The Devil's Claw

by Lara Dearman

  * * *

  Janet Gaudion and his wife died within a month of each other. One, in as glorious a fashion as it was possible to imagine, on a crisp, starlit night scented with brine and sweet marram grass, the other in an overheated hospital room, heavy with the smell of ammonia and shit.

  He cancelled his birthday party. Everybody understood. A party, so soon after a funeral, would have been quite inappropriate.

  25

  Jenny

  Wednesday, 19 November

  Hayley Bougourd’s mother lived on the Mare de Carteret estate, one of the nicer ones on the island. Row upon row of cream, box-like houses with red roofs arranged in a cul-de-sac, each with a small garden in front and the same behind. They’d be called council estates in the UK, but here, with no council, they were referred to as States’ houses. Most of the lawns were covered in scrubby, patchy grass, and some of them were adorned with overly large trampolines or broken children’s bicycles. Every now and then she passed a well-kept garden, the grass healthy and green, a small pond with garden gnomes in attendance, or a neat border of winter pansies. But, for the most part, the estate had a depressing, uncared-for appearance. She drove around twice before she found a parking space between a rusty Yamaha motorbike and a grimy, dented Ford Fiesta with a ‘Guernsey Donkey and Proud’ decal stuck on its dirty back windscreen.

  Hayley had drowned twelve years ago. Jenny remembered it and Hayley’s friends would be just a little older than her. Jenny had asked Sarah to check with friends and family, to see if anyone remembered anything and would be happy to talk about it. Guaranteed Sarah would deliver. She was one of those people who knew everyone, through school or work or toddler groups. Plus she had twelve cousins, all of whom still lived on the island. Her whole family met up regularly for chaotic Sunday lunches and Christmas celebrations and weddings – the opposite of Jenny’s family, with Margaret an only child and Charlie’s sister never having had children.

  Hayley’s mother lived at number twenty-five, one of the houses with the better front gardens. There were no flowers or shrubs, but the lawn was tidy and there was a faded doormat on the top step with WELCOME emblazoned across it in bright letters. She rang the bell and, almost simultaneously, a dog started barking. There was a yell, a thudding of footsteps, some kind of scuffle, and the door opened. A woman, whippet-thin, her bobbed hair dyed an unnatural shade of red, stood holding the collar of a boxer, which probably weighed twice as much as she did. The dog barked again and strained to be released, its front legs raised off the floor, but the woman held fast. Jenny took a step back.

  ‘He won’t hurt you, love, he’s soft as shit. I just don’t want him running into the road.’

  He was wagging his tail now, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and Jenny relaxed. ‘I’m looking for Mrs Le Cheminant?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’ She looked Jenny up and down and pushed the door a little. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I was hoping to talk to you about your daughter.’

  ‘Look, I’ve told you people before: she’s left home, I’m not responsible for what she does any more. If there’s some kind of problem with her rent or something, you need to speak to her.’ She began closing the door. Jenny stepped forward, setting the dog off again, so she had to shout over him, ‘No, Mrs Le Cheminant, I’m sorry, I wanted to talk to you about Hayley.’ The door of the next house opened and a young woman balancing a red-faced toddler on her hip shouted across at them, ‘Jackie, can you please shut that dog up? It’s Ryan’s nap time!’ She slammed her door shut and Jenny looked pleadingly at Jackie, who seemed frozen on the doorstep.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  * * *

  ‘Nobody’s asked about Hayley for so long.’

  They were sitting in a small living room on an old sofa, upholstered in red velvet fabric. Jenny could feel the springs through the thin cushions. The carpet was threadbare, the swirled cream and brown pattern completely worn away in places. Dust motes hung in the air, whirling around as Jackie wafted the smoke from her own cigarette out of her face. Jenny stifled a cough and sipped at her orange squash, which seemed to be three-parts squash to one-part water. She had explained to Jackie that she was looking into suicide rates on the island, asked if Jackie would mind telling her about Hayley. She could tell Jackie was torn, suspicious of Jenny but desperately wanting to talk about her daughter.

  ‘Nobody was interested when she died, you know. Nobody wanted to know what happened to her then. Not the police, not even you lot. Suicide, they said, even though there was no note, nothing. But they all took one look at her, at us, and didn’t think we were worth bothering about.’

  ‘I’m interested. Please, tell me about her.’

  Jackie lit another cigarette. The skin on her hands was dry and flaky, her knuckles red and chapped, but her nails were long and looked professionally shaped. She picked off flakes of pearly pink polish and flicked them on the floor.

  ‘She was really pretty. That’s what people always said about her. She was so pretty. She was clever as well, though. Worked really hard until she got in with that Goth crowd, started drinking and doing God knows what else.’

  The dog was sitting at her feet and she played with his ears, pulling them gently and stroking his head. He whimpered with contentment until a motorbike roared past and he was up, barking at the front door again.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Frank, siddown!’ She dragged him out to the kitchen and shut the door.

  ‘Fucking dog. Kids went on and on about getting one but they never trained him and now they’re all at school or left and I’m stuck with the fucking thing.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, what good is it, raking all this up again? Hayley’s gone. I tried my best. Tried to stop her messing up like I did. I was sixteen when I had her. Still a kid. Never married her dad, he was just some boy from school. He didn’t even come to her funeral. My other three I had later, with my husband. My youngest, my Jax, is the same age Hayley was when she died. Getting himself into trouble as well, that one is.’

  ‘It’s a difficult age.’

  ‘You’re telling me, love.’

  ‘So could you tell me about her? About Hayley? It might help other girls like her. To know her story.’

  Jackie finished her cigarette, grinding the stub into a cut-glass ashtray resting on the arm of the sofa. She brushed at her leggings, picking off a few stray dog hairs and dropping them on to the carpet.

  Hayley was a good girl, Jackie said. She passed her eleven plus and was the first one in the family to go to the grammar school. She did well. Stayed on to do A levels. Jackie couldn’t help much with her schoolwork, but she encouraged her. They all did. They were proud. She wanted to be a designer or go into advertising. She hadn’t decided. But then things started to change. Small things at first. The music she listened too, the clothes she wore. Soon everything was black, her make-up, her hair, her nails, her mood.

  There was a boy. There always was, wasn’t there? Jackie said. He wore all black too. And they started hanging around at Le Guet, there was a crowd of them who met at the little abandoned building at the edge of the woods. They would all drink and make trouble. The police were involved a couple of times, nothing too serious, noise complaints and making a nuisance, that sort of thing. She hadn’t worried too much at first, kids messed around and got into scrapes, it was all part of growing up, wasn’t it? It hadn’t been that long since Jackie was a kid herself, she remembered what it was like. But it got worse. Jackie was worried that Hayley was taking drugs. She stopped studying, was out all night, nobody knew where. But what could she do, Jackie asked? Hayley was nearly eighteen at this point, almost an adult, and she wouldn’t listen.

  A social worker had put them in touch with a charity that helped young people going off the rails, like a youth club with counsellors – Jackie couldn’t remember the name of it. They offered music lessons and art therapy.

  ‘What sort of music lessons?’ Jenny interrupted.

  ‘She was lea
rning to play the piano. We all took the piss a bit, to be honest. Just teasing, like, asking her she was going to run away and join an orchestra, stuff like that. She laughed, it didn’t upset her or nothing. Anyway, we didn’t have one here, so she used the one at the centre.’

  ‘Who taught her?’

  ‘I can’t remember. You want lessons or something?’ Jackie seemed annoyed at being interrupted. She took another cigarette.

  ‘No, sorry, please, go on.’

  ‘I did meet him once. He was an older bloke, bit posh. He was ever so nice to her, though. He would let Jax come along to her lessons when I was working. Until she got into one of her moods and stopped taking him.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. Teenage stuff I suppose, didn’t want Jax cramping her style. We had a right old row about it as it happens, ’cause I had to find someone to watch him while she was out, but she was adamant he couldn’t go with her any more. That was just a couple of weeks before she died. I’d completely forgotten about that. All seems so stupid now.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, apart from that, she was in a good way, right before it happened. She started talking about studying again. I really thought she was getting better. And then one night, she didn’t come home. The next day her body was found. Washed up at Rocquaine. The police thought she probably jumped at Pleinmont. She’d taken pills, sedatives. There was no suicide note though. But they all seemed pretty sure that she killed herself. The police, the social workers, they all just wrote her off.’

  ‘Here.’ Jackie left her chair and got down on all fours, her cigarette balanced at the corner of her mouth and opened a cabinet underneath the television. She pulled out a Christmas-card box, a picture of a robin in the snow on the battered lid, and took out a small pile of photos. She looked at them one by one, and then handed them to Jenny.

  ‘I only kept the good ones. I sorted them all out and threw the bad ones away, the ones that were out of focus or badly lit, you know. I don’t know why I did that. Must have been too upset to think properly.’ Her voice was thick now. She pointed to the photo Jenny was holding. Hayley with a boy. Both of them golden-haired and blue-eyed. A younger brother. ‘That one’s my favourite. Her and Jax. She was really good with him. Took him out with her, even when she was acting up at home. He liked her better than me, I reckon.’ She smiled and wiped her eyes. ‘I’d frame it … if I could bear looking at her every day.’

  * * *

  Jenny walked back to her car. There was a small boy, perhaps four years old, sitting on a bike, leaning against the wall across from where she had parked. He had short, clippered hair and wore a pair of faded dungarees, dirty green rubber shoes on his feet. She smiled at him but he just stared back, his eyes knowing, as if they were many years older than his face. She could see him in the rear-view mirror, watching her, as she drove away.

  Her head ached. Amanda and Hayley both went to some sort of youth programme and took piano lessons. David De Putron said he volunteered at a youth group and had taught Amanda. Had he taught Hayley too? Because, surely, that would be one hell of a coincidence? She would run it by Michael. But first she needed space to think and some fresh air to clear her head. She found herself on the coast road, heading south, past the friendly yellow beaches of Cobo and Vazon with their chip shops and ice-cream kiosks, now closed for the season but still bright and welcoming. As she drove on, the road narrowed and twisted into Perelle. Here the landscape was harsher, flat sand replaced with sharp black rocks, the sea wall crumbling in parts. Landward, wide, empty fields of brittle grass were dotted with the odd greenhouse or fisherman’s cottage. There was a beauty in the bleakness here, an honesty, as if the island was showing its true self, unsweetened, unadorned – this is what I really am.

  The road ended at the Imperial Hotel. She parked opposite. She had often come here with Charlie. It was one of their favourite Sunday-morning walking spots, a place they escaped to while Margaret was at home fussing over a roast dinner or ‘giving the house a good once-over’.

  Autumn was fast becoming winter. The few trees that lined the road seaward were bare of leaves, black and skeletal against a stark, white sky. Opposite, the entrance to a German bunker formed a black hole in the foliage covering the cliffs. It was a small one, a U-shaped tunnel, the exit a few hundred yards further up the hill. As a child she had loved running in, the light behind her disappearing as she turned the corner into a pitch-black corridor, only her hands on the cold rock to guide her until she turned again and her dad was standing there, a dark shape framed in the exit, waiting to catch her as she dashed back into the fresh air.

  Now it was all she could do to force herself to the entrance. She placed a hand on the wall, physically fixing herself to the outside. Beer cans and cigarette butts littered the steps down and the air was thick with the smell of urine. Presumably it hadn’t been like this twenty years ago, although knowing Charlie Dorey, it could have been. He wasn’t one to let a bit of piss and rubbish spoil the fun. She peered at the blackness inside. It was viscous, tangible somehow and trying to pull her in. Her whole body recoiled from the darkness and from the narrow, enclosed space. She could feel the walls closing in on her, the wet, slippery stone under her desperate, clawing fingers.

  She shivered. The memory left her skin cold and her mouth dry. She left the bunker behind her and walked up the road towards Pezeries Point.

  She came to the Fairy Ring. La Table des Pions, the stone next to it said, but nobody called it that. A circular trench dug out of the earth formed the seating and the grassy area in the middle was the table. What the stones were for and where the fairy idea came from was anyone’s guess, but according to local legends this place was a riot of witches dancing with the Devil when he chose to make an appearance. No sign of them at the moment. Just a couple of dog walkers hurrying back to the car park before the weather turned.

  Charlie and Jenny would sit at the edges and make daisy and buttercup chains and throw them in for good luck. Charlie had always said the witches would find out if anyone disturbed their favourite spot and put a curse on them. Sometimes he would dare her to go in and she would, but only for a second, and she would say sorry, in her head, to the witches. She said it now, as she stepped through the stones and into the middle of the circle.

  There was a blackened area towards the centre. She crouched next to it, stroked the scorched, brittle grass. Something had definitely burnt here. She walked around the edges, looking into the trench, crouching down to examine the odd pebble, a sweet wrapper. She was about to give up when she saw it, threaded through some scrappy grass. She pulled it out. A long, pale-yellow hair. She ran it through her fingers, felt it squeak against her skin. Not a real one. From a wig.

  Someone else had stepped in here in the days before Amanda died. Someone who had left a straw woman lying on the grass, a straw woman with blonde hair and blue eyes and cuts in its arm.

  She wrapped the hair around a pen and put it in a pocket at the front of her bag. She stepped out of the circle. An icy mist was descending, not exactly rain but freezing and damp, just the right consistency to find its way under the coat collar and chill the bones. She walked, head down, along the path to the headland. Springy grass and bracken soon gave way to sticky red soil and jagged rocks, small at first and then larger and larger, as the cliffs rose out of the earth. She scrambled up and over, as far as she could go, right to the edge, where the only way onwards was down. She looked out over the channel – eighty miles of churning, steely sea between here and the mainland. From where Jenny was standing, it could have been a thousand.

  Waves thrashed the rocks below. She was not afraid of falling; quite the opposite. She was sure she would enjoy it. Not the ending, she didn’t want to die, but the fall itself. She liked to think about what it might feel like, the cold air rushing through her hair and around her body, the speed, taking her breath away. There was something thrilling about wanting to jump, but knowing she never would, something empowering abou
t exercising control. She wondered if there were people who couldn’t do that, people who couldn’t stop themselves, who walked all the way to the edge and then kept on going. Not because they were hopeless or desperate, but because of the thrill of the fall.

  26

  April 1994

  She was nervous. Her hands shook as she sipped from the bottle he had given her. As she swallowed he felt a stab of anxiety. She might notice. He had used a whole packet, unsure of how much he could persuade her to drink. He had chosen the sweetest, sickliest energy drink he could find in the hope that the sugar and artificial flavourings would mask the taste of the pills, but even after he had shaken and shaken the bottle there was a chalky, bitter taste to it. Perhaps he was only detecting it because he knew what was in it. He had not wanted to try too much, for obvious reasons. He was on edge anyway. This was a new method for him and it made him uncomfortable, having to rely on anything other than himself to achieve his aims. There was no other way though. He had been unable to cultivate a relationship this time. He had not even tried, deeming it too risky. Instead, he had watched from afar; her visits to the social worker, the youth club. He’d even nodded at her once, given her what he hoped was a fatherly smile and a jovial ‘Hope you lot aren’t up to no good!’ as he passed her and her friends smoking and laughing outside the toilets at the North Beach car park. He knew there might only be one opportunity, and when it arose, he would have to be ready. The bottle had been in his glove compartment for weeks.

  He’d seen her that afternoon, outside the police station. She’d been in some sort of trouble. Her mother had been screaming at her in the street that she could make her own way home. He saw her beautiful face, hardened with anger and rage, slowly soften. He saw the tears welling in her wide-set eyes and rolling down her cheeks, leaving tracks of mascara in their wake, saw her lips moving. ‘Don’t leave me…’ Her plea fell on deaf ears.

  She wondered aimlessly around town. He followed, keeping at a safe distance. He tried to look relaxed, nodding and smiling at acquaintances as he passed them by. As late afternoon turned to evening, she fell in with a crowd of friends gathered in front of the row of telephone boxes at the end of the High Street. She and another girl sat on a bench in the shadow of the town church. He kept walking, taking the few steps down to the sea front. He had a moment of indecision. He could keep going and risk losing her, or he could find a place to watch and risk … what? What could he possibly be suspected of? He was doing nothing more than taking a walk through pretty St Peter Port on a fine spring evening. He climbed the steep steps up into the Cosy Corner, a dingy pub housed in the last building on the High Street. The tiny gap between the tavern’s roof and the outstretched gargoyle on the church wall next to it gave rise to the much-beloved claim that Guernsey had the closest pub to a church in the whole of the British Isles. He would pour no scorn on that claim now, as from the window next to his seat he could just about see the tops of the heads of Melissa and her friend below.