Someone Else's Skin (16 page)

Jeanette Conway didn’t look like she had muscles of any description. She filled the white tracksuit she was wearing so thoroughly it was hard to see how she’d left room for underwear. Her features clustered sulkily at the centre of her face, corralled by pallid, marbled flesh. Marnie remembered the scream that came out of her on Friday. The woman’s mouth looked too small to make such a loud noise.

Marnie said, ‘We’d like to go over what happened here on Friday.’

Jeanette squared her shoulders, shooting a look at Ed. ‘All right.’

‘The door was unlocked. Is it usually unlocked?’

‘No, and it wasn’t on Friday. We keep it locked.’

‘It was open when I got here,’ Marnie said levelly. ‘There was no one on the desk.’

‘I was in the dayroom.’ Jeanette looked to Ed. ‘Trying to sort out what that bastard was up to. I was looking out for them, just like you tell me to.’

Ed didn’t speak. His body language was passive, but he wasn’t giving her anything she could interpret as an alibi.

‘How did Leo Proctor get into the refuge?’ Marnie asked.

Jeanette shifted in the chair. She’d masked the stink of cigarettes with Juicy Fruit gum and air freshener. ‘Hope let him in,’ she said sullenly.

‘Hope let him in.’

‘She must’ve. The door,’ she screwed her mouth to a rosebud, ‘was locked.’

‘Why would Hope have let him in? She came here to get away from him.’

‘You know what they’re like,’ this directed at Ed. ‘They can’t help themselves. The thieving and phone calls are nothing. There’s much worse goes on. She’s not the only one. I seen Shelley Coates’s bloke hanging around and all.’

‘You’re saying Leo Proctor had been here before,’ Marnie said. ‘Hanging around.’

‘I seen Shelley’s bloke.’ Jeanette made a noise of disgust. ‘And that’s not all I seen.’

Marnie waited for her to elaborate.

Jeanette smiled primly. ‘They can’t help themselves,’ she said again.

Ed scratched at his head, drawing her attention back to him. ‘What happened in the dayroom, between Hope and Leo?’

‘He tried to give her them roses. She wouldn’t go near him at first. Then she did.’ Jeanette picked at a cuticle. ‘He didn’t look like he was going to cause trouble. No more than the rest of them, anyway. He was quiet.’

‘Didn’t anyone ask him to leave? Simone, for instance?’

‘No.’ Jeanette rolled her eyes. ‘Why would she?’

‘She and Hope are friends.’

‘Is that what they are?’ Jeanette smirked.

‘You don’t think they’re friends? Or you think they’re more than friends?’

Jeanette just shrugged.

‘Didn’t Hope ask Leo to leave?’ Marnie asked.

‘No.’

‘Did they speak to one another at all?’

‘No. Leastways, I didn’t hear anything. I thought she was going to kiss him. She got up close. Like she wanted to smell the roses. Then he went down.’ Jeanette folded her arms and looked around the room, reciting the next words in a bored, nasal tone. ‘I didn’t see the knife until after. If I’d seen the knife, I’d have rung the police, whatever. It didn’t look like it was going to kick off, but I guess he wanted to take her home, or he was mad at her for being here.’ She shrugged with scorn. ‘He’s big, didn’t need the knife, could’ve carried her out. She probably weighs about six stone.’

‘She stabbed him.’

‘Yeah.’ Jeanette returned her stare to Marnie’s face. ‘How’d she do that? I mean, they’d all like to do it, to whoever put them in here. She didn’t look the type, though, not really.’ She shook her head. ‘I guess that’s why she freaked out afterwards.’

35

‘Is anyone else having a gorilla-in-our-midst moment?’

Jeanette had clocked off. Marnie was in the office, with Ed and Noah. Her thumbs were pricking. There was no news of Hope or Simone. No sightings. Hours of CCTV footage to check, with permissions taking longer than usual to work through the system.

‘Simons and Levin,’ Noah said, in answer to her question. ‘Harvard psychologists. Is that what you mean?’

Marnie saw Ed’s quick glance at Noah and smiled. ‘First-class degree in psychology.’

Ed sketched a salute.

‘So Simons and Levin get these volunteers to watch a basketball game on tape,’ she said. ‘They’re meant to count ball passes. Midway through the game, a two-metre-tall pantomime gorilla walks across the pitch and waves at the camera. In every test, less than half the volunteers see the gorilla. Is that right?’

Noah nodded. ‘Some of them thought Simons and Levin switched the tapes. They couldn’t believe they’d missed the monkey. But they did.’

‘Fifty per cent in every test just . . . didn’t see him.’

‘Her. It was a woman in the gorilla suit,’ Noah said. ‘You think the women here missed something they should’ve seen?’ He paused. ‘Something like Hope
meaning
to stab Leo?’

‘No way of knowing, but I’m wondering.’

‘Back up,’ Ed said. ‘Hope
meant
to stab Leo?’

‘It’s a theory we’re working on. Not the only one, but if she meant to kill him and if Simone
knew
that . . . It’s a motive for them to run, as soon as they knew he was awake.’

‘She told Leo she was living in the refuge,’ Noah said. ‘Why do that? If she’s running now . . . I don’t understand.’

‘The pull of home,’ Ed murmured. ‘I’m amazed Ayana’s held out this long without calling her family. Most women make the call within days of coming here.’

‘We still don’t know whether she’ll give evidence against Nasif,’ Noah reminded them.

‘That can wait,’ Marnie told him. ‘It’ll have to wait. We’ve got two missing women, one of whom might’ve tried to kill her husband.’

The television’s soundtrack was ceaseless. Didn’t the women ever switch if off?

‘What was that about Mab and Shelley’s rings?’ she asked Ed.

‘Mab’s a bit of a magpie. I put it down to the scavenging during the Blitz . . . She’s in the habit of picking up anything the others leave lying around. I’ve asked them to be careful, but . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We usually find the stuff in the chair cushion – you saw her. It’s harmless. The others understand. They’re pretty patient with her, in fact.’

‘Right.’ Marnie stretched, rubbing at her neck. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Ed. These are the worst witnesses I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. None of them knows the value of honesty. They’ve learnt the hard way to deal in other currency. Lies, or platitudes, whatever we want to hear. No such thing as the plain truth. They’ve probably learnt to lie to everyone, friends and family. Doctors. The police. Themselves. They don’t even know they’re doing it, I bet. It’s a survival instinct. A reflex.’

Ed said, ‘I can’t argue with any of that.’

‘I thought the problem we’d have would be keeping them from talking about the stabbing before we took their statements. We kept them apart, we were careful to do that. They hadn’t spoken among themselves before we took statements. Even so,’ she spread her hands, ‘different versions of the same thing. At least . . . Shelley thinks Leo got complacent. That he never imagined Hope would fight back.’

Noah nodded. ‘Simone said something similar, that he gave Hope the knife to taunt her for being passive. A way of marking his territory.’

‘Tessa thought it was simple self-defence,’ Ed said.

‘Yes. And Jeanette couldn’t come up with a reason why or how Hope got hold of the knife.’ Marnie frowned at an ink stain on the pad of her finger. ‘Ayana believed she meant to do it. Her only guaranteed way out, but even so . . . However you cut it, we’ve got five versions of the same thing. Self-defence gone wrong. I suppose they share the same triggers. They didn’t need to talk in order to exchange versions of what they saw. Too much shared experience did that for them.’

‘Yes, it did,’ Ed said.

‘So that means – what? That they’d all like to stick a knife in their abusers?’ Marnie shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that. It’s possible to survive trauma without resorting to violence.’

‘We’re not saying they’d
do
it,’ Noah countered, awkwardly. ‘Just that self-defence would be the obvious inference they’d draw in that kind of situation, given their own experiences.’

‘Self-defence is one thing. Violence is different . . .’ Marnie stopped. She bit the inside of her cheek, checking her phone for messages from the station. ‘It worries me that they want to please us. We’re authority figures. We scare them. Even I was scaring them, and God knows I’m a pussycat.’

Ed said, ‘Ayana wasn’t scared. You said she thought Hope meant to kill Leo.’

‘That’s what she told Noah. Ed . . . you know Ayana better than we do. Should we be giving more weight to her evidence than anyone else’s?’

‘Perhaps. She doesn’t miss much.’ Ed linked his hands behind his neck. ‘She’s hyper-alert when it comes to women, scared of her mother, almost more than she is of her brothers. That might mean she steers clear of other women, from instinct rather than anything else . . . You’re right about currency, about the way these women deal in honesty, or don’t deal. Violence isn’t just something they’ve grown up with; it’s a way of communicating. Fear’s the same, and anger. Even for Ayana. Her mother grew up with rules, violence. She passed it along, her legacy to her daughter.’

Marnie listened for sounds of the women in the dayroom, but the television was like blotting paper, soaking up all noise except its own. ‘No one had anything new to say about Simone. You saw her and Hope together at the hospital – that wasn’t pretence, was it? She really cares for Hope.’

Ed nodded. ‘I’m sure she does, but knowing Leo’s awake, and if it wasn’t simple self-defence? If Hope
did
mean to kill him and if she admitted as much to Simone . . . I can see Simone wanting to run. It would be instinctive, whether or not she planned it. Her experience of the police wasn’t a happy one.’

‘So where would she go? If she’s trying to hide Hope?’

‘I don’t know. I wish I did. The only places she knows in London are the Bissells’ house and the flat where Lowell kept her. She wouldn’t go back to either of those.’

‘All right. Let’s try something else.’ Marnie nodded at Ed. ‘You should get back to work. This next bit’s for us to sort out.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Okay. If Simone gets in touch, I’ll call you right away.’

‘Same here. Thanks.’

When Ed had gone, Noah asked, ‘Where now?’

‘The Proctors’ house.’

‘I thought we needed Leo’s permission.’

‘We only need his keys.’ She held up a bunch on a fraying key ring. ‘The hospital hadn’t discharged her. We have reasonable grounds for concern over her safety. Let’s see what’s at the house.’

36

Houses said a lot about the people who lived in them. The Proctors’ was a new-build, masquerading as old. Reclaimed red bricks, Victorian possibly, over a modern shell of breeze blocks. Hollow walls, Noah guessed.

This was where they lived, Hope and Leo Proctor, where she ran from.

The house was like all the others in the street, except in one respect. All the windows at the front had slatted wooden shutters. All the shutters were tightly closed. The shutters stole six inches of living space, an extravagance in a house of this size. How much had it cost? And what were the Proctors hiding, or hiding from?

‘They’re never out of the house at weekends.
She
doesn’t say hello, keeps her head down most of the time. He’s at work all hours. Mind you, lots of families are like that nowadays. I’m not saying there’s any funny business.’ The Proctors’ neighbour, Felix Gill, swilled his stomach back into the waist of his trousers, indulgently. ‘They’re a nice enough couple . . .’ He finished admiring Marnie’s ID and handed it back. ‘No one’s at home, if you ask me. I haven’t seen
her
in a few days.’ He folded his arms, resting them on top of his gut. ‘She the one you’re looking for?’

‘We’ve come to get a few things.’ Marnie deployed her smile, disarming Gill.

‘I don’t have a key,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I offered, but they didn’t fancy swapping keys.’

‘That’s all right.’ Marnie held up the bunch she’d taken from Leo at the hospital. ‘We’ve got everything we need.’

Inside, the house felt empty. It smelt empty, too. With the recent chill of a place unlived in for a short while. They checked the rooms perfunctorily, before returning to the living space on the ground floor.

The sitting room had the dodgy chic of a showroom: everything arranged to evoke the idea of gracious living rather than its reality. A small sofa with matching armchairs, a low table in pale wood, like the bookcase. Woodchipped walls and ceiling, sisal flooring, rough underfoot but it probably did a brilliant job of hiding dirt and wear. Otherwise, the colour scheme was white, off-white and guano. A television, smaller than the average in a modern household, was screwed to the wall opposite the sofa. DVDs in the bookcase, in place of books. The shuttered windows hid the view of the street; impossible to know if Felix Gill was still out there, watching the house. No plants or flowers. No photographs or pictures.

The room at the back of the house was dressed for dining. There was no other way to describe it. The table had a runner of grey linen with lavender trim, matching placemats and plates, smaller ones stacked inside larger. Fake diamonds the size of a child’s fist were scattered artfully up the runner. One wall was papered with a pattern of purple flowers, aiming for regal but falling short. The back of each chair sported a satin bow, the same colour as the table runner. The room wasn’t camp, exactly, but Noah had been in nightclubs with more restrained decor. He found it hard to believe the Proctors ever used the room, for eating or anything else.

They went upstairs, to the bedrooms. In the front room, a double bed stood under twin prints of fruit on the wall. White bed linen with a silvery throw folded back at the foot. The bed didn’t look slept in, its pillows smugly plump. The shuttered windows leaked light in weak stripes on to the
faux
wood floor. A mean-fisted chandelier hung from the ceiling, its glass pendants snatching their reflections as they stood at the side of the bed.