The Snakes Read online

  A knock at the door made him jump and he sprang up and opened it, just a few inches, to see a maid. She looked shocked to see him and took a big step back, her eyes wide in her round and pasty face. Her hair was pinned to her scalp with grips, one hand rested on the push-bar of her trolley, stacked with little decorated bottles for the bathrooms, and the other held her pass key. Dan wanted to explain the room was occupied, and they didn’t want to be disturbed, but he didn’t know the French words and hesitated over the English ones. The maid’s expression hardened. She glanced down the corridor.

  ‘We don’t need anything, thank you,’ said Dan.

  Her mouth was set against him. She hurried off towards the lifts. Dan saw her turn to look at him as she rounded the corner. He shut the door, and went back into the gloomy room, glancing through the gap to where Liv lay. He took out his phone and texted Bea but there was no response.

  After a minute or two, there was another knock at the door. He opened it to find a white man in his thirties, with very tidy hair and a dark suit.

  ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I am Henri Michaud. I am the manager of the hotel.’

  Dan saw the maid by the lifts whispering to another maid, both watching.

  ‘May I ask your name?’ said the manager.

  ‘Daniel Durrant,’ said Dan.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he stepped out into the corridor.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  The manager smiled coldly. ‘May I ask why you are here? This is Monsieur Adamson’s suite.’

  ‘I’m his son-in-law,’ said Dan. ‘Mrs Adamson is inside. Is there something I can help you with?’

  The manager’s face flushed, instantly, and it made him look much younger. He was the same age as Dan, and the same height. He darted a look at the maids, standing together at the end of the corridor, exchanging glances.

  ‘Would you bring up some champagne, please?’ said Dan. He didn’t know why he said it, it just came out.

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said the manager. ‘I am very sorry, we didn’t know.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘My mistake. The maid.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Dan.

  He went back into the suite, and shut the door on him.

  When the champagne arrived, he jumped up and closed the gap in the bedroom doors, hastily clearing a space on the table. He overtipped the waiter, and shut him out as fast as he could, then sat there, staring at the dripping silver ice bucket, wondering how it would look to Griff or Bea that he had ordered champagne when Alex had just died, and his mother was prostrate with grief in the room next door. He opened the bottle, deadening the sound with a linen napkin, and poured himself a glass and then he put his feet up on the yellow silk sofa. They had included a small bowl of cashew nuts, which was nice. If Liv came out, he could offer her some.

  10

  Blanchard drove Griff and Bea to the place, forty minutes away. Bea sat next to Griff in the back of the car. He had his sunglasses on and he wasn’t saying anything. Now he had his way he stopped giving instructions. The foreign landscape slipped by, and civilian traffic made way to let them pass. Then there were almost no other cars, just farmland. Blanchard was silent, like her father. She couldn’t remember what time it was. In her confusion she couldn’t separate all the questions she had, and she looked out at the flat fields and the silence grew heavier and heavier. There was nothing to be said. She would see where it had happened. That was all there was, and dread. They were following in Alex’s steps. It had to be done. Seeing where. She took her father’s hand.

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  He ignored her. She took her hand away. Outside the car, on either side, the farmland was criss-crossed with thin bone-coloured roads. She had never been there but it was familiar, the white road of her nightmare.

  ‘It’s from the stone factory,’ said Blanchard, as if she’d asked. ‘It’s stone dust.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, as if she was interested. Ah, bon?, like a French phrase book. It was ridiculous of her. In the distance, an industrial-sized agricultural machine moved slowly, spraying something. She didn’t know what. She imagined the dust washing from the green leaves. She couldn’t picture Alex here. She didn’t know why he would have been.

  ‘What is this?’ said Griff. ‘What was he doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  The car swung as Blanchard turned left, at a right angle, and stopped.

  ‘OK,’ he said. He got out of the car and opened the door for Griff. Bea got out on her own.

  There were young crops growing in neat lines in the fields on either side. Ahead, she could see slack, candy-striped tape cordoning off the road, and yellow ‘Route Barrée’ signs. Blanchard’s phone rang, loudly, and he answered it. Bea and Griff stood staring at the blowing tape and the accident site beyond it, while he talked. There were jet-black streaks on the road leading to the place where Alex’s car was being winched onto a half-trailer. Bea stared at the car, swinging gently on the cables as it rose up. There were several police, or traffic police, in various uniforms, some standing around, others directing the driver of the towtruck lifting Alex’s car. Blanchard was arguing with somebody on the phone. Bea couldn’t hear the details. She heard him say Merde, then Ça me fait chier as he walked away, with his back to them.

  She and Griff stood side by side behind the blowing tape, staring at the car. It sucked her in, like falling, and she dragged her eyes away, but it drew her back. The small group of traffic police watched too, as the black Renault swung towards the trailer. Everything was in relation to the hanging car, from the far horizon to the nearest figure, feet away. There were two thick troughs gouged through the green shoots in the soft earth of the field by the car, where it had come off the road, and more exposed earth where it had been dragged back. In the middle distance stood a factory, like a cardboard cut-out and on the other side of the car, past the tow truck and trailer, was another line of striped tape and more yellow signs, and she saw two men, who looked like workmen, also watching. They were smoking and talking. Nobody told them not to watch. She heard Blanchard’s footsteps as he hung up and came over to them.

  ‘OK, I’m sorry, I need to take you back,’ he said.

  Griff didn’t turn or answer him, he was still staring at Alex’s car, hanging on the chains.

  ‘Excuse me? Did you hear? I have to take you back now,’ said Blanchard.

  ‘What was Alex doing here?’ she asked Griff.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘What happens now?’ she said.

  ‘They take the car,’ said Blanchard. ‘They examine it. Look, it’s time to go.’

  Bea looked at Griff, who still hadn’t moved, staring at the crash site from behind his dark glasses.

  ‘Dad?’ she said. ‘He wants to take us back.’ When he didn’t answer, she turned to Blanchard. ‘Two minutes?’ she asked. ‘Is that OK?’

  He was embarrassed by the situation. ‘OK,’ he said, sullen in his awkwardness.

  She looked from the car to the gouges, and the jet-black skid marks. The static scene animated itself in her mind. She pictured sunrise, and Alex in his car in an early dawn, and the sudden impact as the blue JCB hit. The brakes, the tyres, the car hurled across the road. Blanchard walked back to his car and leaned against it, crossing his booted feet at the ankle. He took out his phone again and lit a cigarette. Sun and shadow moved across the flat land, dotted with houses and, in the distance, the dark green foothills of the Jura. She could hear the brief exchanges of the men, snatches on the breeze, as they loaded the crumpled Renault.

  ‘What was he doing, out here?’ she whispered to Griff again.

  ‘He must have been up to something,’ he said.

  ‘Up to what?’ She imagined Alex driving from the main road at night, and stopping there. ‘Why?’

  There was a clunk. The Renault stopped in place above the trailer. Abruptly, Griff left her side and ducked under the t
ape. He strode towards the car.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Blanchard. ‘Monsieur!’ He shoved his phone into his pocket and started to run after him.

  ‘Dad?’ called Bea.

  Blanchard ducked under the tape too, and she followed. Griff broke into a run. The three of them ran, their shoes kicking up small storms of dust.

  ‘Hey, stop!’ called Blanchard.

  Ahead, the traffic police waved their arms.

  ‘Stop!’ they shouted, waving, like people herding an animal, hi-viz armbands glinting in the sun.

  ‘Monsieur! Stop!’

  Blanchard overtook and barred Griff’s way, pulling off his sidecap, out of breath. And holding his arms wide. Griff, thwarted, strained like a dog on a lead.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Blanchard shouted angrily to Bea.

  They were close to it now. It swung above them, violent and torn apart. The driver’s door was missing – not hanging, gone – from the crushed side of the car. She could see the leather seats, and cigarette ends tipped out on the carpet. The bonnet was a stub and the buckled wheels thickly caked with earth, but the panels behind the doors were intact, and so was the boot. It was open but undented, just mud-spattered and normal-looking. She stared through the gaping hole at the driver’s seat. She could almost see blood. She jammed her hand over her mouth. She had a clear picture of the door being sawed through and pulled off and the ambulance crew dragging out his body. She leaned over her knees to breathe. Blanchard started towards her and seeing him distracted, Griff took his chance. He ran towards the trailer. Bea looked up. Blanchard glared at her and went after him, but it was too late. Griff had sprung up onto the trailer, the powerful jump of a much younger man, and grabbed one of the cables holding the car. The men watched, amazed, as he hooked the fingers of his other hand under the back bumper. The car swung towards him. Thrown back, he hung over the drop, shoulders straining under his linen shirt, then he let go of the bumper, and reached into the open boot, groping for purchase. He clung to the broken car and it moved, swinging on the chains, as he embraced it.

  Bea realised that as everyone else was warily closing in on her father, she was walking slowly backwards. Griff put his head against the rim of the boot. It was hard to tell from that distance, but it looked as if his cheek were pressed against it, then he let go, and jumped to the ground. The awkwardness of the jump, half turning in the air, betrayed his age. He twisted his ankle as he landed, and stumbled. Blanchard and two traffic police closed in on him, berating him, and gesturing. Ignoring them, he started back. Limping slightly, he walked towards her. Expressionless, he ducked under the tape, looking down with irritation at the dirt on his hands.

  Blanchard stopped in front of her. ‘What was he doing?’ He was frightened and angry.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sorry,’ said Bea.

  ‘He is not allowed to cross the police tape. This is an official procedure.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Bea.

  Blanchard looked over her shoulder at Griff, who stood waiting as if nothing had happened.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bea again. ‘He just needed to see.’

  His expression changed. ‘Are you all right now, madame?’ he asked, like a different man. He put his hand onto her arm, not intimate, but kind.

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s terrible. I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said.

  They walked back to the car. Griff was breathing quickly through his nose, his eyes invisible behind his sunglasses. He had taken a red handkerchief from his pocket and was wiping his fingers.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘If we’re going.’

  Blanchard had nothing more to say to him, he just shook his head and got into the car. Griff got in beside him. Bea looked over her shoulder at Alex’s crumpled car for the last time, then she got into the back seat, behind her father, and slammed the door.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she said.

  ‘I had to,’ he said.

  The car was filled with him. The air was him. She seemed to hear a roaring sound. Her vision blurred and blackened, like paper singeing round the edges. She closed her eyes and concentrated on light. She made a clean space for herself, and when she opened them again the air was back to normal.

  Dan came down to the lobby when Bea and Griff got back, checking Bea’s face, anxiously. She looked shell-shocked, and very pale.

  ‘Sort out the bill, would you?’ said Griff and went upstairs.

  Dan asked for it and the receptionist printed it out. When Griff came down with Liv he hardly glanced at it before tossing his credit card onto the leather blotter. Dan thought he saw an expression of surprise, a frown, but couldn’t be sure.

  Bea thought how strange she and Dan must look next to her parents, as if they weren’t together. Her parents had no cheap clothes, and years and years of money made their age powerful, instead of weak. Next to them, she and Dan looked like they’d wandered in off the street – him unshaven, her hair not brushed. He took her hand. He smelled of toothpaste and sweat.

  They drove back from Bourg-en-Bresse to Paligny. Bea, infantilised by shock, longed for some humane authority, rules to follow, but they were alone, with nobody to guide them through catastrophe.

  On the autoroute, in Griff’s red car, hurtling. 160 kilometres an hour. Outside lane. Bearing down on slower cars. Griff demanded she make calls.

  ‘Find out what we need to do.’

  Liv sat silently in the passenger seat, like she wasn’t there. It was good to have a purpose. Bea called the British Consulate in Lyons, was directed to Paris, then to Bordeaux, and then back to Lyons.

  Stopping at the péage. Liv, fumbling with Griff’s credit card.

  Bea called their administrator, Hélène Guerin, at the Hôpital Centre Fleyriat, but she wasn’t at her desk.

  Stopping for petrol. Water. Liv taking painkillers.

  At Griff’s insistence, Bea called her brother Ed, in Tokyo, and told him. Ed, the first proud son, his father’s reflection. After Ed, Alex had been a disappointment before he spoke his first word. Ed, with his smooth passage through prep school, Eton, his East Coast college, Goldman Sachs. It was one o’clock in the morning in Tokyo. She woke him up. She could hear his wife, Elizabeth, in the background.

  He immediately exclaimed, No, no! – then started to cry, and when he couldn’t speak any more Elizabeth came on the phone and Bea told her what had happened, too.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Elizabeth,’ she said, stripped back to her compassion for a woman she hardly knew, six thousand miles away. ‘I’m sorry to wake you up like this, I’m just so sorry. We thought you should know. Would Ed like to speak again?’

  ‘Tell him I’ll call him later,’ Griff said.

  And when she’d finished with that he had her call the gendarmerie, in Bourg-en-Bresse, to draw from them an estimate of when they would be finished with Alex’s car, but they would tell her nothing. She called Hélène Guerin again. She was given reference numbers. Addresses. London numbers.

  ‘My brother Alex was in an accident this morning. He’s dead.’

  Each time she said it it was new. Dan gripped her hand, he touched her shoulder, but Alex was not his brother. She felt far away from everything.

  She imagined Alex driving parallel to their speeding car. She seemed to see him looking, keeping pace. He was only half in love with death, and he had relished the skirmish. He had not wanted it. He can’t have meant to die. Little fuckers keep me up nights, snacking on mice. I want them out.

  It could take until after the weekend to know when his body would be released, then they would bury him. Or burn it.

  11

  Paligny village and the road back were as empty as ever. Apart from passing a blue car travelling at speed in the opposite direction, they saw nobody. Unlocking the front door and walking into the hotel, it did not feel like there had been a death. It felt like somebody had just left. The four of them who were left made their way through the evening like crash victims th
emselves. It was strange to eat and walk and talk, and even stranger to go to bed, such a passive, trusting thing to do. They had seen chaos but there was no matching response, only the ordinary, and the flimsy boundaries of time. At eight o’clock, eat. At ten o’clock, go to bed. In the landscape of catastrophe there was the brushing of teeth and toilet paper.

  Griff managed Liv like managing a baby, following as she wandered through the hotel, touching things, and went into Alex’s room. She lay huddled on his bed and wouldn’t let her husband touch her. Angrily, she pushed him off. Bea, crippled by exhaustion, left him to it. She and Dan were practical. They did the minimum. They saved their strength. The talking and coping with her parents was over for the day.

  Dan slept, but she did not. She could hear her mother crying through the walls but after a while even that stopped. She sheltered herself in the sweetness of the sound of Dan’s breathing as he slept. She welcomed the air from the open window and the outdoor, night-time smells. She listened to the peace. Shock eased like a boot lifting from her chest. The harshness and horror softened. She cried, tears falling, not stopping. The moon rose, slowly, above the line of the trees until, high in the sky, it shone down onto her. It wasn’t she who lived a broken life. It was not her body in a hospital basement. Her brother had gone. She had lost him. She was filled with love. But he had gone, and could not feel it.

  The next morning, even as she woke, the boot came down on her chest again. It was grey and chilly, the sort of weather that makes skin feel cold to touch, like a reminder of death. She and Dan got up together, taking turns in the bathroom. As they came down the stairs, they saw Griff standing behind the reception desk.