Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  “What I really meant,” I was saying, “is that I'm a children's party entertainer. I often don't have much pressure on my time during the weekdays when everybody else is in their offices. But you, Dr. Schilling . . .”

  “Please, Nadia, call me Grace,” she murmured.

  “All right, Grace. I know that doctors are incredibly busy people, which I've discovered every time I've wanted to see one. I freely confess that this is very pleasant sitting here and chatting, and I'm extremely willing to talk about my life in whatever detail you want. But I was just thinking why a grand psychiatrist like you is sitting here on the floor of a crappy bedsit in Camden Town eating a tuna sandwich. You're not looking at your watch, you're not receiving calls on your mobile. It seems strange to me.”

  “It's not strange,” Stadler said, wiping his mouth. He'd had the salmon. I bet the ham sandwich was the cheapest as well as being the most unhealthy. “What we want to do is to make a plan of how to proceed. We want to give you informal protection, and the purpose of this meeting is to decide what kind. As for Dr. Schilling, she is an authority on harassment of this kind and she has two objectives. Most important, of course, is to help us to find the person who has sent you this threat. To do that she needs to look at you and your life, to get a sense of what has attracted this madman.”

  “It's my responsibility, is it?” I said. “I've led him on?”

  “It's not your responsibility in any way,” Grace said urgently. “But he chose you.”

  “I think you're being daft,” I said. “This is a guy who gets off on sending rude letters to women because he's scared of them. What's the big deal?”

  “You're not right,” Grace said. “A letter like that is a violent act. A man who sends a letter like that has—well, he may have—crossed a boundary. He must be considered dangerous.”

  I looked at her, puzzled.

  “Do you think I'm not getting frightened enough?”

  She drained her mug of tea. She almost looked as if she were playing for time.

  “I may advise you what you should do,” she said. “I don't think I should tell you what to feel. Here, give me your mug. I'll get some more tea.”

  Subject closed. Stadler gave a cough.

  “What I'd like to do,” he said, “if it's all right, is to talk to you a bit about your life, who your friends are, the kind of people you meet, your habits, that sort of thing.”

  “You don't look like a policeman,” I said.

  He gave a slight start. Then he smiled.

  “What's a policeman meant to look like?” he asked.

  He was a difficult man to embarrass, or at least for me to embarrass. I had never met anyone before who looked me in the eyes the way he did, almost as if he were trying to look inside. What was he trying to see?

  “I don't know,” I said. “You just don't have a police look about you. You look, er—”

  And I ground to a halt because what I was feeling my way toward saying was that he was too good-looking to be a policeman, which was both a deeply foolish comment and miles away from being remotely appropriate to the situation and, in any case, Grace Schilling had just come in with more tea.

  “Normal,” I said, belatedly ending the sentence.

  “That's all?” he said. “I thought you might say something nicer than that.”

  I made a face.

  “I think it's nice not to look like a policeman.”

  “Depends what you think policemen look like.”

  “Am I interrupting something?” Grace asked with a touch of irony.

  Then the phone rang. It was Janet. She was checking about our arrangement to meet. I covered the mouthpiece.

  “It's one of my best friends,” I said in a stage whisper. “I arranged to meet her for a drink early this evening. By the way, she definitely didn't write the note.”

  “Not today,” said Stadler.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Indulge us.”

  I pulled another face and made an excuse to Janet. She was very understanding, of course. She wanted to chat, but I wound the conversation down. Grace and Stadler seemed a bit too interested in what I was saying.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I'm beginning to feel persecuted,” I said. “But not by the sad bastard who wrote that letter. I feel like something lying on a card with a pin through me. I'm still wiggling around and somebody's looking at me through a microscope.”

  “Is that what you feel?” asked Grace earnestly.

  “Oh, don't start,” I said hotly. “For God's sake, don't tell me that that's significant.”

  Anyway, it was only half what I felt. We sat there for the afternoon and I made tea and then coffee and found biscuits in a tin. And I dug out the scraps of paper that I call an appointment book, and I went through my address book and I held forth about my life. Every so often one of them would ask a question. It started to rain for the first time in days and days, and all of a sudden I didn't feel like a rare specimen being examined prior to dissection, but instead like someone spending time with two rather strange new friends. Sitting on the floor with rain running down the windows, it just felt reassuring as much as anything.

  “Can you really juggle?” Stadler asked at one point.

  “Can I juggle?” I said pugnaciously. “You watch this.” I looked around the room. There was some fruit in the bowl.

  When I grabbed two wrinkled apples and a tangerine, a puff of tiny flies flew up into the air. Something was going off in there.

  “I'll deal with that,” I said. “Now look.”

  I started juggling with them, then, rather carefully, walked up and down the room. I stumbled on a cushion and they fell to the floor.

  “That gives you a general idea,” I said.

  “Can you do more than that?” he asked.

  I made a scoffing sound.

  “Juggling with four balls is very boring,” I said. “You just hold two in each hand and throw them up and down with no interchanges.”

  “What about five?”

  I made my scoffing sound again.

  “Five is for mad people. To juggle five balls you need to sit in a room alone for three months and do nothing else. I'm saving up five balls for when I get sent to prison or become a nun or get stranded on a desert island. They're only toddlers, and in any case it's only a phase I'm going through while I work out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.”

  “That's no excuse,” said Stadler. “We want to see five balls, don't we?”

  “Minimum,” said Grace.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Or I'll show you my magic tricks.”

  SIX

  I can't explain what happened next. Or at least I can't explain it so it makes proper sense.

  Grace Schilling left. She put her hands on my shoulders when she said good-bye and stared at me for a moment, as if she were going to kiss me, or cry. Or say something deeply serious. Then Stadler told me that they had arranged for a policewoman, Officer Burnett, to keep an eye on me.

  “She's not going to stay here, is she?”

  “No, I wanted to explain this to you. Lynne Burnett will be the officer primarily assigned to your protection. At night she or, more often, other officers will be placed outside your house, mainly in a car. Not a police car. During the day she may spend some time inside, but that's a matter for you and her.”

  “At night?” I said.

  “It'll just be for a while.”

  “What about you?” I said. “Will you be around?”

  He looked at me for just a couple of seconds too long, so that I almost started thinking about saying something else, and then the doorbell rang. I started, blinked, smiled blearily at him.

  “It'll be Lynne,” he said.

  “Aren't you going to answer it, then?”

  “It's your flat.”

  “It'll be for you.”

  He turned on his heel and opened the door. Sh
e was younger than me, although not much, and rather lovely. She had a large purple birthmark on her cheek. She didn't dress like a police officer. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and carrying a light blue jacket in her hand.

  “I'm Nadia Blake,” I said, holding out my hand. “Sorry about the mess, but I wasn't exactly expecting visitors.”

  She smiled and blushed.

  “I'll keep out of your way as much as possible, unless you want me for something,” she said. “And I'm rather good at tidying up. Only if you want things tidied,” she added hurriedly.

  “Everything's got a bit out of hand,” I said. I glanced across at Stadler and smiled, but he didn't smile back, just looked at me thoughtfully. I went into my bedroom and sat on the bed, waiting for him to go. I felt tired and odd. What was going on? What was I supposed to do all evening with Lynne hanging around? I couldn't even feel relaxed going to bed early with cheese on toast.

  It could have been worse. We ate fried eggs and baked beans for supper, and Lynne told me all about her seven brothers and sisters, and her mother, who was a hairdresser. She did some tidying up, almost as if she needed something to do with her hands. Then she left. Not to go away, of course. She went and sat outside in the car. After tonight, she said, there would be other officers instead; after all, she had to sleep sometimes. I had a long bath, until the tips of my fingers were shriveled, and when I got out I looked out between the crack in the curtains. I could see her silhouette in the car. Was she reading or listening to the radio? I couldn't tell. Probably nothing distracting was allowed. I wondered if I should go out with soup or coffee. I went to bed.

  The next day Lynne followed me to the shops; she sat around while I wrote letters. There was a hint of embarrassment when Zach rang up and arranged to come round to go through the appointment book. I put the phone down, looked round at her, and said: “Um . . .”

  She instantly responded: “I'll wait outside.”

  “It's just that—”

  “That's fine.”

  Early in the evening the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. It was Stadler. He was carrying a very serious briefcase, I saw, and wearing a somber suit.

  “Hello there, Detective,” I said sweetly.

  “I've taken over from Lynne for a spell.” His expression was impassive. No smile. “Everything all right?”

  “Just fine, thanks.”

  “I thought I'd ask some questions.”

  He sat on the sofa, and I sat opposite him in the armchair.

  “What are your questions, then, Detective?” He had lovely hands. Long, with smooth nails.

  He opened his briefcase and fumbled with some papers.

  “I wanted to ask you about previous boyfriends,” he said.

  “You've done that already.”

  “I realize that, but—”

  “You know what? I think I'd prefer talking about my past relationships with Grace Schilling.”

  He took a deep breath. He seemed ill at ease. I didn't mind that.

  “You might find it useful—” he began, but I interrupted him.

  “I don't really want to tell you any more details of my sex life.”

  He gazed at me then, and didn't look down at his notes anymore. I stood up and turned away from him.

  “I'm going to have a glass of wine. Do you want one? And don't say, Not while I'm on duty.”

  “Maybe a very small one.”

  I poured us both a glass of white wine, neither of them small. We walked out into what there was of the garden. My yard backs onto an industrial unit where containers are stored, but it made a change from being trapped indoors. The rain of yesterday and today had stopped and the air felt fresher than it had for weeks. The leaves of the pear tree glistened.

  “I'm going to do lots of work out here soon,” I said, as we stood among the bolted plants. “It's like The Day of the Triffids. The weeds are taking over.”

  “It's private, though. No one can see in.”

  “True.”

  I took a sip of my wine. He knew a lot about me. He knew about my work, my family, my friends, and my boyfriends; my exam results and my affairs. The things I wanted, like an open-top sports car and a better singing voice and more dignity, and the things I was scared of—like lifts and heights and snakes and cancer. I had talked to him, and to Grace, in the way I would talk to a lover, lying in bed after sex, with quiet dark outside, telling secrets and intimate nonsense. Yet I knew nothing about him, nothing at all. It made me feel giddy.

  We began to lean toward each other. Here I go, I thought: another big mistake about to happen. But as I leaned I caught my foot on a thick bramble and stumbled badly. I dropped my glass and landed on my knees in the long, wet grass. He knelt down beside me and put a hand under my elbow.

  “Come on, get up,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Come on, Nadia.”

  I put my arms around his neck. He didn't look away. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, what he wanted. I kissed him full and hard on his mouth. His lips were cool; his skin was warm. He didn't push me away and he didn't kiss me back at first. He just knelt there letting me hold him. I saw the lines on his face, the wrinkles round his eyes, and the grooves round his mouth.

  “Help me up then,” I said.

  He pulled me to my feet and we stood together in the wild garden. He was much bigger than me, wide and tall, blotting out the low sun.

  I ran a thumb across his lower lip. I held his heavy head in my hands. I kissed him again, harder, for longer. I felt completely tipsy, as if I'd drunk not half a glass but six glasses of wine. I put my hands on his back, beneath his shirt, and pressed myself against him. He felt solid and huge. His arms hung by his sides. I picked up one of his hands, laid it against my hot cheek, then led him back through the double doors and into the sitting room again.

  He sat himself in a chair and watched me. I unbuttoned my shirt and then I sat astride him.

  “Stadler,” I said. “Cameron.”

  “I shouldn't do this,” he said. He burrowed his head between my breasts and I put my hand in his hair. “I really shouldn't.” His eyes were closed at last. Then he was on top of me, on the floor, and there was a shoe under my back and an old hairbrush spiking my left foot, and dust everywhere, and he pulled up my skirt and came into me, there on the dirty old floor. Neither of us said a word.

  Afterward, he rolled off me and lay on his back beside me, arms under his head. We spent about ten minutes just lying there, side by side, staring at the ceiling and saying nothing at all.

  When Lynne came back, Cameron was on the phone, very businesslike, and I was reading a magazine. We said good-bye to each other quite formally, but then, muttering to Lynne that there was something he had forgotten to check, he followed me into my bedroom with his file under his arm, and closed the door and laid me back on the bed and kissed me again, pushed his head into my neck to muffle his groans, and told me he would be back as soon as he could manage it.

  I spent the rest of the evening on my bed, tingling, pretending to read and not turning a single page and not reading a single word.

  SEVEN

  “What's the plan?” I said to Lynne over breakfast.

  I think I'm a woman of some degree of resource, but this was more than my brain could deal with. I'd had sex the day before with a man I hardly knew. Now I was having breakfast not with the man but with a woman I hardly knew.

  This morning I'd woken out of a turbulent dream that I instantly forgot, and then I remembered what had happened the day before and the day before that. It felt incredible, a violent cartoon of reality, but I looked out of the window and there was Lynne sitting in the front seat, looking dully ahead. What a job. It made being me seem intellectually demanding. I washed and dressed and brushed my hair and teeth in about two minutes and then walked outside and tapped at the window of her car, giving her a start. Some protection.

  I said I'd go and get us something for breakfast and she said she'd come with me. She insisted. We bought
some croissants in the bakery. She paid half. I toyed with the idea of making her pay for the whole lot since I generally don't have breakfast at all except on special occasions.

  We came back, I made coffee and found a jar with about a millimeter of strawberry jam left and we sat down for breakfast. And I asked what the plan was.

  “We're taking responsibility for your protection,” she said, as if by rote.

  I took a big munch of my croissant and washed it down with a swill of coffee. Once I've broken my rule about not eating breakfast, I make sure that I break it properly. There was a long pause, not for reflection but for consumption. I was like a python swallowing a deer. Finally I managed it.

  “All the same,” I said. “Don't you feel this is all a ridiculous overreaction?”

  “It's for your benefit,” she said.

  “Someone sent me a letter,” I said. “Are you going to guard me for the rest of my life?”

  “We want to catch the person who's sending the letters,” she said.

  “What if you don't? You can't carry on like this.”

  “We'll see,” she said. “When the time comes.”

  In the face of nonsense like that, there was nothing more to be said on the subject.

  “I'm embarrassed as well,” I said. “My life's ridiculous enough with just me here. You seem great, Lynne, and I'm not criticizing you, but the thought of doing everything I do with a policewoman staring at me doesn't seem cheering.”

  “We'll talk about that,” Lynne said with an earnest expression, as if I'd raised some important point about policy. But we were interrupted by the doorbell. I went over to the door and Lynne hovered in the background. It was Cameron. He looked over my shoulder and nodded toward Lynne.

  “Good morning, Miss Blake,” he said.

  “Oh, please call me Nadia, Detective,” I said. “We're very informal here.”

  “Nadia,” he said in a sort of feeble mumble. “I've stopped in to relieve Lynne for a couple of hours.”

  “Fine,” I said, trying to sound bright and casual.