Eventually, she hit a spot between Noah’s fifth and sixth ribs. She froze, her arm outstretched, wrist flat. Noah stayed in place, waiting for her to take the stiff end of the polybag off his shirtfront. ‘That wasn’t easy,’ she said, laying the knife back down on the table.
‘No?’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I’d say you were a natural.’ He lost the smile in the same second. ‘Sorry. What d’you mean, not easy?’
‘Easy would’ve been stabbing you in the stomach. A worse way to die – slower. More time for someone to try and save your life.’ She walked away from the knife. ‘Not that anyone in Finchley was likely to do that. They were all too scared or too busy thinking you deserved what you got . . .’
Noah picked up the bagged knife. ‘I’m Leo?’
‘You’re Leo. You brought a knife into a women’s refuge. Why did you do that?’
He held the bag in both hands, careful not to close his fist around the handle. Held like that, it looked like a peace offering. ‘I wanted to scare you. Her, I mean. Hope.’
‘You could do that without a knife. You’re a big bloke, with big fists. You don’t need a knife to scare people.’
‘Then . . . I was going to hurt you.’ Noah eyed the knife with dismay. ‘Kill you?’
‘So why aren’t I dead? Big bloke like you. Little thing like me. Why are you the one in hospital, fighting for your life?’
He took a long moment. Then, ‘I gave you the knife.’ He held it out towards her. ‘I . . . must’ve given you the knife.’
‘And then what?’ Marnie said. ‘Stood still while I stuck it in your lung?’
‘I made a mistake.’ He frowned, his face thin. ‘I was testing you, and it backfired.’ He looked down at the knife in his hand, then placed it back on the table. ‘You took me by surprise. I didn’t think in a million years you’d fight back. I was reminding you who’s boss, teaching you a lesson for running away.’
‘You didn’t think I’d do it.’
‘I didn’t think you’d dare.’
‘So I panicked. Is that what you think?’
Noah touched a hand to his shirtfront. ‘Panic would’ve got me stabbed in the stomach. You . . . you must have meant to kill me.’
He dropped his hand to his side. ‘Ayana was right. You meant to kill me.’
‘Ayana?’
‘I wrote it up, put it on your desk. She said it was deliberate: Hope had no other way to make the abuse stop. A different kind of self-defence, I suppose you’d call it.’
‘But not panic.’ Marnie came back to the table, pushing a finger at the polybag. ‘The knife didn’t find his lung by accident.’
‘If it was deliberate . . .’
‘Then Hope had every reason to run.’
Noah said, ‘She killed him to stop the abuse. That’s a good defence, and we had the medical evidence of what he’d done to her. She didn’t need to run.’
‘Not if she was thinking clearly. And if her closest friend had a good reason to trust the police. If we knew the first thing about her closest friend.’
‘Surely . . . if it was deliberate, someone would’ve said something. Seen something. All those witnesses . . .’
‘All those abused women. Probably still covered in whatever bruises they had when they escaped from their husband, or son, or brothers. Not one of them was likely to see Leo as anything other than a threat . . .’
Marnie reached for her jacket. ‘Time to get back to the refuge. Find out what they really saw.’ She glanced at Noah. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I want to do the interviews with Ed. He knows these women, and they trust him.’
‘Understood,’ Noah said. He picked up the knife. ‘I’ll take this back to Evidence, and see you over there.’
34
Mab Thule sat upright in a straight-backed chair, both feet planted on the floor of her room at the refuge, red cotton gloves on her hands. The chair was wipe-clean plastic, wheezing whenever she moved. She held a fork in one hand, its tines bent out of shape. She’d torn the seam of the chair’s cushion and was poking a gloved finger into the hole. The cushion was lumpy, as if she’d squirreled things into the torn seam. She was like a magpie on a nest of dubious treasure, her head cocked at an angle. The left glove, loose on her hand, looked empty. She leaned forward, pinning Marnie with an intent stare. Her lips worked and Marnie moved closer, to hear what she had to say.
‘You would feel your heart fall over.’ Mab sat back, exhausted.
Marnie looked helplessly at Ed. He reached for Mab’s hands, taking the fork and putting it aside, gripping her fingers in his. A smile stitched itself to Mab’s sunken mouth. ‘Teddy . . .’
‘Yes.’ He smiled back at her. ‘We need your help. We need to work out what happened here on Friday. With Hope and her husband, and with Simone. Hope was friends with Simone, that’s right, isn’t it?’
‘You would,’ Mab said sadly. ‘You would feel your heart fall over.’
Ed put her hands back in her lap. ‘Can I get you anything, lovely?’
She shook her head. Held out her gloved hand, palm up. Ed returned the fork. He nodded at Marnie and they carried the chairs out into the corridor.
When they were a safe distance from Mab’s room, Marnie asked, ‘Is she well enough to be here?’
‘She’s not well enough to be anywhere else. Social services assess her on a regular basis. They made a push a while back to have her moved to residential care, but they backed off after looking at the finances. It’s cheaper to keep her here, at least until she needs nursing care.’
‘She doesn’t need that now?’
‘She needs help getting dressed and washed,’ Ed said, ‘but the others look after her. They take it in turns. It works well enough.’
Marnie glanced up the corridor, in the direction of the dayroom. ‘What’s wrong with her hands? Or does she wear gloves for the cold?’
‘She lost two fingers to frostbite, when she was ten.’ Ed’s face was drawn with anxiety for Hope and Simone. ‘So who’s next on your list?’
‘Not Ayana, she’s studying. I said we’d respect that, unless it was absolutely necessary to disturb her. So . . . how about Shelley Coates?’
Shelley Coates was the youngest of the five women who’d witnessed Leo Proctor’s stabbing. Twenty-three, heavily made-up, eyes small and brown. She wore a silver ring through her right nostril. Her downturned mouth made Marnie think of a puppet’s jointed jaw.
Mab Thule’s room was shabby, but it had charm. Shelley’s room had all the charm of a motorway Travelodge. Cheap furniture, its laminate veneer curling at the edges. A slackly made bed with a discoloured headboard. Ceramic hair straighteners on the bedside table; Marnie could smell burnt hair and see a strand or two melted to the straighteners.
Shelley sat cross-legged at the foot of her bed, tossing a hank of dark hair over her shoulder. Her tracksuit was black velour with rhinestone trim. She wore stacked trainers, white, with a gold chain at one ankle. Her vest was cut low across her chest, D-cup, most of it angled at Ed. He was either pretending not to notice, or not noticing.
‘Hi, Shelley. Thanks for this.’ Marnie didn’t offer her hand. None of these women liked to be touched. ‘We won’t keep you longer than we need to.’
Shelley looked from Marnie’s flat pumps to her flat chest, pigeonholing her with the stare: dyke copper. ‘Okay.’ She chewed the word around her mouth as if it was a wad of gum.
‘We need to go over a few details from your statement, about Friday.’
Marnie and Ed had agreed they wouldn’t ask questions that would make the women anxious about Simone and Hope, remembering the panic from Friday; they were keeping their disappearance to themselves, for now. ‘You were in the dayroom when Leo arrived.’
‘Yeah. A bunch of us was watching Lorraine. We switched off when he came.’ She turned the nose ring. The skin around it had crusted, healing from an infection, or a punch.
‘How did he get in here, do you know?’
‘Walked past that dozy cow Jeanette.’ Shelley screwed her mouth into a scowl. ‘She’s always on a fag break. That or stuffing her face.’
Ed said, ‘Easy, Shell. She’s a volunteer. You know what that means.’
‘Yeah, lick her arse or you’ll chuck me out on mine.’ She turned the scowl into a grin, leaning a little more of her chest in Ed’s direction. ‘Mab’s been at my stuff again, so you know.’
‘What was it this time?’
‘Couple of rings. Nothing special or I’d have made a fuss. Got them back, anyway. But you said to tell you, if it happened again.’
‘All right.’ Ed nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll talk to her again.’
‘Had he been inside the refuge before?’ Marnie asked Shelley. ‘Leo Proctor.’
Shelley shook her head. ‘Nah.’
‘Had you seen him hanging around, outside maybe?’
‘He done that, someone would’ve warned her. Called you,’ nodding at Ed, ‘or the cops,’ boxing Marnie with another stare.
‘Did he say anything, when he came into the dayroom?’
‘No.’
‘How did Hope react?’
‘She jumped into his arms, silly cow.’ Shelley looked around the room, as if trying to pinpoint her objection. ‘It was the roses. She’s the kind falls for shit like that.’ She plucked at the thin chain around her ankle. ‘Least I give him some back. My Clark.’
Marnie glanced at Ed. ‘Clark is Shelley’s boyfriend,’ he said.
‘What did you give him back?’ Marnie asked Shelley.
‘Grief. Aggro.’ She sniffed. ‘Least I didn’t lie down and take it.’
‘You think Hope did that, with Leo?’
‘I know she did. I seen her bruises in the bathroom. She don’t lock the door. He don’t let her lock it at home, that’s what she said. I seen the state of her.’
‘Did anyone else see her bruises? Simone, for instance?’
‘Dunno. Just know what I saw.’ She folded her arms, held herself tightly. ‘I’d have stuck the frigging knife in him myself.’
‘You think it was . . . revenge?’
Shelley shook her head. ‘Not her. She’s the sort sticks around no matter what. She panicked. Simone saw that all right. And the rest of us.’ She sucked at her bottom lip, taking off its topcoat of pink gloss. ‘You got her on suicide watch, right? She’s that type. You know?’
‘You think Hope might attempt suicide?’
‘Depends.’ Her small eyes scanned Marnie’s face. ‘Is he dead yet?’
‘He’s conscious. It looks like he’s going to make a full recovery.’
‘Shit.’ Shelley hugged herself, blanking her eyes. Then she said, ‘Typical,’ grinding out the word through her teeth.
‘What’s typical?’
‘Bastards like that get to live. She’ll go to prison and he’ll walk. Fucking typical.’
‘You don’t think Hope should go to prison.’
‘You’re shitting me.’ Shelley unfolded her arms, taking hold of her ankles. She challenged Marnie with a stare. ‘It’s not like she had a choice. He’d have done her, if she hadn’t got to the knife first.’
‘How did she get to the knife, in your opinion? He’s a big man.’
‘He’s a brick shithouse.’
‘Exactly. So how did Hope get hold of the knife?’
Shelley shrugged. ‘She must’ve taken him by surprise. He got used to her being his bitch, doing as she was told, didn’t expect her to fight back.’ She drew a big breath, keeping it in her cheeks before letting it go. ‘Being here,’ she looked at Ed, almost shyly, ‘it makes you see you’re worth more than whatever crap they’ve made you think about yourself. It gives you back your nerve.’
Ed smiled at her. ‘You’ve never had a problem with nerve.’
‘Yeah,’ Shelley agreed. ‘But women like Hope . . .’ She shrugged again. ‘You should’ve seen the state of her. That’s all. You seen that and you’d know why she done it. She’d no choice. Just trying to stay alive.’
Tessa Stebbins was half the size of Shelley Coates, but just as hard-boiled. ‘Bastard got what was coming to him, didn’t he?’
No hair straighteners or nail varnish in this room. Her bed was tidy, its covers pulled tight. Tessa shoved at the pillows as if the neatness annoyed her.
‘You’d been here a couple of weeks before Hope arrived.’ Marnie referred to her notes. ‘What did you make of her, when she first showed up?’
Tessa’s dark hair was tortured into a ponytail so tight it gave her a brow lift. She kept her arms folded across her chest, the corner of her eye on Ed. ‘She was a mess.’
‘In what way?’
‘Every way. Bruises. Crying. Jumping through the roof every time someone switched channels on the telly. Crying. The usual things.’ She lifted the barricade of her arms to rub her nose on her velour sleeve. Dressed like Shelley, but Tessa’s tracksuit was bubble-gum pink with rhinestones. The tracksuit was too large for her. Marnie wondered if it was on loan from her new friend. ‘Shell saw the state of her, in the shower room. She covered up, during the day, but Shell saw.’
‘Did she talk about her husband at all? To Simone, for instance?’
‘Yes. Yeah.’ Tessa blinked. Her eyes were like a cat’s, yellow-green. ‘Not just to Simone, either. When she was crying, feeling bad about leaving him. Worried about who was cooking his meals. I mean, for fuck’s sake . . .’ She bit her lip at the curse word, as if it was a new piercing she wasn’t used to yet. She was doing a good impersonation of a hard case, but Marnie thought she saw a frightened kid underneath.
Tessa’s boyfriend, Billy, had shared her among his friends, forcing her into sex to pay his debts. In the refuge, Tessa was aping Shelley Coates’s mannerisms, consciously or unconsciously. Looking to align herself with the alpha female. It was a con trick; Marnie saw it all the time in prisoners. She wondered whether Shelley was taking advantage of the fact, whether in fact Tessa had swapped one bully for another.
‘Simone says she saw Leo with the knife.’
‘Yes. I mean yeah. I saw him too.’
‘You saw Leo with the knife.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But he was the one who got stabbed.’
Tessa grinned, revealing capped teeth. ‘Yeah.’
‘How did it happen, do you think?’
Tessa pointed her shoulders at the ceiling. ‘Guess she’d had enough. I mean, a knife, that’s serious shit. That’s not messing about.’ She put her thumb to her mouth, ran her teeth along its nail. ‘My Billy . . . he never done knives. He was scary enough without them, but yeah. Knives are scary shit.’
‘Why do you think Leo brought the knife here?’
‘Obvious.’ Tessa rolled her eyes. ‘He was going to finish her. So she’d no choice, had she? It was him, or her. Self-defence. End of.’
Tessa had nothing to add to what they’d heard from Shelley Coates. Marnie let her return to the dayroom. In the corridor, she rolled her neck tiredly. ‘We’d better catch Jeanette next. She goes off shift at four.’
Ed must’ve heard the reluctance in her voice, because he said, ‘Volunteers are a mixed bunch. I’d like to think most people wouldn’t take a job like this for the money, which apart from anything else isn’t great, but not everyone has a vocational muscle.’
Jeanette Conway didn’t look like she had muscles of any description. She filled the white tracksuit she was wearing so thoroughly it was hard to see how she’d left room for underwear. Her features clustered sulkily at the centre of her face, corralled by pallid, marbled flesh. Marnie remembered the scream that came out of her on Friday. The woman’s mouth looked too small to make such a loud noise.
Marnie said, ‘We’d like to go over what happened here on Friday.’
Jeanette squared her shoulders, shooting a look at Ed. ‘All right.’
‘The door was unlocked. Is it usually unlocked?’
‘No, and it wasn’t on Friday. We keep it locked.
’
‘It was open when I got here,’ Marnie said levelly. ‘There was no one on the desk.’
‘I was in the dayroom.’ Jeanette looked to Ed. ‘Trying to sort out what that bastard was up to. I was looking out for them, just like you tell me to.’
Ed didn’t speak. His body language was passive, but he wasn’t giving her anything she could interpret as an alibi.
‘How did Leo Proctor get into the refuge?’ Marnie asked.
Jeanette shifted in the chair. She’d masked the stink of cigarettes with Juicy Fruit gum and air freshener. ‘Hope let him in,’ she said sullenly.
‘Hope let him in.’
‘She must’ve. The door,’ she screwed her mouth to a rosebud, ‘was locked.’
‘Why would Hope have let him in? She came here to get away from him.’
‘You know what they’re like,’ this directed at Ed. ‘They can’t help themselves. The thieving and phone calls are nothing. There’s much worse goes on. She’s not the only one. I seen Shelley Coates’s bloke hanging around and all.’
‘You’re saying Leo Proctor had been here before,’ Marnie said. ‘Hanging around.’
‘I seen Shelley’s bloke.’ Jeanette made a noise of disgust. ‘And that’s not all I seen.’
Marnie waited for her to elaborate.
Jeanette smiled primly. ‘They can’t help themselves,’ she said again.
Ed scratched at his head, drawing her attention back to him. ‘What happened in the dayroom, between Hope and Leo?’
‘He tried to give her them roses. She wouldn’t go near him at first. Then she did.’ Jeanette picked at a cuticle. ‘He didn’t look like he was going to cause trouble. No more than the rest of them, anyway. He was quiet.’
‘Didn’t anyone ask him to leave? Simone, for instance?’
‘No.’ Jeanette rolled her eyes. ‘Why would she?’
‘She and Hope are friends.’
‘Is that what they are?’ Jeanette smirked.
‘You don’t think they’re friends? Or you think they’re more than friends?’
Someone Else's Skin: (DI Marnie Rome) Page 12