Beneath the Skin (34 page)

“What do you think will happen?”

She lit yet another cigarette.

“He’s escalating,” she said. “The first murder was almost opportunistic. He probably didn’t even look at her face, as if he wanted to eliminate her individuality. The second was far more violent and invasive. It’s a characteristic pattern. The crimes become more violent and uncontrolled. The perpetrator gets caught.”

I suddenly felt as if a cloud had passed over the sun. I looked up. It hadn’t. The sky was a beautiful blue.

“That should be helpful to the person after next that he picks on.”

We both got up to leave. I looked round at Lynne and she avoided my gaze. I turned back to Grace.

“How do you feel about the last couple of months?” I asked. “Are you pleased with the way you’ve conducted the inquiry?”

She picked up her sunglasses, her keys, and her cigarette packet.

“I gave up smoking—when was it?—five years ago, I think. I keep going over and over and thinking what I could have done different. When he’s caught, maybe I’ll know.” She gave a rueful smile. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking for your sympathy.” She took something out of her pocket and offered it to me. It was a business card. “You can call me anytime.”

I took it and looked at it in the pointless, polite way one does.

“I don’t think you’d be able to get there in time,” I said.

When I was at college, supposedly learning how to be a grown-up and ready for the real world, I had a friend who died of leukemia. Her name was Laura, and she had tiny feet, cheeks like rosy apples, and a dirty laugh. She got ill in her first year and died before her finals. We got used to the fact of her death and her absence from us horribly quickly, remembering her occasionally in jolts of shame and sentimentality, but I thought a great deal about Laura now. In a strange and entirely unwelcome way, I felt closer to her—and to Jenny and Zoe, women I’d never met—than I did to my living friends.

Even Zach and Janet felt distant to me. They seemed appalled, yet almost embarrassed, by my situation. They rang me up too often but didn’t come round often enough, and when we did meet there was nothing we could properly talk about, because I was in the shadow and they were in the sunlight. We were self-conscious together. It was as if I had gone beyond them, into some other place that they could not enter and I couldn’t exit. I remembered with a shiver that Laura had said the same kind of thing, toward the end, when it was obvious to all of us that she wasn’t going to make it. She had said, or shouted, rather, that she felt as if she had gone into a waiting room, and soon the door on the other side of it would open for her and she’d have to go through. I remembered the shudder of terror I had felt when she’d said that. I had imagined the door opening out onto pitch black, and stepping out of a lit and furnished room into the empty abyss.

Laura had gone through all the stages you’re supposed to go through when you’re confronting the fact of death: disbelief and anger and grief and terror and finally a dazed, numbed kind of acceptance—perhaps because she was so worn down by the treatment and by the lurches between hope and despair. One night after she had died, a group of us had had an ugly argument, fueled by too much to drink, about whether she could have lived, or lived longer, if she had struggled more, rather than giving up and letting go. In the past, the image of letting go had for me been one of a hand gently uncurling from the hand of a beloved; now, after seeing the photos and case notes, it was more of two hands clinging to a ledge until a heavy boot stamps them off. Someone said she should have fought harder, as if it was Laura’s fault that she had died, not just brutal bad luck.

I was going to fight. I didn’t know if it would make the smallest bit of difference, but that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t going to cower in blind terror in a fucking waiting room, staring at the door in the opposite wall, feeling only the heart-thumping, mouth-drying, stomach-churning, blinding, dehumanizing dread I’d been feeling for the last few days. I’d seen the photographs, the case notes. I’d talked to Grace. I didn’t have much faith in Links and Cameron, partly because I sensed they didn’t have much faith in themselves and, without ever admitting it, they were waiting for me to die. So I was left with me. Just me. And I have always hated waiting.

One thing was certain. I couldn’t go on sitting in my flat any longer, hiding from Lynne and from my own fear. The odd thing was that Lynne and I were still not talking about my possible death. It was a taboo subject. We only discussed plans, functional things like where I was going to go, and where she should wait for me. We no longer ate meals together, not even takeaway chips or toast at breakfast. I had stopped treating her like a semi-guest, a nearly-friend.

The day after I met Grace Schilling I went ice skating with Claire, who was a resting actress and usually more resting than acting. She could skate backward and do those twizzles that make your head spin. Lynne and another policewoman sat morosely on the side and watched me smashing into young children, toppling them like nine pins, and falling over myself in a wild flailing of arms and legs. Then, later the same day, I invited myself to Zach’s and told him to get other friends round, which he obediently did. Lynne waited outside while we ate tacos and I drank too much red wine and made loud and stupid jokes, and only tipped myself back into the waiting car at two in the morning. And all the time, even when I was flooding my body with alcohol or flirting with a man called Terence who was clearly gay and embarrassed by me, I was trying to think what to do next. Grace had said that people like this man were always several steps ahead: more focused, more determined, more persistent. I wanted to get a step ahead of him.

The next morning I woke with a splitting headache and a dry mouth. I felt queasy, and when I drew the curtains, the light was like a shaft of pain boring through my eye sockets. I staggered to the kitchen and drank two tumblers of water, ignoring Lynne’s sympathetic, mildly reproachful expression. Then I made a large pot of tea and returned to my bedroom, carrying it. I sat cross-legged on my bed, wearing a tatty gray vest and a pair of sweatpants, and stared at my reflection in the long wardrobe mirror. I was looking at myself much more often these days, I suppose because I no longer took myself for granted. Shouldn’t I look different, thinner and more tragic? As far as I could tell, nothing about me had changed from the outside. There I was, just a small woman with freckles over the bridge of her nose, unbrushed hair, and a hangover.

The doorbell rang and I heard Lynne answer. I listened, but I could make out only a few muttered words. Then there was a knock on my bedroom door.

“Yes?”

“There’s someone who’s come to see you.”

“Who?”

There was a fractional hesitation on the other side of the door.

“Josh Hintlesham.” Lynne lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Her son.”

“Oh my God. Hang on.” I jumped off the bed. “Tell him to come in.”

“Are you sure? I don’t know what Links would—”

“I’ll be through in a minute.”

I rushed into the bathroom, swallowed three acetaminophen for my headache, splashed cold water over my face, and scrubbed my teeth vigorously. Josh. The boy on the window seat with teenage acne and Jenny’s dark eyes.

I went into the living room and held out my hand.

“Josh, hello.”

His hand was cold and limp in mine. He didn’t meet my gaze but muttered something and stared at the floor.

“Can you wait outside, in the car, Lynne?” I said.

She left, casting an anxious gaze back over her shoulder as she closed the door behind her. Josh shifted nervously from foot to foot. He was wearing a tracksuit that was a bit too small for him, and his greasy hair flopped over his eyes. Somebody needed to take him shopping, tell him to take a bath and wash his hair and use deodorant. I couldn’t see Gloria doing that.

“Coffee or tea?” I asked.

“I’m all right.” His voice was a mumble.

“Juice?” Though come to think of it, I didn’t have any juice in the fridge.

“No. Thanks.”

“Sit down.”

I gestured to the sofa.

He perched uncomfortably on one end, while I ground some coffee beans and waited for the kettle to boil. I saw how large his hands and feet were, how bony his wrists. His skin was pale but the rims of his eyes were red. He looked a mess to me, though I hadn’t met a teenage boy in ten years. Any boys over nine were a mystery to me.

“How did you find me?”

“I looked in the Yellow Pages, under ‘Entertainers.’ Christo told me you were a clown.”

“Brilliant.” I sat opposite him with my cup of coffee. “Listen, Josh, I’m sorry about your mother.”

He nodded and shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said. Mr. Cool.

“You must miss her.”

God, why couldn’t I just shut up?

He winced and started to chew one of his nails.

“She didn’t really have much time for me,” he said. “She was always in a hurry, or cross about something.”

I felt compelled to stick up for her.

“I suppose that with three children and the house and stuff,” I said, and pretended to take a sip from my empty cup. Nadia the amateur therapist. “Have you got someone you can talk to about all of this?” I asked. “Friends or a doctor or something?”

“I’m all right,” he said.

We sat in silence and for something to do I poured myself another cup of coffee and gulped it.

“What about you?” he asked suddenly.

“Me?”

“Are you scared?”

“I’m trying to be positive.”

“I dream about her,” he said suddenly. “Every night. I don’t dream of her being killed or stuff. They’re nice dreams, happy dreams all about Mum stroking my hair and hugging me and stuff like that, though she only used to stroke Christo’s hair. She said I was too old for all that now.” He flushed furiously. “It just makes it worse.” Then he said: “Nobody’ll tell me exactly how she died.”

“Josh . . .”

“I can cope with the truth.”

I thought about the photograph of Jenny’s corpse and looked at the awkward brave boy in front of me.

“Quickly,” I said. “She died quickly. She wouldn’t have known what was happening.”

“You’re lying to me as well. I thought you’d tell me the truth.”

I took a deep breath.

“Josh, the truth is: I don’t know. Your mother is dead. She’s out of pain now.”

I was ashamed of myself, but I didn’t know how to do any better. Josh stood up abruptly and started wandering around the room.

“Are you really a clown?”

“An entertainer.”

He picked up my juggling beanbags.

“Can you juggle?”

I took them from him and started to toss them around. He looked unimpressed.

“I meant, really juggle. I know loads of people who can juggle with three balls.”

“
You
try it.”

“I’m not an entertainer.”

“No,” I said dryly.

“I’ve brought you something,” he said.

He crossed the room to his rucksack and fished out a manila envelope.

There were dozens of photographs, most of them taken on holiday over the years. I leafed through them, horribly aware of Josh at my shoulder and of his labored breathing. Jenny very slim and tanned in a yellow bikini on a sandy beach under a slice of blue sky. Jenny in well-pressed jeans and a green polo shirt, in the stiff circle of Clive’s arm and smiling prettily for the camera. She was so much better looking than he was. Jenny with a much younger Josh, hand in hand; holding a bald baby who was presumably Chris; sitting on a lawn surrounded by all three sons. Jenny with long hair, bobbed hair, layered hair. Jenny skiing, crouched neatly forward with poles tucked behind her. In groups, alone.

The one that touched me most was a photograph taken when she was obviously unaware of the camera and no longer wore her watchful look. She was in profile and slightly blurred. There was a strand of glossy hair against her face. Her cheek looked smooth; her lips were slightly parted, and her hand was half raised. She seemed thoughtful, almost sad. Armor off, she looked like someone I could have known after all. Something else hit me like a blade pushed into me: There was something interesting about her. I could see what might have caught someone’s attention. I could imagine her as a woman people could be fascinated by. Oh God.

I laid them down in silence and turned to Josh.

“You poor boy,” I said, and he started crying then, but trying not to: gulping and sniffing and gagging on his grief, and saying “Jesus” under his breath; hiding his head in the crook of his arm. I put a hand on his shoulder and waited, and eventually he sat up, fished in his pocket for a crumpled tissue, blew his nose snottily.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t,” I said. “It’s good she has someone to cry for her.”

“I ought to go now,” he said, gathering up the photographs and pushing them back into the envelope.

“Will you be all right?”

“Yeah.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“I’ll give you my card so if you want to call me, you don’t have to look me up in the Yellow Pages again. Hang on.”

I went to my desk in the bedroom and Josh lounged in the doorway. He was so thin. He looked as if he would fall over if he didn’t have something to lean on. A pile of bones.

“You’re not exactly tidy,” he remarked. Lippy sod.

“True. I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t tidy up for you.”

He grinned in embarrassment.

“And your antique computer,” he observed.

“So I’ve been told.”

I rummaged in the drawers for my business cards.

“Are you on-line?”

“On-line? Not as such.”

He sat down and started tapping at the keyboard. He looked at the screen as if it were a porthole with something comical on the other side.

“How big is your hard disk?”

“You’ve lost me.”

“That’s what it’s all about. You just need more power. This is like a mosquito trying to pull a lorry. You need a system with proper memory.”

“Right,” I said, hoping he’d shut up.