McDermid, Val: Trick of the Dark

'Why would you do that?' Charlie said aloud. 'Why seal up a perfectly good set of bookshelves?' She gripped the bottom rim of the plasterboard, hands wide apart, and put her back into it. With a loud rip of wallpaper, most of the lower part of the false wall came loose, making Charlie stagger backwards at the sudden release. Steadying herself, she recovered her footing, looking at the gap she'd revealed.

And then she understood why.

The only mummies Charlie had ever seen had been in the Manchester Museum. And they'd been in glass cases. But this macabre relic wasn't some sanitised museum exhibit. Its connection to modern life was all too vivid — the faded tatters of contemporary clothing, the carry-on-sized suitcase rammed against the far wall. Charlie tried to concentrate on those superficialities rather than the all too human remains themselves. But the body demanded her attention.

The skin was dark brown, pulled tight over the bones. The soft tissue had desiccated, giving the head the appearance of a bizarre work of Brit Art-a skull covered in paper-thin leather, the teeth a gleaming grin, the eye sockets dark empty horrors, the hair still hanging lank and coarse. The limbs resembled beef jerky, muscles contracted and contorted into a parody of the foetal position.

At first, she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing. Then she remembered the description of what Jenna Calder had been wearing on the day she disappeared. The rotted remains of denim jeans hung around her hips. The pink polyester blouse was almost intact, though discoloured where it had been pressed against the flesh. A brown raincoat was bundled under the mummy, its belt buckle clearly visible. The body might look like something that had been there for centuries, but Charlie was in no doubt that this was Jay Stewart's mother. 'Oh my God,' she said, taking an involuntary step backwards and letting go of the plasterboard she'd been clinging to. Without taking her eyes off her gruesome discovery, she reached into her pocket for her phone.

'I don't think so.'

The voice came from behind her. Recognising it, Charlie spun round, disbelief on her face, wanting her eyes to prove her ears wrong. 'Lisa?'

'Hand over the phone, Charlie.' Lisa came in from the hallway.

Charlie couldn't take in what she was seeing. Lisa Kent, in black jeans and black leather jacket, holding something in her right hand that pointed towards Charlie. 'What are you talking about?' she said, uncomprehending.

'Just hand over the phone.' Lisa gestured with her left hand. 'Come on, Charlie, this is not a game.' She held up her right hand. 'This is pepper. It's very painful as well as disabling. I don't want to use it yet, but I will if I have to. Now, give me the phone.'

Bewildered and baffled, clueless as to what she was dealing with, Charlie chose to cooperate. 'I don't understand,' she said, stretching out to put the phone in Lisa's hand. She noticed that Lisa was wearing tight-fitting latex gloves. 'Are you feeling OK, Lisa? What's going on here?'

Lisa tucked the phone in a jacket pocket. 'I'm feeling absolutely fine, Charlie. You were right about those deaths, you know. They were murders.' She spoke conversationally, as if they were chatting in her living room. 'Step backwards, please. I'm not comfortable with you this close to me. And not for the pitiful reasons you'd wish for,' she added, a cruel edge to her words.

Charlie took a step backwards, caught unawares by the sensation of the world tilting beneath her feet. 'I don't understand, ' she repeated. 'What's all this got to do with you? Why are you here?'

'You're ridiculously easy to follow,' Lisa said, the chatty tone back in place again. 'Do you ever look in your rear-view mirror? I knew you'd turn up at Howard Calder's eventually, and I just stayed on your tail. I hoped you wouldn't find anything to pursue. But I came prepared to deal with it if you did.'

'But why? What has any of this got to do with you?'

'You really don't get it, do you? All those bodies, those people who stood between Jay and happiness — it wasn't Jay who killed them. I told you: she hasn't got it in her to kill. She needed me to do that for her.' There was no hint of madness in Lisa's sweet smile, which was all the more unnerving.

'Jay got you to kill for her?' Charlie couldn't make sense of this at all.

'No, no. I did it willingly. I did it because it was the only way I could show her how much I love her.' There was something almost radiant about Lisa now. 'She needs to be looked after. But the love between us is so strong, so combustible that she's afraid of us being together. I have to keep proving how much she needs me.'

'You said you hardly knew her. That your paths had crossed at Oxford, but that was all.' The one thing Charlie could cling to in the shifting kaleidoscope around her was her professional skill. Keep her talking, she told herself. If Lisa was talking, she wasn't acting.

Lisa gave a rueful smile and a half-shrug. 'I lied. We were lovers. I was her first. And she was mine. It was so strong, so amazing. Completely transforming.'

A chill ran through Charlie. How in God's name could she have missed this madness? She resisted the urge to shudder. 'I've read the interviews, Lisa. She doesn't mention you. Her first girlfriend was called Louise.'

Lisa's eyelids fluttered in a series of blinks. 'That's right. I was Louise then. But Jay transformed me. And now I'm Lisa. We don't talk about that transformation, you see. Here's the thing, Charlie. Some things are too powerful to share with the world,' she said quickly. 'To know something like the electricity there was between Jay and me is to transcend normal reality. It's impossible to explain to people who have only a mundane experience of the world.'

'People like me, you mean?'

Lisa laughed merrily. 'Exactly, Charlie. Now you're beginning to understand how I couldn't have a relationship with you.'

'As opposed to Nadia,' Charlie said tartly. 'I tell you, Lisa, I am so over you.' As she said it, Charlie knew it was nothing less than the truth. Being threatened and held hostage had a way of putting relationships in a whole new perspective.

Lisa looked momentarily cross. 'That's really of no account to me, Charlie. And I told you already, Nadia was about sex. The satisfaction of a physical urge. There was in no sense a relationship between us. How could there be?'

'I suppose not. But I don't entirely understand how you went from being Jay's lover to being her avenging angel. Presumably she dumped you?' Careful, Charlie, she told herself. Don't make her too angry. Just enough to unsettle her.

'We separated because we couldn't handle the extreme forces between us. My life since then has been about waiting for her to be ready. And taking care of her so she can have the best possible life until that time arrives.'

'And that means killing people who stand in her way?'

Again that brilliant smile. 'Why not? It's not like they were on the same plane as Jay and me.'

'Does she know about this?' Charlie tried to sound conversational too, to hide her intention to understand the pathology of what she was confronted with.

Lisa nodded. 'Naturally. It's important that she understands I'm still as committed to her as I ever was. We remain the keeper of each other's secrets.'

'Each other's secrets?' The echo question. Always a powerful tool. Even with those who had crossed the line.

'She knows I kill for her when it's necessary. And I always knew about this.' Lisa waved vaguely at the alcove and its contents.

'You knew she'd killed her mother?'

Lisa reared back, an expression of outrage on her face. 'Killed her mother? Don't be ridiculous. It was Howard who killed her mother. He'd found out about Rinks van Leer and he followed Jenna here that last morning. He was determined she should die rather than violate his mad Christian principles. By the time Jay arrived to talk to her mother, Jenna was dead. He'd whacked her on the back of the head with his cricket bat. Which he then left lying on the floor beside her.' Lisa rolled her eyes. 'Well, duh. So Jay arrives on the scene in time to see him legging it up the prom. She's scared he's come to put a stop to her escape plans so she runs up to the flat here. And she sees her life falling apart before her eyes. Mother dead, stepfather about to be arrested for murder. What's going to happen to her? The sky's going to fall on her head. The police, the church, the media. She's not going to be sitting her A-levels and going to Oxford in the middle of all that, is she? The lesser of two evils is a runaway mother, right? Am I right?' She paused, waiting for a response.