Skin

63

Flea’s team were trained in MOE – method-of-entry techniques. A smart name for the time-honoured skill of kicking in doors, except that when the police did it, it was with specialist equipment and the blessing of the law. The unit went back each year for a day’s requalification training. The last session had been only a month ago and Flea knew that the forced-entry tool-bag – which Wellard called the Bag of Bollocks – was still to hand in the office.

She drove back fast, using roads the traffic units didn’t bother with, grabbed the bag and the heavy cylinder of the thermal lance the team used to cut through metal, put them both in the car and headed back towards Farleigh Park Hall. She didn’t have very long.

She was pissed off with herself. It was brainless to have dealt directly with Ruth Lindermilk. She shouldn’t have tinkered around. She should have treated her like an object, should have got in there, taken the first opportunity she had, kicked the door down and grabbed the photo of Thom. Time had just been slipping out of her hands. And all the time Misty had been decomposing.

She parked further up the road, careful not to go anywhere near the body-recovery scene. There might still be police there. Hiking the bag on her shoulder, she headed up through the undergrowth.

As always the hamlet was hushed – deserted. It was only the one or two cars parked down the lane that told her anyone was at home. Someone somewhere was watching sport – she could hear crowds cheering as she passed a window. At the bungalow she took a moment to go to the top of the garden and peer out over the wall, just to satisfy herself that no one was watching, then went to the back of the house and set to work.

First she tried all the doors and windows: no point pulling out the heavy artillery if Ruth had simply left a door unlocked. Everything was tightly closed, about what you’d expect with Ruth’s paranoia. The bungalow had quarter-lights in the lower windows, which were small and easy to break. She went to the kitchen ones and studied them. If she remembered rightly the sink and the dishwasher were under them. She recalled a butler sink. Solid. It would hold her weight.

She pulled on gloves and fumbled in the bag, past all the big equipment, for the smallest in the arsenal of tools: the tiny spring-loaded centre punch. They called it the Glasgow key. It took no effort at all, and now she gave just the smallest of taps against the pane. A sharp crack and a spider-web break zigged out into the float glass. It was the tiniest sound, but even so she held her breath and checked over her shoulder. The garden stood motionless – not a breath of air, not a sound of wildlife moving, only the distant hum of the television in the still air.

Tongue between her teeth she pulled out the pieces of glass, cleaning off the edges with a cloth. The last thing she needed was blood, forensic evidence that would link her to this break-in. When it was clean she pulled her sweatshirt sleeve all the way down over her hand and pushed her arm inside, feeling for the latch. She found it, tugged at it. It was locked, so, groping around, she found the other. That was locked too, with no key in it. She stood back, swearing to herself. It’d have to be the little wrecking bar, then. This time it worked like a dream. It fitted perfectly under the locks. The first came out after two or three wrenches and the second with no effort at all, splinters scattering everywhere.

Very carefully she opened the window and lifted the bag of tools through it. The curtains were closed as usual and when she peeped through there were no lights on, only the illumination of the green light on the boiler and the little pilot flame flickering blue. She could smell cats and food, lasagne or something – maybe what Ruth had eaten last night. Did she know, as she put the food into the microwave, that it was the last thing she’d ever eat in her life? It didn’t feel right, this suicide. Not at all right. Yesterday on the phone Ruth had sounded fine. Happy, even.

Not now. Don’t think about it now. She pulled her sleeves back and hoisted herself up into the window, arms trembling. Even though she worked at it – going into the office gym and doing high-weight, low-rep lifting whenever she found a spare moment – she didn’t really have the upper-body strength for her job at the best of times. And recently, with no time for the gym and not enough food, it had got worse. She had to fight now just to lift her own weight up into the kitchen.

She fell inside, into the half-gloom, knocking over a bottle of washing-up liquid, landing among the dirty crockery in the sink – something smashing as she went. She dropped down on to the kitchen floor and found that her trousers were soaked. Water dripped on to the earth on her shoes, clinging to the tiles and leaving a perfect print. She scuffed it with her heel. Cleaned off the worst of the mud with a kitchen towel. In the cupboard under the sink she found plastic freezer bags – should have thought of this before – and pulled two on over her trainers.

The living room was ghostly. Just the light from the broken kitchen window behind her filtered through on to Ruth’s possessions, the books and photos, the piles of paperwork and the empty glasses. A large glass of Coke was on an occasional table, an opened bottle of champagne next to it. Cats’ eyes blinked in every corner.

She went to the bureau where Ruth had put the photo and tested the drawer. Still locked – no key. She gave the rest of the bureau a cursory search for the key, checking inside a small papier-mâché cup, fingering her way through a desk tidy full of paper clips. She dropped some in her hurry, leaving them where they fell – it didn’t matter. There was no concealing there’d been a break-in.

She found the small pry bar in the bag and inserted the head into the gap in the drawer. From the wall Ruth Lindermilk and her son stared down impassively at her. Someone says, ‘I’ll take a photo,’ and you let them, she thought. You let them whether you want it or not, and before you know it that moment – that unthought-out, unplanned and out-of-control moment – is all you have left to mark a life. And then you’re dead.

She turned away from the photos and jemmied the lock in one hit. It caved with a loud splintering. She let the jemmy clatter down and wrenched open the drawer.

It was empty.

She stood there for a moment, staring stupidly at it.

‘Shit, Ruth. Shit.’

The cats shrank away, cowering nervously behind chairs and sofas. She slammed the drawer on to the floor and stood in the middle of the room, her hands out, staring at the rows and rows of books. If Ruth hadn’t left the photo in the drawer, where had she left it?

‘Come on, Ruth. What the hell did you do with it? What were you thinking?’

She turned. Ruth had got the photos from here – she remembered her taking them from the computer table. She opened the top drawer, pulling things out, rummaging through the contents. All that was in here was magazine cuttings and old clothes brochures. She pushed aside the sofa, swept a whole shelf of haphazardly piled chick-lit and romance stories off the bookshelves on to the floor and squatted next to the pile, scrabbling through the books, shaking the big ones, throwing them aside. She moved on to the next shelf, scattering everything. Within five minutes all the bookcases were clear and she was standing calf deep in books.

No photo.

She widened the search, going fast. The house was small – the only thing she found on the ground floor was a tea chest filled with framed photographs: wedding shots of Mr and Mrs Lindermilk, black-and-white shots of a baby. Not the photo she was looking for. She went up the stairs two at a time, hauling herself along on the banister to the small landing. There was a chest pushed up against the wall. She threw it open and pulled out everything inside: clothes, hats scarves. Nothing. Sweating now, she went into each bedroom and rummaged through divan drawers, under pillows, even in the pockets of coats hanging in wardrobes. She had got to the fourth one – had just emptied four shopping bags out on to the bed – when it caught her eye.

It was on the wall above the bed and it was what she should have been looking for all along. Sepia-coloured, about the size of a vinyl LP. A small wall-mounted safe.

‘Oh, Ruth,’ she murmured. ‘You couldn’t have, could you?’

The answer came back instantly: Of course she did, of course she would have put it here. She knew how precious it was to you, knew you might try something like this.

She straightened, went to the safe and gave it a tug. It was locked tight. Nothing in the Bag of Bollocks would open this number. Only the thermal lance would help her here. And it was still in the car down on the road. She threw the dial from side to side, hit it with the crowbar in her frustration. Hit it again. Then stopped and stood still, listening hard. There was a noise. Coming from the front of the house.

Someone outside had just opened Ruth’s front gate.

She went silently to the top of the stairs and peered over.

A second passed. Another.

Footsteps came around the side of the house, heading for the back. Suddenly panicked, Flea went quickly down the stairs and into the kitchen where the curtains were still drawn. The footsteps had stopped.

Whoever it was must be on the patio. She collected all the gear off the counter, counting it quickly: one, two, three, four, five. After cramming it into the bag, she zipped it up, threw it over her shoulder and headed for the hallway.

Someone put a key in the front door. There was a brief metallic clink as it turned, then the shush-shush of the draft excluder moving on the mat.

She turned back into the kitchen and stood for a second or two sizing it up. Opposite, behind curtains, the broken window stood open. No. It would take too much time to climb up there and drop through. In the hallway the door closed. She opened the oven and pushed the bag inside. Went to the tall fridge. Turned her face sideways, raised her hands and squeezed herself into the gap between it and the wall. She bent her arms at the elbows so her hands wouldn’t be visible and stood there trembling, breathing in shallow pants through her mouth because her ribs were constrained.

Someone came in. A man – she could hear him breathing as he surveyed the mess. He moved around, his feet crunching the glass underfoot, then stopped about a yard away. She could see his foot now, in a clean white trainer, ‘Nike’ written on it. There was a long silence while she listened to his breathing. It was fast, heavy, as if he was excited by what he saw. Or distressed.

He left the kitchen. In the living room she heard him kick his way through the mess. He went back into the hallway and the moment she knew he was at the front of the house she eased her way out from beside the fridge, got the bag from the oven and closed it without a sound. She skirted the broken glass, lifted the bag on to the work surface and hauled herself up.

The footsteps stopped. He’d heard her moving.

‘Hello?’

She pulled the curtain wide and dropped the bag through the window.

‘Hello? Who’s there?’

She looked at the drop. Looked back at the hall. Took a breath. And jumped.