The Shape of Snakes (27 page)

From: Libby Garth ([email protected])
Sent: 05 May 1999 14:37
To: M.R.
Subject: Re coming home at last!

M'dear, this is such marvellous news! I truly believed you were gone for good! I suppose Sam's coronary accounts for it-so every cloud does have a silver lining then? Anyway, I can't wait to see you again. Perhaps you can persuade Sam to visit Jock one weekend while you and the boys come up to visit us in Leicestershire? I can't imagine Sam will want to buddy up to Jim for fear of betraying his old friend-and Jim would be v. nervous to have a suspicious mate of Jock's about the place.

Talking about suspicious mates (ha! ha!) are you planning to confront Jock after you get back? As you know, I've never managed to find out how he bought that house in Alveston Road, although I met a university friend of his at a party a while back who made an oblique reference to the effect that Jock's parents had helped him-viz.: "Jock's never been known to miss a trick. He told me once he'd screwed a small fortune out of the pair of them because each one thinks he doesn't talk to the other, and they can't check because they haven't exchanged a word since the brother died." Could that be where the money came from? It sounds like Jock's modus operandi, whatever he may say about being a "self-made man."

Have I ever told you how impressed I am by all your efforts? Who'd have thought the little teacher from Graham Road would have turned into such a tigress! Poor old Sam must wonder what's hit him. You say he still won't talk about the night Annie died, but perhaps that's only to be expected. The longer you remain married the harder it must be for him to admit that he was prepared to put a friend before his wife.

You're too wise not to put something that happened twenty-plus years ago into perspective. Let's face it, we all make mistakes, and in fairness to Sam you did go a little crazy afterward-classic post-traumatic stress reaction for which you should have had counseling-and neither he, Jock, nor anyone else had reason to doubt the police view that Annie died in a tragic accident. I know you'll say it doesn't pass the "so what" test, but I can't help feeling it would put your marriage under unnecessary strain to keep reminding Sam of his "failure" when all the police will require is a straightforward admission that they didn't see Annie that night.

Re the Slaters, Percys and Spaldings. Do be careful how you approach them as there is no doubt in my mind that they'll be extremely hostile to answering questions. Hate groups are notoriously violent-they're too low on the pecking order to be anything else-and I really don't want to read in my newspaper that your body's been fished out of the Thames! The burning fiery cross is a frightening reality, my darling, not a figment of KKK imagination. They believe in terror because terror gives them status. (It probably gives them orgasms as well because they're all sadists, but they would never admit to that!) Anyway, I do wonder if you shouldn't leave the Slaters to the police, particularly as you've amassed so much evidence already of their petty thieving.

Speak soon,
All my love, L

*17*

It was an involved tale about a pretty little secretary in Sam's office who had ensnared him during the August of '78 while I was in Hampshire dog-sitting for my parents, who were on holiday. It was a brief madness, Jock assured me, a fatal attraction that went sour almost as soon as it started. Sam wanted to dump her the minute I came home, but the girl was having none of it. If she'd worked anywhere else it wouldn't have been a problem, but Sam was worried about how it would affect his career if she turned on him out of spite. It was the early days of sexual harassment cases, and this was a girl who knew what she was doing.

Sam strung her along for a couple of months, then made an attempt to end it on the night I was due to stay late at school for a parents' evening. By malign chance, it was also the night Mad Annie died. "Sam was way out of his depth," said Jock. "He had this crazy idea that if he wined and dined his mistress first, then told her he planned to do the decent and honorable thing and stay with his wife, the girl would accept it. Instead she went ballistic ... screamed and yelled at him in the restaurant ... poured wine down his suit ... and, what with one thing and another, he was in a pretty dire state by the time he reached home.

"He passed Annie in the gutter," said Jock. "She was under the lamppost so he could hardly miss her, but she reeked of drink so he left her. He knew you'd be back any minute and his first priority was to get out of the suit, clean himself up and pretend he'd been in all evening." A glint of humor flashed in his eyes. "Then you come running in fifteen minutes later to ring for an ambulance and the silly sod promptly shoots himself in the foot."

I frowned. "He was watching television. I never even questioned where he'd been."

"You told him Annie Butts was dying in the road outside and he said, 'No, she's not, she's paralytic.'"

"So?"

"Why would he say that if he hadn't seen her?"

I bit back a laugh. "Are you telling me you lied to the police because of some half-assed remark he made while I was screaming down the telephone for an ambulance? He could have told me she was standing on her head and waggling her legs in the air for all the notice I paid him. I wouldn't have remembered afterward."

Jock shrugged. "That's exactly what I said, but he didn't believe me. He reckoned you had a memory like an elephant. He said it would be easier all round if we supported the police version that Annie was staggering drunk at a quarter to eight. I mean it wasn't as if we were the only ones to say it ...
everyone
was saying it. We thought it was the truth."

"There were only five other people who claimed to have seen her," I reminded him. "One was Geoffrey Spalding who lived opposite Annie at number 27. He's the man who said at the inquest that he tried to persuade Annie to go home but gave up when she started cursing him. His estimate of the time was between 8 and 8:30. Two were an elderly couple at number 8, Mr. and Mrs. Pardoe, who went up to bed at approximately nine o'clock because they were cold and saw her from their upstairs window, but decided against doing anything because she was clearly drunk and the last time they'd tried to help her she spat at them. And the remaining two were a man and a woman in a car who were using Graham Road as a shortcut and said they had to slam on the brakes when a bulky figure in a dark coat suddenly lurched in front of them, screaming abuse. They decided she was 'an aggressive drunk' and drove on to avoid a confrontation. They couldn't be accurate about the time, but thought it was shortly after nine o'clock."

He looked at the photographs that were still in my lap. "You've just destroyed your own argument," he said. "Why would any of those people lie about seeing her?"

"I don't think they did," I answered slowly, "except possibly Geoffrey Spalding, and he may only have been lying about the time. You see, timing's important. One of the reasons the police estimated that she received her injuries fifteen to thirty minutes before I found her was because the Pardoes and the couple in the car both said she was on her feet at or around nine o'clock. If she was dead by 9:30, then ipso facto something must have hit her during those thirty minutes."

"Then how can you expect anyone to believe she was beaten to death hours earlier?"

"I said she was beaten unconscious, Jock, I didn't say she was dead. There is a difference ... particularly when you're talking about someone as well-built and powerful as Annie." I ran an exploratory finger across her celluloid face as if it could tell me something. "I think she came 'round inside her house and managed to get herself out in search of help. The miracle is she had enough strength left to try to stop a passing car. A doctor would probably say it was impossible because her skull was so badly fractured, but it's the only explanation for why she was in the road and why she appeared drunk."

"Or the police were right all the time," suggested Jock. "I remember reading the inquest report. It said there was a high level of alcohol in her blood."

I shook my head. "It was ninety-five milligrams per hundred millilitres of blood-or fifteen milligrams above the legal driving limit. That's the equivalent of four or five shots of rum ... a drop in the ocean for someone who drank as much as Annie. Sam and I can manage that with no trouble at weekends ... you, too, I expect ... but it doesn't make us stagger about like zombies." I gave a weary shake of my head. "She was labeled a road-traffic accident, so the pathologist routinely recorded her as 'unfit to drive,' which the police and the coroner then interpreted as a 'high concentration of alcohol.' In fairness they had witness statements that described her as 'paralytic' and the police found cases of empty vodka bottles in her house, but if the pathologist had done his job properly he would have questioned whether ninety-five milligrams was enough to cause staggering in a fourteen-stone woman with a known alcohol habit."

"You really have done your homework, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"What do the police say?"

"Nothing yet. I want my evidence so watertight that they'll be forced to reopen the case whether they like it or not." I paused. "I'll need you and Sharon to admit you were the couple I followed into Graham Road that night," I told him.

He shrugged. "That won't worry me. It might worry her, though."

"Why?"

"She lied at the inquest. She didn't get to the William of Orange till 9:15. We usually met up about half-eight, had a quick drink, then cut down the alleyway at the back of her house, but she was dropped off by a taxi that night, high as a kite, and totally uninterested in making any more money. So I walked her along the A316 and split away from her when we turned into Graham Road." He went on before I could ask the obvious question. "She said she'd been at a hotel with another client. I assume it was true because she was dressed up like a dog's dinner and stank of fags." He gave a small shake of his head as he recalled the memory. "She certainly didn't give the impression that she'd come from her house. Rather the reverse, in fact. Kept saying she wanted to get back to it because she was sick as a dog from all the champagne she'd drunk."

"But if Tuesday was
your
day, why would she go with somebody else?"

"She was a pro," he'said sarcastically. "Someone else offered her more money."

"Did she say who it was?"

"She didn't give me a name ... just said it was another regular whom she couldn't afford to disappoint."

"Geoffrey Spalding was one of her clients," I said slowly. "His wife was dying of breast cancer and he didn't want her or his daughters to know he was paying for sex. He took Sharon to a hotel once a month." I laughed at his expression. "No, it wasn't Libby who told me. It was Sharon's son, Michael. I've been writing to him in prison."

"Jesus! Rather you than me then," he said dryly. "He was a right little sadist when I knew him ... used to pluck the whiskers out of Annie's cats just for the fun of it. Do you know why he's in prison?" I nodded. "Then you ought to be careful. His mother was shit-scared of him. And with reason. He had a real temper when he was roused."

I watched the cat lick itself drowsily in the afternoon sun. "You know the one thing that's always puzzled me, Jock ... why neither you nor Sharon stopped to find out if Annie was alive. You must have seen her. Sharon virtually had to step over her to cross the road."

"We truly didn't," he said. "I asked Sharon about it afterward and she went white as a sheet ... kept begging me to keep my mouth shut in case we got accused of being involved in some way."

There seemed little else to say, but I couldn't find the energy to rise from the chair. The journey home held few attractions and, like the cat, I wanted nothing better than to curl into a ball and forget that life was complicated. Perhaps Jock felt the same because the shadows lengthened noticeably before he spoke again.

"You've changed," he said finally.

"Yes," I agreed.

He smiled. "Aren't you going to ask me how?"

"There's no point." I leaned my head against the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. "I know what you're going to say."

"What?"

"I'm more relaxed than I used to be."

"How did you know?"

"It's what Sam always says."

"You used to get pretty hyped-up in the old days," he said. "I remember going into your house one day and having to duck a flying saucepan."

I turned my head to look at him, laughing at the memory. "Only because you and Sam came home plastered at some god-awful hour in the morning and got me out of bed with the row you were making downstairs. The minute you saw me you started demanding food, so I tossed the saucepan in your direction and told you to cook it yourselves. You were supposed to catch it, not duck it."

"Is that right?" he asked dryly. "Then how come most of the crockery ended up on the floor as well?"

I thought back. "I was hopping mad, particularly as we had a school inspection the next day. In any case, I never liked those plates. Sam's mother gave them to us."

He grinned at me. "We were so damn legless we probably thought you'd be thrilled to see us. And at least we never did it again. As Sam said, you'd probably start hurling knives the next time."

We exchanged smiles. "I never did find out where you'd been," I murmured lazily. "You swore it was the pub, but it can't have been because pubs closed at 11."