The Devil's Claw

by Lara Dearman

  Jenny put her face into the water. Closed her eyes. Swam in the dark, remembering.

  * * *

  London, two years ago. An unpleasantly hot summer, untempered heat absorbed by roads and pavements and then thrown back up in hazy, iridescent waves floating above the sticky Tarmac. No breeze. No whisper of sea spray in the air to cool hot cheeks with its fresh, salty touch.

  The net curtains blew pathetically in the tiny breeze created by the clip-on fan she had attached to her desk. She pushed them aside in the vain hope of encouraging fresh air into her stale room. A van was parked outside, a red pick-up, driver’s-side door wide open, Radio 5 Live blasting out from inside. Two men sat next to it, on top of a pile of bricks, shirts off, handkerchiefs tied around their heads, sipping coke from a two-litre bottle and arguing in lilting Caribbean accents about whether or not Arsenal had overpaid for their newest striker. Somewhere in the distance a police siren wailed.

  A bluebottle flew through the open window and started rhythmically throwing itself against the pane of glass. She couldn’t kill it. She couldn’t open the window wider to let it out either. Large bolts on either side of the frame prevented it from opening any more than a crack. The fly buzzed and throbbed around her. Sweat pricked her top lip. She had to get out. She should go to the library, although she was unlikely to make it past Venetia’s coffee shop. She put her laptop in her messenger bag (finally, a useful Christmas present from her mum) and left the house.

  Across the street, a slim, dark-haired woman stood in front of the neighbour’s door, fiddling with some keys. There were small holes in the hem at the bottom of her T-shirt and her jeans were skin-tight and faded to almost white. There was something nervous about her movements. There had been a spate of break-ins over the last few weeks, some in broad daylight and although this slight lady seemed an unlikely burglar, you could never be too sure.

  ‘Are you OK there?’

  The woman turned. Her skin was the colour of skimmed milk and had the same thin, transparent quality. She had bruise-like marks under each of her green eyes, a sharp nose and her lips, pressed tightly together, were two hard, pale lines of pink. For a moment Jenny thought she was going to ignore her, but the woman looked down at the keys and then at the door and seemed to decide she needed help after all.

  ‘I cannot open the door.’ Thick, hard accent.

  ‘Are you a friend of the family?’ Jenny took the keys from her. One of them looked particularly shiny and had dimples imprinted on the blade. She tried it in the deadbolt and heard a satisfying click as the cylinder turned. Her question unanswered, she held on to the keys. The woman pointed to a grubby tote bag on the step next to her, packed full with rags and sprays, polish and a feather duster.

  ‘I am the cleaner.’ She held her hand out. Jenny’s face flushed as she handed the keys over. The woman disappeared into the house, closing the door behind her.

  Two hours later, Jenny returned home in time to see the woman leave. She was struggling to fit an overstuffed black sack into the dustbin at the front of the house. She was sweating, a thin film of moisture clinging to her pallid face, dark patches under her arms. Jenny held the dustbin while the woman pushed the sack into it before jamming the lid back on and wafting the sickly sweet smell of decay into their faces.

  ‘Thank you.’ She nodded and picked up her bag. Her slim wrists were bruised on the inside. She saw Jenny looking but said nothing.

  ‘Where are you from?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Romania.’

  ‘I’m Jenny.’ She held out her hand. ‘I live opposite.’

  The woman nodded again. ‘Madalina.’ she said. She left Jenny’s hand unshaken and walked towards the Chatsworth Road.

  A week after their first meeting, Jenny decided to go for a walk in Victoria Park, catching Madalina on the way out. Jenny smiled and gave a small wave to her and received that same curt nod in return. The week after, she helped her with the bins again. Madalina had a deep purple bruise on the side of her face.

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘I fall over.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What is you want?’

  ‘Nothing. You look like you might need some help. There are places you can go. If you need help, I mean. I can get you a number.’

  Madalina was hostile. ‘You always here. Don’t you have job?’

  ‘I work from home, mostly.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I’m a journalist.’

  ‘For newspaper?’ She seemed interested and Jenny was struck with the feeling that this woman had a story to tell. ‘I’ve been thinking about doing a piece on foreign domestic workers, actually,’ she said, without thinking it through. She hesitated as she tried to come up with what an article like that might cover. ‘What it’s like cleaning other people’s houses, the things you see, the wages, the hours, living conditions. Maybe you’d be interested in being interviewed,’ she handed over her card. Madalina looked at it momentarily and then back at Jenny.

  ‘I have already a long day,’ she said. ‘I go home.’ She dropped the card in the bin, picked up her things and left.

  * * *

  Jenny took a deep breath and tucked her head into the murky green water which filled her ears and washed the sting of tears from her eyes. She swam down. A layer of sand and seaweed covered the concrete floor of the pool and she sculled around so she was almost sitting on the bottom. She looked up to the surface. It was barely lighter than the deep. She stayed there too long hoping that, fully submerged, the memory and the pain would be somehow diluted, until her chest was sore and she could no longer hold the breath burning in her lungs. Seawater crept in through her nose as her body, desperate for air, tried to override her efforts to keep her airways shut, and she arrived at the surface, coughing and gasping, salt water scalding the back of her throat.

  She pulled herself out of the pool, her flesh white from the cold. Her hands were stiff, the skin on her fingers heavy and swollen and she struggled to walk to the changing rooms, the towel wrapped around her shivering shoulders. She heard chattering as she dried and the three women from the pool entered. They were all in their seventies, perhaps older. One approached Jenny, pulling off her swimming cap to reveal long, white hair knotted on top of her head.

  ‘You’re new,’ she commented, drying herself off. ‘Don’t see many young people here these days.’ She stripped off her costume and began dressing. She saw Jenny avert her eyes and laughed. ‘No shame at my age, dear! I’ve been swimming and changing here for fifty years, I’m not about to get shy now.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Jenny laughed. ‘Do you meet here regularly?’

  ‘Every day. Either first thing in the morning or lunchtime. There are less of us each year, unfortunately, one of the downsides of the average member’s age being somewhere around seventy-five.’ She chuckled. ‘You should have a look at our website. The Guernsey Outdoor Swimming Club. We have a few youngsters turning up in the summer. Just us oldies at this time of year, though. And you, of course.’ She unknotted her hair. It was thick and wiry and fell almost to her waist. She brushed and plaited it expertly, twisted it into a bun and perched a pair of silver-rimmed glasses on to her nose.

  ‘It was nice to meet you.’ She extended her hand.

  ‘You too. I’m Jenny.’

  ‘I know who you are, dear. I saw your picture in the News. I never forget a face. I’m Sylvia.’ Her handshake was firm. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you again then? Remember, we’re here every day.’

  * * *

  By the time Jenny had walked back to the office, her head was freezing and she had a damp patch down the back of her shirt. If she did decide to go for another lunchtime swim, she resolved to take a leaf out of the swimming club’s book and wear a swimming cap.

  ‘Here’s a list of the people I thought we should talk to before we cover the demonstration.’ Elliot dropped a sheet of paper on her desk. ‘How have you managed to get soaking wet since I saw y
ou this morning? Is it raining?’ He glanced out of the window.

  ‘No. I went for a swim.’

  ‘Where do you swim around here?’

  ‘The sea. I swim every day, actually. I’m trying to, anyway.’ She wondered if he’d be impressed, if he liked outdoorsy women. Probably not, she thought. She could see him with one of those clever but poised types, a young lawyer, perhaps, in a short, smart dress, with glossy hair, a briefcase in one well-manicured hand, Elliot’s hand in the other. Jenny blushed. Again. She had to stop this. It was getting ridiculous. He was shaking his head at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing!’ He held his hands up. ‘Love a November swim. I’d be out there myself but, you know,’ he pointed to his foot, ‘I have a verruca.’

  She tried not to laugh as he walked off with an exaggerated limp.

  Her phone rang. The registry team at the Greffe had printed out the records she was waiting for, a list of people who had drowned over the last fifty years. It was waiting for her to collect. It would be a relief, Jenny thought, to pick up the list, and then close the Amanda story off. She needed to concentrate on the Save the Islander story to actually produce some publishable copy before Brian noticed she’d been wasting her time chasing ghosts.

  * * *

  She knocked quietly as per Sarah’s texted instructions. The door opened almost immediately and Sarah held her finger to her lips. They tiptoed into the kitchen and Sarah shut the door soundlessly.

  ‘I’m pretty sure they’re all asleep. I hope so. I’ve had a bitch of a day. Have you eaten? I’ve got fish fingers and potato waffles?’ She held out a baking tray with, presumably, the remains of the kids’ tea on it. Jenny shook her head.

  ‘Where’s Simon?’

  ‘It’s Friday. Band practice. They’ve got a gig next week. You should come.’ She ate a handful of leftovers. ‘Anyway. You look agitated. What’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t come and see my friend unless something’s going on?’ Jenny sank into a leather sofa and picked up a cushion, badly embroidered with a lopsided bird standing outside a beach house. Needlepoint was Sarah’s latest creative fad. She’d previously been obsessed with knitting, scrap-booking, quilting, and, very briefly, pottery, abandoned after only a couple sessions following a traumatic incident with a potter’s wheel she refused to elaborate on.

  ‘Nice … seagull?’

  ‘Ha! I’m getting better.’ Sarah beamed. ‘Simon thought the last one was a dodo. Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Coffee?’

  Sarah lived in a proper house, with an open-plan kitchen and living room, a garden and rooms for all the kids plus a guest bedroom. It was bright and modern and decorated with prints of London place names spelled out in quirky fonts and Scandinavian-style etchings of deer and forests. It was nice – but so grown-up. Although, everything looked grown-up when you lived with your mum. Sarah was rummaging in the cupboards, completely at home amongst the trappings of domesticity.

  ‘No coffee. Only tea.’ She looked at the box. ‘And it’s decaf. Fuck it. Let’s have a glass of wine.’

  She brought over two tumblers filled to nearly overflowing, then picked up the baby monitor from the coffee table and pressed it to her ear for a moment.

  ‘Snoring.’ She sighed contentedly, took a swig of wine and put her feet up on the coffee table. ‘Come on then. Talk to Aunty Sarah. Tell me all about it.’

  Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not funny, you know. But you’ve asked, so I’ll tell you. Or rather, it’s easier if I show you.’

  Jenny reached into her bag. She laid a picture of Amanda Guille and the one of Elizabeth Mahy she had printed from the archives next to each other. ‘Here. Take a look at these. Tell me if you think I’m losing the plot.’

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

  ‘The way they look. Wouldn’t you say they look alike?’

  ‘Sure. They look alike. Who is this?’ Sarah pointed at the picture of Elizabeth.

  ‘Elizabeth Mahy. She drowned. Just like Amanda Guille. Only fifty years ago.’

  Sarah looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘It’s not just these two. There are more.’

  ‘More what?’

  ‘I went to the Greffe and requested a list of all the people who have drowned in the last fifty years. I thought there might be an angle for the piece on suicide I was working on. I picked up the list today. It turns out there have been plenty of bodies recovered from the sea over the last fifty years,’

  ‘Jenny,’ Sarah interrupted, ‘is this healthy? I mean, dwelling on all this?’

  ‘This is nothing to do with my dad, Sarah. It’s about Amanda Guille.’

  Sarah nodded, but the concerned expression remained.

  ‘As I was saying, plenty of bodies recovered over the last fifty years. Fisherman, like my dad, a few people who shouldn’t have been out on the water in the first place and hit bad weather or rocks – all reported missing and their bodies eventually found. And of course there have been suicides. Cars driven off the cliffs, people jumping off Pleinmont Point.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Sarah nodded. ‘There’s a lot of water around here. I’m sure a fair few people have drowned.’ She said it gently.

  ‘How many people do you think, excluding the boating accidents and the obvious suicides?’

  ‘I really have no idea, Jenny. Twenty?’

  ‘Eight. All originally suspected suicides, but all recorded as open verdicts by the Magistrates’ Court. Which essentially means nobody really knows what happened. It’s the verdict Amanda’s death is likely to get too.

  ‘Two were men, middle-aged. I made a few of calls, found out about their backgrounds. One was recently divorced and his wife was threatening to take his kids away, one had a history of mental health problems. The suicide rate is highest amongst men aged forty-five to fifty-nine, that’s true for the mainland and Guernsey. Nearly three times higher than it is for women in that age bracket. In fact, statistically, the least-likely demographic to take their own lives are women aged ten to twenty-nine. Surprising, then, that the other six unexplained drownings, presumed suicides, were all women. Young women. So I went back to the archives, found the News reports on their deaths and printed out their pictures. Then I sat at my desk and stared at them for a couple of hours and, when I couldn’t stare at them any more, I came here.’

  Sarah sat forward.

  ‘Here they are.’ Jenny laid the pictures out in a row, starting with Elizabeth Mahy, ending with Amanda Guille. She pointed at each one in turn.

  ‘Elizabeth Mahy, sixteen years old, drowned, 1966. Mary Brehaut, eighteen years old, drowned, 1974. Janet Gaudion, aged eighteen, drowned 1985. Melissa Marchant, aged twenty, drowned 1994, Hayley Bougourd, eighteen years old, drowned, 2002. And Amanda Guille. Eighteen. Drowned. Six days ago.’

  The girls stared up at them from the blurred photographs. Fair hair, blue eyes, wide smiles. All young. All attractive. All dead.

  Sarah looked at them but said nothing.

  ‘Well?’

  Sarah cleared her throat. ‘Does seem like a lot of dead girls.’

  ‘It is a lot of dead girls. And it’s a very small island.’

  18

  Michael

  Saturday, 15 November

  Something didn’t sit right. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sitting right. He rubbed the back of his neck and arched his back. His chair had been ‘ergonomically designed’ according to a faded label stuck on the back of the headrest, but judging by its worn and torn exterior that was at some point in the early nineties. He should request a new one, although he’d probably need some medical reason to justify it. The chair wasn’t even the worst thing about his office. That prize went to the desk, a highly polished monstrosity with mean black metal legs, one of which he constantly caught his hip on as he left the room. There was no money any more. Not for a new chair or desk. Not even for a decent police investigation.

  Bloody budget cuts. With all t
he wealth flowing around this island he should be sitting in a twenty-first century police station right now. The island’s schools should be head and shoulders above the mainland schools. Their hospital should be state of the art. But someone, somewhere, had monumentally fucked up and the only people benefitting from all the tax-avoidance millions the island attracted seemed to be the ones working in the bloody banks. Not that he was a regressive; there were plenty of those about, moaning that the finance industry had ruined everything and that they’d all been better off in the fifties when they relied on tomatoes and flowers and milk for their livelihoods instead of trust funds and captive insurance policies. That was a load of bloody rubbish, but something was going wrong somewhere. He thought momentarily and not for the first time, about going into politics. Surely he could do a better job than some of those numpties in the States? Only he had no desire to deal with all that petty-minded toing and froing. All the arguing over tiny issues all the time. Maybe when he finally retired and had nothing better to do.

  He got up and looked out of his window. It was a much calmer day than yesterday. The eye of the storm, if he wasn’t mistaken. They were predicting hurricane force winds for next week. His office overlooked St Julian’s Avenue, a wide tree-lined road and one of the main routes into St Peter Port. Between the police station and the road there was an attractive green space, planted with exotic-looking ferns and spikey, red-leaved bushes. It would all be very pleasant if not for the public toilets right in the middle of them. As he knew from personal experience, they were perfectly positioned for the pissheads heading out of town on a Friday and Saturday night, many of whom made it as far as the building but then took some twisted pleasure in urinating, or worse, against the wall or over the gravel pathway. On Monday mornings the smell was enough to make you retch. Still, at least he had a window.