Under Your Skin Read Online Free PDF Page B

what we tell guests on the show. Sit on your hands if you need to. My neck is hot. When I have finished my narrative—the identical story PC Morrow wrote down earlier—I tell DI Perivale that he is making me feel guilty and defensive, like I’m walking through security or past bouncers at the doors of expensive shops.
    “Do that often, do you?”
    “What?”
    “Walk through doors of expensive shops?”
    I give his arm a frisky slap. It’s not a comfortable moment. His skin, below the short sleeves of his polo, is pale with dark, spidery hairs. He looks down at my hand, at my crimson nails. “I had to have it on for work,” I say, taking it back.
    He gives a half smile.
    “You’d better drink your tea,” I say. “Sorry I can’t be of more help. I wish I had seen something, anything. I’m sorry it’s been a bit of a wasted journey. That poor woman, though.”
    “No journey is ever wasted for me.”
    He is perhaps one of those men who feels less inadequate when making other people feel small. He reminds me of my boss on Panorama when I was a trainee—Colin Sinclair, with his big black leathers and his little red Suzuki 125. “You might say that; I couldn’t possibly comment,” he would venture at any observation even remotely controversial. Or when my train was late: “I believe you; millions wouldn’t.” His brain was lost unless he could find a little worn groove to slot into, until he found a preconceived idea to latch on to. And this policeman seems to be doing the same. And a body out there . . . if it is still out there.
    “Is she still there?” I ask. “In the middle of the common? Or have you moved her? I’ve no idea what happens in these situations.” I tap the table, touching wood. “Luckily.”
    He rubs his face. “We’ve taken the body away. She’s with postmortem.”
    “Did you, they, SOCO find anything? Anything at all that might tell you what happened? Was it a mugging, do you think? Or a rape? A random killing? Is there some maniac out there we should all know about? Sorry to ask these questions, but it would be nice . . . to know.” To my surprise, I think I might be about to cry.
    “We need to wait,” he says, not unkindly. “We’ll know more later. My motto: ABC. Assume nothing. Believe no one. Check everything. I will be in touch. I promise.”
    “I suppose auto-asphyxiation is out of the question?”
    “Even assuming nothing,” he says, “I think we can rule out auto-asphyxiation.”
    “It’s funny how no one had ever even heard of it before Michael Hutchence, and now it’s the first thing we all think of. ‘Oh. Auto-asphyxiation,’we all say, people of the world now, unshockable. But it’s still such a weird thought, to find strangulation sexually exciting.” I’m gabbling, being facetious, a habit when I’m nervous. He’s just staring at me, half bored, half interested, as you might stare at a brightly striped fish in an aquarium. “You don’t know who she is? No mobile phone . . . or wallet?”
    “No.” He gives an almost theatrically heavy sigh. Perhaps he is not so insufferable. “At the moment, we know nothing.”
    I feel suddenly very sad. “I suppose you are used to this sort of thing.”
    “Not really.”
    “Well, I am sure you’ll do a good job,” I say inadequately.
    “There’s nothing else at all you can remember?”
    A memory washes over me, the shock of a cold wave. “An odd smell. Almost . . . it sounds stupid, but almost like bleach.”
    He nods. “I noticed that. The pathologist will confirm.”
    “And her eyes? I meant to ask? They looked like they were covered in wax.”
    “Conjunctiva. Nothing to do with how she died, more about when. It happens when the pressure drops behind the eyes—the eyeballs soften. It gives them a thin, cloudy, filmy appearance.”
    “The light goes out.”
    “Indeed.”
    I look at my watch. Millie will be back any minute, and I wouldn’t mind him gone before she gets here. I need