Beneath The Skin

TWELVE

I cleared my big living room table but there still wasn’t enough space. After Cameron had got rid of Ly

“Is that all?” I asked ironically as the final pile was dumped at my feet.

“No,” he said.

“I said I wanted everything.”

“You’d need a small van for everything,” he said. “These are the active files from the office, and the others that I’ve got direct access to. Anyway, I don’t know what good you think this will do you. You’ll find most of it incomprehensible.” He sat in the uncomfortable wicker chair in the corner. “You’ve got two hours with this. And if you mention to anybody that you’ve seen any of this at all, then that’s my job.”

“Hush,” I said, picking up files at random. “How are these arranged?”

“Don’t get them out of order,” he said. “Mostly the gray files are for statements. The blue files are our own reports and documents. The red files are forensic and crime scene. It’s not completely consistent. Anyway it’s all written on the outside.”

“Are there photographs?”

“There are pictures of the crime scenes in the albums on the floor by your feet.”

I looked down. It seemed strange that police would put pictures of murders into the same sort of album that people use for their holiday snaps. I felt cold suddenly. Was this a good idea?

“Maybe in a minute. I just wanted to see what they looked like.”

Cameron came forward and started rummaging on the table, muttering to himself.

“Here,” he said. “And here.”

As I reached for it he took my hand.

“Sorry,” he said.

I pulled away from him. I was in a hurry.

“Go away,” I said. “Go into the garden. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

“Or what?” he said wearily. “Or you’ll ring my wife?”

“I can’t read with you here.”

He paused. “It doesn’t make nice reading, Nadia.”

“Leave me.”

Slowly and reluctantly, he left the room.

I had a moment’s hesitation in opening the first file, in even touching it, as if there were an electric current protecting it. I was going to open a door and go into a room and somehow things would always be different. I would be different.

I opened the file and there she was. A snapshot was pi

Also in the file were some typed notes. This was what I’d been looking for. Boyfriend, friends, employer, references to other files, contact numbers, addresses. I had a notebook ready for this. I jotted down some names and numbers, looking round to check that Cameron couldn’t see me. I flicked through the files. There was another photograph, a black-and-white portrait that looked as if it had been taken for some kind of identification. Yes, she was lovely. I’d seen in the previous picture that she was slim but there was a slight roundness to her face. She looked very young. Although she had a basically serious expression, there was a glint of something in her eyes as if, the very moment that the picture had been taken, she was going to break out into a naughty smile. I wondered what her voice had sounded like. Her name sounded foreign but she had been born somewhere near Nottingham.

I closed the file and put it carefully to one side. Now for the second. Je

I had felt that Zoe was much younger than me; Je

Something occurred to me. I looked in the pile of files where these two had come from. As I thought, there was a file with my name on it. I opened it and was looking at a picture of myself. Nadia Elizabeth Blake, b. 1971. I shivered. Maybe in a few weeks this file would be fatter and another would have been opened.

I looked at my watch. What on earth next? And what was the point of this, apart from curiosity? When I was eleven years old there was a five-meter board at our local swimming pool. I never dared jump from it until one day I just climbed the steps as if I happened to be climbing a ladder for no reason and stepped over the edge of the board without thinking and I’d done it. I did this now.

I reached down for the first album of pictures, bound in gaudy red plastic. It should have contained pictures of little girls blowing out candles and people kicking balls along the beach. I opened it and mechanically turned the pages one after another. Not that much to see, really. I turned back to the begi

I put it down and picked up the second book. The crime scene at Je