The Shape of Snakes

by Minette Walters

  I exchanged a quick glance with Danny and saw only curiosity in his eyes. "I want to unsettle him a little," I said. "Make him wonder what three ex-residents of Graham Road are doing in his pub."

  Sam shook his head, clearly unimpressed. "Yes, but why? What are you expecting to achieve? There's no reason to think you'll be any more successful than Sheila, and I'm not keen to end up in the middle of a screaming match in public."

  Danny spoke before I could answer, after shoving his hands into his pockets to protect whatever was there. Cannabis? I wondered. "I've done my best to put distance between me and Mr. Drury these last ten years," he grumbled, "and I'd be well pleased if he thought I was dead."

  I gave a noncommittal shrug. "Okay, we'll go somewhere else. I always planned to confront him on my own anyway. He doesn't scare me ... or not as much as he'd like to think."

  I was lying of course.

  Sam took up the gauntlet as I hoped he would, albeit reluctantly since he obviously thought I was planning a scene, while Danny muttered that the issue had nothing to do with being scared and everything to do with common sense. He asked me if we intended to drive him back to the sculpture park afterward, and when I said we would, he brightened visibly and tucked something down between the cushions of the backseat before we left the car.

  When we reached the Sailor's Rest, Sam chose a table near the harbor wall and eyed the other customers warily to see if he recognized anyone. "Just try to keep your voice under control," he muttered irritably. "You get very strident when you talk about Annie."

  "Not anymore," I said, switching my attention to Danny and asking him to come inside with me. "Sam can guard the table," I told him, "while you and I sort out the drinks."

  "What you mean is, you want the ferret to see the rabbit," Danny muttered despondently as I led the way across the cobbles to the front door of the pub.

  I smiled, liking him a great deal. "Rabbits plural," I said. "We're both in the same boat. But there's strength in numbers ... any rabbit will tell you that."

  "So who's this Annie you get strident about?" he asked as we paused on the threshold to let our eyes adjust from brilliant sunshine to the Stygian gloom inside.

  "Annie Butts," I told him. "She was living next door to you in Graham Road while Sam and I were there. Your mother would probably remember her. She was a black lady who was killed by a truck shortly before we left. Her death was one of the reasons Mr. Drury and I came to blows."

  He shook his head. "Never heard of her."

  I believed him. He seemed to have no memories of his early childhood�perhaps because it was too painful and he had chosen to blank it, just as I had done with some of my more disturbing memories�and I was grateful for his ignorance. If nothing else, it meant my conscience could ride a little lighter. "There's no reason why you should," I said. "People die every day, but they're usually only remembered by their families."

  He looked toward the bar where Drury was standing. "So why did you and him come to blows over her?"

  It was a good question. "I don't know," I answered honestly. "It's something I've never understood. But I'll get an explanation one day ... assuming there is one."

  "Is that why we're here?" he asked in an unconscious echo of my mother three days before. In a way it was flattering. They both assumed I knew what I was doing.

  Correspondence from Michael Percy, son of Sharon�

  convicted of armed robbery and serving out his sentence

  at the Verne Prison, Portland�formerly of 28 Graham

  Road�dated 1999

  In replying to this letter, please write on the envelope:

  Number: V50934

  Name: Michael Percy

  Wing: B2

  B2 WING

  HMP THE VERNE

  PORTLAND

  DORSET

  DT5 1EQ

  To: Mrs. M. Ranelagh

  Jacaranda

  Hightor Road

  Cape Town

  South Africa

  February 1, 1999

  Dear Mrs. Ranelagh,

  First, don't worry about getting your dad to send me stamps. There's a lot of foreign guys at the Verne�drug smugglers and suchlike who get picked up at the airports as they come in�so the prison lets us swap inland stamps for airmail letters. That's okay, as I've no one to write to except Bridget.

  As you can imagine, life's pretty grim inside, but I've only myself to blame. Every prisoner's a volunteer, if you think about it. You say you read what I did in the newspapers and your dad used a mate of his in the prison service to locate me. Well, I'm glad about that. You were always my favorite teacher though you may not want to keep writing when I tell you everything they said about me was true. I'm ashamed of it now, but it's pretty two-faced to say sorry afterward, don't you reckon? The judge said I was dangerous because I had no conscience, but I'd say it's lack of wisdom that's the problem. I've never been able to recognize in advance the things I was going to regret�simple as that.

  You ask me what I remember about the black lady who lived next door to us on Graham Road. Quite a lot, as it happens. She used to drive my mother nuts with her bad-mouthing about "whores" and "cunts" and "trash" and suchlike. One time Mum emptied a bucket of water over her head from our upstairs window when she spotted her peering over our fence, and old Annie howled like a banshee because she thought it was piss. It's probably cruel to say it now�seeing as how she's dead�but it was pretty funny at the time.

  It'd be easier if you listed the things you want to know. I never liked her much, that's for sure. She damn near chopped Alan Slater's hand off when she caught him inside her house�went for him with a meat cleaver and only missed by inches. He was shaking like a leaf for days afterward. Okay, he shouldn't have been nicking off of her but it's a bit heavy to go for a kid with a hatchet when all he did was take a useless wooden statue from her sitting room.

  Still, like I say, you need to tell me what you want. It wasn't just my mum and Alan's mum she drove mad. She got most of the street riled up. I remember this woman she used to follow home every time she went shopping and shout "dirty tart" after her, and it didn't half make her mad. I watched her take a swipe at Mad Annie once with her shopping bag, then end up ass over tit in the gutter. That was pretty funny, too. The silly cow fancied herself something rotten.

  I guess what you really want to know is who killed old Annie, but that's not something I can tell you. I remember my mum being gobsmacked to hear she was dead so I guess the one thing I can say is that she and me didn't do it. In the end, I'd go with it being a truck, like the police said, and I'm sorry if that's disappointing.

  Your friend,

  Michael Percy

  In replying to this letter, please write on the envelope:

  Number: V50934

  Name: Michael Percy

  Wing: B2

  B2 WING

  HMP THE VERNE

  PORTLAND

  DORSET

  DT5 1EQ

  To: Mrs. M. Ranelagh

  Jacaranda

  Hightor Road

  Cape Town

  South Africa

  February 23, 1999

  Dear Mrs. Ranelagh,

  You're the one who should take credit for my handwriting. I remember you teaching us italics in class and telling us that if we wrote well we'd always get a job. It didn't work out like that for me, but only because I couldn't see the point of slaving for peanuts when a hit on a shop or a post office could give a better return for a few minutes' sweat. But I've always liked nice writing, so you scored on that at least. Also�sure!�I've still got the gift of the gab! You should take credit for that, too. It was you who said a good vocabulary means you'll always make a good impression.

  One day I'll tell you about me and Bridget�she's the reason I'm in here. Trust me to marry the only girl in the world who'd rather shop her husband and visit him in prison than wait till he murdered someone! You might remember her. She lived across the street from us in Graham Ro
ad and had blond hair down to her ass till she cut it off and posted it through your letterbox as a sacrifice. She's still as pretty as a picture and refuses to give me up even though I keep telling her she's young enough to find someone else and have kids. The good news is, I could be out next year if I keep behaving myself.

  Okay, to business. The answers to your questions are as follows:

  1. I don't know the name of the woman Annie called a "dirty tart" but I think her man was one of Mum's clients, though I never hung around long enough to get much of a look at him. They were all shits as far as I was concerned.

  2. Everyone stole from Annie. I'd say Alan and his sisters were the worst, but the rest of us did, too. It was the girls who kept egging us on. There were stacks of little trinkets in drawers and cupboards, which they really liked. She used to leave her back door open for her cats, and it was a doddle for one of us to keep her occupied at the front while the other nipped in through the back. It wasn't so easy after she had the cat flap put in and started bolting her door, but the catch on her toilet window was broken and little Danny Slater was skinny enough to slither through the gap. He was a bright little kid, no more than four years old, but he'd creep through to the kitchen and climb on a chair to pull back the bolts. Alan even taught him to shove 'em home again afterward, then use the bog seat to climb out the window. I've never been too sure if Annie noticed her stuff was going�we always rearranged things so it didn't look too obvious�but Alan said she got some bloke in to make a list of everything in her house so I guess she must have done. We gave the whole caper up after she went for Alan with the cleaver. It didn't seem sensible once she'd sussed us. If I remember right, that was a month or two before she died.

  3. Why did we do it? For kicks, I guess. To be honest, I'm not sure any of us ever asked ourselves that kind of question. All I know is it was a hell of an adrenaline buzz to creep around a crazy woman's house, especially one that had so much in it. We didn't do it for money because we reckoned most of what she had was nibbish�like the wooden statue�though I remember Alan's mum taking a ring off Bridget one time because she thought it looked valuable. She got rid of it to buy vodka, so I guess it might have been.

  4. All I remember about the night of the accident is coming home around midnight and Mum telling me I'd missed all the fun. The mad cow next door got run over by a truck, she said. I haven't a clue what I was doing. The same as usual, I expect. Playing the machines in the arcade.

  5. All I remember about the next day is Mum and me being staggered by the number of cats that came out because we didn't know Annie had that many.

  None of this sounds good when you read it back and I hope you aren't too shocked. The trouble is the truth is always worse when you tell it bald. It kind of ignores the fact that there are two sides to everything. I mean, we were dead scared of her because she was mad, and Alan's mum kept saying she practiced voodoo with chickens. I know that sounds pretty off the wall now, but at the time�hell, we thought we were heroes just going in there. Alan reckoned she could turn us into frogs or something just by looking at us!

  Hoping this helps,

  Your friend,

  Michael

  *13*

  I don't know if it's enough to say I wanted revenge on Drury because I hated him. One should have reasons for hatred, not just a visceral antipathy that causes a red mist before the eyes at the mere mention of a name. Dr. Elias had asked me several times why I bothered to invest so much emotion in a man I had known for only a matter of weeks, but I could never bring myself to answer for fear of sounding paranoid.

  He had changed very little in twenty years except that his hair was grayer and his eyes darker and more impenetrable. He was the same age as Sam, but he'd always been tougher, stronger and more attractive. He was a type that women invariably fell for and invariably wished they hadn't when the hard-man image�a thin disguise for misogyny�proved to be an immutable reality.

  He studied us with amusement as we approached. "Mrs. Ranelagh." He gave an ironic nod in Danny's direction. "You're scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, aren't you? What is he? Toy boy or minder?"

  I had to run my tongue around my mouth to stimulate some saliva. "Moral support," I replied.

  His smile broadened. "Why would you need it?"

  "Because you won't like these," I said, taking some photographs from my pocket and laying them on the bar.

  He reached out a hand to pick them up but Danny was there before him. "Is this the black lady you were talking about?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "She looks as if she's been hit with a baseball bat." he said, laying them back on the counter.

  "She does, doesn't she?" I put my finger on the lop picture and pushed it aside to fan out the five others underneath. None of them was pleasant. Each showed Annie in death, bruised and battered about the face, and with a discolored right arm where blood had seeped under the skin to form an extended hematoma from shoulder to wrist. "Mr. Drury decided all these injuries came from a single glancing blow from a truck, which resulted in death within thirty minutes ... but I can't find anyone who agrees with him. These pictures were taken during her autopsy in 1978. I've had them examined by two independent pathologists and they both say the bruising to the arm points to severe physical trauma some hours before she died."

  "What's that in English?"

  "Annie was murdered."

  The irritation from across the counter heightened abruptly, and I wondered why Drury thought I was there. A desire to renew an old friendship? Lust?

  "Jesus wept!" he growled. "Don't you ever give up? It's like listening to a skipping record. Haven't you anything better to do with your life than make a martyr out of a miserable black who couldn't hold her drink?" He lifted the top picture and turned it over to inspect the back for an official stamp. "Where the hell did you get these?"

  "PC Quentin sent them to me."

  "Andrew?"

  I nodded.

  "He's been dead seven years," he said dismissively. "Died in a car crash after chasing a joyrider at high speed for three miles."

  "I know. He sent them to me shortly after we left England. I wrote and asked him for copies because I knew he was unhappy with the inquest verdict."

  Drury gave a grunt of irritation. "What would he know? The guy was still wet behind the ears. He had a half-assed degree in sociology, and he reckoned it gave him an edge over a home office pathologist and a beat copper with ten years' graft on the streets."

  "He was right, though," I said. "This kind of bruising"�I touched one of the photographs�"takes time to develop. It also suggests more than one contact. If her arm was hit in several places, the individual hematomas would have spread out, darkening the skin from shoulder to wrist."

  "A photograph proves nothing. She was black. You can't say what's a bruise and what's not."

  "These are color photos," I pointed out mildly, "so unless you're blind you can certainly see the bruising."

  He shook his head angrily. "What difference does it make? The accepted version was given by the man who performed the postmortem and he said her injuries were caused by a glancing blow from a truck."

  "But not fifteen to thirty minutes before I found her. Two or three hours perhaps. And that means the people who say they saw her staggering about the road were probably looking at someone with severe head injuries."

  His eyes flickered unwillingly toward the pictures again, as if he were both repelled and fascinated by them. "Even if that's true, you can't blame them for assuming she was drunk."

  "I don't."

  "Then what the hell is this in aid of?"

  I licked the inside of my treacherous mouth again. "I'm going to have the case reopened," I said. "I want the way you handled it investigated. I want questions asked about why a rookie cop with a half-assed degree in sociology could see that something was wrong ... but you couldn't. I want to know why, when he tried to raise it with you, you had him thrown off the case."


  He tore the photographs in half and tossed the pieces across the bar to flutter at my feet. "Problem sorted. And if that's all you've got to show for the last twenty years then you've been wasting your time."

  Danny stooped to retrieve the bits. "You don't want to let him get to you," he said as he handed them back to me. "He's a bully. It's the only way he knows how to control people. He's busting a gut to change the subject rather than explain why he did fuck all about this poor black lady having her face smashed in."

  Drury stared him down. "What would you know about it, shithead? You were still in nappies." He jerked his chin at me. "And you're backing the wrong horse if you back her. It was your dad she wanted locked up ... your dad she accused of murder. No one else."

  There was a long silence.

  Danny cast me an uncertain glance. "Is that true?"

  "No," I said honestly. "Mr. Drury asked me if I knew of anyone who had a grudge against Annie, so I named your father, mother and Sharon Percy. I never at any point suggested they'd murdered her. That was Mr. Drury's interpretation."

  Drury laughed. "You were always good at twisting the facts."

  "Really? I thought that was your speciality."

  He held my gaze for a moment, searching for chinks in my armor, then crossed his arms and turned to Danny. "Ask yourself why she brought you here and why she wanted you to see those photographs. She's planning to use you to get at your family, preferably by turning you against them first. It's what she's good at�manipulating people."

  Danny hunched his shoulders unhappily as if all his worst fears had been confirmed, and my son's voice echoed uncomfortably in my ear. I'd be sodding mad if it happened to me...

  "Your father had an alibi from five o'clock until midnight," I told him, "and it was Mr. Drury who established it. He knows as well as I that Derek couldn't have killed Annie."

  "Then why am I here?"

  "Because Mr. Drury lied about me to your family. He told your parents I was saying things that I wasn't ... and I need you to pass on to your mother and brother that all I ever accused them of was racism. And that was true, Danny. They were racists�probably still are�and they weren't ashamed of it."