Skin

by Mo Hayder

  Caffery opened his drawer and pulled out the photographs of another post-mortem that had taken place two nights ago. It had come to him yesterday on the Centrex Guardian database and had everything he needed. He got up and pinned it over the photo of Misty Kitson’s clothing.

  ‘Ben Jakes. Twenty years old. Student at Bristol University. Can’t face his exams, girlfriend leaves him, ends up with a penknife and a case of wkd reds. Down in the Elf’s Grotto area. It’s pretty there. You can see the lights of Bristol. Very popular suicide spot.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘His phone was missing – still hasn’t been found. He’d been robbed. Roommate said he had money, a twenty at least, plus cards, never been used. Even sandwiches in his rucksack. They were gone. Oh, and he was naked.’

  ‘Stripped off to kill himself? What was it? A full moon?’

  ‘No. The thief took the clothes too. At first the officer in charge had it down as a murder. It was in the “too hard for district” file for a while, even flagged up on a watchlist for us, until the PM came back as suicide. The clothes came off him more than twenty-four hours after he died, says the coroner. Plus the other evidence – depression. No one’s got any doubt it was a suicide; even his parents said they’d half expected it. But this is what I want you to look at.’

  Powers took off his glasses and peered at the photograph.

  ‘See it? His hair?’

  ‘It’s been cut.’

  ‘Shaved. Remind you of anything?’

  Powers frowned again. He took the photograph off the wall and turned it over. It was stamped by the Audio-Visual unit at Portishead. ‘Where did you say it happened?’

  ‘Quarry number eight. Down near Elf’s Grotto.’

  ‘And it’s the hair that’s the important factor? Because it’s the same as what happened to Dundas?’

  ‘The same person did it. The marks are almost identical.’

  ‘So?’

  Caffery gave him a grim smile. ‘The pathologist, being a pathologist, is typically vague about when Jakes died. But he’s admitted that whoever rolled up and stole his clothes did it a minimum of six hours after death – there’s livor mortis to prove that. The roommate says it’s six a.m. when Jakes leaves his room. We don’t know how he gets to the quarry but it’s got to take at least an hour, probably more, assuming he doesn’t stop on the way, which gives us seven a.m., so our thief has to come along at one p.m. at the absolute earliest. Meanwhile Brown was in that place,’ he jabbed a finger at the screen, ‘at two that afternoon. I saw the bastard with my own eyes. Can you really see him cruising out to the quarry, shaving Jakes’s head and winging it back to the other side of Bristol within an hour?’

  ‘I take it these are on the quiet, these timings the pathologist’s given you. I can’t picture him writing any of those in the report. They never commit when it comes to time of death.’

  ‘You’re right. But I don’t need his say-so. Vodaphone coughed up Jakes’s phone records. They showed calls made on his mobile at eight p.m. that night. Brown had been in custody for five hours by then.’

  Powers lifted the blind and glanced outside. One or two reporters had taken up permanent residence outside since the Kitson case had come to MCIU. He stared at them for a while. Then he dropped the blind and gave his DI a long look. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘A week. A week on this. Give me two men and a week off from the Kitson case. I want to know how Brown cut Ben Jakes’s hair when he was twenty miles away at the time. I want to know what he wanted the hair bracelet for. And . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I want to know what prosthetics you’d have to use to make a human being look like that.’

  4

  Caffery left the MCIU offices at half past ten. He used the back entrance and walked round the side, away from the Kitson reporters, and straight into the low-ceilinged car park. It was sheltered there, but even so he walked fast, head down, collar up. He didn’t get into his car, an unmarked fleet Mondeo, but stopped, facing it, thighs just touching the bodywork, and took a moment to scan the car park, checking that the shadows behind the other cars were lying flat and still. After a while he crouched, looked under the car. Then he straightened, opened the car, got in and central locked the doors.

  However they’d managed it, whatever tricks they’d used, the players on Operation Norway had convinced people they were seeing something they couldn’t explain. Something that made them nervous. Some of the earlier witnesses didn’t have a name for it – they could only describe the glimpses they’d had: something human-like, but too small and stunted to be properly human. Then there had been the witnesses who had a name: a name that came from the darkest parts of the darkest continent. A Zulu word that Caffery hadn’t spoken out loud to Superintendent Powers because the sound of it put hairs up on the back of his neck.

  Tokoloshe.

  Three simple syllables, but they meant something powerful to those who believed. They meant deformity, brokenness. They meant all African superstition in one creature: the size of a large baboon with the body of a monkey and the face of a human. A witch’s familiar, a creature from the heart of the velds. Sitting in the shadows. Watching, unblinking.

  Caffery couldn’t square the shadowy figure in the video with Johnny Brown, but the alternative explanation was, of course, close to insanity: a theory he would never vocalize, even to himself. But he couldn’t help thinking about whatever it was he was hunting by that eerie Zulu word: Tokoloshe.

  Now he leant over, flicked open the glove compartment and checked through the things in there. All front-line officers were issued the basic self-protection standards – quik cuffs, a pepper spray, and an ASP, a metal baton that could break bones. He’d been on the receiving end of an ASP during the Norway arrests at the beginning of the week. It had hurt like a bastard, but it was laughable as protection when the lowlifes out there were carrying Mach 11s and Magnums. Now it lay on top of a buff envelope file in the compartment. Underneath it, wrapped in oilcloth, was a gun.

  Five years ago, back in London, he’d had a dodgy mate working on Operation Trident who’d put him in touch with a character who’d lived in Tulse Hill all his life, but spoke, inexplicably, as if he’d been born in South Central LA and never took off his LOCs so you never knew exactly what he was thinking. When Caffery had turned up at his place he’d taken him into the kitchen and shown him two guns in a shoebox under the liner of the pedal bin: a model 17 Glock and a stainless-steel AMT 45 Hardballer that was so shiny it looked as if it was meant to be worn as jewellery. The dealer couldn’t believe it when Caffery didn’t jump at the Hardballer, because he personally thought it was the shiza and it wouldn’t be hanging around long because the next person through the door would be snapping it up, if Caffery didn’t have the good sense to take it off him. In the end Caffery did take the fashion-statement gun. Not because he liked it but because the Glock was the same as a force-issue weapon, and although he didn’t intend getting touched for it, you had to look at every eventuality. A force-issue gun would point fingers at the wrong people. It was better to get caught with a street gun, even if it was an embarrassing bit of bling.

  Usually the Hardballer was kept under the bag in the kitchen pedal bin, because if there was one thing Caffery had respected about the Tulse Hill dealer, it was his choice of hiding place. He’d be screwed if he used the damn thing and, anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was there were times when he needed the sense of security it gave him. Just knowing it was there. This week was one of those times.

  He closed the glove compartment and looked out of the window at the walls, checking the shadows again, concentrating on the ones at waist height. He hadn’t told Powers the whole story: he hadn’t mentioned that it wasn’t only the video that unnerved him. He hadn’t said that ever since Operation Norway he’d had the feeling someone was watching him. If it didn’t sound insane he’d say the Tokoloshe had
been following him. The Tokoloshe? In the streets of Bristol?

  It had started in this car. Late one night, more than a week ago, he’d been parked in a deserted alley in the centre of Bristol late and someone, or something, had leapt on the car, slammed into the bonnet. It had been gone too quickly to see what it was, but he’d had the impression of something small, something close to the ground, scurrying away. That had been the beginning. Now he imagined the damned thing everywhere. In the shadows, under cars. Even in the mirror when he shaved in the morning.

  He looked at his watch again. It was ten thirty-five. Only one victim had survived Operation Norway. He’d given the police a garbled statement on the day of the arrest, but now he was in Southmead Hospital, fighting for his life. The doctors weren’t letting anyone near him, especially not the police, stressing him with their questions.

  So what now, you twat? thought Caffery.

  After a moment or two he started the car. He knew where to go. He wanted to see where Ben Jakes’s body had been on the night someone had shaved off some of his hair.

  5

  Every month the underwater search unit did a handful of decomposed-body recoveries. A decomposed corpse is a dangerous thing. A biohazard. The fluids it produces when the abdomen splits can transmit a number of blood-borne diseases, and if the body has been eaten by rats there are other dangers: the transmission of leptospirosis or Weil’s disease. Sometimes when the corpse is moved it will ‘sigh’, as if it has come back to life as air leaves the lungs, maybe expelling tuberculosis spores into the air. Most police forces in the UK insist that severely decomposed cadavers are handled by teams trained to use breathing apparatus. In short, the divers. Even if the body is on dry land.

  Flea’s unit had a strict clean-up routine in their headquarters after a body recovery and usually they managed to keep the place smelling OK. But that morning, at ten o’clock, sitting in the office filling in the RIDDOR accident forms, she noticed that something was wrong. She sniffed the air. Not nice. She put the forms into the envelope, got up and went into the corridor. Sniffed again.

  After the accident with the air lines yesterday, paramedics had checked her over but she hadn’t let them take her in. She was fine. Fine and sturdy. She’d dropped on to the pontoon and done twenty press-ups to prove it. Nothing and no one could talk her into hospital for the rest of the day, and that had turned out to be a good thing because within two hours the team had had another call-out – to collect the sixteen-stone body of a fifty-six-year-old man who’d died on the toilet in a block of flats in Redland. He’d been sitting there for eight days, pyjamas round his ankles. Toilets were the worst because there was never any room to move. It had taken them three hours, start to finish, to get him out. Back at base they’d decontaminated their chemical-incident suits. They’d laid them out on the floor and scrubbed with long-handled brushes, rinsed and sanitized and changed the five phase filters in the masks, then sprayed everything down with antibacterial solution for good measure. Everything had been done by the book.

  But the smell of the man was still there.

  Flea went into the locker rooms where all the team were getting changed. She wasn’t thrilled about the way they’d heard her in narcosis yesterday. So far no one had teased her about it but she wouldn’t put it past them. ‘What’s the smell, guys?’

  ‘Your banana bread?’

  ‘Funny. We did the decontamination. It shouldn’t smell like that in here.’

  Wellard shrugged. The others shook their heads.

  ‘OK. Go on.’ She made a shooing motion with her hands. ‘All of you. Do it again. Use the Janitol.’

  No one moved. They all gazed back at her steadily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve already done it. Again. While you were in the office. Done it twice.’

  ‘Twice? Then, where’s the sodding smell coming from?’

  ‘Your banana bread?’

  She went into the decon room where the suits were hanging up to dry – ghostly, like a line of people standing there – and sniffed. She went back into the hallway and sniffed again. The smell was unmistakable. She went to the dustbin that they’d used to transport their soiled suits off site, put her face into it and took deep breaths of the air in there. Wellard appeared next to her, keeping pace, watching her forage in the bins for the liners they wrapped used bootees and gloves in.

  ‘It’s not that.’ He folded his arms. ‘I checked. The cleaner took them.’

  She straightened. ‘I give up. Where’s it coming from?’

  ‘Haven’t got a clue.’

  She sighed, took a green apron off the hook, pulled it on and tied it. ‘And I was planning to go jogging.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be jogging, not after yesterday.’

  ‘Well, I’m not, am I? I said I was planning to.’ She pulled on nitrile gloves. Pumped some air into the pressure spray. ‘Instead I’m going to clean these suits. Again. Do your job for you.’

  ‘Ooh. Arsy.’

  ‘Not arsy, Wellard, hormonal. I’m a woman. I’ve got ovaries. I get hormonal.’ She went to the store and pulled out some things. A cylinder. An air hose. ‘Come here.’

  He looked at the air hose. ‘Good God, boss. I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  ‘At least make it quick.’

  ‘Attach this,’ she slapped the hose into his palm, ‘to the valve. That’s the way. Good boy. Now, while I redo the decontamination, you go round the buildings and sniff the drains. If anything smells, run some water into it. If it backs up, use this.’

  ‘Compressed air? In the drains? Sarge, we’ve got a caretaker somewhere in the building, I’m sure we have. He’s a lovely man. He’ll have some rods. Better for the interior decoration than air.’

  ‘Wellard?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘JFDI, mate. Just fucking do it.’

  The Arctic Monkeys CD was on the player. Flea turned it on, jacked up the volume really loud and got stuck in. Scrubbing and spraying. Sluicing water into the drain. The umbilical lines that had ruptured yesterday were in a yellow nylon bag pushed up against the tiled wall, waiting for the HSE lab to pick them up. They’d take months. The lab would subject them to a battery of tests trying to work out what had gone wrong and how she’d managed to rub a hole in both of them just like that. She stopped for a moment next to them.

  It befuddled her. She’d always thought they were pretty bombproof and it made her feel really uncomfortable and thick that she hadn’t checked her equipment. She’d been so, so close. It was starting to feel as if she was on a run of bad luck. There was this, yesterday. Then on Tuesday she’d got into a hell bastard of an arrest with the MCIU people on Operation Norway, a job that had all but destroyed the member of the team now on compassionate leave. Not to mention the day before that when she’d got forced into a position again of covering for Thom. He’d come home paralytic one night, driving her car and trailing a cop car with him. Being the sap she always was for her brother, she’d stepped in for him, sworn to the jobsworth cop she’d been driving the car, even did a breathalyser for him. Thom had dodged a serious bullet for the hundredth time, and she was left wondering two things: if he was ever going to stand on his own two feet and how long she could continue to pull him up the hill.

  She pulled out the white wellingtons the team wore for body recovery and turned them inside out to check that no body fluids had run down into the absorbent interiors. As she got to the last pair, Wellard appeared in the doorway. She wiped her forehead and dropped the boots, defeated.

  ‘I give up. I’ve done everything. I’m going to have to go through all your bags next. Check for disgusting man underwear. Socks. That sort of thing. What’s the report, Dyno-Rod man?’

  ‘Drains are as clean as a whistle. Anyway, no point worrying about it now.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Phone’s been ringing off the hook. You had the music up too loud.’

  ‘Who’s calling?’
/>   ‘Your friendly search adviser, Pearce. Got another body. More overtime.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. They think they’ve found Lucy Mahoney.’

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  6

  Quarry number eight was deserted. Caffery stood next to his car and stared at the puffy clouds and blue sky reflected in the still, cold face of the water. At the head of the quarry, on the flat perimeter where the water hadn’t yet risen, two old cabin cruisers lay on their sides, chained together with a rusty anchor line. At the other end vast grey cubes of dimension stone had been abandoned in puddles of brown water. Buddleia clung to the waste tips sloping up on all sides.

  Caffery locked the car, shrugged his jacket closer and went to stand at the quarry edge, peering into the water. Beyond his reflection the water was a clear twilight blue. A yellowish haze of embryonic plants clung to the rock edges and below that, about twenty feet down, the vague suggestion of something misshapen. A boulder maybe, or submerged pumping equipment, or the quarry wall, following the hewn-out rock edge.

  Africans believed the Tokoloshe was a river-dweller. They believed he hung around the banks, made nests in the rushes and could stay submerged for hours. Whatever the witnesses in Bristol had seen, one thing they were all clear on: it had come out of water, from rivers and quarries, once even from Bristol’s floating harbour. They swore it had simply ‘surfaced’, as if it had been under the water for some time, lolling on the bottom, rolling content as a crocodile in the mud. And there was no breathing apparatus – the witnesses were adamant on that point: the hellish face was naked. So how the hell had the Operation Norway gang managed to fake those unexplained submerged minutes?

  Caffery straightened and looked across to the hills of grout. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and for a while something heavy seemed to hover over the water, as if the air itself had got darker. Ben Jakes had been at those slopes when he’d killed himself. A bit of old police tape was still hanging in the bushes and some dead flowers in cellophane that some of his university buddies had brought. There had been ten other suicides here in the last four years. Suicide had that effect – always seemed to spread like a virus. Someone jumps off a bridge and before long it’s Suicide Bridge and people who’d never have heard of the place will drive through the night just for the honour of jumping off it. That was what this quarry was like, except they didn’t jump in. Just sat on the edges with their pills and their razors, probably looking at the stars.