Someone Else's Skin (32 page)

Pity.
Nice choice of word for a serial torturer.

‘But
you
did,’ Marnie said. ‘You had control. Hope told her husband all about it.’

Reece reached for a fresh bottle, pouring a precise measure into the glass. Only the very tips of his fingers trembled, and his top lip as it waited for the drink.

‘What did you and Hope talk about, when she was last here?’

‘Heaven knows. Her mother, I imagine, since Gayle had just died.’

‘You hadn’t been living together, during the last year of her life.’

‘She was in a hospice, so no.’

‘She was in a hospice for the last four months of her life. Before that, she was in a women’s refuge. Isn’t that the case?’

‘If you say so.’ Reece closed his eyes as he drank. She noticed for the first time that he had no eyelashes. ‘We’d lost touch.’

‘Had Hope been in contact with her mother, after her diagnosis?’

‘You’d have to ask Hope. Personally I can’t see her setting foot in a place like that, a breeding ground for neurosis.’

‘This is the women’s refuge where Gayle went, to get away from you.’

Reece ignored her. ‘Hope never mentioned seeing her, when we met.’

‘At Gayle’s funeral. Is that the meeting we’re talking about?’

‘I thought that was clear. I last saw my daughter at her mother’s funeral. Very nice she looked too, in her black suit. The builder hadn’t bothered. He wore boots. Can you believe that? Workman’s boots. I never knew what Hope saw in him.’

‘You don’t think she loved him?’

Reece snorted. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then why marry him?’

‘I suppose she thought she could make something of him.’

Marnie waited for more, but Reece was silent. ‘You said she wasn’t upset, at the funeral. Her mother had died. How could she not be upset?’

‘She didn’t show it, if she was. The opposite of her mother’s amateur dramatics.’ Reece looked up at Ed and Marnie, pride shining in his eyes. ‘I never once saw Hope cry. Never once.’

‘You don’t think she should’ve cried at her mother’s funeral?’

You
didn’t, Marnie’s conscience pricked her. She’d been in a state of shock at her parents’ funeral, numb in her extremities and everywhere else. Was that how Hope felt, at her mother’s funeral? Numb. Too much violence could do that, like too much wine. Take the edge off everything, even the things that mattered. Sometimes pain was a blessing. It woke you up, helped you to
feel
.

‘Did you know that your daughter seeks out violent men? Men who hurt her, physically.’

Hope’s father self-administered another mouthful of anaesthetic in silence.

‘A doctor said Hope had the sort of injuries seen on working girls. Prostitutes who service sadistic clients.’

And another mouthful. Hollow legs. To go with his hollow heart.

‘Leo wouldn’t hurt her,’ Marnie said. ‘He hated it. When he refused, she picked up strangers in bars and went back with them, to be beaten. It’s lucky she’s still alive.’

Unlucky for Simone Bissell.

Reece cradled his glass like an infant to his chest.

‘Your daughter needs to be beaten. Do you think that makes her a survivor?’ Marnie wanted to see his hand shake, even if it was just tremors from the gin. She wanted to see some sign that he understood what he’d done. ‘I think it makes her a sad, damaged woman. And dangerous. To herself and others.’

‘I stopped being responsible,’ Reece repeated, ‘when she reached eighteen.’

‘You’re responsible. You’ll always be responsible. If you can’t see that, I pity you. It’s pathetic. Leo Proctor’s five times the man you’ll ever be.’

Kenneth Reece looked across the rim of his glass at her, his eyes dulled by drink.

He was too far away for her to touch him. Right out of reach.

Just like his daughter.

18

In the Bissells’ kitchen, the dishes sat in the sink, unwashed. Simone had scraped her portion of fish into the pedal bin. The mouthful she’d eaten was full of bones, spines sticking in the tender roof of her mouth.

It was quiet in the house, no noise from the bathroom. Simone was afraid to look in that direction, in case it prompted Hope to go back there. She’d left the policeman screaming. Brought the hammer and kettlebell into the kitchen and propped them at the side of her chair as she sat and ate. He was quiet now, DS Jake. Simone had no proof that he was still alive. She was afraid to ask, in case the answer was bad.

After they’d eaten, Hope sat on the floor by the bell and hammer, nodding for Simone to join her. She did what Hope wanted. It was cold on the floor. Simone’s legs felt stiff, like an old woman’s.

‘Daddy’s kettlebell was warm,’ Hope said. She touched the black iron bell, as if it was a crucifix, or a pet. ‘The handle smelt of his skin. I’d watch him with it. Bending and stretching, lifting it from the floor to his waist then up – high – over his head.’

Simone wanted to cover her ears, but she didn’t. She sat and listened, and tried hard not to weep. Hope had stopped asking questions about her childhood, and for that, Simone was grateful. Hope wanted her to listen now. It was hard to listen when Simone was so scared, so cold. It was almost worse than talking. She didn’t know what Hope was going to say. She only knew something terrible must have happened, to make her like this. Simone was afraid to hear the terrible thing, afraid of the pictures it would put in her head.

‘He lifted the weight over his head, too high for me to reach,’ Hope’s eyes misted as she remembered, ‘even though I stood on tiptoe and stretched the ends of my fingers. Trying to reach, trying to touch.’ She caught Simone’s hand and held it. She didn’t seem to notice how cold Simone’s fingers were, or how badly they shook. ‘He screwed his eyes shut as he worked.’ Hope mimicked the expression, and Simone swallowed a gasp, from the relief of being free just for a second from the woman’s searing stare. ‘His muscles . . . looked like mice moving under his skin.’

Hope opened her eyes again. ‘He didn’t look at me. I wished he would. I wished and wished he’d lift me like that, to his waist and then up. High, high over his head.’

She twisted her fingers through Simone’s, guiding their twinned hands to the kettlebell. It was so solid and hard.

Simone flinched.

‘Hush,’ Hope said. ‘Hush. Look at me.’

Simone did, seeing the woman through a flush of tears.

Hope said, ‘I’ve never told anyone this before.’ She looked angry, just for a second.

Simone cringed, wanting to free her hand, but knowing she could not.
She
’d done this. Brought this woman here. She had to listen to what Hope wanted to say. She had to stop Hope taking the hammer and bell back into the bathroom.

Hope stroked the kettlebell with their linked hands. ‘I’d put my face to it, when he was finished. You could hear it ringing, feel it
humming
against your lips, but it got cold too quickly. And heavy. I couldn’t move it, not even when I put all my strength into it. It was as if he’d glued it to the ground.’ She laughed.

It was the first time Simone had heard her laugh.

‘I wanted to be strong enough to move it,’ Hope said, ‘so I could hand it to him when he asked. It was always so heavy. Cold, like taps, except when he’d finished exercising. Then the handle was hot. Slippery.’ She bent her head and laid her cheek to the bell’s handle.

It was obscene. Simone did not know why, or how. Just that it was. Obscene.

‘I slept curled round it. Sometimes,’ she laughed, ‘I’d slip my fingers inside the handle and hold on, begging him to lift me too, when he was working out.’

Her eyes glittered against the black iron. ‘It was like
flying
, all the blood racing to my heels and toes, my head so light.
Empty
. . . I loved it. Sometimes he’d kiss me, before he swung me back down to the ground.’

Then she did something terrible. Worse than the pictures Simone had feared putting in her head, much worse, because it made so little sense.

She lay down on the ground and kissed her lips to the fat black bell.

Because she was holding Simone’s hand, Simone had to lie down too. Beside Hope. Curled around the belly of iron, fingers fastened through its handle.

‘Nothing else could move me,’ Hope whispered. ‘Only him.
She
didn’t have the strength, even when she wasn’t ill.’ Disgust in her voice; Simone recognised its bitter flavour. ‘Only
he
could lift me up. No one else.’

A sound slipped out of Simone, a sob she couldn’t keep inside any longer.

‘Hush,’ Hope warned. ‘Hush.’

She raised her head, her eyes as madly blue as a summer sky. ‘I’ve never told this before,’ she said. ‘Not to anyone. You’re the first.’

19

Outside Excalibur House, the moon was shining, fitfully. Marnie looked up at the curtained window of Kenneth Reece’s room. ‘He has no concept, does he? No concept of the monster he made Hope.’

‘She was his alibi.’ Ed rested his arms on the open door of the car. Fatigue frayed his voice. ‘The person telling him he was a good father, even a good husband.’

‘She can’t have believed it, can she?’

‘Hard to say. She needed to believe
something
, to make sense of what was going on in the house. In effect, he made her complicit, a part of the violence – and the silence. That’s a huge burden to put on any child. You were right about her mum’s death. It must’ve been a wake-up call about what he did when she was a kid. What
she
was doing to Leo. That must’ve been a tipping point.’

Marnie waited a moment longer, to see if the curtains would twitch at Kenneth Reece’s window, but Reece’s interest was elsewhere. At the bottom of a bottle. She unlocked the car and climbed in, waiting for Ed to join her.

‘He’s not what I expected,’ she admitted. ‘Kenneth.’

‘Bullies come in all shapes and sizes.’ Ed rubbed the heels of his hands at his eyes. ‘Christ, I’m tired. You’ll have to excuse the clichés.’

‘D’you think she chose Leo because he’s physically so unlike her dad? Someone without Kenneth’s slyness, his excuses . . .’

‘Maybe. From what you’ve told me, everything’s about control with Hope. She saw what happened when her dad lost control, and she never believed her mum had any. The manipulative behaviour’s one thing – a trick she learned early on – but control’s different. It’s needy. Addictive.’

Marnie said nothing straight away. He was right, of course; control could become an addiction. From an early age Hope had witnessed violence – the destruction of her family; it was a natural reaction to want to toughen up, take charge. Vow never to be a victim. That much Marnie could empathise with, but not the rest. ‘The abuse isn’t all one way,’ she reminded Ed. ‘Hope likes to be hurt too, which means punishment is in the mix. I really thought he’d react to that. But he doesn’t care about any of it.’

‘That’s his protection. If he starts caring, he’ll go to pieces.’

‘If he’s
capable
of caring. D’you think he is? I don’t.’

‘It depends when he started drinking,’ Ed said, ‘and why. That degree of jaundice . . . I’d be surprised if his liver lasts much longer.’

‘Is that how he got a place here? I’m assuming they don’t make a habit of housing wife-beaters.’

‘Without a conviction . . . with no record of what he did to Gayle, and Hope . . .’

‘We’re screwed.’ Marnie joined the queue of traffic back into the centre of town. ‘We still don’t know where she is, or where she might’ve gone.’ She checked her watch. ‘Do you know what they teach us about missing persons? “If in doubt, think murder.” I was hoping for something from Kenneth Reece to give me a good reason not to think his daughter might resort to murdering Simone Bissell. Now? I don’t know.’

Ed was silent, his head propped to the passenger window. Eventually he said, ‘We’re assuming Hope ran from the hospital because she knew Leo was awake, or likely to be awake, in which case he might’ve told the truth about her abuse, and her self-defence alibi would be out the window. That doesn’t explain why she took Simone. Surely she’d be better off on her own. From what we’ve heard, she doesn’t need backup, or sympathy. I can understand Simone’s value as a witness, back at the refuge, someone who’d swear blind that Hope was a victim, but Simone as a travelling companion doesn’t make any sense.’

He was right. This was more complicated than hostage-taking, or revenge. There was a connection between Hope and Simone.

‘Maybe she wanted a different kind of witness,’ Marnie said.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. I’m still trying to figure it out.’

Traffic lights brought them to a halt again.

A hen party crossed the street, holding one another upright. Pink bunny ears and tails, a pink veil for the bride-to-be. Not one of the women was sober.

‘She must know now.’ Marnie took her hands from the wheel, flexing her fingers. ‘Simone. She must know the truth about Hope by now. How Hope used her, what she wanted.’

Ed was silent, watching the women staggering up the street. ‘What did Tim Welland have to say? You said you spoke with him, when I was at the refuge.’

‘He lectured me about hostage negotiation,’ Marnie said drily. ‘Quoted Aristotle.’

‘Ethos, pathos, logos.’ Ed made a sound of sympathy. ‘Did he mention Polybius?’

‘No, but I might’ve blanked that bit out. Who was Polybius?’

‘Son of a Greek governor, held hostage in Rome for years and years. Went on to kill most of his captors in the sacking of Carthage. I got the same lecture once, from someone who wanted to prove that Stockholm syndrome doesn’t affect every hostage.’

‘It didn’t affect Simone Bissell.’

‘Not in the obvious way,’ Ed agreed, ‘but Paton kept her prisoner for a year. That must have left a mark, emotionally.’

‘She’s a survivor.’ Marnie realised she was repeating the phrase, like a mantra. They both were.

‘She might need to be more than that,’ Ed said. ‘There are a lot of dangerous ways to survive. Look at Hope. She survived her childhood, managed to avoid her mother’s fate, if we can believe that. It left more than a mark – twisted her entire personality.’