The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  ‘I’ll walk you in.’

  ‘Your generation of men are so good at feelings. So kind. So lovely.’

  ‘I was brought up by my mother. Had to be.’

  They started in, arm in arm.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Liv.

  Gripping his hand, for balance, she took off her dark glasses again, and looked up at the sky.

  ‘You can’t see stars in London,’ she said mournfully. ‘Even here. What’s that line, in the poem about the stars? Doubt the stars are made of fire? Doubt something-something, But never doubt I love. I don’t know.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dan, ‘can’t help you.’

  ‘I can’t remember it. Alex would. It was one of the first poems he learned. I loved him, Dan. And he loved me.’

  Someone passed, and squeezed her hand. ‘See you inside,’ said Liv.

  ‘I’m sure he knew, how much you loved him,’ said Dan.

  ‘He did,’ she said. She brought her gaze from the sky above, down, to his face. ‘People don’t understand purity. They want to destroy it.’

  She was looking at him fiercely. Her grief was monstrous.

  A very short man with a bow tie and a bald head stepped in front of her. He had a cigar and was in his seventies, his deeply tanned face was frozen-looking, smooth and plump, and fixed in a grin, with ice-white tombstone teeth and liver spots.

  ‘My darling girl!’ he shouted in an accent – Italian, possibly. The neck beneath his stiff face hung in folds and wrinkles, with a last little flap above his tight collar.

  He and Liv clasped one another’s hands, and Dan, gratefully, said goodnight.

  He saw Bea’s packed things the moment he came into the bedroom. She was sitting up in bed, and her backpack and bulging cloth shoulder bag were leaning against the wall.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said.

  ‘What job did my father offer you?’

  ‘Just a job. In PR. Not for him. Another company.’

  ‘PR? Dan. What did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He gestured her packed things, against the wall. ‘You didn’t think to, maybe, run this by me?’

  ‘I can’t stay in this house,’ she said. ‘I’ve booked the Eurostar. We can take the train to Beaune, and get a cab to Paligny. If the police say we can go, let’s just go.’

  He took off his T-shirt and went into the bathroom. She heard him showering. She didn’t move. He came back in, in one of the towelling robes from the bathroom.

  ‘Your mum,’ he said, ‘she’s grieving. And you won’t even give her the time of day. It’s shit. Do you not see that?’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’re wrong about her.’

  ‘I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘That’s it. I’m wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s terrible, what happened to Alex. It’s terrible. Obviously. And I’m sorry. But I tell you, it’s put you in a different light for me, girl. They’ve lost their son. We should be standing by them.’

  ‘Really? We?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your family loyalty is touching,’ she said. ‘And I can see you really need to stay on their good side, now you’ve named your price.’

  ‘Hey –’

  ‘But you haven’t got it in writing yet. All this money you think we need. So you should probably stay on my good side, too.’

  The house was silent the next morning when Dan and Bea came down with their bags. The caterers had cleared away a lot, but not everything, and Liv had told them to come at noon to do the rest. Stacked boxes and washed cutlery lay waiting. Blessica was polishing a vase in the kitchen.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Dan. Morning, Miss Beatrice,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning, Blessica,’ said Bea. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well. Coffee machine hot for you. Early bird!’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bea.

  ‘You go today, shame!’

  Dan wasn’t in the mood for her. ‘Let’s just go and talk to Griff,’ he said. ‘Sort this out.’

  Bea looked at him coldly. ‘Blessica, do you know where my father is?’

  ‘In the study. Very messy. I can’t clean in there.’ She laughed.

  Bea knocked on the door.

  ‘Come!’ said Griff.

  Dan pushed it open and let her through ahead of him. There were dirty glasses littering the coffee table, and the smell of the stale brandy, transporting her to the night before. The buff police file was where they had left it. Bea tried not to look. Griff was at his desk, with the curtains open behind him.

  ‘You’re up early,’ she said.

  ‘Been for my walk. Kick-starter.’

  ‘We’re going to go today,’ said Bea. ‘We’re just off.’

  ‘Back to Paligny?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll speak to the police when we get there, and see if there’s anything else we can do. Then if they say we can go, we’ll head off.’

  ‘Fine.’ He came round the desk, to hug her goodbye.

  ‘Before we go –’ said Dan. He looked at Bea, prompting her. ‘Bea?’

  Griff looked from one to the other. ‘What’s afoot?’ he asked.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ said Bea.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Griff, ‘shall you?’

  ‘I know Dan told you yesterday, we want to buy a house,’ she said. ‘And I wanted to let you know, whatever we find, I want to match what we spend with donations to charity.’

  Griff seemed unperturbed. ‘Bit extreme. Not as stupid as it sounds, probably,’ he said, ‘from a tax point of view. Arun can sort you out.’

  ‘We won’t be looking until we get back,’ said Bea.

  ‘Dan mentioned Dalston,’ said Griff.

  ‘Did he?’ Bea looked at Dan.

  ‘Where was that flat we offered you, when you got married?’ said Griff.

  ‘What flat?’ said Dan quickly. ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you tell him?’ Griff looked from Dan to Bea. ‘Wedding present. I sent you the details. Notting Hill, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said Bea. She had thrown the details away, unread. But she remembered the glossy brochure going into the bin, and how happy that had made her.

  ‘I never saw it,’ said Dan tightly.

  ‘Fine,’ said Griff. ‘Let’s not get into it.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ she said. ‘We should go.’

  ‘Bea?’ said Dan.

  Bea looked him in the eye. ‘You ask,’ she said. ‘If you want to.’

  ‘Ask me what?’ said Griff, amused.

  ‘Did you know our tenant fell through?’ said Dan.

  ‘What tenant?’

  ‘We had a tenant for our flat. It was our travelling money, and she never turned up.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ said Griff, ‘but go on.’

  ‘It’s left us a bit short,’ said Dan.

  Bea went red, and stood looking at her feet.

  ‘So, use your money,’ Griff said to her. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t have any of the bank details,’ she said quietly.

  ‘What? Christ, I don’t know,’ said Griff impatiently. ‘Talk to Arun.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dan hastily. ‘We’ll do that. Thanks.’

  Bea looked up. ‘OK, we should go. We need to get to St Pancras. Our train’s at eleven.’ She went to her father. ‘Goodbye, Dad.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘I love you.’

  Dan held out his hand. ‘Thanks a lot. Thanks very much. I’m sorry to bother you with all of this. Thanks.’

  Griff did not speak. He was thinking. She touched Dan’s arm.

  ‘Dan?’

  They both turned to go. They reached the door, and she tugged at it, but it stuck.

  ‘If it’s cash you need,’ said Griff, behind her, ‘it’s not a problem, there’s some at the hotel.’

  She stopped pulling at the door.

  ‘What?’ said Dan.

  ‘There’s money at Palign
y,’ said Griff. ‘You can take some of that.’

  ‘What money?’ said Dan.

  Bea stared at Griff, examining him.

  ‘What do you need?’ said Griff. ‘A few thousand?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dan, ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘I’ve just told you.’

  ‘What money is it?’ said Bea slowly.

  ‘It’s just a bit of cash,’ said Griff.

  ‘How much cash?’

  Griff gazed into space and blew out his cheeks.

  ‘A few hundred thousand?’ he said. ‘If you two wouldn’t mind dropping it off somewhere safe, you can skim off whatever you need. It’s in euros. Arun will give you James Florence’s number. Bea, you remember James Florence?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t, but she remembered his name in Alex’s notebook. She had thought it was a girlfriend. She felt overwhelmed by sadness. Florence hadn’t been a girl, just another contact of Griff’s.

  ‘You can meet James, and hand it over. Wherever you like.’

  She looked steadily at her father, and didn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, ‘Did you tell the police about this?’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘That there’s money in the hotel.’

  ‘Why would I tell the police?’

  ‘Why?’ She walked away and stood with her back to the room.

  Dan watched her. He looked from Griff to Bea, waiting. She turned to face her father.

  ‘Did Alex know?’ she said.

  ‘Just forget it,’ said Griff, suddenly uncomfortable, regretting having spoken. Dan had never seen him look like that.

  ‘Did he know?’ she repeated.

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘What money is it?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Bea, calm down.’

  ‘I am calm. Answer me.’

  ‘It’s just some money. We were clearing some cash out of a defunct company. Tiny company I set up ages ago. Alex used to pop over and get bits of it, when we visited.’

  ‘Pop over?’

  ‘To Switzerland.’

  ‘You sent Alex to Switzerland, to pick up cases of cash?’

  ‘It’s really not that big a deal.’

  ‘Did you do this whenever you came? Is that why you went to see him? Was that all it was?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘You made Alex go to Switzerland, and bring money back into France? Illegally?’

  ‘Christ,’ said Griff, ‘you make it sound like gun-running. I’m trying to do you a favour.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You say you need cash –’

  She went to the bar and poured a glass of water from a jug. Dan saw her hands were shaking. He thought of Griff’s boundless possessions. The houses. The villas. The cars. He saw the private jet in his mind, soaring into a blue sky.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘you keep euros, in cash, at Paligny? How do you bring it back?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  Bea’s back was still turned to them. She was drinking the water, not looking at either of them, but Dan didn’t need to try, to know what she was thinking.

  ‘That kind of money is peanuts to you,’ he said.

  Griff shrugged. ‘Only people like you think there’s small money and big money. How do you think the big money gets that way?’

  ‘But it’s illegal to move cash. Why would you do that?’ Dan said.

  ‘Fun,’ said Bea, still turned away from them both. ‘He does it for fun.’

  ‘Is that it?’ said Dan. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Alex got a kick out of it,’ said Griff.

  ‘A kick?’

  ‘We both did.’

  ‘Yeah, some guys take their sons to the football,’ said Dan. ‘They get lap dances. So that was the “errand”. Did you tell the police you knew where he’d gone?’

  ‘Of course I told them,’ said Griff. ‘What do you think I am? Obviously I told them. I said he’d gone to Switzerland, for a meeting.’

  ‘Not Mâcon? You told us Mâcon before.’

  ‘No, I straightened that out.’

  Slowly, Bea turned back towards the room.

  ‘So,’ said Dan, ‘Alex had an envelope – or what – a briefcase? Full of money, in the car?’

  Dan was aware of Bea’s anger.

  ‘And you didn’t tell the police,’ he said, ‘when they interviewed you? You just said he was in Switzerland? If he had it with him, whoever attacked him took it.’

  Bea’s hand was over her mouth.

  ‘Some French copper could’ve pinched it,’ said Griff quickly. ‘Or the ambulance crew. Or he may not even have collected it. Whatever.’

  ‘Whatever?’ said Bea, finding her voice at last.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘You were looking for it, in the car,’ said Bea. ‘That’s what you were doing.’

  He shrugged but he could not meet her eye.

  ‘You let us stay there,’ she said. ‘At Paligny.’

  ‘I tried to make you leave,’ said Griff.

  ‘Anything could have happened.’

  ‘But nothing did,’ he said.

  ‘It could’ve done!’ said Dan.

  ‘I asked you to get out of there.’ Griff was stony-faced, unrepentant. ‘I repeatedly invited you, didn’t I? To come and stay with us. I practically begged her.’ He gestured Bea furiously. ‘She refused me.’

  ‘We didn’t know we were in danger,’ said Bea.

  ‘Oh, grow up, you weren’t in danger. This is unbelievable. What’s wrong with you both?’ said Griff. ‘I’m doing you a huge favour. There is money at Paligny. I am asking you, as a courtesy to me –’

  ‘Where is it?’ said Bea. ‘Where in the hotel is it?’

  ‘If I knew, I would have got it myself.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have no idea?’ said Dan.

  ‘You know what Alex was like,’ said Griff. ‘He’d hide it around the place, and make a game of it. He put it under the floorboards once.’

  ‘Maybe he was scared,’ said Bea. ‘To be alone with it.’

  ‘He wasn’t scared. It was a game, that’s all.’

  ‘He was just trying to please you,’ said Bea. ‘All he ever did –’

  ‘All right! It was stupid.’

  ‘It was wrong.’

  ‘It was stupid of us. I grant you. I see that now, but it’s done. If I could undo it, I would. I would never have sent him off that night – is that what you want me to say? I’ve said it before. Obviously I regret it. Maybe he got drunk and blabbed about it, he was completely out of control. It was a mistake, all right? But if he’d told anyone there was more at the hotel, then someone would have robbed the place, and they didn’t. They haven’t, have they?’

  Bea looked at her father, for a long moment. Dan went and stood next to her.

  ‘This money is a completely separate issue,’ said Griff. ‘It has nothing to do with the police investigation. Nothing. If they do search the hotel, or if someone finds it when I sell the place, it will just muddy the waters. It’s not going to do Alex any good, is it? It’s not helpful for the authorities to get involved with me, and my tax situation, when they should be trying to find out what happened to your brother. Just take the money out of the building. Help me. Help yourself. Help Alex. Isn’t that what matters? Will you do it, please?’

  Dan took her hand.

  ‘No,’ said Bea. ‘We won’t.’

  26

  They both turned off their phones as they left the house. They got to St Pancras and caught the eleven o’clock Eurostar, almost without speaking. They took their seats and waited. The air in the carriage was stuffy and still, not circulating yet, and the train idled, and clicked. They didn’t talk. Eventually they set off, and the tracks below them swerved and slowly crossed, and the ropes of wire and blackish brick buildings sped, and blurred, outside. As they neared the coast, the train slowed, as if it was storing ener
gy for the tunnel, then it sank into the deep cutting. The wire fences on either side rose, then disappeared from sight. They dipped and rushed through darkness, with a hundred feet of rock above them, and a hundred more of water. She didn’t have her laptop, but she had a notebook. She found a pen.

  Liv,

  I’d call you nothing at all, but I want you to know this letter is for you, and that I know what you did to my brother. You are not a mother. You think you loved him, but you didn’t. Whatever sick fantasy you have, that what you did was natural, or special, it wasn’t. It was disgusting abuse. The regret of my life is that I didn’t stop you, and I didn’t help Alex. I was a coward. And Griff was too. If there was a God, you would be punished for what you did to him. I carry rage and hatred all the time. I lie to Dan because I feel. Why am I ashamed? I look at you and feel ashamed. I see I have seen worked with paedophiles. Murderers. Drink drivers who killed people. Abusers. I can’t think about you what you did to Alex who. I can’t put his name in the same None compare to you. None. I wish there was a Hell and I could see you in it. Paedophiles are nearly always the victims of abuse. Some of them think they are above the law, and morality does not apply to them. I’ve felt pity for them but I don’t feel it for you. I don’t care what happened might have happened in your childhood to you, when you were a child, or waste time wondering if it made you this way. I hope it was very bad. I believe you were born corrupt. You destroyed Alex. He was a child and you had no right to hurt him. If you had even a moment of conscience I would try my hardest to forgive you. I’m happy you hate me and I don’t have to bear the insult of your approval so-called love. There are no words to condemn you. But I saw you abuse your son. I want to not have it in my You Killed Him. I need to cut this pain from myself. Not for you but for Me. I’m Sometimes I’m glad he’s dead. At least he’s free from you.

  Beatrice

  She finished writing. It felt like poison filled her stomach and her blood. She tore out the page, and folded it, and put it in her pocket, and the train rose up out of the tunnel into France.

  PART FOUR

  27

  Inside Paligny at five o’clock that afternoon it was dark. They felt tired and strange from travelling, and being there again. The hotel was exactly the same, and the sameness made it feel more empty, and sinister. In the few days they had been away, the weeds had grown taller and the vines thicker on the windows. Capitaine Vincent’s card had the grenade symbol of the gendarmerie centred above his name and number. It was dusty from the seams in the bottom of her cotton bag and the corners were bent.