Skin

72

Looking at it now, it had been clear all along. There was so much to pin on Flea. The tics, the lapses of logic in her behaviour. He remembered Stuart Pearce at Lucy Mahoney’s body-recovery site. The traffic cop at the quarry saying that the night Kitson went missing there’d been something wrong with Flea. That she’d been distressed.

From the quarry to his right there came a low, distinctive glooping noise – as if an animal had broken the surface. He dropped the phone into his pocket and backed away from the car, moving silently into the trees, stopping about twenty yards away where he was hidden. He waited, watching the car and the black water reflecting the clouds.

Tiny ripples raced out across the water, as if someone had thrown a stone about three yards from the shore. The surface bulged and broke again. More ripples disturbed the cloud reflections. Someone was in the water. He moved himself further inside the shadows of the trees. More bubbles boiled up, then a head appeared: black and shiny. It was Flea, the hazy light bouncing off her diving hood.

He wedged himself against a tree so he didn’t lose balance while he watched. She climbed up a few ladder rungs, then pulled off the mask and sat on the edge of the quarry, unsnapping the front of the harness, leaning back and lowering the cylinders to the ground. She pulled off her fins and gloves, took a moment or two to turn off the air regulator on the cylinders and got shakily to her feet. She paused for a moment, surveying the quarry, turning around and around. Her wet hair clung to her head and her small face was strained and pinched. When she was sure she was alone, she reached into a pocket in the drysuit leg, pulled out keys and headed for the car. She didn’t open the driver’s door, but went straight to the boot and opened it.

Bending down, she wrapped her arms around a large white package. Caffery knew what it contained: he could see the yellowish smudge of bleached hair pressed to the plastic sheeting. He shuffled forward a few paces, pinching his nose hard as if that might make him come to his senses and realize this was just a dream.

Moving slowly, clumsily, Flea dropped the body. It hit the ground with a dull thud. She slammed the boot and bent, catching up the package by two corners of the plastic sheeting. Gritting her teeth in concentration, she leant her weight back and began to drag it along the ground, pulling it out of the trees, out into the hazy, reflected moonlight, out in the direction of the water. It bumped and snagged. Once or twice he thought she wasn’t going to be able to get it out of the trees. But she was used to the lumpen weight of a dead body and she fought it. It took her ten minutes to do it, but she dragged it all the way to the edge of the quarry.

She lowered the package close to the ladder, and straightened, digging her hands into the small of her back, circling her head to release the tension. Then something made her stiffen. She turned and looked into the trees.

‘Who’s there?’ She stared in his direction.

Caffery squeezed his nostrils tighter, fighting back the urge to speak. A weight pressed up against his ribcage.

She listened for a moment or two longer. Then, frowning, she began to reassemble her kit, pulling on the fins, leaning back to hitch up the twin tanks, snapping on the jacket.

When she was fully kitted she climbed halfway into the water. Standing on the ladder, one arm wrapped on the rungs, she bumped the body down after her. As it tilted up Caffery could see skin, exposed through the shredded plastic. Torn skin, and muscle, and white-blonde hair.

When Flea’d got the corpse most of the way into the water she paused. She was facing it, one arm around it.

He thought for a moment she was thinking, trying to work out how to do what she was going to do next. Then he realized it was something else entirely. Her head was slightly down, her eyes raised. She was looking into the blank smear that would have been Misty Kitson’s face. If it hadn’t sounded ridiculous, if it hadn’t broken all the rules after what he’d just watched her do, he’d have said she was apologizing to Misty.

He could step out of the trees now, could stand there motionless in the moonlight, somewhere she’d see him. But before he could do anything she pulled up her mask, wriggled it around her ears, wrapped both arms tightly around the corpse and dropped like a stone out of sight into the dark mirror of the quarry, taking it with her.

Surprised it had happened so quickly, he limped out of the bushes and stood in the pool of water her equipment had left, peering down. Through the bubbles, he could just see the two of them – the black of Flea’s head, the frosty plastic shroud around Misty and the wavering of the torchbeam.

Then they were gone. And all that was left were the mirrored domes of bubbles breaking on the surface.