The Snakes Page 15

  ‘No,’ said Bea, I don’t understand.’ She stood her ground. ‘You haven’t helped us at all. Isn’t there an organisation we should be speaking to? Don’t you have Victim Support?’

  ‘Of course, we have a victim support service in every area of France,’ said Vincent.

  ‘Well then –’

  ‘You are not the victim of a crime.’

  They left the gendarmerie and Bea called Griff from the car as Dan drove, keeping his eyes on the road, deliberately careful, as he listened.

  ‘Griff, we’ve just come from the police station,’ she said. ‘They gave us absolutely no information, and no support.’

  Dan had worried for her, but she sounded very strong, her usual calmness combined with Adamson power. He hadn’t seen this side of her, he was used to her humility. Even her accent had come up a notch, dropping the everywoman patina she used for work – and, he thought, for the first time, maybe for him. A car honked, and Dan realised he didn’t have his lights on. He was shell-shocked from the day, and gripped the wheel of the unfamiliar Golf, double-checking road signs. Keeping right, he thought, tiredly, turning right, staying right.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bea said, on the phone, ‘I’m going to write down the details of the whole conversation when we get back to the hotel.’

  Griff had the lawyer with him. He put him on.

  ‘Is that Bea? Philip Roche here.’

  ‘Hi, yes. Dan and I have just been interviewed by the police. I think my parents should both come back.’

  It wasn’t necessary, Vincent had already summoned her parents. They were flying out the next morning. Bea hung up.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  There was a silence.

  ‘They must have done the post-mortem,’ she said, staring at nothing. ‘Don’t you think? They must have done it by now. How long does it take?’

  ‘I don’t know, babe.’

  ‘An hour? A day?’

  ‘We can ask the lawyer, what’s-his-name.’

  ‘Philip Roche.’

  For the rest of the journey they talked in circles until she said, ‘OK. Enough.’

  There was only so much horror she could take. In silence, they approached the Hotel Paligny. They got out of the car looking up at it, against the evening sky.

  ‘Sometimes it feels completely abandoned,’ she said, ‘and sometimes it’s as if he only just left. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dan.

  ‘I don’t want to go in.’

  ‘We have to, though, unless you want to go and find somewhere else?’ said Dan. ‘Like your dad said?’

  Her face hardened. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re staying here.’

  ‘We really don’t have to.’

  ‘We don’t need a hotel,’ she said stubbornly. ‘We’ve got a hotel.’

  ‘We could go into Arnay for dinner,’ said Dan. ‘Go to the cafe?’

  ‘I’m not that hungry,’ said Bea.

  ‘No, me neither.’

  So they went inside.

  The hotel felt very empty that night. There was no imprint of its recent visitors, no lingering aftershave smell, nothing different about the things on the desk. It looked undisturbed. It was too big a building to disregard, and they were constantly aware of the rooms around them and the noises that just they were making, with food and plates and clearing up, and their footsteps on the echoing floors. They kept the garden doors locked, and ate in the kitchen, standing up, to avoid the dining room. Bea wondered if Alex had done that when he was alone, or if he’d taken food up to his room. She pictured him eating sandwiches in bed with a book, or by the computer in the hall, watching YouTube, finding friends online.

  When they went up to the room, Dan put a chair against the door.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ said Bea.

  ‘Makes me feel better,’ said Dan.

  She didn’t argue, but she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t sure if anything frightened her, or if everything did. She had been destroyed already.

  ‘I forgot to go and get the rent from the farm for your dad,’ said Dan.

  ‘Fuck ’im,’ yawned Bea, sleep falling like a fog.

  ‘Don’t want to piss him off.’

  ‘Rent,’ she murmured with contempt. ‘He’s got enough money.’

  13

  To get to the Orderbrecht farm by car they turned left instead of right out of the hotel, and then took another left where the road forked. It narrowed and then doubled back, and they saw the sign Orderbrecht on a wooden gate at the start of a track. The track climbed and at the brow of the hill they paused. It was not nearly so strange a place as when Bea had walked through on foot. The herd of white cows grazed among the pens of chickens and goats, and the low yellow farmhouse looked relatively charming in the innocence of the morning sun.

  ‘Is that the barn?’ asked Dan, pointing. ‘The chapel?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. We shouldn’t park outside.’

  ‘In case they’re sacrificing something.’

  Only six days before, in the garden with Alex, she had told him about spying on the family through the barn door, and they had laughed about it. Time had lost its rational scale. Dan turned the car and left it facing the way they had come, so he wouldn’t have to do it when they left, and they walked down to the house, feeling conspicuous. Before they reached the garden gate, a woman opened the front door.

  ‘Bonjour,’ said Dan.

  Her colourless hair was pulled back from a heavy, white face. She had very pale, bare legs and thick socks and a denim skirt. A pair of tattered rubber boots stood on the threadbare mat outside. Dan put his hand on the gate.

  ‘Bea?’ he said. He had exhausted his French with ‘bonjour’.

  ‘Good morning. Are you Madame Orderbrecht?’ said Bea.

  The woman nodded.

  ‘I’m Bea. Alex Adamson’s sister.’

  ‘Hello.’ She was expressionless.

  ‘May we?’ said Bea.

  The woman shrugged. Dan and Bea approached the front door, stepping around a big red tricycle upended on the path.

  ‘I hope it’s all right,’ said Bea, ‘we’ve come for the rent.’

  Madame Orderbrecht just shrugged, and turned, and went into the kitchen, which was very cluttered and surprisingly dark. Peering in, they could make out two huge dogs, lying under the kitchen table and a baby in a nappy, sitting on the floor nearby. The baby was holding a Barbie doll by the legs, open-mouthed. Madame Orderbrecht opened a drawer in the dresser, and took out an envelope. She came back and put it into Dan’s hand. It was thick with banknotes.

  ‘Merci,’ said Dan.

  Madame Orderbrecht stared at him for a second, then she closed the door on them. They walked back down the path.

  ‘Well, that was easy,’ said Dan.

  Then there was the choking sound of a diesel engine and a small green tractor appeared from behind one of the outbuildings. An old man was driving, with a teenage boy balancing on the trailer piled with plastic trays of asparagus. There was sand on the sunless white ends of the asparagus, stacked juddering on the trays. The door opened behind them, and Madame Orderbrecht shouted something from the doorway, words that sounded like German spoken backwards, and the old man, seeing her, raised his arm and waved. He and the boy stared at Bea and Dan as the tractor went past. The boy was skinny, with sun-bleached hair, his stick-insect limbs coming out of shorts too big for him and a T-shirt too small. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but his look was insolent. He had one hand in the gappy pocket of his shorts, so that his sharp hip bone showed, and the other was gripping the bar of the trailer. Through half-closed eyes he stared at Bea’s breasts, and twisted his head to keep looking as the tractor bumped on, past them, and out of sight. Dan was looking down at the envelope, and did not notice.

  When they were clear, and almost back at the car, he said, ‘That’s the whitest woman I’ve ever seen. She made you look brown. The kid, too. And the old guy. Jesus, he looked l
ike a duppy.’

  ‘Yes, I saw,’ said Bea.

  ‘They looked like freaks.’

  He turned his head to try to see through the doors of the barn as they walked past. They got into their car, and drove away along the uneven track.

  ‘This car is so posh and clean,’ said Bea. ‘It’s embarrassing. Rent collecting.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ said Dan. ‘It’s fine.’

  The track reached the road. With one hand on the wheel, Dan looked into the soft envelope of cash, flicking his thumb over the notes.

  Her parents were on their way, there was no time to go back to Paligny, they went straight on to Carrefour, on the ring road outside Dijon.

  The supermarket was vast. Eggs. Bread. Fruit. Yogurt. Griff didn’t eat breakfast, just coffee and his early-morning walk. Tonic for gin. Washing powder. New, cheap towels, very white with bleach and petrochemicals. Cling film. Toothpaste. Steaks. It was probably more shopping than Bea and Dan had ever done at one time. Bea googled potatoes dauphinoise, standing in the queue to pay. Liv wouldn’t eat potatoes, never ate pasta, hated bread. Lights flickered over the line of tills, narrowing away along the row. Dan leaned on the trolley, looking up at her.

  ‘What time do you think they’ll be here?’ he said.

  She was looking at something nearby.

  ‘What room shall we put Philip Roche in?’ he asked.

  She moved her mouth, but her eyes were fixed on a woman waiting in the queue, at the next till, with a year-old baby on her hip.

  ‘Bea?’

  The mother had his small hand, and put it in her mouth, lips cushioning her teeth. His head lolled in paroxyms of silent laughter, completely confident he would not be dropped backwards onto the tiled floor.

  ‘Um-num-num,’ the mother said, chewing her baby’s fingers.

  ‘Look at her,’ said Bea.

  ‘Cute.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what it’s like? Do you think you want to eat them like that?’

  ‘He is kind of fat and tempting,’ said Dan.

  Bea’s expression was blank. He didn’t know what she could have been thinking about, looking at the baby.

  ‘So, what about the bedrooms?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t think.’

  They were still making beds when they heard a car and went down to meet it. Griff was driving a black SUV, with another man in the passenger seat. They could just make out Liv in the back seat and, next to her, the shape of another person, another man.

  ‘Four,’ said Dan, ‘bloody four of them. Who the hell is that?’

  Bea bent to look. ‘That’s Arun. Griff’s lawyer.’

  Even as Griff got out of the car, he was talking. ‘Christ, what a journey. They didn’t even have a decent car. You’d think somewhere in Dijon would have a proper range, what do they call them? Prestige cars? Forget it. Not a bit of it, awful.’

  ‘Hello, Griff,’ said Bea.

  ‘This is Philip Roche.’

  Roche, a small man in a dark suit, came forward. ‘How d’you do? I’m sorry for your loss. I hear you had a bit of a shock yesterday. The French system can be quite overwhelming. Your father may have told you, I’ve applied for the family to have access to the police files.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Griff, stretching. ‘An hour and a half in a car full of bloody lawyers.’

  Next to Arun’s chic blandness and Griff’s linens and Lobbs, Philip Roche was a study in bourgeois discomfort. Arun smiled, came over, and kissed Bea’s cheek.

  ‘Bea. I’m so sorry about Alex.’

  ‘Dan – Arun Karnad. Arun, my husband, Dan.’

  Her mother stood a little apart, like a wound-down toy. She wore dark glasses. Her hair was tied back, her thin arms were covered by the sleeves of her black shirt, tucked into jeans. It was easy for Bea to ignore her but the others were satellites to her, as if her tiny body had a gravitational pull, glancing at her, exchanging glances.

  ‘You didn’t say Arun was coming,’ Bea said.

  ‘Forgot you again, Arun,’ Griff laughed, patting him.

  ‘You’re a very ill-mannered person.’

  Arun was exactly ten years Griff’s junior. They’d first worked together as young men, in the early eighties. Arun was elegant, where Griff was not, and, unlike Griff, bald now; his nut-brown, polished head was the most noticeable thing about him. He knew almost everything about Griff, but he wasn’t godfather to his children and he hadn’t been his best man. Griff had more visible characters for that.

  ‘We don’t have enough beds,’ said Bea.

  ‘There’ll be an IKEA or something, I guess,’ said Dan.

  ‘Beds?’ said Griff. ‘What do we want beds for? We’re not staying here. After this meeting they’ve summoned us to, we’re on our way to Chateau something or other.’ He dropped his voice. ‘But something’s happened.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Bea. ‘What now?’

  ‘Shall we go in, love?’ Griff took his wife’s arm.

  The two of them went ahead. Arun fell into step with Bea, and spoke quietly in her ear. His voice was smooth, well used to undertone.

  ‘Have you seen the paper?’

  ‘What paper?’

  ‘The Daily Mail,’ said Arun.

  ‘No,’ said Bea. ‘Why?’

  ‘Your mother feels absolutely awful about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Don’t talk about me! You’re talking about me!’ said her mother, shrilly with a jerk of her head.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He pulled a folded copy of the Mail from his soft leather briefcase. ‘Don’t let Liv see,’ he whispered. ‘She’s had a terrible morning. And they were handing them out on the plane. Awful. Page 5.’

  Reluctantly, Bea took the newspaper from Arun’s hand. He retreated to a tactful distance as Griff shepherded Liv up the stairs. Dan stood awkwardly, near Bea but trying not to interfere. On entering the hotel, Philip Roche stopped and took in its shambolic amateurishness with a mild, observing expression.

  ‘We need to be at the gendarmerie by three,’ he said, checking his watch, as Liv and Griff disappeared up the stairs.

  Bea opened the newspaper. Page 5. The headline was big; sharp, black letters standing out.

  SON OF PROPERTY MOGUL GRIFF ADAMSON DIES IN FRANCE Alexander Adamson has been found dead in his car in France. Distraught mother, Olivia Adamson, said: ‘It’s a mystery. Nobody knows what happened to Alex.’

  There was a picture, taken years before, of a dishevelled Alex with his arm round the shoulders of someone else’s rich kid.

  Bea wasn’t prepared for the violation, the roof ripped off, and crowds of people looking in, the sudden fresh loss of seeing his face, and he was transformed, by being in the paper.

  The 35-year-old was the troubled son of billionaire Bernard ‘Griff’ Adamson, who first gained notoriety in the 1970s as one of London’s most ruthless slum landlords –

  A picture of Griff shaking hands with a politician.

  Griff Adamson, left, ex-director of disgraced property development company, Hemisphere, which was the subject of an investigation, came under scrutiny again, recently, when his connection to –

  Another old photograph of Alex, at a charity ball with some trashed-looking girls. Bea wanted to cover him up, he would hate it, his nineties hair and the clothes that looked like fancydress for ‘the privileged’.

  Friends remember Alex as a ‘gentle soul’, a fun-loving charmer who lit up a room –

  ‘What was she doing, talking to the press?’ said Bea, furious.

  ‘They called her at home,’ said Arun. ‘They took her by surprise.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Bea said, ‘this is disgusting.’

  ‘They did the old trick, “if you talk to us you can give us your side”.’

  ‘How stupid can a person be?’

  ‘Bea!’ barked Griff, coming back down the stairs. ‘Keep your voice down.’

  She shoved the paper back at Arun, a
nd Dan took it from him.

  ‘Can we get it out of here?’ she said. ‘Why did you bring it here? That’s my brother.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Arun. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Throw it out,’ said Bea.

  ‘It’ll be online,’ said Dan, looking up. She saw it was a thrill to him, that Alex’s death had made the papers. He tried to hide it, but he couldn’t.

  Arun took the paper, deftly, from his hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘Your mother feels terrible.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault,’ said Bea, then, ‘They got his age wrong.’

  There was silence.

  ‘It’s a quarter past one,’ announced Roche, standing alone.

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Griff. ‘Let them wait. And they’d better give us some answers.’

  ‘It really wouldn’t do to keep them waiting,’ said Roche. His English was stuck somewhere in the twentieth century, the too-perfect grammar of the bilingual.

  ‘Fine,’ said Griff. ‘Bea, go and get your mother.’

  ‘You get her.’

  ‘Bea!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please,’ said Griff. ‘Please would you fetch your mother?’

  Bea could never resist a plea for help. She went upstairs for Liv.

  Her mother was lying flat on her back, still in her shoes. The curtains were drawn. It was like a room with a body laid out, but it was the wrong body. Her large handbag was open on the corner of the bed. The air smelled strongly of her scent, a single-note essence that clung like the blood of something to everything she touched.

  ‘I’m going to open the window,’ said Bea. ‘You and Griff have to go to the police station. You need to get up.’

  She opened the curtains and lifted the sash. Liv propped herself up on the pillows, slack-faced. Her eyes struggled to focus. Bea wondered if she was unable to speak, rather than choosing not to.

  Mother and son overdose within a fortnight of each other. Distraught mother takes own life.

  Bea tried to calm down. She did not want to feel this hatred. It turned her stomach.