Original Skin (21 page)

“In here.”

Tremberg approaches. Looks inside.

The woman is alive, but barely. She lies on her side, hair plastered to her face, an officer’s uniformed jacket covering her naked, fetal form.

“We’ve called an ambulance. We didn’t like to move her.”

Tremberg crosses to the woman’s side. Gently pulls back the coat.

The heads of the nails scarcely protrude an inch from the putrefying entry wounds in the back of her hands. The tips are buried three inches into her kneecaps. Blood has run down her legs to her ankles and blackened her feet. She was sitting up when this was done to her, before being thrown down here for more blood to trickle and congeal upon the lumpy, linoleum floor.

Her bare breasts appear, at first glance, to be covered in a matted, sticky hair.

Tremberg peers closer.

Sees the horror of the mutilated flesh. The blackening and burning of her skin.

Tremberg, face gray, turns back to the door. Colin Ray is standing there, smile gone.

“Pharaoh’s snout,” says Tremberg through bile. “McAvoy’s admirer.”

Ray scowls. Turns away.

Tremberg brushes Leanne’s hair back from her face. Feels the big, well-muscled woman shiver and pull away. Her eyes flicker open and closed. Her lips move. Tremberg has to place her ear next to her mouth to make out what she is saying.

“Shaun—is he okay? Shaun? They wouldn’t tell me. They kept asking me where he was, then laughing when I said I didn’t know.”

Tremberg, despite herself, feels tears prick at her eyes.

She wonders who will have to tell this tortured, broken creature that the man she has been protecting is already dead. That she has been mere practice, and sport.

THE REPORTER
is in her thirties and plain as a cheese sandwich. She has brown hair, glasses, and her waterproof coat betrays no flair or sponsor. She’s BBC to her bones.

Helen Tremberg tries not to let the sauce from her bacon sandwich drip as she stands in the canteen and watches the bulletin.

The reporter is being lashed by a heavy, gusting rain, and winces slightly as she talks to the camera.

“I’m here on Division Road, just off Hessle Road in the west of the city, where residents were this morning witness to the latest in a series of citywide raids by Humberside Police. We’re told that this morning, in an operation involving the force’s helicopter and a dozen officers, Drugs Squad operatives smashed their way into the property you see behind me and recovered hundreds of cannabis plants, along with equipment used for their cultivation. There are reports that one of the suspects removed from the house was transferred immediately to a medical facility, though where they sustained their injuries remains unknown.

“I’m joined here by Detective Superintendent Adrian Russell, who oversaw the hugely successful operation.”

Tremberg takes a bite of her sandwich and watches as the senior officer enters shot. He has pulled on a coat and made an attempt to slick back his hair, but the unhealthy pallor of his skin and fretting of his hands betray his discomfort.

Tremberg finishes her lunch in two bites as the reporter asks a series of bland questions, to which Russell gives anemic answers.

She tries to pay proper attention. Focuses in on what he is saying.

“It’s too early to say at this stage whether this setup has anything to do with a larger organization, but this is clearly an important result. These drugs would have a street value of hundreds of thousands of pounds. We found seedlings and plants in thirteen rooms in this abandoned house, as well as a complex setup. Corridors between the rooms were snaked with electric wires and pipes to vent the smell of the drugs out of the building. The energy to heat the equipment came from a generator that had been custom-built to hide the noise. The front of the property appears totally derelict—”

He is interrupted by the reporter, asking the only question that matters.

“And the two men you arrested?”

Russell looks as though he wants to be sick. “I can only tell you that a fifteen-year-old youth and a thirty-year-old man, both believed to be Vietnamese in origin, have been arrested and are currently being questioned by senior detectives.”

Tremberg smiles to herself. Wipes her face with a napkin. She likes being called a senior detective.

Throwing the napkin in the bin, she pushes through the swinging canteen doors and heads for the interview room. She was grateful when they took a break for a midafternoon lunch. She was starting to worry that the vein in Colin Ray’s head was about to pop. He is truly struggling with the concept of people not really being able to speak English. Seems about to reach across the desk and do some serious harm.

As she nears the interview suite, one of the doors bangs open and Colin Ray stomps out, furious.

“Fucking Chinks!” he screams at nobody in particular, and then glowers at Tremberg when he sees her. “They understood Ronan easy enough, and he sounds like he’s drowning half the time. And they don’t understand me? They can say ‘solicitor’ well enough, lying bastards. Where you been, anyway? Fucking part-timer . . .”

Tremberg bows her head as she is bawled out, and suddenly feels an extraordinary rush of affection for McAvoy and Pharaoh. She wishes to high heaven they were here. Wishes they were running this. She has seen Colin Ray get results today. Seen him, somehow, twist people inside out. And yet it only added to the acid in his gut and the distaste on his face. There is something vile within him. A genuine, bona fide malevolence. She realizes he is dangerous. That if he were not so damned obsessive about catching crooks he would be one.

“Is the translator on her way?” asks Tremberg at last.

Ray spits on the linoleum floor of the corridor. “Hours away. And the assistant chief constable is sniffing around. Talking about procedure.”

This morning’s brief sensation of victory is souring. The two Vietnamese farmers are saying nothing. If they speak English, they are hiding it well.

Ray stares into space for a while.

“Ronan’s picture,” she says. “Anything?”

Tremberg had stayed with the older man in the interview room while Ray worked on the younger one. She has not yet heard how it went, though from Ray’s face she can guess.

“Knows him, course he does,” says Ray viciously. “Eyes like bloody saucers when I showed him. Then it was all this Vietnamese shit and plenty of ‘No, no, no.’ Same with the picture of Shaun Unwin. And the two other Chinks from the foreshore. Christ, you’d think they’d want to help their mates. Don’t they know what they’re looking at? Even if they didn’t do the harm to Pharaoh’s informant, they’ve been busy growing weed while she lay there rotting and begging for help.”

Ray slams a fist into his palm. “They’re not going to talk, are they?”

Tremberg doesn’t answer.

“Neither’s Rourke. Or Ronan. His brief’s got him to shut his trap. Shaz can’t get a word out of him.”

They stand in the corridor, and for a moment neither knows what to do.

Within seconds of each other their phones begin to ring.

They turn away. Ray to Archer. Tremberg to McAvoy.

“Hello, Helen. Are you okay? I heard about the raid. What’s happening? I thought you were going home last night. I would have come with you. Were you with Ray? And Leanne, she’s okay, yes? Does Pharaoh know? Are you okay?”

Tremberg gives in to a smile.

This is the most appreciated she has felt all day.

•   •   •

“COULD YOU BUTTER
these, please, Suze?”

The middle-aged lady nods at a tray of bread rolls. The gesture comes as a relief to Suzie. The lady is wearing a plastic apron over what appears to be a corset paired with school socks, and Suzie had momentarily feared she was going to be asked to do something unusual with a tub of margarine.

“Don’t go mad,” she says as Suzie sets to work. “Just a scraping.”

This is the aspect of swinging and wild sex that Suzie finds most pleasantly surreal. Underneath the costumes and the impromptu blow jobs, these gatherings are little different from a normal house party. Although most of today’s guests will spend the day naked, the owners are putting on a finger buffet, and so far everybody who has arrived has brought a bottle, a plate of homemade cakes, or a card for the birthday girl.

It is four p.m. on a bright but cold Saturday afternoon. Suzie has gravitated toward the large, old-fashioned kitchen of the white-painted farmhouse that stands in a dozen acres of private fields and woodland. She is dressed in a short denim dress, thigh boots, and a Venetian mask, which sits on her head as she sips from a plastic beaker of lemonade and helps the host and her best friend make snacks.

“Throw a few cherry tomatoes on the tray,” says the woman. She shakes a bottle of homemade salad dressing with enough force to send her lopsided breasts jiggling. “Make it look pretty.”

Suzie is pleased she came. She is not planning on staying all evening, and has no hopes or ambitions for how the party will play out, but she is enjoying the feeling of relaxed escapism that always settles upon her when she finds herself in the company of people who, to some degree at least, understand her.

“I wish I’d brought a cake or something,” says Suzie as she gaily drops cherry tomatoes onto limp-looking ham sandwiches. “It was just a last-minute thing.”

“Don’t you worry,” says Christine. “Just nice to see you.”

Suzie turns. Adjusts her glasses so she can slide the mask back onto her face. Smiles at the hostess. “Are you having a nice birthday?”

“Ask me again when a few more turn up.” Christine laughs. She had greeted Suzie with a big, full-breasted cuddle and a kiss on both cheeks.

“Are you expecting many?” asks Suzie, taking another drink. “Maybe the weather will put people off.”

Christine looks out through the thick glass. The sky is a rich blue, but the trees that bound the paddock are shaking in a chill breeze.

“We’ll see,” she says. “Got a party with the family tomorrow anyway. This is just a normal club night, even if I do get a few extra presents.”

“I like your outfit,” says Suzie.

“Took some getting into,” says Christine. “It’s not real leather. You have to cover yourself in talc to get it on, and when it comes off, you can still see the shape of it on your skin. Hopefully be too dark for anybody to notice by then.”

Outside, Suzie hears the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel driveway. She heads to the back door and steps into the cold air; her boots precarious on the uneven cobbles.

On the patio, four or five couples are lying, in various states of undress, on deck chairs and sun loungers. When she came here with Simon, Suzie had thought it funny that wicker chairs were also laid out. They had laughed uncontrollably when she had nudged him and pointed at the back and buttocks of a sixty-year-old man who had recently vacated one armchair. “Crinkle cut,” she’d said.

There are smiles all around as she is noticed on the patio. None of the people who have turned up so far are particularly attractive, but all have enjoyed dressing up. Unfortunately the cold weather and muddy fields have rather spoiled their ensembles. On one striped deck chair, a woman in her early thirties is wearing a waterproof parka over a crotchless body stocking, while her fifty-year-old partner is holding his lighter as if it were a portable heater, cupping his hands around the flame as he shivers in denim shorts and a tight-fitting T-shirt.

On the other side of the patio, two couples are chatting animatedly about the rising cost of fuel. The tall, dark-haired man who arrived with a younger, bespectacled girl in a PVC catsuit and red knitted cardigan is complaining that it cost him eight pounds more to fill up the car than it did the last time they made the drive over here from their home in Morecambe Bay. The younger, stockier man he is talking to looks genuinely interested. He is complaining that he just spent twenty thousand pounds on a new car, but that it has no cup holder, and beeps at him when he doesn’t wear his seat belt. It is a pleasant conversation, and neither of the men seems to mind that the younger chap is wearing an unfastened white dressing gown and wellies.

Later they will pair up and team up. They will drink and smoke and giggle and splash in the hot tub that sits at the bottom of the far field, next to a cheap imitation Hawaiian bar.

Those brave enough will stride naked to the small stream with its halfhearted waterfall that bisects the apple orchard half a mile from the house, where Suzie and Simon once sat and smoked a joint with a gay couple from Leeds.

“Everybody, this is Jarod and Melissa. Say hello.”

Big Dunc, the home owner and husband of the birthday girl, Christine, is introducing two newcomers to the rest of the group. Jarod is no more than twenty-five years old. He has short blond hair and an unremarkably pleasing face. He is wearing a black muscle vest that shows a slim but well-defined physique, and looks happy, if slightly ill at ease.

The lady is older. Larger. Expensive and imposing. Black hair, cut short. She could be his mum, were it not for the fact she is holding his hand.

“Just the one single,” says Christine, smiling and pointing at Suzie. “Plenty of couples to pick from soon enough. We’re really pleased you could join us. Now can I get you a drink?”

Suzie takes a sip from her glass as the newcomers look at her. Jarod smiles. Melissa does, too, but it comes a moment later and is not so wide.

“Where do we put our stuff?” asks Jarod of the lady in the waxed jacket. He gestures at his sleeping roll and overnight bag.

“Big Dunc will sort all that,” she says. “Just leave it there for now. You can trust everybody. There’s nobody comes up unless they’re here for this, so there’s never any thefts.”

Jarod smiles a thank-you. The woman in the parka, who Suzie seems to think might well be called Karen, gives the man a once-over with her eyes. She looks at her partner and they share a grin.

“First time here?” she asks the newcomers.

“Yeah, thought we’d try,” says Jarod. “Game for anything, us.”

“Couple are you? Or just a swinging couple?”

Melissa turns to her. “We’re just here to play,” she says, and there is something in her voice that suggests no further questions are welcome. Those present respect her wishes. Such gatherings are based on trust. All participants in these parties have told some lie or another about where they are going. Some are with playmates they met on the Internet. Others lead completely separate lives with other partners and spouses, only coming together with their “swinging partner” for such parties and club nights as these. And others are here with their husbands and wives, keeping their relationships fresh and exciting by fucking strangers, and terrified at the prospect of their kids finding out what Mummy and Daddy were up to when they went away for the weekend.

Suzie feels a bit of a spare part. She had not felt in the mood to be chauffeured by J & J, and so had driven here on her own. If they turn up later, she will apologize and if need be make it up to them. She is resisting the urge to drink alcohol so she can drive herself home if and when she feels like it, but is beginning to feel an eagerness to claim a glass of wine.