The Devil's Claw

by Lara Dearman

  ‘Is that what you were arguing about?’

  ‘That and the five or six other stories he’s blocked because they don’t seem to fit in with his world view. Which is reactionary, by the way.’

  She nodded, checked her phone for messages.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? I know you wanted this story. Thought you’d be trying to wrestle it off me, what with the Amanda Guille thing fizzling out.’

  ‘It hasn’t fizzled out. I’m still working on it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She contemplated sharing what she’d discovered with him. Telling him about her meeting with DCI Gilbert. He might be useful. He was a good reporter for a start. And she liked him. He was looking at her expectantly, one eyebrow raised. She should trust him. She should let him in.

  ‘Just tying up some loose ends. Look, there’s Tosser-tevin.’ She pointed to the deputy who was talking to another elderly man, this one waving a leaflet in his face.

  Deputy Tostevin was slick. Not in manners, although he did have a way about him, an easy charm, which could be described as smooth, but in appearance. His tanned skin, wrinkled and leathery, glistened, and his thick white hair, long enough to tickle his collar at the back and combed forward over a high forehead, was sticky, unmoving in the sharp blusters which blew through the square. He smelled faintly of almonds and Jenny wondered if he used some kind of nut-based oil on his face or his hair or both. When he smiled, as he did now, his wide, pale mouth stretched from ear to ear.

  Not a disappointing turnout at all, he replied to Elliot’s question about attendance. In fact, he said, this was very encouraging considering it was the first one and had been organised at relatively short notice. A December rally was being planned already, he said; they should be sure to be there then, when people would no doubt come out in their hundreds.

  ‘More rallies?’ Elliot asked. ‘What are you hoping to achieve with them? Surely the best way to get what you want is through debate in the States?’

  ‘It’s an issue people feel strongly about. Protecting our jobs, our housing, our unique cultural identity. If the States appreciate how strongly islanders feel about it, we’re more likely to achieve our aims.’

  Elliot continued to question the deputy about his policies, his views on the housing and job markets. All threatened by lax laws and misguided do-gooders, apparently. Jenny scribbled some notes. Elliot wrapped up the interview. Deputy Tostevin turned to Jenny.

  ‘Terrible business, finding that poor girl on the beach.’

  She nodded.

  ‘We should count ourselves lucky, you know. Things like that happen so rarely here. And I truly believe it’s because of our community.’

  ‘In what sense?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘In the sense that, until very recently, everyone knew each other. I don’t mean literally. Obviously, one can’t be on first-name terms with sixty thousand people.’ He laughed. ‘What I mean is, everyone was familiar with each other. And that’s what kept us safe for so long. Our connection to one another, through friends and family and – I know you young people struggle with this – but through our shared culture, too. Shared values. When we lose sight of those things, Jenny, cracks start to appear on the surface. Job losses, depression, petty crime and then…’ He raised his hands, shrugged his shoulders, ‘well, who knows? I don’t want to find out. That’s why I’m doing this. I want to protect what we have. Because it’s so precious. Don’t you agree?’ He didn’t wait for a response, just smiled and nodded, went to talk to some of the straggling protesters.

  ‘What do you think?’ Elliot asked.

  ‘I think he’s terrifying.’

  ‘You want to write this up? Or too busy tying up your loose ends?’

  She handed him the notes. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘No problem. But if you want me to keep covering for you with Brian, you might have to let me in on whatever it is I’m covering you for.’ He looked at her with the faintest hint of a smile, but she sensed he was serious.

  ‘Give me until the end of next week. If there’s anything to tell you by then, I will. OK?’

  ‘OK. It’s a deal.’ He held out his hand. She took it. His grip was firm, the palm of his hand warm and dry and she wondered, just for a second, what it would feel like on her cheek.

  20

  Jenny

  Monday, 17 November

  She heard the church of Saint-André-de-la-Pommeraye before she saw it – a bleak, slow clanging of the bells, a funeral toll. A fitting day for one – a grey Monday, mid-morning already, and the sun yet to appear, obscured by swathes of pale yellow cloud, which wrapped the sky like bandages. She rounded the corner and drove down into the lush valley at the heart of St Andrews parish. The road was narrow and steep, lined with tall beech trees, stripped almost naked of their leaves by the previous weeks’ high winds. It was green here though, the hedgerows and the gardens watered by tributaries, which flowed down grassy slopes from the Talbot Valley to the west of the parish.

  In the car park, two older ladies, both dressed in smart, buttoned-up coats, stood chatting quietly, one murmuring that it was a lovely service, the other nodding in agreement, adding that it was a shame you miss your own really. They smiled at Jenny as she walked past them on to the gravel path which led to the front of the church.

  The doors were open, and the vicar, a large, soft-featured man, was gathering up stray service sheets from the back row.

  He looked up at the sound of her footsteps and smiled gently. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed the service.’ He had a deep, commanding voice, which no doubt did an excellent job of underpinning a poorly sung hymn. She explained she was here to see David De Putron.

  ‘Ah, here for the choir, are you? Wonderful, wonderful, we’re a little melodically challenged at the moment, we could do with some young blood!’ He led her to the back of the church.

  ‘David!’ he boomed. ‘Young lady here to see you.’ He excused himself with another smile and left her standing in the empty church. She sat on a pew and picked up one of the service sheets. A black-and-white picture of a young man in Royal Navy uniform, she guessed during the Second World War.

  In Loving Memory of Len Le Poidevin – he loved his family and the sea.

  So simple. She’d agonized for hours over what to put on Charlie’s service sheet and had eventually gone with a quote from Ebenezer Le Page which hardly anyone had recognised. She felt a sudden wave of annoyance and regret and placed the sheet back where she found it.

  ‘Jennifer?’ A soft, mellifluous voice, belonging to a distinguished-looking man. Jenny thought she could just about see the resemblance between him and his great-great-grandfather, whose portrait she had stared at countless times while sitting, bored rigid, during school assemblies at the Ladies’ College. De Putron was the name of one of the school’s four houses, the teams girls were assigned to in their first year. The other three houses were named after equally prestigious Guernsey families. Jenny couldn’t remember how the De Putrons had risen to island fame and fortune. Something to do with the military she thought. And then, of course, a couple of hundred years of good breeding and fine schooling on the mainland and then back to the island to lead and govern and lend their names to various roads and a park and a particularly nice manor house.

  David De Putron certainly looked the part. He was elegantly dressed in a white shirt, silver waistcoat, and navy woollen trousers. Undoubtedly handsome in his youth, he had a long, straight nose and a strong jaw, softened now by gentle folds of age-loosened skin. He was holding a bundle of sheet music, bright blue veins forming a twisted relief on the back of his pale hands. He led her through the vestry to a small room with a piano and began to put the music away in a folder.

  ‘I know them all off by heart, of course, but you never know when somebody else will need them. I believe you wanted to talk about Amanda?’ He frowned. ‘Terrible business, but I’m not sure I should be talking to you. Do the family know you’re writing about her?’ Ther
e was something of the theatre about him, she thought, his eyebrows raised questioningly, his expression exaggerated, words enunciated as if he was projecting to the gods, not wanting any of the cheap tickets to miss out on the performance.

  She skirted around the issue. She just wanted to find out what kind of person Amanda was; she was really writing about mental health, depression, the effects of drugs and alcohol, the dangers of the sea. Did Amanda strike him as the type who might have risked her life in this way, taken her own even?

  David De Putron looked perplexed. ‘Well that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? She was a lovely girl, really quite beautiful, and she had a very nice voice. Such a shame … Her poor parents.’

  ‘Do you have a lot of younger choir members?’

  ‘A few. Mostly our members are older, very few men unfortunately, but we have three young ladies. Well, two now, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘So was Amanda a regular churchgoer, before she joined the choir?’

  ‘Well, no, she wasn’t, actually. I have to confess, I rather browbeat her into joining. I was teaching her piano, through a youth programme I volunteer at, and she mentioned she wanted to sing. I offered to give her lessons if she joined the choir.’

  ‘So you knew her well, then?’

  ‘Only as well as a teacher knows a pupil. She was serious about her singing, came to choir regularly, always practised before her lessons. She had a pretty voice, talked about songwriting.’ He sighed. ‘It seems everyone wants to be a pop star these days. So little enthusiasm for classical music.’ He spread his hands, a gesture of helplessness. ‘I really don’t know what else to tell you.’

  ‘Amanda’s friend mentioned she’d stopped taking singing lessons in the weeks before she died. Did anything happen that might have upset her do you think?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, looking pensive for a moment instead.

  ‘I rather got the impression she had some problems. Not that I had any issues with her, I’m not saying that, not at all, but she seemed like a bit of a lost soul to me. Confused about life. Just my impression, you understand. Nothing concrete to go on as such.’ He paused. ‘When might the article be published?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I have some more research to do. The police can’t say for sure if it was a suicide or an accident so I’m looking into both angles, similar incidents, other deaths by drowning.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  She gathered her things and stepped towards him. He was a tall man and she had to look up to meet his eye. His face was pale and, close up, deeply lined. He was old enough, she thought, to remember.

  ‘I’ve looked back to the sixties, actually. 1966. A girl drowned at the bathing pools. You would have been very young then, I’m sure.’ She smiled.

  Did he flinch? She thought he did. The tiniest jerk of his head, a flicker of the eye. He recovered, quickly, looked thoughtful, wrinkled his brow. He did remember it, he said. Vague details. It was just before he left the island to study.

  ‘Music?’

  ‘Law. Family tradition. But I must be a bit of a black sheep. I didn’t really take to it. Music’s always been my thing. Music and teaching. Well … If that’s all, Jennifer, I should be getting on.’ He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, the sort that men of a certain age reserve for women and placed his other hand on the small of her back, guiding her towards the exit. He gave her a small shove over the threshold and closed the door before she could say goodbye.

  The bell tower cast a long shadow on the gravel pathway. She followed it around the perimeter of the church and emerged into the graveyard. There was a neat, mounded rectangle of freshly dug earth at the end of the newest row of gravestones, furthest from the church. She walked over to it.

  The earth would need to settle before a stone was erected, so for now a small wooden cross marked Len Le Poidevin’s final place of rest.

  He loved his family and the sea.

  And now he was so far from both.

  She turned to walk to the car, startled by a figure standing at the corner of the church, near the top of the path she had just walked down. It was David De Putron. He had put on a long black coat against the late afternoon chill. She could not tell if he was looking at her or over the gravestones, towards the setting sun. She raised her hand in a half-hearted wave. He did not respond. Her phone rang and she fumbled in her bag for it.

  ‘Hi, Brian.’

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ He spoke slowly, quietly, but there was fury in his words.

  ‘I’m in St Andrews. I’m on the way back to the office now.’

  ‘I know where you are. I asked what you were doing.’

  ‘Following a couple of leads, Brian. Finishing up on the Amanda story.’

  ‘There is no Amanda story. We’ve discussed this. Now stop fucking around and get some real work done. I’m losing my patience with you.’ He hung up.

  Jenny dropped the phone back into her bag. What the hell was his problem? And how did he know where she was? She looked back up at the church. But David De Putron was gone.

  21

  May 1974

  Liberation day. Red, white and blue bunting criss-crossed the seafront, triangular flags fluttering in a brisk breeze. There was a chance of showers according to the forecast but nobody had let that put them off. On the pier, beneath a white tent, men in navy sweaters were playing Crown and Anchor. They hunched over the green canvas board, placing bets and throwing the dice over and over again, shouts of triumph and groans of defeat carrying over to where he stood.

  A cry of ‘Worro, Len!’ as a man in a British Navy uniform clapped his hand over the shoulder of an identically dressed brother-in-arms. Every year they dusted off their uniforms and strutted around like ageing peacocks, preening each other’s fading feathers, showing the masses they had answered the call of duty all those years ago. A few measly years in the armed forces and then back to their farming and their fishing and their fucking, carnival clowns in meaningless, moth-eaten costumes. He smiled at them. Gave a respectful nod. Thank you for your service.

  The parade was about to start, crowds moving to one side or the other along the seafront, behind the barricades. Families in their Sunday best stood eagerly awaiting the beginning of the celebrations. Some of the children ate candyfloss, the spun sugar crystallising into sticky pink threads as it made contact with their warm lips and cheeks. Some of them waved flags, smiling gaily with their Union Jack or St George’s Cross on a stick, arms linked, chattering and laughing.

  Look at them all. It should be uplifting, he knew that. A people bound by such a singular history, coming together to celebrate and to remember. But all he could see were little people with little lives. Giving gratitude. Giving thanks. To a dead man and his long-defunct government, who twenty-nine years ago deemed it fit to free the islands they’d so casually allowed to be occupied. Nobody seemed to remember that bit, the fact that Churchill had left them undefended in the first place. That he hadn’t felt them worth fighting for. That he’d sat there, drinking his whisky, smoking his cigars and allowed the Germans to take them, their ‘Dear Channel Islands’. So dear that they were the only part of British soil to feel the weight of the jackboot, year after year, to have their land plundered, their women defiled. The Occupation wasn’t the Nazis’ fault. Britain deserved to have her islands taken. They were jewels in the British crown, waiting to be stolen.

  The brass band started marching. ‘Sarnia Cherie’. Always. He hummed along, smiled with the crowd. Soon there were thousands of voices.

  ‘Sarnia Cherie, gem of the sea,

  Land of my childhood, my heart longs for thee,

  My voice calls thee ever, forget thee I’ll never,

  Island of beauty, Sarnia Cherie!’

  He joined in with the cheering and waving as the anthem reached its climax.

  The parade continued in earnest. He stood on the steps alongside Boots the Chemist, where he had a good view over the rest of the crowd. The Boy Scouts marc
hed next, followed by various ex-servicemen, and then women dressed in 1940s fashions, hair rolled back from their foreheads, lips painted red, singing, ‘Bless ’em all, bless ’em all, the long and the short and the tall…’

  It was just then that he saw her.

  Mary.

  A flash of bright purple. She always wore bright colours. Her hair was long, straight, white blonde. It hung like curtains so you could never see all of her face at once, just enough to know that she was beautiful and he wanted nothing more than to see her clean, truly clean and pure, stripped of her clothing and scrubbed of her make-up and glistening in the sunlight. Just thinking about it he felt that kernel of elation, that feeling of intense joy inside he had felt so precious few times before. She was laughing now. Not at him, but it seemed that way, and the feeling faded. She was talking to her boyfriend. He wore his hair in the same fashion as hers but had added a long moustache and beard. He was part of the alternative crowd, beatniks and hippies who talked about changing the system but lounged around smoking marijuana and listening to loud music. They fucked, he supposed. Everyone did. He couldn’t understand how she, so pure, so delicate, could let any man possess her, let alone a lanky, greasy boy.

  He closed his eyes and saw Mother. He’d not been more than nine or ten when he’d first looked through the keyhole. He’d thought she was being beaten at first, that the man, naked and on top of her, was hurting her. He’d stood there, a helpless boy, wondering what he should do. But then he had caught that look on her face. Seen her hands wrapped tightly around that thick, hairy neck, pulling the man closer and closer to her, lifting her body, pressing against his, making those noises, those ugly, animal noises which had woken him from sleep. He felt physically ill at the thought of it.

  When he opened his eyes again, Mary was gone.

  * * *

  Evening approached. The family crowd dispersed, replaced by a younger, rowdier demographic. Pub-crawlers. Revellers. They would drink until they were sick, some of them. It was said alcohol affected different people in different ways. Happy drunks. Nasty drunks. Violent drunks. He didn’t believe that. Nastiness and violence were always there, lurking beneath the surface. Alcohol set the truth free. He never touched it.