Original Skin (24 page)

“What’s this?” He looks at the images. Turns it around. Widens his eyes.

“Yep,” says Pharaoh with a smile. “That appears to be a picture of our dead man having a little bit of fun with himself, though quite why Dan thought I’d want that to be the picture I looked at over my breakfast is anybody’s guess.”

“He sent these?”

McAvoy looks at the images. They are unmistakably of Simon Appleyard, naked and pleasuring himself.

“Bloody hell.”

“Yes. And they were sent as picture messages at about nine p.m. on the day Simon was last seen.”

“That’s . . .”

“Yes, about an hour before the pathologist reckons Simon died.”

“So he was sending this kind of stuff at nine p.m. and then hanging himself at ten?”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t bump himself off,” says Pharaoh, taking the pictures back. “Just means there is a hell of a lot to explore here.”

“What else?”

“Some more poetry. Messages he sent . . .”

McAvoy takes the report. Reads Simon’s words out loud: “‘You move inside me as a puppeteer. Take ownership of my body. Fold me into your vision of desire . . .’”

“You say the nicest things. Look at what he was getting in return. These were in the in-box.”

McAvoy turns the page. “‘Am going to hurt you. Take you. Make you my bitch . . .’”

“They were my wedding vows.”

“‘Will scratch my mark on you, tear open the ink on your skin . . .’”

“Yep, I do.”

McAvoy stops. “So he knew he had tattoos? Had they met before? Or did he send him pictures of his back, too?”

Pharaoh sighs. “What we can get is in there. Simon’s poetry, and this other person wanting to hurt him and dominate him.”

“Is it just a game?”

Pharaoh raises her eyebrows. “I’m not the expert,” she says. “I know people go online a hell of a lot looking for sex, and I know people have fantasies they want to come true and those that they don’t. Anyway, this is all just maybes. I’m not here on a Sunday for maybes. You haven’t got to the interesting bit yet.”

McAvoy turns to the last page of the sheaf. Reads the words underlined in red. The words Simon Appleyard received the night he died.

Want you on your belly when I arrive. Naked. Body waiting for my touch. Hold the rope in your hand. Leave the door unlocked. Show me your ink as I arrive, then let me take possession of you. Let me make you feel pretty . . .

McAvoy looks up. “Fuck.”

Pharaoh smiles. “Yes indeed.”

THE WATER
tastes of early mornings. Of last night’s booze.

Dirt.

Grass.

Blood.

“Thanks.” She grimaces. Her throat is full of cold stones. “Lovely.”

She shuffles herself into a more comfortable sitting position. Watches the sunlight stream in through the conservatory glass. Dazedly soaks up the view. The flat green landscape and the swaying trees, the painted-on symmetry of the distant apple trees and the blueness of the clear sky.

“Still sore?”

Suzie winces again as she finishes the drink. “Will be okay when it opens up a bit. Christ, I sound like Louis Armstrong.”

She is in the large, L-shaped living room of a remote Lincolnshire farmhouse that, three nights a week, becomes a sex club. This morning it is just a home, and she is an injured guest, convalescing, wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa and with her hair stuck up on one side.

“Did you have bad dreams?”

Suzie gives a shrug. “I don’t remember,” she says. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter if you don’t remember, does it?”

Christine is up and dressed. She looks comfortable in old jeans and a rugby shirt. Big Dunc is doing something onerous out on the shingled drive. She can hear the scrape of a rake on the pebbles.

“You must be hungry,” says Christine. “Yogurt? Fruit?”

Suzie screws up her face. “I’m going to get off this morning. I’ll stop at a McDonald’s on the way home. I’m fine.”

“Suzie, you can stay as long as you want.”

“Honestly,” she says. “I need to go.”

Christine seems unsure. Suzie can understand her feelings. Here, on the sofa in the living room, she can be watched. She can be gently spoken to and nursed. She can be persuaded of the benefits of chalking Saturday night down to experience, and keeping her bloody mouth shut.

“Really,” says Suzie, stretching. “You’ve been good to me. I’m okay to go.”

Christine still looks worried, but she forces her lips into a tight smile. “I’ll make you a sandwich for the journey,” she says, and takes the empty glass from Suzie’s hand before heading back to the kitchen.

Suzie rummages around in her thigh boot and finds her watch. It’s just gone lunchtime. A McDonald’s breakfast is out of the question.

She fell asleep just after three, just as the last vehicle left the grounds, and as news filtered back from the hospital that Jarod had a fractured skull but was going to be okay. He’d been smashed across the head with a branch. It has been disposed of. Suzie did not have much to say about that, or anything else. She was on the sofa, knees curled up beneath her, sucking an ice cube, some of Christine’s hand cream turning the redness of her rope-burned neck into something ghoulishly shiny.

Last night is coming back to her in stages. Nobody had wanted to call the police. There had even been dissenting voices when Big Dunc said he was going to take Jarod to hospital. Were it not for the fact that she could barely swallow and that her heart was still racing, as if to justify its reprieve, she would have found the discussions of the previous evening comical. Even in her dazed, drunken, semi-throttled state, she could feel a bizarre giggle building inside herself as she took in the scene. A score of men and women—some in white dressing gowns, like Greek philosophers, and others with towels around their waist. One man entirely naked, sitting on the edge of a wicker chair with his shrunken manhood sitting on his balls like a hat. Jarod laid out on the patio in a mess of mud and blood. Angry voices and fist-shaking accusations.

The man who carried her back to the house said his name was Matt. He was a chartered accountant from Bradford, and spoke with a thick West Yorkshire accent. He did not let her go until she was ready. Held her in his arms as if comforting a child. Placed one large hand over her left ear and pressed the other ear to his chest, while the argument raged about what had happened and what should be done.

Suzie does not judge the others for wanting to keep their secrets. Few would be proud to have their names and addresses taken by detectives in connection with an attempted murder at a sex party. Fewer still would want their lives pored over by sniggering police officers, or their wives and partners to be questioned over their movements and bedtime habits.

Suzie’s attacker had not been found. Whoever it was disappeared into the shadows with barely a sound; the shouts of pursuers roused the rutting couples who were enjoying the party, and resulted in a hastily convened, babbling argument in the conservatory about what was for the best.

“My life will be over! This can’t get out. There’ll be interviews. Police. The papers. My wife!”

“It’s about right and wrong. Somebody’s attacked him. He could die!”

“No, it’s too important. Secrecy, remember. That’s what the website says. Discretion assured.”

“This changes things. It’s life and death. It could be one of us.”

“He probably slipped. She might have had too much to drink. It might even be her who did it.”

Like a tennis umpire, she watched the debate go back and forth. At length, they had convinced Suzie that her attacker was probably a local teenager. Big Dunc revealed that their website had received a few e-mails from youngsters who had heard there was a sex club upon their doorstep, promising to pay a visit next time there was a party. Suzie had merely nodded. Kept her own counsel. Swallowed painful mouthfuls of blood and picked the dirt from between her teeth.

Here, now, she knows. Knows full well that she has been running from her own thoughts. Knows that Simon did not hang himself. That she never truly believed that he did. Simply refused to let her fears take her to a conclusion that terrified her. She knows, more than anything, that whoever killed him is now after her.

Filling herself with a deep, painful breath, she rummages through her handbag and finds her phone. It has been switched off for days. She half expects her hands to tremble as she turns it on, but is surprised to find that she is in control. She feels detached somehow. Not numb, but somehow separated from what she is doing. She did not feel her soul leave her body as her attacker strangled her, but now she almost feels as if she were looking down on herself from above.

Suzie disentangles her legs from the quilt. She is still wearing the dressing gown. Somebody has brought her clothes from the side of the hot tub, but she is in no mood to dress as yesterday. She stuffs them in her handbag after removing a long blue dress, spotted with snowflakes and with an owl on the left breast. She pulls it on and wriggles her feet into her boots as the phone begins beeping. Spewing out messages and missed calls.

Closing her eyes, preparing herself, she moves to the conservatory door and slides it open. Takes a lungful of cool, fresh, air. Plugs back into her life against a soundscape of chattering birds and scraping gravel.

The message she seeks was sent ten minutes after the car plowed into the man she had been ordered to fuck.

So sorry. Can’t make it. Will you still go play for me and tell me how he touched you? Wish I could see what a dirty girl you are. Xx

Suzie swallows again. Sneers, ever so slightly, and makes fists with her hands.

His next message was sent early the following morning.

Were you a bad girl last night? Xx

Then:

You’ve gone quiet on me. Did you pussy out on me? Are you a tease?

There is a hiatus of a few hours. Then, angrily:

Knew you would be just like the others. Knew you were all talk.

She scrolls on. Finds his next missive.

Sounds like you had a lucky escape. Bad accident at the rest stop. Lucky girl. x

Finally:

May make an appearance at the party you mentioned. Lincolnshire, you said. Googled it and sounds a ball. Would I be welcome? x

Suzie stares out across the fields. Watches a fat, purple-throated pigeon walk delicately along the wooden fence. Squints, and wonders if the brown creature she can see near the hedgerow is a rabbit or somebody’s discarded UGG boot from the night before.

She sifts through her other messages. Nothing from the police about the accident, but plenty of inquiries from work, from friends, about where she is and what she’s doing. A Facebook alert from her mum.

Her eyes close, almost involuntarily. The sensation of dislocation is dissipating. She is coming back to herself, guided by the pain in her throat and the cold emptiness in her gut. She is unsure, right now, how she feels about herself. She knows that she has let Simon down by accepting his suicide without question. Believes herself to have cheapened their memory by giving in to fear, and never demanding a less palatable truth.

It was the shabbiness of his life that Simon hated. The smallness of it. The inability to shine as brightly or as brilliantly as he wanted to. But such miseries would not claim his life. No, he was killed by somebody he wanted to make happy, and Suzie wants to cry at the thought.

“Somebody wants to kill me, Si,” she says, under her breath. “Somebody who killed you.”

She opens eyes that threaten to fill with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“Beg your pardon, love?” Suzie turns. Christine has entered the conservatory with a fat ham sandwich and a mug of tea. “Made you a little something,” she says, putting it on the stout table that has been cleared and wiped down sometime between the party and today.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think . . .”

“You need to eat,” she says. She puts an arm out and gives Suzie a squeeze. “Lovely dress,” she says.

Suzie can barely find the strength to smile. She wants to run suddenly. Wants to get away from these old people, with their sagging flesh and foul-tasting skin and their desperation to touch her and make themselves feel alive. She hates herself now. Hates seeing herself as this link to vitality. This young sacrifice being fawned and pored over, tongued and tasted, by men and women fleeing the grave. She feels disgusted with herself. Here, now, she feels the wrong kind of dirty. Feels the wrong sort of whore.

“I have to go,” she says, bundling out of the conservatory door, spilling yesterday’s knickers from her bag as she fumbles for her car keys.

“Dunc!” Christine is shouting her husband’s name. “Dunc, she’s going . . .”

The big man appears suddenly from behind a white-painted outbuilding. He is all smiles.

“You off, sweetie? There’s no rush. I’ll give you a lift later . . .”

Suzie can’t think of anything to say. She just pushes past him. Runs to where her crappy blue car is parked on a patch of grass. Pulls open the door and climbs inside, willing the engine to work. Now her hands tremble as she turns the key, and she laughs with relief as it bursts into life.

She turns the car in a ragged semicircle, scattering the neatly raked gravel, and puts her foot down. She feels alive suddenly. And so very scared of death.

The trees and hedgerows fill her windows as the car bumps and jerks down the rutted path. She is barely looking at the road. Instead, she fiddles with her phone. Scrolls through her numbers. Finds the number she could have called six months ago.

Rings the auntie of her dead friend.

Doesn’t even manage a hello.

“Simon was murdered,” she says.

And in this moment, a sluice gate opens inside her. The tears finally come.