Skin

51

‘I almost fucking killed you!’ Pooley shook Caffery furiously, forcing the blood into his brain, making his face bulge. They were on the floor where they’d both fallen, their heads up against a steamer trunk. Pooley’s hands were on Caffery’s collar. His breath was stale on his face. ‘Did you hear me? I could have killed you.’

Caffery’s guts screamed where Pooley had grabbed his balls to take him down. He could hardly breathe, but he groped blindly in his pocket for the ASP. Just as he was sliding it back, ready to crack it down, Pooley thrust him back against the trunk, then crawled away a small distance and collapsed in a sitting position, his back to a stack of Victorian stained-glass doors. Caffery curled up in a ball, gulping air.

‘What are you doing here?’ Pooley spat on the ground. ‘How did you get past Security?’

Caffery fumbled the ASP back into his pocket and took a moment or two to recover. Slowly he sat up, loosening his shirt and tie. There were raw, raised areas around his neck where the fabric had dug into his flesh. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple was hard and sore. ‘That.’ He nodded to where his warrant card had fallen out of his shirt pocket and lay about three feet away on the polished concrete floor. ‘My get-out-of-jail-free card.’ He swallowed again, rubbed his throat. ‘Why the vigilante stuff?’

‘I thought you were a burglar. There was a break-in last week.’

‘And what about that – that torture bench you’ve got over there? What’ve you been doing with it?’

Pooley glanced in the direction he was pointing. ‘The tanner’s bench?’

‘Where did you get it?’

Pooley opened his hands wearily as if this was all irrelevant. ‘From a tannery. Why?’ He moved his head slightly and now Caffery saw, in the blue light from the computer in the office, that his face was wet. He’d been crying. The creepy noise like an animal panting.

Caffery pulled the warrant-card holder back, pocketing it. ‘Why’re you crying? Is it Lucy? You knew her more than you said, didn’t you?’

Pooley shook his head. ‘Christ, oh, Christ.’

‘I’m right. Aren’t I?’

‘I miss her… I miss her so much… I never did the best for her, never. It would have pushed Jane over the edge if I’d left.’

‘Jane? Your wife?’

‘You saw her.’

‘Your wife? Yesterday? With the chandelier?’

‘She’s not well.’

Caffery blew a little air out of his nose. Too bloody right she’s not, he thought. He felt in his pockets for the bag of tobacco he carried everywhere. Sod the Nicorette chewing-gum, but there were times, he thought, when you had to stick your good intentions and hotline nicotine into your system. ‘How long had you been seeing Lucy?’

‘Two years. Since she left him. Colin. Bastard.’

Caffery rolled the cigarette, using the tip of his tongue to moisten the gummed strip on the inside of the paper. ‘How often were you with her?’

‘Once or twice a week.’

‘When your wife wasn’t around?’

‘On the days she goes to her family.’

‘And the sex toys?’

‘Purely aesthetic.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. She just thought they looked nice, that was all. Her ex, though, Colin, he never came to terms with it. Never.’

‘Yeah. I know.’ Caffery twisted the end of the rollie. Felt in his pocket for the lighter. ‘So. Were you the only one? For Lucy?’

Pooley lifted his chin and stared at him, his eyes hard.

‘No need to look at me like that – you see a woman once or twice a week and you don’t expect her to hang around waiting for you while you’re at home playing happy families.’ He lit the cigarette and studied Pooley, squinting through the smoke. ‘I’m just trying to make sure you were the baby’s father.’

‘The b-?’ Pooley retracted his head, taken aback, frowning. ‘What baby?’

‘Don’t give me that. Some time in the last two years Lucy Mahoney had a baby. What happened to it?’

Pooley dropped his arms limply. ‘No,’ he murmured, his voice a little scared, a little puzzled. ‘No. You’ve got that wrong. There was no child.’

Caffery studied him. The guy was doing a bomb-ass acting job. ‘Nah. I’m not falling for this. You can’t magic a child away, no matter how hard you try.’

‘I’m not,’ Pooley said. ‘Seriously I’m not. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but Lucy, my Lucy, she never had a baby.’