Mo Hayder - Skin

Thom and Mandy. Still over there. Watching her like dummies from the jetty. She tapped harder.

PC Prody’s testimony would be that he’d chased her. Not Thom. It’d be that she’d sworn over and again she’d been driving the Focus. Pearce: well, Pearce she didn’t want to think about. He’d tell everyone that Sergeant Marley had been bouncing around some very confident theories about where Misty would and wouldn’t be found. Not in the lake, she’d said. We definitely won’t find her in the lake. Like she knew. Big fat mouth. She’d only said it because she didn’t think someone as groomed as Misty would commit suicide by drowning. It had been a stupid thought – off the top of her head.

She looked at the jetty.

Thom: It’s a bit of a haze .

Mandy: We’ll protect you .

She turned the music off. Got out and came back to the jetty.

‘Flea.’ Mandy’s hand went out warningly. ‘Let’s have a talk about this and-’

Too late. Flea was on Thom. Had him by the shoulders. Slammed him against the post. ‘ Tell the truth! ’ she yelled.

‘ Let go of me .’

She dragged him forward. Slammed him back again. His arms flew out. The pint glass toppled, shattered. ‘ Say it now. ’

Winded, he slithered down the post to a sitting position. On the balcony people turned in amazement. She got him under the arms and pulled him forward, throwing him down on his face, put her feet astride his back and dropped her weight on his buttocks. Got his hair in her hands. ‘ Take some responsibility .’

‘Stop it.’ Mandy scrabbled at her hands. ‘Stop it now.’

Flea wasn’t listening. She was seeing Dad, a million years ago, slapping Thom. The flatness in Thom’s face. The way he didn’t react. ‘ Tell the truth! ’ she screamed.

He groped blindly behind him. ‘ Leave me alone .’ He got his fingernails into her hands and tried to pull them out of his hair.

She clenched her teeth. Leant back and hauled his head up. ‘ Tell the fucking truth -’

He threw himself sideways, his bony hips twisting, until he was on his back, facing her. She tried to slam his head down but he stopped her, grabbing her wrists. While she struggled, he lifted his knee swiftly, twice, three times, catching her in the groin. And now Mandy was squatting next to her. Not screaming. Silent. Face screwed up in concentration, her meaty arms grappling around Flea.

‘ Get off me, you bitch .’ Flea rammed her elbow out sideways. Missed. A muscle jarred in her shoulder. ‘ Get off .’

She flung her weight sideways, hair flying. Back again, trying to break Mandy’s grip. But she was twice Flea’s weight and strong, and she kept her face against Flea’s shoulder, held the armlock grimly, going with the movement. They rolled on to the jetty. She felt a fragment of glass slice into her cheek, felt Thom wriggle out from under them, heard him stand as she struggled with Mandy.

‘Let go of me, Mandy,’ she spat. ‘Because I will kill you.’

‘Get her hands!’ Thom yelled suddenly. ‘Get her.’

Flea kicked blindly as his hands scrabbled for hers. She felt spiteful fingernails in her wrists. Felt herself being lifted. He was strong too. Stronger than she’d ever guessed. Blood was running down her chin. Vague ghosts of people were coming from the bar, shouting.

‘ I’ll kill you .’

A kick. Or a punch. In her stomach. Up high, under the diaphragm. She didn’t see who it came from, but it pushed all the air out of her – finished her in one. Mandy released her and she fell forward and lay there, not moving. The cop trained to stand up in a riot was on the jetty with blood coming out of her face, thinking the only important thing was to get another breath into her body.

‘Phoebe.’ Mandy’s voice was just a whisper close to her face. Flea could smell the tang of her sweat. The sweetness of laundry detergent. ‘Phoebe, Thom and I love you very much. Very much indeed. That is why we are going to help you. We’re going to help you sort out your problems, your issues, and together – together – we’ll find a way of not taking you to the police.’

Caffery broke all the rules and took alcohol into the unit meeting that evening. He got a can of Coke from on top of the filing cabinet, drank half of it, then uncapped a bottle of Bell ’s and filled the can to the top. The Bell ’s was there because, compared to a good malt, Glenmorangie maybe, he hated the taste. The idea was to stop himself necking the whole bottle. Sometimes the trick worked, sometimes it didn’t.

Every force he’d ever known called the daily meeting with a senior investigating officer ‘prayers’. Some SIOs held prayers once a day to collate what the team had done the previous day. Some held it twice: morning and afternoon prayers. Some held it whenever the wind changed direction. Like Powers. He was a nightmare.

Today’s prayers was mostly about Kitson’s phone records and how well Powers had come across on TV at the press conference. Caffery stood against the wall, drinking the whisky and Coke and thinking not about Kitson but about Susan Hopkins. Susan Hopkins and Lucy Mahoney, he’d worked out, probably hadn’t known each other. There was no mention of Mahoney in Hopkins ’s address book or paperwork and vice versa. Nor had Hopkins’s family and friends heard the name, though the boyfriend from the rigs thought ‘Lucy Mahoney’ sounded like a porn star, if Caffery wanted the honest truth. And yet there was a link between the women. Somewhere, something connected them, he was sure of it. Which left a nasty truth, a truth that felt like a dark and limitless hole opening in the air close to his face: not Amos Chipeta, but someone else. Someone cold and slick, who could disguise a killing as suicide. Who had reasons for wanting to pull the skin off a dog.

‘Quiet in there, weren’t you?’ After the meeting Powers caught up with Caffery in the corridor. ‘Not seen you so quiet before.’

Caffery stopped at the door of his office. He was still holding the Coke can. He didn’t try to hide it, not with what he knew Powers kept in his filing cabinet. ‘There wasn’t much to say.’

‘You weren’t in the office this morning. Like I hoped you’d be.’

‘I was. Early. I divvied up the actions like I said I would. Then I went for lunch.’

Powers looked at him thoughtfully, then at the Coke can. ‘Jack, let me tell you how it is. I drink on duty. That’s just what I do. As long as the job gets done, and one of the traffic guys at Almondsbury doesn’t net me going the wrong way down the M4, it doesn’t make a difference. In twenty years no one has said a thing about it.’ He raised his eyes. ‘And do you know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Because I do my job and I don’t get in people’s faces. I don’t get in people’s faces and I toe the line so they don’t find ways to hurt me. But if I did , if I was the sort of person who made people angry, who didn’t pull with the team…’ he paused ‘… I’d be shit on toast. No time at all, it’d take them. Shit on toast.’

Caffery gave him a long look. He pushed open the door to his office and went inside. Put the can down, sat, unbuttoned his jacket and arranged it loosely around his torso. He beckoned to Powers. As if he was inviting a body blow. ‘Go on, then. Give me it if you have to.’

Powers eyed him carefully, then, with reluctance, came in. He closed the door behind him and sat down. ‘I heard you were out for lunch in Clifton.’

‘News travels.’

‘Turnbull’s very faithful.’

‘That’s nice. And there was I thinking he and I had something special going on.’