Shape of Snakes

by Walters, Minette

  He flicked his indicator. "Where did they do it?"

  "In her house. Sharon used to smuggle her clients down the alleyway at the back as a way of protecting her reputation ... such as it was."

  "What about her kid?"

  "Michael? I'm not sure he was there very much. Wendy said he was always in trouble with the police so I imagine he was made to roam the streets."

  "Jesus!" said Sam in disgust, as he drove onto a rough unmade track that led down to the sculpture park. "No wonder he went to the bad." He drew the car to a halt and switched off the engine. "How was he caught for the post-office job?"

  "He confessed to his wife three months later and she promptly turned him in. She gave the police a black leather jacket which she said Michael was wearing on the day of the robbery. It still had blood spots round the cuffs which matched the customer's in the post office." I thought back. "Michael pleaded guilty but it didn't do him much good. The judge commended Bridget for the brave assistance she'd given the police, and said he was sending her husband down for eleven years as a result of her efforts."

  "And this is the Bridget who lived on Graham Road?"

  "Mm. She was at number 27 ... opposite Annie's house. Her father, Geoffrey Spalding, shacked up with Michael's mother when Bridget was thirteen, leaving her and her older sister, Rosie, to fend for themselves. I don't know what happened to Rosie, but Bridget and Michael married sometime in 1992, just after Michael finished a long sentence for aggravated burglary and ten counts of breaking and entering. He stayed out of trouble for about six months then robbed the post office. All in all, he and Bridget have spent less than a year living together as a married couple."

  "And now they're divorced?"

  "No. The last I heard she was working in Bournemouth and making a monthly trip to Portland to visit Michael. That's why he was moved down here ... because no one visits him except his wife. She said at the trial that she still loved him-said she can't rely on anyone the way she relies on Michael because they've known each other since they were children-and the only reason she turned him in was because she was afraid he was going to kill somebody. I thought how brave she was," I said dryly. "His mother's a coward by contrast-that's Sharon-won't go near him ... hasn't done for years because of the shame he's brought on her. She's been respectable ever since Bridget's dad moved in with her and she was able to give up the game."

  "She sounds a right bitch," he said grimly.

  "She's not much of a mother, that's for sure."

  Sam leaned his arms on the steering wheel and stared thoughtfully out of the window. "Were all the kids as bad?" he asked. "What about the Charles children next door?"

  "The oldest was only five," I said, "and Julia never let them out of her sight. It was really only Michael and the Slaters who ran wild ... in both cases because their mothers had given up on them. Sharon didn't care ... and Maureen was so brutalized by Derek that she spent most of her time getting stoned in her bedroom."

  "Did you know all this in '78?"

  "No. Most of it came from Libby after we moved. I knew Alan Slater was getting into fights because he had so many bruises, but I didn't realize it was his father who was hitting him. I talked it over with the head on one occasion, but he just said it would do Alan good to be thrashed by his own peer group because he was a bully himself. As for Michael"-I gave a small laugh-"I always thought how mature he was for his age. He wrote me a couple of love poems and left them on my desk, signed: The Prisoner of Zenda."

  "How did you know they were from him?"

  "I recognized his handwriting. He was an incredibly bright child. If he'd come from a different background, he'd have an M.A. from Oxford by now instead of a ten-page criminal record. The trouble was he was a persistent truant so he only ever attended one class in three." I sighed. "If I'd been a little more experienced-or less intimidated by the bloody headmaster-I could have helped him. As it was, I let him down." I paused. "Alan, too," I added as an afterthought.

  "Did Jock know Michael was truanting?"

  I reached for my door handle. "I shouldn't think so," I said bluntly. "He was paying to have his dick sucked, not listen to stories about Sharon's only child."

  It was years before I understood that Michael's poems were more about loneliness than love. At the time I swung between suspicion that he had plagiarized them, possibly from song lyrics, and admiration that a fourteen-year-old could write so poignantly. Either way, I decided he had an unhealthy crush on me and made a point of keeping him at arm's length to prevent him becoming a nuisance.

  If I was older. If I was wise.

  You'd look at me with different eyes

  and love me.

  If I was handsome. If I was strong.

  No one would say that you were wrong

  to love me.

  It always makes me sad to see

  a weed grow where a flower should be.

  So I think of flowers when 1 think of you.

  It always makes me sad to hear

  the deathly silence in the air.

  So I think of music when I think of you.

  Letter from Libby Garth-ex-wife of Jock Williams,

  formerly of 21 Graham Road, Richmond-

  now resident in Leicestershire

  Windrush

  Henchard Lane

  Melton Mowbray

  Leicestershire

  December 4, 1989

  M'dear,

  Happy Christmas! I'd send a card if I didn't think Sam would go ballistic at the idea. It still hurts, you know, that he took Jock's side without ever bothering to hear mine. I know you say it's not in his nature to think ill of anyone-let alone a close friend-but he must think ill of me if you can't even tell him we're still in touch. It's one of the horrible truisms that divorce doesn't just divide property, but friends as well. That being said, it's probably better this way if he's still shying away from the whole subject of Annie's death.

  Have you ever worked out why that is? I know you say he has a habit of forgetting anything he doesn't want to remember-like your frigid spell, your near-divorce, your "fits of the vapors," your police caution, etc.-but surely Annie doesn't hold any fears for him now? He can't possibly have killed her because he's not the type to push people under trucks! Surely, that had to be Derek Slater? He was the only man on Graham Road who was vicious enough.

  Jim and the girls are fine. At the moment I'm resisting Jim's blandishments for one more try to see if we can make a boy. I keep telling him a three-year-old, a nine-month-old and a teaching job are more than enough to occupy anyone, but he seems to think I'm Superwoman. I don't know how you managed without a nanny. The only thing that keeps me sane is to get into my car every morning and spend the day with my alternative "family" at school, though I'm still trying to work out how to persuade fourteen-year-old gorillas with twice as much testosterone as brain that learning is a "good thing." I leave every class feeling as if I've been raped and ravaged by their revolting imaginations. Did that contribute to your agoraphobia after Annie died? I've often wondered. I remember you telling me that you couldn't stand the way Alan Slater and Michael Percy looked at you.

  Apropos, I enclose two cuttings. One about Michael, who goes from bad to worse, which is only to be expected of the tart's son. Yes, I'm being beastly, but I'd have to be a saint to view the "bleached vampire" and her progeny with anything other than hatred since they received a rather more regular income from Jock than I ever did! The second is about the policeman, Sergeant Drury-the one you had a yen for at the beginning. (Looked like a shorter-haired version of Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing-have you seen the movie? It's to die for!) I might have fancied him myself if he hadn't turned out to be such a shit. It was unforgivable of him to "kiss and tell" to Sam. Have you considered that that might be Sam's problem with the Annie saga? It was certainly his problem the night before he took himself off for three weeks. Have you forgiven him for forcing you yet? It was a shabby and beastly way to treat you when you were struggling
with agoraphobia and depression. But that's men for you-act first, think later! I bet he regrets it now, especially if you managed to persuade him that Drury was lying.

  Anyway, Drury's taken early retirement, though by the way the piece is worded the implication is he was given the boot for whacking a seventeen-year-old Asian boy.

  Keep smiling,

  All my love,

  Libby

  Local Man Convicted

  Michael Percy, 25, of Graham Road, Richmond, pleaded guilty yesterday to aggravated burglary at a house in Sheen Common Drive. He admitted carrying a chisel and using it to threaten the homeowner when he was surprised to find the house occupied. He asked for 10 other charges of burglary to be taken into account. The judge described Percy as a "persistent criminal" and a "dangerous man" before passing a sentence of four years.

  Richmond & Twickenham Times-September 14,1989

  Police Sergeant Retires

  Sergeant James Drury, 41, is retiring early after 15 years with the Metropolitan Police in Richmond. He has been absent on sick leave since a fight broke out between him and a group of youths behind the William of Orange pub two months ago. One of the youths, Javinda Patel, 17, sustained a broken cheekbone and was taken to hospital. The rest of the gang fled before P.S. Drury's colleagues reached the scene. A police spokesman said today, "Mr. Drury was very shaken by the incident and this was a contributory factor in his decision to take early retirement. We're always sorry to lose good officers." He denied that Mr. Drury started the fight.

  Richmond & Twickenham Times-November 24,1989

  *12*

  Tout Quarry, home to the sculpture park and once a source of hand-quarried Portland stone, had been long worked out and abandoned. It was a wild and wonderful place. A man-made labyrinth of tangled gorges and wide-open spaces like amphitheaters where stunted shrubs and trees grew among blocks of half-excavated sedimentary rock. It looked as if a giant hand had rummaged in the belly of the earth and stirred the stone into a chaotic, tumbling dance.

  Sam was fascinated by the intermittent sculptures which had been carved in situ and introduced subtle shape to the craggy landscape. Antony Gormley's Still Falling-a cameo figure plunging down a rocky cliffside. Robert Harding's Philosopher's Stone-an intricate layer of cut stones perched between V-shaped rocks. A crouching man with his chin resting on his knees. Footsteps. A tulip, prized from the rock to lie in reflection on the ground. "Is anyone allowed to have a go?" he asked, examining a fossil in a slab and trying to work out if it was a real ammonite or a simulated one.

  "I think you have to be invited."

  "Pity," he said wistfully. "I quite fancy leaving my mark for posterity."

  I laughed. "Which is probably why people like you aren't allowed to do it. You'd get bored after a while and carve out 'Sam woz 'ere, 1999,' then the whole place would be desecrated with graffiti."

  We heard the sculpture workshop before we saw it. A constant rat-a-tat of hammers on chisels, overlaid by the whistle of wind through a polythene canopy that had been rigged above the sculptors' heads. It was a scene of intense industry because everyone was there for a purpose, to learn how to work in three dimensions. White stone chippings littered the ground, and a fine dust clung to arms, hair and clothing like baker's flour. It might have been a Renaissance atelier in Italy but for the polythene canopy, the uniform prevalence of T-shirts and jeans, and the fact that half the sculptors were women.

  It was situated in a sheltered gulley, and Danny stood out from the rest of the group, not just because he'd positioned himself near the entrance but because his block of stone was three times the size of anybody else's. It was also a great deal more advanced. Where most of the others were still working to establish basic form, Danny had already released a bespectacled head and upper torso from the limestone's grip and was using a claw chisel to give grained texture to the skin of the face.

  He looked up as we approached. "What do you think?" he asked, stepping back and letting his hands fall to his sides, unsurprised that we'd come to admire his work. His physique interested me. I was amazed by how well developed his shoulders and arms were without a jacket to hide them.

  "Excellent," observed Sam with the overdone bonhomie that he reserved for men he didn't know very well. "Who is it? Anyone we know?"

  A scowl of irritation narrowed Danny's eyes.

  "Mahatma Gandhi," I said, casting a quick verifying glance at the drawings and photographs on the ground beside him. I didn't need to. The likeness was there, even if more reliant on intuition than reality. "It's an ambitious subject."

  That didn't please him either. "I can tell you're a teacher," he said witheringly, glancing toward the canopy where instructors were passing on advice and help to the other students. "That's what they keep telling me."

  I eyed him curiously. "Why don't you take it as a compliment?"

  He shrugged. "Because I know a put-down when I hear it."

  "You're too sensitive," I said. "In my case it's a spur to keep you going. You're obviously the star here-head and shoulders above the others-and unless you're blind and stupid you must recognize the fact."

  "I do."

  "Then stop bellyaching and prove you can cope with an ambitious subject." I ran a finger along the larger-than-life spectacles which grew at a forty-five-degree angle from the wrinkled stone cheeks. "How did you do these?"

  "Carefully," he said, more serious than ironic.

  I smiled. "Weren't you afraid of knocking them off?"

  "I still am."

  "There's a bronze statue of Gandhi in Ladysmith in South Africa. It commemorates the ambulance corps that he set up there during the Boer War. It's the only other one I've ever seen of him."

  "How does it compare?"

  "With this one?"

  He nodded. I might have mistaken his question for arrogance if the muscles in his shoulders had been less rigid or his scowl less ferocious. He is preparing to defend himself again, I thought.

  "It's a thoroughly professional life-size representation in bronze of a tiny little man who did his duty by the Empire after accepting British citizenship," I said. "But that's all it is. It gave me no sense of his greatness, no sense of the extraordinary effect his humility had on the world, no sense of inner strength." I moved my fingers to touch the rough limestone face. "Gandhi was a giant with no pretensions. For myself, I'd rather have him larger-than-life and rough-hewn in stone than realistically small and neatly polished in bronze."

  His scowl relaxed. "Will you buy it?"

  I shook my head regretfully.

  "Why not? You just said you liked it."

  "Where would I put it?"

  "In your garden."

  "We don't have a garden. We're only renting the farmhouse for the summer. After that"-I shrugged-"who knows? If we're lucky we may be able to afford a brick box with a tablecloth for a garden and a few roses 'round the border ... and, frankly, a bust of Mahatma Gandhi in the middle of it would look very out of place."

  He was disappointed. "I thought you were loaded."

  "Sadly not."

  He pulled out his cigarettes. "Just keeping up appearances, eh?"

  "Something like that."

  "Ah, well," he said with resignation, bending his head to shield his lighter from the wind. "Maybe I'll give him to you for free." He blew smoke through his nose. "It'll cost me an arm and a leg to get him back to London, and the chances are the specs'll get knocked off in the process. You can start a collection ... put him next to Alan's Quetzalcoatl ... make the Slaters famous for something other than drugs, burglary and wife-beating..."

  I suggested we treat Danny to lunch at the Sailor's Rest in Weymouth but Sam wasn't keen. "The food's good," he admitted, "but the landlord's an asshole."

  "I think you already know him," I told Danny as we made our way back to the car. "He's the policeman who got Alan sent down. I thought it might amuse you to see him in different surroundings." I interrupted the silence that followed this remark to point a
t the wreck of a Viking long ship that was creatively cast upon some rocks to our left. "That's a clever use of materials," I murmured.

  "What's his name?" asked Danny.

  "James Drury. He was a uniformed sergeant in Richmond until he was forced to take early retirement and took himself off to train as a pub manager for Radley's Brewery. They started him off in Guildford, then moved him to the Sailor's Rest in '95."

  Danny eyed me with understandable suspicion. "How do you know he's the one who nicked Alan?"

  "A neighbor of ours in Graham Road told me," I explained. "Libby Williams?" He shook his head. "She knew I was interested in anything Mr. Drury did, particularly if it concerned an ex-pupil." I tucked my hand companionably into the crook of Sam's elbow to soften the blows of revelation. "I had several encounters with him before we moved abroad. He's probably the most corrupt person I've ever met ... a thief, a liar, a bully ... and a racist. Quite the wrong sort of man to be given a police uniform."

  A mirthless laugh escaped Danny's mouth. "He sure as hell stitched Alan up. Okay, I'm not saying my brother was an angel, but he was no drug pusher. A user, maybe-never a pusher."

  "What happened?"

  "I don't know the exact details ... I was just a kid at the time ... but Ma said Drury nicked him in a pub one night, and dropped four ounces of hash into his pocket while he was slapping on the handcuffs. He was a right bastard. If he couldn't get you for one thing, he'd get you for another."

  "What had Alan really done?"