Read Someone Else's Skin Online
Authors: Sarah Hilary
Tags: #Crime, #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Police Procedural, #Mystery & Detective, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Contemporary
Someone Else's Skin
Copyright © 2014 Sarah Hilary
The right of Sarah Hilary to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2014
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 0771 5
Cover photograph © Rob Lambert/Arcangel Images
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London
NW1 3BH
www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Table of Contents
About Sarah Hilary
Sarah Hilary lives in Bath with her husband and daughter, where she writes quirky copy for a well-loved travel publisher. She’s also worked as a bookseller, and with the Royal Navy. An award-winning short story writer, Sarah won the Cheshire Prize for Literature in 2012. SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN is her first novel.
Follow Sarah on Twitter at @
Sarah_Hilary
About the Book
Devastating, brilliant and heralding an outstanding new talent in crime fiction, SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN is the crime debut of the year.
Some secrets keep you safe, others will destroy you . . .
Detective Inspector Marnie Rome. Dependable; fierce; brilliant at her job; a rising star in the ranks. Everyone knows how Marnie fought to come back from the murder of her parents, but very few know what is going on below the surface. Because Marnie has secrets she won’t share with anyone.
But then so does everyone. Certainly those in the women’s shelter Marnie and Detective Sergeant Noah Jake visit on that fateful day. The day when they arrive to interview a resident, only to find one of the women’s husbands, who shouldn’t have been there, lying stabbed on the floor.
As Marnie and Noah investigate the crime further, events begin to spiral and the violence escalates. Everyone is keeping secrets, some for survival and some, they suspect, to disguise who they really are under their skin.
Now, if Marnie is going to find the truth she will have to face her own demons head on. Because the time has come for secrets to be revealed . . .
To Anna, in defiance
Author’s Note
Someone Else’s Skin
is a work of fiction, but some of the characters and their stories were inspired (or informed) by research. In particular, I found the following books and websites inspirational and/or informative:
- Daughters of Shame
by Jasvinder Sanghera, published by Hodder & Stoughton, August 2009 (978-0-3409-6207-7) - The Invisible Gorilla
by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, published by HarperCollins, March 2011 (978-0-0073-1731-8) - ‘The real CSI: what happens at a crime scene?’ by Craig Taylor, published in
Guardian Weekend
, 28 April 2012 - Women’s Aid, domestic abuse support network:
www.womensaid.org.uk - Karma Nirvana, honour-based abuse support network:
www.karmanirvana.org.uk
Acknowledgements
More words? Yes, a few. Without these people, this book would have been less, or not at all.
My agent, Jane Gregory, and her team, especially Mary who refused to let the slush pile have me. My editor, Vicki Mellor, and the team at Headline who welcomed me so well.
My beta readers, Elaine in Texas, J in Australia, and Becca. The Max posse, in particular Anne-Elisabeth, Claudia, Lisa, Manisha and Philippa. Rhian Davies, who talked such sense when I didn’t. Linda Wilson, whose promise of a free lunch helped square it away. Alison Bruce, who has the best theories about Red John. My favourite cheerleaders, Vanessa Gebbie and Tania Hershman, and Venetia and Alan Sarll. Pita, for a terrific first edit. River, for the tequila and the avocado. Raven, for the ink.
Anna Britten, whose friendship made all the difference at all the right moments.
My family, who never seemed to doubt I’d get here and who always make everything better. My mother, the best in the world. My sister, Penny, who was my first fan. My brilliant brothers, Mark and Nick. My husband David and our awesome daughter, Milly. One day I’ll let you read this book.
Five years ago
They’ve cordoned off the house by the time she gets home. A uniformed stranger is unwinding police tape, methodically.
Marnie watches from the safety of the car, her fingers icy on the ignition key, the engine running as if she might make a quick getaway, drive past and keep driving . . .
She knows she won’t get through the police cordon, but she also knows she has to. Whatever else is in the house – and she’s scared, so scared her teeth ache –
answers
are in there. She needs to get inside.
She cuts the engine, burying the keys in her fist, their teeth biting the hollow pocket of her palm. She’s shivering before she’s out of the car.
An ambulance, there’s an ambulance, but it’s standing silent, no sirens or sweeping lights. The crew’s in the house, no one’s in a hurry to leave. That’s not good. It means there isn’t any hope, the worst possible thing has happened. Her face is wet and she looks for rain, but the sky’s empty, grey, as if someone has dragged a tarpaulin across it. There’s no rain, just the dull, raspy pressure that comes before a storm.
It’s been raining all month. Like the rest of London, she’s got used to it; there’s an umbrella in her glove compartment, another in her desk back at the station, and in the bag at her shoulder. She’s not going to get wet queuing for coffee or coming out of the tube station, or standing around at crime scenes. Be prepared isn’t a motto, it’s common sense. When you can pull it off. When it’s not something so huge and horrible you’re afraid to get close.
She looks for the PCSO.
There, wearing a fluorescent vest over his uniform by the side of Dad’s car, the brown Vauxhall, his pride and joy. The car manages to shine even without the sun, like the windows to the house, dazzling her. As if everything behind the tape is made of glass, breakable. Even the hanging basket of petunias over the door. Breakable.
Marnie stands on the pavement, her teeth knocking together with cold, knowing she has to get into the house, knowing she can’t.
She’s fourteen again, home late, hoping to sneak in under her parents’ radar. Her eyes are itchy with mascara, her tongue dry and patchy with tequila. It feels like a snake’s crawled inside her left boot and strangled her toes to sleep. She’s limping, heroic and guilt-stricken. She’ll never make it in there alive . . .
She shakes herself back into the present. She’s not fourteen. She’s twenty-eight, petrified of what she’s going to find the other side of the police cordon. Silence, and that dark zoo stink that’ll be in her clothes for hours and on her skin for longer.
She forces herself to think of something else. A different crime scene, one she’s survived, worse than whatever’s waiting in the house. Albie Crane . . .
She thinks of Albie Crane. A homeless old man, no next of kin. Burned alive in a doorway down by the docks, by kids high on pocket-money-priced pills. Back before the rain started, while it was still dry enough for an old coat and six flattened cardboard boxes to burn all night so that what’s left is a sticky mess of flayed ribs, a blackly lacquered skull. Old Albie Crane with no one to cry for him, and she made herself repeat the lie, ‘He was sleeping when it happened,’ as if you could sleep through a thing like that. The worst she’d seen, or smelt, until the next thing: a couple in a house fire, melted together by the flames.
The PCSO is young enough to have acne, but it doesn’t make any difference. He’s in charge here. He could stop the Chief Constable crossing that line.
Something – a breeze, traffic – makes the police tape stiffen and turn. The sound it makes is
snick-snick-snick
.
The edge of her eye catches Mrs Poole, her parents’ neighbour, huddled in the porch of number 12. Her face is spotty with shock and there’s a foil blanket around her shoulders, but no one is with her. All the action is next door. No one else is hurt, or the cordon would be wider.
Normally, that would be a comfort, the fact that the damage is contained. Private.
Seeing Marnie, Mrs Poole moans, a hand coming up to hide her mouth.
Marnie ducks to pass under the tape.
‘Miss. You can’t go in there.’ Up close, the acne is lurid, red and yellow. The PCSO squares up to her, authority lending him an inch in all directions.
She shows her badge, remembering too late that after the DS, it gives her surname. Rome, like the couple in the house. DS Marnie Rome. Greg and Lisa’s little girl.
A big hand on her shoulder makes her jump.
Tim Welland, her boss.
Now she knows it’s as bad as it gets.
‘DS Rome,’ he says quietly. ‘Marnie.’
Using her first name. It’s worse, much worse.
‘Please.’ She just wants to get inside the house. She’s shaking with cold out here. ‘Sir, please . . .’
He steers her with his hand on her shoulder, back towards the tape. She feels it tap the waist of her shirt. ‘Sir . . .’
Welland has a scab above his left eyebrow, too high to be a shaving scar. It’s crusty, ringed like a bull’s eye. Red veins spoil the whites of his eyes. He looks ill. Old.
‘Let me go in,’ she says. ‘Please. Let me go in to them.’