Original Skin (33 page)

“Suzie.”

Shirt torn, bleeding from the nose, McAvoy is standing in the doorway. He gives her a bone-weary smile.

“You okay?”

“Did you get her?”

“Are you okay, Suzie?”

She nods. Breathes, deep and slow. “Please . . .”

“We’ve got them both, Suzie. It’s a mess . . .”

JULY, IT WAS.
Evening. A Sunday. Halfway through some costume drama on BBC One. A bottle of wine already drained and gravy-streaked dinner plates daringly abandoned on the coffee table.

That was when Paula Tressider took the call that made her a killer.

Four and a half rings, then a weary hello: warm plastic receiver against fleshy cheek.

TV on pause and a shared look of exasperation . . .

Five whole seconds of silence, then a male voice. She didn’t recognize it at first. Had not heard it say very much the only time they met. Just a few grunts and a thank-you.

Clipped West Yorkshire tones . . .

“You might not remember me. I remember you. Huddersfield, it was. Some enchanted evening. Does your sweetheart know how you spend your evenings?”

Thirty seconds more.

No words, save his breathing.

“I think you have the wrong number . . .”

The laugh. The snuffling, nasal sniggering.

“No, I’ve got you. Was a surprise, like. Didn’t think somebody in your position would be in the phone book. Then again, I didn’t think somebody in your position would do the things I saw you do . . .”

Cold fear in a churning belly.

White roses blossoming on red flesh.

“I’m sorry, would there be a better time for you to ring to discuss this more fully? Perhaps if you left me your number, I could contact you at a more convenient time . . . ?”

No laughter this time. Just ice in his voice.

“I’ll call you. I’ll call again, and again, and then I’ll call somebody else. I’ll tell. I’m sorry to be doing this. I really am.”

A moment’s consideration. Eyes closed, hiding from it all. Memories folding inward over everything else, like petals at dusk.

“Tomorrow. Call me tomorrow.”

A wordless nod.

Click.

A week without food. Of hands trembling and broken sleep. Needing a piss every thirty bloody seconds. Throwing up the wine that brought such feeble relief. Snapping at every gentle inquiry. Swearing at every question over health and happiness . . .

He called back, of course. The other man.

Midday, it was. Friday. Sweetheart at the shops.

Alone in the house. Glass knocking against the receiver; clutched in shaking hands.

“You ready to talk now?”

A nod. Then a deeper, more assertive reply.

“I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

His smile.

“No? That’s fine, then. I’d probably get plenty of money from the papers. I’m only calling you out of courtesy.”

“That’s what you want, is it? Money? What makes you think I’d pay? Or that I could?”

Scorn, then. A note of uncertainty? A diversion from the script . . .

“You’ve got more than me. Everybody’s got more than me.”

Resisting feebly. Trying to talk him round.

“How do you know it’s a secret? People who know me already know what I like . . .”

“Bollocks. I remember. You told me a dozen bloody times what a risk you were taking. You were slumming it. Roughing it. Playing away, too close to home. You don’t want this coming out. I read the papers. I know what they’re saying about your future. You’re a big deal. And I saw you on top of that pretty little girl with the blossoms, loving every minute of it. Even me, when you let me join in . . .”

Tears. A coughing fit that became puke.

“How much do you want . . . ?”

Click.

Life became timeless. Hours became a shapeless, colorless mass.

Days, nights, all spreading out from that one moment, in the early hours, when her mind was made up.

Broken by tiredness, racked by fear.

Acquiescing to will.

Weighing payment with risk.

Nodding in the dark. Eyes fixed on the ceiling. Tears on cheeks.

Paula Tressider acknowledged what must be done. Decided they all had to die.

•   •   •

HERE, NOW,
in the interview room at Courtland Road Police Station, with the rain thundering down outside and their breaths forming into ragged strips on the cold, damp air, Paula Tressider sobs.

McAvoy prompts gently. Nudges along her confession. Tries to pretend they already know what she is giving up so freely . . .

“I said I would pay,” she says, her voice muffled as she drops her face into her fleshy palms. “Told him to come.”

McAvoy leans forward. “You need to say his name for the tape.”

“Connor,” she says, choking on the word. “Connor Brannick.”

It means nothing to him. He tries not to show it. Feels the breeze as Pharaoh leaves the room, name scrawled on her palm in ballpoint.

Paula is too caught up to notice the sudden absence. Just keeps talking. Sniffing. Wiping away tears with the heel of her hand.

“He came on his motorbike. End of summer. Hot day, I remember that. I could barely keep my hands still. It was real then. Him on the front drive, in his helmet and leathers, asking me if he could put the bike in the garage so the sap from the trees didn’t drip on the paintwork . . .”

“Go on.”

“He was different from how he’d been on the phone. Embarrassed, even. When he took his helmet off, he looked like he was about to cry. Was talking and talking. Said the house was lovely—that his wife would like it. He seemed sorry to be asking me for money. Tried to justify himself by telling me he was struggling. Said he would never do this if he could just get work.”

“Go on, Mrs. Tressider.”

“He was talking so fast. Just gabbling on. He was as nervous as I was. I told him to come through to the back garden, be a bit more discreet. He followed. Saw the pond. Started saying how he could fit lights in it. Saying what a good electrician he was. Would look lovely lit from underneath. I was hardly listening. Managed to tell him the money was in the gazebo. I went to get it.”

“And then what, Paula?”

“I came back with the hammer.”

Pharaoh reenters the room. Slides a warm piece of paper in front of McAvoy.

PARTNER OF MISSING MAN SAYS SHE HAS NOT GIVEN UP HOPE

The common-law wife of a Morley electrician missing for almost eight months has made a renewed appeal for him to come home.

43-year-old Connor Brannick vanished last September. He told his partner, 39-year-old Gwen Simmons, that he was going to price up a new job of work, but never returned home.

Ms. Simmons, the mother of his four-year-old son, Andrew, waited several days before contacting police, as she said it was not unlike him to go away for several days at a time for work.

But as time went on she began to worry, and calls to his mobile phone went unanswered.

Today she told the
Huddersfield Examiner
that after he vanished, she discovered that he had been hiding major financial problems.

She said, “I just wish he’d spoken to me about it. I know everybody’s saying that he’s done himself in, or just run off and left me to it, but I have to cling to the hope that he’s okay and will come home.

“Our son keeps asking where Daddy is. I need him here. It was never about the money. I wish he’d told me how deep a mess we were in. I don’t know what to do next or where to turn. I just want him home.”

Mr. Brannick’s motorcycle, which he was riding when he left the family home, is also missing. Anybody with information should call West Yorkshire Police . . .

McAvoy looks up. “His body?”

Paula raises her head long enough to glare at him, then the flicker of defiance is gone. She looks away. “In the pond.”

“You smashed his skull in?”

Paula nods.

“For the tape, please?”

“Yes.”

For a moment there is silence in the room. Then McAvoy says the name that has brought them here. “Simon Appleyard.”

Paula turns to the gray-suited solicitor who sits to her left, and who has done nothing but polish his glasses on his tie since she told him to shut up and let her speak.

“The magazine.”

McAvoy nods. “The
Journal
. The advert.”

“They were both there. Him and her. The boy Stephen found for us and the girl he brought. Their tattoos, mocking me, like she did that night. The night she made me take the mask off . . .”

McAvoy licks his teeth. “Mrs. Tressider, do you really believe that either Simon Appleyard or Suzie would ever have tried to blackmail you? Do you think that even if you became the prime minister’s wife, they would have any notion of who you were, or try and use that to their advantage? Not everybody is like that.”

For the first time, Paula meets his gaze. “Don’t tell me about people. I know what people are. I know what’s under the skin. It’s not pretty. It’s base and it’s desperate, and it takes what it wants . . .”

It is Trish Pharaoh who stops her short, slamming her palm down on the desk.

“Did you kill Simon Appleyard?”

She holds Pharaoh’s gaze. “Yes.”

“And you are responsible for the attack on Georgie-Lee Suthers? On the boy at the swingers party? Repeated attacks on Suzie Devlin?”

“Yes.”

Pharaoh breathes out. Looks the burly, disheveled politician’s wife up and down. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

AS HE WALKS
across the car park in the teeming rain, tired to his bones, aching to his soul, McAvoy considers desire. Wonders at the nature of lust. Pictures Simon Appleyard, naked and holding his own noose, waiting for the stranger who would kill him where he lay. Considers Suzie: still visiting darkened rest stops and opening herself for strangers, even as the bruises burned on her skin.

Thinks of Paula Tressider.

They’d always gone farther afield, she’d told them in her interview. She and Stephen. Had crossed the country to find playmates. She thought Huddersfield was too close to home. Only eighty miles away. Too risky. But she’d been excited. Liberated. Daring. Had thrown herself into the evening and had fun with the young couple with the tattoos. And then the magazine had arrived. The one she’d been so proud of. The photo shoot of her beautiful home. The picture of her and Peter. Her fingers locked around her husband’s. Every inch the politician’s wife. And there, mocking her, in the adverts at the back: skin she had tasted and which had touched her own. She didn’t know when she’d decided to commit murder. Just knew that she had to make sure they could never talk. Knew only that the boy was into being dominated and liked certain websites. Knew, more than anything, he liked to please. Liked words. Liked peacocks. Could be found, and could be persuaded, to contribute to his own death.

“Aector.”

He turns, one hand on the door handle, rain slicking his hair to his face, soaking his already sodden clothes.

Pharaoh runs across the puddle-filled car park. She has her jacket over her head.

“Suzie,” she says, and it is a question.

“She’s okay,” he says. “Roisin’s making a fuss of her. Sounds like they’re having a sleepover.”

“She’s at your house?”

“No. Roisin’s at hers.”

“The kids.”

“There, too.”

“And where are you going?”

McAvoy looks at her for a while. Watches the rain run down her face. Sees the black mascara pool in her eyes. Sees himself on her pupils.

“What was all this for?” he asks, raising his voice above the noise of the rain.

Pharaoh gives him an encouraging smile. “We’ve got a confession. We’ve solved a murder.”

“Nobody knew it was a murder.”

“Does that matter? You knew.”

“Why did I do this?” he asks, and she cannot tell if it is rain or tears that spills down his face.

“
’
Cause you’re one of the good ones.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t feel any better for it.”

“Is that what you thought would happen?”

“I don’t know. I feel worse.”

“Oh, Aector, it’s not your fault. You’re the one that did things right. She’d have killed Suzie, you know that. Tressider had a weak heart. He kept it secret. Thought it would ruin his political chances. You heard her. That’s why she turned to Hepburn.”

The affair had started a little more than a year ago. Her husband had introduced them at a civic function. Mentioned they had done a little business together, and then left them to share a quiet corner and glasses of tasteless white wine. Hepburn had been vibrant, larger than life. Exciting. Flirty. She had thought he was gay until he asked to smell her perfume and then licked her jawline all the way to her mouth. Had found herself a secret life she did not know she wanted, and to which she became addicted.

For a moment McAvoy and Pharaoh could do nothing but look at each other, trying to see a better kind of sense in the other’s approach to crime. They turn as they hear a car door slam, a soft, mechanical sound barely audible over the rain.

They peer over at the side street that leads to the front entrance of the police station. Dressed in a T-shirt that clings to his skin and a pair of nondescript trousers, they almost do not recognize Stephen Hepburn. His shoulders are slumped. He is looking back over his shoulder at the car he has parked haphazardly on a curb.

He pauses now. Standing by the barrier that blocks the entrance to the staff car park.

“News travels fast,” says Pharaoh.

McAvoy is already moving toward the distant figure. He does not bow his head in the face of the gale. Takes the cold and the rain upon his face without complaint or evasion.

Hepburn sees him coming. Straightens himself. Pulls the damp material from his skin. Pushes a hand through his hair and then drops his arms to his side. They hang there, awkward and limp.

“Is it true?”

Hepburn’s voice is a tremble.

McAvoy stands in front of him, saying nothing. Looks the smaller man up and down. Tries to place this ragged, unremarkable man at the scene of so many stories. Imagines him, for the briefest of moments, rutting with Paula Tressider on the Welton hillside. Imagines him at his keyboard, persuading sexed-up strangers to meet them in hotel rooms and car parks. Remembers the arrogant, cocksure man who curled his lip in halfhearted contempt when McAvoy told him he was investigating a murder.

“Please,” says Hepburn. “Paula. Did she kill the boy? The one from the party?”

McAvoy looks him up and down. Stares into eyes filled with bewilderment and tears.

“You really didn’t know,” he says, and it is not a question. “You just didn’t give a damn, did you?”

Hepburn opens his mouth to speak.

McAvoy silences him with a shake of his head.

“She didn’t just kill
him
, Councillor. The man who joined you that night in Huddersfield. She did him in, too. She killed anybody who might tell about the time she took her mask off.”

A stream of water falls from the end of Hepburn’s nose.

“I didn’t know,” he begins, before protestation gives way to self-preservation. “I had nothing to do with it . . .”

McAvoy works his jaw in a slow circle, then clenches his teeth. “You won’t be charged,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what we could make stick. I don’t know if there’s even a charge for what you’ve done. I don’t even know how I feel about you. I don’t know if you’ve done anything wrong. I just know you’ve got away with something and I hope you never forget that.”

Hepburn looks up into McAvoy’s brown eyes. Sees himself mirrored, fuzzy and indistinct. A dark, shadowy thing, blurred by the storm.

“I just wanted to play.”

McAvoy walks away. Is grateful that the rain running into his mouth tastes so foul. It gives him a legitimate reason to spit.

“All of it,” says McAvoy quietly, as he returns to his car to find Pharaoh waiting, soaked to the skin. “Trying to run Suzie over. Attacking her at the party. Smashing the lad over the head and trying to throttle her. She did all of it just to make sure nobody told.”

“I think she got a taste for it,” says Pharaoh, choosing not to ask him what he said to Hepburn. “I think she started pushing the boundaries. Maybe this became another game. I don’t believe that shit about burying the past.”

“What’s going to happen, d’you think?” He asks the question cautiously, as if walking on breaking ice. “Politically, I mean.”

Pharaoh purses her lips. The bandage on her neck is sodden with rain and she reaches up to smooth it back down. “I think we’ll be okay. We did it with kid gloves, didn’t we? Kept it off the books. Had a look and then got a result.”

“We should go and see him,” says McAvoy. “Now. He’ll want to talk.”

Pharaoh holds his gaze. “You think he knew?”

McAvoy nods. “I think he threw the phone where I would bloody find it. I think I was cheaper than hiring a private detective.”