Someone Else's Skin (3 page)

‘Maybe they’ve evacuated the building, while the scaffolding’s put up.’

‘Not according to Ed. Support staff work nine to five, Monday to Friday. There should be someone in charge. Come on.’

They started down an empty corridor that smelt of stale cigarettes, talcum powder and milk. At the far end: a fire exit, closed. The silence was thicker than ever.

Noah rubbed his fingers, chilled. It wasn’t just the quiet; everything felt wrong about the refuge, as if they were walking into a trap or—

A scream tore up from their right.

Marnie Rome broke into a run.

Noah stayed at her heels, the back of his neck spooked into goose bumps.

3

As they reached the room, the screaming stopped. Abruptly, as if someone had thrown a switch. An obese girl in a black tracksuit stood with her hands over her mouth, in the middle of a huddle of silent women. The room had wide windows hidden by curtains, and murals on the walls: jungle animals in tall grass. Surreal.

A man was on the floor, a woman standing over him with a knife, bloody and wet.

DI Rome put out a hand to her. ‘All right. It’s all right now.’

The woman’s eyes swung at her, wildly. The knife jumped in her fist.

Noah, who’d been reaching for his phone, stopped. Wanting his hands free in case she went for Marnie, or one of the others. His heart was pelting in his chest. On the floor, the man’s feet kicked. Noah needed to get down there and help, but he was afraid to move while the woman looked like this: frantic, capable of anything. Static had stuck her long blonde hair to her face in spikes.

Marnie said, ‘This is DS Noah Jake.’ Her voice was rock-steady, calm. ‘I’m DI Rome. We’re here to help.’ She nodded at Noah, her eyes not leaving the woman’s fist.

The knife stopped jumping. The woman tensed with listening, as if her whole body was an ear, watching the calm expression on Marnie’s face, hypnotised by it.

Noah had forgotten Marnie Rome could do this. Talk people down. He’d seen it at the station, but never in an armed situation. Keeping his eyes on the knife, he took out his phone and dialled 999. ‘Ambulance, please.’ He gave the address, aware of the breach of protocol; the refuge address was a closely guarded secret, for the sake of the women’s safety.

It was a kitchen knife, an ordinary kitchen knife. In the woman’s fist.

Someone had thrown a big bunch of yellow roses on the floor. The man’s feet kept kicking, smearing petals into the carpet. He was wheezing, red spreading on his chest.

‘DS Jake,’ Marnie prompted.

Noah pocketed his phone and crouched, checking for a pulse in the man’s neck, searching with his free hand for the source of the blood: a single stab wound at the base of the ribs on the right side. His fingers slipped in the mess of torn tissue and he pitched forward a fraction, sickened. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry . . .’ He put a fist to the floor to get his balance back, keeping his other hand tight over the wound.

‘It’s all right,’ Marnie said. It took Noah a second to realise she was speaking to the blonde woman behind him. ‘Put the knife down, or give it to me. I’ll take care of this. Of you.’

The wounded man’s face was square and pitted, pasty. The air staggered in his chest, pink froth bubbling from his lips. Noah glanced up, trying to get some measure of what had happened here. The woman’s face was white, her eyes black. Her fist was red. She’d pushed the knife as far as it would go into the man’s chest, deep enough to wet her fingers with his blood. An eight-inch blade. All the way in. That meant . . .

Noah felt the suck of the wound under his palm. Bright spittle frothed from the man’s mouth. His lung was perforated.

Shit.

Noah needed to stop the lung collapsing. He had to stop it, right now.

He pressed his left palm to the sucking wound, sliding his free arm under the man’s neck so he could prop him into a sitting position. It wasn’t easy. The man was over six foot and heavily built, padded everywhere with fat and muscle.

Blood filled Noah’s palm hotly. He had to stopper the stab wound, make it airtight.

He
knew
this . . .

Trauma training. In theory, he knew it. First time in practice.

‘Here.’ A slim dark girl knelt next to him, holding out a Pay As You Go phone card and a cotton scarf, orange and pink. ‘Use these.’

A flood of relief pushed adrenalin into the right places. ‘Thanks.’ Noah could use the phone card, but not the scarf. ‘Is there cling film? In the kitchen?’

She gave a sharp nod and straightened, disappearing from his line of vision. Noah took the man’s weight, saying, ‘Spit, if you can.’ The less froth in his mouth, the better.

Behind them, DI Rome was holding the blonde woman. Noah couldn’t see the knife now, but he could hear the woman sobbing, her teeth snapping with shock. One of the others said, ‘How did he get in here?’ It was a girl’s voice, rising to a scream as she repeated it: ‘How the fuck did he get in here?’

Marnie murmured something and the screaming stopped. The dark girl returned to Noah’s side, with a roll of cling film. He covered the stab wound with the phone card in the hope it would stop more air escaping from the punctured lung, before reaching for the film, struggling with it until the girl knelt, the two of them passing the roll between them, the girl helping to support the injured man’s weight. She was strong, despite her small frame. She tore the cling film with her teeth when Noah had enough to bind the man’s chest three times, making the wound airtight.

‘Thanks.’ He looked at her for the first time, seeing a straight sheet of black hair, an oval face, almond eyes, the left one a milky ruin, burned at the lid and brow. ‘Ayana?’

‘Yes.’ She was Nasif Mirza’s sister, the woman they’d come to question. She was nineteen years old, but looked younger.

DI Rome crouched on her heels by their side. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘His lung’s collapsing. We’ve done what we can, but he needs to get to a hospital.’

Marnie shoved a stray curl from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘His name’s Leo. Leo Proctor.’ She nodded at Noah. ‘Good job, Detective.’

‘I had help.’

Marnie nodded at Ayana. ‘Good job.’

Ayana wiped blood from her hand on to her skirt. ‘I don’t understand how he got in. It is safe. They always lock the doors. I’ve checked.’ She stopped, aware that her voice was the loudest sound in the room; the wounded man had stopped kicking, his breath clicking wetly in his chest. ‘They always lock the doors,’ Ayana repeated.

Someone sobbed; the blonde woman with the bloodstained hand. An African girl with braided hair was holding her. Both women wore the same shapeless clothes: grey sweatpants and shirts.

‘She’s in shock.’ Marnie looked down at the injured man. ‘She’s Hope Proctor. This is her husband. I’ll make sure the ambulance knows where we are.’

4

Fuck.
Two police cars. Three, if he counted the unmarked Mondeo.

Bitch had backup.

He sat very low in the car, pulling at the cap he’d bought at the tourist stall:
I
♥
London.
Its peak hid his eyes and mouth. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be in a car, let alone within a hundred yards of the women’s refuge. The sudden wail of a siren had him fumbling at the car key, snagging its teeth in the ignition. Clumsy bastard.

She
did that to you . . .

He dropped his hand into his lap, checking the mirrors. The rain kept coming, as if someone had unplugged the sky, sheets of the stuff, thick and chilly, making the car steam. He ran the wipers, clearing the inside of the windows with the cuff of his overalls, so he could keep watch.

Fucked if he was running.

It’d taken him weeks to track her down to this dump. The refuge stank, even from a distance. Damp. Yeasty. She’d smelt that way. It’d turned him on, once.

An ambulance shaved the pavement as it parked up, the gutter throwing a wave of rain as the vehicle’s back doors banged open.

Shit.

He slunk lower in the seat. Watching to see what came out of the refuge, whether it’d be a man or a woman, alive or dead.

Better not be her . . .

It’d better
fucking
not be her.

He wanted to do her with his bare hands. Just the two of them, the way it’d been before. Except this time, he wouldn’t turn his back.

That’d been stupid.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

5

The paramedics – one male, two female – arrived shiny with wet. At some point in the last hour, the rain had started. Monsoon-force now, slapping up from the roof of the ambulance, stuttering in the potholed driveway.

‘We’ve got him, thanks.’ A paramedic nodded at Noah.

He moved out of the man’s way before climbing to his feet, stiff-kneed and shaking.

The paramedic glanced up. ‘Okay?’

Noah nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Leo, is it? All right, mate, we’re going to make you more comfortable.’

Noah stepped away, to give them room to work.

On the sofa, Leo’s wife was sitting wrapped in a shock blanket, her shoulders circled by her African friend’s arm. A female paramedic knelt next to them, winding a bandage around Hope’s right hand; she’d cut herself, on the knife. Her friend was holding a wad of rusty cotton in her left fist. Behind them, the jungle mural was an aggressive arc of green, tall grass parting around a lion’s pink muzzle.

Yellow light snapped across the ceiling, making the women cringe: lightning.

DI Rome had been right about the storm. She was briefing the police team who’d arrived with the ambulance, speaking quietly, holding their attention. Noah watched, knowing what was going through her mind: the need not to compromise the evidence, to manage her witnesses; the fact that she’d have to reconstruct all this in court. Training drummed it into them: ‘One chance to get it right, and in the right order.’

‘Let’s get you on the stretcher, Leo.’

Ayana and the others watched the paramedics with the false calm of those who’d witnessed trauma before, and often. Noah needed to wash the blood from his hands, make himself less frightening.

He left the dayroom and found the kitchen. Children’s paintings were pinned to three of the walls, fastened to the fridge by magnets. Outside, the concrete yard was empty except for noisy sheets of rain. The ordinariness of it made Noah blink. Had he really just sealed a man’s lung with a phone card? Yes, his palms were sticky with Leo Proctor’s blood. Adrenalin made the ends of his fingers jump. His mouth tasted of copper coins, cheap.

A drawer hung open under the sink. He guessed it was where Ayana Mirza had found the cling film. He closed it, checking the other drawers for cutlery. Looking for knives like the one the forensic team had just bagged – the blade with Leo Proctor’s lung tissue on it. Nothing sharper than a potato peeler in any of the kitchen drawers. Noah kept searching and found the knives, finally, on top of the fridge, in a blackened, greasy butcher’s block. Out of the reach of children. Hope Proctor would’ve needed a chair to reach the block. Noah didn’t touch it. He ran the hot tap, scrubbing at his palms with the pads of his thumbs, waiting for his pulse to slow.

Lightning cut across the yard, its bright reflection trapped for a second in the sink. He counted six before the thunder came. The storm was closing in.

‘How’re you doing?’ Marnie Rome was in the doorway.

‘I’m good.’ He tore a sheet of paper towel. Dried his hands. ‘You were right about the storm.’ It sounded like someone was stir-frying the yard, rain spitting, sending up a smoky mess of steam.

Marnie came to the sink. ‘We’re going to be a while taking witness statements. Most of the women are calm, but I don’t trust that to last.’ She stripped off her jacket and rolled up her sleeves before soaping her hands as he had done. ‘You impressed the paramedics with your first aid. Not bad for a copper was the consensus.’

‘Trauma training,’ Noah said. ‘Did they say anything about his chances?’

‘Just that you’d done good, but a punctured lung is a punctured lung.’

‘Why did she do it, did she say?’

‘She’s not said anything.’ Marnie’s quick eyes flicked to the butcher’s block on top of the fridge. She touched the left side of her neck, as if it hurt. ‘Her friend with the braids, Simone, says the knife was Leo’s, that he came here armed. If that’s true, it was probably self-defence.’

‘He came here with a knife?’ Noah thought of Proctor’s dead weight, his face turned inside out with pain. Hope was half her husband’s size, weighing maybe eight stone. Leo was nearer seventeen. Noah’s arm ached where he’d held Leo in a sitting position until the paramedics took over. ‘How did she get it off him?’

‘I don’t know. It’s something I need to find out. We’re not short of witnesses, but it’s too soon to start taking statements, that’s what the paramedics think.’

More lightning lit the yard. Steel-coloured, like a snapped cable. Marnie rolled down her sleeves, leaving the cuffs loose.

‘Let’s make some tea . . .’

Noah searched for mugs in the cupboard above the stove.

Marnie filled the kettle and plugged it into the wall. ‘The advice is not to move Hope until she’s less stressed.’ She glanced at the window, which was swarming with rain. ‘Simone says she’s scared of water. That Leo used to make her sit in the shower for hours on end, to get clean.’ Her eyes blanked with censure. ‘Just one of the reasons she was hiding here.’

Noah remembered the scream: ‘How did he get in here?’ and although they’d meant Leo Proctor, he knew the women might just as easily be afraid of
him
. A stranger, male. He wondered why Marnie hadn’t come alone. ‘How did Leo get in?’

‘Something else I don’t know. Jeanette, she’s the screamer, is insisting the doors were locked, standard procedure. She’s in charge of security, for what that’s worth. From the smell of her, she was on a fag break. She’s concerned to let us know she was taking care. A bit too concerned.’

‘You think she’s covering her back?’