Someone Else's Skin (7 page)

A trolley bumped down the corridor outside the private room.

‘Why did Leo bring the knife to the refuge, Hope?’

‘For me,’ Hope whispered. ‘To make me feel safe.’

Marnie pinched the bridge of her nose. This conversation was . . . insane. ‘Leo brought a knife to a women’s refuge to make you feel safe.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did it make you feel safe?’

Hope didn’t answer.

‘Can you look at me, please? Hope.’

Hope lifted her head, a fugitive coldness in her stare. Resentment. Because Marnie was forcing her to confront the truth about the lies in her marriage?

‘That’s better. Thank you.’ She gave her a supportive smile. ‘Did Leo hand you the knife, is that how you got hold of it?’

‘Yes. He said I didn’t know these people. There were all sorts in there. Like a prison, he said. There’s always violence in prisons.’

‘He gave the knife to you, and you took it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Then . . .’ She wedged the flat of her hand under her nose. ‘Then he held out the roses and – I was going to smell them. They looked so beautiful, perfect, only I scratched myself on a thorn . . .’ She put out her left hand, searching its fingers, showing Marnie the scratch on the pad of her ring finger, looking bewildered. ‘It didn’t even hurt. I hardly felt it, just a scratch, but I panicked. I panicked.’

Her eyes flew wide. ‘I stabbed my husband because of this!’ Thrusting the scratched finger at Marnie. ‘A pinprick! Nothing! Why? What sort of person does that? It was nothing – a scratch! How could I?
How?
’

Marnie took her hand. ‘Hope . . . who can I call? Is there someone you’d like here with you? Family?’

They’d asked Marnie the same question, five years ago. She hadn’t been able to think of anyone, not easily. Only Ed Belloc, and it was his job. She was afraid he’d come as a professional, rather than a friend.

‘I don’t have any family.’ Hope shrank, as if the outburst had stolen what was left of her strength. ‘They died. Dad when I was little. My mum . . . last year. Cancer.’

‘I’m sorry . . . How about friends?’

‘Simone . . .’

‘From the refuge?’

‘Yes. If she’ll come. I know she’s scared.’ Hope pulled her hand from Marnie’s, to wipe at her nose again. ‘I haven’t any tissues; they were in my handbag . . .’

‘Simone’s scared . . . of leaving the refuge?’

Hope nodded. She turned her face away. ‘I was the same. I thought I was safe there. I didn’t think anything bad could happen as long as I was there. It was . . . my home. You’re meant to be safe in your home.’

‘Yes, you are.’ Marnie got to her feet. ‘I’ll ask Simone if she’ll come. And I’ll bring your handbag.’ She paused. ‘There was a note, in your bag. Very nasty.’

‘What?’ Hope’s voice was dull, desensitised. She rubbed at the skin under her right breast: the tattooed heart.

‘A threatening letter,’ Marnie said gently. ‘In your handbag.’

‘Oh.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not mine. I took it because it scared her so much. She was sure he didn’t know where to find her . . . It’s why I don’t know if she’ll come. She’s so frightened . . .’

‘The note was sent to Simone?’

Hope nodded. ‘By Lowell.’

‘Lowell who?’ Marnie felt a new itch between her shoulder blades.

‘I don’t know. Just . . . Lowell. He did things to her . . .’ Hope shuddered. ‘At least Leo . . . He never hurt me, the way Lowell hurt her. He’s a monster. Simone says he’ll never give up, ever. Not until he’s got her back.’

12

‘What’re you doing in here?’ Hope’s friend with the braids, Simone Bissell, stood in the doorway to Hope’s room, challenging Noah with a stare.

‘I wanted to take an overnight bag,’ he invented, ‘to the hospital.’ He held up a plastic washbag. ‘This is all I could find.’

Hope’s room was pin-neat. What possessions she had, she’d tidied away into the wardrobe and the cupboard by the bed. Noah had searched for samples of Proctor’s handwriting, but there was nothing of Leo’s in the room. The washbag was the kind sold in airports, pre-packed with deodorant, a toothbrush, shower gel.

Simone’s eyes were huge on his face. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’ Her accent was tricky to place. North London, but posh, not street. ‘It’s her room. Private.’

‘It’s all right.’ He hunted for a phrase to reassure her. ‘I’m a detective. I was here earlier, with DI Rome? And I’ve been talking with Ayana . . .’

‘I know who you are.’ She lifted her chin. ‘You’re a stranger. Hope doesn’t know you. She’s done nothing wrong.’

‘She stabbed her husband.’

‘You didn’t see.’ Her mouth wrenched. ‘He’s dangerous. Hope saved our lives. She saved all our lives.’

The bed had been made with military tightness. Noah had slipped his hand under the mattress on every side: nothing. The emptiness of the room mocked him.

‘Why is she being kept in the hospital overnight?’ Simone demanded.

‘Just so we can be sure she’s okay.’

‘I want to see her.’ Simone’s eyes went around the room, measuring its emptiness, or checking to see what Noah had touched. ‘She shouldn’t be alone.’

‘She’s not alone. DI Rome’s with her.’

‘She should have a friend.’ Simone’s stare flitted to the window; for the first time, he read fear in her face. She was afraid of what lay outside the front door. He wondered what shape her fear took. A husband or father? Brothers, like Ayana?

‘You’d do that for her?’ he asked. ‘Leave the refuge?’

Simone raised her chin at him. The defiance transformed her, gave rosy hearts to her mahogany cheeks. At some point, her nose had been broken, but she was still beautiful. ‘She needs me.’ She looked him over. ‘You have someone, don’t you, who would go back for you?’ She nodded at the window, as if she was pointing out a wild animal enclosure, a place no sane person would stray. ‘Back out there. You have someone.’

Yes, he had someone.

‘DI Rome will be back soon. From the hospital. I’ll ask her if you can visit Hope.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes.’

Simone nodded. ‘She had to do it.’ Her big eyes came back to his face. ‘There wasn’t any choice.’

‘How did she get the knife?’ He spoke as quietly as he could, knowing the ambulance crew had said it was too soon to start asking questions about the stabbing. ‘Simone? How did she get the knife?’

‘It was a test, to see if she dared . . .’ Simone’s voice dropped to a hot whisper. She rubbed her hands at her forearms, hidden by the sleeves of her sweatshirt. ‘She told me things he’d done . . . Things you wouldn’t want to believe. He must have thought he had broken her. That she wouldn’t
dare
. . . He didn’t think she’d dare . . . He thought he’d broken her in a thousand pieces, but sometimes . . . when you are broken . . .’

She drew her hands from her sleeves, knitting her fingers into a fist. ‘You mend hard.’

13

The rain had stopped, street lights sitting in flooded puddles in the road. It was dark enough now to remove the cap –
I
♥
London
– as long as he kept low in the car seat.

He’d thought when it got dark that it’d be easy to see what was going on inside the refuge, but they’d pinned some thick stuff over the windows and all he could make out were shadows moving in the rooms at the front.

He couldn’t stay much longer, not today. Things to do and he’d promised he wouldn’t be late. This was his life now: always making promises, most of them to other people, but some to himself. Like this one, here and now.

Waiting for his chance, with her.

He chewed at his left index finger until he tasted blood. In the mean spill of light from the street, the hand was ugly, clawed like an old man’s arthritic paw. He balled it to a fist, pictured smashing it into her . . .

It calmed him down.

The anger was like a new baby; sometimes you had to let it bawl itself out. When he was calmer, he put the finger back in his mouth and sucked at the blood.

He’d missed something, when he was avoiding the police cars, waiting for the sirens to shut up. After the ambulance took the big bloke away. It flicked across his mind:
Who was that? What happened to him?
But he didn’t really care. It didn’t matter.

What mattered was the unmarked Mondeo.

When he’d driven back round to the front of the refuge, that was when he saw . . .

The Mondeo had moved. It was parked in a different spot, facing the other way. Same car; he’d checked the registration.

What if they got to her before you could?

While he was skulking around the corner, the Mondeo had gone and come back. What if he’d missed her, if the police got to her first? Just for a second, relief had squirmed in the pit of his belly, before he made himself remember what she’d done and why he couldn’t let it alone; the promise he’d made to himself.

The police were still here, which meant
she
was still here. She wouldn’t dare leave the refuge alone, he was sure of that. She knew he was coming.

He’d had fun writing the warning note.

You fucking evil bitch your dead.

Gripping the pen in his left hand – in what was left of his left hand – pretending to be some arsehole who couldn’t spell, in case she decided to show the note to someone. He knew she’d know who’d written it.

He hoped she was afraid. He hoped she was shitting herself with fear.

She deserved it. For what she’d done.

She deserved everything he’d promised himself she’d get.

You think your safe. Think again.

14

From everything Marnie had said about Ed Belloc, Noah had pictured a big bear of a man, cuddly and capable. Asexual.

Ed, when he came, was five foot ten. Slim and soaked, rain running down his face, making a skullcap of his dark hair. He shook himself like a dog on the doorstep of the refuge, lifting a hand in greeting at the blurred lens of the CCTV.

Noah buzzed him into the building, fetching a towel from the nearest bathroom.

‘Thanks.’ Belloc scrubbed the towel at his head, offering his free hand. ‘Ed. You must be DS Jake.’ His hand was thin and chilled.

‘Noah. Can I fix you a cup of tea?’

‘Great. Thanks.’ Ed mopped the back of his neck. ‘Where’s Rome?’

‘She’s just got back from the hospital. She’s in the dayroom.’

Rome?
The familiarity surprised him, but Ed had known Marnie for years, at least five years that Noah knew of. He was younger than Noah had expected. Thirty-ish, with the soft-focus look of a student midway through his finals. Dressed like a student, in decimated cords and a blue shirt with a fraying collar which rain had soaked to navy. His hair was drying into bedhead brown curls and he had brown eyes, cute in a through-a-hedge-backwards way. Noah preferred something edgier, but he admired the way Belloc was working the look. Ed was the least threatening man he’d seen in a long time.

Marnie was waiting in the doorway to the dayroom, her face softening to a smile when she saw Ed. ‘Thanks for coming. How was court?’

‘Stuffy.’ He finished drying himself with the towel. ‘Good to get into the fresh air.’

She straightened his wet collar. ‘Looks like you swam here . . .’

‘So what’s been going on?’ Ed’s eyes went over her shoulder, to the dayroom where the women were sitting. ‘You said an incident. That can’t be good.’

Marnie walked Ed and Noah towards the office. ‘One of the women stuck a knife in her husband. We walked into the middle of it. It was lucky Noah was with me. He saved the husband’s life.’

The office was a short, windowless room. Three of its four walls were partitions, drawing noise from elsewhere in the refuge. Little of the desk was visible under a litter of stained mugs, empty sweet wrappers and gossip magazines, celebrity cleavage shining from their covers.

‘Who did the stabbing?’ Ed asked.

Marnie moved a copy of
Heat
magazine out of the way, so that she could perch on the edge of the desk. ‘Hope Proctor.’

‘Not a name I know. How long’s she been here?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘My last visit was a month ago.’ Ed looked apologetic.

‘I wanted to ask you about security here,’ Marnie said. ‘From the look of it, Hope’s husband walked in, armed, no one to stop him.’

Ed was silent for a beat. Then he said, ‘He brought a knife in here?’

‘No one challenged him.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Ten, this morning. The door was on the latch. Is that usual, in places like this?’

‘Nothing’s usual, in places like this.’ Ed towelled his neck again. ‘I’d love to tell you trained professionals are in charge twenty-four-seven, but it’s just not practical in most places. There
should
have been trained staff on duty. The door
should
have been secure. There are panic buttons and they should be working. We shouldn’t have to rely on volunteers because resources are so stretched . . .’ He scratched a hand through his hair. ‘Where’s Hope now?’

‘In the hospital. Sedated.’ Marnie glanced at Noah. ‘DC Abby Pike’s with her.’

‘How bad is she?’

‘She’s bad.’ Marnie touched the side of her neck. ‘Shaken, ashamed. In denial. Nine years of abuse, a lot of it sexual. It was difficult, talking with her. She resented the questions . . .’

Noah reached a hand for the wall, feeling sick. This was the man whose life he’d helped to save? A rapist and a torturer?

‘She’s blaming herself,’ Marnie said, ‘even so. She says Leo had the knife for her protection, can you believe that?’

‘That and a whole lot worse,’ Ed said. ‘About resenting the questions . . . It’s nothing personal. Keeping secrets is empowering, even if you’re the one getting hurt. Counterintuitive, I know, but I’ll bet she felt stronger before she told you anything . . .’ A frown pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Who else was here when it happened?’

‘Simone Bissell. Mab Thule. Tessa Stebbins and Shelley Coates. Ayana. And the supervisor, Jeanette Conway.’

‘Jesus,’ he breathed, looking shaken. ‘They all saw it? The stabbing? Mab and Simone and the others?’