The Devil's Claw

by Lara Dearman

  ‘That would be lovely, Mrs Dorey, thank you.’

  Margaret retrieved the best china from the top shelf of the cupboard and hastily rinsed the dust off.

  The ends of DCI Gilbert’s jacket sleeves were fraying and he pulled at a loose thread before he placed his elbows on the table. He smiled at Jenny.

  ‘How are you feeling, Jenny?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. A little tired. It was gone midnight when I left the station.’

  ‘Yes, sorry we kept you so late. You did a good job though, eh? Very detailed statement. There are just a couple of things to go over, some forms we need you to sign.’ He looked apologetic as he handed a manila folder to her. She skimmed through the paperwork. A copy of her statement, a disclaimer, information about counselling services. Michael discussed the case with Margaret. He had a thick Guernsey accent, all guttural consonants and elongated vowels, the obligatory, questioning ‘eh’ at the end of his sentences.

  ‘Such a waste,’ he said. ‘These youngsters don’t look after themselves and look what happens, eh?’ He shook his head and picked up his tea. He had tufts of hair on his knuckles and his hand trembled slightly as he bought the dainty cup to his lips.

  ‘So you think it was an accident?’ Jenny asked.

  He raised his eyebrows as he drank and then carefully placed his cup back on the saucer, avoiding her eyes.

  ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘She might have been messing around on a boat, or on the rocks and fallen in. No witnesses, mind you. Nobody saw her down on the beach, or at the bonfire, either.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he looked up at Jenny, ‘that we can’t rule out the possibility that this was a deliberate act on the young lady’s part.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Now, Jennifer…’ DCI Gilbert reached over and patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Don’t you worry about any of this. It must be difficult for you, with what happened to your dad, eh?’ He looked to Margaret. ‘And for you, Mrs Dorey.’ She nodded, eyes down.

  ‘My father’s death was an accident. I don’t really see how that’s relevant to any of this.’ Jenny handed the folder back.

  ‘Well, you’ve been through a lot, that’s all. Anyway, we’ll have all this sorted out as quickly as possible, there shouldn’t be any reason to bother you with it again. Although I presume you’ll be taking a professional interest?’

  She nodded. ‘When will you be releasing details? Her name?’

  ‘Probably late tomorrow. The world and his wife will know who it is by then, but we trust the News not to print until we release the details officially. Out of respect for her family. Thanks for the tea, Mrs Dorey. You look after Jenny here. See she gets some rest, eh?’

  Margaret was showing him out of the room when he stopped and turned back to Jenny, handed her a card.

  ‘You give me a call. If you want to talk about anything. Not just police stuff.’

  His name, Michael Gilbert, and a phone number on one side. On the other,

  Christian Friendship Society Support, Sharing, Friendship

  Margaret came back into the kitchen, smiling and began to clear away the cups. ‘Well, he seems very nice.’

  ‘I’m not convinced.’ Jenny showed her the card he had given her. Margaret shook her head.

  ‘You’re just like your father, Jennifer.’

  ‘It’s not just that. He seems to have made his mind up about the whole thing already. And I’d seen all those papers before. There was no reason for him to come here – he’s wasting his time here having a cup of tea when he should be out investigating this case.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted to check on you, see how you were doing. Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you find it impossible to believe someone would do that. As for the investigation, he’s a chief inspector, I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘But they’ll have to do a post-mortem, surely? I mean, it probably was an accident or a suicide, but it could have been anything. A violent boyfriend? A random psychopath? This place is unbelievable. There was a dead girl found on the beach last night and nobody seems to care how she got there!’

  ‘Jenny, enough. I’ve had enough. I don’t want to hear any more of this.’ Margaret left the room, pulling the door behind her with such force that the cabinets shook and the glasses and crockery inside tinkled against each other.

  * * *

  Everything black. She fumbled, feeling around for her lamp, and for a moment, for one terrifying split second, she was fifteen again and she was trapped, the walls, cold and wet, closing in around her, piercing shrieks ringing in her ears.

  Short, sharp breaths. Accept the fear. Let it in.

  I’m not afraid of the darkness.

  Only what it hides.

  She found the wire, pressed the button.

  Click. Light.

  That was close.

  She opened her door wider. She always left it open at night. Just enough to allow the light from the hallway in. It was a compromise she’d made with herself. She wouldn’t sleep with the light on in her room, like a child, frightened of the monsters under the bed, but she’d leave one on in the hallway, set her door ajar. She flicked the switch on and off. Nothing. Bulb blown.

  She sat on the bed and tried to shake off the residual panic, that lingering feeling of imminent danger that took her right back there, to that cold, black, terrifying space in her memory where her lungs and her heart and her brain worked against her so she could no longer breathe or think and the prospect of death seemed real and imminent and the bottom of her stomach fell away. Because real fear does that. Hits you in the gut.

  Her last panic attack had been ten years ago. No, eleven. She’d been eighteen. Her first term at Sussex university. She’d been doing well. Using tricks learnt in therapy, she had nearly (but not entirely) got over her fear of the dark. It was the move that triggered it, the stress of meeting new people, the new environment, the tiny, dingy rooms at Lancaster House, the university’s traditional campus halls, unfit for habitation really. Her corner unit had been slightly bigger than most of the others but colder too, as two of the walls were exposed to the elements. They were freezing to the touch during those first months and beads of moisture clung to the walls whenever she ran the tiny fan heater, which had cost a week’s worth of her maintenance grant. Black mould bloomed on the ceiling and strips of glossy, magnolia paint peeled off in the corners and around the window. She would pick at it, pulling it off like dry skin. A chest infection knocked her for six after only a couple of weeks and even a month or so after that she was feeling tired and wheezy.

  A Saturday. A quiet day at Sussex. There were so many Londoners there, so close to home they thought nothing of hopping on a train and going back for the weekends. She’d had a drink at the Falmer Bar with a couple of other international students: cheap rum and warm coke. The barman had been chatting her up, incredulous when she’d told him that, yes, students from Guernsey were technically international and, no, she didn’t speak French. She would have stayed there and talked to him, he was cute and funny, but the plan had been to get the bus into Brighton. Students usually avoided Saturday nights in town, they were too expensive and the likelihood of running into a pissed-up townie looking for a fight was high. A good DJ must have been playing for them to have considered the trip a risk worth taking. Maybe it had even been Fatboy himself…? She couldn’t remember, because by the time they’d reached the bus stop on Lewes Road, Jenny’s cough had started up and she’d not felt up for going out after all. So she’d walked back alone, across campus. Not far.

  It had been dark and quiet, just the wind rustling dry leaves, carrying with it the sounds of laughter and music from the flats at East Slope. She’d felt depressed. Not just sad or sorry for herself, but heavy inside, weighed down with it all. She was tired and sick and didn’t want to go back to her crappy, cold room, to lie there, alone, filling her lungs with air that was thick with the smell of damp and dec
ay – she couldn’t bear the smell. That’s when it had gripped her. A cold hand reaching inside, freezing first her stomach and then spreading its fingers upwards, twisting and squeezing her heart and chest until her breathing became so laboured that her vision blurred and she’d crouched down, instinctively, knowing from previous attacks that she needed to be close to the ground. She’d tried to call out but had managed only rasping cries and soon the pain in her chest became so great that she’d felt sure she was going to die, that her heart could not possibly be strong enough to withstand it, not this time.

  One of the night guards had found her, hours or minutes later – she’d had no idea how long she’d been there, lying on the grass, panting, like a wounded animal. He’d helped her back to halls and told her with a wink, to lay off the wacky baccy. She’d slept for thirteen hours. The next morning she’d called the doctor, asked for an appointment as soon as possible. The receptionist, clearly used to dealing with students who deemed a missed contraceptive pill or a toe stubbed in a drunken accident a medical emergency, demanded a list of symptoms. Jenny had hung up. She’d gone for a run across the South Downs instead, the first of many. She’d been fine since then. Well, not fine. But that was the last of the panic attacks.

  It was disconcerting then, eleven years later, to feel on the edge again. To feel that an attack was even a remote possibility. But it had been. She needed more exercise. That had been the first step on her road to recovery all those years ago. Swimming, every day, or, when she was too far from the sea, running until her chest felt it would burst.

  She had an hour before it would be light enough to go out. In the corner of the room, nearly covered in a pile of half-clean clothes, was a large cardboard box, edges sealed with shiny, brown tape.

  It had taken her months to unpack her things when she moved back from London. She had sorted out the essentials, her clothes and wash stuff. She needed those even if she wasn’t staying. Then slowly, as the weeks went by, she had put her books on the shelves, her photographs on the wall, some tacky souvenirs friends had bought back from their travels on the dressing table, until finally, eleven years after she’d left home, she had made the room her own again.

  Apart from the last box. It had been eighteen months and she hadn’t opened that one. It looked bigger now, somehow. Looming, almost. She knew she’d been avoiding it, not wanting to be reminded of what it held. And she knew that avoiding something was the best way to ensure it grew bigger and more powerful and would eventually eat her up from the inside. She moved the clothes and ripped the tape off, releasing a fine, cardboard dust into the air.

  Inside, there were copies of nearly everything she’d ever written, from her first article for the Badger (‘Rogue Landlords Exploit Sussex Students’) to her last London piece about a campaign to save a Hackney landmark. Her last published London piece. Her last piece in London had been about a young Romanian woman. She’d never finished that one.

  She searched through the box until she found it. Five thousand wasted words. There was no point reading them again. It wouldn’t change anything. But she read it anyway. Because after seeing that girl’s body on the beach last night, it was impossible not to think of Madalina.

  7

  March 1961

  He towered over them all. It gave him a quiet thrill, walking past them, their taunts and violence reduced to malevolent glares and whispers, which gave way as he held their gaze, unyieldingly. Only a few of them bothered waiting for him any more and on some days there were none at all. School would be over for most of them in a couple of months and then they’d all move on to other things; they’d take menial island jobs, growing or labouring, and a few years later they’d all marry their island cousins and have screaming island babies, the whole tedious cycle destined to be repeated over and over again.

  He walked straight past his house and on to Les Sages farm. He’d been helping old Joe Le Measurier for a few months, shifting and carrying, shovelling shit, feeding the sheep. It was hard work but he liked it. He liked pushing himself, feeling his muscles strain, forcing his arms to support too much weight so that they trembled and shook when he offloaded. He would rub his biceps, encouraging the blood to flow beneath the skin, knowing the aches were making him stronger.

  He found Joe in the field, kneeling down at the backside of a ewe, which was lying on its side, belly distended, tongue out, panting and rasping. He knelt beside him.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Lamb’s stuck. Breech. And it was too big. It’s dead already. Thought I’d have one last go at getting it out, try to save her.’

  Joe was short and muscular, his skin weathered and tanned. He had rolled up his sleeves and his hands and arms up to his elbows were covered in blood and mucus.

  ‘Cor chapin!’ Joe stood, rubbing the small of his back. ‘N’faut pas faire lè cotin dèvant què lè viau set naï.’ He sighed. ‘Or the lamb, in this case. I’m getting too old for this, boyo.’ Joe was a kind man with kind eyes, which usually twinkled under his thick white eyebrows. Joe shook his head. ‘Nothing else for it,’ he said, and walked to the house.

  He stayed where he was. It was unseasonably warm and he loosened his shirt collar, let the sun fall on the back of his neck. The sheep’s eyes were bulging and edged with pink, the pupils dilated. She looked at him. It was clear she was in pain, but she was not afraid. He stroked her head, combing his fingers through the coarse wool between her ears, pulling it back, away from her eyes so they stretched and widened. His fingers were waxy with wool grease, earthy and sweet-smelling. She kept looking at him, stoic and dull and he knew, in that moment, what true beauty was. It was this sheep. Dying but oblivious. And the other sheep, which stood, nibbling the grass, bleating softly to their lambs, unaware and unconcerned. How perfect it would be, he thought, to live a life momentarily, where pain meant only pain and joy meant only joy and there was no fear of death or of God. It was beautiful and clean and simple and free. He felt a euphoria he had never before experienced.

  A hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Didn’t know you were so soft-hearted, lad.’

  He put his hand to his cheek. It was wet with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He got up quickly.

  ‘Don’t mind me. It’s always hard. But the animals don’t know it’s coming, eh? Not sure if that makes it better or worse. Stand back.’

  Joe raised the rifle and fired. It was louder than he’d expected and it made his ears ring. Joe told him to get a wheelbarrow and bring the animal round the front and then come in for a ‘p’tite goute.’

  ‘I’ve a nice whisky open. Looks like you need one.’ Joe gave him another pat on the shoulder.

  The hole in the sheep’s head was right between her eyes. It was surprisingly neat and there was very little blood. She was still looking at him.

  * * *

  He let himself in quietly, hoping she was already asleep. A half-empty bottle of gin on the table, only one glass. No company tonight. There had been no talk of ‘prospects’ for a long time, and it was only thanks to the few shillings a week he was earning at the farm that there was food on the table every night. Even then, there was never enough. If she had an ounce of intelligence she would have realised there was an easy way to make her lifestyle more lucrative. He’d hinted at the idea only a few weeks before. She had shouted at him, judge not lest ye be judged, and then cried, made ugly, cow-like sounds. He had watched her, impassive. He was not judging, he said, just hungry.

  He washed his face and hands in the sink, dried himself with a thin, stale-smelling dishcloth. He took a couple of slices of bread from the larder and the last scraping of beef dripping, made a sandwich and sat on the threadbare sofa to eat it. The floorboards creaked above him. She was awake. He licked the grease off of his fingers and then washed and dried his plate and returned it to the cupboard.

  He went over to the piano. He couldn’t afford to buy new sheet music, but Joe had given him a pile of yellowing paper, which had b
elonged to his sister. She’d played for the Jerries during the war. Joe had said it like he said everything, calmly, matter of fact. He wondered if it was an acknowledgement, a nod to his own start in life.

  It was all German, obviously. Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss. If mother had known anything about music, she might have found it disconcerting. He started with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Mother’s bedroom door clicked open.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in, darling. You’re so late I thought you were staying out.’ That girlish voice, too thin for a grown woman.

  He kept playing. The door clicked shut.

  She came out again as he walked up the stairs. She was wearing a pale blue gauze nightdress with puffed sleeves, a row of tiny silk roses embroidered along the frilled neckline. He could see her large nipples and the whiteness of her heavy breasts through the thin fabric and below, the faint triangle of her pubic hair. He thought about all the men who had climbed on top of her, grunting and fucking while she squealed just like the pigs he had seen doing it on the farm and he felt it. The weakness. She put a hand to his cheek and stroked his face and his breathing quickened and he leant in towards her until he could smell the gin on her breath. ‘My beautiful boy,’ she said. ‘So big and handsome.’ She stood on her tiptoes, swaying slightly, pulled his head down even further and kissed him, her lips landing just above his nose. He smiled and kissed her back.

  Right between the eyes.

  Right where the bullet should go.

  8