Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  “What?”

  “He's Jennifer Hintlesham's son.”

  “I know that. What are you doing talking to him?”

  “He came round to see me.”

  “How? How does he know who you are?”

  If he had been within reach I think I would have leaned over and shaken him and rapped my knuckles on his skull, but he wasn't.

  “Don't bother about that. It doesn't matter. The point is, I've found someone we both know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The other day something went wrong with my computer and I called a number on some card and this guy called Morris came round and fixed it. It was actually very easy. I actually know sod-all about computers. And the other day, when I slipped away, I bumped into him in the street. He was very friendly. I didn't think anything of it. But I was talking to Josh and he goes to a computer club that's connected to his school. And one of the people who runs it is this guy called Morris.”

  Now there was a long pause on the phone. That had given him something to chew on.

  “Is it the same person?”

  “Sounds like it.” I couldn't resist adding: “It may not mean anything. Do you want me to do some checking?”

  “No, no,” he said instantly. “Definitely not. We'll do that. What do you know about him?”

  “He's called Morris Burnside. I think he's in his mid-twenties. I can't say much about him. He seemed nice, clever. But then I'm impressed with anybody who can switch a computer on. Josh liked him a lot. He's not like some weirdo. He's good-looking. He wasn't shy or strange with me or anything like that.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “I don't know him. As I said, I just met him twice.”

  “Has he tried to get in touch with you?”

  I went through our meetings in my mind. There wasn't much.

  “I think he was attracted to me. I told him that I'd just split up. He half asked me out and I put him off. But there was nothing nasty about it. He offered to help me buy a powerful new computer. I said no, but that doesn't seem enough reason to kill me.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “I've got his phone number. Is that all right?”

  I read it to him off the card, the card I'd been so pleased to find just two weeks earlier.

  “Fine, leave it with us. Don't make any attempt to get in touch with him.”

  “You'll talk to him?”

  “We'll check him out.”

  “It may be nothing,” I said.

  “We'll see.”

  “It may not be the same person.”

  “We'll check.”

  When I put the phone down I wanted to collapse in a heap, to cry, to faint, to be put to bed and looked after. But there was just Lynne, hovering like an annoying fly that I wanted to swat. She had been listening to my end of the phone conversation with growing interest. Now she looked at me expectantly. She wanted to be filled in. My heart sank. Sometimes it felt like having a live-in au pair without even having a child for her to look after. I needed to get out of here. Quickly, without even giving myself time to speak, I picked up the phone and dialed.

  “You met him.”

  Zach stopped, as if he couldn't walk and think hard at the same time.

  “When?”

  “The other day. When you came round and this young man had fixed my computer. You met him when he was on the way out.”

  “The one who wouldn't take any money?”

  “That's right.”

  “Sandy-colored hair.”

  “No. Quite long dark hair.”

  “Have you seen my hair?”

  Zach stepped over and tried to look at his reflection in a shop window. We were walking along Camden High Street, in and out of shops, occasionally trying things on, not buying anything. Lynne was twenty yards behind, hands in pockets.

  “It's going,” he continued. “What I ought to do is shave it, if I had any integrity. What do you think?”

  He turned his anxious face to me.

  “Leave it as it is,” I said. “I don't think a shaved skull would suit you.”

  “What's wrong with my skull?”

  “As I was saying, it turned out that this guy, who's called Morris, also knew the son of one of the women who was killed.”

  “You mean he might have killed her?”

  “Well, he's the only connection we've found.”

  “But he couldn't have. I know I only met him for eight seconds, but he just seemed a normal person.”

  “So? I talked to the psychologist who's an expert on this. She said it probably would be someone who seemed normal. I'm just praying it's him. If he could just be locked away and my life could start again.” I reached for Zach's hand. “You know, I was absolutely convinced I was going to die. They tried to protect these other two women and they failed. They were killed. I just keep thinking about dying. About being dead. I've been so scared.”

  Tears started running down my face. It wasn't precisely the time or the place for that, with shoppers pushing their way past us. Zach put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. He could be nice sometimes. He pulled some fairly pristine tissues from his pocket and handed them to me. I wiped my face and blew my nose.

  “You should have asked for help,” he said.

  “What would you have done?”

  “Something,” he said. “For example, about being dead. Think of before you were born. You were dead for millions and billions of years. You don't find that frightening, do you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Suddenly there was a presence at my elbow. It was Lynne.

  “There's a message from DCI Links. He'd like to see you straightaway.”

  “What's happened?”

  Lynne gave a shrug.

  “He just said he wants to see you.”

  They were so nice to me at the police station. I was whisked straight through and taken into a grander office, set away from all the other desks in the open-plan setting. I was seated in the chair in front of the desk and brought tea and two biscuits on a little saucer and I was told that Links would be along in just a tick. I had managed no more than a couple of sips and a dip of the biscuit into the tea when Links and Cameron came into the room. They both looked serious and formal. Cameron sat on the sofa to one side and Links sat behind the desk. So it was his office.

  “They got you tea?” he said.

  I held up my cup. There wasn't really much to be said.

  “I wanted to tell you straightaway,” he said. “We've interviewed Morris Burnside and we've now eliminated him from the inquiry.”

  The room seemed to shift around me, leaving me queasy and dazed.

  “What?”

  “I want to assure you that this is a positive step.”

  “But how could you clear him so quickly?”

  He had picked up a paper clip from his desk. First he had unwound it so that it was straight. Now he was trying to twist it back into its old shape. I had tried that before. It never works as well again. But as an activity it at least prevented him from having to look me in the face.

  “I understand from Dr. Schilling that you have found out that there are two other murders—I mean two murders involved—in this inquiry. Document analysis has shown with complete certainty that the same person was involved in the murders of Zoe Haratounian and Jennifer Hintlesham and in sending you the threats that you have received. It's not just the documents.” Links was now talking as if he were in severe pain. “We know that the murderer went to the trouble of placing an object belonging to Mrs. Hintlesham in the flat of Miss Haratounian as a means of er . . . muddying the waters.” He untwisted the clip again. “On the morning that Zoe Haratounian was murdered, Morris Burnside was in Birmingham at an information technology conference that lasted all that weekend. He was manning a stall, doing presentations. We made a couple of calls. There are numerous witnesses who can place him there for the entire Sunday, morning till evening.” />
  “Couldn't he have got away?”

  “No, he couldn't.”

  “How did he react to being questioned?”

  “He was a bit shocked, of course. But he was perfectly polite and cooperative. Nice young man.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “Not at all. Anyway, we didn't mention you had given us his name.”

  I leaned forward and put my teacup on the desk.

  “Is it all right if I leave that here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I had nothing left. Everything seemed to have drained out of me. I'd thought I was safe. Now I had to go back out into it again. I couldn't face it. I was too tired.

  “I thought it was all over,” I said numbly.

  “You'll be fine,” Links said, still not looking at me. “The protection will continue.”

  I got up and looked around for the door, in a daze.

  “You must see it as a positive step. We've eliminated one potential suspect. That's progress.”

  I looked around.

  “What?” I said.

  “One less person to bother about.”

  “Only six billion to go,” I said. “Oh, I suppose we can eliminate women as well and children. That's probably two billion. Minus one.”

  Links stood up.

  “Stadler will see you out,” he said.

  It was a matter of half leading, half carrying me out. On the way he stopped in a quiet stretch of corridor.

  “You all right?” he said.

  I moaned something.

  “I need to see you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I've been thinking about you all the time. I want to help you, Nadia. I need you and I think that you need me. You need me.”

  He touched my arm.

  “Uh?” It took me some time to work out what he was doing. I moaned something again and shook him off me. “Don't touch me,” I said. “Don't ever touch me again.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Fear kicked in. I was legless with it; my insides felt molten with it. I crawled into bed and lay staring up at the ceiling, trying not to think, yet trying desperately to think. A few hours of hope and elation, and what now, then? What now, when I was back at the beginning where I'd begun just a few days, a week or so, ago? Except it didn't seem like days, but months and years, a dreary and ghastly eternity of fear. I slept and woke and slept again, stale and itchy sleep, just under the first level, where dreams lurk and catch you like thick weeds waving under the surface of the water. It was dark and then it was dim and then at last light again, a steely sky outside the window. I lay and listened to a bird singing outside. I peered at my watch. Six-thirty. I pulled the covers over my head. What was I supposed to do with myself today?

  The first thing I did was to ring Zach. His voice when he answered was thick with sleep.

  “Zach, it's me. Nadia. Sorry. But I had to. It wasn't him after all. It wasn't Morris. He couldn't have been the one.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Right. What am I going to do now?” I found I was crying. Tears were dribbling into my mouth, itching against my nose, tracking their way down my neck.

  “Are they sure?”

  “Yeah, it's not him.”

  “Shit,” he said again. I could tell he was trying to think of something to add that wouldn't sound so dismaying.

  “I'm back at square one, Zach. He'll get me. I can't do this. I can't go on like this. It's no use.”

  “Yes you can, Nadia. You can.”

  “No.” I wiped the sleeve of my nightie over my teary, snotty face. My glands ached and my throat hurt. “No, I can't.”

  “Listen to me. You're brave. I have faith in you.”

  He kept saying that: I have faith in you; you're brave. And I kept crying and snuffling and saying: I'm just me, and: No, I can't. But somehow the repetitions made me feel a bit better; my protests thinned out. I even heard myself giggle when Zach swore I'd live to be a hundred. He made me promise to make myself some breakfast. He told me he'd ring me in an hour or so, that he would come round to see me later.

  I obediently toasted some rather stale bread and ate it with a large cup of black coffee. I sat in the kitchen and stared out of the window. People walked past and I thought to myself: It could be him, with the baseball cap and the wide trousers, lips pursed in a whistle I couldn't hear. Or him with headphones, towing the yappy dog. Or him, with the straggly beard and thinning hair, hunched inside his quilted anorak on a baking late-August day. Anyone. It could be anyone.

  I tried not to think about Jenny after she had died. If I called to mind that photograph, panic almost closed my throat. Before I saw the files, the killer had been a lurking menace, something abstract and almost unreal. But there was nothing abstract about Zoe's sweet face, or about Jenny's grotesque corpse, and now there was a stirring, tentative part of me that was starting to feel personal hatred toward him: an intimate, purposeful feeling. I sat at the kitchen table and held on to that feeling, let it take clearer shape in my mind. He wasn't a cloud, a shadow, something dreadful in the air I breathed. He was a man who had killed two young women and wanted to kill me. Him against me.

  I found an unopened letter informing me on the outside of the envelope that I had already won a prize and I started to make notes on the back of it. What did I know? He had killed Zoe in mid-July, Jenny in early August. As Grace put it, he was “escalating.” A locket of Jenny's, missing for weeks, had been discovered in Zoe's flat, a photograph of Zoe had been found among Clive's possessions, but those were the only things that had been found to connect the two women. The only link—weak and, as it turned out, meaningless—between me and Jenny was Morris. I thought of the other people who had been interviewed: Fred, of course, though never as a suspect since he had been cleared before the murder was even done; Clive; the real estate agent, Guy; a businessman called Nick Shale; a previous boyfriend of Zoe's back from traveling round the world; Jenny's crew of architects and builders and gardeners and cleaners. Now Morris. All the police had achieved, it seemed to me, was to eliminate the obvious suspects.

  I sipped my cooling coffee. Where did that leave me? It left me sitting at my kitchen table, pathetically trying to be my own detective, watching men out the window, thinking: him, or him, or anyone at all. I was banging my head against the same wall the police had been banging their heads on for weeks.

  I went into my bedroom and found the scrap of paper on which I'd written the names and addresses I'd filched from the files Stadler had shown me. I stared at them, until the writing blurred. Then, for lack of any better idea, I took a deep breath and picked up the telephone.

  “Good morning, Clarke's. Can I help you?” A woman's voice, ringing with fake enthusiasm.

  “I heard you're selling a flat in Holloway Road. I wondered if I could have a look at it.”

  “Hold on, please,” she said, and I sat for a couple of minutes listening to Bach played on a child's miniature electric organ.

  A male voice announced its presence on the line with a discreet cough.

  “Guy here. Can I help you?”

  I repeated my request.

  “Great,” he said. “Superbly located. Extremely convenient for Holloway Road.”

  “Can I see it today?”

  “Definitely. How about this afternoon?”

  “Is the owner there?”

  “I'll show you round myself.”

  Lucky me.

  I rang another number from my scrap of paper next. I don't really know why. Perhaps because of all the people in the files, she was the only one who had sounded sad.

  “Hello?”

  How do you begin? I decided to be direct.

  “I'm Nadia Blake. You don't know me. I wanted to talk to you about Zoe.” There was a silence on the other end of the phone. I couldn't even hear her breathing. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn't want to upset you.”

  “Who are you? Are you a journalist?”

  “No. I'm like her. I
mean I've been getting letters from the man who killed her.”

  “Oh, God. I'm sorry. Nadia, you say?”

  “That's right.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “I thought we might meet.”

  “Yes, of course. I'm still on holiday. I'm a teacher.”

  “How about at her flat, then, at two?”

  “Her flat?”

  “I'm being shown round.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to see it.”

  “Are you sure?” She sounded doubtful. Maybe she thought I was mad.

  “I just wanted to find out about Zoe.”

  “I'll be there. This is weird. You've no idea.”

  I had four hours before the appointment. A different woman police officer was here today. Bernice. I told her I wanted to go and visit a flat on Holloway Road just before two, and she didn't even blink, just nodded impassively and made a mark in the notebook she carried around with her. Perhaps she didn't know Zoe's old address, or perhaps everybody was just getting bored waiting for something to happen. Then I had a long bath, washed my hair, soaked in the sudsy water until the skin on my fingers and toes softened and shriveled. I painted my toenails and put on a dress I'd hardly ever worn. I'd been saving it up for a special occasion, some glamorous party where I'd meet my next Mr. Right, but it seemed stupid to wait for that now. I might as well wear it for Zoe's flat, for Louise and Guy. It was a lovely pale turquoise, tight-fitting with short sleeves and a scoop neck. I put on a necklace, some small earrings, a pair of sandals. I looked fresh and smart, as if I was about to go out to a summer party, drink champagne in some green garden. If only. I put on some lipstick to complete the picture.

  At midday, Bernice came in and told me that two young men were here to see me. I peered out the hall window and saw Josh standing fidgeting at the doorway. Beside him stood someone with dark tousled hair, wearing a black cloth jacket. He was holding a packet of cigarettes in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other and smiling at the doorway I was going to appear in.

  When, for a couple of elated hours, I had thought Morris was the killer, the face I had remembered had been a murderer's face: cunning, his eyes dead, like shark's eyes. Now I saw that he was boyish and handsome. He looked rather endearing as he arranged his smile for me, and held up his paper-wrapped bouquet.