Someone Else's Skin: (DI Marnie Rome)

by Hilary, Sarah

  ‘Is he right, Hope?’ Marnie looked at the woman sitting next to Rolfe. ‘Are you a coward under the skin? Like your dad?’

  Hope scratched at her elbows. The gesture lifted her sleeves, showcasing the bandaging on her arms. ‘Show him your tattoo.’ Marnie smiled across the metal table at her. ‘The one that matches your dad’s. He’s talking about skin. Show him what you did to your skin. We already know what you did to Leo’s.’

  ‘My client has suffered enough as a result of your prejudice against her, Detective Inspector. If it wasn’t for your incompetence, she’d be in a hospital bed right now, where she belongs.’

  ‘She was in a hospital bed. She left it as soon as she realised there was a chance her husband might tell the truth about what she’d been doing to him.’

  ‘What she’d been doing to him,’ Rolfe repeated. ‘You’ve seen the medical evidence of my client’s injuries at the hands of her husband. Are you really expecting the CPS, or anyone, to close their eyes to that?’

  ‘Your client picked up strangers in bars, with the express purpose of being beaten by them. Did she tell you that? I’m sure we can find one or two of those men. In fact, we already have. It’s going to be hard to pretend she was a victim when it’s proved she sought out sadomasochistic sex.’

  ‘As I said, your prejudice against her.’

  ‘Detective Inspector,’ Welland said, ‘can we move this along? Only I’m getting a distinct pain in my arse sitting on this metal chair.’

  Marnie reached for the box file and drew it towards her. ‘You said you weren’t in touch with your dad after October, because Leo didn’t like it. You could’ve called him, though, couldn’t you? When Leo was out at work.’

  Hope held her ponytail in both hands, stretching the skin taut at her forehead. ‘He . . . checked the phone records. To see who I’d called.’

  ‘You didn’t think of getting a mobile phone? Hiding it from Leo? Lots of abused women do that, as a precaution.’

  That landed. A fugitive spark, cold, in those blue eyes.

  Hope didn’t look at the box file, but she was afraid of what was inside it. ‘I didn’t have any money of my own. He didn’t let me have any.’

  ‘You could have saved money, from the shopping. Couldn’t you?’

  ‘He checks everything. The house is like – it’s like a list he can tick things off against. He needs to see where I’ve made mistakes so he can punish me for them.’

  ‘Oh, we saw the house. Nice. Leo had his own room, right under the stairs.’

  ‘That . . . that was mine. He put me in there.’ Hope cast about the room, avoiding Welland’s sceptical gaze. ‘I tried to keep quiet. I did. But it was so hard. I couldn’t breathe in there, couldn’t get out . . .’

  ‘Funny that he’s the one with the split nails and you had a perfect manicure. Until you realised it was giving you away.’ Marnie rested her hand on the file, letting Hope look a moment longer, trying to guess what was coming out of the box. ‘So you never had a mobile phone?’

  ‘Not . . . not one of my own.’ She was hedging her bets.

  ‘But you know how to use one. You sent texts from Noah’s phone. To the police and to Daniel Noys.’

  ‘That wasn’t me – it was her. Simone.’

  ‘Really? They read like warnings. Why would Simone warn us about Nasiche Auma? She is Nasiche Auma.’

  ‘I don’t know why. She’s insane. It’s not her fault. What happened to her was horrible. I understand.’ She appealed to Rolfe, using the fierce tone Marnie had admired, back at the refuge. ‘It’s not her fault.’

  ‘You’re all heart,’ Marnie said. ‘Just to be clear: you do not own a mobile phone.’

  ‘I told you – not of my own. He won’t let me . . .’

  Marnie lifted the evidence bag and put it on the table. The phone’s rhinestone casing winked under the lights. ‘Let’s try that again, shall we?’

  Hope snapped her eyes away. ‘That’s not my phone.’

  Rolfe didn’t like the look of the evidence bag. Any second now he was going to warn his client to stop talking, shut up.

  ‘It’s your phone. It has your fingerprints on it. And only yours.’ Marnie took a sheet of paper from the box. ‘This is the call log from this phone. You called Leo, at home. Who else would do that?’ She took a second sheet from the box. ‘This is the call log from your house. It confirms the call from this mobile phone.’

  A third log joined the other two. ‘And you called Ayana Mirza’s house. The morning you tried to murder your husband. Because you saw straight away that she was a threat to you. The only one of those women who didn’t buy your act wholesale. Because Ayana knows that women are as capable of violence as men.’

  ‘No.’ Hope shook her head savagely. ‘No.’

  Marnie arranged the damning evidence, for Rolfe’s benefit. The phone and the logs. No margin for error. ‘Can you see what it is yet?’ she asked.

  A smile mugged the bottom half of Welland’s face. ‘Can you see what it is yet? That’s very good. Right, Rolfe?’

  ‘That isn’t my phone.’ Hope turned to her lawyer, using the doll eyes to full effect. ‘It’s a trick. I told you, she hates me.’ She shot Marnie a look, full of loathing. ‘Right from the start she’s treated me as a suspect. She’s crazy. I don’t know what her problem is. Why did she visit my dad, unless she was stirring up trouble? There was nothing for her there – nothing for anyone. I should know. I grew up with him.’ She shuddered.

  ‘You’re accusing my client of owning a mobile phone?’ Rolfe took out a sleek BlackBerry, laying it on the table. ‘You’d better arrest me, in that case.’

  ‘Put it away,’ Welland said wearily, as if Rolfe had exposed himself.

  ‘Ayana Mirza,’ Marnie said, ‘is a young woman blinded by her brothers. They poured bleach into her eyes. She was living in the refuge in genuine fear for her life. Not putting on a show. Not manipulating traumatised women. In fear. Of being found by her family and taken home to be tortured again, or killed.’ She put a hand on the evidence bag. ‘Your client told Ayana’s family where to find her. As a result, her family abducted Ayana from Finchley. She’s missing. Probably tortured. Very possibly dead.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Hope whispered. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘You asked why we were there that morning. The morning you tried to kill Leo. I told you we were there to see Ayana. If you hadn’t hated her before, you must’ve hated her then. She ruined your plan, but you know what I think? I think she’d have saved Leo’s life even without our help. She’s tough and she’s smart and she’s got a heart. Compassion and strength. She’s the real survivor. Not you. Ayana.’

  Hope shivered, looking away.

  ‘Your mother went into a women’s refuge in the year before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was a place of safety, the first place like that she’d known. She made friends there, people who understood what she’d been through and who supported one another. The first real friends she’d ever known.’

  Hope was weeping. She hunched away from Rolfe, away from them all.

  ‘Do you think she’d have been proud of you? Of what you did to those women in Finchley? To Ayana Mirza? Or is it enough that your dad’s proud?’

  Hope’s face was wiped blank by tears. Marnie wanted to believe the tears were real. She really did. Everyone, even Hope Proctor, deserved the chance of remorse. Nothing else – justice, prison, rehabilitation – made a blind bit of difference without it.

  ‘You can’t do anything for Ayana,’ she told Hope, ‘but you can help Simone. By telling the truth about what happened. She believed in you. She was ready to fight for you.’

  ‘Detective Inspector . . .’ Rolfe was composing an objection.

  Marnie ignored him, holding Hope to her stare. ‘We have Lowell Paton. He’s going to jail for a long time. I think you’ll agree that’s a good thing. With Simone’s evidence, he could get what he deserves. A life sentence. You could do that. Help Simone to put
him away, get her life back. That’s the power you have over her. I wish I had that kind of power.’

  She watched for a change in Hope’s face, wondering if she was wasting her time.

  It was possible she’d just given this woman another kind of alibi, a different disguise to wear, but without the hope that people could change, where was she?

  Where was anyone?

  Welland was waiting for Marnie in the corridor, after Hope had been taken back to the cells. ‘Bit of a long shot at the end,’ he said. ‘Asking her to help Simone Bissell.’

  ‘I wanted to see if she was capable of real remorse.’

  ‘That’s Rolfe’s job. We’re building a case against her. Let him concentrate on her defence.’

  Marnie nodded, feeling tired enough to weep.

  ‘You think her husband’s going to make a convincing witness?’ Welland asked.

  ‘Perhaps, with the right support.’ She knotted her hair away from her face. ‘And there’s Henry Stuke. I’m going to see if I can’t persuade him to make a statement about whatever it was the two of them did after he picked her up in that nightclub.’

  ‘A man’s man,’ Welland grumbled. ‘Isn’t that how Noah described him? In which case, good luck. I imagine blood from a brick would be easier.’

  ‘We need his evidence. Without it . . . I just don’t see us getting a conviction. I’ve spent a lot of time with Hope, but I couldn’t swear to what’s going on inside her head. All I know is that she’s dangerous. She can’t be out on the streets. Stuke knows that. If we’re right about what she did to him . . . he’s a key witness.’

  ‘All right. But take Ron Carling, since he failed to put two and two together first time around.’

  Marnie shook her head. ‘I don’t want to spook Stuke. More chance of him talking to me if I’m on my own.’

  38

  In West Brompton, the street lights were coming on, putting fist-sized shadows in the stucco facade of Henry Stuke’s house.

  Marnie knocked on the door and stood back to wait, nursing a sweet spot in her neck where Ed had kissed her. He’d kissed her in a dozen places and more. It wasn’t pain any longer, straying around her body. This was a new kind of ache. She shut her eyes and smiled, just for a second, looking up quickly when she heard the door.

  ‘Henry Stuke?’ She opened the ID in her hand. ‘I’m DI Rome, just following up on DS Carling and DS Jake’s visit, if that’s okay.’

  Henry Stuke was as broad in the shoulder as Leo Proctor, but with the crabbed stance of a tall man trying to fit under a low doorway; if he straightened up, he’d be imposing. Sallow olive skin, pale hazel eyes and a crook in his nose that Marnie bet plenty of women found attractive.

  He glanced over his shoulder, back into the house. ‘I’ve put the babies to bed . . . It’s not the best time.’ Deep voice to match his chest. Put him in chinos and a blue shirt, dancing alone in a nightclub, and she could see why Hope had singled him out: alpha male with a whiff of domesticity, or was it a whiff of disappointment? Either way, Hope would’ve known how to work the angle.

  ‘That’s okay.’ Marnie smiled in response to Stuke’s objection. ‘I can talk quietly.’

  He stepped back, holding the door wide, shutting it when she was inside the house. She could smell the kids, an exhausted post-play smell of heated plastic and skin.

  The house was just the way Noah had described it: a shambolic shrine to the twins sleeping overhead. Toys had spilled into the narrow hall, fighting for space with shoes, anoraks and a folded pushchair that hadn’t folded properly.

  Stuke looked at the mess, defeated. ‘Why don’t we go to the kitchen? I could put the kettle on.’

  ‘That sounds good, thanks.’

  The kitchen was marginally better than the hall, smelling of stewed fruit and scalded milk, and the perfumed bin liners used to disguise the smell of soiled nappies.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ Stuke asked.

  ‘Whichever you’re having. Thanks. Can I help?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’ Stuke filled the kettle and clicked it on, taking a pair of mugs from the draining rack and setting them on the counter, shoving aside a baby monitor, bottle steriliser. He did everything with his right hand, keeping his left hidden in his pocket.

  The back of his neck was stiff and hostile; he resented her suggestion that he needed help. She was going to have to tread carefully if she wanted his evidence against Hope. He wouldn’t give up anything that might compromise his masculinity. Hope had done a thorough job of emasculating him. Was his hand the only thing she’d damaged?

  Marnie listened for the sound of the twins upstairs. The house was strangely quiet, as if the walls and ceiling tiles were soundproofed. A sticky brown film coated the tiles above the cooker. ‘DS Jake said you’re an uncle now, as well as a dad.’

  Stuke kept his back to her, busy with the mugs. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Is your wife still at her sister’s?’

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No thanks. Mr Stuke . . .’

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Henry. I wanted to talk with you about Hope Proctor.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hope Proctor. She was living in a women’s refuge, in Finchley.’

  Stuke didn’t turn to face her. He set his right hand on the counter, squaring his shoulders. The kettle spat, heating up. ‘Never heard of her, sorry.’ A warning in his voice: back off.

  ‘It’s possible you know her by another name, or that she didn’t use a name when you met her, but she’s Hope Proctor. She’s in police custody.’

  ‘I haven’t met her.’ If he got any more rigid, he’d snap. ‘What’d she do, anyway?’

  ‘She stabbed her husband.’

  Stuke reached for the fridge. ‘Glad I never met her, in that case.’ He opened the door, removing a carton of milk, swinging the door shut again. The draught dislodged a shopping list from the counter. The list floated slowly sideways to the floor.

  Marnie crouched to retrieve it, reading: wipes, juice, no-tears shampoo . . .

  Blue biro on lined paper. The ink had clotted in places, thinned in others. Stuke had gone back over some of the words, when his pen had failed. She straightened, holding the list in her hand. Her body rang steadily from head to foot with alarm.

  Wipes, juice, no-tears shampoo . . .

  It was the same handwriting as the threatening note from Hope’s handbag. Stuke had disguised it, for that note, but it was the same. No one had written a threatening letter to Simone Bissell. The note was intended for Hope Proctor, and it had been written by Henry Stuke.

  You fucking evil bitch your dead. You think your safe. Think again cunt.

  ‘Put that on the table, would you?’ Stuke didn’t turn; eyes in the back of his head.

  He knew Marnie had the shopping list. In all likelihood he could hear her heart bumping in her chest. He wasn’t just Hope’s victim. He was the man who’d threatened to pay her back.

  The kettle boiled.

  It kept boiling when Stuke picked it up, pouring angry water into the two mugs.

  Marnie glanced about the kitchen for a defensive weapon, anything.

  Everything sharp and heavy . . . Stuke had put it all out of reach of the babies. They were crawling now, Stuke had told Ron Carling. Everything was out of reach, on a high shelf.

  Stuke set the kettle back on its base. He took his left hand from his pocket and stretched it to the shelf where the tea bags sat, next to a butcher’s block of knives.

  Cold seized at Marnie’s stomach. ‘Mr Stuke,’ she said. ‘Henry.’

  He was letting her see his hand. His claw. He wouldn’t do that unless he knew that she knew. ‘You were there,’ he said blandly, ‘at the refuge, in the Mondeo.’ His hand grappled for the box of tea bags, brought it down to the counter.

  Marnie said, ‘Yes. Yes, I was there.’

  He turned finally, and faced her. Straightened to his full height.

  She tried to smile. It wasn’t easy. The light pulled
huge shadows from his head, throwing them down at his face in bruises. He made the fridge look small, even though it wasn’t. A big man, whose eyes she couldn’t see.

  ‘Where’s Freya?’ she asked. ‘Where’s your wife?’

  ‘Upstairs.’ Stuke dropped a tea bag into each mug, poking it into the hot water with his damaged thumb. Hope had done that, with a kettlebell: smashed Stuke’s hand. Turned it into a twisted claw, a thing he could put in hot water without flinching. Stuke was a man’s man, a bloke, but Hope had laid him low, disfigured him. He wanted payback.

  ‘With the twins?’ Marnie said. ‘Freya’s with the twins?’

  ‘No.’ Stuke stirred a spoon in the mugs, one after the other, watching her. ‘Not with the twins.’

  The back of Marnie’s throat was burning, and the backs of her eyes. She waited for Stuke to say what he’d done to his wife and babies.

  ‘She hasn’t been out of bed in three days.’ Stuke shook the spoon and put it aside. He rubbed at his mouth with his hand. ‘She’s on pills. They gave her pills.’

  ‘She’s . . . sleeping?’

  He jerked his head in a nod.

  ‘The twins . . . are sleeping?’ Another nod. ‘You’re on your own. Looking after the three of them.’ Please God, let it be true.

  Stuke tossed the spoon into the sink, the clatter of it like shrapnel. ‘Always,’ he said.

  Always on his own. Always looking after them.

  ‘There isn’t anyone who can help?’

  He held out a mug of tea. His mouth curled at her. ‘I’m coping, aren’t I?’

  ‘Hope—’

  ‘Don’t speak that bitch’s name.’ He put the tea on the table, where Marnie could reach it if she took a step nearer to him, got within range of his fists.

  ‘She’s going to prison. For a long time. Two counts of attempted murder, grievous bodily harm . . .’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Her husband and DS Jake. You met him. He came here.’