Original Skin (32 page)

Suzie smiles. “Thanks.”

Roisin picks Lilah out of her playpen. Pretends to bite her tummy. “Want a hold?”

Suzie shakes her head. “I’ll just stick to performing. I’m clumsy.”

“Aector is, too. Should see him trying to get his change ready to pay the toll at the bridge. He can’t manage five-p pieces. Hands are too big. Gets in a right state.”

The way she says it is not critical. Roisin seems to think her husband’s clumsiness is every bit as laudable as his strength.

“He must make you feel very safe,” Suzie says, and instantly wonders if she has overstepped an invisible boundary.

Roisin looks at her quizzically. Grins. “There’s no world without him.”

They enjoy a moment, two new friends together. As they stand here in front of the mirror, fixing their hair and praising each other, the first fresh handfuls of rain start to beat against the glass. They cross to the window, amazed by the thunderous onslaught.

“It’s gone so dark,” says Suzie, marveling at the sudden gloom beyond the glass. “Could be nighttime.”

“Going to be a good summer,” predicts Roisin. “Crappy spring means warm summer.”

“That true?”

Roisin shrugs. “No. If we say it enough, though, it will be eventually.”

As they talk, there is a screech of tires and a fountain of spray as a car, traveling too fast, is flung around the turn-in to the little close. It is followed by another, uncomfortably close, and both scream to a halt on the curb opposite.

“Aector?”

Both women watch as the doors are flung open. McAvoy clambers from the driving seat of the hatchback in the lead. A middle-aged, busty woman in leather boots and a too-tight V-neck jumper wrenches open the driver’s door of the little two-seater sports car. From this remove, Suzie thinks her bra looks painfully tight.

“His boss,” says Roisin, by way of explanation. “Likes lamb.”

“Yeah?” asks Suzie, confused. “Bunnies, personally.”

The door swings open and McAvoy, red-faced, bursts into the living room, knocking a picture off the wall. Pharaoh is just behind him.

“These two,” says McAvoy, pulling out a mag and throwing it open at a picture of a smiling, fifty-something couple in a posh, expensive-looking house.

Suzie looks to Roisin. Glances at Pharaoh, whose eyes are wide and face unreadable.

“Look,” says McAvoy. “Do you know these two?”

Suzie takes the mag. Looks up into McAvoy’s face and gives a nod.

The big detective spins away from her, hands in his hair. Throws a look at his boss. Goes and stands in front of the window with his hands on the sill, collecting himself. Roisin, wordlessly, slips to his side.

“You’re sure,” asks Pharaoh.

“It was a place over in West Yorkshire,” says Suzie, and when she hears Lilah’s little squeal, drops her voice, as if embarrassed. “Private members’ club.”

“A sex club?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Simon had made friends with somebody online. Said we should try it out.”

“When was this?”

Suzie sucks her lip. “Not even a year, I don’t think. I’d only had the tattoos done a wee while. Simon, too.” She stops, nods excitedly as she remembers. “Yeah, that was his grand unveiling. Couldn’t wait to show them off. The tattooist was really pleased. Said he was going to use them in his adverts. Was going upmarket . . .”

Pharaoh moves them both to the sofa. Sits them down. “Were there many couples there? Would there be more witnesses?”

She frowns. “People don’t like to talk. They give false names. You’re pretty safe there.”

“What happened?” asks McAvoy, crossing from the window. “What did you do?”

Suzie looks at each of their intense faces. “We played. Him with me. Then him with Simon. Then all four of us. He was nice. Simon said he was amazing. She was a bit of a cold fish. Liked my tattoos, though . . .”

“This couple,” says McAvoy, pointing at the page. “You’re sure.”

Suzie’s mouth drops open, horrified she may have misled them. “Not him,” she says hurriedly. “I don’t know him. Just her. She had this mask. She was a big woman. Like a man, with boobs. She was wearing this silly mask when we went in. I think she’d been to posher parties than ours. We were a bit of a comedown, but she liked roughing it. She took the mask off soon after. Was really into it. Into me. There was another guy, too. Just joined in. It’s a bit embarrassing talking about all this . . .”

Pharaoh spins in her seat. Locks eyes with McAvoy. He pulls out his phone and quickly finds his way to the Hull Council website. Finds the right picture. Crouches down and shows it to Suzie.

“Him, yes? He was the other man? Stephen Hepburn.”

She nods. “Yeah. Friendly guy. Funny. Simon liked him. Are they not a couple, then? Who’s the guy with the beard in the mag? That her husband?”

Pharaoh gives a laugh. “That’s Peter Tressider. Chairman of the Police Authority. Future MP.”

Suzie looks at McAvoy, not understanding.

“And he killed Simon?”

McAvoy shakes his head.

“No,” he says, rubbing his head with a large, clumsy hand. “She did.”

THE MASK
sits on the dressing table in the master bedroom, propped against the gilt-edged frame of the expensive oval mirror and surrounded by vintage perfume bottles, which flicker in the soft light of the large church candles that burn behind the four-poster bed.

Paula remembers the mask’s purchase. A little shop filled with grinning faces, laughing gargoyles, down a Venetian side street near the grand hotel where she and her new husband were honeymooning.

“Do you like it?” he’d asked, already reaching for his wallet.

She didn’t need to answer. She was mesmerized. Lost in the sightless eyes of the gold-and-crimson face she yearned to pull over her own.

A
bauta
mask, the seller had said. Worn in the eighteenth century by men and women keen to disguise their identities at the gaming tables.

She reaches for it now. Strokes the glossy paint. Touches its nose and its detailed jaw with the back of her knuckles.

Paula has never felt more alive than when looking out through its eyes.

This is the face she wears when she lets herself play. At parties. In hotel rooms. Letting herself be free.

It was only naughtiness at first. Just a chance to feel sexy with a man or two. It became an addiction. And then more than that.

She stares at the mask again.

The colors are entrancing. Traditionally, it should be painted in plain black or white, but the harlequin pattern of luxurious red and gold catches the light better. It is an exquisite work, a gorgeous example of its type. Tied with ribbon at the back, it covers the whole face, but the square jawline points upward, allowing the wearer to eat and drink without its removal.

From behind this magnificent veil, Paula has experienced pleasure and pain in equal and exquisite measure. She has tongued and tasted, felt and fucked. She has given in to every instinct and desire. And she has never had to look at her face in the mirror.

Of course, her identity had not mattered at the start. She had been a successful man’s wife, but the risk of having sex with strangers was no greater for her than for anybody else.

Then his political career took off.

She began having her photo taken. She began to become recognizable.

And they started to talk about Peter becoming an MP.

She had trusted to good fortune at first. Told herself that anybody who recognized her from her tawdry couplings would have a vested interest in keeping it to themselves. But she could not stop herself from remembering. Could not help but think back to all the nights when she had risked everything in the pursuit of faceless sex.

Alone among the many indiscretions troubling her was the night they slummed it. When she and Hepburn found a couple of playmates online and decided to take a risk.

During their Internet chats, the couple mentioned the private members’ place in Huddersfield. Told her and Hepburn all about the love swing. The chains. It had sounded deliciously seedy. Wonderfully down-market. Instantly arousing in its griminess.

They decided to take the risk. Convinced themselves eighty miles was far enough from home.

They had let their fantasies take shape and worked themselves up. Given false names and paid their membership. Had a drink with the foulmouthed old bastard who ran the place and then headed upstairs to one of the private rooms.

Paula had worn the mask. Been waiting in a private room, spread-eagle on the bed, when Simon and Suzie walked in.

Suzie had laughed. Taken a look at the tall, broad-shouldered, middle-aged woman on the bed in her hook-nosed Venetian mask, and giggled.

So Paula had taken it off. She wanted the girl as soon as she saw her. Wanted to touch her warm, young skin. Wanted to trace her tongue against the blossoms on her back. She hadn’t wanted the evening to dissolve into silliness. She’d taken off the mask and pulled Suzie between her thighs. And the party had begun.

After a time, when her need for pleasure had outweighed all else, she had instructed Hepburn to open the door. To let in the first man he saw. She opened her legs, and allowed herself to be entered by a stranger. His name was Connor Brannick, and the few seconds he spent inside her would eventually cost him his life.

Here, now, Paula drops her head to her hands. She can hear her husband mowing the lawn in the back garden. Wishes she were out there, too. Perhaps sitting on a blanket. Drinking wine. She can’t go out there now. Can’t even look at the fish pond.

She knows that this cannot go on. That soon her husband will find the time to investigate properly the continued death of his expensive carp. Will drain the pond. Will find Connor’s body, stones wedged into his motorbike leathers, decomposing on the plastic bottom of the deep pool . . .

Her husband does not know she has killed. But he knows something has changed. Knows that she is lying. Has asked, more than he should have done, when the motorcycle in his garage will be going back to the “friend” for whom she claims to be looking after it.

She knows, too, that the big Scottish sergeant is getting closer. That Hepburn’s phone call to his superiors has done nothing but convince him there is something to investigate.

Knows that, far more than her husband, it is her lover, Stephen Hepburn, who is closest to making the accusation. To asking her whether she has killed two people, and is trying, so damn hard, to do it again.

She holds the mask to her face. Stares out through its eyes. Smells the stale sweat and shivers as she remembers the moment she first closed it over her countenance.

Her phone bleeps.

Behind the mask, she gives the faintest of smiles.

•   •   •

THEY DIDN’T THINK
she was going to reply at first. Sat for hours watching Suzie’s phone and waiting for a message back. It came around six p.m., as Pharaoh and McAvoy were sitting at the laptop in his kitchen, eating ham-and-mustard sandwiches and filling in the gaps in their murderer’s life.

Paula Tressider was born in 1959. Nice middle-class Manchester family. Two sisters. Arty mum and businessman dad. Started university and met the man who would be her first husband. Played at being a political activist but seems to have been more about the outfits than the cause. Married the history student at twenty-two and divorced him a year later. Took a job in a boutique in Leeds. Became the manager. Met Peter Tressider. Married in 1989. Became the good wife. Started appearing on the boards of his various businesses. Turning up on his arm at political functions. Moved to East Yorkshire and opened two fashion houses. Gave talks to the Women’s Institute about the importance of a stable family unit. Started wearing twinsets and pearls. Joined the board of governors at a local school. Joined the Conservative Party. Became a pillar of the community and the cardboard cutout of a politician’s wife.

“She must have been terrified,” says McAvoy, softly.

“Don’t start that,” says Pharaoh between mouthfuls. “You go soft on me, I’ll kick your teeth in.”

“Sorry, guv. Just, I thought we were after somebody who was doing this for kicks. She just wanted her secrets to stay hidden.”

Pharaoh shrugs. “She got her kicks a different way. Killed to cover it up.”

“You think he knows?”

“Her husband? No. If he does, he turned a blind eye.”

McAvoy looks again at the website. Paula Tressider, pictured in hundreds of pounds’ worth of designer gear, wearing a forced smile for the camera, shaking hands with the prime minister at a Conservative fund-raiser a year before.

“When she saw their tattoos in the magazine . . .”

“Yeah.”

The phone buzzes. They each take a breath, before McAvoy reads the text aloud.

“‘Think it’s time we finished our game. You’re on.’
”

His smile contains no mirth. Just a relief that his own message, carefully constructed with Suzie’s help, has been received and accepted.

Roisin gives Suzie a cuddle as they head out of the door. She does not know what is happening, but her new friend seems trembly and scared.

“He’ll take care of you,” she says, gesturing at her husband.

“I know.”

McAvoy bends down and gives Lilah a tickle. Bumps fists with Fin, who is sitting in front of the TV, eating pasta and pesto with sliced-up hot dogs.

“They called,” whispers Roisin in his ear as he stands.

He turns to her. Looks quizzical.

“Noye,” she says. “The new campsite. Anlaby. He wants you there.”

McAvoy’s face contorts. He wonders if any more burdens will be laid upon his broad shoulders tonight.

“I’m a policeman.”

She makes sure he is looking straight at her as she replies, “You’re a man.”

He does not speak again. Just quietly closes the door as he leaves. Does not turn up his collar or lower his head as he walks through the pounding rain. Opens the car door and climbs inside. Starts the engine and finds something soothing on a classical station.

Watches the lights come on.

Checks his radio and gives a nod.

Suzie leads the way, her tiny Fiat at the head of this three-car convoy. She squints through the rain and the gathering gloom, wincing at the distorted headlights of the cars in front and behind, aware that the only reason she is not shaking her legs is because she does not want to stall the car.

On the passenger seat, the phone Pharaoh gave her bleeps. She reads the message. It has been forwarded from her own phone.

Need to Taste Your Skin. Don’t be Late.

She closes her eyes for as long as she dares while driving. Instinctively looks across to the passenger seat. Wonders if she can really feel Simon’s presence or just wants to.

The journey takes more than an hour in the slow-moving traffic. Twice she fears she has lost McAvoy and Pharaoh, but whenever she prepares to park up and wait for them, her phone flashes to tell her they can see her. That she is not alone.

It is easier when she hits the motorway. She sticks at a steady seventy in the inside lane. Tries to find comfort in the sound of the wet tires on the road. Concentrates on her breathing. Half wishes she had let Roisin petition her husband into being allowed to come, too.

She has been to this hotel before. It sits off the motorway, three miles from Goole. She sat in the car park for two hours while Simon entertained a man he’d met on the website. She had done some drawing and eaten a McChicken sandwich. Simon had enjoyed his afternoon. Said the man was grateful and kind.

Suzie parks. She wants to look at the other cars in the dark, wet car park. Wants to see if her murderer is already there. Does not let herself. Climbs out of the vehicle and, straight-backed, face upturned, walks through the puddles and into the hotel.

“Can I help you?”

The man at reception is younger than she is. He looks bored, and his shirt is too big for his skinny frame.

“I have a room booked.”

She gives her name. Tries to keep calm as he fiddles with the machine and then finally hands her a key. He looks her over, as if appraising livestock. Even has the temerity to nod.

“Second floor,” he says.

She takes the stairs. Cannot bear the thought that the lift may be mirrored. Does not want to see herself.

Balling her fists, clenching her jaw, she finds the room. Slides the pass card into the lock and pushes open the door. Switches on the light and looks round the dark, characterless room, her heart thudding painfully against her broken ribs.

Another message on her phone, this time from McAvoy.

Be strong. I’m here.

She undresses. Peels off her borrowed shirt and leggings. Tries to rub the creases out of her imperfect skin. Takes the length of cord from her handbag and wedges the door open with a flip-flop.

Slowly, as if every moment pains her, and each breath is a countdown, she moves to the bed. Lies facedown and naked. Feels the cool blankets against her warm skin. Grips the phone tight. Texts her killer.

I’m ready.

Time slows. Suzie does not know how long she has been here. Her mind drifts. She could not say with any certainty that she has not fallen asleep in the time she has been lying here, in this beige room, with its white sheets and thin mattress.

Just knows that this was how Simon died. And that by lying here, like this, she is helping to catch a killer.

There is no prelude to the attack. She hears nothing. No creak of floorboard or clever threat.

One moment she is lying facedown on the hotel bed. The next there is a pressure upon her back, and the cord she has draped so invitingly across her buttocks is tight around her neck.

She gasps. Fights. Thrashes like an animal. But the weight upon her shoulders is too great. The hands too rough. It is the same weight that pinned her to the grass two nights ago and was the last thing her friend felt as he died. It hurts.

Her mouth opens. The tendons in her neck feel, for a moment, to be snapping like a fistful of twigs.

And then it is gone. She is facedown on the bed. Her face is on the pillow. The tears upon her cheeks are soaking into the mattress. Warm, tender hands are upon her.

She turns. Manages to wriggle onto her back. Whips her head this way and that. Looks at the devastation of the room. The smashed TV. The spilled kettle and cups. The door that hangs from only one hinge.