Skin (40 page)

Gerber breathed out noisily. He turned his head a fraction and stared at Caffery. His face was pale, his lips painfully swollen.

Caffery frowned, puzzled. Something was very wrong here. He took a step forward and swiped up the gun, pointing it at Gerber’s head. Still Gerber didn’t move. If anything his chin hung a little lower, as if it was difficult to keep his head up.

Caffery took another step forward. Then another. Gerber stared at him with his heavy eyes, a drop of saliva gathering on his bottom lip.

Caffery stopped just out of arm’s reach and stood with the gun held out, contemplating the strange little man, with his wiry hair and his pale, flaky-skinned face. Now he was close he could see Gerber was trembling. He waved the gun in his face. Gerber’s eyes followed the barrel dully, but he didn’t move – didn’t try to grab it. The saliva grew into a long string, then broke and dropped on to the floor. Caffery peered at the glob on the walnut floor. There was blood in the saliva. He was beginning to get the first wave of understanding. He raised his eyes to Gerber’s face. ‘What’ve you done?’

‘Fuck off,’ Gerber muttered. He was shaking hard now. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. ‘Fuck off and die.’

His hand lifted slightly, as if to swipe at Caffery, but the effort proved too much and he dropped it on his lap, breathing hard.

And now Caffery could see why. His shirt on the left side, the side that was hidden from the staircase, had a long stain of blood from the collar to the waistband. Caffery leant forward, not so close that Gerber could spit at him or grab him, but close enough to see the wound in his neck.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Look at that.’

The tear in the flesh began at the front, then moved diagonally up and finished at the back of his neck inside the hairline. Caffery could see all the way into the wound, could see the tell-tale dull glint of a bullet lodged in the bone behind the ear.

Gerber’s teeth were chattering.

‘Shot yourself, you cowardly dog turd. You shouldn’t do bad things if you can’t face the consequences. Don’t you know that? Shouldn’t mess with—’

He broke off. He looked at the gun on the floor. Back at the wound. Looked out of the window to the empty swimming-pool, dull and blue in the sun. No. That couldn’t be what had happened. Gerber hadn’t had time to open the cesspit, come back here and attempt suicide. From the cesspit the gunshot might have been inaudible, but from the swimming-pool, where Caffery would have been at the time, he’d have heard it clearly. Especially with the window open. And the blood on the shirt – some of it was dark and crusted. As if it had been there a long time.

He looked out of the window again. Back at Gerber.

‘This is all wrong,’ he murmured, fascinated. ‘All wrong.’

Then, as if in answer, from the front of the house, he heard a thin whine. The noise of a two-stroke engine. A lawnmower. No. It was more contained than that, more like a small scooter.

And then he got it. All at once. Gerber hadn’t opened the inspection cover – he hadn’t been able to. He’d been here all along. Leaking blood on the floor.

Caffery limped as fast as he could back down the steps through the refrigerator room and out into the gravel driveway. In the middle of the lane he stopped and stared south to where the sound was fading. The lane was empty from here to about a hundred yards down where it took an abrupt turn out of sight. The sound of the scooter dwindled in the still air, then was gone, and all he could hear were the birds in the trees.

The Tokoloshe. Amos Chipeta.

Caffery stood in the dappled sunlight, staring at the point where the lane vanished.
What the hell am I supposed to think about you? What the hell do you want?

For no apparent reason, he’d saved Caffery’s life. And in doing so he’d opened a can of shit for himself that might take for ever to shovel away. The hair taken from the corpses was one thing – he’d probably have got away with that – but shooting Gerber? He’d go down just as fast as Gerber would. Even if he’d saved a cop.

But, as life will sometimes have it, when Caffery turned from the quiet lane and limped back inside, up to Gerber’s corridor where the afternoon sun was bathing the floor in a syrupy glow, he found that the tables had turned again.

He found that another door in the story had just opened. And this time it was one both he and Amos Chipeta could slip through like ghosts.

65

Prosecution lawyers sometimes talked to Caffery about the ‘
CSI
effect’ – the way the American TV programme made people, specifically juries, believe forensic science was omnipotent. That there was a test for everything. That if the clue was there the crime-scene officers would automatically find it. The truth, as every law-keeper knew, was that the best forensic scientist was only as good as the investigating officer. All forensic science was intelligence-led, so it was exquisitely easy to manipulate.

Gerber was dead. In the few moments Caffery had been outside, his heart had pumped out the last of its sticky heat and was now motionless and grey, sunk in on itself. Which gave Caffery a chance to change the course of history. He limped around the house recovering his belongings: his phone, his quick-cuffs and pepper spray. Then he spent forty minutes orchestrating the scene: wiping prints, scrubbing at bloodstains, positioning Gerber’s body, so that when the teams arrived he would treat the place as if he was the investigating officer, not the victim, taking the CSI people around and selling them his own very feasible version of events.

The scenario: Gerber had known the net was tightening. He’d dumped Caffery in the cesspit, thinking he was dead, and had ended his own life with the illegal gun he’d kept wrapped in a tea towel in his desk. When Caffery had regained consciousness, he’d found enough of a signal at the top of the ladder in the cesspit to fire off a text to Turnbull. There was no mention of a gun in the text, Caffery didn’t know anything about a gun, he said he’d heard nothing down in the cesspit. It was all a terrible surprise when the teams arrived and released him to see what Gerber had done to himself.

He watched them take Gerber’s body away. When his fingers were tested there’d be gunpowder residue on them. There’d be a stray bullet found in the ceiling of the corridor that must have been fired off reflexively by Gerber after the initial suicide bullet. The only fingerprints on the 45 Hardballer and on the rounds still in it would be Gerber’s. Otherwise it would be clean. The only fibres they’d find on it would come from a tea towel they’d recover from a drawer in his office where he must have been storing it for years. There’d be none of Caffery’s blood or footsteps or fingerprints anywhere above the ground floor, only what he’d left in the break-in – a misdemeanour he’d put his hands up to straight away. There’d be no mention of Amos Chipeta.

Caffery stayed long enough to see the ballistics officers recover the Hardballer from the floor of the corridor. Seven hundred nicker down the drain. Shame. It was an effective gun: ugly, but effective. Given time, it might even find its way back out on to the street. Then he’d have to buy it all over again. Outside he stopped for a moment in the evening sun and looked back at the place, at the manhole cover and the swimming-pool. He thought about Tanzania. What it would be like to grow up deformed and in poverty. What England would look like through Chipeta’s eyes.

Two paramedics stood in the front doorway watching him. They’d been trailing him around the place all afternoon, patiently trying to coax him into the ambulance. Now he gave them a friendly smile and, before they could stop him, got into the Mondeo, lifted the bad leg into the driver’s footwell and started the car. The hospital was twenty miles away. He didn’t need an ambulance. He gave the paramedics a small wave as he pulled out of the driveway. If he could survive what he’d survived today he figured he could manage twenty miles on his own.

66

The call came at half past eight in the evening when Caffery was lying on the bed in A and E, face down, head on his arms, his ripped trousers on the chair next to the bed. He was a cop so they’d triaged and assessed him double-quick. It was a superficial wound, no nerves, ligaments or bones involved, but even so if he wanted his leg to look near-presentable in a year’s time he’d need specialized surgery. He should be admitted. He’d refused. He just wanted to be patched up and get out. So now he had a junior doctor who looked like a surly male catalogue model sitting on the bed behind him, jacking Naropin and sutures into the back of his leg and sniffing loudly at the foul clothes Caffery was still wearing. When the phone rang Caffery had to push himself up on his elbows to get at it in his breast pocket.

‘Yeah – DI Caffery,’ he mumbled.

‘There’s another.’ It was Turnbull. ‘Came in this afternoon. First attending thought it was a suicide and sent it over to the Royal United, but someone in the call centre got thinking about it after work and – bright spark – put it together with our job, did a Crimesnitch number and picked up the phone. It’s the same MO. They found her in her car – pills, knife, same shit as before.’

For a moment Caffery didn’t answer. The doctor had stopped his work and was standing at the head of the bed, arms folded, eyebrows raised at the sign on the wall – a picture of a phone with a line through it. Caffery held up his thumb, giving him a bear-with-me-I-won’t-be-a-minute look, and stuck his finger in his left ear.

‘Yeah, go on. Who is it?’

‘Woman called Lindermilk.’

‘Lindermilk? I’ve seen that name somewhere.’

‘Ruth Lindermilk? Lives out near Farleigh Hall in one of those hamlets we were searching. She was kind of a recluse. You’re going to love who her niece is.
Was
, mind.’

‘Let me guess. It was Mahoney.’

‘No. It was Hopkins.’

‘Christ.’

‘Yes, and Lindermilk had an appointment at the Rothersfield clinic this morning. Surgeon’s name?’

‘Gerber. That’s where I saw her name – in his records.’

‘And meantime,’ said Turnbull, ‘while they’re giving it duhs at the site they found her, another call comes in. Lindermilk’s house has been screwed. Place is trashed.’

‘From when Gerber killed her?’

‘Don’t think so. From her body it seems like she went without a struggle. We’re thinking this happened
afterwards
. He did her, then went back and screwed her house. Just like with Mahoney, ’cept not as discreet.’

‘Who found it?’

‘Lindermilk’s son. He hears what’s happened to his mother and – get this for the calibre of human being we’re dealing with here – because she’s got some property or other he wants before the police seal the place off, he goes straight over and lets himself into the place. He’s got a key apparently. Except when he gets there, someone’s beaten him to it. Nearly catches them too. He hears them jumping out of a window at the back. That’s how close he came.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Two or three hours ago.’

‘Then it can’t have been Gerber.’

‘Lindermilk’s got some history of pissing off the neighbours. Couple of disputes there. Maybe it was one of them.’

The doctor, apparently at the end of his tether, walked out of the cubicle, leaving only a half-stitched wound, a few syringes in the kidney bowl, a blood-soaked sheet and a little sway of the curtain to prove he’d been there.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Turnbull said.

A huge wave of tiredness came over Caffery. He didn’t think he had it in him to get up and keep going. He wanted to eat, drink and sleep. Nothing else. ‘Dunno,’ he muttered thickly. ‘Where’s the body?’

‘Up at the mortuary. We’re waiting to hear when the PM’s going to be. The CSI are heading down to the house now. Do you want to have a look at it?’

Caffery inched his legs around, easing them carefully off the bed. He waited a moment or two for his head to stop spinning, then looked around for the call button. ‘I’ll be there, just as soon as I can find a doctor in this place.’

67

The first thing Caffery noticed was how near to Farleigh Park Hall Ruth Lindermilk’s place was. In fact, now he thought about it, he remembered driving past the hamlet only a few days ago. He got a rush of adrenalin as he pulled off the road and parked behind the marked police cruiser outside the bungalow. No way Misty Kitson could have been on Gerber’s list too? No. That would be too, too neat. Wouldn’t it?

First things first. Check out the burglary. Then think about Misty. He looked around. The scene-of-crime guys’ cars were lined up by the bottom of the road and one or two neighbours were standing in the dark lane, arms folded, coats over their shoulders, trying to get a glimpse of what was going on inside. Someone had put screens outside Lindermilk’s front door. Maybe that was why the rest of the village were so interested.

He’d been given an antibiotic shot, packets of hospital pharmacy tramadol and codeine. They’d send him to sleep so for now he was sticking to ibuprofen 400s and a top-up of paracetamol. Giving into a rare burst of professionalism, he’d stopped at his cottage to dump his suit in a bag for the CSI guys. Now he was in black jeans and a black nylon warm-up jacket, but the limp still gave it away. That, and the swollen nose and the way his face creased every time he put weight on his foot. The district officer waiting for him in the house came forward, hands out instinctively to help him along the path.