Secret Skin

Prologue

Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The height of the last property boom. 

Prologue

A painfully skinny forensics officer stood on the edge of the creek wearing an absurd, almost theatrical uniform. His young manicured hands trembled as he pulled back the grimy tarpaulin like a child removing the cover of a surprise birthday present.

One arm slapped the empty cobbled promenade of Dubai’s dhow lined creek. The other arm stayed where it was, crippled, the elbow twisted at an impossible angle in its socket. Deep burns scored and bruised the dead woman’s wrists where they had been tied together. Graded nautical rope still bound her ankles. In a last final indecency her knees had fallen open, revealing everything to a disapproving but fascinated male audience of boatmen and police. Unashamed, each man’s eyes explored the bloody kaleidoscope of painful dark reds, soft purples, and long savage gashes where her naked flesh had been cleaved apart.

The evidence of bondage and the obvious lack of clothes made it hard to believe she had fallen from a ship and been mangled by rotor blades.

‘So, is it her?’ the captain said.

‘There’s too much mutilation,’ I said. ‘I can’t be certain.’

I looked again. Her hair and eyes were the same color, and the deformed skin also had a familiar sallow tint, but then so did half the population of Dubai.

‘Close her eyes,’ I said.

Captain Khadim snapped his fingers and barked a short order. The forensics waif obeyed.

Ignoring the patterns disturbed minds had carved into the body I moved in closer. My breathing shallowed, a feeble defense against its perfumed decay.

There was one small feature that I knew intimately, something that would distinguish this disfigured corpse from any other, a small mole on her left eyelid. Her one imperfection she'd said.

As the grand mosque’s early morning call to prayer echoed through the cool dawn air I probed her loose spongy skin and stifled a gag.

Then I forced myself to look again.