Mo Hayder - Skin

Human skin is an organ. The biggest organ in the body, it comprises the dermis, the epidermis and a subcutaneous fatty layer. If it were to be removed intact and spread out it would cover an area just under two square metres. It has weight too: with all that protein and adherent fat, it has enormous bulk. The skin of a healthy adult male would weigh ten to fifteen kilos, depending on his size. The same as a large toddler.

The skin of a woman, on the other hand, would weigh marginally less. It would cover a smaller area too.

Most middle-aged men, even the ones who live alone in a remote part of Somerset, wouldnt have given any thought to what a woman would look like without her skin. Neither would they have cause to wonder what her skin would look like stretched and pinned out on a workbench.

But, then, most men are not like this man.

This man is a different sort of person altogether.

Deep in the rain-soaked Mendip Hills of Somerset lie eight flooded limestone quarries. Long disused, they have been numbered by the owners from one to eight, and are arranged in a horseshoe shape. Number eight, at the most south-easterly point, nearly touches the end of what is called locally the Elfs Grotto system, a network of dripping caves and passages that reach deep into the ground. Local folklore has it there are secret exits from this cave system leading into the old Roman lead mines, that in ancient times the elves of Elfs Grotto used the tunnels as escape routes. Some say that because of all the twentieth-century blasting, these tunnels now open directly into the flooded quarries.

Sergeant Flea Marley, the head of Avon and Somersets underwater search unit, slid into quarry number eight at just after four on a clear May afternoon. She wasnt thinking about secret entrances. She wasnt looking for holes in the wall. She was thinking about a woman whod been missing for three days. The womans name was Lucy Mahoney, and the professionals on the surface believed her corpse might be down here, somewhere in this vast expanse of water, curled in the weeds on one of these ledges.

Flea descended to ten metres, wiggling her jaw from side to side to equalize the pressure in her ears. At this depth the water was an eerie, almost petrol blue just the faintest milky limestone dust hanging where her fins had stirred it up. Perfect. Usually the water she dived was nil vis like swimming through soup, everything having to be done by touch alone but down here she could see at least three metres ahead. She moved away from her entry point, handholding herself along the quarry wall until the pressure on her lifeline was constant. She could see every detail, every wafting plant, every quarried boulder on the floor. Every place a body might have come to rest.

Sarge? PC Wellard, her surface attendant, spoke into the comms mike. His voice came into her ear as if he was standing right next to her. See anything?

Yes, she murmured. Into the future.

Eh?

I can see into the future, Wellard. I see me coming out of here in an hour freezing cold. I see disappointment on everyones face that Im empty-handed.

How come?

Dunno. Just dont think shes down here. It feels wrong. How longs she been missing?

Two and a half days.

And her car. Where was it parked?

Half a mile away. On the B3135.

They thought she was depressed?

Her ex was interviewed for the misper report. Hes adamant she wasnt.

And theres nothing else linking her to the quarry? No belongings? Shed not been here before or anything?

No.

Flea finned on, the umbilical lead the air and communication line that linked her to the surface trailing gently behind. Quarry number eight was a notorious suicide spot. Maybe the police search adviser, Stuart Pearce, disagreed with the family about Lucy Mahoneys state of mind. Maybe that was why hed put this particular pin in the map and detailed them to do this search. Either that or he was grasping at straws. Shed encountered Stuart Pearce before. She thought it was the latter.

Could she swim, Wellard? I forgot to ask.

Yeah. She was a good swimmer.

Then if shes a suicide shell have weighted herself down. A rucksack or something. Which means shell be near the edge. Lets run this pendulum search pattern out to ten metres. No way shell be further out than that. Then well switch to the other side of the quarry.

Uh, Sarge, theres a problem with that. You do that pattern and itll take you to deeper than fifty metres.

Wellard had the quarry schematic. Flea had already studied it surfaceside. When the quarry company had made finger-shaped holes to pack explosives theyd used ten-metre-long drills, which meant that the quarry, before theyd turned off the pumps and allowed it to flood, had been blasted away in ten-metre slices. At one end it was between twenty and thirty metres. At the other end it was deeper. It dropped to more than fifty metres. The Health and Safety Executives rules were clear: no police diver was cleared to dive deeper than fifty. Ever.

Sarge? Did you hear me? Youll be down to fifty metres at the end of this arc. Maybe more.

She cleared her throat. Did you eat all the banana bread?

Eh?

That morning before work shed baked banana bread for the team. It wasnt the sort of thing she usually did. She was the boss but shed never been mumsy with them she was the second youngest, only Wellard was younger. And it wasnt because she loved cooking either. Theyd had a bad, bad time recently: one of them was on compassionate leave and probably wouldnt be back after what hed gone through earlier that week. And then thered been her foul moods, too: a nightmare to live with for the last two years. She had to give them something in return every now and then.

We ate it. But, Sarge, some of those pockets are way over fifty deep. Were supposed to get one of those maniac techie divers in to do something like this.

Whose side are you on, Wellard? Ours or the HSEs?

Silence. Or, rather, the sound of Wellards silent grumbling. When it came to being an old woman Wellard had the whole team beat hands down. OK. But if youre going to do it Im turning this voice panel down. The whole quarry can hear you and weve got a viewing gallery today.

Who?

Theres a traffic unit cruised by to get a look, sitting up there on the grout dunes. Think theyre having their coffee.

I dont suppose the audience includes that tit of a search adviser, does it?

Not yet.

Nice, she said, sarcastic now. Just, its sometimes considered etiquette for the search adviser to get his arse out of bed when hes hauled a team out like this.

She slowed. In the darkening water ahead a net was slung across her path. Beyond it was the fifty-metre section, where the water was darker and bluer. Colder. It was such uncertain territory that the company had rigged up netting to prevent access to the recreational divers who sometimes used the quarry for practice. She gripped the net, clicked on her divelight and shone it through to where the quarry floor dropped precipitously away.

She might have had only one previous encounter with Pearce but it was enough. She wasnt going to let him get one up on her. Even if it meant breaking all her professional rules and going deeper than fifty, she was damned if she wasnt going to complete the search. There was a sign set in concrete to her right, the words covered in algae. Danger: depths exceeding fifty metres. Random checks on dive computers are in force in this quarry. Do not dive beyond your capabilities.

Good place to hang your dive computer, she thought, touching the sign. Just take your wrist unit off, hang it on one of the nails, then collect it on the way back up. No one checking later would be any the wiser that youd gone deeper than fifty, and the surface unit didnt generate a computerized dive record. It was the sort of trick Dad had pulled when he was alive. An extreme-sports diver, hed do anything to push the limits, get to the depth he wanted to be.