Shape of Snakes

by Walters, Minette

  He had grown a beard since the last time I saw him and his dark hair was going gray, but it suited him and I decided he must thrive on adversity because he had none of the worry lines that characterized Sam's face. "You look good," I said, settling myself in the chair. "Sam's lost most of his hair and is very sensitive about it. He'll be upset to hear you've kept all yours."

  "Poor bugger," he said with surprising sympathy. "He was always paranoid about going bald ... used to count the hairs in his comb every day."

  "He still does." I transferred my attention to a tortoiseshell cat that was curled up on a padded footstool in the corner of the room. "I didn't know you liked cats."

  He followed my gaze. "This fellow's grown on me. One of the exes stormed out when I refused to pay her credit-card bill and poor old Boozey got abandoned in the rush ... Either that, or he went to ground the minute the estrogen started to fly. He's more interested in me than my wallet so we rub along pretty well together."

  "Do you have a girlfriend now?"

  "You mean Libby hasn't told you?" he asked sarcastically. "I thought she knew everything."

  "She gave up calling when foreigners started answering the phone."

  "Why wasn't she worried about me picking it up?"

  "You did," I told him, "several times. She always pretended to be an old lady phoning the doctor's surgery. You were very patient with her. Kept telling her to correct the number in her book so she wouldn't get it wrong again."

  "Godammit! Was that Libby? It didn't sound like her." He looked impressed, as if I'd just said something laudable about a nonexistent daughter instead of the wife who'd cast him aside nearly a quarter of a century before.

  "She's good at putting a tremble in her voice." I paused. "Do you miss her?"

  It was a question he hadn't expected and he stroked his beard pensively while he considered his answer. "Sometimes," he admitted. "Where is she now? I know she remarried because one of her friends told me, but I've no idea where she went."

  "Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. She did a postgraduate course in Southampton after you and she split up and now she's head of the history department at a comprehensive in Leicester. Her husband's a bank manager called Jim Garth. They have three daughters. The eldest is thirteen and the youngest seven."

  His lips twisted in a regretful smile. "She always said she could do better without me."

  "She wanted an identity of her own, Jock"-I leaned forward, clamping my hands between my knees-"and if you'd encouraged her to train as a teacher while you were still married ... who knows? Maybe you'd still be together."

  He didn't believe that any more than I did. "Hardly. We weren't even on speaking terms by the end." His eyes narrowed as he looked at me, and I guessed he had as much pent-up distrust of me as I had of him. "I've always blamed you for the divorce, you know. Libby didn't have a problem till you came along, all she wanted was babies ... then you move into the street and, suddenly, babies aren't good enough. She has to have a career, and it has to be teaching."

  "I didn't know she was so easily influenced."

  "Oh, come on! Every idea she had was recycled from the last person she spoke to. That's probably why she became a history teacher," he said sarcastically. "You don't have to think so much when your subject's been chewed over for centuries by other people."

  "That's rubbish. Jock. Libby knew exactly what she wanted out of life ... also what she didn't want."

  "Yes, well, I could always tell when she'd been with you. She was a hell of a sight more belligerent about her rights when she'd had a dose of Ranelagh left-wing feminism."

  "Maybe it's a good thing you never introduced her to Sharon then," I said dryly. "Or you'd have had a prostitute for a wife."

  He wouldn't look at me-afraid, I think, of what I might read in his eyes-but his neck flushed an angry red. "That's a stupid thing to say."

  "No more stupid than you trying to blame me for your divorce," I said evenly. "Nothing I said or didn't say could alter the fact that Libby was sick to death of your gambling. She wanted some stability in her life, not a roller-coaster ride of wins one day and losses the next. It was bad enough when it was just the stock market, but when you admitted to losing three thousand quid on a poker game..." I shook my head. "What did you expect her to do? Pat you on the back?"

  "It was my money," he said sulkily.

  "It was also your money when you won," I pointed out, "but you never shared your winnings with her, only your losses. You put Libby through hell every time you lost and used your winnings to buy blow jobs off Sharon."

  It began to dawn on him just how much Libby had told me and he retreated into an offended silence, punctuated only by the regular ticking of a pendulum clock on the mantelpiece. I made no effort to break it. Instead I glanced about the study, trying to imprint what I could see on my memory. It was an impossible task, so I looked for what wasn't there: silhouette pictures of Annie's grandparents, mosaics of Quetzalcoatl, items of jade, artillery shells and peacock feathers...

  There was a fine seascape in a gilded frame on the wall opposite showing a ship under full sail battling with a storm-tossed sea, and I could just make out the words on the small plaque screwed to the bottom of the frame. Spanish Privateer in Great Storm off Kingston, Jamaica, 1823. I was so absorbed in trying to decide whether the date represented the year the storm happened or the year the picture was painted, that it was a while before I realized Jock was watching me.

  "What the hell's going on?" he asked suspiciously, following my gaze. "Has Libby got some crazy idea that she can get more money out of me?"

  I shook my head. "I came to ask you about the night Annie Butts died."

  He gave an exasperated sigh. "So why drag Libby into it? Why not be upfront at the beginning?"

  It was an obtuse remark from a man who always attacked first and asked questions later. "Sorry," I said apologetically.

  "You could have talked to me on the phone," he said, warming to his grievance. "I've always answered your questions in the past. I even drove round to St. Mark's Church the other day to find out the vicar's name for you."

  "That was kind," I agreed.

  "Then what's the big deal?"

  I pulled a wry expression. "Nothing really. I'm just not very good at this. I was afraid you'd clam up if I dived straight in with questions about where you were and who you were with that night."

  He looked surprised. "You already know all that. It was in my statement. I was with Sam at your place. We had a couple of beers and then I went home."

  "Except it was a Tuesday," I reminded him, "and Libby told me Tuesday was your fellatio day."

  "God almighty," he growled angrily, hating the whole subject, "I went to Sharon first. Okay? I came out at about half-seven, bumped into Sam and went back to his place for a beer."

  "Sam said you bumped into each other at the tube station."

  He shifted uncomfortably. "It was twenty years ago. You can't expect me to remember every wretched detail."

  "Why would you be at the tube if you'd just left Sharon? I thought you had sex in her house."

  "What the hell difference does it make? Annie was alive and well when we passed her in the street."

  I shrugged. "The reason Sam knows he met you at the station is because you were on your way home from a poker game."

  He was taken by surprise. "A poker game?" he echoed. "Where on earth did that spring from?

  "It's what Sam said."

  "Not in his statement, he didn't."

  "No, it was the explanation he gave me afterward," I lied. "He said he took you home for a drink because you were in a blue funk about how to tell Libby you'd lost another fortune."

  Surprise was abruptly replaced by irritation. "You didn't pass that on to Libby, did you?"

  "No. I didn't hear about it until after we'd left England."

  He pondered for a moment. "Maybe Sam didn't want to say I'd been with Sharon."

  "Did he know about her?"

&
nbsp; He gave a halfhearted nod.

  "But who could have told him, Jock? You?" I said in amazement when he didn't answer. "God! I'd have put money on you keeping that a secret. It wasn't something to be proud of, was it?"

  His mouth thinned. "Give it a rest, all right? None of this has anything to do with Annie's death."

  I shook my head. "It has everything to do with it, Jock. She died because she was beaten half to death some hours before she managed to drag herself down to our end of the street for me to find, yet you just said she was alive and well when you came out of Sharon's house at a quarter to eight." I lifted copies of the autopsy photographs from the front pocket of the rucksack and spread them on my lap. "Look at the bruising. It's too extensive to have come from injuries inflicted fifteen to thirty minutes before she died." I isolated a close-up of Annie's right arm. "This is a classic picture of a multitude of defense wounds sustained hours before death. The probability is that she curled herself in a ball to try to protect her head and, instead of a few individual bruises, which is what you would expect to see if a truck had flung her against a lamppost minutes before she died, all the bruises have merged over a period of hours to produce one massive hematoma from shoulder to wrist."

  He stared at the photographs with shocked fascination but instead of expressing revulsion over Annie's bludgeoned face, he offered a poignant non sequitur. "I'd forgotten how young she was."

  "Younger than you are now," I agreed, "and very strong, which is why she took so much punishment before she passed out. This bruising at the top of her thighs"-I turned a picture of Annie's torso toward him-"suggests massive internal injuries from being kicked or beaten around her abdomen, causing blood to seep into the tissue of her legs. It's what's usually described as a 'frenzied attack' and it almost certainly happened in her own house because anywhere else would have been too public."

  He took time to assimilate what I was saying. "I thought she was wearing her coat. Why would she wear a coat in the house?"

  It was a question I'd asked myself many times because she certainly wouldn't have been in any condition to put it on after she'd been attacked. "I can only guess that someone pushed in behind her when she came home from the pub and attacked her before she had time to remove it."

  He began to look worried. "The police would have found some evidence," he protested. "There'd have been blood on the walls."

  "Not if most of her injuries were internal. In any case, there was evidence. The police recorded it themselves. Broken furniture which suggested a fight ... absent floor coverings which suggested she did bleed and the rugs were removed ... human waste in the hall, which is a classic fear response from intruders. She stank of urine when I found her, Jock, which suggests they pissed on her as well."

  He turned away to fiddle with the pens on his desk. "That's disgusting."

  "Yes." I gave a tired shrug. "And if you and Sam hadn't lied about seeing her at a quarter to eight, then maybe the police would have interpreted the evidence properly instead of condemning her as a tramp."

  He licked his lips nervously. "Does Sam say we lied?"

  I nodded, carefully squaring the photographs in my lap. "He was feeling homesick one night in Hong Kong and started blaming me for the fact that we'd had to leave England. It all came out at about three o'clock in the morning ... how you'd phoned him and begged him to give you an alibi ... how I'd made his life impossible by telling the police it was murder ... how the choice between supporting me or his closest friend had been one of the hardest he'd ever had to make." I shrugged. "I've not had much sympathy for you since. You put me through hell and I've never forgiven you for it."

  "I'm sorry," he said awkwardly.

  I couldn't help admiring his loyalty. It was more than Sam deserved but it said much for their friendship, which had stayed healthy through their regular exchange of phone calls, faxes and e-mails. "It's only a matter of time before the police reopen the case," I told him, "and the first thing they're going to look at is where people were in the hours before Annie's death. She died shortly after 9:30," I reminded him. "So if you spent thirty to forty minutes in Sharon's house and left at half-seven, then you were there within the timespan that bruises like this"-I tapped the photographs-"need to develop."

  His eyes flicked toward my lap.

  "And that means you must have heard what was going on next door," I went on matter-of-factly, "or you joined Sharon shortly after she heard it. Either way you'd have noticed something. You don't get good sex off a woman who's just listened to her neighbor being clubbed into unconsciousness." I eyed him curiously. "But Sharon's bound to claim your story's bullshit anyway because, according to her inquest testimony, she was in the pub from 6 till 9:15."

  "This is crazy," he said, his eyes straying toward the telephone on his desk. "What does Sam say?"

  "Nothing much ... except that he's adamant he didn't know about Sharon and refuses to take the blame if you lied to him about why you needed an alibi."

  It was the accusation of lying to Sam that seemed to goad him toward honesty. Either that or his resentment at being made everybody's scapegoat finally boiled over. "Sam knew better than anyone that I didn't have the bottle to go near another card game," he said bitterly. "I may be a risk taker but I'm not a bloody fool. I was taken to the cleaners by some pros the first time and I wasn't going to give them a second chance." He squeezed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. "And there's no way Sharon was an issue. I could have paraded half the whores in London in front of Libby without her turning a hair. The marriage had been dead for months ... it was just a question of which one of us was going to pack our bags first."

  "Then why did you lie in your statement?"

  He saw in my eyes that I knew the answer. "Do you really want it spelled out? It was dead and buried before you even left England."

  "For Sam maybe," I said. "Not for me. That's why I'm here. I've waited a long time to find out who he was with that night ... and what they were doing..."

  E-mail from Libby Garth-ex-wife of Jock Williams,

  formerly of 21 Graham Road, Richmond-now resident

  in Leicestershire-dated 1999

  M. R.

  From: Libby Garth (liga@netcomuk.co)

  Sent: 05 May 1999 14:37

  To: M.R.

  Subject: Re coming home at last!

  M'dear, this is such marvellous news! I truly believed you were gone for good! I suppose Sam's coronary accounts for it-so every cloud does have a silver lining then? Anyway, I can't wait to see you again. Perhaps you can persuade Sam to visit Jock one weekend while you and the boys come up to visit us in Leicestershire? I can't imagine Sam will want to buddy up to Jim for fear of betraying his old friend-and Jim would be v. nervous to have a suspicious mate of Jock's about the place.

  Talking about suspicious mates (ha! ha!) are you planning to confront Jock after you get back? As you know, I've never managed to find out how he bought that house in Alveston Road, although I met a university friend of his at a party a while back who made an oblique reference to the effect that Jock's parents had helped him-viz.: "Jock's never been known to miss a trick. He told me once he'd screwed a small fortune out of the pair of them because each one thinks he doesn't talk to the other, and they can't check because they haven't exchanged a word since the brother died." Could that be where the money came from? It sounds like Jock's modus operandi, whatever he may say about being a "self-made man."

  Have I ever told you how impressed I am by all your efforts? Who'd have thought the little teacher from Graham Road would have turned into such a tigress! Poor old Sam must wonder what's hit him. You say he still won't talk about the night Annie died, but perhaps that's only to be expected. The longer you remain married the harder it must be for him to admit that he was prepared to put a friend before his wife.

  You're too wise not to put something that happened twenty-plus years ago into perspective. Let's face it, we all make mistakes, and in fairness to Sam you did go a li
ttle crazy afterward-classic post-traumatic stress reaction for which you should have had counseling-and neither he, Jock, nor anyone else had reason to doubt the police view that Annie died in a tragic accident. I know you'll say it doesn't pass the "so what" test, but I can't help feeling it would put your marriage under unnecessary strain to keep reminding Sam of his "failure" when all the police will require is a straightforward admission that they didn't see Annie that night.

  Re the Slaters, Percys and Spaldings. Do be careful how you approach them as there is no doubt in my mind that they'll be extremely hostile to answering questions. Hate groups are notoriously violent-they're too low on the pecking order to be anything else-and I really don't want to read in my newspaper that your body's been fished out of the Thames! The burning fiery cross is a frightening reality, my darling, not a figment of KKK imagination. They believe in terror because terror gives them status. (It probably gives them orgasms as well because they're all sadists, but they would never admit to that!) Anyway, I do wonder if you shouldn't leave the Slaters to the police, particularly as you've amassed so much evidence already of their petty thieving.

  Speak soon,

  All my love, L

  *17*

  It was an involved tale about a pretty little secretary in Sam's office who had ensnared him during the August of '78 while I was in Hampshire dog-sitting for my parents, who were on holiday. It was a brief madness, Jock assured me, a fatal attraction that went sour almost as soon as it started. Sam wanted to dump her the minute I came home, but the girl was having none of it. If she'd worked anywhere else it wouldn't have been a problem, but Sam was worried about how it would affect his career if she turned on him out of spite. It was the early days of sexual harassment cases, and this was a girl who knew what she was doing.

  Sam strung her along for a couple of months, then made an attempt to end it on the night I was due to stay late at school for a parents' evening. By malign chance, it was also the night Mad Annie died. "Sam was way out of his depth," said Jock. "He had this crazy idea that if he wined and dined his mistress first, then told her he planned to do the decent and honorable thing and stay with his wife, the girl would accept it. Instead she went ballistic ... screamed and yelled at him in the restaurant ... poured wine down his suit ... and, what with one thing and another, he was in a pretty dire state by the time he reached home.