Someone Else's Skin (26 page)

‘When she first told me about him, I called him a monster, rotten. It made her – angry. I was no different, she said. No man was any different and he was her dad. I wanted her to have nothing to do with him. I said I was glad I got her away from all that, but she said she didn’t need rescuing, that I needn’t think I was a hero. I was the same as him, the same as all men.
She
was the one who was different, because she knew how to handle us. Men, she meant.’

‘But she married you. She must have wanted to get married. What did she expect?’

‘Maybe she didn’t know how else to get away from that place, from her dad . . .’

Or maybe she wanted to prove she could succeed where her mother had failed. Was her marriage an exercise in control – power? Plenty of marriages were.

‘What about her mum? Wasn’t she worried what would happen to her if she left?’

‘She thought her mum let it happen. She couldn’t understand why she allowed herself to be hurt. “I was just a kid and I could manage him,” that’s what she said. She blamed her mum for being clumsy. Gayle broke a mirror once. Seven years’ bad luck. “She brings it on herself”; Hope learned to say that. I suppose her dad used to say it.’

It wasn’t Hope who broke a mirror. It was her mother, Gayle. How much more of the act from the hospital had Hope borrowed from her mother, for Marnie’s benefit? Perhaps it was more than an act. Perhaps it was an involuntary impulse. Empathy, however twisted or repressed, for what her mother suffered.

‘She thought Gayle could’ve stopped it,’ Leo said, ‘if she’d wanted to. “Maybe she liked it.” That’s what Hope always said.’

‘You said
Hope
liked it. Being hurt.’

‘It’s what she wanted. Needed.’ He gulped again at the glass she’d put into his hands. ‘The tattoos . . . She made us get tattoos.’

‘Hearts, with arrows through them.’

Leo searched her face. ‘Yes. I . . . thought it was a love thing, but it wasn’t. Her dad had the exact same tattoo.’ He held the glass to his chest. ‘It hurts, getting inked over your ribcage.’

‘It really does,’ Marnie agreed.

He didn’t notice. ‘She needed that. The hurt. It’s what she wanted.’

‘But she preferred hurting you.’

‘I was an animal.’ He dropped his voice into the pit of his throat. ‘She wanted me to behave like what I was. An animal. Then she punished me for it.’ His face contorted, as if this was too much truth for him to stand. ‘But she could be sweet, gentle, and I understood, after what she went through at home, what she saw happening to her mum. She thought it hadn’t affected her, but it must’ve done. It
must
.’

‘Yes.’

Empowering Leo, then emasculating him, making him complicit in the abuse. Demanding he behave like her father, then beating him for it. Making him beat her. That was more than a split personality, a combination of her mother’s submission and her father’s aggression. Marnie didn’t know exactly what it was. It would take a professional to figure Hope out, but it made sense of her resentment during the interview at the hospital, the way she swung between tears and toughness. ‘She was prescribed antidepressants. Didn’t her GP realise something serious was going on?’

‘She was good at hiding it.’ Leo propped his head to the pillows, wearily. ‘She hid it from you.’

True. Marnie had fallen for the little lost girl. Hope had perfected the act at an early age, her defence against her father. She looked the part, frail and blonde, with those china-doll eyes and hands. Hard to imagine, even now, that she’d terrorised Leo Proctor, a man more than twice her size and weight. Marnie wanted to ask how Hope had made Leo climb into the space under the stairs, what words she’d used to make that happen. Conditioned behaviour was complex, a tangled mess of love and lies, threats and promises. How many times had he crawled in, sat scrabbling at the floor and walls? How many times had he forgiven her, only for her to beat him again, worse than before? He’d held down a job, which meant he left the house five days out of seven, always returning for more of the same. What was he holding out for – a proper explanation for her cruelty? Reconciliation? The chance of redemption, for the pair of them?

‘Do you think she intends to hurt Simone Bissell?’

‘I don’t know,’ Leo said.

‘But she despises weak women. Victims. If she sees Simone in that light . . .’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He looked up at her, exhaustion lining his face.

‘Leo . . . What about the suitcase? Are you sure you don’t know what was inside the suitcase she took from the house?’

The answer was in his eyes.

It was nothing good.

4

Two men – one white, the other black – stood on the doorstep, waiting for Henry Stuke to answer the bell. His first thought was Jehovah’s, but these two were empty-handed, and the white one had grubby skin, tired-looking, like an elephant’s hide.

Police. They were police. Plain-clothes detectives.

A rush of panic brought bile to the back of his mouth. He swallowed it, hearing the doorbell shrill a second time. If they kept that up, the twins would wake.

He went into the hall, past the mirror that Freya had insisted he put up so she could check her face on the way out, back in the days when she cared how she looked to strangers. In Freya’s mirror, he looked pasty, guilty. He smoothed his hair and buried his left fist in his pocket, before answering the door.

‘Henry Stuke?’ The detective with the grubby skin showed his ID, holding it up the way a preacher would hold a bible, fingers splayed.

Henry couldn’t really read the ID, with the sun squirming on the plastic wallet, but he nodded. ‘What’s this about?’

‘I’m DS Carling, this is DS Jake. You own a Prius.’ He read off the registration number. ‘Is that right?’

‘Yes. Yep, that’s right.’

‘Where were you on Friday afternoon, Mr Stuke?’

‘I was . . . Let’s see. Friday? Working. Yeah, most of the day I was working.’

‘Where do you work? Actually,’ DS Carling looked up and down the street, ‘tell you what, can we come inside to chat?’

That meant they didn’t have a warrant. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.

‘Okay, but can you keep it down?’ He pulled a look of apology. ‘I’ve got babies sleeping upstairs.’

‘Babies?’ DS Carling mirrored Henry’s look of apology, adding a touch of sympathy. ‘They sleep much?’

‘Not as much as I’d like.’ They shared a grin. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.

The young one – DS Jake – hadn’t spoken yet. He was good-looking enough for TV. Henry had seen him before, in the unmarked Mondeo at the refuge, and at the hospital where they’d taken
her
.

‘Sit down. I mean, if you’d like.’ He kept his left hand in his pocket.

‘How old are they?’ Carling cast his eyes at the ceiling.

‘Nine months next week.’ Henry tried to sound happy, the way he was supposed to feel. He was praying they wouldn’t wake. If they started their grizzling, he didn’t know if he could keep up the proud dad act. ‘Twins.’

‘Nine months. That’s a nice age,’ Carling said. ‘Are they walking yet?’

‘No. No, not yet. Crawling a lot, you know. Getting about.’

Carling nodded. He sat on the sofa, picking up a plastic toy: a red truck with beads inside that rattled when you rolled it across the floor. Henry couldn’t remember if he’d wiped the puke off it. The sitting room smelt dirty, of nappies and dust. God knows the last time they cleaned in here, he and Freya. The twins’ stuff was everywhere. Baby wipes in green boxes, tippy mugs, board books with soggy chewed corners.

Henry lowered himself on to the sofa next to DS Carling, keeping his hand in his pocket, his fingers wet with sweat. DS Jake stayed standing, looking around the room.

‘So . . . what’s this about? Friday, you said.’

‘You were working.’ Carling held the red truck in his hands, fondly. How many years since he was wiping up sick and shit? So long, he’d forgotten, smiling like all the memories were good ones, like fatherhood was one long laugh.

Henry clenched his fist in his pocket. ‘I’m a plumber, do a bit of carpentry sometimes, put in new kitchens.’ He laughed. ‘Mind you, you should see the state of ours. I’ll have to get it sorted before they’re walking.’

‘Nah, you just fix up a safety gate, you’ll be fine.’ Carling put the truck to one side. ‘You weren’t in Finchley on Friday, then?’

‘Finchley . . . Actually, yeah, I think I was. Shit.’ He looked from Carling to DS Jake and back. ‘This isn’t a parking thing, is it? Only I was on an emergency call. All that bastard rain brought down a ton of guttering . . .’

‘It’s not about parking,’ DS Jake said.

Henry stared at him. He didn’t like DS Jake. Didn’t like the way he stood there looking like nothing could put a crease in his suit, or a line on his forehead. Speaking softly, as if he understood about sleeping babies when what the fuck could he know, at his age, about anything?

DS Carling must’ve been thinking the same thing, because he said, ‘Don’t mind DS Jake. He’s counting his lucky stars none of this is in store for him.’ He winked at Henry, rolling his eyes in a matey gesture that Henry only half understood.

‘So what’s it about?’ Henry asked. ‘Something about the car, you said.’

‘You were in Finchley on Friday, then at the North Middlesex yesterday.’ Carling sat forward, elbows on the saggy knees of his suit. ‘We’re investigating something that happened at those two places, on those two days.’

‘What happened?’

‘We can’t go into details right now.’ An apologetic grin. ‘We just need to know why you were at the hospital yesterday. Friday, you say you were working.’

‘That’s right.’ He wet his upper lip. It tasted stale. ‘And I took the twins to the hospital yesterday. They were coughing and I panicked. You know how it is.’

Carling nodded. He looked at the family photos along the bookcase. ‘Your wife’s not home?’

‘She’s at her sister’s, just became an auntie.’ His smile felt sickly on his face. ‘More new babies. I said I’d look after our two, but you know how it is. First-time nerves. I’d not heard them cough like that before.’

‘But they were okay. I mean, you didn’t go into the hospital.’ Carling looked a bit embarrassed. ‘CCTV showed you sitting outside, in the Prius. You didn’t go in.’

‘They calmed down. Fell asleep.’ Henry managed a laugh. ‘I felt a right wally.’

Carling nodded. He’d started looking bored, like this was a waste of his time. That should have made Henry happy, but it pissed him off. As if the fact of the twins meant he couldn’t be a suspect, or a threat. Carling should’ve seen Henry with that bitch. Not the last time, the night of the funeral, but the time before. If he’d seen the stuff Henry had done to that bitch, he wouldn’t be looking bored, like he couldn’t wait to get out of here and back to some proper police work.
This
was proper police work, Henry thought savagely.
You should’ve seen what I had planned for her.

Carling shifted on the sofa and the red plastic truck rolled to the edge of the cushions and fell, nearly hitting the floor except Henry caught it in time. His reflexes took him by surprise; he’d been scared of the noise the truck would make; a noise the twins knew, and loved. Scared they’d wake and start up.

DS Jake said, ‘What happened to your hand, Mr Stuke?’

‘It’s . . . Henry. I’m Henry.’ He held on to the truck.

‘What happened to your hand, Henry?’

He turned the hand so they could both see it, clawed like an old man’s, fingers pulled into a fist, skin scarred and puckered up the heel, like someone had cut it open and stitched it, badly, shut again. ‘Six months ago . . . I was fixing a sink,’ he lied. ‘Old pipes collapsed, trapped me.’

He’d been trapped, that much was true. Bitch had pinned him down, sat on his chest, for what felt like hours. He thought he’d die on that hotel floor, under her.

‘They had to cut me free.’ He turned the hand to the light, ashamed of the sight of it. He had to hide it from everyone, on buses, in the street. People stared otherwise. If he’d gone straight to casualty, maybe they could’ve fixed it better, but he’d stayed hidden in the hotel, afraid to leave in case she was waiting for him.

He should’ve guessed what was in store for him when he’d seen her dressed like that. Like she’d come from a funeral. He should’ve guessed when he saw that rage in her eyes. He’d thought it’d be great – the best time yet – but he was stupid, clumsy.

He turned his back when she told him to, thinking – what? That she was going to surprise him with sexy underwear, maybe a new tattoo. Never saw it coming, until she hit him with that fucking thing, his ribs cracking like rusted pipe.

‘Looks like you were lucky to keep it,’ DS Carling said. He meant Henry’s hand.

‘Yes. Yes, I was.’

A low warning noise from overhead, like an engine starting up: the twins waking.

All three of them looked in that direction.

‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll have to go up to them.’

‘That’s okay.’ Carling stood. ‘I think we’re done here.’

5

‘My father had a driver,’ Simone said. ‘I never knew his name. If I needed his attention, I had to – press the intercom in the back of the car. I was only to press it in an emergency, if I needed him to pull over, because I was unwell. I wasn’t to press it just because I wanted to talk about my day, or because it was lonely in the back of the car.’

Hope was peeling an apple, with a knife. The apple’s skin was a thin red bracelet around her wrist. When Simone stopped speaking, Hope glanced up, her stare like the knife, sharp. Simone swallowed the dryness in her mouth. ‘My father’s driver wore a peaked cap. I’d sometimes catch his eye in the mirror. He always looked away first. His – his uniform suited him, better than my leotard suited me. Pink and black do not go together, whatever my father said. The man who called himself my father.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Charles Bissell.’

Hope licked apple juice from the back of her hand.

‘He had a tattoo on his neck. The driver. A hawk, blue. I remember thinking it wouldn’t show against my skin.’ Simone spread her palms, pink and empty.