Someone Else's Skin (27 page)

‘What did he do?’ Hope said.

Simone dipped her head away, chasing after the memory. ‘The ballet teacher was always tapping me on the shoulder with her stick. “You are rolling. We are not waves. We do not roll.” Everywhere on me was flat, then, even my feet. I didn’t understand what she meant. When I looked into the mirror, if I concentrated, I saw my mother.’ She covered her eyes with her hands. ‘Mine was the only black face in the room. All that pink. Leotards and – and tights and satin shoes. And me.’

She’d stuck to the leather seat in her father’s car. The car was black, but the inside was the colour of whipped cream. Simone had to peel her bare shoulders away from the buttoned seat, her skin making a kissing sound. Sometimes she kicked her feet at the back of the passenger seat and her father’s driver looked at her, in the mirror. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t allowed to be. When he looked away, she stuck her tongue out at him. Not all the memories were painful, but Hope only wanted the ones that were.

‘Tell me about the soldiers,’ Hope said. ‘In the village. Before the Bissells.’

‘They – they came at dusk, and dawn. The most dangerous times of day. I remember . . . their arms.’ Simone stretched out her own arms, no longer expecting a hug from Hope. ‘The muscle wound like – like ropes.’

A sound outside made her stop, her heart drumming in her chest. Hope glanced in the direction of the noise, then back at Simone. It was a car passing, that was all. A car.

‘Your father,’ Hope said next. Her voice was the same as it had always been. Soft, sweet, drawing confidences from Simone as a soap plaster draws splinters from a thumb.

It hadn’t been like this between them at the refuge. Then, it was silence that brought them together. Silence and something like peace. Perhaps all the time Hope was holding in these questions, her need to know everything about Simone’s past. She didn’t understand why Hope needed to know; she only knew that the telling made her
less
– and Hope
more
, as if the other woman drew power from Simone’s words. More than words – pain. Hope wanted to hear about Simone’s pain, the things from her past that had hurt her the most.

As long as she kept talking – as long as she did exactly as Hope said, no more and no less – it would be all right.

‘When – when he asked about the ballet classes, I said I hated them. He would look sad, then he’d smile, as if it was a joke we shared. He would put his hands on my head.’

She remembered the thinness of his fingers between her cornrows, this stranger who’d stolen her. Charles Bissell, his wife’s face lined like a riverbed after a long drought.

‘He was only my father on paper. He said it was the same, but I knew it was not. He took me from the village. My brothers and sisters . . . The soldiers took them, for the Lord’s Army. All the children in the village were stolen, one way or another.’

The ache in her head was awful, but it was nothing, she knew that. ‘Each morning before class, he would pin an orchid to my leotard. For luck. In the car, I would peel its petals on to the carpet. The car smelt . . . like decay. They – the Bissells – were afraid of how I was growing up, the questions I was asking. They were afraid I’d find out that they’d stolen me. The only good thing was that I was one less recruit for the LRA.’

She could see her old anger, remote as a bird circling in a full sky. ‘I used to think – even that would have been better than them. Their rules. Their silence. Lies.’

Hope ate a slice of apple, passing her tongue across her lips.

‘In my village, I remember, one night, hiding from the rebels. I was so scared, trying to keep still, not to scream.’ She put her hand up to guard against the memory.

Bats. She remembered bats flying down from the trees, warm and squirming, like the sky splitting into bits. Her anger was nothing, a cold firecracker after a night of crazy celebration. Speaking like this, she was back in the village. Eight years old, watching for death from every corner, heat pressed like a blank face to the windows. The red stench of dying. Men with their guts held like infants in their arms.

‘Some of the soldiers were children, taken from other villages. Kids in camouflage, cut down to fit. The rebels’ flag stitched to their chests. Red, black and blue. My hands . . .’ She spread them again, searching the pink of her palms. ‘My hands stained . . . wet with fear.’

‘You were afraid,’ Hope said.

‘Yes.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of being taken by the soldiers. Of being killed. Dying there, in the dirt.’

Her mother had spread a blanket over the dirt, when Simone was eight. The blanket was green and gold. Dark patches lay on it, like shadows. There was no sun inside the house. The patches were stains. Her sister’s blood, and her mother’s. Her mother’s mother’s. Her aunt’s blood and her aunt’s aunt’s. They held her down, all these women, on the stains they’d spilled on the green and the gold. Her blood was a new shadow, red. It soaked through the blanket, into the dirt. ‘I was afraid of dying in the dirt.’

Tears wet her skirt, like rain falling. She didn’t know how to make it stop. She only knew she had to keep doing whatever Hope said.

‘Now,’ Hope said. ‘Tell me about Lowell.’

6

‘Rome?’ It was Ed Belloc. ‘You wanted me to call you.’

‘Is there news of Ayana?’

‘Nothing. Where are you?’

‘Just leaving the North Middlesex. I have to call in at the station, then we can meet, if you’re free.’

Ed, hearing the sharpness in her voice, said, ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing good.’

The station stank of coffee and whiteboard markers. Someone had switched on a fan, churning the air to soup. Marnie went to Noah’s desk. ‘Where’s DS Jake?’

From the adjacent desk, Abby Pike looked up. ‘He went with Ron Carling, to West Brompton. Ron called in, said it was a waste of time. They’re on their way back.’

‘A waste of time,’ Marnie repeated. ‘They were seeing Henry Stuke, the man who was watching the refuge?’

‘Except he wasn’t.’ Abby made a face. ‘Ron says he’s in a right state, trying to look after new twins, doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. He was driving around, trying to get the kids to settle. Ron says he’s on the level.’

‘What does Noah say?’

‘I didn’t speak with him. Ron said Noah was going to walk back. He seemed to think it’d freaked him out, being in a house full of baby stuff, but I should think Noah just fancied some fresh air.’ Abby looked up at Marnie, her full face smooth and trusting. ‘Any news about Hope and the others?’

‘You need to change the missing person status,’ Marnie told her. ‘Hope Proctor is now a suspect. Assault, kidnap and attempted murder.’

‘Hope?’ Abby’s eyes were saucers.

‘I need a list of sheltered housing in Dulwich. Can you get that for me?’

The Millennium Bridge hung improbably over the Thames, like a rope bridge across a jungle pass. The river was busy with boats, its saline stink ripe with rust. Impossible not to look at the London Eye; it had eaten the skyline alive, a giant span of steel and glass, hollow moon in orbit above the city. The bridge’s structure had been reinforced after pedestrians detected swaying. Even now, when the wind got above a stiff breeze, Marnie could feel it moving. It didn’t stop people using the bridge. They expected it to sway. These expectations were everywhere in London, shaping the city.

Ed was standing on the bridge, his face fractured with worry.

‘Tell me about Ayana,’ she said first.

‘I called at her parents’ house. Strictly in the role of Victim Support. One of her brothers answered. Turhan. What did Ayana tell Noah his name meant?
Of mercy
.’ Ed’s mouth wrenched at one corner. ‘He denied knowing where she is. I asked to speak to his parents, but he said no one else was home.’

‘Do you think she’s there? At her parents’ house?’

‘No. Turhan was too relaxed for that, but he knows where she is. He knew she wasn’t in the refuge, before I told him why I was calling.’ Ed turned and gripped the steel lip of the bridge, looking down at the water. ‘He was smiling. I could hear it in his voice.’ A patrol boat was making its way upstream, tannoy stuttering, driving a thin margin of litter to the edges of the shore. From where they stood, they could smell the silt of the river’s bed. ‘He knows where she is.’ Ed rubbed the crook of his elbow at his face. He was wearing yesterday’s clothes, slept in. If he had slept. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘What about her mother? Did you believe Turhan when he said she wasn’t home?’

‘Hard to tell.’

‘Ayana warned us,’ Marnie said, ‘about women and violence. Look what those girls did to Stephen, at Sommerville. Look at Simone, what
her
mother did. All the way down the line, I’ve been staring at evidence of what women are capable of, but still I chose their side. Instinctively. Male aggression’s part of the job. I see it all the time. Not just sexism or strutting. Boys like Lowell Paton . . . It blindsided me. Too many gorillas on the court.’

Ed turned to face her, propping his back to the steel bar. ‘What’s happened?’

She didn’t know where to begin. She needed to test the soundness of what she was going to say, to see if it stood up. Not that she thought Leo Proctor had lied, but she could hear the CPS picking holes in the evidence already. ‘At the hospital, the night of the stabbing? I spoke with Hope, and with the doctor who’d examined her. It looked . . . black and white, but it wasn’t just that. It was the way she spoke, the things she
knew
. About all the worst ways people can hurt one another. How you can buy silence not only with threats or violence, but with promises. Secrets. I thought it proved what she’d been through. She knew everything there was to know, about abuse.’ The river’s traffic pulled lines from the current. Silver scars on the water’s brown skin. ‘The other person who’d know that much about it is the abuser.’ She paused, the woman’s name sticking in her throat. ‘Hope Proctor.’

Ed said slowly, disbelievingly, ‘Hope?’

Marnie nodded. ‘Hope. She was the abuser, not Leo. He was the victim.’

‘You’re wrong.’ There was a lick of anger in Ed’s voice. ‘You must be wrong.’

She looked at him, steadily. ‘I’m not.’

‘Where’s this coming from? Leo? It’s bollocks. Every abusive husband on the planet denies it at some point or other. He’s not the first who’s tried twisting the facts to make it look like he’s the victim.’

‘Ed . . . It was Hope. I know it was. She broke his hand, and his ribs.’

‘What about
her
injuries?’ Ed demanded. ‘How’s he explaining those?’

‘She made him hurt her. It was a condition of their marriage.’

Ed made a sound of exasperation. ‘Jesus, Rome . . . I can’t believe you fell for that.’

She’d slipped in his estimation. She was surprised how much it meant, how much it hurt. She hid her hands in her pockets, driving her fingernails into her palms. ‘Leo refused to do it at first, so she went to bars and picked up strangers, before going home to show him their bruises on her.’ Connection. Was that what Hope was chasing? The need not to feel like a stranger inside her own skin. ‘Leo was terrified she’d end up dead. She wouldn’t tell him why she needed it. Punishment of some kind, I imagine.’

Ed had turned away, his jaw tense, a muscle wrenching in his cheek. She studied his profile, looking for something she’d lost. ‘I know how it sounds. I didn’t want to believe it either. A woman asking for those sorts of injuries, inflicting them on her husband? I was happy to think she fought back, at the refuge. That the stabbing wasn’t panic, that maybe she meant to kill him because he’d been raping and abusing her, for years. Because it fitted with my personal preference. What was it you said, at Sommerville? I thought she was
my kind of victim
, the kind that fights back. I didn’t stop to think that she might be the abuser, but that’s exactly what she is. Do you think I’d be telling you otherwise? Ed . . . I need you to listen to this. Then tell me I’m wrong.’

He straightened to face her. Nodded. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Leo admitted it, after I asked some awkward questions. I think he’d have kept it secret if he could. I began to suspect after what happened to Stephen at Sommerville. It was the way he defended himself . . . It reminded me of Leo, that first time I questioned him.’ She wanted to reach for Ed’s hand, but couldn’t. ‘I didn’t really get a fix on it until I heard that Hope had been to the house, with Simone. For a suitcase. I couldn’t imagine Simone risking a trip like that. It got me wondering who was behind the escape from the hospital. I’m not saying Simone wasn’t up for it, but I couldn’t see her motive for running. Hope was the one with a motive, especially after Leo woke up.’

Ed drew a short breath. She watched his face change, making room for this new, appalling truth. She regretted the shadows she’d put in his eyes, the lines around his mouth.

‘Then . . . it was attempted murder,’ he said. ‘The stabbing. Can you prove it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if I can persuade Leo to make a formal statement. He’s not in great shape.’ The breeze had untied her hair. She reknotted it. ‘If Hope gets away with it, it’ll be because she blindsided Simone and Shelley – all of them. Took their fear, and their suffering, and twisted it into the perfect alibi. Talk about witness protection. We have to prove what really happened, not what she wanted them to see. If we can’t . . .’

Ed said nothing.

‘Yes,’ Marnie murmured sadly. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

She looked out across the water to where the sun was setting behind the Houses of Parliament, making a tourist postcard of the view, London’s outline gilded in rose and orange. The Eye was a cool ring of steel, lit with white light.

‘I swear this bridge still moves,’ Ed said. ‘Like standing on a snake.’ He shook his head at her. ‘I should’ve heard you out before jumping in. I’m sorry.’

She smiled at him. ‘Hope . . . The last thing out of Pandora’s box. After all the evils, plagues, whatever. I know the legend, but I never knew if hope was meant to be the consolation prize, or the worst evil of the lot.’