The Devil's Claw

by Lara Dearman

  Looking for Answers? Drop into the Christian Friendship Society: We can help you. Call in and find Support, Sharing, Friendship.

  He’d called in. And he’d found all three.

  So, here he was. Detective chief inspector, no less. Drinking coffee in a thunderstorm and heading up an investigation into a young girl’s death. He had to talk to her parents this morning. Grim job. He tipped the last of the morning’s coffee down the hatch and nodded at the huge black cumulonimbus hovering over his back garden.

  Mysterious ways. He worked in mysterious ways, for sure.

  * * *

  Amanda’s parents lived in a small bungalow on a neat, private housing estate in the Vale parish. On the surface, each house appeared different to the next, this one with a rose window, the next with a porch, but behind these external affectations, they were all the same really. Like people, he mused. The same parcel of flesh and blood and muscles and nerves and brains, just wrapped up seven billion different ways. The thought depressed him. The weather didn’t help. Oppressive clouds lingered above him and the air was quick with cold; it tickled his lungs with each breath. He opened the garden gate. A few bunches of withered flowers were propped against the front fence and a sad-faced teddy bear held a message written on the back of a postcard.

  RIP AMANDA HEAVEN HAS A NEW ANGEL NOW

  Perhaps. Although his belief in some form of God was steadfast, he was not one of those late-to-the-party believers who came to faith because of a desperate fear of the nothingness that inevitably followed an irreligious life. In fact, he was very uncomfortable with the idea that one’s deeds, good or evil, would be rewarded or punished after the fact. In his opinion, a lack of accountability at best encouraged laziness and, at worst, was downright dangerous. He would bring it up at the next Friendship meeting. They all enjoyed a good debate, which had surprised him. He’d expected everyone to be prescriptive in their beliefs. It was all part of their plan to suck him in, Sheila had said during one of their infrequent telephone conversations (she tried to be a good ex-wife, telling everyone how amicable their divorce was), but she was wrong. They’d simply opened their arms to him and he’d welcomed their embrace.

  He stood on the steps a moment, thinking about an appropriate greeting before knocking. He adjusted his coat collar and smoothed his hair as he waited.

  Amanda’s father opened the door. He looked worse than the last time they’d spoken. He’d had a few days to let the news sink in – enough time for the lack of food and sleep and the sadness to have an effect. He stepped aside to let Michael in. A door to the side creaked open and a small boy, about six years old with scruffy brown hair and freckles all over his face, poked his head around it, then shuffled out into the corridor. He had a soft toy wedged under his arm, a smiling donkey. Michael smiled and raised his hand in a wave. The boy frowned back at him.

  ‘Go and play with your Lego, Toby.’ His dad patted him on the head. ‘I’ll take you to the playground in a little while.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the playground.’

  ‘To the shop, then. We’ll get a new puzzle.’

  Toby shook his head and held the donkey to his chest, clutching it tightly. ‘I don’t want a puzzle.’

  ‘Is that a Guernsey donkey you’ve got there?’ Michael crouched down and pointed at the flag embroidered on the side of the toy. ‘I used to have one like that. Don’t think they make them any more.’ He smiled, ruffled the boy’s hair as he got back up. Toby said nothing, went back into his room and shut the door.

  His dad leant against it, hand kneading his forehead. ‘They were close. I don’t know how he’s going to cope.’

  ‘Children are resilient.’ Michael knew it was a platitude. He followed Amanda’s father into the living room.

  They sat on the too-soft sofa scattered with velvet cushions, drinking weak tea, which always made Michael feel sick but he didn’t want to appear rude. As if Mrs Guille would care if he wasted his tea. It was from her that Amanda had inherited her looks. While her husband was squat with a soft, round face, she was taller with delicate features behind taut, sallow skin and a smattering of freckles, like her son. She sat opposite Michael, poker straight, hands folded in her lap and left her own tea untouched.

  He started with the pleasantries and the routine questions, checking that the family liaison officer was doing a good job, asking how they were getting on (stupid question) and did they have anything they wanted to ask him, to talk about? They sat, nodding and shaking their heads. They had nothing to tell him, no answers, no questions beyond did the police know what happened to their daughter yet? How could he tell them they might never know? Not really. A tragic accident. That was the easiest way to present it. Better than it being an obvious suicide. Suicides were the hardest for parents to accept. He felt a twist in his gut at the thought and wondered, again, about Ellen.

  ‘Just a couple of things I’d like to go over with you both, if you’re up to it?’

  They both nodded.

  ‘Whatever you need.’ Mr Guille murmured.

  ‘Amanda had had a couple of run-ins with the police.’ He looked up and smiled reassuringly, ‘Nothing serious, of course, usual teenage stuff. I just noticed that on one occasion, about six months ago, it was you, Mrs Guille, who called us?’

  She must have been prepared for the question. She didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘Yes. I found cannabis in her bag. It was a shock. I’ve never had anything to do with drugs, inspector, I didn’t even know what it was at first. I suspected, of course, but I had to ask John and even he wasn’t sure.’ She looked at her husband. ‘She was a bright girl. Could have gone to university. But she wouldn’t focus. She got in with this crowd. They’re not bad kids, just lazy. They have no ambition. I wanted better for her. That’s why we called the police. We just wanted to teach her a lesson. Wanted her to know it was serious. That she could ruin her life if she had a criminal record.’ Her voice wavered. ‘And I think it was a good decision, overall.’ She looked to Mr Guille again, who was unresponsive.

  ‘It was,’ she insisted. ‘She saw a social worker, started going to that youth programme; Leap it’s called. She took some music lessons, got back into her singing. She enjoyed it. She was getting back on her feet. I thought she was.’

  ‘You disagree, Mr Guille?’ Michael asked, gently.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The youth club did seem to be a positive influence. I was glad to see her out and about. She was always shy, so it was good to see her making friends.’

  ‘But?’

  He hesitated. ‘She didn’t trust us after we called the police. She’d had problems before. Depression, low self-esteem, issues with food.’

  ‘Did she ever self-harm?’ Michael asked, gently. ‘I know we’ve asked you about the cuts on her arm and you say you hadn’t noticed them and there’s certainly no evidence of it elsewhere on her body.’ He paused, the word hanging in the air between them. He knew they were picturing her right now, as they’d last seen her. ‘The marks were fresh. Inflicted shortly before death. They may have been indicative of her state of mind. You’d not known her to hurt herself before?’

  Amanda’s father shook his head. ‘She never did that. Not that we knew about, anyway. But she would have hidden it from us, wouldn’t she?’ He shook his head again. ‘We kept writing things off, we thought it was all part of a phase, that sort of thing, but when we found the drugs, well, we panicked. My wife thought calling your lot was the best plan. Now I wonder if she thought we’d given up on her.’

  Mrs Guille spoke softly. ‘We agreed, John. We agreed that we needed to do something drastic.’ She looked to Michael. ‘I love my daughter. Loved her. Yes, she had some problems. If I’d had any idea that calling the police that time would lead to something like this, of course I would never have done it. She looked at her husband, eyes brimming with tears. ‘We agreed.’ A whisper now. ‘It was the right thing to do.’

  Michael nodded. Of course, he said, they
were doing their best. And sometimes a sharp shock like that did the trick. It was worth a try. They shouldn’t even think about blaming themselves, there was never one reason something like this happened. It was never that simple. He paused.

  ‘As her parents, you knew her better than anyone. So I’m afraid I have to ask: do you think Amanda could have taken her own life?’ He looked to Mr Guille, who stared at his hands intently.

  ‘It’s possible. She was unhappy. I don’t know what went wrong.’ He slumped back and the sofa seemed to swallow him up.

  Michael patted his shoulder on the way out.

  He gave them six months.

  13

  Jenny

  Thursday, 13 November

  Something had woken her. She sat up, listened. Trees and bushes swaying outside, the patter of rain on the roof. She walked to the window, pulled back the curtains, looked out into the night. Small solar-powered lights shaped like old-fashioned gas lanterns marked the fence at the bottom of the garden, only a few yards from where she stood. Beyond lay open fields and then greenhouses, which years ago had belonged to Sarnia Flora, one of the island’s biggest growers. Jenny remembered when her parents worked evenings there, picking freesias and carnations. They would take Jenny with them and she would run amongst the plants, the scent of the hot, dry earth mingling with the delicate perfume of the flowers. The company had gone out of business twenty years ago and the greenhouses had fallen into disrepair, their wooden frames now like the skeletons of some long-extinct beasts, the earth around them littered with broken glass. Beyond, the nearest houses were just visible in the distance, the odd illuminated windows shining like beacons and she was struck by the thought that if anyone was out there, she was framed, a bright target in the darkness. She startled at a hollow thud from behind her and pulled the curtains closed.

  There was a blocked-up fireplace in her room and on stormy nights the wind rattled through the chimney; finding no escape at the bottom, it buffeted about angrily in the flue. This sounded louder than usual and she walked over to the chimney breast, put her ear to the wall. She listened and heard the telltale scratching and chirping of a trapped bird. And something else. From the hallway.

  Muffled sobs.

  Margaret. Another nightmare.

  She could just go back to sleep. She lay back down on the bed, closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of the wind and the rain outside. If she listened very carefully she could hear the sea in the distance. As a child, when she felt anxious or worried, the sound had soothed her; the gentle swish and sway of the water on calm nights or the violent smashing of the waves during a storm. She listened for it now, but the whisper of the distant sea was no match for the gentle thudding in the chimney or the hushed sobbing in the next room.

  Margaret’s light was on and her door was ajar. She was propped up on her pillows, sipping from a glass of water. There was an unopened packet of tablets and a Josephine Cox novel on her bedside table. She still slept on ‘her’ side of the bed. She had wanted to get rid of the double and get a single after Charlie died but Jenny had persuaded her not too, had thought her mum would feel his loss more keenly seeing space for only one person after so many years, but perhaps this was worse. The pillows on the left-hand side were smooth, the duvet unruffled, a constant reminder of his absence.

  Jenny sat on the end of the bed.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  Margaret shook her head.

  ‘You’ve got work in the morning, you should get back to sleep. I’m fine. It’s just these nightmares. I hardly sleep and then when I do…’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘What are you dreaming about? Is it Dad?’ Jenny rubbed her bare arms against the cold.

  ‘Get into bed.’ Margaret pulled back the covers.

  ‘OK. But please, will you take one of these?’ Jenny popped a sedative out of the packet and climbed in next to her mother. ‘Bit of a turn around, isn’t it, me coming to give you a cuddle because you’re having nightmares?’

  Margaret laughed and wiped at her nose with her sleeve.

  ‘So are you going to tell me about them or can I go back to sleep?’

  Margaret sighed. ‘You know who I’ve been thinking about?’

  ‘Who?’ Jenny stifled a yawn.

  ‘Elizabeth Mahy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Elizabeth. The friend of mine who died.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned her.’

  ‘I have. I must have done. You probably weren’t listening. Anyway, it was a long time ago, before you were born, before I met your dad even.’

  ‘I don’t remember you talking about any Elizabeth. How did she die?’

  Margaret looked at the little white pill in her hand and then swallowed it down with a sip of water.

  ‘She drowned. At the bathing pools. A long time ago.’

  Margaret told her story, animated at first, threading it through with a hundred tiny details about her and Elizabeth; the clothes they wore, the places they went to and what had happened – at least, as much as she knew – until slowly, as the sedative took effect, the details became hazier, her voice softer, and finally it trailed off completely and her breathing slowed and deepened. Jenny got out of the bed and tucked her back in. She had not seen her mother sleeping for a very long time. She watched her for a moment and then turned out the light.

  The storm had calmed. Jenny slipped back into her bed and closed her eyes. The sea was a quiet roar, like the sound you could hear when you held a conch shell to your ear. And much closer, behind the blocked-up fireplace, she could hear the muffled beating of frantic wings. She listened to it, helpless, until dawn broke and the singing of the birds outside drowned it out.

  * * *

  Pembroke, a wide, sheltered bay at the northern tip of the island, was always crowded during the summer, the long, flat stretch of golden sand interrupted by brightly coloured windbreaks, families gathered around picnic blankets, children paddling in the shallows. Cold November mornings were a different story. It was freezing underfoot, even before she’d got to the sea, the sand chilled by the icy water just under the surface. The flag on the Martello tower, which stood sentinel on a grassy bank at the head of the bay, flew with hardly a flutter, so brisk and unyielding was the breeze. Several turrets of smooth rocks which at low tide formed a natural children’s playground of rock pools and hidey holes, were nearly fully submerged, only the round, flat tops visible, poking out like seals trying to keep their heads above water.

  Even near the shore the waves were powerful and relentless, whipped up by yesterday’s storm and yet to settle. Usually, Jenny would relish the challenge. It was one of the reasons she liked to swim outdoors. You had to focus, be aware of your surroundings – the currents, the weather, the rocks. You were at once immersed in nature and battling against it. Today, however, Jenny was tired, and the sea was winning. She moved slowly through the water, the muscles in her arms complaining each time she pulled a stroke. She should look at the bathing pools for her daily swim. They would surely offer more shelter from the wind. And they had changing rooms. She had forgotten about them until her mum had told her about Elizabeth.

  She could not remember hearing about Elizabeth before, although Margaret insisted she’d told Jenny all about it. Most likely Jenny had not listened. She had always been more interested in Charlie’s stories of adventure and mischief than Margaret’s cautionary tales.

  Margaret and Elizabeth had been great friends as teenagers. Sometimes they would tell their parents they were going to each other’s houses and then change into miniskirts and high heels before hitting the bars in town. One Saturday night Grandpa Le Page had stopped Margaret from going out. One of his friends had seen her the previous week in a bar. He had checked her bag, found her outfit, and slapped her round the face. Grandpa Le Page had been a benign, smiling man who never seemed to get out of his armchair. He would do the football pools, sipping at a whisky and ginger ale, or tell Jenny stories about
his time in the navy, his visits to the Far East and India, while they made jigsaw puzzles together. She had never heard him raise his voice. He’d even died quietly, sitting in that same armchair, watching his beloved Pompey Chimes.

  ‘He hit you?’

  Margaret had nodded. Not for the first time either, she said. He’d had a terrible temper when he was younger and he drank a lot more whisky back then too. That Saturday, when she’d been forced to stay in, nursing a bruised cheek, Elizabeth went out without her. She never came home. She was found the next morning at the bathing pools. Dead. Drowned. In her underwear. The police said she’d been drunk and gone skinny-dipping, suspected there may have been someone with her but no witnesses came forward. Margaret had known Elizabeth had a boyfriend, someone older, but she’d never met him. She was no help at all to the police.

  The wind was picking up and the undertow strengthening. Her arms tired, Jenny pushed through it towards the beach, feeling with her feet for the sand concealed beneath the leaden waves, wading the last few feet to the shore, the water slapping at her thighs, an admonishment for her foolhardiness. She walked back to the large, flat rock she had left her things on. Each bluster of wind seemed to strip a layer off of her wet skin, already blue with cold, and she struggled to wrap her towel around her shoulders as the edges caught and billowed away from her. She rubbed at her pale, shaky legs with the rough towel to bring some blood back to the surface. She peeled her costume off, one hand securing the towel around her neck, while she inelegantly pulled her jeans over her damp skin and a T-shirt and sweater over her head. Too cold to fiddle with undies and it was only a few minutes on the bike back to her house.

  She stuffed her wet things back in her rucksack and hoisted it over one shoulder, pulled her wet hair back from where it was whipping at her face. That was when she saw him. A man behind the sea wall. Watching her.

  He was dressed all in black, a hoody pulled up over his head, and she thought about the man on the motorbike, wondered if it was him. She wouldn’t have heard him approach, not while she was in the sea, with the waves crashing around her. She walked towards the wall, gripped with the overwhelming need to know what the fuck was going on, ignoring the screeching in her head telling her to run and hide. There was nowhere to go anyway. The beach offered no shelter. Not from this.