Someone Else's Skin (30 page)

His eyes were instantly wet with tears. He clawed at the door. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Can we come in?’

‘My girl,’ his voice cracked, ‘she’s my girl. I’ve a right to know what’s happened.’

‘Let’s discuss your rights,’ Marnie said, ‘inside.’

Kenneth Reece stepped back from the door, flapping his hand at the narrow hallway. ‘Go through, go through.’

10

Noah got lucky. If Hope had used the hammer, she’d have smashed his ankle. Simone hadn’t hit him as hard as she could’ve done, but it was hard enough. He was on his back, on the kitchen floor. Hope dropped down and sat on his legs, her fist full of sharp white light. A knife. She put its tip to his chest. ‘Careful,’ she warned, ‘that bitch with the phone card isn’t here to help you this time.’

He saw her properly then. For the first time. Everything fell into place, crystallised in the threat of steel through his shirt. Who she was, and what she’d done.

What she meant to do.

Hope was angry, but he had to look hard to see it, under the tight layers of self-assurance. This was what she did, what she excelled at; Hope was in her happy place.

‘Too many weapons in here,’ she decided, looking around the kitchen. ‘We’ll have to move him. Get the rope.’

Simone flinched into action, dropping the hammer and going in the direction of the conservatory. ‘Simone . . .’ Noah wanted her to stop, think about what she was doing, stand up to Hope’s bullying, whatever tactics the other woman had deployed to turn her into an automaton, obeying Hope even when a person’s life was at risk. He’d never seen anyone so blankly terrified; there was no room in Simone’s eyes for anything other than whatever threat Hope had made, to make her follow orders.

‘Shut up.’ Hope moved the knife meaningfully. ‘She doesn’t have to listen to you or anyone else any more.’

Noah fought to control his breathing so that his words would come out without shaking. ‘Except you . . .’

She smiled, freezing his blood. ‘Except me.’

Simone brought rope from the conservatory. Blue plastic-coated rope.

‘Where’re your foster-parents? Simone—’

Hope hit him with the rubber handle of the knife, in the throat.

Everything went red, and black. He choked, kicking under the impact.

Hope sat on his legs, hard. ‘You. Don’t get to talk to her.’ A beat. ‘Tie his hands, over his head.’ She set the tip of the knife to the bruise she’d planted in Noah’s windpipe. ‘Be helpful.’

He forced his eyes to focus on her face. She’d do it. Cut his throat. Then there’d be no one to get Simone out of here. He surrendered his hands, putting them on the floor above his head. Simone looped rope around his wrists, tying it off.

Hope checked the tightness of the knots. ‘Good, that’s perfect. You see?’ She shone a smile at Simone. ‘You can do this. Now his feet. Take off his trainers.’

Noah set his teeth against the distress signals from his injured ankle. Hope watched his face with a clinical interest that made his skin crawl. She was a sadist, he’d worked that much out as soon as he’d realised it was Leo’s fingernails that had scratched under the stairs. What else – worse – was she? He didn’t know anything about Hope Proctor, not really. Not even the name on her birth certificate. He knew enough about Simone to understand her quick, reflexive obedience to Hope’s commands. Doing as she was told, from fear or for survival, came naturally to Simone.

Simone had spent a year at the mercy of Lowell Paton. For years before that, she’d been trying to please her foster-parents, to fit into their life here in England. Gardening, wellington boots, roses.

How had Hope spent her childhood? Not happily, if these were the consequences: Leo Proctor’s near-murder; Noah with a knife at his throat, waiting to see what form her revenge was going to take; and whatever damage she’d done already to the Bissells in their safe middle-class home.

11

Kenneth Reece’s sitting room was fitted with a dark carpet that sucked up the light and coughed it back in miserly patches. An oversized sofa and armchair filled most of the space, upholstered in fraying corduroy. Brown dust shrouded the light fitting and the curtains. The wall nearest the window was freckled with mould; the thick green smell of damp was everywhere in the room. An upright fan heater, doubling as a humidifier, stood to the left of the sofa, its plug separated from the socket in the wall.

Marnie had been in dozens of rooms like this. Temporary shelters for those who’d opted out of mainstream society, or been elbowed out of it. She’d learnt to look for personal details, the clutter that marked out an individual’s ownership. The living space loaned by the local housing authority was featureless, replicated all over the city.

The council had screwed handrails to three of the four walls in Kenneth Reece’s sitting room. Either the previous resident was elderly and needed the rails, or this was Kenneth Reece on a good day, when he was managing to be upright without assistance.

On a table next to the sofa was a lamp with a cellophane-wrapped shade, a glass tumbler cloudy with fingerprints and four corner-shop-sized bottles of gin, three of them empty, one with a pink plastic rose stem in its neck. Marnie wondered if she needed any further clue to Reece’s life here. She looked at the sofa – stained, low-slung – and opted to stand. Ed perched unobtrusively on the arm of the chair.

Reece walked carefully, with the exaggerated dignity of a drunk, to the sofa. He sat and crossed his legs, holding the bathrobe shut with both hands. The robe was a good match for the mould on the wall, the same colour and with the same patchy texture, falling apart in places. Reece tidied himself, eyeing Marnie and Ed.

There she was.

Hope Proctor.

In his false modesty. The prim, resentful shape he made of his mouth.

Marnie registered an odd pain in the pit of her stomach. Stephen Keele had spared her this much: the image of her old age in her parents’ faces. Not all loss was about grief. Sometimes it was the loss of fear, or consequence. Loss could be liberating.

Had her mother’s death liberated Hope Proctor? If so, what were the consequences of that liberty?

‘What’s all this about?’ Reece asked.

‘Hope. We’re here about Hope.’

She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this arch, effete man. His shins were hairless, white. He had hairless toes with yellow nails so long neglected they’d toughened nearly to bone. This detail, more than any other, made her certain that every bad thing she’d heard about the man was true. No logic to her judgement. Just instinct.

She lifted her eyes to the wall behind the sofa, where, framed in shiny orange wood, he’d hung a floral tribute of the kind found on coffins. Purple flowers in the shape of a crucifix, sprayed with plastic to preserve it. From his wife’s coffin? Marnie dropped her gaze to the gin bottles on the side table.

‘What’s this about my little girl?’ A whine rode the pitch of his voice, like a surfer on a high wave. Kenneth Reece was a drunk, with all the self-pitying conviction that entailed. He probably considered himself a victim, just like Lowell Paton. When he looked in the mirror – if he looked in the mirror; there were none in this room – the last thing he saw was a wife-beater.

‘We were wondering,’ Marnie said, ‘if she’s been in touch recently. Hope.’

‘Not in over an age. That husband of hers . . .’ Reece smoothed a hand at his thinning hair. The backs of his hands were marked with muscle, wasted now, but it reminded Marnie of his daughter’s hands, the muscle definition she’d imagined came from housework. She’d been wrong. It came from lifting bricks and whatever else Hope had used to break her husband’s bones.

‘We’re concerned for Hope’s safety. She went missing from hospital yesterday.’

‘Hospital?’ Reece wet his lips, looking towards the gin bottles.

‘We hoped you might have some idea where we could find her. We think she’s in central London. Do you know of anywhere she might’ve gone?’

‘What’s wrong with her home?’

‘We know she’s not there.’

‘That husband of hers doesn’t know where she is?’

‘Leo Proctor is in hospital.’

Same reaction. His eyes going to the gin, voice vague. ‘Why’s that then?’

‘Hope stabbed him.’

That got his attention. ‘With a knife, stabbed?’

‘With a knife. That doesn’t surprise you?’

‘She’s my tough nut.’ His smile was thirsty. ‘My girl.’

12

In the bathroom, Hope searched Noah’s pockets, taking his wallet and ID, his phone. Simone had gone back into the kitchen, after helping Hope drag Noah here, tying his ankles, roping his hands to the pipework under the sink. He couldn’t stop Hope taking what she wanted from his pockets.

She’d left the knife in the kitchen, but she’d brought the hammer in here, together with a brown suitcase, the one Felix Gill had described to Noah and Marnie. Noah remembered the fruitless search in the Proctors’ house for whatever Hope had taken away. Now, he didn’t much want to know what was inside the brown case.

Hope thumbed through the contents of his phone. Noah willed her to use it. Even if she didn’t, as long as she left it switched on, the Met could get a trace. ‘Where’s Simone?’ he asked. ‘And Pauline?’

Hope looked over at him.

‘That’s her mum’s name, isn’t it? And her dad, Charles, is he here?’

Pauline and Charles Bissell. He hoped he had that right, struggling to remember the detail of the conversation with Ed Belloc at the North Middlesex.

Hope held up his phone. ‘You’re a funny sort of policeman.’

Noah lifted his head from the tiles to see what she’d found on the phone. An old text from Dan, smiley face in the sign-off. Noah only kept the texts that made him laugh, or the filthy ones, which reminded him that there was more to life than his work.

A funny sort of policeman . . .

‘Because there’re people who care about me? There are people who care about you, Hope. And about Simone, and her mum and dad.’

‘Pauline and Charles.’ She sat on the floor, five feet from him. ‘I suppose they teach you that. To use first names. Make the hostages more human. Or is it the hostage-taker who’s supposed to become more human?’ She crossed her legs under her, the grey sweats swamping her slight body. She’d pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail. Her face was heart-shaped, free from make-up, its skin translucent.

‘You’re human,’ he said.

She pointed the phone at him. ‘You’re gay.’

What was that – an insult? An accusation? An excuse for whatever she intended to do next? It didn’t really matter what it was; his answer was the same: ‘Yes. I am.’

‘What if I happen to hate gays?’

‘What if you hate Jamaicans? Am I supposed to lie about that, too?’

What about men?
he thought.
What if you hate men?

She toyed with the phone, wrinkling her nose at Dan’s text. ‘Don’t they teach you to keep quiet about your personal life?’

‘You didn’t ask about my life. You asked if I was gay, and I told you the truth.’ He waited a second before adding, ‘You’d have known if I was lying.’

That pleased her. She cocked her head at him. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’re so good at it. Hiding. Pretending to be what you’re not.’

‘You pretend. You’re pretending to be a detective, but you don’t look much like one, lying here.’

True. Most detectives didn’t spend their evenings roped to the plumbing in a stranger’s bathroom. None of the ones Noah had met, anyway. Maybe he should ask Commander Welland to introduce him to some senior-ranking officers . . .

He blinked, to focus. The ache in his arms was inching towards pain, and his ankle alternated between blazing and throbbing. But she hadn’t done anything to hurt him, not really, not yet. ‘Where’s Simone?’ he asked again.

‘She’s cooking supper.’ Hope kicked a foot at the bathroom door. It swung open, letting in the smell of frying fish. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘I’m thirsty,’ Noah admitted. ‘And I need to use the lavatory.’

She uncrossed her legs and stood. ‘It’s a tiled floor. We can rinse it down.’

For the first time, Noah felt despair flare under his ribcage. ‘Hope . . .’

She held up his phone again. ‘Can they trace this?’ She saw him debating how to answer. ‘You’d better tell the truth. I’ll know.’

‘They’ll have traced it already.’

‘In that case,’ she said, ‘we’d better lay some extra places at the table.’

She was insane. Was she?

‘Hope, don’t go. We need to talk. You need someone to listen to you.’

She curled her mouth. ‘They teach you that, too. Hostage-takers want to be heard. I guess I can’t be a hostage-taker, in that case. Because I don’t have anything to say, to you or anyone else.’

She shut his phone in her fist. ‘And now? Neither do you.’

13

In Excalibur House, a neighbour of Kenneth Reece’s was running taps. Filling a sink, or a bath. The sound travelled through the pipes, gulping and belching. ‘It doesn’t worry you that Hope is missing?’ Marnie said. ‘On a charge of attempted murder?’

Reece didn’t need to know she hadn’t had the chance to charge his daughter, yet.

‘I’m sure she had her reasons.’ Reece swept his stare around the room, idly.

‘For trying to kill her husband.’

‘For whatever. She’s a tough nut, like I said.’ He leaned forward. The bathrobe hung open on wasted thighs, mottled violet, like the floral tribute on the wall. He managed a smile, cracked with disuse. ‘Would you nice people like a drink?’

‘No thank you. It wasn’t the first time she’d hurt Leo. There was an established pattern of domestic abuse.’

‘Was there?’ He didn’t care about anything she was saying. Unless he had a drink soon, she’d get nothing.

‘It doesn’t concern you that your daughter abused and nearly killed her husband. That she’s wanted by the police for the kidnap of a disturbed woman.’

‘You didn’t say anything about that.’

‘I’m saying it now. Mr Reece, we need to find your daughter.’