The Shape of Snakes

by Minette Walters

  "They might believe Alan," I suggested.

  "He'll just deny it. He's got a family now ... doesn't want something he did as a kid coming back to haunt him this long afterward. And Danny doesn't even remember his dad, let alone who lived next to us twenty years ago. He asked me down the phone what Annie was like and why I've never mentioned her."

  "What did you say?"

  "That she was a fat bitch who made our lives hell, and he didn't ought to believe anything you said because you had about as many screws loose as she did."

  I smiled at her as I pulled a manila envelope from the bottom of my rucksack and put it on the table in front of her. "He'll probably believe this, though. I made this copy for you. When you've read it, give me a call. My number's on the front."

  "What is it?"

  "An affidavit from a jeweler in Chiswick who bought several items off a woman called Ann Butts. It took me and my father about two hundred letters to find him after Michael suggested you'd sold the ring you took off Bridget. We started with jewelers and pawnbrokers in Richmond and radiated out until we hit pay dirt in Chiswick. He's still in business and keeps a record of every item that passes through his hands ... together with the name of the seller and purchaser."

  She dropped the envelope on to the table as if it were a red-hot coal.

  "He's an honest trader and pays an honest price, so he requests proof of identity and ownership in order to be sure that the goods aren't stolen. He also records the type of proof that's offered. In the case of Ann Butts, it was a bank card and supporting statement, and a Sotheby's valuation of a list of items, including the jewelery, which were viewed on site at 30 Graham Road, Richmond. I presume you don't still have it?" I said with a lift of my eyebrows. "You wouldn't have been that stupid, would you?"

  She reached for another cigarette but I took the packet away from her and flattened it under my heel as I stood up.

  "The really interesting fact," I finished, leaning my hands on the table, "is that the first item wasn't sold until June '79, and my jeweler friend is positive that the Ann Butts he dealt with was a small white woman with a Brummy accent."

  She had a quick mind for a Prozac junkie and a drinker. "Just like half a million others then," she said.

  "My phone number's on the envelope," I reminded her. "Call me if you want to trade. If you don't, I'll give the affidavit to the police."

  "Trade what?"

  "Information. I want to know who murdered Annie, Maureen ... not who stole from her."

  Sharon Percy refused to open her door beyond the burglar chain. "I'm not going to talk to you," she said. "You thought I wouldn't recognize you, but I watched you go into Maureen's so it didn't take much guessing."

  A tortoise head loomed behind her in the hallway. "First you pester us with bloody letters," Geoffrey spat at me, "now you turn up in the flesh. Why don't you just bugger off and leave us alone?"

  "I would have done if you'd written back," I said.

  "What's to say?" he growled. "We don't know anything. Never did."

  "Then why did you lie in your statements to the police?"

  There was a look of panic on both their faces before the door was slammed against me. As I hadn't expected anything else, I set off on the two-mile walk to Jock Williams's house.

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

  formerly of 21 Graham Road, Richmond�now resident

  in Leicestershire�dated 1997

  Windrush

  Henchard Lane

  Melton Mowbray

  Leicestershire

  June 19, 1997

  M'dear,

  Written in haste before I start cooking supper for the hungry horde. Would you believe Jock's moved yet another bimbo into that mansion of his! He seems to replace them every few months, yet he's hardly sex on wheels, for God's sake! How on earth does he attract them? I know he makes money from time to time but it's not as if he holds on to it for very long.

  His new project, "Systel"�something to do with mobile phones�looks optimistic, but if it goes the way of the others he'll be looking for a huge injection of cash within a year or so. Word has it (the new bimbo) he has such a lousy reputation with venture capitalists he's now looking at loans secured against the house. He needs his head examined if he does because he'll end up without a roof over his head if he overreaches himself. Heh! Heh!

  God, I'm a bitch! And why am I still doing this? Perhaps I'm a voyeur manque! If so, I blame you for it. You should never have encouraged me to keep tabs on him, because it is so addictive chatting up his "crumpet." It must be a "comfort thing." I feel better knowing I wasn't the only one who couldn't make a relationship work with him.

  All love,

  Libby

  X X X

  PS: Jim keeps complaining about the amount of time I spend at teachers' conferences. Did I tell you I'm now a union rep? Next stop Parliament! And this from a man who expects me to entertain his major account-holders every weekend with cordon bleu cookery! Men, eh? Who needs 'em?

  *16*

  Jock kept me standing on the step for several minutes before he opened the door, and I took the time to catch my breath after my hike from Graham Road to the rather grander street between Queen's Road and Richmond Hill where he was now living. The area had been developed in the wake of rail travel when the middle classes first began to exploit the benefits of living at a distance from their workplaces in noisy city centers; and the houses, though still in terraces, were more substantial than their humbler counterparts in Mortlake, with a third story to accommodate servants. A hundred years ago, each house would have had a walled front garden with trees and shrubs for privacy, but since the advent of the two-car family the gardens had been opened and paved to provide off-street parking.

  To one side of Jock's frontage was an elderly black Mercedes with worn leather seats, and I was peering through the windscreen wondering if it was his when the door to the house snapped open and he appeared at my side. "You're half an hour early," he said irritably. "I thought we agreed two o'clock."

  I had expected age, divorce and thwarted ambition to have mellowed him a little, but attack, I saw, was still his favored form of defense. I was surprised by the sense of pleasurable recognition I felt, as of an old friend, and offered my cheek for a kiss. "Hello, Jock," I said. "How are you?"

  He gave me a quick peck. "Where's Sam?"

  "Didn't he phone you?"

  "No."

  "He got tied up at the last minute and couldn't make it," I lied with convincing regret, "so I'm on my own." There was a beat of time while I pretended not to see the swift look of relief that crossed Jock's face. "I didn't know you were into classic cars," I said mischievously, patting the Mercedes's hood. "You always hankered after the newest model in the old days. I remember how rude you were when Sam and I bought that secondhand Allegro estate."

  He made a dismissive gesture. "I keep the Merc as a runabout. The Jag's in a lockup garage down the road."

  "A Jag!" I exclaimed. "My God! Sam will be green with envy. He's been wanting an XK8 since they came out." I looked past him into the shadows of the hall where a coin-operated telephone hung off the wall. "Don't let me stop you if I've interrupted something," I said. "I'm in no hurry."

  He pulled the door to. "I've some e-mails to answer."

  "I can wait." I hitched a buttock onto the bonnet of the Mercedes and lifted my head to look at the house. It was an attractive building with sandstone bays containing the high, wide windows of which Victorian architects were so fond. According to Libby the house had cost him Ł70,000 in 1979 and, according to a local real estate agent, it was now worth upward of three-quarters of a million. "Nice place," I murmured when he made no move to return inside.

  He nodded. "I like it."

  "So what was wrong with it when you bought it? Sitting tenants? Subsidence? Dry rot?"

  He looked surprised. "Nothing."

  "You're joking! How on earth did you afford it? I thought yo
u got a pittance out of the divorce settlement."

  He recoiled slightly as if I'd just revealed teeth. "Who told you that?"

  "Libby."

  "I didn't know you were still in touch."

  "On and off."

  "Well, she's wrong," he said warily. "She thought she could clobber me by hiring an expensive solicitor but he never came close to finding the investments that mattered."

  It is odd, I thought, how the memory plays tricks. In my mind, I had likened him for so long to a weasel that his rather charming face surprised me. "It must have been a first then," I said with a small laugh. "You never managed to hide anything else from your wife."

  "What else has she told you?"

  "That you moved a blonde in here before the ink was dry on the divorce. 'Young enough to be his daughter,' she said, 'but old enough to recognize a sucker when she sees one.' "

  Another flash of relief. "That's her jealousy talking," he scoffed.

  I laughed again, amused by his cocky expression. "You always were a hopeless liar, Jock. It used to irritate me ... now it amuses me ... probably because I know so much more about your business affairs than Sam does."

  His expression soured. "Like what?"

  "Like you have an outstanding loan on this place of Ł500,000 which you took out to keep Systel afloat and now can't repay."

  There was a short silence while he considered his response. "Is this something else Libby told you?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, it's a lie," he said curtly. "She doesn't know a damn thing about my finances. Hell, she didn't even know what they were twenty years ago, so she certainly wouldn't know now. I haven't spoken to her since the divorce." He waited for me to say something and, when I didn't, he ratcheted up his aggression. "I could sue you both for slander if you repeat it to anyone else. You can't go 'round destroying people's reputations just because you hold a grudge against them."

  I was tempted to say such considerations hadn't stopped him twenty years ago from helping Sam to destroy my reputation. Instead I said mildly: "I'm always happy to be put straight, Jock. So which is the lie? That you don't have an outstanding loan, that you didn't plow it into Systel and lose it or that you can't repay it?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Perhaps you should have been a little more selective in your girlfriends," I suggested. "According to Libby, the blond bimbette was the first of many, and none of them knew how to keep her mouth shut."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Libby's been prying information out of them for years while you were out at work, and even she couldn't believe how indiscreet some of them were. All she had to say was that she was conducting research for a hosiery manufacturer, then offer them a dozen free packs of luxury tights in return for twenty minutes of their time answering lifestyle questions, and the floodgates would open."

  He frowned. "Why the hell would she do a thing like that?"

  It was a good question, but not one I was ready to answer. I needed him off balance if I was ever to get at the truth. "She wanted to know how much you ripped her off in the divorce settlement."

  "None of my exes could have told her that," he said confidently.

  "No," I agreed, "but she never asked anything so direct. She was far more subtle"�I smiled�"and very patient. She built on what she already knew about you." I thought of the regular lists Libby had sent me with updated information on Jock. "Do you or your partner own the house? Was the value of the house more or less than Ł50,000 at the time of purchase? Is the present value of the house more or less than Ł100,000 ... Ł200,000, et cetera? Is your partner self-employed? Does he earn more or less than Ł50,000 . . . Ł100,000, et cetera? Does he have a mortgage? Is it more or less than Ł50,000, et cetera, et cetera?" I laughed unkindly. "She never got a straightforward yes or no. One of your girlfriends even fished out your bank statements so that the figures would be accurate."

  "That's illegal."

  "Undoubtedly."

  "You're lying," he said with more certainty than his expression suggested he felt. "Why would she keep on with something like that? It doesn't make sense."

  I smiled ruefully as if I agreed with him.

  "What answers did she get?"

  "That your mortgage went from Ł20,000 to Ł500,000 in fifteen years, and you worked your way through seven girlfriends in the process. Two of your start-up businesses failed and the half million you made on the one you sold last year went straight into staving off bankruptcy. The only reason you're still here"�I nodded toward his front door�"is because the capital value of the house exceeds the loan and the bank's allowing you to make interest-only repayments while you look for a job with a six-figure salary. You're not having much success because you're almost fifty and your track record is far from impressive. You're fighting the bank's pressure to sell the house because you're afraid you'll only walk away with Ł200,000 once the bills have been paid, and that's barely enough to buy back your old place in Graham Road."

  He looked devastated, as if I'd just torn his life apart and tossed the pieces to the winds. I felt no remorse. In a small way he was beginning to understand what he had once done to me.

  "If it's any consolation," I went on amiably, "Sam's been just as economical with the truth. We didn't make a killing in Hong Kong, there's no eight-bedroom mansion on the horizon, and the farmhouse we're renting is falling down. In fact we're not much better off than you are, so it seems rather pointless to spend the next half-hour trying to impress each other with our nonexistent fortunes."

  He sighed�more in resignation than anger, I thought�and gestured toward the door. "You'd better come in, though I warn you I'm pretty much confined to my study these days. The rest of the house is let out to foreign students as the only way to cover the bills. Matter of fact, I was planning to take you to the pub so you wouldn't find out, but it's a hell of a sight easier this way." He led me across the hall toward a room at the back. "Have you told Sam any of this?" he asked, opening the door and ushering me in.

  "No. He still believes everything you tell him." I took stock of the room, which had barely enough space to maneuver. It was packed to the scuppers with sealed boxes, piles of books and pictures hung in tiers on every wall, and if anything of Annie's was in here, it was stubbornly invisible. "My God!" I said, unbuckling my rucksack and dropping it to the floor. "Where the hell did all this come from? You haven't taken to burglary, have you?"

  "Don't be an idiot," he said tetchily. "It's the stuff I'm keeping from the lodgers. If they don't steal it they'll break it. You know what they're like."

  "No," I assured him. "I haven't met them."

  "I meant foreigners in general."

  "Ah!" I gave a snort of laughter, enjoying the irony of Jock sharing his house with strangers. "Are we talking black foreigners, Jock?"

  "Arabs," he said crossly. "They're the only ones with any money these days."

  "Is that why you're sleeping in here?" I asked, looking at the bed in the corner. "To guard your possessions from dusky predators?"

  "Ha-bloody-ha!" He took the swivel seat in front of his desk, leaving the armchair for me. "Only when the other rooms are full. It's a bit hand-to-mouth but it's tiding me over."

  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."