Beneath the Skin (13 page)

I went back to Jeremy, who was helping himself to more coffee from the Hintlesham self-service canteen, as Clive has christened the commune we’re perched in at the moment. The old dears had knocked through left, right, and center, replaced all the paneled doors, hacked out every chimney piece, and hunted every surviving cornice into extinction. I know that everybody was doing that in the sixties, but it looked as if they were trying to pretend they lived in a council flat at the top of an apartment block rather than in a semidetached house on the end of an early Victorian terrace.

Much of the job was restoring the house to a style that suited its history. The only place where I drew the line was in the kitchen. The Victorian kitchen was a place for scullery maids and cooks, and we hoped to do ourselves a little better than that, but I still wanted a period atmosphere. The tricky bit was not to end up with the style that Jeremy calls farmhouse Ikea. I’d made Jeremy redo the plans about eight times. There also happened to be a tricky pillar that we had to work around. I wanted just to take the wretched thing away, but Jeremy said the back of the house would fall down.

We were right in the middle of discussing his latest bit of cleverness when there was a ring at the door. As usual I left it to Lena, since the only people coming into the house were carrying pots of paint or radiators or strange copper pipes. I heard her yelling for me at the top of the stairs. Being shouted at in my own house is an experience I rank alongside chewing tinfoil. I walked up to the ground floor. Lena was standing at the open front door.

“If you’ve something to say to me, could you come and tell me?”

“I did tell you,” she said in an innocent tone.

I gave up and walked toward her. I saw now that there were two policemen in uniform standing on the front step. They looked young and uneasy, like a couple of Boy Scouts who were asking to wash a car and weren’t sure what reception they’d get. My heart sank.

“Mrs. Hintlesham?”

“Yes, yes, it’s very nice of you to come round. But I can’t think that it’s necessary.” They looked even more awkward. “But come in. Since you’re here.”

They both wiped their feet with immense care on the mat before following me inside and down the stairs to the rudiments of our kitchen. Jeremy made a face at me that basically meant, Should I make myself scarce? I shook my head.

“This will only take a minute,” I said. I pointed out the letter where it still lay by the stove. “You’ll see it’s just something stupid. It’s really not worth any trouble. Can I get you some tea or something?”

One of them said, “No, madam,” and the two of them looked down at the note while I got back to work with Jeremy. After a few minutes I looked up and saw that one of the officers had stepped just outside the French windows into the garden and was talking into his radio. The other was looking around at the room.

“New kitchen?” he said.

“Yes,” I said and pointedly turned back to Jeremy. I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation about interior decoration with a junior police officer. The other one stepped back inside. I don’t know whether it was the uniform, or their black boots, or that they’d removed their caps, but they made this really rather large basement room feel small and cramped. “Are you finished, then?” I asked.

“No, Mrs. Hintlesham. I’ve just been talking to someone back at the station. Someone else is going to come over.”

“What for?”

“He wants to have a look at your note.”

“I was actually planning to go out later this morning.”

“He’ll only be a minute.”

I gave a sort of huffing sigh.

“Really!” I said in a reproving tone. “Isn’t this just a waste of everybody’s time?” They answered only with lumpish shrugs that were difficult to argue with. “Are you waiting here?”

“No, madam. We’ll be in the car outside until the detective sergeant arrives.”

“Oh, all right.”

They shambled out shamefacedly. I went up with Jeremy, which was just as well because a tin of National Trust paint in entirely the wrong shade had arrived. One of my main discoveries during this whole horrific process has been that to make sure that the actual things you’ve ordered actually arrive, and then that the actual things you’ve asked to be done with them are actually done, is more than a full-time job. While I was on the phone trying to sort it out with a gormless female at the other end, I heard the doorbell ring and while I was still talking a ratty-faced man in a gray suit was shown into the room. I gestured toward him while trying to get some sense out of, or, to be more accurate,
into
, the woman on the phone. But it’s embarrassing to get cross with somebody you’ve never met while someone else you’ve never met stands right next to you looking expectant. So I brought the call to a close. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Aldham and I took him down to the basement.

He also looked at the note and I heard him swear under his breath and he leaned down very close to it as if he were desperately short-sighted. Finally he gave a grunt and looked up.

“Have you got the envelope?”

“What? Er, no, well, I think I chucked it in the bin.”

“Where?”

“It’s in the cupboard there, by the sink.”

I couldn’t believe it, but he went and pulled the bin out, lifted the top off, and started rummaging in it like some down-and-out.

“I’m sorry. I think there may be tea and coffee grounds in there as well.”

He lifted out a scrunched-up envelope that looked a bit damp and brown and generally worse for wear. He held it very delicately, by a corner, and put it on the side near the letter.

“Excuse me a moment,” he said, and took out a mobile phone.

I retreated across the room and put the kettle on. I heard fragments of his conversation: “Yes, definitely” and “I think so” and “I haven’t talked to her yet.” Apparently from then on it was bad news for Sergeant Aldham. Because his side of the conversation turned into squeaked questions: “What?” “Are you sure?” At last he gave a resigned sigh and replaced the phone in his pocket. His face was red and he was breathing heavily as if he had just jogged here. He was silent for a while.

“Two other detectives are on their way,” he said in a sullen tone. “They would like to interview you, if that’s possible.” Aldham was mumbling now. He looked miserable, like a dog that had been kicked.

“What on earth’s going on?” I protested. “It’s just a silly note. It’s just like an obscene phone call, isn’t it?”

Aldham perked up for a moment.

“Have you had any phone calls?”

“You mean obscene ones? No.”

“Can you think of anything that might be connected with this letter? Other letters maybe, or someone you know—anything?”

“No, of course not. Unless it’s some stupid joke.”

“Can you think of anyone who might play a joke like that?”

I was nonplussed.

“I’m not very good on jokes,” I said. “That’s more Clive’s subject.”

“Clive?”

“My husband.”

“Is he at work?”

“Yes.”

Things were a bit sticky after that. Aldham hung around looking embarrassed. I tried to get on with things, but his doleful, drab face put me off. It was quite a relief when the front doorbell rang, not much more than a quarter of an hour after Aldham had first arrived. I went to answer it and Aldham trailed me in a slightly absurd way. This time the front door was positively crowded. At the front were two slightly more upscale-looking detectives and with them were a couple more uniformed officers and two other people, one of them a woman, coming up the steps behind them. In the street I could see two police cars and two other cars with them, all double-parked.

The older man was balding, with gray hair cut very short.

“Mrs. Hintlesham?” he said with a reassuring smile. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Links. Stuart Links.” We shook hands. “And this is Detective Inspector Stadler.”

Stadler didn’t look like a policeman at all. He looked more like a politician, or one of Clive’s colleagues. He had a smartly cut dark suit, a discreet tie. He was rather striking looking, in a way. A bit Spanish, maybe. He was tall, well built, and had very dark hair that was almost black, combed back. He shook hands as well. He had a curious soft handshake that pressed my palm with his fingers as if he were finding out something about it. It was rather disconcerting. At any minute, I thought, he would lift my fingers to his lips and kiss them slowly.

“There are so many of you,” I said.

“Sorry about that,” Links said. “This is Dr. Marsh. He’s from our forensic department. And he’s brought his assistant, Gill erm . . .”

“Gill Carlson,” said the woman gamely. She was a pretty little thing, in an un-made-up sort of way. Dr. Marsh looked like a scruffy schoolteacher.

“You’re probably wondering why there are so many of us,” Links said.

“Well . . .”

“A letter of the kind that you have received is a kind of threat. We need to assess its seriousness. In the meantime we have to ensure your safety.”

Links had been looking me in the eyes. But with that he slowly shifted his gaze toward Aldham, who began to look even more abjectly embarrassed.

“We’ll take over from here,” he said quietly.

Aldham mumbled something to me. I think it was good-bye. Then he eased his way past us and was gone.

“Why did he come?” I asked.

“A misunderstanding,” said Links. He looked around. “You’ve recently moved in?”

“In May.”

“We’ll try not to cause too much disturbance, Mrs. Hintlesham. I’d like to see the letter and then I’d like to ask you one or two questions and that will be all, I hope.”

“Downstairs,” I said faintly.

“Beautiful house,” he said.

“It will be,” I said.

“Must have cost a bit.”

“Well . . .” I said as a way of not getting into a discussion about property values.

And so, a few minutes later, I found myself sitting at my table with two detectives in the middle of a half-completed kitchen. For reasons that I didn’t remotely understand, the two uniformed officers were wandering around the house and garden. The letter had been read by everybody and then lifted with tweezers and inserted into a transparent plastic folder. The crumpled, sodden envelope was put into a small polyethylene bag. There was one item for each scientist, and they left clutching them.

Before speaking to me the two men whispered to each other, which I found mildly irritating. Then they turned to me.

“Look,” I said. “Can I just say that I don’t think there’s anything remotely I can tell you? It’s a horrible silly letter and that’s all there is to it. I don’t know anything about it.”

The two men looked thoughtful.

“Yes,” said Links. “We’ll just ask a couple of routine questions. You’ve just moved into this house. Did you live in this area before?”

“No. We lived miles away, south of the river, in Battersea.”

“Do you know a school called Laurier?”

“Why?”

Links sat back.

“One of the things we try to do is to establish connections with other threats that may have been made. Do you have children?”

“Yes. Three boys.”

“Laurier is a state primary school just off Kingsland Road in Hackney. Is it possible you ever considered it for your children?”

I couldn’t suppress a smile.

“A state primary school in Hackney? Are you serious?”

The two men exchanged glances.

“Or maybe you’ve met one of the teachers. A woman called Zoe Haratounian, for example.”

“No. What can the school have to do with this letter?”

“There were . . . er, incidents associated with the school. There may be a connection.”

“What sort of incidents?”

“Letters like the one you received. But can we continue with our questions? Has this letter come out of the blue? You don’t connect it with anything else, or any other person, no matter how remotely?”

“No.”

“I would like to assess how many people have access to this house. I see that you’re having work done.”

“That’s right. It’s like Waterloo Station here.”

He smiled.

“Which estate agent did you use?”

“Our house was sold by Frank Dickens. Bunch of sharks.”

“Have you ever used Clarke’s?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe,” I said. “I was looking for ages. I must be on the books of almost every estate agent in London.”

They looked at each other again.

“I’ll check it out,” Stadler said.

One of the officers came down the stairs. Yet another woman was with her. Tall, with long blond hair, some of it up on top of her head, looking as if it had been pinned up by a blind man in a dark room. She was wearing a business suit that looked as if it could do with a run-over from an iron. She was carrying a case and had a raincoat over one arm. She looked harassed and out of breath. Both detectives looked round and nodded at her.

“Hello, Grace,” said Links. “Thanks for coming so quickly.” He turned back to me. “This may seem strange to you. Somebody has picked on you. We don’t know why. We don’t know who this person is, or anything about him. But we have you. We can’t look at his life but we can look at
your
life.”

I felt suddenly alarmed and irritated. This was becoming tiresome.

“What do you mean, look at my life?”

“This is Dr. Grace Schilling. She’s a very distinguished psychologist and she specializes in the psychology of, well, of people who do things like this. I’d be very grateful if you’d talk to her.”

I looked at Dr. Schilling. I expected her to be blushing or smiling at Links’s flattery. She wasn’t. She was looking at me with narrowed eyes. I felt like something stuck to a card with a pin.

“Mrs. Hintlesham,” she said. “Can we go somewhere quiet?”

I looked around.

“I’m not sure there
is
anywhere quiet,” I said with a forced smile.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said as we tiptoed across the room between packing cases toward a sofa. “This is going to be a drawing room in about twenty years.”

She took off her crumpled linen jacket and sat down in the uncomfortable old basket-weave chair. She was tall and slim, with dark blond hair, long thin fingers. No rings.