Beneath the Skin (19 page)

Mouse let the mobile slide from her ear. ‘He was alone?'

‘No, he had a man with him. The one I see you with, Alys.' There was disapproval in her eyes, and a challenge too, as if she were exacting her own little revenge on Alys. ‘You remember? He had on a cap, a young man's cap, a red one.'

‘A baseball cap?' asked Walt.

‘The man you said was family? I say to him, I say . . .'

‘Where did they go?' said Mouse.

‘William, he say, we go to the museum, and I say to him, it don't open until ten, you going to have a long wait.'

‘That's where he used to take me,' Alys hissed. ‘To the museum.'

Caller, are you still there? Caller?

Mouse flipped the phone back to her face. ‘Yes, please tell your guys to meet us at the museum. The National Museum in Chambers Street.'

‘They take a cab,' Mrs Petrauska went on. ‘I had doubts but the man – he is
family
, is he not, Alys?'

Alys was shaking. ‘Yes. Yes, he is. The worst kind.'

47

The taxi ride across the city seemed to take for ever, the streets clogged with people on their way into work. There'd been an awkward moment when they realised none of them had any cash. Walt was down to his last eight pence, Alys never carried a handbag, and Mouse had come away with just her phone. The driver took pity on them. Walt had spun him the story but, in the end, one look at Mouse's face had been enough to convince him. He waived the fare.

On the museum steps, Walt said, ‘One of us should stay here for the cops.'

Mouse and Alys ignored him, already pressing through the glass doors. He hesitated, then, figuring it wouldn't be that hard for the cops to find them, followed them into the building. The brasserie, to his right, was fairly busy, but the entrance was quiet: just a few knots of visitors poring over maps in the low-level lighting. Mothers with buggies, a handful of pensioners in full hiking gear, students.

He spotted Alys and Mouse heading up the stairs to the main floor, and hurried after them. They were holding hands, grimly focused, oblivious to the artefacts hanging on the walls. Emerging at the top, into searing daylight, they moved into the grand gallery, with its three floors and that great arch of sky.

Mouse was breathless. Her voice was shaky and the cathedral-like acoustics made it too loud, too shrill. ‘Where would he take him? Where did he take you?'

She jiggled Alys's hand, as if that would somehow release the appropriate memory.

Alys just shrugged. ‘I remember the animals, the taxidermy. He used to bring me to see the animals.'

‘So where are the stuffed things then?' Walt said, coming to a stop next to them on the slick marble floor. ‘Let's start there.' He spun around, scanning the galleries, before asking directions from a woman with a walkie-talkie.

‘Taxidermy?' She pointed to the end of the gallery. ‘Right through there. It covers three floors.'

Three floors of the undead.

‘Great, thanks.' He led the way, striding past a statue of some deity he didn't recognise. Behind him, Mouse was starting to panic. She should have stayed at home. What if they'd gone back there?

An enormous deer skeleton was on sentry duty at the entrance to the valley of death, its expression suitably sphinx-like. Walt paused in the shadow of its antlers and glanced back. ‘We're here now. Come on.' He reached for Mouse's hand. Alys followed, as if sleepwalking.

His heart dropped through his chest. The gallery was Alys's basement on a mammoth scale. In the minimal lighting, creatures appeared to loom out of the darkness; he was afraid to look up. A small child scampered past, footsteps unnaturally loud on the wooden floor. Beside him, Mouse flinched.

A dinosaur!
The child was in heaven. Walt looked up, past the bare bones of the Tyrannosaurus rex and through the mezzanine floors, where all manner of creatures hung, suspended in space for all eternity.

Giant screens, eerily green, projected images of the outside, of sea and sky and bright natural things; around them, schools of stuffed sharks and fish and porpoises were trapped for ever in mid-swim. He could see a hippo, legs akimbo; another deer with tossed-back horns. A giraffe extended its tongue to taste the toes of the visitors on the second floor. More kids, excited, noisy and smelling of popcorn, elbowed their way past, and the jolt broke something in him. All the horror he'd been trying to tamp down flooded his system. Sweat pooled around his neck, his back, and nausea rose like the tide. He gripped the nearest display case and closed his eyes. Tried not to see the things he wished he could un-see.

Mouse's mobile rang. It's the police, she said. Her voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance. He was trapped under water, floundering in one of those display cabinets. He sucked in a breath, pressed his brow against the cool glass. Air seeped from his nose to mist the pane. His lids flickered open, and through the condensation he could see a crow pulling a reluctant worm from a block of wood. It fixed him with a knowing, beady eye.

Two police officers detained Mouse with endless questions.
What was he wearing? Age? Height? It's okay, we already have someone at your house
. Eventually he could stand it no longer; he had to get out of this place. He made some kind of gesture –
I'm away to look
– but Mouse was concentrating, trying to remember the tiniest of details – her boy was wearing Batman socks and trainers with blue laces – and the weight of it was crushing her. He didn't want to leave her; it was a kind of cowardice, wasn't it? Deserting his post. Letting the fear win. He told himself he would find William. He would be the one to bring him back. He had some notion of racing round the endless floors – Jesus, he would scale the railings if he had to – and tackling that pervert to the ground. As he set off, he realised that Alys had vanished. He'd been too wrapped up in his own stuff to notice, but Alys was gone.

He was glad to return to the light airiness of the main gallery. It was like sinking into clouds, full of humanity and life. He took the stairs that led up to the next level, skirting the upper entrance to the taxidermy bit – he never wanted to go in there again. Pausing beside an innocuous cabinet of fish fossils, he pressed against the banister and eyeballed the other floors, methodically checking for clues. Looking down, he found himself above the huge deer skeleton with its branching antlers. Glancing up, he scanned every floor. According to Mouse, William would be wearing a blue hoodie. He trained his eyes to look for blue. What he saw, on the opposite side of the mezzanine, was Alys.

The lower sections of the white balustrade were covered in what looked like chicken wire. Alys was crouched down, her grip so tight the metal seemed about to bite through her skin, right to the bone. Walt wanted to loosen her fingers, pull her away, but he was afraid to touch her. Her gaze was fixed on nothing that he could see.

‘There's a roof garden. Did you know that? He used to take me up to the roof,' she said. ‘I was older then, maybe thirteen, fourteen. I wanted to see the animals, but he used to take me up to the roof.'

The back of Walt's neck went icy. ‘Let's try there.' When she didn't move he reached for her hands. ‘Come on, Alys.' Her hands were those of a statue, fingers frozen into claws around the wire mesh.

‘You can look over and see the whole city,' she whispered. ‘The Scott Monument, Greyfriars Kirkyard. There's a map to tell you what all the buildings are, and all the stone sculptures. You can look right down through them and see all the layers of the past.'

Rage was beginning to boil in the pit of his belly, the same rage that had been festering since he'd spotted that bastard's coat hanging in the bathroom, like it had every right to be there. ‘Alys, how do you get to the roof?' He tugged at her fingers. ‘We need to find him. To stop him.'

She released her grip and stood, turning to pierce him with a stare. ‘He said he'd throw me off the roof if I didn't do what he wanted.'

48

Alys couldn't remember how to get to the roof. There was a lift somewhere, she said, and it was on level seven. They tried the glass elevator, which was right beside them, but that only went to level five, a fact they only found out as they glided smoothly upwards.

‘Shit!' Walt slapped the toughened glass with the palm of his hand. ‘We're wasting time. And what are the cops doing? I haven't seen a single cop.' He thought of Mouse, alone and scared. ‘I should've stayed with Mouse.'

He slumped against the glass. The ground floor of the main gallery majestically sailed into view. He could see the god statue and a wooden canoe and . . . a man towing a small boy by the hand. A small boy in a blue hoodie.

‘There they are! Ground floor!' He began jabbing at the elevator buttons. ‘We'll get out here and run down the stairs!' The lift stopped, doors inching open painfully slowly. Walt grabbed Alys's arm. ‘Did you see them? Did you?'

‘Yes. He was taking him to the other part, to the dark bit.' She was trembling.

Christ
. He scraped back his hair. ‘Is that where the roof garden is? In the dark bit?'

She nodded. Her lips were bloodless. ‘I can't go there again.'

‘I know.' They were passing a leather couch. He made her sit. ‘You don't need to. I'll go. Will you be okay?'

She nodded.

He was running through a tunnel. Faces peered at him from the walls. Dolly the Sheep. There were workmen, scaffolding. Transformation, the signs promised. He veered left. The temperature dropped and he found himself in corridors of hushed stone. It smelled ancient, like the old buildings in Afghan. There were too many corners, too many twists and turns. He kept close to the wall, avoiding eye contact with civilians. A sign directed him to a stainless-steel elevator.
Level seven. Level seven.
The intel burned in his brain.

The lift took an age to descend. Just as he was about to go hunting for the stairs, the doors swooshed open. It was empty. He stepped in. Inhaled the smell of onions.

Yes.
He had them in his sights now. The elevator inched upwards, stopping at every floor, even though nobody got on board. He wanted to beat great dents in the steel walls. Eventually it jerked to a stop on the top floor.

As the doors opened, the wind took his breath away. It was the sort of gust that brought the mountains down with it, and he didn't need to see the spires and flags and rooftops to know how high up he was.

He proceeded with caution, not knowing what this man would do when confronted. The ones who threaten people – women, little kids – they don't expect a fire fight.

His vision was blocked by various structures, fire escape routes and so on. He could hear voices, a woman exclaiming at the stunning panorama, and sent up a silent prayer that they were not alone.

The rooftop was a large square expanse of decking, bordered by concrete and with a solid barrier at one end. William was standing on a plinth, staring into the sort of huge binoculars you get at the seaside. Coby was standing over him, pointing out the landmarks and trying to flatten down his own wispy hair, which was lifting in the wind. At intervals he wiped his nose on a white handkerchief as big as a tea towel. There were two other people there, a man and a woman, admiring the view. While they were there, the kid was safe. The woman grinned at William as she walked past.

‘Shall we go down now?' she asked her husband.

The guy nodded. ‘It's blowing a gale up here. Let's get a cuppa.'

So that just left the two of them. And Walt. He had to make a choice. Rescue the vulnerable or apprehend the perpetrator. He walked into view. Coby saw him first and automatically backed away from the boy. He held up his hands and smiled.

‘Walt, this is a surprise.'

‘You know who I am?'

‘Alys tells me all the family news.' He smiled, as if he were a jolly old uncle with nothing to hide.

William jumped away from the binoculars. ‘Walt! I didn't know what was happening! He said . . .'

‘I said I'd take you to the museum, son.' The man took a few more steps backward.

Walt advanced.

‘Keep going, you perv. You're nearly at the edge.'

‘Now let's not be hasty!'

‘I'll chuck you over the fucking edge. That's what you threatened Alys with, isn't it?'

Coby flapped the handkerchief, wiped his nose, playing for time. He scratched his scalp. He was bald on top, the remaining hair fluffing out around his ears. ‘Don't take any notice of Alys. Alys is crazy.'

‘Is she?' Walt laughed and took another step closer. ‘And why would that be? Just
maybe
you've had a hand in that.'

‘No! No hands. I never touched her, whatever she says.' The white hankie flapped in the breeze like a flag of surrender.

‘She's downstairs right now, telling the cops all about what you never did.'

Coby's expression changed. It wasn't shock, exactly, but surprise. Surprise that his past had caught up with him. Walt could see him calculating, taking stock, wondering what he could get away with. Then suddenly he broke and ran for the stairs. Walt set off after him, his heart thumping, adrenaline pumping through his veins. A cry from behind pulled him up. He hesitated and Coby disappeared around a corner.

‘Walt?' William was standing all alone, looking lost. ‘I didn't want to go with him. He said we could go for a ride in a taxi. I like taxis.'

Walt looked from William and back to the empty space where Coby had last been. He could still catch him, if he ran; he was faster, stronger.

‘I didn't want to go with him, honest. I'm sorry.'

Sighing, Walt turned and walked towards William, kneeling awkwardly on the decking.

‘What happened? Did he hurt you?'

‘No. He took me to a café and bought me a cake. But it had raisins in it, and I didn't like it. And then we came here.'