Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  “Come in, both of you.”

  Josh muttered something and stumbled in, tripping over his undone laces. Morris held out the flowers.

  “It should be me giving you flowers, to apologize for my suspicions,” I said. “But thanks; they're lovely.” On an impulse I stretched up and kissed him on his cheek. Bernice closed the door behind us like a jailer.

  “I hope you don't mind me turning up like this,” said Morris, watching me as I filled a jug with water and stuck the flowers in.

  “Hack thought we should all get together,” added Josh.

  He was doing his restless prowl around the living room again, picking things up and putting them down, running his hands over objects.

  “Sit down, Josh. You're making me nervous. It's good to see you both. It feels a bit odd.”

  “What?”

  “Come on, look at us.” I started to giggle wretchedly, and Josh, out of nervous politeness, joined in. Morris stared at us both, frowning.

  “How can you laugh,” he asked when I'd stopped my hysterical chuckling, “when there's someone out there who wants to kill you?”

  “You should have seen me this morning. Or yesterday, when I discovered it wasn't you after all. I hope you won't take it the wrong way when I tell you that I really, really wanted it to be you.”

  “Hope's a cruel thing,” said Morris, nodding his head gravely.

  I looked at Josh with concern.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  He didn't look fine at all; he looked dreadful, with a pallor that was almost green and bloodshot eyes. I stood up and steered him over to the sofa, pushed him back into its cushions.

  “When did you last have something to eat?”

  “I'm not hungry.”

  “I'm going to make you something to eat. Pasta maybe, if I've got any. Do you want some?” I asked Morris.

  “I'll help you,” he said. “Just rest there,” he said to Josh, giving him a small slap on his shoulder. “Gather your strength.”

  Josh lolled back and closed his eyes. A pale smile spread over his face.

  Morris chopped tomatoes. I found half a bag of pasta spirals. I poured them into a pan with a clatter and put the kettle on.

  “Are you very scared?” he asked, just like Josh had done.

  “It comes and goes,” I said. “I'm trying to stay strong.”

  “That's good,” he said, chopping away. “Are they helping you?”

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  “Sort of,” I said dismissively.

  I didn't want to get into all of that. I had found a tin of pitted black olives. When the pasta was ready, I tossed a handful over it and sprinkled some olive oil over the top. It looked rather minimalist and elegant. I should have Parmesan cheese and black pepper to finish it off, though. Never mind. Morris was still cutting the tomatoes very slowly and methodically, into tiny cubes.

  “How do you imagine him?” he asked.

  “I don't,” I said, surprising myself by my firmness. “I think about the women. Zoe and Jenny.”

  He scraped the tomatoes into a bowl.

  “If there's anything I can do,” he said. “Just ask.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But not too encouragingly. I've got enough friends.

  As we ate, I told Josh and Morris about my appointment to see round Zoe's flat. Both of them looked appropriately dumbfounded by the idea.

  “Why don't you two come with me?” I asked suddenly, half regretting the suggestion as soon as I'd made it.

  Josh shook his head. “Gloria's taking all of us to meet her mother,” he said bitterly.

  He seemed much better after his pasta, although all the olives were piled in a neat heap on the side of his plate.

  “Yes,” said Morris with a smile. “I'll come with you.”

  “I'm meeting a friend of Zoe's there as well,” I said. “A woman called Louise.”

  “That's funny,” Morris said.

  “Why funny?”

  Morris looked a bit taken aback.

  “You're getting to know people who knew Josh's mother. And now people who knew Zoe. It seems strange.”

  “Does it?” I said. “It seems like something I have to do.”

  He murmured something that sounded like vague agreement. When he had finished his pasta, he stood up and fished a slim mobile phone out of his jacket pocket.

  “Checking my messages,” he said. He stood by the window and pressed buttons on the phone and listened, frowning. “Shit,” he said eventually, buttoning up his jacket. “I've got an urgent call. I'll have to skip the flat. Sorry. I feel awful about that, after promising to help you.”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  He took my hand and squeezed it. Then he left. He liked me; I could tell he liked me. He'd liked me the first time he saw me, when he came round to mend my computer. Couldn't he tell I was miles away from things like that now, so far away it seemed impossible that one day I would feel desire again?

  Josh left soon after. I kissed his cheek at the doorway and tears welled up in his eyes.

  “See you,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “Take care of yourself now.”

  Then, before he slouched off up the road, he blurted out: “You first. I mean you take care of yourself.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Guy wore a chocolate brown suit, a Bart Simpson tie, and a large smile. He had very white teeth and a tan. He shook my hand firmly. He asked if he could call me Nadia and then kept saying my name, as if it was something he had learned at a course. As he unlocked the front door, a voice behind us said:

  “Nadia?”

  I turned and saw a woman about my size, about my age. She was dressed in a sleeveless yellow top and a very red skirt, which was so short I could almost see the curve of her buttocks; her bare brown legs were strong and shapely. Her glossy brown hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail; her lips were painted a red to match her skirt. She looked bright, alert, pugnacious. My spirits rose.

  “Louise? I'm glad you came.”

  She smiled reassuringly. Together we went into a dingy entrance hall and up the narrow stairs.

  “This is the living room,” said Guy unnecessarily as we stepped into a cramped space, which smelled musty and unlived in. A pair of thin orange curtains were half drawn across the small windows, and I stepped forward and opened them. What a depressing little flat.

  “Tell you what,” I said to Guy, “would it be all right if we just looked round it without you? You can wait outside.”

  “Don't you . . . ?”

  “No,” said Louise. Then, as he left, “Creep. Zoe couldn't stand him. He asked her out. Kept hassling her.”

  We smiled at each other sadly. I felt tears prick the back of my eyes. Zoe with the lovely smile lived here. Through that door, she died.

  “I like the sound of her,” I said. “I wish—” I stopped.

  “She was great,” said Louise. “I hate saying ‘was.' The kids at the school adored her. Men were smitten too. There was something about her. . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Louise was walking around looking with eyes that clearly saw things I couldn't. When she talked it was almost to herself.

  “She lost her mother when she was young, you know. And somehow she always seemed like that—like someone who didn't have a mother. It made you feel protective towards her. Maybe that's why . . .”

  “What?”

  “Who knows? Why does a woman get picked on?” She caught my eye.

  “I've been wondering about that,” I said.

  I walked round the room, looking: Nothing had been cleared away yet, although somebody had obviously tidied everything up. Books were neatly stacked on surfaces, a couple of pencils, a ruler and an eraser lay on top of a lined notebook on the small table by the window. I opened it up and there on the first page was a list of lesson ideas, neatly listed and numbered. Zoe's handwriting: small looped letters, neat. On the wall was
a framed page from a newspaper, with a picture of Zoe, surrounded by dozens of small children, holding a giant watermelon.

  We went into the kitchen. Mugs stood on the draining board; some dead flowers drooped in a vase. A single bottle of white wine stood by the kettle. The fridge was open and gleamingly empty.

  “Her aunt owns the flat now,” said Louise, as if I had asked her some questions about arrangements.

  I picked up a calculator that was lying on the counter surface and idly pressed a few buttons, watched a sum appear on its screen.

  “Was she terrified?”

  “Yeah. She stayed at my place. She had been completely out of it, but she seemed calmer on that last day. She thought it was going to be all right. I was outside, you know.” Louise jerked her head toward the street. “Waiting on a double yellow line in my car along the road. I waited and I waited. Then I tooted the horn and waited some more and cursed her. Then I rang the doorbell. Finally I called the police.”

  “So you didn't see her body?”

  Louise blinked at me.

  “No,” she said eventually. “They would not let me see it. It was only later they brought me to look at the flat. I couldn't believe it. She just got out of my car and said she wouldn't be a minute.”

  “Are you ladies all right in there?” called Guy from the stairwell.

  “We won't be long,” I shouted back.

  Together we went through into her bedroom. The bed was stripped and a pile of sheets and pillowcases lay stacked on the chair. I opened the wardrobe. Her clothes were still there. She didn't have many. Three pairs of shoes stood on the wardrobe floor. I put up a hand and fingered the cloth of a pale blue dress, a cotton jacket with an unstitched hem.

  “Did you know Fred?” I asked.

  “Sure. Very charming. Zoe was better off without him, though. He wasn't exactly supportive. It was a relief to her when she finally told him it was over.”

  “I didn't know that.”

  Briefly I closed my eyes and let myself see the photograph of her corpse, peaceful on the floor as if she had gone to sleep there. Maybe she didn't suffer. I opened my eyes and there was Louise, looking at me with mild concern.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “What's all this for?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “I hoped I might learn something, but I've no idea what it would be. Maybe I'm just looking for Zoe.”

  She smiled. “Are you looking for a clue?” she asked.

  “Stupid, aren't I? Is anything missing?”

  Louise looked around.

  “The police wanted to know that. I couldn't really tell. The only thing I noticed was that there was a wall hanging that Fred had given her. That was gone.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw that in the file on the murder scene.”

  “It seems a funny thing to steal. It can't have been worth anything.”

  “The police assumed that the killer used it to carry stuff away in.”

  Louise looked puzzled. “Why not just use a plastic carrier bag from the kitchen?”

  “I don't know. I don't suppose people are all that rational just after they've killed someone.”

  “Anyway, she didn't have that many things. Her aunt may have helped herself already. And the police will have removed stuff, of course. Mostly it looks just like I remember it. Dreary place, isn't it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She hated it. Especially by the end. But it doesn't give you any idea of what she was like.” Louise went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa. “On her last day, we went shopping together. Just to buy her a couple of things to wear until she collected all her stuff, you know. We got her a pair of knickers and a bra and some socks, and then she said she wanted to buy a T-shirt. Mine were all too big for her. She was a skinny thing, and she'd lost weight with all the fear. So we ended up going to this kids' shop down the road from my flat and she found a light summer dress and a white T-shirt with little embroidered flowers all over it. Size ten to eleven, it said on the label. Ten to eleven: It fitted her perfectly. She tried it on in the fitting room and when she came out wearing it she looked so—so sweet, you know, with her hair all mussed up and her thin arms and her bright face, giggling a bit, in this kids' T-shirt.”

  Tears were trickling down Louise's face. She made no attempt to wipe them away.

  “That's how I think of her,” she said. “She was twenty-three, with a proper grown-up job and a flat and all that. But when I think of her, I see her standing giggling at me, wearing clothes made for a child. She was so little, so young.” She fished inside her bag and pulled out a tissue, wiped her face. “That's what she was wearing when she was killed. All dressed up in her brand-new clothes. Clean and fresh as a daisy.”

  “Ladies,” called Guy again, putting his head round the door. He looked confused when he saw us hugging in the middle of the room, tears streaming down our faces. I didn't know who I was crying for, but we stood there like that for a while, weeping, and when we left Louise put her hands on either side of my face and held me like that for a moment and stared at me.

  “Good luck, Nadia, my new friend,” she said. “I'll be thinking of you.”

  NINETEEN

  Just before seven on the following evening I was lying on the sofa in my flat when the front doorbell rang. Up to that point, the day had gone wrong. In the night I'd been thinking about Zoe and Jenny. I thought of them like friends now. More than that, maybe. I lay in bed that night and thought of myself as walking on a footpath and knowing that Zoe and then Jenny had walked this footpath before me. Sometimes I would see traces showing they had passed and always I knew that they had seen what I was seeing. They had gone ahead, and, in that early morning with the light around my curtain edges, I thought of them waiting for me out there, in the darkness and nothingness.

  Had they thought about dying? What had they done? I didn't mean what precautions they had taken. Had they lived their lives in a different way? What do you do when you may have a day or a week to live? It was supposed to make life more precious. I should think clearly, read great books. I wasn't sure I had any great books. After I got up and made myself some coffee, I looked along the shelves and found a book of poems someone had given me for a birthday present. They were supposed to be particularly suited to learning by heart but I couldn't even read them off the page. Something seemed to be wrong with my brain. I couldn't follow the sense of the poems. Their meaning was a song playing in the next house too faintly to make out. I put it back in the shelf and switched on the television.

  Just a day earlier I'd been thinking about constructive ways to use the rest of my life. Now I was watching a talk show involving women who'd had affairs with their sister's boyfriend and then a cooking program that was also a game show and then a repeat of a sitcom from the seventies and a rather old-looking documentary about a coral reef somewhere. The divers had sideburns. I saw lots of weather reports.

  If I died at twenty-eight and somebody wrote an obituary of me, which they wouldn't, what would they find to say? “In her later years she found her niche as a moderately successful children's party entertainer.” Zoe had a job as a teacher, though she was hardly more than a child herself. Jenny had three children. She had Josh, a child who was almost a man.

  I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up and watched the end of a western and some indoor bowling and a quiz program and another cookery program, and it was then that the doorbell rang. I opened the door. Josh and Morris were standing there. The damp, warm aroma of Indian food blew in. Morris was in discussion with a policewoman.

  “Yes, she does know us. And the other woman who was here already has our names and addresses. I can give it to you again if you want.” He turned and saw me. “We bought a takeaway and we were nearby, so we thought we'd drop in.”

  I looked blank. It wasn't them. It was having spent an entire day in front of the TV screen. I felt tranquilized.

  “It's fine,” Morris continued. “Don't worry. We can go
off with our food and find a bench somewhere or a doorway. Somewhere under a street lamp. In the rain.”

  I couldn't help smiling. The day was still sunny and bright.

  “Don't be stupid. Come in.” The policewoman looked reluctant. “It's all right. I know them.”

  They came in bringing the lovely smell with them and dumped three carrier bags on the table.

  “You're probably going out to a dinner party,” said Morris.

  “As it happens, I'm not,” I confessed.

  They both took off their jackets and tossed them to one side. They looked very at home.

  “I rescued Josh from a nightmarish soiree at home and we went out in search of a woman.”

  Josh smiled so awkwardly that I almost felt I should give him a hug, except that that would have made things even worse. They started unloading tinfoil cartons.

  “We didn't know about your tolerance,” said Morris, peeling off the cardboard lids. “So we got everything from extremely mild cooked in cream to meat phal, which is marked dangerously hot, and various things in between and a couple of nans, papadums, dhal, and various veg. Beer for the grown-ups, whereas Josh will have to make do with lager.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you allowed to drink, Josh?”

  “Of course,” he said truculently.

  Oh well. I had enough to worry about. I got out plates, glasses, and knives.

  “What would you have done if I hadn't been in?” I asked.

  “Morris was sure you'd be in,” Josh said.

  “Oh yes?” I asked, turning to Morris with a mock-ironical expression.

  He smiled.

  “I wasn't making fun of you,” he said. “I thought you might be a bit shaken up.”

  “I was a bit,” I said. “It's not been a good time.”

  “I can see that,” he said. “So eat.”

  And we did and it was good. I needed a good, messy, undignified meal in which lots of things were piled up together, and I ripped off bits of nan and dipped them in different sauces. We challenged each other to take mouthfuls of the phal with glasses of very cold beer standing by. I think Morris cheated and only took a tiny amount while pretending to be brave, but Josh took a few deep breaths and really did put a substantial spoonful of the fiery meat into his mouth and chewed and swallowed it. We stared at him and beads of sweat started to pop out of pores on his forehead.