Original Skin (22 page)

She has not switched on her phone yet. Does not know if Anthony has called. Has vague memories of him putting her in a taxi and sending her home, but the thought of switching on her phone and sifting through the last four days of messages and voice mails fills her with dread. She’s thinking of him though. Remembering the puzzled little smile with which he listened to her ramblings. The tenderness with which he had held her in the street as she wept in his arms. The way he stood his corner in the bank and saved her with his white-knight generosity.

“Here.”

Suzie has been staring across the flat, green fields and trying to work out if she can see Lincoln Minster in the distance, and is startled when Melissa places a bottle of beer in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she says nervously, taking the drink. “Miles away.”

Melissa looks at her. There is an intensity to her gaze. “I like your mask,” she says. “That would have been a good idea. Do people usually wear them?”

“Only if they want to,” says Suzie, absentmindedly sipping the beer that she had not asked for but is grateful to receive. “It’s not about secrecy. Everybody knows everybody.”

“Yes?”

Suzie thinks about it. “Well, no. I guess everybody trusts everybody.”

“These people know you?”

“They know my face.”

Melissa gives her first real smile. “I bet they know more than that.”

Suzie takes another drink, and points with the bottle at where Jarod is talking to another couple of newcomers about the difficulty he had in getting this location to show up on the GPS. “Jarod, was it? Interesting name.”

Melissa shrugs, as if to suggest that not much about Jarod interests her at this moment. Suzie feels vaguely uncomfortable under the older, larger woman’s stare. She has played this game before, of course. She has experimented time and again. She did not think she was averse to doing so again tonight, but at present there are no stirrings of desire within her. She is just enjoying looking across the fields and not really existing for a while. The events of the week are a mound of cold coins in her gut. She feels weighted down and toxic. She fancies she can taste blood when she swallows. She is existing in moments of exhilaration and numbness, unwilling to let any of her thoughts develop into questions. She knows she cannot ignore what happened. Knows that she left a man to die. Knows, too, that she feels somehow fearful for her own safety. But she cannot distinguish this feeling from the loneliness and solitude that have been constant since Simon died. More than anything, her thoughts keep returning to Anthony. It has been a long time since she had these feelings. Is feeling the lovely terror of wondering if somebody likes her . . .

“You’ve polished that off,” says Melissa, pointing to Suzie’s empty bottle. “I’ll get you a proper drink.”

Suzie lifts her mask, then drops it again. She likes being half hidden like this. She readjusts her dress. Exposes the lilies inked on her skin.

“Hi,” comes a voice, close enough to her ear to goose-pimple her skin.

She turns. Sees Jarod staring into her eyes, his own a piercing green.

“Beautiful ink,” he says, tracing a hand over the design. His touch makes her tremble.

“Thank you.” Her voice catches. In her throat.

A half smile on the young man’s face; his eyes on her tattooed skin.

“I feel like I’ve been looking for you.”

•   •   •

NIGHTTIME.
A shapeless landscape in northern Lincolnshire; green fields and neatly tended apple trees. Two figures laughing: stick drawings etched in tar.

“Are they okay with this?”

“Of course,” says Suzie, laughing. “They’re okay with everything.”

This is a pleasant drunkenness. Suzie does not feel sick, and the dizziness is that of a carousel rather than a fairground waltzer. She feels light. Not content, but happy enough with this sensation of giddiness.

“You cold?”

“I’ll live.”

The night sky is the color of bruised fruit, but remains cloudless, and though the air is cold and close, the wind has dropped.

Both Suzie and Jarod are wearing dressing gowns over naked skin. Until a few moments ago they had been drinking wine in the hot tub with a married couple who had driven up from Reading, and a large Asian man with an extreme amount of body hair whom nobody seemed to know.

Suzie has been drinking for seven hours. She has long since given up the notion of going home. Here, intoxicated, giggly, excited, she can see nothing to rush home for. Cannot bear the thought of the empty flat. Shudders at the thought of sitting at her kitchen table, trying to think of something wholesome to do, before giving in and searching dating sites and porn channels for something that will divert her attention from the fact that somebody tried to kill her, and that her best friend took his own life . . .

“Down here,” she says, holding open an old wooden gate and pointing to the six stepping-stones that lead to the river.

“Pretty,” says Jarod, touching her hip with his palm. He takes the lead and follows the sound of tumbling water.

“Anybody there?”

He and Suzie pull expectant faces as they listen for answers, then giggle at the silliness of it. Suzie feels her insides warming. Enjoys herself, throwing herself into silly games with this young, attractive, playful man. Imagines, for the smallest of moments, that the past few months have not happened. That she is giggling with Simon and that death has not touched her life.

“Is it deep?”

The stream is at its widest point here, beneath the miniature waterfall. It is perhaps six feet across. The riverbed is silt and stone, and sandbanks slope upward to soft, damp grass.

“Up to your waist,” says Suzie, cautiously tiptoeing to the water’s edge. She is cold—the water from the hot tub turned icy cold on her flesh during their walk across the fields.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” says Jarod, and laughs. He leans in and gives Suzie a light kiss on the cheek. It is friendly and not sexual. They may have been naked in the hot tub together, but there has been no suggestion so far of anything happening besides giggles and laughter. They have enjoyed each other’s company. They are the youngest people here. Have laughed themselves drunk at each other’s gently barbed comments about the other guests. Have talked football and music, stayed away from anything that matters.

“Do you think she saw us?” asks Jarod, peering into the darkness. “She’s like a bloodhound.”

Melissa, the lady he came with, has not been a popular party guest. She has barely taken her eyes off Jarod or Suzie all day, and anybody who has approached her with an offer of finding a private room or a place to get to know each other better has been rewarded with an icy stare. Suzie does not want to know the dynamics of her new friend’s relationship with the older lady, but fancies it is not destined for marriage and kids.

“Ooh, it’s freezing!” Suzie has dipped a toe in the water. She winces. Takes her glasses off and lays them on the bank. She pulls up the hem of her borrowed dressing gown and steps, ankle deep, into the water.

“I’m game if you are,” says Jarod. He doesn’t look particularly game. In truth, he suddenly looks cold and reluctant.

“It was your idea,” says Suzie, and her laugh rings out, the only sound besides the tumbling water.

“How did we end up here?” asks Jarod thoughtfully. He appears to be trying to distract Suzie from making him good on his skinny-dipping promise.

“You said you wanted a plunge pool. You said you were too hot in the hot tub. Which you would be. That’s its job . . .”

“No, here,” he says, casting an arm around. “What did you say you were? Twenty-six? I’m twenty-two. They’re all, like, old.”

Suzie frowns at him. “They’re just people having fun,” she says. “You’re not going to get Angelina Jolie at a place like this.” She pauses. “You might, actually. She seems into all sorts.”

“I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

Suzie pouts. “You’re not having fun?”

Jarod waves in the direction of the house. “We’re not a couple,” he says a little drowsily. “We’ve done it a few times. Met her on the Internet and it turns out she lives near me. I don’t fancy her or anything. I don’t even know how we ended up in bed.”

Suzie is shivering now, up to her knees in the water, not really listening.

“This is her fantasy,” he says. “She says she wants to see me do it to somebody else.”

Suzie shrugs. “She doesn’t seem like she wants to.”

Jarod nods enthusiastically. “I’m not really called Jarod, by the way. I’m Luke. I just liked the name Jarod.”

Suzie smiles. “I’m really called Suzie. Some people call me Blossoms.”

“It suits you.”

“Thanks. Jarod is a good name. You’re more a Jarod than a Luke.”

They smile at each other, half drunk, half happy, here, knee-deep in a silted-up stream.

“Fancy getting soaked?” asks Jarod, looking at the water.

Suzie is not sure now. She knows it will be exhilarating to plunge into the water, but it suddenly seems too cold. Too dark, even. Her thoughts turn to Simon before she can stop them. To the last time she threw herself into this water, hand in hand with her best friend.

“Next time,” she says, and begins to inch her way back to the bank.

Above the sound of the falling water she hears voices. She looks up the slight slope to see a naked couple and the Asian man in a giant bath towel appear at the top of the stepping-stones.

“Hi,” shouts Jarod, to alert the newcomers. “Water’s lovely.”

The trio of fellow bathers wave and laugh. “Is it freezing?” comes a woman’s voice.

“Too cold for us,” says Jarod.

They pass one another, awkwardly, wet and naked, on the stepping-stones. Suzie gets a whiff of beer and marijuana. The fat Asian man gives her a smile that is guileless and innocent. She wonders if he has turned up here by mistake.

Suzie and Jarod begin to walk back toward the house. They are barefoot and the wet grass feels nice on their feet. Behind them, they can hear fading shrieks of alarm and excitement as the three bathers enter the pool.

“Do you think Melissa is making friends?” asks Suzie quietly as they pass under the low-hanging branches of an apple tree. She lets the leaves play through her fingers.

“Doubt it,” says Jarod, with a laugh. “Here, did you—?”

He does not get to finish his sentence.

Suzie turns at a sudden movement in time to see Jarod falling to his knees. He is crumpling as if demolished from beneath. Even in this darkness, she can see the sudden explosion of crimson that colors his expressionless face as he folds in on himself.

Suzie begins to shriek, but finds no words. She spins, her world chaos and movement, darkness and noise, and then there is a hand in her hair and she is being pushed to the ground.

Her face is in the grass, her mouth full of dirt. There is pressure on her back, now. Strong arms upon her shoulders, a fist in her hair.

She feels a frenzied tugging at her clothing and, for a moment, she knows what will happen. Knows she is to be raped. Knows that without Simon to protect her, her fears are coming true . . .

She is yanked back and down again as the dressing-gown belt is tugged free. Suzie tries to throw elbows backward, to claw at the pressure upon her, but she is suddenly aware of her weakness, her glasses pressed painfully into her face, the sudden taste of blood in her mouth as she mashes her teeth on her tongue.

Now the belt is free. Her bare stomach and breasts are pressed into the grass. There is more dirt on her tongue.

A hard yank, her hair tearing at the roots, and now the belt is around her throat: a hissing sound fighting the blood in her ears as her neck is squeezed shut.

Simon. Please. Simon . . .

“
What the fuck?”

A chorus of shouts. Sudden protests.

“Who . . . ? Get off, you bastard.”

The pressure suddenly loosens. She can breathe. She can breathe!

“Come here, you fucker . . .”

“Stop!”

Suzie: coughing up blood and earth, gasping for breath, trying to turn herself. To see who did this to her. To see who it is that is trying to end her life.

Tears in her eyes. Blood streaking her face.

Suddenly feeling lighter than air. Flying. Rising high: a half-drunk rapture.

Being picked up in the arms of a fat Asian man. Her face pressed into a wet, hairy chest. Heart thudding, masking the sound of running footsteps, and distant shouts . . .

SUNDAY, MIDMORNING.

A LEG OF LAMB
roasting in the oven and the smell of garlicky meat and fat filling this small two-bedroom house.

McAvoy looks at his wife. She is wearing a purple velour tracksuit top and shorts. She has taken her makeup off, and her dark, tanned skin looks kissably soft in the half-light of the bedroom, illuminated only by the ghost-shaped lamp that sits on Fin’s chest of drawers.

“You happy, darling?”

Roisin gives her husband a huge grin. Then playfully shouts, “Catch,” and pretends to throw him their daughter. He adopts a rugby player’s stance, and they share a laugh together over his instinctive response.

“Are we going to watch the film now?” asks Fin.

The lad had been upstairs, playing with his toys, when he had asked if his sister could come and join him. Roisin had taken Lilah up and told him he had to play nicely and not let her near the toys that could come to bits. Ten minutes later Fin had shouted for his parents and told them his sister had given a noise that was a definite laugh. His parents had needed proof, and set about putting on a comedy routine. Lilah had not responded to silly voices or Roisin’s jumping jacks, but had started showing signs of mirth when McAvoy plucked his wife out of the air and threw her on the bed.

“Sure, Fin, we’ll put it on. You finished playing?”

McAvoy is interrupted by the sound of a Shakira song. Roisin fumbles in her cleavage for her phone, and puts Lilah on her hip as she speaks.

She rolls her eyes at McAvoy as she asks who it is.

Her smile fades. She stops looking at her husband. Turns away from him.

“Daddy, can we—?”

McAvoy shushes his son. Crosses to his wife and turns her to face him.

“But that’s mad,” his wife is saying. “It’s not an honor thing now. How can it be? He’ll never say yes. He’s a policeman. No, that’s . . .”

McAvoy is rubbing his wife’s forearm. Trying to get answers. He has a feeling between his guts and chest, an uneasiness. A queasy feeling of foreboding.

“Tell him no,” says Roisin. “No.”

She hangs up the phone. Turns to McAvoy. Her face is pale. The dark lines beneath her eyes, invisible when she was laughing just moments ago, seem suddenly to have deepened to a bruise.

“Fin, can you watch your sister for five minutes? There’s a good lad.”

Roisin’s voice has a slight tremble. Its tone is gray.

She settles Lilah back on her play mat and takes McAvoy’s hand as she leads him from the room and into their own bedroom. She switches on the bedroom light and sits down on the bed, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“Did you hurt Ronan?”

McAvoy, the nervousness inside him threatening to make his hands tremble, is too bewildered to answer. He tries to predict what he will be told. Cannot think fast enough.

“There’s a new campsite at the playing fields in Anlaby,” she says. “Some of the lads from Cottingham have set up there.”

McAvoy spreads his hands, eager to find out how much he needs to worry. “Yeah, I was there a few days ago, there was an escaped horse, I told you . . .”

“You were there a couple of nights ago. You arrested Ronan.”

McAvoy frowns. An image of the ginger lad fills his mind. Sees himself, pinning him to the dirt and wrenching his hands behind his back. Hears, again, the hissed threats. “Do you know him? He’s the one who set the dogs on Trish.”

Roisin waves the question away. “I think we were once at a wedding together. That’s not the thing.” She stops. “Aector, do you know who his godfather is?”

McAvoy’s mind is struggling to keep up. “What? No.”

“Look, Aector, people know who you are. They know you’re the big ginger copper that Roisin Byrne ran off with and got herself married to. They know your name.”

“What does that matter?”

McAvoy’s voice betrays his feelings. They have not had to discuss such things in many years. His wife’s past and heritage are things they have both long since assimilated into their union. They have been a couple since she was seventeen. Their first meeting was on a campsite just outside Carlisle. She was a girl, giggly and raven-haired, entertained but not enthralled by the giant, young, uniformed policeman who blushed so furiously as he spoke to the men on the site about a spate of petty thefts. It was only later that their passing knowledge of each other was cemented. Bonded by fire. Turned into something deep and unyielding in a moment of violence that left McAvoy with blood on his hands, and a weeping girl in his arms: she rescued from her attackers by luck, providence, and a giant man with flame-red hair and furious righteousness in his eyes.

“Aector, Ronan’s godfather has heard about what you did. Ronan’s called him somehow. Told him you beat him up. Tied his hands and battered him.”

“That’s insane,” splutters McAvoy. “I would never . . .”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, her eyes pricking with tears. “He believes it. And he wants a straightener.”

McAvoy opens his mouth. Pulls a face. He breathes out, relieved that the problem is no bigger than the ones he is already facing.

“A straightener? I’m a policeman! You told them that, yeah?” He pauses. Furrows his brow. “Who was that on the phone?”

Roisin looks at her phone distractedly, as if it doesn’t matter. “Just somebody giving us warning.”

“Friendly or unfriendly?” asks McAvoy, and there is an edge to his voice now.

“Aector, there are still people who care for me. I’m not dead to everyone.”

McAvoy sees the flash of temper in her cheeks and sits next to her on the bed. He puts an arm around her slim, toned shoulders. “I didn’t mean that,” he says.

He knows how much she has sacrificed to become his wife.

Knows that her mother and father can barely bring themselves to acknowledge that their youngest daughter has married a policeman, in a simple registry office ceremony. Her two brothers deny her existence. Roisin was brought up believing in family above all else. He knows that part of her soul was fractured the day she told her parents that she had fallen in love with the policeman who had twice arrested her dad.

“Aector, his godfather is Noye.”

McAvoy searches her face, waiting for more information. None comes.

“Noye?”

“Giuseppe Noye. Pepe.”

McAvoy stands again. There is a half-full glass of water on the bedside table, and he takes a sip, swilling it around his mouth until it is warm.

“I’m a policeman, Roisin. We don’t have fights. We deal with dangerous people all the time.”

Roisin stands now, coming close to her husband. There is genuine fear in her expression.

“He won’t care about that,” she says. “It’s a traveler thing. An honor thing. Ronan’s told him you hurt him, and that’s that. The uniform won’t matter.”

McAvoy sighs. He could do without this. “Roisin, seriously, he can’t expect me to go and have a bare-knuckle fight . . .”

“He does! That’s what he’s demanding.”

“Well, he hasn’t demanded anything of me.”

“This is how it works, Aector,” she says patiently, as if explaining to a child. “The word gets out. A message gets to you. A time and place is arranged. You meet and you fight. And you keep going until one of you gives up.”

“Dead?”

“No, not dead. There are rules. There’s a ref. He keeps it from getting—”

“Deadly?”

“Yeah. But people get hurt. Really hurt. And they get hurt by Giuseppe Noye.”

McAvoy finishes the glass of water. Sits back down and pulls Roisin to his knee. In truth, he is not overly concerned. He is sad that his wife is upset, and knows that he will probably have to deal with this situation at some point, but in terms of what he has to deal with at present, he will not be giving Giuseppe Noye much thought. He mentally puts a circle around the name. Makes a note to check him out, and cross-reference for any links to Vietnamese drugs gangs.

“I can look after myself,” says McAvoy. “This is what I do.”

Roisin does not seem pacified. “Would you fight him, Aector? If you had to? For honor?”

McAvoy looks at her. He realizes he has been wrong. Her fear is not that Noye will hurt him. It is that he will not fight.

“There’s no honor in this,” he says coldly. “I’d die for what I thought is right. But this? Is that what you think I am?”

Roisin drops her face to her hands. “I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I feel like a stranger. The way things are, the way you all behave.”

“Who’s ‘you all’?”

They sit in silence. For a moment, McAvoy entertains the notion of agreeing. Of standing his ground and taking his bruises from a bare-knuckle fighter. He laughs under his breath. Reaches out and strokes his wife’s hair.

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Roisin. I’d die to make you smile.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want that. I don’t even want you to fight. I want you to be you. To be good and brave and caring. But then I see my mam’s face and how she would sneer if one of her boys said no to a straightener and I don’t know who to be myself.”

McAvoy pulls her close. Holds her. They were married when she was so young. Her life was among the travelers, and she took to his world without a backward glance. There are times they both feel they married somebody from a different age.

He tries to make her smile.

“Lilah was awesome, wasn’t she?”

With an effort of will, Roisin manages to let herself be steered into more pleasant thoughts.

“She’s got my laugh, not yours.”

“That’s a relief,” says McAvoy. “She’d scare people.”

Fin appears in the doorway. He is scowling and clearly ready to watch the film.

“Go on down with Mammy,” says McAvoy. He eases Roisin into a standing position. “I’m going to make a call or two, then I’ll be down, too.”

She looks at her husband. Ruffles his hair and bends forward to stroke the rasping stubble on his cheeks. “You’re my hero.”

The family head downstairs, leaving McAvoy alone in the bedroom. He picks the laptop up from where it has been charging by the bed, and places it on his knees as he shuffles back against the headboard. The machine had run out of power when they were looking at holiday destinations in bed the night before. The picture is frozen on an image of a lake in Sweden. It is the view from the remote log cabin he hopes to be able to afford to take his family to for a week or so in the winter. Whether they make the trip or stay at home will depend on whether the insurance company pays out for the minivan. He is not getting his hopes up.

He logs on to his work e-mail, using his remote access code and password. Checks his messages. Nothing from the tech unit yet, and a brief line of thanks from ACC Everett for rewriting his speech. It had gone well.

Pursing his lips, unsure whether he is simply inviting more worry, he accesses the Police National Computer. He enters the name Giuseppe Noye and breathes out through a tight mouth as the screen is filled with the criminal activities of the forty-eight-year-old repeat offender. He scans the various crimes. Armed robbery. Wounding. Receipt of stolen goods. He has served for different lengthy sentences. Was released from a stretch only last September and has not kept any of his parole meetings. A warrant for his arrest is currently active.

McAvoy brings up the mug shot. Maximizes the image until it fills the screen. Looks into the face of a thickset, bovine man with close-cropped hair and piggy eyes, his jowls and jaw covered in gray stubble. McAvoy checks his height. Six feet, two inches. He gives a little nod.

“Okay,” he breathes.

He is about to close the screen when it occurs to him to check Noye’s associates. He does not know whether he expects to find Ronan’s name, or Roisin’s.

Scrolling down, he looks for familiar names. Stops at Alan Rourke. The pair did an armed robbery together in 1993. Held up a post office in a village just outside Leicester. It had been a straightforward raid: lots of noise and shouting and a shotgun shoved in the postmistress’s face. They would have got away had Noye not realized, on his way out of the door, that he had used the name Al when shouting instructions at his partner. Despite Rourke’s protestations, he had climbed out of the getaway car to go back in and silence the witnesses. The decision was costly. Rourke and Noye were still arguing on the pavement over whether or not to add murder to their list of crimes when the police turned up. The chase was a short one. Rourke crashed their stolen Toyota, and both men were sent down. They served seven years of a twelve-year sentence.

McAvoy jots down a couple of notes. Closes his eyes, aware he is about to be shouted at, then picks up his mobile. Calls Colin Ray.

“What do you want?” The voice is tired and grumpy.

“It’s about Alan Rourke,” says McAvoy, determined simply to say what he has to, and then get off the phone. “One of his associates. A Giuseppe Noye. He’s worth checking out.”

There is silence at the other end of the phone. McAvoy wonders where the other man is. Realizes he knows precious little about his life. Knows only that he is twice divorced and lives in an apartment somewhere in the city center. He tries to picture his life. Finds it hard to imagine the older man without Shaz Archer in his shadow. A thought crosses his mind. He wonders if there is anything more to their relationship than the master-and-protégée dynamic. Realizes that many of his colleagues must have questioned it before him. Wonders, briefly, whether such rumors would ever circulate about his own bond with Trish Pharaoh.