The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  By the time he got back to Holford Road he felt better. He sat on one of the tall white stools in the kitchen, and looked at property online, and wondered why he’d got so worked up. Through the glass, the fairy lights were tested – on-off, on-off – like regimented fireflies. Liv had disappeared to her room to get ready, and he didn’t know where Griff was. There was a readiness about the house, the calm before the party. He was separated as completely from the confused feelings of his day as a space station from the Earth. He could prepare himself for Bea’s reaction. Where her family was involved she was uncharacteristically irrational. It was tempting not to tell her. If he turned Griff down, she need never know. He thought of all the husbands and boyfriends who routinely lied to their women. He had grown up around men to whom secrecy bordered on a belief system. They made every trip to the pub a victory against the matriarchy, and smoking weed or a lunchtime lap dance not just dicking about, but an assertion of the self. As a child, his friends’ fathers were mostly of the lie-to-the-wife, betting-shop variety, or, like his, not there. On film, men were either reluctant husbands and fathers, or violently avenging their conveniently murdered wives or children. Extreme violence was justified to save the wife. At college he’d caught on that Hollywood’s expedient morality was more a tool of political propaganda than intended role model. His mother dismissed his indignation. Dan, you think too much! His mother, the constant worrier, with her late-onset godliness, her stultifying belief. It’s just a movie, she’d say, followed by, Go outside! Kick a ball around! – like they were living in the 1970s. He didn’t condemn her. She was all right. She had pinned up his drawings on the fridge door when he was small. She had kept him safe. She was a good mother, on her day. But she was not a father. Negotiating maleness had been, as Bea would put it, complicated for Dan. Thou shalt not kill, unless provoked. Thou shalt not commit adultery, except, like Dan’s own father, fucking off back to whiter-than-white Surrey. There was no commandment about being in league with thy father-in-law, but Dan knew a sin when he saw it. He did not have a god, but he had Bea. He wasn’t going to lie to her. She would understand. She always understood.

  On her knees, Bea sorted through the stripy holdalls and bin bags, with the smell of strangers’ cupboards getting into her nose and hair, poking and rummaging and folding. There was on expensive coat with a cleaning ticket pinned to it that went straight onto the rail. There were a lot of baby clothes. Meticulous and gentle, Bea sorted them by size, from very tiny to small. But Veena said people were fussy about baby clothes, and would not buy them. She put them aside. Occasionally the bell on the door would ring.

  ‘Morning,’ she heard Veena say.

  She could not see but she heard, and pictured the people from their voices. Shoppers with children. The old and the unwell. The lonely. Bea, kneeling among limp mountains of clothes, listened. The weather. Their pets. The news. And her mind travelled to the unknown of their lives.

  When the floor of the back room at the Oxfam shop was clean and clear, and she had put everything in its proper place, it was closing time. She felt embarrassed to be thanked so effusively, when it had saved her sanity to do it. She said goodbye to Veena, then caught the bus, and then a train. She could have got the Tube, but she didn’t want to get out so close to her parents’ house. It felt like a sin, to ease without discomfort into so much plenty. She wanted to delay the night. It was after six when she came out of Hampstead Heath station. It had been warm but there was a cool edge to the day’s end. She walked onto the Heath, looking out from the heights over the far view of the city. The sun was a dark gold circle in the polluted haze. Dog walkers and commuters strode over the rough grass, the conceit of its scruffiness, as if every blade of grass didn’t reek of privilege. She stopped, and watched the view; the sunlight on the distant buildings, and, then she went back to Holford Road. Unable to face entering the house by its front door, she went in by the basement. Coming home to Dan and their flat, she never felt guilty, only lucky. It was just home. She wondered what precise financial distance between richest and poorest made the contrast wicked. She supposed it was a different scale for everybody. And for people like her father, limitless. The lights flicked on as she stepped underground. She could smell chlorine from the pool, and the petrol-and-oil smell from the cars. The huge red Porsche was in there, on the turntable, gleaming in the standby light, and her mother’s white Mercedes, and her father’s bigger one. She put the combination into the keypad for the inner gate. 010482. Alex’s birthday. It hadn’t changed. It wouldn’t. As she went up, the smell changed from basement to ground floor; room fragrance and glass cleaner. Her feet sank into the rugs laid over the tiles.

  Dan was at the island unit. She could tell he had been waiting for her. Something was on his mind. He wasn’t waiting with love, he was waiting anxiously, defended. He looked like a person about to try and sell her something. He got down from the stool.

  ‘So, listen,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  But her father’s voice broke the quiet, carrying from the floor above. ‘BEA! Are you home?’

  They heard his footsteps, quick and urgent, coming down the stairs.

  ‘Bea, I need to talk to you. Can you come to my study? Do you mind?’

  ‘No, sure,’ she said, and saw fear in Dan’s eyes.

  ‘Alone,’ said Griff, stopping Dan in his tracks. ‘When you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready now,’ said Bea, making it true.

  23

  Bea followed her father up the stairs and across the hall to his study. He had to haul the sliding door to open it.

  ‘That needs oiling,’ he said.

  The room inside was dim. She saw Philip Roche, immediately, sitting on one of the leather sofas, then Arun, over by the bar – but not her mother.

  ‘Hello, Bea,’ said Arun.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she said.

  Griff closed the door, and there was a hush in the panelled room.

  ‘Our access came through,’ he said. ‘Philip has the police file, from the judge.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bea, her stomach dropping like she had fallen, suddenly, from a height.

  ‘Your mother’s getting ready for this – party,’ said Griff. ‘I don’t want her to know. I only tell her when she asks. She doesn’t ask.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Bea.

  ‘Sit down.’

  She sat on the sofa opposite Roche, and Griff sat next to her.

  Roche took a buff file from the briefcase at his side. He put it on the coffee table. ‘I think it’s fairly comprehensive,’ he said, ‘but there are frustrating omissions.’

  Arun joined them. They were all around the table, with the pale file on the smoked glass. Bea looked at her father.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  He nodded. She felt her eyes drawn to the file. Trying to comprehend the enormity of her brother’s death, she didn’t want to know the details. She feared the smallness of horror, and of rage. Roche slipped the elastic from the corners of the file. Griff leaned forward, and took her hand. It was a surprise, but comforting.

  ‘We have to see it, Bea. We have to keep up.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘I do.’ He was still holding her hand. ‘All right. Let’s do this,’ he said.

  ‘The full autopsy isn’t here,’ said Roche, ‘or the pathologist’s report. That’s likely to take weeks.’

  ‘Weeks?’ asked Griff. ‘How can it take weeks?’

  ‘Because of very detailed lab work. But we have the pathologist’s preliminary findings, and some of the evidence Capitaine Vincent’s section de recherches have gathered, thus far. It’s very unusual to have access this early.’

  ‘Just get on with it,’ said Griff.

  ‘All right,’ said Roche, separating one paper from the sheaf in his hands. ‘So. The definitive cause of death is not stated.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Griff, gripping Bea’s hand.

  ‘I’m looking into it,�
� said Arun. ‘Let’s deal with what we have. Prepare yourselves, I’m afraid it’s quite violent.’

  A pulse beat in her ears and her mouth was dry. She looked at her father. He was focusing on getting from each second to the next, just like her.

  ‘There is evidence of significant blunt instrument trauma,’ said Roche.

  Tears came to Bea’s eyes but she didn’t feel anything yet, she was dislocated.

  ‘We thought it was prescription drugs,’ she heard herself say.

  ‘Yes, it mentions “acute toxicity”, but the primary cause of death is not recorded.’

  She repeated the words blunt instrument trauma.

  ‘Yes. To the head and neck. I’m so sorry.’

  Griff let go of her hand. He shielded his face. ‘We didn’t see any injuries, when we – saw him.’

  ‘It was the back of the head,’ said Roche. ‘Back of head, side of neck. Back and side.’

  He separated a piece of paper, a blurred inked diagram of a human body, marked, but Griff didn’t move. Bea reached forward and took it from him. The body diagram looked like a crude Vitruvian Man, the same pose, duplicated, front and back. There were shaded sections. The back of the skull, shaded. The right side, shaded. The back of the neck, blocked out. She watched her hand give the paper back to Roche, then reach for her water glass. She felt her mouth on the rim, then water. Her hand put the glass down. She saw that her father couldn’t speak. He needed her to do it.

  ‘That’s what killed him?’ she asked.

  ‘It doesn’t say, specifically.’ Roche took another piece of paper.

  ‘Do they know how long it took?’ she asked. ‘To die.’

  ‘The report is incomplete.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Does it say how much pain he would have been in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does it say how long it took?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was he drugged, and then beaten?’

  ‘There are no conclusions, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m looking into it.’

  ‘What killed him?’

  She thought she heard Griff make a noise. He might only have flinched.

  ‘I can’t say,’ said Roche.

  ‘What else?’ she said. ‘What about the CCTV images?’

  Roche laid out the papers; Arun took notes, in pen, on a yellow pad. Most of the documents were in the folder; technical French, full of acronyms. For so much paper it was precious little information, like a planning notification, spattered with killing. There were a number of people’s DNA in Alex’s car. He had been to several places. There was a report of his being seen in the town of Oyonnax. His credit card receipt from a bar, Chez Janine.

  ‘They asked us about that bar,’ said Bea.

  There were no conclusions, no shape, only disjointed moments in the progress of many lives.

  ‘There must be something else,’ she said.

  ‘There is an absence of some of the evidence that one might expect to see.’

  ‘Why?’

  Griff’s phone rang, on the sofa next to him. He picked up.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be there in a minute.’ He put the phone down. ‘My wife.’

  Roche handed Bea a piece of paper. ‘I took the liberty of synopsising the basic timeline Vincent’s team are working with, in my simple language. My own words. It may help.’

  Bea took the page, and read it.

  Saturday, 23:00 – AA left the Hotel Paligny.

  Saturday/Sunday, 23:56–00:08, AA bought petrol at the Avia service station, A39, Toulouse-le-Chateau. (Possibly in the company of an unknown man.)

  Sunday, AA unaccounted for, up until 20:30.

  Sunday, 20:30, AA drinks at a bar, Chez Janine, in Oyannax, in the company of (the same?) man.

  Sunday, 23:00, AA and companion leave Chez Janine.

  Monday, 06:10, AA’s body discovered.

  She handed it to Griff. Arun poured more water for her.

  ‘The French use CCTV a great deal less than we do in this country,’ said Roche.

  ‘Who was Alex with, in this bar?’ she said.

  ‘There’s nothing to indicate they know who it was. Or if it’s the same person he may have been with at the petrol station.’

  ‘They don’t know anything,’ said Griff.

  ‘I’m not convinced they’re sharing everything with us.’

  ‘Don’t they have to?’ said Bea.

  Roche shrugged. He shuffled through the papers again, and held out several, clipped together. ‘These pages detail the interviews with the family.’

  ‘We don’t need that,’ said Griff. ‘We were there.’

  ‘There are photographs, taken at the scene of the accident, and at the mortuary.’

  ‘I don’t want to see those,’ said Bea. ‘Dad?’

  ‘No,’ said Griff.

  ‘Do they want us to go back?’

  ‘Not for the moment. I’m sure they’ll let us know.’

  The conversation died. There was silence for several minutes. Griff asked Arun and Roche to leave them, and when they had both gone, he and Bea sat alone, with the file in front of them, on the coffee table.

  Griff got up and poured brandy into two glasses. The doorbell rang, muffled by the thickness of the doors, and the panelled room.

  ‘Knock it back,’ he said.

  She did. The curtains were drawn, and the lamplight pooled onto the dark walls, soft, like the smell of leather and cigars.

  ‘Your mother’s doing better, since you ask,’ he said.

  She didn’t say anything. He pushed the file away.

  ‘Arseholes,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘You’d think they’d know more.’

  ‘They’ve got nothing,’ said Griff. ‘Or if they have they’re not telling.’

  ‘I’d rather know nothing,’ said Bea. ‘I don’t understand why we need to see it all.’

  ‘To know what happened.’

  ‘It’s happened. It can’t un-happen.’

  ‘We’ll feel better when we know everything.’ He got up and poured himself another brandy, holding up the decanter to her.

  ‘No, thanks,’ she said. Then, ‘Yes, please.’

  He gave it to her, sat down again, checked his phone, and put his feet up on the coffee table. Bea tried not to go over the things that Roche had told them. She didn’t want them in her mind. She tried to imagine Alex alive, but she couldn’t. She finished her brandy, and traced her finger along the pyramids of the cuts in the glass, watching the light in lines along the edges, tasting the brandy that had been in her mouth. The doorbell rang again.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Do you know how many parties I’ve hidden from, in this room?’

  ‘You love parties.’

  ‘Mostly.’

  He got up and poured himself another drink, and some for her, too. Bea poured water from her water glass into her brandy.

  ‘Lightweight,’ said Griff. He sat put his glass down, and stared at his feet. ‘When were you born again?’

  ‘Nineteen-eighty-nine.’

  ‘Of course. Worst year of my life.’

  She didn’t take it personally, he’d lost a lot of money that year.

  ‘Regret is the worst thing,’ he said. ‘Worse than anything. I hope you won’t have regrets, when you’re my age.’

  They sat staring at the file on the table again. She seemed to see Griff looking down at Alex’s peaceful face when he was dead in the hospital in Bourg, not knowing his skull was crushed. She brought her mind back.

  ‘What are your regrets?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, Christ, let me see … I should probably regret not being around more for you kids, but to be honest, I don’t, particularly. There’s a modern belief fathers should be, you know, pestering their kids with footballs, fuck knows, doing all that stuff. Was I that bad? To you?’

  ‘You turned up, you went away again. You were
who you were.’

  ‘So why all this?’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘Darling, you do a very good impression of hating me.’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘I just hate what you do, and what you stand for.’

  He laughed, a sudden, huge laugh. She laughed, too.

  ‘Not as much as you did, apparently,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure he’d heard.

  ‘What’s the difference between guilt and shame?’ he asked.

  ‘I think guilt is about something you’ve done,’ she said. ‘Shame is for what you are.’

  He thought about it. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Guilt is negotiable.’ He reviewed his past, the years descending on his face.

  ‘I do feel a bit guilty, probably,’ he said. ‘I regret causing your mother pain.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve never really been mates, Liv and I. Don’t know how much she likes me, frankly.’

  ‘Do you like her?’ she asked.

  ‘What a question.’

  ‘I don’t know how you could.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘Do you know what she did?’ she said, as if it were a normal question. But then it was hard to speak. ‘I’ve always wondered and never asked. Did you know about her?’

  He jolted and flickered, like a machine with a momentary loss of power. She saw the enormity of his denial.

  ‘She’s suffering,’ he said. ‘She can’t get out of bed one minute. The next she’s talking to thirty friends on the phone.’

  ‘She doesn’t exist unless she has an audience.’

  ‘Don’t be a bitch.’

  ‘Don’t tell me how to talk about her. I can say what I want.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to hear it.’

  She looked away.

  ‘I should have been nicer to Alex,’ he said.