The Devil's Claw

by Lara Dearman

  Jenny

  Tuesday, 11 November

  They had a name and a photograph.

  Amanda Guille. Eighteen years old. A student at the College of Further Education, she’d been studying Health and Social Care. The picture on the front page was a school photograph. A pale blue background, head turned towards the camera, hair scraped back, maroon and gold striped tie. Fuller of face than the girl Jenny had seen on the beach, and so much younger looking, although the picture was only a year old.

  Jenny was leading the coverage. Brian was delighted, joking that she had taken the idea of being first on the scene a little too far.

  ‘It’s perfect, you can give the whole thing a personal angle, nothing too macabre mind, not yet, don’t want to upset the family. Give ’em a couple of days to calm down and then let’s get them in for an interview.’ He was practically rubbing his hands together. It was distasteful, but they all felt the same. There was a buzz in the office and it was impossible to deny the excitement in the air.

  Jenny’s piece was on page three. Brian had insisted they include a photograph of her, to put a face to the name. They’d taken one of her at her desk looking suitably serious.

  She didn’t like it, seeing herself in the paper. She was used to her words being out there, but you could choose your words, shape and manipulate them, tell the story you wanted people to read. A picture was different. A moment captured. Vulnerabilities exposed. She felt exposed. She was feeling anxious. Seeing the body, being on a big story again – it was natural, she told herself, to feel unsettled.

  Her phone rang and the receptionist told her there was a man in the lobby asking to see her. She checked her diary. No meetings scheduled. She glanced at her emails, at the folder: Fairfield Road. Perhaps they’d seen her picture in the paper, decided she was overstepping somehow. Perhaps they thought she needed a face-to-face reminder. Stupid. As if someone would come to the office. They’d grab her in a side street or break into her car and lie on the back seat waiting for her to get in or maybe they’d go to her house, trick Margaret into letting them in and Jenny would come home to find one of them holding a knife to her mother’s throat. She put her face in her hands. Slowed her breathing. Stop catastrophising. She tucked her hair behind her ears and straightened her jacket.

  A man in skinny black jeans and a long black coat was sitting in the reception area, slumped forward on the faux-leather sofa, picking at the nails of his nicotine-stained fingers. He wore earphones, the tinny whine of his music audible from across the room. The receptionist, a heavily made-up agency temp, raised her over-plucked eyebrows and nodded her head towards him before returning to her magazine.

  He looked up and she relaxed.

  A boy, not a man, pale-faced and spotty. He needed a good wash and a haircut. He pulled out his earphones and tucked his hair behind his ears.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ He stood. ‘I’m Matt. It’s about the girl. Amanda.’

  * * *

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. I thought you said this was about Amanda Guille?’

  ‘Yeah, it is. Sort of. I dunno. It’s just, it looked like her.’

  She had pulled a chair over to her desk and he was leaning forwards, elbows on knees, looking down at his hands.

  ‘What looked like her?’

  ‘The guy. I found a guy.’

  ‘And it looked like Amanda?’ A trace of the frustration she felt escaped into her voice.

  ‘Do you wanna hear this or not?’ He looked up at her, challenging, defiant.

  ‘OK! OK. Carry on.’

  He continued, talking into his lap now, avoiding her eyes, describing a guy he’d found at Pleinmont. She shifted in her seat, scribbled some notes. All the black, the long hair covering his face, his death-metal T-shirt covered in skulls and blood. It was a bit macabre. Perhaps he was looking for something to be depressed about, some connection to Amanda, some reason to go to the funeral, to immerse himself in the pain and sadness. Perhaps he needed help. She should call someone. Social Services. Or his parents.

  It was weird, he said. It was lying in the middle of the Fairy Ring. He’d thought it was a person, then realised what it was, but it had been creepy. It had blonde hair and blue eyes, just like Amanda, and cuts on its arm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like you wrote in your piece. You said she had marks on her arm, scratches or something.’ He was angry now and raised his voice. ‘So did the guy. Slashes in the fabric and all the straw was spilling out. Don’t you think it’s a bit weird, the night before this girl turns up dead, someone puts a straw woman that looks just like her in the middle of the Fairy Ring? Fuck me, nobody fucking listens.’

  Jenny was not writing any more.

  ‘What do you mean, nobody listens?

  ‘I told the police this morning, straight after I read what you wrote. They just laughed at me, but I’m telling you, this shit is freaking me out.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of Marlboros, began flicking the lid of the box open and closed.

  ‘What did you do with it, Matt?

  He shifted awkwardly.

  ‘I burnt it.’

  9

  Michael

  It was bloody madness, every time something out of the ordinary happened on this island. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath in and tried to focus.

  He picked up the News. Obviously the story was front-page. It would be for days to come. Not every day a young girl’s body gets washed up on the beach. But then the News had to go and do what they always did and sensationalise the whole thing. Which was all well and good, he liked a good story as much as the next man, but it just made everything so much more difficult for them. And they were hardly off to a very good start. There was just him and a couple of detective constables on the case, including that young bloody plod who had clomped his boots all over the sand before they’d had time to cordon off the area. Stephen Marquis, his name was. Skinny, carrot-topped lad with a face full of freckles and a nervous twitch.

  There were, as he predicted, no suspicious circumstances so far. Amanda Guille had failed to meet her friends on Saturday night although her parents didn’t know that. They’d assumed she was staying the night with one of them and only became worried around lunchtime when they hadn’t heard from her. About the same time they saw the Channel News report about the body.

  It was terrible dealing with the parents. And nobody knew better than him what it felt like. He’d taken them to identify the body, to a room in the hospital, just like the one the detective who had dealt with Ellen’s death had taken Michael to, all those years ago. They didn’t have to go inside, not like Michael had. These days they had a window between the relatives and the body. Just a simple pane of glass, but it served so many purposes, Michael thought. It was a cold, clear cushion between the living and the dead, a hard surface to beat hands against, a resting place for heads too heavy with grief to hold steady.

  Amanda’s mum was the first to break, doubling over, howling until she had no more breath in her lungs and her husband put his arm around her, dragged her back, away from the view of the body, before he started crying, quietly. There was no one to comfort him, not at that point. His wife was too consumed with her own grief to notice his. Michael had given his shoulder a squeeze, deeming any gesture, however futile, better than none at all. Then he had left them, told the family liaison officer to give them five minutes and then take them some tea and help them out of that godforsaken place.

  Maybe they had a chance. More than likely not. He didn’t like to be a pessimist, but the statistics spoke for themselves. Michael and his now ex-wife, Sheila, had joined a support group for bereaved parents after Ellen’s accident. There had been five couples in it, including them, and they were all divorced now. All of them. Some of them lasted a few years. He and Sheila only managed two. Maybe they would have divorced anyway. Maybe none of those marriages were supposed to last. More likely it was the de
aths that did it for them. He didn’t mention this to Amanda’s parents. They had enough on their plates.

  With all that to deal with, the investigation, the traumatised parents, and his own unavoidable emotions surrounding the death of an eighteen-year-old girl, he could have done without the bloody lunatics. Call after call from all the usual suspects, all the curtain twitchers, the gossips, the busybodies. He looked at the list of notes from the day’s calls.

  ‘Around nine p.m. on Saturday evening I heard a car accelerating and playing very loud rap music, which you don’t often hear around here.’

  That was from a lady in St Martins. A good four miles from where Amanda was found.

  ‘I think you’ll find there are greenhouses in the vicinity of Vale Castle where there are foreigners employed illegally and I have said for a long time that there would be trouble if nothing was done about this.’

  Anonymous, that one. Bloody Anonymous always had a lot to say for himself.

  If the phone calls weren’t bad enough, they’d had a kid in this morning talking about a Guy Fawkes or some nonsense. Michael had popped his head around the door to the interview room to see what all the laughing was about. They’d stopped, of course, as soon as they’d seen him. Nobody on the force had shared a joke with him for a long time. They shared plenty of jokes about him but that was a different story. The lad had been in a right state, gabbling about a straw figure he’d found up at Pleinmont. Michael could tell just by looking at him he was one of those Gothic types who spent their time smoking tea leaves and Oxo cubes, or whatever the local dealers could dupe kids into buying these days. Looked like some of the real stuff had snuck in somewhere along the line. He felt sorry for the lad. He’d told them take his statement but the sniggering started up again before he’d left the room.

  He rubbed his eyes. It was time to go home. He took one last look through Amanda’s file. She had a record. Nothing serious, couple of run-ins for underage drinking and an odd incident when the parents called the police because they found what they’d thought was cannabis in her school bag. Trying to frighten her into going straight, he supposed. Social Services had been involved. He would ask her parents about it when he spoke to them next. He would have to be careful. To consider how he phrased things. Because words could stick with you, just like pictures. He imagined it was the same with all bereaved parents; when you closed your eyes at night, the last thing you saw was your child. On good days, you might see them laughing as they reached for a bit of sea glass, or running towards you, arms wide open, after a day at school. On bad, you’d see them on a mortuary slab. And when it was quiet, as it was right now, the words would come back. The voices. They’d go round and round in your head.

  I love you, Daddy … So sorry … Don’t worry, Daddy … So sorry … It’s about your daughter … I love you, Daddy … It’s about Ellen … So sorry …

  I’m afraid she didn’t make it.

  10

  Jenny

  It was ridiculous.

  It was ridiculous but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Nearly everybody else had left for the day. Brian was in his office talking to Elliot, loudly, the sounds of their voices carrying across the office. She could see them, through the glass walls, Elliot standing, gesticulating, Brian, arms folded, looking up at him, shaking his head. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but there was definitely a disagreement of some sort going on. The cleaner had arrived, a slim lady in her thirties. She muttered and sighed as she cleared mugs from desks, stopping at Jenny’s and pointing to her half-drunk coffee.

  ‘You finished?’ She was pretty but careworn, with limp hair and tired eyes, the faintest hint of an Eastern European accent.

  Jenny nodded. ‘Thank you. You’re new here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Latvia.’ She gave the desk a cursory wipe.

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘No. Why? Should I?’ She glared at Jenny.

  ‘No, just interested. Do you have family, back home?’

  ‘Some. Are you writing about this?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This immigration stuff. This local jobs for local people.’

  ‘No, my colleague is covering that. I’m just interested.’

  ‘There is a meeting I saw. Save the Islanders or something. That Tostevin man. All the people who don’t want us here.’

  Deputy Tostevin was a bigot. A small-minded man whose motto was ‘Guernsey for the Guernseyman’. Whatever that meant. He was popular, had been a member of the States of Guernsey, the island’s government, for years. It was depressing. Jenny said so. The woman shrugged and moved on to the next desk. There was something about her, her vulnerability thinly veiled behind a mask of indifference. She reminded Jenny of Madalina.

  Her phone pinged. Sarah was on her way to the bar. Jenny was about to pack up when Elliot came storming out of Brian’s office. He kicked a stray chair out of his path on the way to his desk, sending it spinning in Jenny’s direction.

  ‘Jesus! What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Mind your own business!’ He spat the words at her.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ She turned back to her screen. She wanted to go, but she could see him, angry, shaking a little, looking at her. She stared at the document she’d been working on. Her interview with Matt, typed up in Times New Roman, neatly spaced, black and white, in the hope it would make more sense that way.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She looked up. He stood over her. ‘This place drives me crazy sometimes.’ He sat on the edge of her desk. Sweat pricked through his shirt under each arm and she could smell it, sharp and acidic, underneath the artificial scent of his deodorant.

  ‘No problem. I know the feeling.’ She smiled, tried to look at ease, unsure if she was nervous because of his behaviour or just because he was there. She turned away, self conscious, remembering her un-plucked eyebrows and the fact that she’d been rubbing her eyes and probably had mascara all over her face.

  He was staring at her. Still angry, although she sensed he was trying to get it under control. He ran his hands through his hair. He did that sometimes. A nervous gesture, she thought.

  ‘See you tomorrow, Jenny.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’ When she was sure that he’d gone, she sat back in her chair, relaxed her shoulders. He had made her uncomfortable. No, more than that. The way he’d kicked the chair and then turned to her, the rage on his face. It was only for a moment, but she’d been frightened.

  She switched off her computer and pulled a brush through her hair, checked her reflection in her screen, dabbed a tissue at the circles of smeared make-up under her eyes. She rummaged around in her handbag and found her perfume. She’d worn Opium since she was a teenager when her mum had given her a half-used bottle and, despite paying little attention to fashion or make-up, stuck by her Granny Dorey’s adage that one wasn’t properly dressed without a spritz of scent.

  She walked past Brian’s office on the way out. Through the glass doors she could see him, phone glued to his ear, deep in conversation, brow furrowed.

  * * *

  Hugo’s Wine Bar was busy for a Tuesday evening. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was always like this. She glanced at the menu. There was no proper food, only tapas and sharing platters or individually priced portions of artisan cheese. Everything was painted in muted tones, creams and browns, lots of exposed woodwork. The chairs were leather wingbacks and the tables resembled writing desks, a nod to the author the bar was named for. Passages from Toilers of the Sea were painted on the ceiling in elaborate, cursive writing. He’d written it in Guernsey, of course, ‘where dwells the noble little race of the sea’. She craned her neck to make out the end of the quote.

  ‘Well Halle-bloody-luia! It’s Jennifer Dorey in an after-work drink shocker.’

  Jenny rose to give her friend a hug. ‘Hey, it’s not just me. How long has it been since you managed to ditch domestic bliss?’
<
br />   ‘Too bloody long. Harry’s finally sleeping through the night so fingers crossed Simon will manage without me for a couple of hours.’ She shook her head in mock exasperation. ‘Right. Where’s the wine?’ She gestured over to the waiter and ordered a bottle of red.

  Sarah was a typical Guernsey girl, olive-skinned with thick, dark hair and, at just under five feet tall, a good six inches shorter than Jenny, even in a pair of heels. She’d returned to the island straight after university, landed a well-paid job in a bank, married a local boy from the same school year, and proceeded to buy a house and fill it with children – three at the last count. Sarah gave a quick update on the kids and the house and the husband and then looked at her.

  ‘Anyway. What’s going on with you? Bit of a celeb now, aren’t you? Tell me all about it.’

  Jenny told her.

  ‘It must have been horrible, seeing that girl on the beach,’ Sarah said, taking a swig of her wine. She fixed Jenny with her brown eyes, so dark they looked black under the dim lights of the bar.

  Of course it was upsetting, Jenny said, but she was fine. She told Sarah about the visit from DCI Gilbert, and about Matt and the guy.

  ‘So, you don’t like the policeman because he’s religious and some pothead found a guy at Pleinmont. Ever think you might be looking a little too hard for something interesting to write about? Or that maybe you’ve read one too many Miss Marple novels for your own good? You were obsessed with them when we were kids, do you remember?’ Sarah snorted a laugh into her wine glass and then downed half of it in one sip.

  ‘Yes, I remember. I like to read, very funny. But it’s strange, don’t you think? This guy, or whatever it was, had marks on its arm, just like the scratches on Amanda.’

  ‘Couldn’t this kid be making it all up? Bit convenient that he burnt the thing, isn’t it? He could have imagined it all. Or maybe he has issues. He’s attention-seeking. Or he was high.’ She nodded to herself. ‘That’s the most likely scenario. You know all the kids that hang around up at Pleinmont are smoking weed and doing pills and God knows what else.’