02-Shifting Skin (41 page)

His open hand crashed into her face, snapping her head back.

‘The room!’

‘Twenty-three – she’s in room twenty-three. Please don’t hurt me.’ She fell to the floor as Alex kicked off his shoes and stormed towards the stairs.

Jon could see the motel foyer was empty as he raced towards the doors. He burst through and spotted a pair of woman’s shoes on the floor. One was splattered with blood and missing a heel. Immediately he ran to the double doors on his right and scanned the corridor. Empty. The sound of sobbing was coming from the back office. He vaulted over the counter and went in. Dawn Poole was huddled in the corner, arms wrapped tightly round herself. A nearly empty bottle of brandy was on the floor at her feet, sodden tissues strewn around.

‘Dawn, it’s DI Spicer,’ he said, crouching in front of her and looking into her face. ‘Are you all right?’

She couldn’t control her crying, her whole body convulsing with sobs.

Jon took her gently by the arms. ‘Easy, Dawn, easy. You’re

OK.’

Her eyes were tightly closed.

‘Dawn, can you answer me? Is Fiona Wilson here?’ He felt her stiffen.

‘She’s here, isn’t she? Her husband found her flat. She came here because she had nowhere else to go. I’m right, aren’t I?’

Dawn took in a shuddering great breath.

‘Dawn, is Alex Donley here? Alexia, the red-haired prostitute?’ She started to shiver. ‘He said he’d never hurt me. Oh God, it’s all gone...it’s all gone wrong.’

Jon frowned. ‘Who said that? Alex?’ She nodded.

‘Alex is your partner?’

‘He said he was different. Said he’d protect me.’

Jon gently squeezed her arms, aware how painfully thin they were. ‘Dawn, none of this is your fault. Do you hear me? Dawn, open your eyes. Look at me.’

She took another breath and her eyes slowly opened.

Christ, he thought, seeing the look of utter defeat in them. ‘I know people have made you a victim in your life. But you can put a stop to it now, do you hear me? You can put a stop to all of this by telling me where Fiona is. Please tell me before she gets hurt.’

She shut her eyes and Jon thought he was losing her. But she lifted her chin and said, ‘Room twenty-three.’

He jumped to his feet.

She started to cry again. ‘He’s up there already. You must stop him – he’s going to do something terrible.’

The door at the top of the stairs opened on to another empty corridor. Jon looked at the first door: fourteen. He crept forwards, passing fifteen on the other side. Seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one. Twenty-three. The door was shut. He listened, but no noise came from inside. Slowly he turned the handle and opened it a crack.

‘You stupid cunt.’ A man’s voice, straining with effort. ‘This is what happens to stupid cunts like you.’

Jon slipped inside, moved past the bathroom and looked into the room beyond. Alex Donley was straddling the chest of Fiona Wilson, pressing a pillow into her upturned face. Fiona’s hands were scrabbling around, feebly trying to get a grip on the thing smothering her.

One step took Jon to the edge of the bed. ‘Hey!’ he barked, swinging with all his might.

Alex’s head whirled round, streaks of long red hair flying out. Jon’s fist caught him full in the mouth, lifting him clean off Fiona and sending him somersaulting backwards to the floor.

Jon plucked the pillow from Fiona’s face, heard her gasping in air. He looked over the end of the bed.

Alex Donley lay crumpled and unconscious on the floor, both lips burst open, the upper one split right up to the base of his nose.

Chapter 35

Officers were clearing their drawers, packing files and personal effects into boxes. Rick held up a batch of reports and tapped their lower edges on the desk to square them off. ‘How did you track them down?’

‘I pulled all the reports for credit cards that had been lost or stolen in the city centre in the three days prior to Alex Donley paying for a new surgical procedure.’

‘Quite a few, no doubt?’

‘A few dozen. From those, I selected all reports made by men. Next I took the cases where money was withdrawn from a cashpoint after the card’s disappearance had been reported. That narrowed it down massively, since you need the card’s PIN to make a cash withdrawal. After that it was just a case of contacting the card owner, explaining it was a murder investigation and asking whether they’d lost their card in the vicinity of Canal Street.’

‘I bet that got a few evasive answers.’

Jon smiled. ‘It certainly did. But I explained that it was all confidential and they soon admitted involvement with a certain red-haired individual going by the name of Alexia.’

Rick shook his head. ‘So who were these people?’

‘All sorts. An immigration officer from Gatwick doing a placement at the airport, a builder working on the new apartments going up, and an out-of-towner who was in Manchester for the weekend.’

‘What I don’t understand is how he got access to all their bank accounts.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that, too,’ Jon replied. ‘Remember the garage forecourt? He was snaking round Gordon Dean at that cashpoint. I reckon he skimmed the guy’s PIN then.’

Rick rubbed his forehead. ‘The sneaky bastard. So he’d rob someone, then go straight to Dr O’Connor and use the money for his next stage of surgery.’

‘Exactly. There’s a gap of several months between his visits to O’Connor. As soon as the wounds from one operation healed, he’d go back on the game and rob another punter. What I want to know is why he took the step of actually killing someone. What’s the score with him? Has he spoken yet?’

Rick shook his head. ‘Still scrawling on his little pad that he can’t talk. They’ll do a psychiatric assessment once his mouth’s sorted out.’ He glanced at Jon’s bandaged right hand. ‘That must have been some punch.’

Jon said nothing.

‘In the meantime,’ Rick quickly continued, ‘Dawn Poole’s proving extremely helpful.’

‘She still under arrest?’

‘No. We’re putting her up in a hotel for the time being. Obviously she knew Alex was earning money by turning tricks on the ladyboy circuit, but McCloughlin’s happy she had no idea he had murdered a punter.’

‘Good,’ Jon said. ‘She didn’t.’

‘And Fiona Wilson?’ Rick’s question hung in the air.

‘She’s moved back in with her parents and is talking to the Domestic Violence Unit. I gather from Alice that she’s pressing charges against her husband. The refuge has got photographic evidence. She’s divorcing the prick, too. He’s been on a decent salary for years, so she’ll be fine from a financial point of view.’ Rick looked around. There were only a couple of other officers left. ‘Good. Coming for a drink? McCloughlin’s put a couple of hundred behind the bar, apparently.’

Jon thought of how McCloughlin had rubbed his nose in it about getting it so wrong with Pete Gray. He got up, a halfhearted smile on his face. ‘I don’t think so. Tell the lads I’m on painkillers. No alcohol allowed.’

‘A Coke, then?’

Jon raised his eyebrows. ‘Be serious. No, I’ll pass.’

‘Another time, then. The Bull’s Head, perhaps?’

‘Definitely. So where’s your next stint?’

‘I’ve got some time off to think about it. I’m not sure if the front-line stuff is really my thing. Maybe I’ll head back to Chester House. There’s something I could do on discipline and complaints.’ He looked at Jon for his reaction.

‘You’ve been excellent to work with, Rick. You’re bloody sharp and you’re meticulous with detail.’

‘Thanks. But I froze at O’Connor’s house. I didn’t want to go in there. If you hadn’t led the way . . .’

Jon shrugged. ‘Another thing about that cellar. He had two syringes in the tray by the stone slab. Did you find out what they were?’

‘Yup. Propofol, to keep her sedated. Diamorphine for him.’

‘He’d started using again?’

‘That psychologist, Dr Heath, reckons he was using it as a disinhibitor. To allow him to do what he did.’

Jon picked at the edge of the box of files.

‘What’s on your mind?’ Rick asked.

‘Any theories from Dr Heath on why he was doing it?’

‘Only the usual ones – the thrill of playing God, that sort of thing.’

Dr O’Connor’s final words echoed in Jon’s head. Deep inside a little part of him agreed that there was a thrill in holding another man’s life in his hands. The sensation, he realised, hadn’t been a lot different from swinging his fist into Alex Donley’s face.

‘Come on, mate, spit it out,’ Rick said.

Taking a deep breath, Jon quietly spoke. ‘Down in that cellar, after you’d gone upstairs to check on the ambulance, he said something to me.’

‘Really? What?’ Rick hunched forwards to hear better.

Jon caught Rick’s eye for an instant. ‘I let him die down there, Rick, and he smiled and said, “We’re just the same underneath.”’

His eyes dropped to his watch and he kept them there as the seconds ticked silently past.

Finally Rick said, ‘Two things. You didn’t let him die. He’d just about bled out by the time we got there. He’d gone through an artery. I doubt a team in an operating theatre could have saved him.’

Jon tried to smile. ‘But I was happy to not even try. What’s your second point?’

‘“We’re just the same underneath”. Are those his exact words?’

Jon nodded.

‘I don’t think he meant we as in you and him. He meant we as in all of us. We’re all the same underneath. Maybe that’s what he was trying to show by skinning his victims. It was a demonstration, a display. Perhaps a protest against the way his art – one that took him years to acquire – is being debased and exploited to satisfy people’s vanity.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes.’ Rick got up and came round their desks. They faced each other a little awkwardly. He held out a hand.

Jon glanced down at his bandaged fingers. Unable to shake, he raised his left hand instead and clapped it on Rick’s shoulder.

‘Good working with you, mate.’

‘Likewise.’

They embraced, each slapping the other’s back – a ploy, Jon knew, to keep up the required level of manliness.

As Rick set off for the pub, Jon called across the empty office.

‘If you change your mind about the front-line stuff, I’d be happy to work with you again.’

Epilogue

Jon knelt on the nursery floor, spreading the same paint-spattered sheets of newspaper out. He put the tin of red paint on them, then tried to prise off the lid with his left hand. The fingers of his right were no longer bandaged, but gripping anything was still painful.

Reaching for the spoon, he lifted it with a quiet crack from the crusty blob of paint it lay in. The viscous puddle on the floor of Dr O’Connor’s cellar appeared in his head. The file notes for Carol Miller, Angela Rowlands and Tyler Young had been found hidden in his surgery. All died trying to achieve some superficial ideal of beauty. Images flashed through his head. Melvyn’s salon. Jakes’ tattoo parlour. The Paragon Group. TV shows, magazine articles, newspaper reports. All about one thing: trying to look more attractive.

Jon put the paint-covered spoon aside and, still kneeling, rested his elbows on the windowsill. He stared through the glass, unable to stop dwelling on why Dr O’Connor had started to kill his customers. The explanation, if there ever could be one for things like that, had gone with him to the grave. What a world this is, he thought, letting out a little snort of breath.

Alice’s voice came from the doorway behind him. ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

He looked round, and without getting up held his arms out.

‘Come here.’

Slowly she crossed the room, her stomach looking like it was about to burst. She stepped carefully onto the sheets of paper, one foot covering the small ad for the Beauty Centre. It sat discreetly next to the columns of classified entries in the ‘Health and Beauty’ section. The opposite page was covered in boxed ads for Manchester’s assortment of massage parlours and escort agencies, Cheshire Consorts’ one of those at the top.

Still kneeling, Jon pressed his cheek against Alice’s belly and reached his arms round her until he could grasp his own wrist. It was a gesture that sought to protect them from everything he knew existed outside the window and an attempt to bind all three of them closer together. But it didn’t seem enough. A desire for something more tangible engulfed him and he found himself saying, ‘Alice, do you fancy getting married?’

Acknowledgements

Once again a rough manuscript was transformed by the expert touch of Gregory and Company and Orion – special thanks to Emma Dunford and Jane Wood for all your time.

Keeping names anonymous for professional reputations, a big thank you to:

The Turnip – how you sat all those exams, I’ll never know Ian – for the medical advice and the tour of your cellar Nessy – top marks on the police knowledge as usual