The Shape of Snakes (17 page)

My mother drew a disgusted breath, although whether her disgust was leveled at me for making the suggestion or at the suggestion itself, I couldn't tell. "What sort of people would do a thing like that?"

I reached into my pocket for a copy of the police report describing the entry into Annie's house the day after her death and passed it across to her. "The same people who tortured cats for Annie's benefit," I said. "The only difference is, they pushed the wretched creatures through her cat flap so she could see what was happening to them."

She glanced at the report but didn't read it. "Why? What was the point?"

"Any reason you like. Sometimes I think it was done to cause fear, other times I think it was done for pleasure." I turned my face to the wind. "In a perverted sort of way, I ought to feel flattered. I think the assumption was I was cleverer than Annie and could work out for myself that animals were dying in dreadful agony under my house. And the fact that I wasn't ... and didn't ... must have been a disappointment."

If my mother asked me why once, she asked it a hundred times on our journey home. Why hadn't Annie gone to the police? Why hadn't Annie phoned the RSPCA? Why would anyone feel confident about tormenting me in the same way they'd tormented Annie? Why weren't they afraid I'd go to the police? Why
hadn't
I gone to the police? Why would anyone want to reinforce my suspicions about Annie's death? Why risk getting Sam involved? Why risk getting the rat catcher involved? Why hadn't I questioned the RSPCA findings at the inquest? Why...? Why...? Why...?

Was she finally beginning to understand how betrayed I'd felt when she hadn't believed me at the time? Or was I being cynical in my absolute conviction that it was only her recognition of my father's tireless support of me that had shamed her into asking any questions at all?

In any case, I had few answers for her, other than to say no one believes a madwoman. "But why assume there was a logical thought process at work," I asked her finally, "when whoever tortured the cats was clearly unbalanced?" It was done for the pleasure of inflicting pain, not because it was possible to predict how Mad Annie or I would react to having mutilated animals left on our doorsteps.
 

Family correspondence-dated 1999

CURRAN HOUSE
Whitehay Road
Torquay
Devon

Monday

Darling,

Just a quick note to thank you and Sam for the weekend. It was good to see the boys again, although I do think you should persuade them to have their hair cut. Your father and I both liked the house, despite its dilapidation, and feel it would be sensible to make an offer for it. Sam is clearly at a loose end at the moment (country life doesn't really suit him, does it?) and a renovation project would keep him occupied. You can always sell it afterward if and when he manages to find a job.

With regard to what we talked about yesterday: I have since had a word with our local RSPCA inspector. He tells me stories like yours are not unusual and that cruelty to cats is more common than anyone realizes. He gave me some horrific examples-cats tied in sacks to be used as footballs; claws pulled out with pliers; and fur doused in gasoline and set alight. Apparently the favorite sport is to use them as target practice for air-guns and crossbows.

He's given me the name of a solicitor down here whose wife runs a rescue home for abused animals, and suggests we consult him with a view to a prosecution. I said I was sure you had some idea of who was responsible and, while he is not optimistic of a successful prosecution twenty years after the event, he believes it may be worth a try, particularly as the RSPCA inspector involved at the time is still alive and able to give evidence. Let me know what you'd like me to do.

All my love,
Ma

PS I know she's barking up the wrong tree but do give her credit for trying. She's very "down" at the moment because she feels we ganged up on her and can't understand why. I said she should have expected it-i.e., what goes around comes around-but she doesn't want to be reminded of how she ganged up on you all those years ago. It would be tactful, my dear, to avoid saying "I told you so," however strong the temptation. I would think less of you if you did!

Dad
X X X

*11*

Portland Peninsula was under assault from a blustery southwest wind the following Wednesday when Sam and I drove up from Chesil Beach in search of the sculpture park. Given the choice, I'd rather have gone on my own. There was too much that still needed explaining-my more-than-passing interest in Danny, for example-but I balked at telling Sam his presence would only exacerbate the problem when, like my mother, his way of making up for past indifference was a belated wish to be involved.

I had made a halfhearted attempt the previous day to talk about the three weeks at the end of January and beginning of February '79 that I spent alone on Graham Road, but my habit of silence was so ingrained that I gave it up after a few minutes. I found I couldn't talk about fear without becoming cruel, and I couldn't become cruel without turning on Sam because he had abandoned me when I needed him most. In the end, as so often in my life, I took the fatalistic view that whatever would be would be. Sam was a grown man. If he couldn't learn to live with the truth, irrespective of how it was revealed to him, then nothing I did or said would make a difference.

The Isle of Portland, a tilted slab of limestone four miles long and one mile wide, forms a natural breakwater between Lyme Bay to the west and the sweep of sheltered water between Weymouth and the Isle of Purbeck to the east. Its precipitous cliffs rise out of the sea to a high point of nearly five hundred feet, with only the hardiest of vegetation surviving the mercurial English weather. As Sam and I wound our way up its spine, I thought how bleak it was, and how unsurprising that successive governments had claimed it both as a fortress against foreign invasion and as a colony for prisoners.

In 1847 the Admiralty had employed convict labor awaiting transportation to Australia to construct a mighty harbor on Portland's eastern shores, which remained the preserve of the Ministry of Defense until the government abandoned it in the early 1990s. It seemed fitting somehow, in view of the convicted men who had toiled to create the anchorage, that the most prominent feature in Portland harbor that Wednesday was a gray prison ship that had been imported from America some four years previously to deal with the chronic overcrowding in Her Majesty's inland gaols.

"Is Michael Percy being held there?" Sam asked me.

"No. He's in the adult prison here on the island. It's called the Verne. It's off to our left somewhere." I pointed to a sprawling Victorian building ahead of us which dominated the skyline. "That's the young offenders' institution. It was built to house the convicts who worked on the harbor."

"Good God! How many prisons are there?"

"Three, including the ship." I laughed at his expression. "I don't think it means Dorset's a hive of criminal activity," I said, "just that desolate lumps of rock make good holding pens for society's rejects. Think of Alcatraz."

"So what did Michael do?"

I thought back to the press cuttings of his trial which had arrived toward the end of 1993. "Went into a village post office in leathers and a crash helmet, and pistol-whipped an elderly customer until the postmaster agreed to open his security door and hand over what was in his till."

Sam whistled. "A bit of a bastard then?"

"It depends on your viewpoint. Wendy Stanhope would say it was his mother's fault for letting him run out of control. Her name was Sharon Percy. She's the blonde you saw in the pub occasionally."

He made a wry face. "The prostitute? She used to haunt the flaming place looking for customers. She tried to hit on me and Jock once so I gave her a piece of my mind. Jock was furious with me afterward. He said Libby was giving him a hard time, and he'd have been up for it like a shot if I hadn't queered his pitch."

"Mm. Well, at a guess he was double-bluffing you in case you got suspicious about her approach. According to Libby, he was paying out thirty quid a week to Sharon for most of '78. They didn't bother to keep it much of a secret either, except from the people who mattered ... like you and me and his long-suffering wife." I watched him out of the corner of my eye. "Paul and Julia Charles worked out what was going on because Paul saw Jock coming out of Sharon's house one evening and put two and two together."

He threw me a startled glance. "You're joking!"

"No. She charged twenty for straight sex. thirty for a blow job, and Jock visited her every Tuesday for months." I was amused. "You can work out for yourself which service he was getting."

"Shit!" He sounded so shocked that I wondered if "Tuesday" had registered as the day Annie died, and if he was now trying to remember the details of the alibi he'd given Jock. "Who told you?"

"Libby."

"When?"

"A year or so after we left. It all came out in court when Jock decided to contest the divorce settlement. Libby hired a hotshot solicitor who demanded an explanation for the Ł30 withdrawals from the joint bank account every Tuesday, along with an explanation for the numerous other bank accounts he'd set up without Libby's knowledge. He wasn't very good at hiding his peccadillos and the judge took him to the cleaners for it." I pointed to a sign for Tout Quarry. "I think this is where we need to turn off."

He flicked his indicator. "Where did they do it?"

"In her house. Sharon used to smuggle her clients down the alleyway at the back as a way of protecting her reputation ... such as it was."

"What about her kid?"

"Michael? I'm not sure he was there very much. Wendy said he was always in trouble with the police so I imagine he was made to roam the streets."

"Jesus!" said Sam in disgust, as he drove onto a rough unmade track that led down to the sculpture park. "No wonder he went to the bad." He drew the car to a halt and switched off the engine. "How was he caught for the post-office job?"

"He confessed to his wife three months later and she promptly turned him in. She gave the police a black leather jacket which she said Michael was wearing on the day of the robbery. It still had blood spots round the cuffs which matched the customer's in the post office." I thought back. "Michael pleaded guilty but it didn't do him much good. The judge commended Bridget for the brave assistance she'd given the police, and said he was sending her husband down for eleven years as a result of her efforts."

"And this is the Bridget who lived on Graham Road?"

"Mm. She was at number 27 ... opposite Annie's house. Her father, Geoffrey Spalding, shacked up with Michael's mother when Bridget was thirteen, leaving her and her older sister, Rosie, to fend for themselves. I don't know what happened to Rosie, but Bridget and Michael married sometime in 1992, just after Michael finished a long sentence for aggravated burglary and ten counts of breaking and entering. He stayed out of trouble for about six months then robbed the post office. All in all, he and Bridget have spent less than a year living together as a married couple."

"And now they're divorced?"

"No. The last I heard she was working in Bournemouth and making a monthly trip to Portland to visit Michael. That's why he was moved down here ... because no one visits him except his wife. She said at the trial that she still loved him-said she can't rely on anyone the way she relies on Michael because they've known each other since they were children-and the only reason she turned him in was because she was afraid he was going to kill somebody. I thought how brave she was," I said dryly. "His mother's a coward by contrast-that's Sharon-won't go near him ... hasn't done for years because of the shame he's brought on her. She's been respectable ever since Bridget's dad moved in with her and she was able to give up the game."

"She sounds a right bitch," he said grimly.

"She's not much of a mother, that's for sure."

Sam leaned his arms on the steering wheel and stared thoughtfully out of the window. "Were all the kids as bad?" he asked. "What about the Charles children next door?"

"The oldest was only five," I said, "and Julia never let them out of her sight. It was really only Michael and the Slaters who ran wild ... in both cases because their mothers had given up on them. Sharon didn't care ... and Maureen was so brutalized by Derek that she spent most of her time getting stoned in her bedroom."

"Did you know all this in '78?"

"No. Most of it came from Libby after we moved. I knew Alan Slater was getting into fights because he had so many bruises, but I didn't realize it was his father who was hitting him. I talked it over with the head on one occasion, but he just said it would do Alan good to be thrashed by his own peer group because he was a bully himself. As for Michael"-I gave a small laugh-"I always thought how mature he was for his age. He wrote me a couple of love poems and left them on my desk, signed: The Prisoner of Zenda."

"How did you know they were from him?"

"I recognized his handwriting. He was an incredibly bright child. If he'd come from a different background, he'd have an M.A. from Oxford by now instead of a ten-page criminal record. The trouble was he was a persistent truant so he only ever attended one class in three." I sighed. "If I'd been a little more experienced-or less intimidated by the bloody headmaster-I could have helped him. As it was, I let him down." I paused. "Alan, too," I added as an afterthought.