Skin (41 page)

‘’S OK.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s OK.’

Pulling on the gloves the CSIs gave him, Caffery followed the officer along the tread plates into the little lighted dining room where a stubby, thick-bodied man dressed in a grey polo neck sat at the polished oak table. He was in profile, his chin resting on his fist, his mouth pursed. In front of him on the table was a brass telescope.

‘Mrs Lindermilk’s son,’ the officer muttered. ‘Steve. I think the reality’s just hitting him now.’

‘You coping there, mate?’ Caffery stood in the doorway. ‘You all right?’

Steve Lindermilk’s face was very red. ‘Not really. I should’ve done something – I never saw it coming.’

‘You’ve been asked if you want to speak to a family liaison officer?’

‘Yeah, I have. Don’t need it.’

‘They’ve been assigned already. You can change your mind.’

‘No, thank you. But could you have someone speak to the neighbours? The ones gawking at us?’

‘Sure.’

Caffery glanced down the hallway at the yellow crime-scene tape slung across the entrance to the living room, then back at Lindermilk. ‘You know why I’m here?’

‘To ask me questions?’

‘And to look at the house. We need to find out if the break-in was connected to her death.’ Caffery’s head and leg were hurting like hell, in spite of the painkillers. ‘Do you understand?’

Lindermilk nodded.

‘Are you OK about that?’

‘I’m OK.’ He got up and followed Caffery along the tread plates. They stopped in the living-room doorway, leant over the tape and peered inside like visitors to a stately home. It looked to Caffery as if Ruth Lindermilk hadn’t been a good housekeeper to start with, but this was something else again: every cupboard, every shelf, had been emptied in a pile on the floor. An angry break-in? With those they usually took time out to shit on the floor. Or on the beds. This one looked more as if they had been searching for something. In the kitchen a window stood open, the locks prised off. It looked professional. A cat jumped on to the window ledge, paused when it saw the visitors and balanced for a moment, all four paws tight together, staring at them.

‘Look at that,’ Lindermilk grunted. ‘My mum encouraged that behaviour. Didn’t have much in the way of boundaries.’

‘When was the last time you were here?’

‘Couple of days ago.’

‘And the place didn’t look like this, I take it, the last time you were here?’

‘No, it bloody well did not,’ Lindermilk said. ‘Those pictures on the wall – the ones of the animals – that’s what was pissing people off round here. I’m surprised they never took those, if it was one of them did this.’

‘We’re looking at every possibility.’

Lindermilk shrugged. ‘Tell you what, when you’re done here can I have them photos? I’m going to burn them all.’

‘Speak to the CSI men. It shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘There’s some stuff on the outside I want to take too. Those things on the roof. I don’t want the neighbours coming through here and making a laughing-stock of us.’

Caffery turned to the staircase. Silver aluminium oxide dust clung to the banisters, crisscrossed with rectangular gaps where the fingerprints had been lifted by tape. ‘You didn’t see anyone hanging around last time? No cars you didn’t recognize?’

‘Never saw a thing.’

‘Would you know if something was missing? Anything of value she kept around? No cash on the premises? Jewellery? Credit cards?’

‘Only the computer. And the TV. And the telescope. She did have a bit of jewellery, though, rings and that.’

‘Where would she put them?’

‘In the safe.’

Caffery raised his eyebrows questioningly at the CSI man standing next to the front door. ‘Safe’s not damaged, sir.’ He lifted a finger and pointed to the next floor. ‘It’s in the bedroom. They’ve given it a whack, but haven’t got into it.’

The three men went upstairs, Caffery pulling himself up on the banister, not putting any weight on the damaged leg. Another CSI guy, in blue forensic overalls, crouched at a chest on the landing, eye level with its handle, brushing it with black powder. As they came past he gave a long sigh.

‘Only getting one set of fingerprints at the moment. And they’re hers. I’m thinking the guy wore gloves.’

Lindermilk took them into a bedroom, a small, low-ceilinged, room with an under-eaves window and exposed beams. There was a bed with a quilted headboard in the corner and above it a wall safe, a small one, just big enough for paperwork and jewellery. It was covered with fingerprint dust. Lindermilk went to the safe. He was about to turn the dial, when Caffery coughed.

‘Just a moment.’ He limped back into the hall and bent to fish a pair of gloves out of the CSI’s kit. He tossed them to Lindermilk, who caught them and pulled them on.

‘Know the combination, then?’

Lindermilk peered at the lock. ‘Used to. Unless she’s changed it.’ He twirled the knob experimentally, muttering the numbers under his breath. The lock clicked, turned, and he opened the door, standing back, hand up to indicate what was inside.

Caffery stepped forward. The safe was full. He could see two plastic envelopes of paperwork with pale blue backing, and a small black enamel box.

‘The jewellery.’ Lindermilk pulled it out. He opened the box and looked inside, poking through the contents with a fingertip.

‘Anything missing?’

‘Don’t think so.’ He held it out to Caffery.

Nothing remarkable was in there: a solitaire diamond on a chain, a pair of cufflinks, a few rings and a diamanté brooch in the shape of an anchor.

Lindermilk put the box down and turned back to the safe. He took out the top envelope, tipped the contents into the palm of his hand and looked through them. ‘Legal stuff. Her will, house deeds, stuff from her solicitors.’

He unpicked the rubber band of the second folder. It contained photographs, all the same size, A4, but from the different print quality and paper they must have been taken over a span of thirty years or more.

‘What’re they?

‘Photographs of animals. God knows why she kept them, the silly cow. She used to like taking photos of dolphins and stuff. I’ll burn these too.’

‘Let me see.’

Lindermilk fanned them. Some were in colour. A few showed a wedding, probably in the late seventies: a couple smiling outside a churchyard, the bride, a fair-skinned blonde in a long blue-and-white flower-sprigged dress and straw hat. Others showed dead animals: badgers splayed across roads, their hindquarters and heads smeared into the road markings, dead rabbits, dead squirrels. A deer with its neck broken so its head was turned back to face its hindquarters. ‘Just about every piece of roadkill in the country.’ Lindermilk sounded weary. ‘She wanted to get up a campaign to have speed controls on the road down there. That’s what had the neighbours so pissed off.’

But Caffery had stopped listening. Out in the garden, where the trees made sharp black cut-outs against the night sky, something had moved. He went to the window and peered out, careful not to touch the glass even when his breath steamed it. He’d caught the movement out of just the corner of his eye. It hadn’t been the reflection of one of them in the room but something else. Something was in the garden.

He stood for a moment, thinking how dark it was out there, thinking of the miles and miles of countryside that anything could crawl through, thinking of the road that led down to the clinic, of the place he and the Walking Man had sat, watching shapes move in the trees. He thought of that tinny little scooter phut-phutting on the country lane. And then he thought of what he, Caffery, might look like from outside, standing at the window, his serious face lit from the back and the side.

‘Sir,’ Lindermilk said, ‘can I ask you a question?’

He turned, distracted. ‘What?’

Lindermilk was holding out the photos. ‘I’ll take these too, then? Along with the ones on the walls downstairs?’

Caffery’s eyes went back to the window. What had been out there? It hadn’t been much more than a smear of light, but somehow he’d had the impression of eyes.

‘Sir?’

‘Yeah.’ He didn’t glance back. ‘Whatever.’

He came away from the window and limped for the door, holding a hand out to the district officer. ‘Thanks for your help, mate. I’m done now. Get the CSI guys to bag everything up, and when they’re finished, close up, will you?’

His leg hurt more than he liked but he went fast down the stairs, out of a side door into the night, which was cool and muffled, a scent of something like lemon in the air. The back of the house was silent and dark. The lawn was terraced for about a hundred yards: he could see bird-feeders standing skeletal and ghostly in the gloom. Beyond that the road and the hills and the rapeseed field he’d driven past the other night when he’d been looking for the Walking Man.

He stopped at the trees and spoke in a low, clear voice. ‘Are you there? Is that you?’

He could hear his heart thudding. Nothing else.

‘If you’re there, you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to say anything. I won’t give you away.’

He held his breath and listened, but all that came back was a cold, soundless breeze. In his mouth he tasted metal. He thought of the way the breeze had come across the fields, thought of the scents and sounds it must carry. He glanced at the house, at the windows. No one was listening. No CSI guys having a fag on the country lane. He took a few steps into the trees and crouched, his leg sending blue pulses of pain. He put his fingertips on the cold ground and held himself there, staring into the trees.

‘I know what you’ve done.’ He hesitated, not sure how to continue. This was nuts, talking to trees and thin air. ‘You’ve got away with it. But listen.’ His voice got softer. ‘I can’t help you any more. From here you’re on your own. That’s just the way it is.’

He stopped and waited for something to come back. Long minutes passed until his leg ached so much he had to straighten. He put his hands into his pockets and listened again. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting: a movement or a breath. A rustle of leaves or cool clear words, spoken in the darkness.

Nothing came. Nothing. Just the sound of the blood pounding in his head.

68

I’m not going to say anything. I won’t give you away . . .

Half frozen in the trees, crouched behind the cylinder of the thermal lance she’d dragged up from the car, Flea stared at Caffery in disbelief.

You’ve got away with it. But I can’t help you any more.

She didn’t move. Just squatted there with her mouth half open, his words freezing her to the spot. What the hell was he talking about? What the hell did he know?

From here you’re on your own. That’s just the way it is . . .

Something hollow opened inside her. She felt colder and lonelier and more scared than she ever had in her life. She remembered what Mum had said in the quarry. Look after
yourself
. It hadn’t been a bland imprecation, a throwaway line telling her to be careful. It had been something starker than that. It had meant: you’re on your own, so put yourself first. In front of others. Now she saw clearly what she had to do: saw that the only important thing left was to protect herself. She had to fight for her life.

Caffery stayed there for a long time and gradually, watching his face, the moonlight glancing off his eyes, it dawned on her that maybe he couldn’t see her. She raised a hand in front of her face, moved it back and forward. He didn’t react. Tongue between her teeth she leant forward a little, scrutinizing his eyes. He wasn’t focused on her. She stayed there, weight resting on her knuckles, head lifted, trying to work out what the hell was going on.

When he sighed and straightened, she was sure of it: he didn’t know she was there. The words hadn’t been meant for her at all: whoever he thought he was talking to it wasn’t her, and if the words had meant something it had been a coincidence. But that didn’t change her resolve. As he turned and walked to the front gate, as she let all her breath out and sank back on her haunches, she was resolute, focused and completely calm. At midnight tonight Mandy and Thom were going to get the surprise of their lives. They were going to get the photo, and they were going to get something more, much more. They were going to get Misty’s body. On their front lawn, if necessary. Flea wasn’t going to listen to any arguments or reasoning: from here on it was their mess to clear up.

By ten the CSI team had gone and the house was empty, just a copper on the gate, his back to her, waiting for the maintenance crew to arrive. After ten minutes he got bored of waiting, as she had known he would, and went to sit in his car, from which he could see the front of the cottage, not thinking there was someone round the back, sitting silently in the trees. Neither did he know that Caffery had left the back door open.

So cold her bones were aching, she straightened, the muscles in her legs stiff, gathered up the thermal lance and went painfully across the lawn to the house, then inched her way through the back door. The copper might be lazy but he’d notice light seeping out of the windows, so inside she fumbled the Maglite from her jacket pocket, pointed it at her feet and crept along the hallway in the half-darkness, her ankles brushing against cats as she went. The house was smeared with fingerprint dust from the CSI team, strange pocked light filtering from the broken window, sending shadows across the walls. At the foot of the stairs she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, dressed in the pale blue shirt and jeans she’d thrown on a million hours ago, the cylinder of the lance hiked up on her back, her eyes watering. Her face seemed strangely smooth and young, as if stress had airbrushed it.