Someone Else's Skin (31 page)

‘I’d love to help.’ He used the pretence of enthusiasm to lean across and fill the tumbler with the dregs from a bottle. ‘But as I say, I’ve not heard from her in an age. Not since her mother.’ He had just enough self-control to stop himself sucking at the glass, waiting a beat before lifting it to his lips.

‘Her mother died in October, is that right?’

He nodded, wet-eyed again. She realised that he was waiting for her condolences. He’d wait a long time for that.

‘Hope came to see you, when her mother died?’

‘She did.’ Another sip at the dirty glass.

The bathrobe was forgotten, hanging open to his waist, showing a whittled ribcage above a paunch the size and shape of a rugby ball. There, below his left nipple. A tattoo of a heart pierced by an arrow. The same tattoo Hope had insisted she and Leo get. On Kenneth Reece, it looked like a festering red wound. ‘Was she very upset?’

‘Hope? Not her.’ He thinned his lips at the rim of the glass. ‘Hope’s my sweet little tough nut. My survivor.’

‘What did she survive, Mr Reece? The sort of thing her mother couldn’t?’

‘I object to that.’ He nodded towards Ed. ‘You might like to make a note of my objection. I assume you’re here to take notes, since you’re not opening your mouth.’

Ed smiled at him, neutrally. His presence irked Reece, which was exactly why Marnie had wanted him here. ‘What’s your objection?’ she asked Reece.

‘Your insinuations about my wife.’ He pointed at her with the glass, then returned it jealously to his mouth.

‘What is it you think I’m insinuating?’

He shook his head, making the gin last. Gin, the weeper’s drink. His tears were probably eighty per cent proof.

Marnie said, ‘Let’s remove any confusion, shall we? I’m referring to the fact that you routinely beat your wife, Hope’s mother, in front of your daughter. That Hope grew up in a house ruled by violence and abuse. Her frame of reference was whatever you did with your fists on any given day.’

Kenneth Reece shook back the frayed cuff of his bathrobe. ‘Excuse me, Detective Inspector, but what would you know about my family life? If you’ve been listening to that builder my girl married, well . . . I warned her about him as soon as she brought him home. “You’ll have to take charge of
that
,” I told her. What sort of man,’ he looked at Ed, ‘sits around with his lips sealed while the women run their mouths? If you’ve been listening to
him
—’

‘I’ve been reading your wife’s medical reports,’ Marnie said. An exaggeration; she’d requested a copy of the report after seeing Leo at the hospital but she’d spoken, briefly, with staff at the hospice where Gayle Reece died. ‘The ones that pre-date her cancer. But yes, since you mention it, Leo Proctor did share with us what Hope had told him, about your treatment of her mother.’

Kenneth Reece batted this away with the back of his hand. ‘Hope never had a problem,’ he said, ‘with anything I did.’

14

Light bulleted off the tiles and chrome in the bathroom. Hope had gone back to the kitchen, leaving Noah alone in here. He worked his hands mechanically, trying to get the blood back into his fingers.

Where was Marnie Rome? Why hadn’t she warned him, given him a clue to Hope’s psychosis, when she first started to suspect it? She’d known something when she asked him to crawl into that space under the stairs at the Proctors’ house. The questions she’d asked, about the phone call Hope made from the hospital . . . She’d suspected Hope, he realised that now. She’d suspected Hope, and she’d said nothing.

Noah had no weapons, no words, to use here. All he could do was hope for a rescue.

Wrong choice of word.
Hope’ll kill you
. Wasn’t that the saying?

Hope will kill you. Not a lot of doubt about that. She’d stuck a knife in Leo Proctor, puncturing his lung. What had she done with the Bissells? This was their house, but Noah hadn’t seen or heard any proof that they were alive.

He yelled, because it helped with the fear. Yelled for Simone, for Hope. Kicked his bound feet on the floor and against the side of the bath.

The sound bounced like a ball in the tiled room.

He curled his fingers round the steel pipe where she’d tied off the rope. Hauled, willing the sink unit to come away from the wall. Hauled until his shoulders screamed at him to stop, by which time he was panting.

All right, calm down.

Stop it. Stop.

He could see little balls of dust under the sink, and dark hairs, white at the root. Pauline Bissell’s hair? He looked up at the cabinets on the wall, imagining all manner of weaponry, out of reach. Razor blades and improvised Mace in the form of aerosol sprays. All too far away. He needed something nearby.

The brown suitcase, but it was at the foot of the bath and he still wasn’t keen to discover what was inside. He squinted at it, seeing a dull red dot on the front of his T-shirt, like a sniper’s spot.

Blood. She’d nicked him with the knife. It was nothing, in the scheme of things, but he wished she had a steadier hand.

How long did it take to eat fried fucking fish?

He kicked at the bath again, raising the same hollow ball of sound.

‘Hey! Hope. Simone!’

Anything was better than waiting. That’s what he was thinking. Anything was better than waiting.

Wrong.

Waiting was a killer, but Hope was worse.

She pushed open the bathroom door with the head of the hammer. She didn’t look at him. She swung the hammer in her hand, its shadow stretching and shrinking under the light. Fear shut the back of Noah’s throat. ‘Hope . . .’

She went to the brown suitcase. He couldn’t see her except in profile, the childish curve of her cheek. She propped the hammer at the end of the bath – away from his feet – and reached into the suitcase. Got hold of something and lifted it out.

Solid. Black. She set it on the floor.

A Russian kettlebell, pot-bellied.

A rock with a handle.

15

The smell of gin was overpowering, oily, as if Kenneth Reece had bathed in it. It was his sweat, Marnie realised, coming out through his pores.

‘You used to lift weights,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’

Hope’s father smiled, a mouthful of fake modesty marked by rotting teeth. ‘You’re not in bad shape yourself, Detective Inspector.’

‘What sort of weights? Dumbbells?’

‘Kettlebells.’ Kenneth Reece held his drink at arm’s length, so that the light fell into the glass and swam, whitely. ‘Russian.’

‘How much could you lift?’

‘Forty, fifty pounds.’ He shot Ed an idle look, laced with contempt.

‘That’s more than a hobby,’ Marnie said.

‘Hobbies are for children.’ Reece adjusted his robe. It was hard to imagine him with body mass, proper muscles. Hard, but not impossible.

‘Did Hope have any hobbies, as a child?’

‘She liked to watch me work.’ He shaped his mouth to the glass again. ‘But she wasn’t a frivolous child, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘I was wondering if she was any kind of child. If she had anything I’d recognise as a childhood.’

Reece gave an elaborate shrug, as if physically dislodging her objection. ‘Just because she wasn’t spoiled, or indulged . . .’

‘She liked to watch you work. Do you mean
work out
, with the kettlebells?’

‘Yes.’ He sipped at the drink.

Sipped.
Such self-restraint.

Marnie remembered the reluctance with which Leo Proctor had divulged the contents of the suitcase his wife had taken from their house. No such reluctance on the part of Kenneth Reece, who named his weapon of choice with candour, even conceit.

‘You let Hope keep one of the bells, when she left home. That’s what her husband told me. Is it true?’

‘She asked for it,’ Reece said. ‘So, yes. I let her have it.’

‘Why do you think she wanted it?’

He curled his lip to the glass. ‘They make good doorstops.’

‘Is that what you used them for? As doorstops?’

‘I lifted them. As I said.’ Reece put his arm out again, finding something to admire, apparently, in its etiolated wrist, bony elbow. ‘Sixty, seventy pounds. That’s professional standard.’

Too bad wife-beating wasn’t an Olympic sport; this psychopath would’ve won enough medals to put Lowell Paton’s gold chains in the shade. She wondered, briefly, if she could have Reece arrested for inciting violence, providing Hope with a weapon, and intent. ‘Is that all you did with the kettlebells? Lift them?’

‘What else would I have done with them?’

Gee, Mr Reece, I don’t know. Broken your wife’s bones? Pinned her to the ground, cracked her ribs or her skull. Whatever took your sick, twisted fancy.

‘Do you know what Hope did with the kettlebell you gave her?’

Kenneth Reece reached to refresh his drink. The snapping sound of the metal cap set Marnie’s teeth on edge. ‘Specifically, what she did to her husband, Leo. The man you warned her would need knocking into shape.’

‘I stopped being responsible for my child,’ Reece said piously, ‘when she turned eighteen.’

‘Still, you’d like to know, I’m sure. I’m guessing it would make you proud. Like father, like daughter.’

‘I’m flattered by your concern for my paternal instinct, Detective Inspector, but—’

‘Paternal instinct?’ Marnie echoed. ‘You mean the way you showed your child what damage could be done with twenty kilograms of Russian cast iron?’

16

Noah tried to guess at the weight of the kettlebell Hope had taken from the brown suitcase and placed on the bathroom tiles. From the effort she put into lifting it, the bell was twenty kilograms. He hadn’t lifted anything heavier than eight.

Simone had carried the suitcase from the Proctors’ house. She was stronger than she looked. So was Hope, if she was about to do what Noah feared she was.

‘Hope. You don’t need to do this. I just – I was worried about you and Simone . . .’

She bent, both hands gripping the kettlebell’s stout handle. It was an old-fashioned bell. Not the glossy kind you saw in modern gyms. This one belonged to her dad’s generation of weight-trainers. The bell was important; she’d risked returning to the house for it. Why? What did it represent?

Symbol of machismo. Strength. Or something more . . .

Look at the way it was anchoring her to the ground.

Okay, enough thinking. Try talking
.

‘Hope. Please think about this. Please. Stop, and think. You don’t want to do this.’

‘You,’ she said, ‘have no idea what I want.’

True, but he could hazard a guess. Leo Proctor had broken ribs, and a broken hand. Like someone else he’d seen recently . . . His mind veered at an angle, chasing after the memory, smelling soiled nappies, soured milk. Like . . .

Henry Stuke.

Oh, fuck.
Stuke
. Stuke was watching the refuge. The smashed hand he’d explained away as a work accident – was that Hope?

Noah curled his own hands into fists, shielding his face with his forearms, aware of the vulnerable bones in his elbows, and his wrists. Over two hundred bones in the human body. She could break him in over two hundred places. He drew his knees to his chest and twisted on to his hip. The foetal position made him feel even more exposed to her attack. From under the shelter of his arm, he saw her lift the bell, muscles roping the backs of her hands. She swung her arms and straddled his waist with her feet.

‘On your back,’ she warned. ‘I don’t want to call Simone in here to help.’

Noah cursed in his head. He didn’t want Simone in here either, not like this, made to play helpmate in Hope’s sick game. He had to force down his defences, one by one. Knees first, straightening his legs before he gathered a breath and rolled on to his back, his chest exposed to the kettlebell. He couldn’t uncover his face, or unfist his hands. He tried, but he couldn’t, his body in lockdown.

It didn’t matter to Hope. She had what she wanted. His chest, exposed. She positioned the squat base of the bell over his heart and lowered it.

Let go.

The sudden impact was horrific, solid weight crushing him into the tiles. Pain bolted up his ribs to stuff his throat with a scream. He fought for air, trying to dislodge the weight by twisting back on to his side, wanting it off him. Needing to breathe. Animal instinct, no real thought involved.
Get it . . . off me . . .

The kettlebell swayed and toppled. Fell. Rolled three feet and thundered into the side of the bath. Hope bent. Heaved it back over him. Screamed, ‘Simone!’

Noah couldn’t make Simone part of this. He couldn’t. ‘Don’t . . .’

Hope’s eyes slitted. She hissed, ‘On your fucking back.’

He did as she said, and she dropped the kettlebell again, over his heart.

His teeth shredded the scream, but not by much.

He was still screaming when her shadow lengthened, reaching away from him, then back, a bigger shadow now, knuckled at its end.

That was when she used the hammer, for the first time.

17

Someone was pacing in the flat above Kenneth Reece’s. Across the floor and back again. Across and back. Like a caged animal. Marnie blocked it out, focusing her attention on Hope’s father. ‘Hope never had a problem with you beating her mother in front of her.’

‘I never laid a finger on Hope, if that’s where this is headed.’ Reece eyed the armchair where Ed was perched. ‘Not even to discipline her. I didn’t need to.’

‘You were torturing her mother. It’s hardly surprising Hope didn’t put a foot wrong. Let’s be clear, however. What you did – to Hope as well as her mother – was abuse.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He patronised her with a smile. ‘A marriage is a private affair. You’d never hear my wife complain. As for Hope, she didn’t have a problem with anything I did.’ He raised the glass as if in a toast. ‘She refused to let her mother ruin her with weakness, although God knows Gayle tried. She suffered all her life with emotions. Anything and everything made her cry. The television, kiddies in the street, books . . . She had no control over it, more’s the pity.’