Skin

60

Caffery heard the car coming from a distance. He shut the vacuutainers away and left the room silently, clicking the door closed behind him. He kicked aside the metal swarf and was stepping out of the front door as an immaculate blue Mercedes swept up the drive. A 500 AMG with all the bells and whistles.

He didn’t know if he’d been seen coming out so he stepped away from the building into the sunlight. The Mercedes came to a halt. There were a few moments’ pause, then the door opened and a small man with greying hair got out. He was about fifty, unremarkable, except for the odd tunic he wore. Yoked and made of brushed denim, it was the sort of thing an artist might have worn in the 1970s. There were damp spots on the front.

‘Georges Gerber?’

He glanced towards the road, then back at Caffery. ‘Who wants to know?’

He held up his card. ‘Inspector Jack Caffery.’

There was a slight pause. Gerber closed his eyes. And opened them. As if he was taking a picture of Jack. Then his face cleared abruptly. ‘Where are my manners?’ He pushed his hair back from his face with a chalk-white hand. ‘Do come in.’ He slammed the car door and took out a key, came forward and opened the front door wide. Smiled. ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’

Caffery pocketed his card and followed. While Gerber went to the corner of his office and busied himself with a coffee-maker Caffery stood next to a winged armchair, shifting it slightly so he could keep three things in plain view: Gerber, who had pressed two sachets into the machine and was now filling the cups, and the two doors – the one he’d come through and the other, which led to the refrigerator room where the padlock lay snapped on the floor.

‘So,’ Gerber said pleasantly, as he turned with the coffee, ‘you found me easily enough. How long have you been here?’

‘I just arrived.’ Caffery gave him a cool smile. ‘Why?’

‘A polite enquiry,’ he said lightly. ‘Simply making conversation.’

He put a coaster on to a little occasional table next to the chair and set the coffee on it. When he straightened Caffery noticed he was sweating. Nothing too obvious, just a faint sheen across his forehead. ‘My father was in the force. A chief inspector – Hampshire.’

‘Really?’

Why haven’t you asked me why I’m here yet? When are you going to ask?

‘I feel I’ve got an affinity with the police.’ Gerber pulled up a small table next to the sofa and put down his own cup. He went back to the coffee-maker and stood for a moment with his back to Caffery, opening a packet of biscuits. Something with a royal crest on the box. He shook them out on to a plate. ‘Fixing things. You know. Making the world a better place. Biscuit?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Drink your coffee.’

‘When I’m ready.’

The last thing Caffery was going to do was eat or drink anything in this place. No other incapacitants had come up on the tox results because Gerber was a doctor and had access to the liquid form of temazepam. He could have slipped it to the women in a drink – they wouldn’t have noticed. Knowing it would come up on toxicology, and that using a liquid temazepam that Lucy hadn’t been prescribed might point to murder and maybe to someone in the medical profession, he’d fed them pills later to account for the tranquillizer in the blood result.

‘Is there something wrong with your coffee?’

‘You tell me, Mr Gerber. Is there something wrong with it?’

Gerber went still. He turned swiftly to Caffery. Something off centre had crept into his eyes. The spots on his smock were still dark. If they were water, Caffery thought, they’d be dry by now. ‘S-sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Is that a riddle?’

‘No. It’s a straightforward question. Is there something in my coffee? Liquid benzos, for example.’

‘What?’ Gerber put his hand to his forehead. ‘Goodness – this is confusing. You’re confusing me.’

‘I haven’t just arrived, Georges. I’ve been here for a long time. Enough time to go into your room. See what you’ve been up to.’

Gerber dropped the biscuits. They scattered on the table, some on the floor. He stood with his hands limp at his sides, making no attempt to pick the biscuits up. ‘There’s an explanation,’ he said woodenly. ‘I can explain everything you’ve seen.’

‘I can explain too. Lucy Mahoney caught you, didn’t she? She saw what you were doing. Saw what you’d taken from her. Or did she remember being photographed? Was that it?’

‘This is a fantasy you’re having. Some sort of fantasy. If you let me explain I’ll-’

‘She was blackmailing you. And then what happened? My guess is she asked for too much. She wanted to buy herself a house – her demands got too big. There was no way out for you. You’re a thief. For years, by the looks of things, you’ve been stealing skin, like a serial killer who takes a part of his victims. These women have been your victims.’

‘Victims?’ He raised his eyes to Caffery. ‘That’s a harsh word. I didn’t hurt one of them. They left my surgery better than they came in.’

‘They are victims. They didn’t consent.’

‘The skin – it’s part of my life’s work. I s-study skin. I’m trying to build synthetic skin.’

‘Building synthetic skin?’ Caffery laughed. ‘Oh, good one, Dr Frankenstein.’

‘It’s the truth. Have another look in that room. You’ll see the boxes. From other manufacturers.’

‘I’m not stupid, Mr Gerber. From the limited knowledge I have, I’d say what you’re doing is nothing about building synthetic skin or whatever bullshit you’re asking me to swallow. I’d say it’s nothing to do with that and everything to do with sex.’

Gerber’s face went blank for a moment. He blinked.

‘I’d say that, whatever it looks like on the surface, this sort of behaviour always has a sexual motivation. Where’s your problem, Georges? You can’t get it up? Or did your mother make you give her bedbaths when you were six?’

Gerber blinked again. Once, twice. Three times in succession.

‘You photographed those women naked. God only knows what else you did to them while they were still half under. And you kept trophies to remind you. I looked at those – those specimens – and I couldn’t help asking myself: If I tested them would I find traces of your semen on them?’

Gerber stopped blinking. His left hand opened and closed as if he wanted to touch something. He came towards the table where he’d put the cup of coffee. ‘No wonder you’re not drinking your coffee. The table’s too far away.’

‘It’s fine where it is.’

‘Here.’ He bent to pick it up. ‘Let me just move it along.’

‘I said it’s fine where it-’

A spasm hit the back of Caffery’s calf and bolted up his body. He rolled away, a shout coming out of his mouth, scrambling across the sofa, fumbling for the back of his leg. He got clumsily to his feet, knocking over a chair, and turned, panting, to see Gerber, half bent over next to the table, his head at a slight angle, watching him. There was a weapon in his hand. It looked like a small pick or an awl – the sort of thing you’d use to work leather. A piece of material clung to it, from Caffery’s trousers, and long loops of blood lay across the cushions where he’d just scrambled over the sofa.

‘Why didn’t you drink my coffee, you fucking shithead?’

‘Hey,’ Caffery panted, reaching down to hold his leg, finding ripped fabric and something else – shredded calf muscle. ‘You are so fucked you just don’t have a clue.’

With his free hand he grabbed the chair and took a limping step forward, swinging it at Gerber, who sidestepped, nimble as a dancer, and landed the heel of the awl across Caffery’s temple. The pain pushed something black into his head. He fell forward, grabbing at things as he went, seeing the legs of the sofa fly up to meet him.

What’s happened to the sofa? he thought dimly, as he hit the floor. Why is the sofa on the fucking ceiling?