Under the Skin Read Online Free PDF

all. Like, she could maybe find a few extra loopholes in the EU regulations.
    What did this girl do for a crust? Her hands weren’t quite right. No, they weren’t normal at all. She’d buggered them up, maybe, in some heavy manual job when she was too young to handle it and too stupid to complain. Chicken-plucking. Fish-gutting.
    She lived by the sea, definitely. Smelled of it. Fresh today. Maybe she worked for one of the local fishermen. Mackenzie was known to take women on, if they were strong enough and not too much trouble.
    Was this girl trouble?
    She was tough, that was for sure. Probably had been through hell, growing up funny-looking in one of those little seaboard villages. Balintore. Hilton. Rockfield. No, not Rockfield. He knew every single person in Rockfield.
    How old was she? Eighteen, maybe. Her hands were forty. She drove like she was pulling a wonky trailer-load of hay over a narrow bridge. Sat like she had a rod up her arse. Any shorter and she’d need a couple of pillows on the seat. Maybe he’d suggest that to her – maybe she’d bite his head off if he did. Probably illegal, anyway. Highway Code regulation number three million and sixty. She’d be scared to tell them where to shove it. She’d rather suffer.
    And she was suffering. The way she moved her arms and legs. The heating turned up full. She’d done some damage there somewhere along the line. A car accident, maybe? She had guts, then, to keep driving. A tough little bird.
    Could he help her out, maybe?
    Could she be any use to him?
    ‘You live near the sea, am I right?’ he said.
    ‘How can you tell?’ Isserley was surprised; she had made no conversation yet, assuming he needed more time to appraise her body.
    ‘Smell,’ he stated bluntly. ‘I can smell the sea on your clothes. Dornoch Firth? Moray Firth?’
    It was alarming, this point-blank accuracy. She would never have expected it; he had the half-smiling, half-grimacing squint of the dull-witted. There was black engine oil on the sleeves of his shabby polyester jacket. Pale scars littered his tanned face like imperfectly erased graffiti.
    Of his two guesses, she picked the one that was wrong.
    ‘Dornoch,’ she said.
    ‘I haven’t seen you around,’ he said.
    ‘I only arrived a few days ago,’ she said.
    Her car had caught up now with the procession of vehicles that had passed him by. A long trail of tail-lights stretched, fading, into the distance. That was good. She dropped back into first gear and crawled along, absolved from speed.
    ‘You working?’ he asked.
    Isserley’s brain was functioning optimally now, barely distracted by the steady pace of the traffic. She deduced he was probably the type who knew someone in every conceivable profession, or at least in those professions he didn’t despise.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m unemployed.’
    ‘You need a fixed address to get benefits,’ he pointed out, quick as a flash.
    ‘I don’t believe in the dole.’ She was getting the hang of him at last, and suspected this reply would please him.
    ‘Looking for work?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, slowing down even further to allow a luminous white Mini into the queue. ‘But I don’t have much education. And I’m not that strong.’
    ‘Tried gathering whelks?’
    ‘Whelks?’
    ‘Whelks. It’s one of my lines of business. People just like yourself gather ’em. I sell ’em on.’
    Isserley pondered for a few seconds, assessing whether she had enough information to proceed.
    ‘What are whelks?’ she said at last.
    He grinned through his haze of steam.
    ‘Molluscs, basically. You’ll’ve seen ’em, living where you live. But I’ve got one here, as it happens.’ He lifted one cheek of his meaty buttocks towards her, to fish around in his right trouser pocket.
    ‘There’s the fella,’ he said, holding a dull grey shell up to her eye level. ‘I always keep one in my pocket, to show people.’
    ‘That’s very foresightful of you,’ complimented