Skin

49

The last few encounters Caffery’d had with Flea hadn’t been exactly knockdown dragout fights, but they hadn’t been exactly friendly either. So it was a surprise, an uncomfortable surprise, to hear her voice. Under different circumstances he might have used the opportunity as a springboard and dug a little deeper into why she’d been acting so bloody odd, but then the image of the tor slipped into his mind and a stark blast of light stopped that train of thought dead. He was in the fast lane of the M5, a boy racer in a Golf GTi right up his backside, when it happened. He cancelled the call and slowed the car so quickly the boy racer gave him the finger.

It was nearly ten at night. He’d spent half the evening trying to catch the thread of a lead into who Lucy had been seeing – who had fathered that baby and what had happened to the child. He’d got the warrant for the bank, to be served in the morning, and first light he’d be out re-interviewing the friends, Lucy’s GP, and getting a second warrant signed by the magistrate for all the local labour wards to open their records for the last twenty months. He’d done everything in his power. At half past ten, feeling beaten and running on empty, he’d left the office.

Now he dropped the phone and pulled across the carriageway into the middle lane, ignoring the Audi and the F signs.

Glastonbury Tor. The shape, like a tall pudding, had been somewhere in his mind for the last couple of days, lingering on the edges. But it was only now that it made sense. He steadied the car in the middle lane, keeping the needle at a level seventy-five, gripping the wheel. He was seeing the reclamation-yard owner, James Pooley, looking down at the paperweights, making the shape of the tor with his hands.

You could line them up like this. Maybe on a windowsill, he’d said. If there was something out of the window you wanted to draw attention to.

That was why Pooley didn’t have any sales dockets. Lucy hadn’t paid him for those pieces. And the other paperweights Pooley had produced, bought because Lucy would have liked the colour, were exactly the same shade of blue as her paintings. How did Pooley know she’d like the colour if he’d never been inside her bedroom and seen the paintings? How did he know she had a view of the tor out of that studio window? Especially when she was so defensive about the room. Were they things that came up in natural conversation? He didn’t think so. He thought it was Pooley who’d made that video of Lucy in the studio.

He called the crime-scene manager who’d searched Susan Hopkins’s flat, but his phone was switched off so he left a message: ‘Just wondering if there were any antiques in Hopkins ’s flat, or paperweights. Did the name “The Emporium” come up at any time? Call me. ASAP, if you can, mate. Even if you get this at two a.m.’

Then he called someone at Control to check on James Pooley but the guy was clean. An electoral search brought up three James Pooleys – two in Wiltshire and one in Somerset. All three were at least an hour and a half’s drive away. And then, as he was making up his mind which to hit first, he noticed he was passing the ring-road exit to Brislington. He indicated left and swerved off the motorway, swinging the car up over the bridge and pulling hard on the steering-wheel so the car headed south on the empty road.

The little industrial estate had a security guard in a booth at the entrance. He was fast asleep, a copy of the Mirror spread over his stomach, a yellow milk skin floating on his cold coffee. Caffery had to hammer on the booth to wake him up. He couldn’t have been gagging to keep his job because he let Caffery in without a murmur, and even though he’d seen the warrant card and knew it was police business, once Caffery had driven through the barrier he didn’t bother to watch, just went back to sleep.

At the back of the lot the first thing Caffery noticed was that the big twin sliding hangar doors of the Emporium stood open. Odd at this time of night – even with the guard on site. He killed the engine and wound down the window. There was no artificial illumination, only the milky light of the Bristol cityscape spilling down from the clouds, dimly bathing everything a uniform smoky grey. He could just make out the spectral outlines of the bric-à-brac stacked against the walls inside the hangar. There were two cars parked about twenty feet away, their noses facing him. He was wondering about calling Control again and checking their indexes when a sound came out of the hangar. A sound that made the hairs go up on his skin.

He leant across and opened the glove compartment. The bling gun was in there, tucked behind a map and two packets of tobacco. Not to be used. He looked at them for a moment or two, then closed the glove compartment and checked his suit pocket for the ASP baton and the pepper spray. He got out of the car, closed the door silently, and walked quickly and quietly to the doors, stopping a little to the side so he couldn’t be seen from within. The noise was louder here, and although he screwed up his face in concentration, he couldn’t identify it. It might have been an animal, an injured fox panting. Or a child whimpering.

He opened his mouth to speak, because that was how it was supposed to be. You were supposed to warn people you were police and you were coming in. Give them a chance. A chance to do what? A chance not to panic? Not to shoot? Or just give them a chance to run? He flipped his jacket away from the radio clipped into his breast pocket so he could hit the red emergency button if he had to, then slipped inside the hangar.

The space was taller than he remembered, and higher. In the semi-darkness he sensed huge cavities arching above his head. The faint illumination from the city came behind him, and from ahead the dusty blue light of a computer or a fax machine filtered through the windows of the glass office cubicle. At the point he remembered seeing the customer pulling at the chandelier crystals he stopped. Standing next to a low oak bench, one hand on the CS gas, the other resting on the bench to steady himself, he put his head back to concentrate on the sound. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere: as if it was ricocheting across the roof girders. What was it? It made his skin crawl because he was sure of one thing. It was made by something living.

There was a smell too. Old and unnameable, but familiar. He waited a beat, trying to place it, then realized it was coming from the bench he was leaning on. He turned, slowly, half of him not wanting to see what he had leant against. He raised his fingers. Rubbed them together. They were coated with something. He put them to his nose and sniffed. The smell made a cold line of suspicion move down his back. This was fat. Animal fat.

He remembered the bench from yesterday. A worn breaking bench with a vertical blade, about four foot high, gimballed at the head. Tanners would have used it to ‘break’ animal skin. To soften it. They would sit on it, working the skin against the blade. The skin would be from something as big as a deer or an elk. Or something as small as a dog.

The noise stopped.

He turned, his fingers lightly brushing the ASP, to face into the darkness. Let’s go outside, he wanted to say. Let’s go out where there’s a bit more light and where my car’s waiting and I know I can get a signal on this piece of shit radio. But instead he kept his voice low and level. ‘I think we should talk,’ he murmured. ‘I suggest we switch the light on and talk.’

Silence. A group of bats wheeled through the overhead struts, the fragile crack crack crack of their lower-frequency chatter circling down to him.

‘Are you there?’

He thought of the mad customer, endlessly sorting her chandelier crystals. He recalled the blunt, defeated expression in her eyes. He thought of the gun, sitting in the glove compartment.

‘I said, are you there?’

A click behind him and a loud boom. He wheeled around as the huge double doors slid closed, cutting out the night, leaving him in the darkness with just the blue light of the computer and his thudding heart for company.

He pulled out the CS gas. Held it in front of him, arm rigid. Good job the gun was in the glove compartment because it could easily have been that. ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ he said. ‘I mean it. Don’t fuck with me.’

The darkness lay hard up against his eyes as he moved the spray in an arc, ready to unlatch the safety button if something came hurtling at him. Every inch of his skin crackled, and his ears yawned open to pick up the smallest sound, the tiniest shift of air.

‘I’m moving now,’ he said. ‘I’m coming towards the door.’

He took a few short steps, then stopped. His foot had connected with an object at knee height. As he pulled his leg back, he became aware that something was standing a few feet to his left. Something pale, spectral – something at head height, watching him. He didn’t turn to it. He kept facing forward, the hairs all over his face and neck standing up stiff, trying to study the shape out of the corner of his eye.

A face, a pale, oval face, stared at him steadily from the darkness. About three feet away. Tall. Tall and big.

‘I can hurt you,’ he murmured. ‘I’m trained and you’re not. I can make you very uncomfortable. So step away from me.’

The face didn’t move. Just went on looking at him.

‘Step away from me, I said.’

Still no movement. Heart hammering, Caffery went through the move in his head, thinking of reaction distances and the effect of the spray – not just on the creep staring at him but on his own respiratory system.

One, two, three, he counted to himself. One, two, three – and good to go.

‘Step back!’ He held his left hand against his face, right hand forward. Protect your own eyes first. ‘I said, step back, dickhead. Step the fuck back.’

Three seconds of spray, then he released the nozzle and dropped his hand, taking a clumsy pace back, knocking something over, the other arm across his face, squinting through the cloud of chemical. The shape hadn’t moved. He lifted his hand slightly, his eyes watering from the chemical’s kickback, his heart thrumming low and deep in his chest. It was still there. A motionless, smooth face, the gas running slowly down it, forming at the chin into a rivulet and dripping away into nothing. Eyes open and glassy, none of the coughing or vomiting he’d expected.

‘Shit.’ He dropped his head. Spat on the ground. ‘Shit.’

It was a fairground effigy, its brittle doll’s face impassive. He turned, breathing hard, to the doors. So where the hell was Pooley? Which avenue had he slid down? Which pile of furniture was he hiding behind? The doors, he thought. Start for the doors. He took a step forward. Felt his chest collide with something. Felt an arm lock around his neck, and a hand come up into his groin, immobilizing him and pulling him down.