Original Skin

by David Mark

  “And the petrol bomb?”

  Rourke nods. “Me and a pal.” He looks up, voice quickening. “You must know we never wanted to cook anybody. We threw it as wide as we could. Just wanted to show it had been done. Then Ronan wasn’t in trouble and nobody was hurt. You tell me—what was I supposed to do? Pepe asks me to keep the boy safe, and next thing I’m in the middle of all this shit . . .”

  Rourke stops. Closes his eyes. Looks tired and old. Looks like a man who has been pulled in too many directions.

  “How did your print get on the bottle?”

  “I wore gloves, but the bottle we used . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “One of my own,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m a thick bastard.”

  “The car you drove?”

  “Ronan’s. Been driving round like a rock star.”

  Ray scratches his face thoughtfully. “Bet Ronan wasn’t pleased.”

  “Threatened me with his uncle. Threatened me with his new pals.”

  Ray gives a tiny nod. “And Noye?”

  “He knows I’ve done what I can.”

  “The drug contacts?”

  Rourke shrugs. “Who fucking knows?”

  They stand and consider each other for a time.

  Broken, humbled, Rourke cannot even raise his head as he asks whether he can have his dogs.

  Ray looks at him hard. Turns to Tanner. “Give him the fucking things.”

  He leans back against the side of the van. Listens as the barking increases in volume, and has to suppress a smile when he sees the swarthy, unbreakable traveler down on his knees, weeping into the necks of two excitable, slobbering dogs.

  Rourke catches his eye.

  “Would you have done it? Pulled the trigger?”

  Ray gives his first real smile.

  “I still might.”

  SUZIE WISHES she had an addiction.

  Wishes that drink or cigarettes or sticking a fucking needle in her veins brought her some vestige of comfort and relief. She has nothing. No chemical crutch. Doesn’t know how to soothe herself.

  “Breathe, Suzie, breathe . . .”

  She halfheartedly punches the passenger seat—a backhand slap that would have made Simon giggle were he there to receive it.

  “It’s all bollocks.”

  She sneers as she says it. Drops her head. Realizes that her images of peace are all clichés. Knows that were she to shut her eyes and take deep, cleansing breaths, she would feel no more at ease than she does now: wide-eyed, teary, staring into the gathering darkness with her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel like ivy around a tree trunk.

  It is pushing ten p.m. She does not know why she has driven here, to Coniston rest stop. Doesn’t know what she hopes to achieve. To see. To feel. It brings her no comfort, but nor did she expect any.

  Her day has been a haze. She drove home after fleeing Big Dunc’s house, but found her flat as cold and distant as an unloving partner. Wraithlike, she drifted from room to room, looking for familiarity. For warmth. For something that would trigger happier memories or more encouraging thoughts. She found nothing. Took her laptop to the pub and spent money she does not have ordering clothes she does not need. Drank two vodka-and-Cokes, then threw up in the toilets and headed to the park. Sat reading a book and picking at a shop-bought sandwich: absorbing nothing and tasting less.

  It is only here, now, that she is finding herself again able to connect with her own thoughts. Here, now, she thinks in her own voice.

  She fiddles with the radio. Something pop has been playing and it seems inappropriate. She fiddles with the dial and finds a classical station. Gives herself over to a melancholy cello concerto that seems a more fitting accompaniment to the gloomy, cloud-shrouded sunset she watches through the dirty glass.

  “Miss you, Si,” she says again. She has been saying it a lot. Not chatting to him. That would be odd. Just acknowledging his memory, his presence. The fact that she failed him. Let him be murdered and did not care enough to make a fuss.

  Later, should she be given the chance, she will find a place for her guilt. She will never excuse herself, but she will accept that she went mad for a time when her friend died. Became a half-thing. Existed emptily. Closed herself off to thoughts she could not stomach and to fears she dared not acknowledge. She will tell herself that she was young, naive, and that the notion of murder, or deliberate death, had never filtered into her bouncy, silly life. But here, now, she hates herself for not demanding answers when Simon died. For letting it seem she did not care.

  “See you soon, Si,” she says softly.

  She senses there is a certain truth in the statement. She is not entertaining thoughts of self-harm, but twice this week somebody has tried to kill her. She cannot swallow without pain. Cannot close her eyes without seeing the man crushed against his own car. Keeps remembering the sound of crunching bone and squelching blood, the snippets of vile audio collected as she tumbled down the grass verge, knickers trailing from one leg, dirt and grit on her face.

  She looks at her phone. Wishes she had somebody to counsel her. Somebody she could ask whether it is a good idea to text the man who tried to kill her, and ask him whether he murdered Simon, too.

  She is parked away from the main shadow of the rest stop. The car’s lights are off, but there is enough daylight remaining for her not to worry, or care, about another vehicle slamming into her. She has been passed by two vehicles already. Saw another half-dozen when she drove through half an hour back.

  “What are you going to do?”

  She asks the question of herself. Pulls down the sun visor and looks at herself in the vanity mirror. Asks it again and looks at the shape her mouth makes. Looks into her own eyes. Takes off her glasses and wipes away the steam that her hot, wet eyes have created on the lenses. Wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands. Sniffs noisily and pulls a face at the rather revolting sound.

  Suzie has never felt so alone. So lost. She cannot help but consider the shabbiness of her life. To think of her debts. Her tiny flat with its charity-shop and hand-me-down furniture. Her stalling career. Poor CV. Her one, failed, relationship.

  “You’re not even pretty,” she says out loud, and suddenly feels angry about it. “Ugly bitch,” she snaps venomously at herself. “Fuck you!”

  She slams the visor back against the car roof. Takes a breath, but as she blows it out, her throat hurts and she starts coughing. She begins to cry again, then loses her temper with her frailty and locks her teeth. Angrily, she turns the car key. Stamps down on the accelerator as she wrestles the old Fiat into gear. Throws the car forward, disappearing into the darkness behind the mound of grass and trees that shields the rest stop from the road, and makes the whole area so appealing.

  Four cars are parked up, two on either side of the road. A mass of figures congregates around the windows of a large family sedan. As Suzie approaches, heads turn. She pulls into the curb close by. Feels, perhaps, a frisson of terror. Remembers, fleetingly, the first time she came here. Remembers watching from the safe remove of her car as a husband made love to his wife in the back of a hatchback and a man stood at the window, touching himself, as the pair put on their show. It had all been a novelty then. She had been fresh out of love, eager to live, to experience. To be bad. It had struck her as odd at first. Unusual that men and women should cluster around a cheap car and watch other people fuck. She has seen so much since that she finds it unusual some people don’t.

  Impulsively, recklessly, she steps out of the car. She is wearing flip-flops and a long dress under a baggy jumper. She has on a scarf to hide the ligature marks. Looks okay. Would be considered a prize were she to let anybody touch her this evening. She wonders whether she will. Whether she’ll watch and smile or let somebody enjoy her.

  There are three men standing at the driver’s side of the sedan. A coupl
e, wrapped up in each other, are on the far side, watching through the passenger window. With the car doors open, the interior light is switched on, and gives off enough light for Suzie to understand the nature of the scene taking place within.

  Heads turn her way as she gets closer to the car. She smiles instinctively. Closes her eyes tightly as she passes the spot where, just a few days ago, a man was nearly killed in her stead.

  “Evening.”

  A male voice. Local. Friendly. Middle-aged.

  Suzie nods a hello to the nearest of the group. Feels eyes upon her. Fixes her gaze on the shapes moving in the car. Stops. Looks inside. Locks eyes with the man in the passenger seat. He’s young. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. He’s wearing a knockoff designer T-shirt and his tracksuit bottoms are pooled around his ankles, sitting atop his dirty white sneakers. He is not unattractive. A little ratty and disheveled, perhaps, but he is well muscled and his features handsome.

  The shock of hair bobbing up and down in his lap belongs to a large, bulky woman whose clothes suggest middle age. She has taken off her seat belt to better go about her work, but Suzie knows from experience that the gear stick will be hurting her breastbone. Squinting, she notes that there is a label sticking out the back of the woman’s jumper. It declares her a size sixteen and a discount shopper.

  “You on your own?” asks the same voice.

  Suzie looks at its owner. Mid- to late forties. Quite tall. Decent-sized gut pushing at cord trousers. Turtleneck and check suit jacket. Graying hair and two days’ beard on his oval, fleshy face. He has nice eyes.

  “You think I need a bodyguard?” she asks.

  The man smiles. “Been at it for a while,” he whispers, nodding at the car. “Thought they’d be done by now. When I was his age I was a two-minute man. Opposite problem now.” He looks her up and down. “You wanting to play or just watch? My car’s nice and warm . . .”

  “We’ll see,” says Suzie, and realizes she has no clue why she is here or what she wants. The knowledge is almost freeing.

  Suzie cannot help but want to see more. She gently pushes past the man with the nice eyes and bends down to better see what is happening. She is not aroused. Just curious. Eager to witness something that is worth opening her eyes for.

  “You!”

  Suzie’s head whips left. Searches the source of the enraged exclamation.

  The back of the car. Broad back and shoulders against the glass. Skintight leggings and a floaty silky top. Multicolored bob and rage in her eyes. Melissa. Jarod’s friend. The lady from the swingers’ party who didn’t smile, and who ended the evening with her partner being rushed to hospital.

  Suzie’s mouth falls open. She starts to say hello but a sudden fear has taken hold of her. She backs away from the window but pushes against the firm, unyielding bulk of the man with nice eyes.

  She sees the woman in the front seat stop her work. Turn her head. She looks familiar. She, too, was at the party. She is in her late thirties. Plain. Pinch-faced. Spent some time in the swing being pleasured by Big Dunc and a vending-machine stockist from Selby.

  The back door of the car is swinging open. Melissa levers herself out. Angrily pushes aside the young couple in her way and comes round the back of the vehicle.

  “Little slag,” she’s saying, face contorted. “Jarod’s going to be a vegetable ’cause of you. One night was all I wanted. One night with him. And you make eyes and he’s off and then he’s getting a brick around his fucking skull and you’re playing the victim and it’s all ‘poor me, poor me.’”

  Her words come out in an angry spit. Her lips froth. Teeth are bared. Suzie doesn’t know whether to turn and run or stand her ground and defend herself from the woman’s lies.

  “I’m sorry, nothing happened with us, we were just having a moment . . .”

  “You’re a little tease,” says Melissa, her face in Suzie’s. “You wave your bits in people’s faces, then leave them begging.”

  “That’s not true . . .”

  “Little teases, all of you. I’ve met people like you. The ones on the Internet who say they’ll turn up. The ones who go to parties and don’t join in . . .”

  “I do join in . . .”

  The blow comes from nowhere. It is not a slap. It is a right hand delivered with a closed fist, and it knocks Suzie backward and to her knees. She is dizzy. Sick. The same dirt and gravel in her mouth she has tasted for days.

  A boot now. A foot to her ribs, tipping her to her side. Pain explodes inside her. She begins to vomit, but is still gasping for breath and begins to choke, her swollen throat closing.

  Now there are fingers in her hair. She is being dragged upright. She hears voices. Protestations. Sees the shape of men moving away. Hurried footsteps, running for cars. Lights, engines.

  Her face slams against metal. The cold of the car bonnet. Spit and blood pooling in the corner of her mouth as her face is pushed painfully down . . .

  “I’ll show you little bitches . . .”

  Spit on her face. Another punch to the back of her head.

  And now she can feel the cold wind on the back of her thighs. Can feel her dress being pushed upward and hands clawing at her skin.

  She knows now. Knows what she came for and what she will get.

  Then there is a new voice. Loud. Firm. Clear.

  She hears Melissa spit and swear. The throaty laugh that follows her suggestion the speaker should wait his turn.

  And then the pressure is released. There are no hands upon her. There is no pressure on her face or breeze upon her thighs.

  There is a shrieking. More angry threats, growing more frenzied and yet more distant.

  Suzie slides down the bonnet of the car. Collapses on the gravel, a mess of twisted limbs and pain.

  Her eyes close. None of it seems to matter anymore. All the noise. The pain. The threats. She feels somehow free of it. Light. Feels a warmth and closeness around her that she has not felt in an age.

  Soft, rough hands upon her face. A giant, tender palm upon her cheek.

  She opens her eyes. Lets the features swim into place.

  Lets the background roar of her ears tune to the frequency of the gentle, probing voice.

  Catches, among the other words, a name.

  McAvoy. Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. Don’t worry, I’m here, you’re safe . . .

  • • •

  THE COFFEE is bitter and tastes faintly of soup and orange squash. More than anything, it tastes of the flask it has been carried in. Suzie drinks it gratefully. It warms her. Fills her with a flavor that is blessedly removed from the blood and spit of her mouth.

  “Better?”

  Suzie nods, cupping both hands around the metal mug. She lets the steam rise beneath her nostrils. Inhales deeply.

  “Cute,” she says, and forces a smile.

  McAvoy is holding Lilah against his hip. The baby is wide awake. Trying to reach her daddy’s ear with one tiny, grasping fist.

  “Thanks,” says McAvoy, kissing his daughter on the head and shushing her softly. “All babies are cute, though, aren’t they?”

  Suzie appears to think about it. “I prefer bunnies.”

  “Yes? You must be a city girl. Grow up in the country, you don’t feel the same. Bloody pests.”

  “Wouldn’t trust anybody who didn’t like bunnies.”

  McAvoy smiles. “Didn’t say I didn’t like them. Said they were pests.”

  Suzie sips her coffee again. “You don’t seem like a policeman,” she says quietly.

  “It’s the outfit, isn’t it?” he says acceptingly. “I know, I know.”

  He is dressed in pajama trousers and a rugby shirt underneath a waterproof jacket he managed to find in the back of the car. When he took Lilah for a drive to settle her before bed, he had not admitted his intentions to himself. Even went to the tr
ouble of feigning surprise when the car took him to Suzie’s flat. Told himself then it would be dereliction of duty not to follow when he saw her climbing into the Fiat and slamming the door.

  He has not yet phoned Roisin to tell her why he has been out so long. Will tell her tomorrow that he did not want to wake her. That he and Lilah fell asleep somewhere pretty and had a pleasant night.

  Suzie pulls a face as she looks up at the hulking form of McAvoy, and then at his car. She is sitting in the passenger seat, legs outside, door open. She cannot imagine him squeezing himself into the tiny vehicle.

  “This really your car? Bet you don’t need roll bars.”

  McAvoy laughs. Takes the cup from her and sips from it thoughtfully. “Used to have a minivan. It blew up.”

  “You have all the luck.”

  “Luck of the Irish, my friend says.”

  “But you’re Scottish. You sound it, anyway.”

  “That’s the joke.”

  “Oh.”

  In silence they pass the drink between them. It feels strangely intimate. They feel oddly comfortable in each other’s nearness.

  “You were following me?” asks Suzie, struggling to digest the information McAvoy had first imparted as he scooped her from the ground in arms that could have lifted the car, too.

  McAvoy nods. “You know what I want to ask you about . . .”

  Suzie nods. Bites her lip. She looks up at the sky, where the moon is partially obscured by clouds that put her in mind of burned popcorn.

  “It was me,” she says acceptingly. “The other night. Here. The man.”

  McAvoy pauses. “I know that. We have your prints.”

  She frowns. “I wiped the receiver.”

  McAvoy looks away. “We got them from the bonnet of the car.”

  Suzie pulls a face, embarrassed. “Oh.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Suzie . . .”

  “Car came from nowhere,” she says flatly, finishing the coffee. “We were playing. Then the car hit him. I got out of the way just in time.”

  “And you left him there.”