Mo Hayder - Skin

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine.’ She smiles. ‘Feel great. Just a little-’

She puts out a hand and he takes her under the arms, then leads her through into the living room. Helps her into the armchair.

‘Do you feel faint?’

‘Feel strange.’

‘I know why. When I took your blood pressure earlier, I thought then it needed to come down.’

‘My blood… What did you say?’

‘Don’t move. I’ve got some tablets for it.’

‘Tablets? My blood pressure’s always OK. The doctor says it’s good for my age.’

She looks down. He has taken a small brown bottle out of a pocket and is shaking white tablets into his palm. The pills seem huge and very white in his hand.

‘What are they?’

‘They’ll bring the pressure down. Make you feel better straight away.’ He nods to the computer. ‘What’s the password?’

‘My password?’ She puts a finger to her head. The room seems smaller than she remembers it. ‘Why do you want to…?’

‘I need to check a dosage. What’s the password?’

‘Stevie21.’

‘And how much do you weigh?’

‘How much do I…? I don’t know.’

He goes to the computer and she hears him tapping keys. Her head’s too heavy to turn and look. She rests it on her hand and imagines for a moment that it’s made of stone, like a statue’s, and will crack if she moves it. Gerber comes back and drops loads of tablets into her hand.

‘So many?’

‘They’re homeopathic.’

Homeopathic. She’s heard of that. She puts them into her mouth and takes the glass of Coke he’s holding out. The tablets are bitter and scratch her throat but she swallows them in two gulps.

‘I think you need to go for a drive. Get some fresh air. Where’s your car?’

‘Outside,’ she mutters. Her mouth seems full of dust. ‘Outside in the…’ She tilts her head back. Tries to focus on him. ‘Over there next to the patio.’

She tries to push herself to her feet but she can’t. And instead of it worrying her, she finds she couldn’t care less. Her feet are a long, long way away. Her legs are just fuzzy poles of light. She looks at her shoes and thinks: Beautiful, beautiful shoes. Red and shiny like rubies. Thank you, God, for lovely shoes.

‘Your keys.’

Gerber is next to her. Shaking her. She lifts her heavy eyes.

‘Where are your keys?’

‘I think I need something to eat.’

‘No, you don’t. Just tell me where your keys are.’

‘In the hallway. Hanging up.’

‘The front-door keys too?’

‘Yes. But why do you need my door keys?’

Instead of an answer all she hears is the distant sound of bird-song. And when she tries to see where he is she realizes he’s left the room. She drops back into the chair and her eyes roll upwards into the lids. She sees constellations of light and electricity. She sees dolphins jumping and ruby red shoes. ‘There’s no place like home,’ she murmurs, smiling. ‘No place like home.’ She floats to the stars and Stevie’s there next to her, holding her hand.

Mum, I think you’d better get up now. Come on. Get up.

Hello, Stevie, darling. You’re a good boy. A good boy.

Listen to me. Get out of your fucking chair. Bitch.

Stevie – what’re you talking about?

Shut up about him now and-

Her eyes open. The light is too bright. Georges is there, his face close up. He’s smiling.

‘Get out of your chair,’ he says encouragingly. ‘Get out now.’

She pushes herself up. He’s wearing gloves, she thinks. Didn’t notice that before. He’s wearing latex gloves. But, then, everything today is strange, really strange, like a dream.

He puts his hand under her elbow and she lets him lead her to the door.

Years ago a trainer had told Caffery that if he ever felt faint on parade he should look at something green: a lawn, a tree. Colours had an effect on the brain – stopped it freezing and giving up – so when he got out of the car in the quiet country lane outside Georges Gerber’s house he stopped for a moment and rested his eyes on the grassy bank. His head was sluggish and staticky from lack of sleep. He needed it to be clear.

Darcy said Susan Hopkins had caught Gerber stealing. Lucy had been blackmailing him: maybe she’d threatened to take him to the GMC over the abdomectomy. Maybe she’d also witnessed the stealing, or whatever had been happening in the recovery room. It had taken him two years to get fed up with the blackmail and kill Lucy. With Susan Hopkins it had been quicker. Maybe she’d confronted him. Maybe he’d already been stirred up enough by Lucy’s murder to have killed again in quick succession.

An early butterfly flapped its lonely way across the lawn, then over the hedge that grew alongside the house, attracted by the blue of a disused swimming-pool. It was very clean – no slime growing on the painted blue walls. He stood on tiptoe and looked past it. About twenty feet on was the distinctive sand mound and manhole inspection cover of a septic system. The house itself was to the right: square and grey, set a long way back from the quiet lane. Everything was tidy, very well kept. Tidy but wrong, Caffery thought, dropping back on to his heels. In spite of the tidiness something felt out of kilter.

He licked his palm, pushed it through his hair and buttoned his jacket. The house had two entrances, one a blue-painted front door to the left, which looked as if it went into the main house. No one answered when he rang this bell so he went to the other entrance, where the house had been extended into a low-roofed building running out at an angle. The stone extension had shuttered casement windows, a narrow portico, and a small porch with an antique foot-scraper built at the left-hand side. He rang the bell. Waited, looking at the brass sign screwed to the front door: Georges Gerber FRCS (Plast) engraved in ornate script.

No answer. He went along the side of the house, glancing into the windows as he went. At the end he stopped. The shutters were closed. He got his Swiss Army Hiker from his pocket and prised off the catch. Pulled the shutter wide.

About ten centimetres into the room, a breezeblock wall had been constructed. He put his nose to the glass. The wall stretched up as far as he could see, and out to the sides as far as he could see. There was an airbrick about six blocks to his right.

Oh, goody, he thought, smiling against the pane. Oh, goody, Mr Gerber, I smell your blood.

In South-east London there had been long, complex issues around stop-and-search laws. When Caffery was a PC, his inspector had adopted a head-in-the-sand solution to the problem and thrown most of his manpower into meeting quotas on other crime. Breaking and entering fell to Caffery. In two short months he’d learnt a lot about the clever ways people had of getting into other folk’s houses.

He drove six miles down the road to a village ironmonger’s and got some of the things he needed. The rest Gerber had generously provided: in the unlocked maintenance shed near the pool. Didn’t people know about locking sheds? Hadn’t it sunk in yet? You were just as likely to have your shed burgled as your house. Hey, Georges, he thought, it’s difficult to comprehend this slack attitude to security. He carried the stepladder and the power drill to the side of the house so that he was hidden from the road. He would hear a car on that lane from miles away. There’d be time to hide the tools if anyone appeared.

Whatever Gerber was getting up to in that strong-room he wouldn’t be wanting a key-holder or the police rolling in if the alarm ever went off. Which meant that the system probably wouldn’t be connected to a control centre, and was probably designed just to unnerve an intruder. Even so, Caffery chose a point about ten metres from the house and snipped the telephone wire. He carried the ladder back to the house, fitted a 9 mm bit in the drill chuck, climbed to the alarm box and made a hole in the ‘T’ of the company name, right where the print was at its darkest so it wouldn’t be visible from a distance. He shook a canister of expanding foam, eased the nozzle into the hole and filled the interior of the box until the face plate made a low noise and popped out a little. He placed a square of black gaffer tape across the strobe unit, climbed back down and returned the stepladder to the shed.