Nicci French - Beneath The Skin

“Yes. Do I know you?” He spoke with a languid self-assurance. I imagined Zoe beside him, her eager, pretty face looking up at his.

“Sorry to wake you up, but it’s urgent. Can I come in?”

He raised his eyebrows at me.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Nadia Blake. I’m here because I am being threatened by the same man who killed Zoe.”

I thought this would surprise him, but it clearly hit him like a physical blow. He almost fell backward.

“What?” he said.

“Can I come in?”

He stepped back and held the door open. He looked utterly dazed. I was past him before he could say anything more. He followed me upstairs to a small cluttered living room.

“I’m sorry about Zoe, by the way,” I said.

He was looking at me intently.

“How did you hear about me?”

“I saw you on a list of witnesses,” I said.

He ran his hand through his tousled hair and then rubbed his eyes.

“Want some coffee?”

“Thanks.”

He went into the adjoining kitchen and I stared around me. I thought there might be a photograph of Zoe, something that would remind me of her, but there was nothing. I picked up some of the magazines lying on the floor: horticultural manuals, a guide to London club life, a TV guide. There was a heap of round stones on one of the shelves and I picked up a marbled one that looked like a duck’s egg and held it in the palm of my hand. I put it carefully back and picked up a brown felt hat that was hung on the edge of the chair, swung it round on my forefinger. I wanted to feel close to Zoe, but she felt utterly absent. I picked up a carved wooden duck from a shelf and examined it. When Fred came back into the room I hastily restored it to the shelf.

“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.

“Just fidgeting. I’m sorry.”

“Here’s your coffee.”

“Thanks.” I had forgotten to tell him I don’t like it with milk.

Fred sat on a sofa that looked as if it had been retrieved from a dump and motioned me into the chair. He held his mug in both hands and stared into it. He didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry about Zoe,” I said again, for want of anything better.

“Yeah,” he said.

He shrugged and looked away. What had I been expecting? I had felt that there was a bond between us, because he had known Zoe and that made him, in a quite irrational way, closer to me in my imagination than any of my friends.

“What was she like?”

“Like?” He looked up sulkily. “She was nice, attractive, happy, you know, all that, but what do you want from me?”

“It’s stupid, I know. I want to know silly things about her: her favorite color, her clothes, her dreams, what she felt like when she got the letters, everything…” I ran out of breath.

He looked uncomfortable, almost disgusted.

“I can’t help you,” he said.

“Did you love her?” I asked abruptly.

He stared at me as if I had said something obscene.

“We had good fun.”

Good fun. My heart sank. He hadn’t even known her, or didn’t want me to know her through him. Good fun: what an epitaph.

“Don’t you wonder, though, all the time what she must have felt like? When she was being threatened, I mean, and then when she died?”

He reached across for a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches on a low table by the sofa.

“No,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

“The photograph I saw of her looked quite old. Do you have a more recent one?”

“No.”

“Not one?”

“I don’t take photos.”

“Or any things of hers that I could look at? There must be something.”

“What for?” he said, his face hard and unyielding.

“I’m sorry. I must seem like a ghoul. It’s just that I feel a connection to these two women.”

“What do you mean two women?”

“Zoe and then Jenny Hintlesham, the second woman he killed.”

“What?” he said, leaping forward. He put the mug on the table, spilling quite a lot of the coffee. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry, you didn’t know. The police have been keeping it a big secret. I only found out by mistake. This other woman got the same letters. She was killed a few weeks after Zoe.”

“But… but…” Fred seemed lost in thought. Then he looked at me with a completely new intensity. “That second woman.”

“Jenny.”

“She was killed by the same man?”

“That’s right.”

He gave a low whistle.

“Fuck,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

The telephone rang, loud as an alarm, and we both started. Fred picked up the receiver and turned his back on me.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m up.” A pause, then: “Come round now and we’ll collect Duncan and Graham later.”

He put the phone down and glanced over at me.

“I’ve got a friend coming round,” he said in dismissal. “Good luck, Nadia. Sorry I couldn’t be any help.”

Was that it? That couldn’t be it. I gazed at him helplessly.

“Good-bye, Nadia,” he said again, almost pushing me to the door. “Take care.”

I walked with my head down, making my way blindly toward the underground. Poor Zoe, I thought. Fred had struck me as a man almost entirely without imagination, handsome and heedless. I couldn’t imagine him being very sympathetic toward her while she was receiving the threats, whatever he had told the police afterward. I went over what he had said, which was not very much-nothing that made it worth escaping from police protection. A sudden shiver of fear went through me. I was on my own, nobody looking after me. I imagined eyes in the Saturday crowd looking after me.

Suddenly my way was blocked. A man standing in my path looked down at me. Dark hair, pale face, teeth glinting behind his smile. Who was he?

“Hello there, you look miles away.”

I stared at him.

“It is Nadia, isn’t it? The woman with the ancient computer?”

Ah, now I remembered. Relief flooded through me. I smiled.

“Yes. Sorry. Um-”

“Morris. Morris Burnside.”

“Of course. Hi.”

“How are you, Nadia? How have you been?”

“What? Oh, fine,” I replied absently. “Look, I’m really sorry but I’m in a bit of a hurry, actually.”

“Of course, don’t let me keep you. You’re sure you are okay? You look a bit anxious.”

“Oh, just tired, that’s all. You know. Well, bye then.”

“Good-bye, Nadia. Take care of yourself now. See you.”

The house was beautiful. I’d seen it in the photographs of course, but it was grander in real life: set back from the road in its own gardens, steps leading up to its porched front door, wisteria climbing up the tall white walls. Everything about it was substantial and spoke of good taste and wealth. I knew about the wealth of course, but now I could practically smell it. I looked upward to the windows on the first floor. In one of those rooms, Jenny had died. I smoothed back my hair and fiddled nervously with the straps on my cheap cotton shift. Then I walked briskly up to the door and banged the brass knocker.

I almost expected Jenny to open the door herself: to see her narrow face and her glossy dark hair framed in the doorway. She’d be polite to me, in that well-bred and faintly surprised way that says get lost to people like me: the rude and the reckless.

“Yes?” Not Jenny, but a tall and elegant woman with blond hair swept smoothly back, jewels at her ears, wearing a pair of well-cut black trousers and an apricot-colored silk blouse. I had read about Clive’s affair in the file and I had a pretty good idea who she was. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to Clive Hintlesham, please. My name is Nadia Blake.”

“Is it urgent?” she asked with chilly pleasantness. “As you can probably hear, we’ve got visitors.”