Nicci French - Beneath The Skin

“I didn’t meet any of them. You can talk to Lena about that.”

I was walking busily around the kitchen. Stadler was sitting at the kitchen table looking gloomy, poor thing.

“Tell me what you’re actually doing about all of this,” I demanded.

“Doing?” he repeated, as if the question didn’t make sense.

“Yes, you know, forgive me for being stupid, but just spell it out for me, will you?”

He put his hand on mine and I let it lie there, hot and heavy. “Mrs. Hintlesham, Jenny, we’re doing everything we can. We’re doing forensic tests on all the letters, we’re trying to find out where the paper came from, we’re looking at the fingerprints in your house in case he should have broken in. As you know”-he attempted a rueful smile but it didn’t suit him-“we’re going through all your friends, acquaintances, contacts, people who work or have worked for you, to try and establish any connections between you and the, er, the other people who have been targeted by the writer of these letters. And then, of course, until he is caught, we are making quite sure you are safe and protected.”

I took my hand away.

“Is there really any point in carrying on with all this?” I asked.

“What?” said Stadler.

“All this ridiculous fuss about opening letters and hanging around the house.”

There was quite a long silence. Stadler seemed to be finding it hard to make up his mind what to say. Then he looked up at me with his very dark eyes, almost too dark.

“This is serious,” he said. “You’ve read the letters. This man has threatened to kill you.”

“Well they’re pretty nasty,” I admitted. “But really it’s the sort of thing you have to put up with living in London, like obscene phone calls and traffic and dog mess on the streets and all that.”

“Maybe,” said Stadler. “But we need to take it seriously. I’m going to liaise with DCI Links in a minute, but what I’m going to suggest-and I’m sure he’ll agree with me-is that we need to make this environment more secure.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the work being done here must stop. Just for the time being.”

“Are you crazy?” I was aghast. “These builders have a six-month waiting list. Jeremy’s off to Germany next week. The plasterers are arriving at the beginning of next week. Do you want to see my folder? This isn’t something I can just shut down and start up again when you feel like it.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hintlesham. But it’s essential.”

“Essential for who? Is it just going to help you because you aren’t doing your job properly?”

Stadler stood up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry we haven’t caught this lunatic. But it’s difficult. Normally there’s a procedure, knocking on doors, looking for witnesses. But when a madman picks on somebody at random, there’s no normal procedure. You just have to hope that you get a break.”

I almost laughed, but I stayed coldly silent. This ridiculous man wanted my sympathy. He wanted me to say “There, there” because it was so hard to be a policeman. I felt like throwing him out, him and the rest of them.

“What we have to consider,” he continued, “is that he has made a serious threat on your life. We want to catch him, but our first priority is your safety. I don’t feel we can take any more risks with that. The alternative would be for you to move away from this house to somewhere more protected.”

I’d felt like there was a volcano trying to erupt deep in my stomach. The second prospect was even worse, so I had agreed, in a sort of cold fury. I asked when he wanted them to leave and he said straightaway, while he was in the house. So I stomped around like a nightclub bouncer and briskly ejected everybody. Then there was an awful hour of phone calls and half explanations to baffled people and attempts to make vague commitments for the future.

I drank the last of my gin and tonic and got out of the bath and wrapped myself with the big soft towel. It was so hot and so steamy in the bathroom that my skin remained clammy however much I rubbed it, so I walked through to the bedroom. The doors on the fitted cupboards had full-length mirrors on them. They were to have been ripped out next week. I stood in front of one of them and watched myself as I dried my hair and then my body. Even then I still felt damp in the heat of the evening, so I tossed the towel down on the carpet and stood and looked at myself. It was something I hardly ever did, not naked, without makeup.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be unfamiliar with that body, to see it for the first time and to find it attractive. I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to one side, but it seemed almost too much of an effort. I suppose it happens with all married couples after years together and children and all that, and hard work-you just become part of the furniture, something you hardly notice except when it starts to go wrong. Maybe that’s why other things-I mean other people-might seem more enticing. I tried to imagine what it was like when Clive and I had first seen each other in, well, in that sort of way, and the funny thing was that I absolutely couldn’t. I could remember our first time. At his first flat in Clapham. I could remember all the details. I could remember the play we had been to see beforehand, what food we had eaten afterward. I could even remember what clothes I was wearing, which he had then taken off, but what it had felt like, to see each other’s flesh for the first time-that had gone.

I’d had only one serious boyfriend before that. Well, fairly serious, to me at any rate. He was a photographer called Jon Jones. He’s pretty famous now. You see his name in Harper’s and Vogue . He did a nail-varnish commission using my hands, and one thing led to another. I was quite nervous really, about sex, I mean, that sort of thing. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was obedient, really, more than anything. I’m not sure how exciting it actually was technically, but the idea of it-of him-was exciting.

I was almost in a dream and then I realized I was standing naked in my room with the light on. The curtains were open. The windows were open. I walked to the window quickly to close the curtains and then stopped. What did it matter after all, to be looked at? Was it so bad? I stood there for a moment. The wind blew in hotly. I felt as if I would have given anything for a breath of cool breeze. It was too hot to close the window but I turned and switched off the light. That amounted to the same thing.

I lay down on the bed, on my back with the covers off. Even a sheet would have been agony. I touched my forehead and my breasts. I was already sweating again. I moved my fingers down across my stomach and between my legs. I felt warm and wet. I touched myself gently and looked up at the ceiling. What would it be like to be looked at for the first time? What would it be like to be wanted? To be lusted after. To be looked at. To be wanted.

I’m good at packing. I always pack for Clive when he has to go away for a few days. Men are hopeless at folding their shirts properly. Anyway, now I was packing for the boys, who were off into the wilds of Vermont for their summer camp. We’d heard about it years ago from a friend of a friend of a friend at Clive’s work. Three weeks of rappelling and windsurfing and sitting round campfires and, in Josh’s case, probably eyeing up nubile young girls in skimpy shorts. I said as much to him as I was carefully laying the T-shirts, shorts, swimming things, and trousers into his case. He just looked glum.

“You just want us out of the house,” he muttered.

Everything he says now is in a mutter that I can’t quite catch. It makes me feel as if I’m going deaf.