Skin (44 page)

Moving slowly, clumsily, Flea dropped the body. It hit the ground with a dull thud. She slammed the boot and bent, catching up the package by two corners of the plastic sheeting. Gritting her teeth in concentration, she leant her weight back and began to drag it along the ground, pulling it out of the trees, out into the hazy, reflected moonlight, out in the direction of the water. It bumped and snagged. Once or twice he thought she wasn’t going to be able to get it out of the trees. But she was used to the lumpen weight of a dead body and she fought it. It took her ten minutes to do it, but she dragged it all the way to the edge of the quarry.

She lowered the package close to the ladder, and straightened, digging her hands into the small of her back, circling her head to release the tension. Then something made her stiffen. She turned and looked into the trees.

‘Who’s there?’ She stared in his direction.

Caffery squeezed his nostrils tighter, fighting back the urge to speak. A weight pressed up against his ribcage.

She listened for a moment or two longer. Then, frowning, she began to reassemble her kit, pulling on the fins, leaning back to hitch up the twin tanks, snapping on the jacket.

When she was fully kitted she climbed halfway into the water. Standing on the ladder, one arm wrapped on the rungs, she bumped the body down after her. As it tilted up Caffery could see skin, exposed through the shredded plastic. Torn skin, and muscle, and white-blonde hair.

When Flea’d got the corpse most of the way into the water she paused. She was facing it, one arm around it.

He thought for a moment she was thinking, trying to work out how to do what she was going to do next. Then he realized it was something else entirely. Her head was slightly down, her eyes raised. She was looking into the blank smear that would have been Misty Kitson’s face. If it hadn’t sounded ridiculous, if it hadn’t broken all the rules after what he’d just watched her do, he’d have said she was apologizing to Misty.

He could step out of the trees now, could stand there motionless in the moonlight, somewhere she’d see him. But before he could do anything she pulled up her mask, wriggled it around her ears, wrapped both arms tightly around the corpse and dropped like a stone out of sight into the dark mirror of the quarry, taking it with her.

Surprised it had happened so quickly, he limped out of the bushes and stood in the pool of water her equipment had left, peering down. Through the bubbles, he could just see the two of them – the black of Flea’s head, the frosty plastic shroud around Misty and the wavering of the torchbeam.

Then they were gone. And all that was left were the mirrored domes of bubbles breaking on the surface.

73

Dawn, and Flea had drifted at last to the narrow lanes around her home. She drove steadily, eyes bloodshot, dull, the smell of the quarry still in her nostrils. A mist had come down, a grey, wreathing mist, making the twists and bends in the lanes treacherous. About half a mile from the house a hairpin bend came up fast. She slammed her foot down, wrenching the Focus to the left. The wheels flared out under her, the steering-wheel jerked in her hands, but she held it steady as the car careened around the corner of the narrow country lane, the wheels locking, going into a sideways slide. The tyres screeched, a tree hurtled towards the car. The impact, when it came, shot her forward against her seat-belt and sent pain through her ribs. The airbag inflated, slamming her head back, pushing her jaws together so fast she bit her tongue.

A moment of shock, then the airbag deflated. Her head fell down on to her chest with a jolt.

She sat for a moment, waiting for her ears to stop ringing from the airbag. Blood was welling in her mouth, under her tongue. She held it for a while between pursed lips as she did a mental check of her limbs, her trunk, moving her concentration down her body, along her arms and legs. Her knee hurt – she’d banged it against the steering-column – and her sternum ached where she’d strained against the seatbelt, but she could feel her toes. Could wiggle them.

She opened the door and spat the blood on to the tarmac. Moving creakily, she released the seatbelt, pushed the door open as far as it would go and got out gingerly, not putting too much strain on her chest. The car was tight up against the tree. She had to squeeze herself against it and shuffle backwards.

It was a quiet lane, full of elderflowers and new poppies. Mingling with the mist was the acid smell of crushed cow parsley where the car had flattened the hedgerow. Dew from the overhanging tree had splattered across the windscreen. She walked around the car, inspecting the damage. When she got to the front and saw what had happened she let all her breath out at once. Somehow, maybe more by luck than judgement, she’d got it right.

She went back to the boot, opened it and pulled out the bin liner containing Misty’s handbag, phone, sandals and coat. The paint can she’d put in the back had tipped but not spilled so she used her Swiss army knife to lever the lid off and let it trickle out across the boot.

One last look at the car. The headlight that had hit Misty was buried in the tree-trunk, the front wheels had been driven sideways and back towards the passenger seat, snapping the axle out of line. The engine bay and the firewall would have cracked too. The car was a write-off. Earlier she’d cleaned the whole thing with a rag soaked in petrol, stripping away grease and fingerprints, lifting hairs and fibres. She’d taken two long hours over it, and she was confident. No one would be forensicating this car anyway. They’d have no reason to, as long as she reported she’d been driving it. All the evidence linking Thom and her to Misty Kitson was going to end up in a breaker’s yard. The remainder of the petrol was in a small flask in the bin liner.

With the bag over her shoulder, Flea pushed through the hedgerow and set off up through the dewy fields. The sun filtered down through the early-morning haze and, as she climbed, vague ghost shapes to her left and right slowly revealed themselves as stiles and trees. By the time she got to the top of Charmy Down, the old airfield, she had walked straight out of the mist and could see the disused mast ahead of her, glinting in the sun. The remains of her previous fire were still there. A flat circle of blackened grass, dew clinging to it, giving it a greyish pall. She put the bag on the circle, pulled out a flask, tipped the petrol on to the bagged belongings and phone and threw a match on to it.

Having retreated a few yards she sat, waiting for the fire to catch. Beyond, the sky in the east was streaked with dirty pinks and browns. In the valley the mist swirled. The neighbouring hills – places she’d known all her life – rose like dark islands above it. Solsbury Hill was half a mile off and, far away where the gap in the hills led out to Frome and Warminster, another line of smoke, like a finger, rose up into the blue sky.

She kept her eyes on that fire. Her body was aching from everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and there was a tingling in her fingers that she thought came from the cold of the quarry. But watching that distant fire gave her a kind of peace she couldn’t explain. She linked her fingers round her ankles and leant forward, gazing at it.

Look after yourself . . .

It was OK. OK to save herself like this. To do the wrong thing for the right reason. Sometimes all you can do is simply to continue moving forward. Making the choices that keep you alive.

Her own fire made a small whooshing sound and a flame shot up. It dropped, then shot up again, and more joined it, crackling, burning green, orange, blue. A line of silky black smoke guttered and rose into the sky, answering the fire on the neighbouring hill.

The fire of a man she had never met in her life.

74

Some humans have the instincts of animals. It comes from years of living without comfort. Even asleep the Walking Man sometimes appears to know what is happening in the waking world and who to expect. It’s as if his slumbering mind can creep coolly out, can float away over the hills and valleys, watching like a hawk those who are out at night. All those who move in his vicinity. And all the time his body lies next to the extinguished campfire, still and silent, only his eyes moving.

That night, as Gerber lay in a Trowbridge mortuary, as Flea submerged herself in the Elf’s Grotto quarry, the Walking Man slept soundly and peacefully. He was expecting someone. He had left out a spare foam mat with a sleeping-bag next to the fire.

Caffery arrived at three thirty a.m. He crawled into the bag and fell immediately into a torpid, drugged sleep.

When he woke two hours later in the cold, milky dawn, the mist was freezing and the only sound was the bleak cawing of crows in the high branches overhead. He sat up. The Walking Man was making breakfast. A long thin column of smoke rose from the fire. There was bacon and eggs for two people. Two mugs waiting.

‘Morning. Going to be a good one. The mist will clear.’

Caffery didn’t answer. The hospital’s codeine was still in his system, like something hot and feathery packed into his brain behind his eyeballs. He sat, his hands on his ankles, and gazed into the fire, at the twin tin cups of coffee, at the two frying-pans sizzling on the flames. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired, so numb, inside and out. His head drooped. He had to jam his elbows into his knees and prop his head on his fingers.

‘Why is your phone switched off?’ The Walking Man didn’t look up from the fire. ‘Usually you treat it like a second heart.’

Caffery took it out of his breast pocket. He put it on the ground and stared at it. Not as if it was a heart. As if it was a snake.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know what I’d do if I switched it on. Don’t ask me again.’

The Walking Man shrugged. He scooped the food on to two plates: each had four thick rashers of bacon, three fried eggs, two sausages and a slice of fried bread. He walked all day and he needed his fuel. His plates always brimmed over and he made sure his guests ate well too. He straightened, put one plate next to his bedroll and brought the other across to where Caffery sat. When he saw Caffery’s expression, the sick way he looked at the food, the way there was water in his eyes, he hesitated. ‘OK,’ he grunted. ‘OK.’

He straightened, took a few steps away from the fire and crouched to scrape the food off the plate on to the ground. ‘The badgers will like you for it.’ He went back to his bedroll, walking carefully because he only had his socks on, and if there was one thing the Walking Man had to do, it was care for his feet. He settled down, the tin plate resting on his knees, and ran a thumb and forefinger through his beard, studying Caffery’s face through narrowed eyes. ‘You know what you’ve come to.’ He nodded at the phone. ‘Don’t you?’

Caffery was sullen. ‘What?’

The Walking Man grinned. ‘Crossroads,’ he said. ‘Your absolute crossroads. And now,
now
, your hand is going to be forced. I don’t know why or what’s happened but when you switch on that phone you’ve got to make a decision. Haven’t you?’

Caffery stared at the Walking Man. The bastard was right. It had been coming to him as he slept. Hallucinations crossing and double-crossing him. That in the morning he’d have to speak to Powers. He’d have to make the decision. He’d have to tell him what he knew about Misty Kitson.

‘And this is the decision that’s been coming at you for years. You might not see it but this decision is about whether you stay facing death, or whether you turn the other way and choose life instead. That’s all.’

Caffery made a small, contemptuous noise. ‘I’m being preached to about choosing life by
you
? Someone who’s chosen death? How does that work?’

‘Or maybe you’re being preached to by someone who’s
been chosen
by death.’

‘You’re not dead.’ He studied the Walking Man’s eyes. They were blue. Like his own. As if they were from the same family. Except Caffery knew that the wisdom in the Walking Man’s eyes wasn’t in his own. Not yet. ‘You’re still alive.’

‘Yes. Oh, yes.’ The Walking Man looked at his hands. Turned them over and over as if they belonged to someone else. ‘It seems I am.’

‘You’ve got a plan. I don’t know what the plan is, but it’s there. So you haven’t chosen death at all.’

The Walking Man laughed – sympathetically, as if Caffery was so simple, just a child. As if it would take him years to come to any maturity of thought or emotion. ‘When Craig Evans killed my daughter,’ he wiped his moustache, ‘when he told me what he’d done . . . when he told me how many times he’d raped her before he did it,’ he tapped his finger against his lips, as if for a moment he didn’t trust himself to complete the thought, ‘when he told me it all, I knew then that the choice had been made. For what she had suffered she had to be comforted. And to comfort her I had to follow her.’

Caffery leant forward. It was the first time the Walking Man had spoken directly about his daughter’s death. ‘Follow her where?’

‘Into the next world, of course. That was just how it had to be. It’s the natural way of things. Everything I do, every mile I walk, is my preparation. I have to find the time and the place.’ He looked up. ‘You don’t know what happened to your brother’s body.’

‘No.’

‘You’ve searched everywhere you can think of.’

‘Yes. There’s nowhere else. Once I thought I got close. A long way from here. Out in the east, not the west.’