The Shape of Snakes

by Minette Walters

  I looked into her downstairs window�more curious than expectant�-and was taken aback when her flour-white face, slashed red lips and heavily outlined eyes appeared briefly behind the pane. I recalled Libby's nickname for her, "the bleached vampire," but she looked more pathetic than predatory that morning. An aging woman trying to paint away the ravages of time. Was Geoffrey Spalding still with her? Or had his infatuation died along with her sex appeal? I felt an absurd desire to raise my hand in greeting before I remembered that we'd never spoken and that, if she'd known me at all twenty years ago, she certainly wouldn't recognize me now.

  I barely glanced at Annie's house as I moved on to number 32. Even when I'd stood in front of her boarded-up house in the months following her death, her ghost had never troubled me, and I certainly didn't expect to be bothered by it now.

  In the end, the only ghosts that lingered here were lonely mothers..

  Maureen Slater opened her door before I could knock, and thrust out a miniature hand to pull me inside. "I don't want anyone to see you," she said.

  "They won't know who I am."

  "They'll guess. Everyone talks."

  I wondered why that mattered when there was no one left who remembered Annie, and decided that by "everyone" she meant Sharon. I thought it would be counterproductive to say I'd already been seen, and followed her down the corridor to the kitchen, catching glimpses of the two ground-floor rooms as I passed their open doors.

  The sitting room looked as though it was rarely used, but the dining room had been converted into a comfortable den with brightly colored bean bags littering the floor, a cushioned sofa along one wall and a wide-screen television in the corner. It was already switched on, showing a daytime magazine program, and the rumpled duvet on the sofa and the fug of smoke in the room suggested Maureen had either been watching it all night or had started early. She closed the door as we passed to deaden the volume.

  Even though Maureen's was an end-of-terrace house, the layout inside was identical to ours, as indeed was every alternate house in the row: sitting room and dining room on the right with the corridor running past the stairs on the left-hand side toward the kitchen at the back. The in-between houses were built in mirror image so that corridors adjoined corridors on one side, and living space adjoined living space on the other. Upstairs, in precisely the same way, it was either the bedrooms or stairwells that adjoined. In order to allow for a window in the dining rooms, the kitchens were offset against the ends of the houses and shared a party wall with the people on the corridor side. As none of the structures was built to modern soundproof standards, the inevitable result was that we all came to know our neighbors rather better than we would have liked.

  Indeed, it had been Sam's permanent complaint that we should have done some "noise" research before we bought number 5. On the corridor side, number 7�the side that acted as a sound buffer�lived an elderly couple, who rarely spoke above whispers even when they were in their kitchen. On the living-space side, number 3�the side that acted like a huge echo chamber divided by a thin vibrating wall�were the Charles children, whose nighttime screaming had kept us awake. One day, in a spirit of optimism, Sam invited both couples in for drinks and suggested they swap houses so that peace could break out all 'round, but Paul Charles took exception to some of the things Sam claimed to have heard through the wall and treated him with hostility from that moment on.

  I had often wondered if a similar situation had existed with Annie, although, of the many complaints made against her, the question of noise had never been mentioned. In fact it was more likely she had been a victim of it and had suffered in silence while her life was made a misery. Certainly Michael Percy and Alan Slater had taken great pleasure from teasing her in public, and I couldn't believe they hadn't continued the sport in private by shouting insults at her through the party walls.

  "Danny phoned last night," said Maureen, pulling out a chair in the kitchen and pressing me on to it. "You seem to be making quite a hit with him." She had a trace of the Midlands in her voice, which showed itself in the hard "g" she added to "ing," but whether she had been born there or whether she had learned it from her parents I didn't know.

  Like everything else about her it set my teeth on edge, and I had to glue a smile to my face to mask my dislike. Whatever Wendy Stanhope may have said about her brutal treatment at the hands of her husband, I'd always thought there was something evil about Maureen Slater, perhaps because I held her responsible for the hate campaign against Annie. I'm sure she knew what my real feelings were, but for the moment she was prepared to go along with the pretense of friendship.

  "The feeling's mutual," I assured her. "Danny's a nice fellow."

  She busied herself with cups and saucers. I had written to her many times over the years, seeking answers, but the only response I had ever received was the one a week ago, agreeing to this meeting. I assumed it was my contact with Danny that had persuaded her to change her mind, and I wondered how far she suspected that I had sought him out deliberately and how far she was worried about what he had been telling me. There was, after all, so much that she wouldn't want me to know.

  "You're the only person who thinks so," she said, filling a kettle at the sink. "Danny's been in and out of trouble since he was ten ... fighting ... stealing cars ... he started shooting heroin when he was twelve." She paused, waiting for an answer. When I didn't give one, she went on a little tartly, "Not the type most mothers want hanging around teenage boys. He says he's been out drinking with your lads."

  "He has. They've met up with him on Portland a couple of times."

  "You know he smokes cannabis."

  "Yes."

  "He's probably offering it to your kids," she said with a touch of malice, as if the idea pleased her.

  "Then he isn't the first, and he won't be the last."

  She eyed me suspiciously. "You're pretty laid back about it. You must have a lot of faith in your boys."

  I gave a noncommittal smile. "I'd be more worried if Danny was still on heroin."

  "No chance of that." She plugged in the kettle. "It's the one good thing Mr. Drury did for me ... caught the stupid little bastard at it one day and put the fear of God into him so he'd never go near a needle again."

  "How did he do that?"

  "He gave him a choice: punishment now, or a care order imposed by the juvenile court. Danny chose punishment now." She laughed. "I think he thought Drury was going to slap him about a bit ... didn't reckon on honest-to-God sadism." The idea seemed to amuse her.

  "What did he do?"

  "He broke off the needle and pressed it into Danny's arm with the edge of his handcuffs, then told him if he went to a doctor to get it removed there'd be that many questions asked he'd find himself in care so quick his legs wouldn't touch the ground. It was two days before Danny could find the courage to cut down deep enough to pull the needle out with a pair of tweezers. He's never been able to look at a syringe again without turning green."

  "That sounds like Mr. Drury's style," I murmured. "Brutal but effective. Did you report him for it?"

  "Did I hell!" She spooned coffee into the mugs. "In any case I was grateful. The last thing I wanted was one of my children dead of an overdose."

  A silence fell while we waited for the kettle to boil. I had no idea what kind of background she came from, but Drury's parting shot to Danny�"How's that downtrodden slut of a mother of yours? Still on the booze?"�was uncomfortably close to the mark. My mother would say it was breeding (or lack of it)�a scientist would say it was genes�I would say it was poor education and low self-esteem. If she cared about anything at all, I thought, it was probably her benefit checks and whether they would buy enough smokes and alcohol to last her through the week.

  Her windowsill was lined with empties, testimony to the drinking habit she hadn't been able to kick. An unopened bottle of vodka stood beside the salt and pepper on the table like an unearned reward. But if she was drunk or stoned on Prozac th
at day it wasn't noticeable. Indeed in some ways the sharp, assessing glances she kept flicking in my direction reminded me of Wendy Stanhope, although there was no kindness in them, only suspicion.

  "Thank you," I said when she put a mug of coffee in front of me. Out of habit, she had added milk and sugar, neither of which I could stand, but I sipped enthusiastically as she sat herself in the chair opposite and lit a cigarette.

  "Do you want one?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "I never got hooked, thank God. If I had, I'd be a sixty-a-day woman by now."

  "How do you know?"

  "I have an addictive personality. Once started, I can't stop."

  "Like this thing with Annie?"

  "Yes."

  Maureen gave a baffled shake of her head. "You wouldn't have liked her, you know. That's what makes this all so ... stupid. If anyone else had found her, there'd have been no fuss, she'd have been quietly buried and we could all have got on with our lives." She paused to draw pensively on her cigarette. "You, too," she added, watching me through the smoke.

  "I haven't done badly so far."

  She dropped ash into her saucer. "Except you can't let her go, and that's not healthy."

  I might have answered that Annie was the least of my obsessions but I didn't want to put her on her guard. Instead I asked, "Why wouldn't I have liked her?"

  "Because she wouldn't have liked you. She didn't like any white people. We were all 'white trash' to her. She used to chant it through the kitchen wall whenever Derek raised his voice. 'White trash ... white trash...' On and on for minutes on end. It used to drive him mad."

  "Is that why he hated her?"

  She nodded.

  "Perhaps he didn't like hearing the truth?" I remarked dryly.

  A wary expression crept into her eyes. "We never claimed to be anything we weren't."

  The pretense at friendship began to unravel at speed. "You were known as 'the family from hell,' Maureen. When you and Derek weren't screaming at each other, your children were running riot in the street. I've never known a group of people make their presence felt so rapidly in so short a time. Alan's favorite occupation was to practice his jump kicks against other people's front fences. He flattened Annie's within a month of you being rehoused here ... and ours within three months."

  She bridled immediately. "He wasn't the only one. Michael Percy was just as bad."

  "I agree."

  "But it was always my Alan who got the blame."

  I shook my head in disagreement. "Michael faced up to what he'd done. Your son never did. Alan used to run away the minute trouble appeared and leave Michael to take the flak."

  "Only because he knew his father would give him a larruping if he got caught."

  "But it was all right for Michael to be given a larruping?"

  Her mouth thinned immediately. "It never happened. Who was going to give it to him? Sharon? He'd have thumped her first. He was a nasty piece of work that Michael ... a bad influence on all the kids 'round here. He was the one got my lad into trouble, never the other way 'round."

  I wondered if Sharon saw it that way, or if she cared. "I watched a man hurl him head first into a brick wall once," I said idly. "It all happened very quickly and I was too far away to stop it. The wretched child was only fourteen�and he wasn't very big for his age�so he went down like a sack of potatoes."

  "Serves him right," said Maureen balefully. "He almost killed somebody not so long ago ... got eleven years for his troubles. That should tell you the sort of boy he was. It makes me sick the way we got dumped on all the time, when it was him and his tart of a mother caused all the problems in the street." A sly expression crept into her eyes. "Annie had their measure all right. She called Sharon a 'whore' and Michael a 'son of a bitch.' "

  "Did she call her 'white trash'?"

  "Nn-nn. 'Whore' ... 'ho' ... 'cunt.' Annie'd get going at the top of her voice every time she was with a client. It was pretty funny."

  There was a time, I remembered, when she and Sharon had been thick as thieves, and I wondered what had happened to make them fall out. Something to do with money, I guessed, as it was the single passion they both shared. "So it was just the Slaters who were 'white trash'?" I murmured.

  Maureen studied the end of her cigarette. "Think what you like," she said.

  "Do you know who the man was who knocked Michael down?" I asked her.

  She gave an indifferent shrug.

  "It was your husband," I told her. "He was fighting drunk and caught Alan and Michael trying car doors to see if any of them were unlocked. Alan took to his heels but Michael stood his ground and ended up with a bloody face. I wanted to report Derek, but Michael said he'd take his anger out on you if we grassed him up. 'Mr. Slater's a right bastard,' he told me. 'He beats up on his missus every time his kids get the better of him.' " I watched her for a reaction, but there was none. "So I let Derek get away with it, and took Michael to my house instead of a police station. It was three hours before his nose stopped bleeding."

  She stubbed out her cigarette, refusing to meet my eyes. "You can't blame me for that. Most of the time I didn't even know where Derek was, let alone what he was doing."

  It sounded like the beginnings of a defense. "I'm not blaming you."

  "Sure you are. You're like everyone else. It's Maureen's fault her kids were out of control. Maureen's fault she married a lousy husband. Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. But who the fuck ever cared about me? Tell me that."

  "The vicar and his wife?"

  Anger sparked briefly in her eyes. "They were more interested in the nigger than they were in me."

  I looked away to hide my anger, recalling what Wendy Stanhope had said. The poor woman was always taking refuge with us... "I understood they took you in whenever Derek became violent."

  "Only out of charity, never out of liking."

  It was something she resented, I thought.

  "The vicar knocked next door once a week. He never did that for me. I had to go looking for help."

  "Perhaps he felt Annie had more to put up with."

  "No more than we did. You should have heard her cursing and swearing at us through the wall."

  "You said she only did it when you made a noise."

  "Not always. Sometimes it was hard to say which came first ... her or us. She had a mouth like a sewer. When it wasn't 'white trash,' it was 'honkies' or 'scum.' It used to rile us up something rotten."

  "She couldn't help herself," I said. "She suffered from a neuropsychiatric disorder called Tourette's syndrome. Sometimes it manifests itself as coprolalia, which is a compulsion to utter obscenities. Her mother was far more prone to it than Annie, but maybe Annie resorted to it when she was stressed."

  "Then she should have been in a loony bin."

  Does she believe that? I wondered. Or was it something she repeated like a mantra to excuse what she did? "A more sensible solution would have been for the council to rehouse you and your family somewhere else," I suggested. "To be honest, I never understood why they didn't. You lived entirely on benefit, had more social workers allocated to you than anyone else in the street, yet for some reason the pressure was always on Annie to move and never on you. That always seemed grossly unfair to me when she was a householder, paying rates, and you were paying nothing."

  "That wasn't our fault. Derek was out of work. Would you have liked it better if we'd starved?"

  I refused to be sidetracked. "Why did the council take your side against Annie's, Maureen? It must have been clear to them that she wasn't getting on with her neighbors."

  "Why would it? She never complained."

  "She called you 'white trash.' What's that if it's not a complaint?"

  She lit another cigarette and shook her head at my stupidity. "I meant she didn't complain to the council."

  I had to make a conscious effort to stop my mouth dropping open. I had imagined any number of conspiracy theories to account for why the Slaters and the Percys had been allo
wed to wage a terror campaign against Annie, but it had never entered my head that the explanation was so simple. "Are you saying that, despite all the complaints you and Sharon made against her, she never once retaliated?"

  Maureen nodded.

  "Why not?"

  She didn't answer and another silence developed between us. She wore her hair in a tight ponytail and kept running the flat of her hand across her crown as if to check that the elastic was still in place. She seemed to be debating with herself whether after twenty years there was anything to be gained by telling the truth, although I guessed that her real concern�indeed the only reason we were having this conversation�was to find out how much I knew and what I was planning to do about it.

  "She was too afraid of Derek," she admitted suddenly.

  "To make an official complaint?"

  "Yes."

  "What did he do to stop her?"

  Another silence, longer this time, before she gave an embarrassed shrug. "Killed one of her cats and said he'd kill the others if she ever spoke out against us. The thing is"�she wriggled her shoulders uncomfortably, knowing that nothing could excuse her husband's behavior or her complicity in it�"we'd been moved three times in three years, and we didn't want to move again. We sure as hell didn't want to go back to a high rise."

  "No," I said slowly. "I don't suppose you did."

  "It was only a cat."

  "Mm." I paused to glance along the corridor. "It was quite a bargain when you think about it ... a cat for a house."

  "There you are, then."

  "Oh, no." I gave a small laugh. "Don't you dare bracket me with a sadist. If Derek had been married to me, he'd never have got near a cat. I'd have beaten his brains out with a sledgehammer the minute he lifted a finger against one of my children. Why were you such a coward? Why didn't you fight back?"

  Her malice intensified. "You don't know what it was like. You didn't go in fear of your life every day. What do you think he'd have done to me and the kids if I'd tried to stop him?"