Under Your Skin (14 page)

Today, 10:50 a.m already, well into Gok Wan’s Spring Trends and I’ve hardly thought about it once.

She is wearing glasses, too. I don’t think she was yesterday. Blimey, did she not even have time to put in her contacts?

“So, we have no witnesses. I’ve got that absolutely on Perivale’s authority. He’s not pissing about anymore. I can’t bear it when police start mucking about with limited disclosure. It’s so sodding tactical. Just being silly buggers for the sake of it.”

I like her, I realize. It’s the swearing that swings it.

“And CCTV: they’ve got none. Nada. Zilch. There aren’t any at Fitzhugh Grove, and the ones at Tesco Express on Balham High Road are on a twenty-four-hour loop, so have already been wiped. I expect he’s narked off about that.”

“So much for all that following the left wall, pretending he was at Hampton Court.”

“Did he tell you that?”

I nod.

“Silly sod. Yeah. No. But you need to get back to him with an alibi for the eighth of Feb.—if it turns out you were in Honolulu for the entire day, all well and good.”

“I’m not sure that I
was
in Honolulu.”

“Also, he has no murder weapon. They’ve turned Ania Dudek’s flat inside out. They’ve searched the common. Yesterday, they went through your house with a fine-tooth comb. Guess what? No murder weapon there either.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. Wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. He had a warrant.
Your cleaner was there incidentally. She wasn’t happy about them keeping their shoes on. They’re looking for a bit of a string basically. Anyway, he found not a thing. No murder weapon. And not this St. Christopher he’s obsessed with. Also”—she turns her steady gaze on me—“they have no confession. It’s what he wants: a confession. It’s what he’s depending on.”

“Well, he’s not going to get one.”

She is still looking closely at me. “Excellent. So, Gaby—if I may call you Gaby?—all his evidence is circumstantial. Plus the fact that you have an incomplete alibi for the murder. That is right, isn’t it? I know it’s hard because of the time frame. They’re not quite sure what time she was killed. The heating was on high in the flat, which muddies the issue. But no one was with you the entire time?”

“My daughter and the nanny were in bed. I went for a run at some point. And my husband didn’t come home until the early hours.”

“Yeah.” She consults her notes. “Perivale has spoken to your nanny, who thinks you were in all evening, though she is not sure. Your husband has corroborated that he was also out. He was at work and at a dinner. His alibi, were one to need it, is pretty solid, a list of colleagues and clients and waiters. He says you were asleep when he came in. Is there anything you can think of that might go some way to explaining . . . ? To be honest, it’s the receipt. Everything else—well, it would take a barrister two seconds to dismantle the Italian-soil malarkey. Sounds fancy, but there’s a garden center just across the way. Bet it’s awash with Tuscan loam. Your theory that she was your stalker is also interesting. But the receipt? I won’t lie to you—it bothers me.”

I tell her that I have thought about it a lot, that I have spent most of the night thinking about it. “Two people could have had access to my card. My husband—but he is never back that early. It is just an absurd thought that he might have been at Tesco Metro in the
late afternoon.” I give a hollow laugh. “And the other person is our nanny. It would be such a simple explanation. I’m not saying she killed her, just that she might have known her. It would tie into everything. She says she doesn’t, didn’t, but if she is lying, everything could be explained. The clothes: Marta could have given them to her. The newspaper articles: well, I don’t like thinking it, but maybe, if Ania was her friend, they were both intrigued by my job . . . whatever. Or they were collecting them to show someone else.”

Caroline Fletcher nods. “Go on.”

“As for the receipt, she could have taken my credit card. I, you know, sometimes leave it out. If I’ve been on the phone and needed it . . .”

“What about the PIN?”

“It’s two-five-oh-three, my wedding anniversary.”

“I’m not asking for the number.” Rather comically, she puts her hands over her ears. “Could she have known it?”

“She could have seen me key it in—at Pizza Express or somewhere. She’s been with me a few times when I’ve used it. If she is lying about all this, maybe she has something to hide.”

Caroline Fletcher has been watching me carefully. She is holding her glasses on the tip of her nose and has been looking over them. Reading glasses, then, not contacts. She closes her notebook now and nods. She says I am to leave it with her and not to worry. “The most important thing is to get you out of here. They can’t keep you for longer than thirty-six hours without charging you. They’ve only got until one o’clock to make this stick.” She looks at her watch. “Less than an hour.”

•   •   •

I’m back to pacing, only this time not in my head. Up and down the pathetic little cell—a new one. Up and down. I pretend I am at a step class. I am using the bench. I’ve got a stupid song spooling
in my head: “Build me up, Buttercup . . .” It’s one of the numbers they used to play during weekend aerobics sessions at the Harbor Club. Why on earth am I a member of the Harbor Club? The prissy women on reception and the mothers in their skintight Lycra and the screamingly spoiled alpha brats in the pool, and the Nikkei indexed fathers
thrashing
the living daylights out of each other on the indoor all-weather tennis courts . . . Philip was so keen, but why did I go along with it? I’ve let myself be sucked into his world.

PC Morrow lets herself in, poking her head round the heavy door, like someone checking to see if their baby is awake. “Let’s be having you, then,” she says.

I don’t want to know what is happening. I don’t want to ask. For the few minutes that it takes to walk along the corridor, and up some steps and into the room where Caroline Fletcher and Perivale are waiting, I can pretend that it is all going to be fine, that Steve will be idling out there in the street, and in a minute I will be gone, leaving this horror, this nightmare behind, speeding away like Jackie Kennedy whisked off in her motorcade in Dallas. The alternative is too dark to contemplate.

“Your bag—check it. I wouldn’t trust any of them in here as far as I could throw them.”

The bag Philip gave me is sitting on the table. It takes a few seconds for her words to sink in. My hands are shaking so much I can hardly unzip it. I’ve no idea what it contains. My nervous system is in pieces. I rummage, but no electrical impulses connect. I push my sleeves up my arms to try and get sensation back, but my brain isn’t charging. I could be fondling my phone, my purse, my Dodo Universal Organizer, a gaggle of Tampax, or I could be massaging the sort of wadding they use in medical dressings.

“All there,” I say, because it is easier than saying anything else.

“Right.” Caroline Fletcher stands. “Perivale?”

He looks glum. He intones, almost mechanically, “You are
bailed pending further enquiries. Don’t go on any long journeys. You are free to leave.”

The relief is, for a moment, almost as unbearable as the dread. I make a noise that is a bit like a gasp and a bit like a sob.

He can’t drop it, though, Perivale. He can’t let it go. He has to have the last word.

“Scratches have healed, I see.”

•   •   •

Oh, it is a learning curve. The 219 is what I need. PC Morrow is a walking encyclopedia on bus routes. I could get the 319 and change, or the 432b or something, but that goes “round the houses.” I always thought that was the point of a bus, but there you go. The 219 is a bit of a walk, but, “It’s a nice sunny day. It’ll clear your head.” Caroline Fletcher would have driven me, only her car was in the garage, having its suspension sorted. (That’s why she was discombobulated. There’s an explanation for everything if you wait long enough.) And then on the bus, it’s a flat fee these days. Who knew? And they don’t like giving change. I had to rummage around in my bag as the bus lurched off to dig out the right coins. Everybody else seemed to have an Oyster card. In my new life, I am going to get an Oyster.

When you walk out of the cinema and you aren’t expecting it still to be light, it’s as if the world has spun a whole cycle without you knowing. For those first few moments, as you go down the steps or the escalator, the day itself is a surprise—even if you are only looking at it through the windows of the Southside Shopping Center. Well, that feeling of wondrous incredulity is what my liberty feels like. Clapham Junction is a great bright, brilliant ball of activity. The low sun catches the shop windows. A row of awnings is as jaunty as bunting. Wads of pink cherry blossom bunch over the walls of back gardens. Across the common, where the light turns hazier, trees show tips of acid green against the Chelsea-blue sky.

In the bottom of my bag, I have found one of Millie’s school hair ties and I’ve pulled my hair back into a ponytail. My lips are dry and cracked; I keep licking them, which makes it worse. My eyes, shrunken and puffy, hurt when I move them. It’s busy—all these people with their bags of shopping, a lad in a school uniform next to me eating fried chicken from a box, but no one spares me a peep. No nudging or sideways glancing.

I’m desperate to see Millie and speak to Philip. I should wait until I’m home, but I can’t. My worries about our marriage seem to have been swept away by the enormity of what has just happened. I need to hear his voice, even if I can’t speak openly yet. And then, as soon as I know she is out of lessons, I’ll ring Clara. I rummage around in my bag. No answering light flickers; perhaps the battery is dead. I search the pockets, feel my way along the lining. I take out the heavier items one by one and then I know for sure: it’s not there.

My first thought is that I need to go back to the police station—I half stand to get off the bus—but my second thought is that I can’t possibly do that. It’s the opposite of what I want to do. I want to get as far away from Perivale as possible. I will have to phone from the landline when I get home. Perhaps they can pop it in the post.

It has knocked a little dent in my relief, but only a little. There’s a stop just past the end of my road and I get off. The magnolia in the garden on the corner seems to have blossomed overnight, unless I just haven’t noticed it before: a spectacle of blowsy magenta cups, the sort of show-off flowers you should have in midsummer, almost indecently magnificent. I pause to bury my nose in a bloom. Honey and lemon with a medicinal note! All the years I have lived in our house and I’ve never smelled it. I don’t normally even walk up this way.

Then I turn the corner. For a fraction of a second, I have time to turn and run, but the fraction multiplies, splits into a million numerators, a trillion denominators, and then it is too late.

The woman in a beige trench coat spots me first. I think she must have moved up the road a bit to have a cigarette. As she sprints toward me, I see her chuck it, still lit, in an arc over her head into the middle of the tarmac. “Gaby! Gaby! What was jail like, Gaby? Gaby!”

She is in my face in seconds. Her skin is yellowy-gray, all perpendicular lines—from her nose to the outside of her mouth, from her mouth to her chin: ventriloquist marks. The rest of the pack is behind her now. Cameras are whirring. Someone is trying to thrust a Windjammer microphone over the lot of them. It’s too late to smile, to turn and glance over my shoulder. It’s full frontal, not slept, bad-hair-day horror.

More shouting. Male voices, pretending they know me. “Gaby. Gaby. This way, Gabs. Any comment, Gabs?” I close my eyes. “The Running of the Bulls” in Spain, filming it for
Panorama
years ago. The noise of the hooves—like standing under a bridge when a train is going over—the muscles straining in the beasts’ necks, the sweat flying off them. People jostling, pulling. Crowd control.

If I push forward, I might get through to the empty pavement beyond, but the throng moves with me, ants transporting a crumb. Aside from the woman in the trench coat, it’s all men in black—black jackets, black Puffas, a sprinkling of fur-trim hood. A king rat. Tails twisted. Some of them are trying to reach me from the other side of the parked cars, round the side, over the top. The scratch of microphone on metal. Thumping of bag on boot.

I should be smiling, half smiling but still sad—humbled by my ordeal, relieved to be out of it—but my muscles have seized. I’m just trying to get through, to get into the safety of the house. It’s how far? Fifty yards. If I can just do that without breaking . . . I mustn’t crumble or cry. What do I need? Dignity, grace. Mournful but plucky. Come on. Order. Control. The life cycle of the frog. The origins of the Second World War. I’ve managed so far. Where is my dignity? Where is my grace?

At the back of my throat a lump is growing, making it hard to swallow. I am losing control of my mouth. It’s trembling and contorting. I want to shout at them to let me pass, but I must keep quiet. I must remain silent.

It’s like a wall. I can’t get through it. All those faces in my face. No one is on my side. The panic rises. I’m back in that cell. Nuclei. Cytoplasm. External gills. Lungs. Images flash through my head: Millie, Philip, Clara, Robin, the people I love. My house—the gate, the front door—is only a few yards now. Stan, smirking, Perivale. I can’t get there. I can’t move at all. I’m twisting and turning.

“Gaby, Gaby, are you free? Gaby?”

It rises, the strength, from deep inside me. It rises and changes color, turns red, and, flickering, enters my blood. “Go away!” I hear myself shout, in an ugly voice that isn’t mine. I am pushing through them. My foot impacts with shin. “Leave me alone, all of you. Just go away.”

•   •   •

Inside, I lean against the door, shut my eyes, and wait. It’s so cold it’s like a smell, the sort of cold that stops you in your tracks. An abandoned house, unlived in. How long have I been gone? A year? A month? No, thirty-six hours exactly. My eyes open; I can’t keep them closed any longer. The noise has abated. A picture of Millie is at an angle on the wall. A faint footprint on the bottom stair.