Skin

58

Years ago a trainer had told Caffery that if he ever felt faint on parade he should look at something green: a lawn, a tree. Colours had an effect on the brain – stopped it freezing and giving up – so when he got out of the car in the quiet country lane outside Georges Gerber’s house he stopped for a moment and rested his eyes on the grassy bank. His head was sluggish and staticky from lack of sleep. He needed it to be clear.

Darcy said Susan Hopkins had caught Gerber stealing. Lucy had been blackmailing him: maybe she’d threatened to take him to the GMC over the abdomectomy. Maybe she’d also witnessed the stealing, or whatever had been happening in the recovery room. It had taken him two years to get fed up with the blackmail and kill Lucy. With Susan Hopkins it had been quicker. Maybe she’d confronted him. Maybe he’d already been stirred up enough by Lucy’s murder to have killed again in quick succession.

An early butterfly flapped its lonely way across the lawn, then over the hedge that grew alongside the house, attracted by the blue of a disused swimming-pool. It was very clean – no slime growing on the painted blue walls. He stood on tiptoe and looked past it. About twenty feet on was the distinctive sand mound and manhole inspection cover of a septic system. The house itself was to the right: square and grey, set a long way back from the quiet lane. Everything was tidy, very well kept. Tidy but wrong, Caffery thought, dropping back on to his heels. In spite of the tidiness something felt out of kilter.

He licked his palm, pushed it through his hair and buttoned his jacket. The house had two entrances, one a blue-painted front door to the left, which looked as if it went into the main house. No one answered when he rang this bell so he went to the other entrance, where the house had been extended into a low-roofed building running out at an angle. The stone extension had shuttered casement windows, a narrow portico, and a small porch with an antique foot-scraper built at the left-hand side. He rang the bell. Waited, looking at the brass sign screwed to the front door: Georges Gerber FRCS (Plast) engraved in ornate script.

No answer. He went along the side of the house, glancing into the windows as he went. At the end he stopped. The shutters were closed. He got his Swiss Army Hiker from his pocket and prised off the catch. Pulled the shutter wide.

About ten centimetres into the room, a breezeblock wall had been constructed. He put his nose to the glass. The wall stretched up as far as he could see, and out to the sides as far as he could see. There was an airbrick about six blocks to his right.

Oh, goody, he thought, smiling against the pane. Oh, goody, Mr Gerber, I smell your blood.