Original Skin (31 page)

Pharaoh snorts. “Which powerful people? A bunch of councillors? People don’t care. People don’t give a damn. For God’s sake, our MPs can do what they like and we at least know what some of them look like. You think people will be shocked that a councillor has a bit of a dodgy past? Seriously? Smells like bullshit to me.”

Cocker opens his mouth, then closes it again. Unasked, he slides onto the opposite bench, then gives an accepting nod.

“Hepburn’s not the story,” he says. “Not really. There is a story there, though. Some way down the line. He’s a liar. Bloody fraud, I can tell you that. Got himself into a powerful position playing the gay card and, I can tell you, that particular card isn’t all pink. I haven’t always done this, you know. I was a lobbyist for a while. I’ve just got a knack for sniffing out trouble. And there’s trouble here that could embarrass the people who pay my wages . . .”

“You thought Tressider and Hepburn might be having a fling?”

Cocker shrugs. “It happens. More than you might think.”

“And what did you find out?”

Cocker looks skyward, almost reluctant to admit his hunches have failed to play out. “Hepburn’s a bit of a lad. Some dodgy connections, but nothing that powerful people the world over haven’t got in their backgrounds. I know he had a fling with another city councillor. Cabourne or someone. I know he likes a bit of variety in his life.”

“Variety?”

“I got hold of a police report. From a while back. He got a bit of a telling-off from a patrol unit who caught him nuts deep in trouble in the public toilets at Fraisthorpe. You know the caravan park on the road to Bridlington? Arse-end of nowhere? Police caught him in there getting up to no good.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Got a telling-off, but no official caution.”

Pharaoh and McAvoy look at each other. “Do you know who the other person was?”

Cocker smiles, broadly. “Officers were sympathetic. All boys together. Didn’t make her give her name.”

McAvoy’s eyes narrow. “Her?”

“Told you,” says Cocker. “That pink card he plays is raspberry ripple. He likes a bit of both.”

McAvoy begins to speak, but a sudden pressure on his wrist indicates Pharaoh wants him to be quiet.

“Did you confront Hepburn with this knowledge?”

Cocker nods. “He’s not who we’re interested in. But I thought he might be honest with me. Tell me if there really was anything to worry about. He didn’t like being asked. Said he didn’t think anybody would give a damn. Said he is a single man who enjoys himself.”

Pharaoh smiles. “So it was just a fishing trip when you visited Tressider?”

“Wanted to see if I could shake something loose. He lost his temper with me. Went crackers about me approaching his wife. She wasn’t happy, neither.”

“So what will you be writing?” asks McAvoy. “Your report. Will you recommend him?”

Cocker pulls a face. “Probably. There’s nothing we couldn’t manage. I think he’ll be a decent MP,” says Cocker grudgingly. “I’m sure the decision will come down from on high, not to mention the money he put Hepburn’s way. Doesn’t look great, and if that’s his only indiscretion, would be a shame to lose him for the party. He’s our sort of person. No kids, but they’re a strong couple. Respectable. Bit panicky but they’ll get used to that.”

“Panicky?”

Cocker waves it away as if it didn’t matter. “You can’t go ranting and roaring at the people you need on your side. You need some dignity. Screaming, he was. We like them best in photo-shoot mode. Like in that mag you lot have got up here. There was a piece in it about them. ‘At Home with the Tressiders’ sort of thing.”

“The
Journal?
”

“Yeah, our sort of people.” Cocker stops. Rummages in his suit pocket and, frowning, runs back to the car. He comes back with a copy of the mag. Hands it to McAvoy.

“You may as well keep it,” he says. “Angle’s all changed.”

Pharaoh curls her lip. “We’re done,” she says.

“Yeah? That was it? Thought I was going to get pummeled.”

“Don’t count it out,” she says, then waves sweetly to tell him to be on his way. Moments later the Volvo is pulling out and roaring off.

“Weasel,” says Pharaoh, and turns to McAvoy, who is opening the mag and leafing through. The weak sunlight bounces off the glossy pages, and he has to hold it straight out in front of him before the images come into focus. He looks at Peter and Paula Tressider. Blinks. Looks again. He swallows hard.

“She was at Hepburn’s house,” he says quietly, and scratches his eyelid. “Offered me a towel.”

Pharaoh takes the mag. “Perhaps they’re friends,” she begins cautiously.

“Perhaps.”

They look at the pictures for another full minute. McAvoy lets his eyes scan the text.

Paula, 53, runs two boutique shops in Beverley, but is also a director of two of her husband’s companies. She admits to finding the idea of being a politician’s wife very daunting, but says she will be at her husband’s side throughout his journey to Westminster if he is selected, as many predict, next year.

Pharaoh takes over. Reads Paula’s quotes out loud. “‘That’s a wife’s role—to support her husband. We have always been a strong unit. We have not been blessed with children but we don’t feel our lives are incomplete. We’ve always had this feeling that it’s us against the world. It will be hard to let people in.’”

She and McAvoy realize their legs are jiggling. Their breathing has slowed. They inhale and exhale almost as one.

“It’s a lovely house inside,” says Pharaoh, to break the silence.

He flicks through the mag again. Skims a feature on an up-and-coming polo player, and a six-page spread about an organic deli opening in North Ferriby. Scans the adverts. Butchers. Bakers. Bloody ornamental candlestick makers.

Turns to the back page. An advert for a jeweler’s. A posh hair-dresser’s, at Kirk Ella. A tattoo and henna parlor on Newland Avenue . . .

Squints his eyes against the glare on the glossy page. Knows, even before the image swims into focus, that the picture will be of a skinny young man with peacock feathers on his back, and a fleshy girl with blossoms and lilies upon her shoulder.

Closes his eyes as he passes the magazine across to Pharaoh. “Same edition,” he says, under his breath. “Same edition outlining their future, they got a glimpse of their past.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER. NEWLAND AVENUE, HULL.

BAKERS,
butchers, charity shops, and a couple of decent restaurants and wine bars.

A busy street, where asylum seekers, students, and daytime drinkers sit elbow to elbow with besuited businessmen and schmoozing city councillors, smoking everything from roll-ups to fat cigars at metal tables and chairs.

It’s the city’s melting pot: a beacon of multiculturalism and a place where most things can be acquired, be it a secondhand Kappa tracksuit, a bag of weed, or a tenner’s worth of rotisserie chickens.

McAvoy parks down the side street by Planet Coffee. The place is doing a brisk trade. Young office workers reading the papers over soup bowls of latte. Students sharing a muffin at low tables and sifting through purses full of bus tickets to find enough change for the jukebox.

“That one,” says Pharaoh needlessly, as she lets herself out of the car.

Hull Ink occupies a corner plot on the opposite side of the road. The sign declares it to be an award winner, though it is clearly not for interior design. The large glass window is papered to halfway up with black-and-white designs, while the glass door is covered in a double-page spread from the
Hull Daily Mail
, showing one of the tattoo artists hard at work scrawling something indistinct into the back of one of the paper’s less dull feature writers.

“Me?” asks Pharaoh, as they cross the road.

“Guv?”

“The talking. Me?”

McAvoy isn’t sure what to say. Doesn’t know whether he should tell his senior officer to leave it to him. “We’ll just play it by ear.”

McAvoy pushes open the door into a large, cream-painted room. The floor is a chessboard of tiles and the walls are a collage of different designs. Behind the till sits a large, heavily inked woman aged around thirty. There are piercings in her eyebrows and through her septum. She is dressed in black, and though her arms are uncovered, they could not be called bare. No flesh tones can be seen. She is patterned magnificently, a tapestry of intermingled designs and glorious color.

She smiles brightly. For a goth, she seems a happy soul.

“Nice,” says Pharaoh enthusiastically. She crosses straight to the girl by the till and begins cooing over her arms.

“You like?” asks the girl, her Hull accent strong.

“Love it! Was it all one design or has it just evolved?”

“Bit of both,” says the girl. “Got a treble clef and then some stars. Then a band around my bicep. Was becoming a bit chaotic, so we started joining them up. Took a while . . .”

“I bet! Gorgeous. Would love more myself but work would frown. Would love something pretty, though. A bird, maybe. Something free.”

McAvoy turns. Tries not to wonder where she hides her ink. Forces himself back to flicking through the different designs that hang in plastic folders from a newspaper rack.

“That what you’re after, is it?” asks the girl. “We’ve only got Devon in today. Stefan has Mondays off. We’ve got an appointment in about an hour.”

“Sorry, love, it’s actually more business than pleasure,” says Pharaoh, still in the same bright tone. “I’m Trish Pharaoh. Detective Superintendent, if you’re asking. That big lump is Detective Sergeant McAvoy. I know. To tattoo him you’d need a javelin and a pot of emulsion, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m just the receptionist,” says the girl, though she doesn’t seem worried. “Devon’s upstairs with a client . . .”

“Sounds dubious, when you say it like that,” laughs Trish, who has turned her attention to the magazines on the counter. “That’s nice,” she says, pointing at a little pixie wrapped around a bluebell, which snakes down the back of a pale-skinned model. “It’s lilies I’m interested in. Peacocks, too. I saw your advert . . .”

McAvoy crosses to the counter. “In the back of the
Journal
,” he says. “A boy with peacock feathers and a girl with lilies and blossoms.”

The girl nods enthusiastically. “Got a good response from that. Stefan’s work, though it was their own designs. That’s caused a few problems, actually. People who liked the advert can’t have the same design. Copyright laws, you see. I mean, it’s not like the courts can repossess it if we do breach copyright, but it’s not really the done thing.”

“Do you know the couple? The boy and girl?”

“I remember them. He was quite flamboyant. She was fun.”

“What records do you keep? If somebody got in touch with you and wanted to know about the models . . . ?”

The receptionist pulls a face. “We wouldn’t tell. We take a phone number and a name to reserve the appointment but that’s it, really. Of course, if you go online, you can see who our regulars are, and our best work goes on there . . .”

McAvoy stops her by holding up a hand. “Has anybody else shown an interest in these particular images?”

The girl looks up, as if trying to see into her own mind. “Young girl brought in a copy of the mag. Wanted the same as the model. We told her about copyright but she made a few tweaks, and that was okay. Wasn’t that long since. Go on Facebook—I think it’s on there . . .”

McAvoy and Pharaoh exchange a glance. He turns away from the desk, reaching into his pocket for his phone.

“Can you show me?” asks Pharaoh.

The girl, eager to please, retrieves a laptop from under the desk. Opens it up and flicks over to the shop’s page.

“There’s no real order to it,” she says, flicking through a collage of beautifully inked skin. “Black-and-white stuff. Flowers. The rest is all just crammed in.”

“Would the peacocks and lilies be on here?”

“I don’t think so. Stefan wouldn’t use somebody else’s designs on here, I don’t think.”

“But the advert was okay? In the magazine?”

“Who reads magazines? It was just nice work. There was no strategy . . . aah, there we go. Georgie-Lee. Beautiful, isn’t it?” She turns the screen so Pharaoh can see. McAvoy views it over her shoulder. Bare skin patterned with branches and blossoms, lily pads, and petals.

“Click on the girl.”

The receptionist does as asked.

A moment later, all three are reading page after page of messages, all posted on the wall of a nineteen-year-old girl who, according to friends, is in their prayers.

“‘Can’t believe it,’” reads Pharaoh slowly. “‘You don’t deserve this.’”

“‘Hope they kill whoever did this to you,’” reads McAvoy.

“Is that what this is all about?” asks the receptionist. “What happened? Is she okay?”

Pharaoh scribbles down a name on the front cover of one of the tattoo mags. Rips it haphazardly. Stuffs it in her bag.

“Take the whole thing if you like,” says the girl, but Pharaoh has already turned her back. She is muttering in the big man’s ear.

“Do you need to see Stefan?” asks the girl as the detectives walk quickly across the tiles.

The door bangs behind them.

•   •   •

PHARAOH IS SITTING
in the passenger seat, phone to her face, finger in her other ear, frustration in her eyes as she tells McAvoy to shut up and let her listen.

“And she’s home already, yeah? Morpeth Street? That’s two minutes, isn’t it?”

McAvoy fidgets. Debates turning on the ignition. Decides not to.

Pharaoh hangs up. Raises a hand, then looks at her phone.

“Coming through now,” she mutters.

McAvoy looks at her expectantly.

“DC Jensen took the statement,” she says. “Queens Gardens CID. Would have come to us in time.”

“Guv?”

“Serious and Organized. That’s what it smelled like. That, or just some nutter on his way home. Was on its way to our in-box anyway.”

Her eyes narrow as she reads the statement Georgie-Lee gave yesterday morning from her hospital bed, as she waited for a nurse to remove the cannula from her wrist and to check that the stitches in her forehead weren’t likely to burst open before she made it to the taxi.

“Friend’s birthday party . . . outside for a smoke and a breath of fresh air . . . saw a vehicle, big thing, four-by-four, damage to front end . . . heard a door slam.”

Pharaoh stops.

“The attacker said, ‘Suzie.’”

McAvoy closes his eyes. Turns his head away. Looks out of the window, where a man in running gear is sipping a hot chocolate and smoking a cigarette while chatting up two students. He finds himself shaking his head. Wonders if there will be exhilaration later. He feels none now.

“Pushed to the ground . . . choked her . . . hands in her hair . . . turned her over . . . thought she was going to be raped . . .”

“Jesus,” says McAvoy softly.

“Ripped her dress. Tore it nearly to shreds.”

“Looking for her ink,” says McAvoy needlessly.

“Smashed her head into the ground, after . . .”

Pharaoh pauses.

“Guv?”

“They said sorry.”

McAvoy licks his teeth. Turns the key in the ignition only to have something to do with his hands.

“Description?”

“Yes. Sketchy, but yes.”

“And she’s home?”

“Yes. Two minutes.”

McAvoy pulls out. Makes the brief drive through a network of back roads and one-way streets.

“That one,” says Pharaoh, and he pulls to a stop.

“You have it?” he asks, and Pharaoh pulls the magazine from her bag.

They look at each other. They are suddenly bone-tired. Cold. Drained by the endlessness of what they do.

The front door is answered by an attractive girl in tracksuit bottoms and a skimpy top. She announces herself as Jen and tells them excitedly she is Georgie-Lee’s best friend. Tells them, too, that she has been looking after her. Keeping her comfortable. Keeping her spirits up, because that is what she always does for everybody else. Tells them, a manic note in her voice, that Georgie-Lee had just organized the “best birthday party ever” when the attack happened, and that she doubts she will ever get over the shock of finding her there, bleeding and unconscious on the front step.

“Georgie-Lee! Visitors!”

She opens a white-painted bedroom door. A young girl, childlike in pajamas and bandages, is sitting up in bed, reading a magazine and sipping hot black currant tea. The room is decorated with band posters and dream catchers, tattooed rockers, and colorful unicorns. She smiles as her friend enters the room, then freezes as McAvoy and Pharaoh enter behind her.

“Are you police?” she asks, instinctively pulling up the quilt. “Have you got them?”

Pharaoh sits down on her bed.

Does not speak. Just holds the young girl’s gaze, and tries to tell her that everything will be okay.

After a moment she pulls the magazine from her pocket. Leafs through. Flinches at the sound of glossy papers catching on the quilt and the tearing of quality paper.

Lays the mag down on the bed, open at the picture of politician and bride.

She does not have to ask Georgie-Lee the question. The shiver of fear and vile memory that ripples across her face is enough.

•   •   •

SUZIE IS UPSIDE DOWN.
The blood is pooling in her head and there is a thunderous rushing sound in her ears, broken only by the ceaseless shrieking that fills the living room.

“Give it up. You won’t last . . .”

She does as she is bid. Tumbles right way up and gives in to fits of breathless noise.

She and Roisin are having a headstand competition on the sofa, and Lilah is laughing so hard, there is a risk of losing at least one eye.

“You sure this isn’t hurting?” asks Roisin, as they right themselves and pull faces at the giggling baby.

“Hurts anyway,” Suzie says with a shrug. “May as well be upside down.”

Roisin nods and seems to think about the sentence. “I like that. We should have that on a T-shirt.”

“Or a pair of knickers.”

They giggle like two old friends.

Roisin and Suzie have shared little in the way of their stories. They have not probed each other’s secrets. Roisin knows only that the kooky young woman in her house is somebody her husband wants to keep safe. She does not doubt him. Suzie strikes her as somebody the world requires.

Suzie, meanwhile, thinks Roisin may be the best person ever. She wants to tell her. Blurts it out, as the petite, dark-haired gypsy girl straightens her hair in the big mirror above the fire.

“You’re so lovely,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m giggling. Being silly.”

“We’re a silly family,” says Roisin, blowing a raspberry on Lilah’s tummy.

“I’m not sure your husband is silly,” says Suzie, carefully. “He seems quite serious.”

Roisin smiles warmly, as if looking at a picture nobody else can see. “He’s serious about some things. He’s a big eejit a lot of the time.”

“And this is okay?” Suzie asks.

“Nice to have company. Nice to be silly.”

Suzie looks at herself in the mirror. She is wearing one of McAvoy’s shirts, and a pair of Roisin’s leggings. She has no makeup on, though Roisin has promised to remedy this after lunch. She feels odd, looking at this unfamiliar reflection. This plain face and unremarkable hair. Comfy clothes and covered-up tattoos.

“Do you think I’d look good with my hair black, like yours?” she asks.

Roisin considers it. “Might be a bit severe for you. You’ve got a warm face. Need a warm color. Your hair suits you.”