The Snakes Read online

  She stood up, and, taking his cue, Capitaine Vincent did too.

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ he said. ‘It’s very difficult. But we are the good guys, yes?’ He said good guys in English.

  She nodded.

  ‘Thank you for talking to me.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Vincent. ‘And thank you, for your courage.’

  As they left the room he closed the door behind them quietly, as if a child were sleeping.

  As soon as he left, Bea remembered Dan, shocked that she could have forgotten him, and filled with sudden panic, as if she had been dragged from a deep dark place of comfort, guilty in the face of reality. She drove to Chateau L’Orée des Vignes, playing the radio loudly, to block out her thoughts. The calm that she had felt talking to Vincent had gone. She walked from the car, around the outsized giant of a chateau, to the front. Her father had said he’d wait for her in the lobby but he was standing on the forecourt, with the view behind him, in his sunglasses, looking out for her.

  ‘Dad – they’re –’ She stopped.

  ‘What?’

  She wanted to unburden herself of the shock, and share it, but she remembered it would shock him, too.

  ‘What is it?’ he said, when he saw her expression.

  ‘Shall we go inside?’

  ‘Tell me now,’ he said.

  An SUV pulled up very near them and a liveried valet hurried down the steps towards it. All four doors opened and they heard a family, loudly talking.

  ‘Over here,’ said Bea. She walked away from the people getting out of the car and her father followed.

  She paused, and waited, until she had his attention. She left a silence so he could prepare himself.

  ‘They’re calling it murder,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I am telling you.’

  He took off his dark glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes. Behind them the noisy family went up the steps. They could hear their rolling cases bumping on the stone.

  ‘When?’ said Griff. He meant when did she find out.

  ‘One of the gendarmes just said it, just –’ She stopped. ‘Like I knew already. While they were looking in Alex’s room. But we didn’t know, did we?’

  ‘I suspected.’

  ‘They said they were investigating a murder,’ she said. ‘And then when Capitaine Vincent came, we talked about it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said – I don’t know. Nothing. There isn’t any detail, or anything. I think they just want to find out everything they can from us.’

  ‘From us? What kind of thing?’

  ‘How we get on – as a family?’

  ‘Are they still searching Paligny, now?’

  ‘No, they left.’

  ‘Where did they look?’

  ‘In his room.’

  ‘What were they looking for?’

  ‘They didn’t say. They took a notebook of Alex’s and his computer. But they didn’t look for fingerprints or anything. I don’t know what they were looking for.’

  He walked away from her. She watched his back. She saw him take deep breaths and then nod, as if he were listening to himself say something, and responding.

  ‘Is Philip Roche still here?’ she asked.

  ‘No. He’s gone to Paris.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have been so rude to him.’

  ‘He can do whatever he does from his office,’ said Griff. ‘We’ve got Arun.’

  ‘Has Arun gone to get Dan?’

  ‘No, but he’s on it.’

  ‘What does that mean? What’s that? On it?’

  He raised his hand. ‘Leave it alone.’

  She went and stood by him. They were both silent, both blind, in the grip of the same paralysis, thinking things too dark to be spoken. Horror was all there was, there wasn’t any need to say it.

  When Bea spoke, she whispered. ‘Why do you think it took so long for them to start investigating?’

  ‘We don’t know when they started, do we?’

  ‘We don’t know anything,’ she said. She thought of Vincent, and their conversation, and a small calm came into her mind. It was coolness and steadiness, and she held on to it.

  ‘Come up to the suite,’ said Griff.

  She followed him inside. They crossed the lobby and started up the carpeted staircase together, but on the landing she stopped.

  ‘Can Arun come down instead?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to go to your room.’

  They were by the open doors to the high-ceilinged ballroom that led out to the terrace where they had eaten the night before. Her father looked at her for a long moment.

  ‘I know you don’t. I’m asking you to,’ he said.

  ‘All right, I will.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Griff. ‘I don’t think we should tell her, do you?’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ said Bea. ‘It might be wrong, not to. There’ll never be a good time.’

  The ballroom was empty and airy, and through the open doors, waiters could be seen taking down the lunchtime parasols on the terrace, and putting fresh cloths on the tables. A group of Americans came up the stairs.

  ‘Hi!’ they grinned, so keen to show the best of themselves. ‘How are ya?’

  Bea and Griff stepped aside to let them pass.

  ‘I was thinking about Alex’s funeral,’ he said, when they’d gone. ‘If we ever get him back.’ Somebody was vacuuming a hallway somewhere in the building. A telephone rang. ‘They can’t keep him there forever.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bea.

  It was a very hot day. She could feel the sun’s heat on the breeze that came through the open doors, across the polished ballroom.

  ‘It’s been almost a week already,’ said Griff.

  She knew they chilled corpses almost to freezing if they had to store them for any length of time. Alex’s body would be no more rotten than when he had been pulled out of his car. She sat down, suddenly, on the bottom step of the staircase behind her. She thought of the decomposing rat in the attic, how loose the body had been. Did they sew Alex’s body back together again after the post-mortem, crudely, like Frankenstein’s monster, or tidily, as if he’d be using it again?

  ‘I was thinking about what people will say,’ said Griff. ‘At the funeral. They’ll come out of the woodwork, won’t they, all his mates. Ex-junkies, his old teachers and what have you, and they’ll all yabber on about how creative he was, what a great guy. I can hear it now. And to be honest with you, your brother was a stranger to me from the day he was born.’

  He looked down into her face for a reaction, hoping to shock her.

  ‘I didn’t see much of him as a baby,’ he said. ‘And he was the sort of kid we would have beaten the crap out of at Stratford Grammar. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Poetry? I mean, seriously. Who gives a shit?’

  Bea looked past him, towards the open doors, trying to feel the fresh air on her face. A butterfly had flown into the ballroom. Luminous and bright blue, it flickered and dipped in the air.

  ‘When was this?’ she asked. ‘That you were imagining his funeral?’

  ‘Last night. Today.’

  ‘Everyone remembering him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And not being able to appreciate what they said.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must be horrible,’ she said, ‘feeling like that.’

  ‘It is,’ said Griff. ‘Yes, it is. You think you’ll have time. To sort stuff out with people.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you remember Alex’s school uniform?’

  Her stomach flipped with the acuteness of her memory. ‘Yes. At Stowe?’

  ‘No, when he was a little boy.’

  He held out his hand, in a rough approximation of Alex’s height as a small boy. ‘Grey jumper with a red stripe,’ he said. ‘Red tie. And a cap, like Just William. Always leaving it behind. Always under my feet, in the car. Red blazer.
’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bea.

  She watched the pretty butterfly, and wondered exactly how short its life was, and how far it was through that short life, as it flew about the sterile room, wasting precious seconds. Griff seemed to notice for the first time that she was sitting on the stairs, and that it wasn’t normal. He held out his hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Up you get.’

  She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet.

  ‘I sent your brother on an errand,’ he said. ‘Anybody could have done it for me. Just one of those things, like collecting rent from the farm, just something to make him feel like he had a job, but if I hadn’t, he’d still be here. He’d be alive.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly have known.’

  He shrugged her off.

  ‘Griff, it was beyond your control.’

  ‘Beyond my control?’ He repeated it wonderingly, as if such a thing were unthinkable.

  ‘There was nothing at all you could have done.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have sent him.’

  ‘No. That’s not true,’ said Bea. ‘It’s easier to blame yourself than to accept your helplessness.’

  ‘Easier?’ He sounded offended.

  ‘Yes. Blame. Blaming yourself. Blaming anyone. Raging against it. That’s easy. And it will make you mad. You have to try not to.’

  He squinted at her, calculating, then gave a sudden, big, barking laugh, like someone who’s witnessed a conjuring trick. It made her jump.

  ‘You’re actually quite good,’ he said. ‘You should have been a lawyer.’

  16

  It wasn’t funny any more, Dan thought. It hadn’t been before, but he had been able to be cool about it when the cops were talking to the whole family, even the second time. Now this was just him, and he’d been forced to leave Bea, alone with more of them. It was hard not to panic. It wouldn’t do any good to fight, but he felt so scared. He pictured losing it in the back of the police car, and trying to escape and when they let him out, inside the compound of the barracks, he could see himself making a run for it, and imagining what would happen then was terrifying. They had guns, they were soldiers, he was in a foreign country and they had no reason to treat him well, and he didn’t know what was going on and his wife was alone at Paligny with three men. He didn’t need to let his mind go far before it went to very bad places, it didn’t take a lot of imagination. So he texted Griff from the back of the car, and texted Bea once, and then concentrated on sitting as quietly and calmly as he could, and not letting them see how scared he was.

  They were very courteous. They stood aside for him to go through doors first, and even smiled. He reminded himself of the facts, and that everything else was just his panic talking, and his ingrained, natural distrust of the police. It was all in his mind. He told himself that. He tried to look fine with it all as, just like the afternoon before, he had to wait while they found the interpreter. That’s why it had taken longer than Bea’s interview. That was the reason, nothing sinister.

  Today, he only had to wait twenty minutes. And he was upstairs in an office with people around, and he had his phone, it wasn’t like they’d asked him for it. There was nothing to suggest he was doing anything other than helping them with their enquiries. He didn’t know where he’d got that phrase. So-and-so was said to be helping the police with their enquiries. So-and-so is not a suspect. He had a feeling so-and-so usually got booked. As far as he could guess, the cops had no more idea what had happened to Alex than he did. They were just digging around. And he was helping them, with their enquiries.

  The day before, a detective had asked him basic questions about his whereabouts. And they’d asked about drugs. Today he was interviewed by a tall, fair man with a long neck, who introduced himself as Dufour. From Bea’s description, Dan thought it was the same man who’d interviewed her. Dufour, and a smaller man called Luis, with hairy arms and chest, came over and greeted him. Greeted was the wrong word. It was more of a mime. See you later. Watch-tapping, thumb jerks. Then they left him on his own. At three o’clock, the interpreter arrived, the same one as the day before, a senior lecturer from the languages department at the University of Bourgogne. She was a skinny little German woman, with short grey hair which would have been pixyish in her youth, but now looked manly. They liked each other, she was out of place too. Her name was Karen Koch. It had been funny the day before, but it wasn’t funny now. When he saw her walking towards him, he felt so lonely it was like seeing his best friend. She was smiling, with pursed lips, inhibited by her role.

  ‘Hello again,’ she said, ‘what a surprise.’

  ‘Yeah. Hi.’

  ‘How are you today?’ Her English came easily and her accent was comforting, he associated it with rational Europe, and bureaucracy.

  ‘I’ve been better,’ said Dan. ‘My wife is at home, on her own, with two more of these guys,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said Karen.

  She was kind. He thought she might be gay. Not that the two were connected. He just thought she might be, because of the hair.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  They sat waiting together in silent, mismatched companionship. Dufour and Luis came back and all four went into the stairwell, and up the stairs. The two detectives were laughing as they talked, and Dan followed, with Karen Koch.

  The second floor had an open-plan low-ceilinged office. It looked like it had been recently dedicated to Alex’s case; it wasn’t crowded, like downstairs, and the small group of plain-clothes officers seemed to all know one another. They joked around and went out for cigarettes in pairs, looking at Dan as they passed, not trying to hide their interest. It was strange not understanding the language, it sharpened his other senses. Without words, the mood in the air was physical, like prickling on the skin.

  At an empty desk, Dufour and Luis shook hands with him, as if he’d only just walked in, and sat down. He didn’t like either of them, but they were polite. Dufour was a racist, Luis was not. Dan didn’t ask himself how he knew; he knew, the same way he knew in deceptively polite old England, where these days open hostility was mostly reserved for Muslims. Black had been upgraded recently, now they had found more foreign foreigners to fear, with accents and religion. Karen sat at Dan’s side with a notepad. She put on a pair of wire-framed reading glasses.

  ‘OK,’ said Dufour, looking down at a file. Then he said something else.

  ‘He says: he’s sorry to keep you waiting. They were waiting for me,’ Karen smiled.

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK,’ said Dan. ‘But I don’t know why I’m here.’

  Karen translated this but Dufour looked blank. The other one, Luis, took out a pad and a pencil, and rested the pad on his knee. He held his pencil clumsily. It was not reassuring. Dufour rattled out sentence after sentence, in French that might as well have been Urdu, and Dan, looking at Karen, waiting for her to translate, saw her expression change.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  She turned to him. She was completely different. Not used to doing this job, she couldn’t cover her reactions. Dan hadn’t realised how much he was counting on her. He smiled, trying to re-establish their tiny bond. He thought of Germany, a country which, in his mind, was a haven of sensible, liberal thought, and hoped with sudden panic that Karen Koch would deliver on his stereotype. He remembered neo-Nazi rallies he had seen, and put them from his mind.

  ‘Detective Dufour says: your wife said you weren’t in bed with her the night Mr Adamson died,’ she said.

  Dan was stunned. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Quoi?’ said Karen to Dufour.

  Dan felt a jolt of adrenaline. He concentrated on not looking tense. They mustn’t think they were on to something. They weren’t on to anything. There had been a mistake. Griff would be working on getting him out, even as he sat there his father-in-law was probably bawling someone out. He thought of Griff’s stature, and his money, and held
on to the thought. He had connections, he wasn’t free-falling, they couldn’t hurt him.

  ‘Detective Dufour says: how long were you out?’ said Karen.

  ‘I wasn’t out. I was in bed, all night.’

  Suddenly, he remembered Bea’s face, her smug calm as he was taken away, and how surprised he’d been that she didn’t seem worried. He’d been much more worried about her at the time, but now he couldn’t forget it. Usually, she was more likely to jump to conclusions about racism in the police force, and corrupt authorities, and he was the one trying to pacify her. Why had she been so happy to see him go? His thoughts were racing so fast he couldn’t focus. Dufour said something else, and Karen turned to him again, her eyes cast down. Two small red patches had appeared on her cheeks.

  ‘He says: your wife woke up in the middle of the night, and you weren’t there.’

  He remembered. ‘OK, yes, I did get up for a – I went to the bathroom, and I went downstairs for some water.’

  The other detective, Luis, was writing quickly, leaning the pad on his stocky thigh. It was archaic. The guy could be writing anything. Dan reminded himself he wasn’t under suspicion. He was helping them with their enquiries. But he didn’t know what they were enquiring about. He felt a vertiginous drop, and held back fear.

  ‘Look, tell him I woke up for, like, five minutes, OK? I got a glass of water, and went back to bed. When I got into bed, Bea said Where’ve you been? I remember it, but it was five minutes. Tops. OK?’

  She listened, gravely nodding, then translated, and Dan waited for Dufour’s friendly shrug, the Oh, that explains it then, but he had moved on to something else.

  ‘He’s asking how you felt about Mr Adamson,’ said Karen.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Alex Adamson.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But “felt about him” – like, in what way?’

  Dufour shrugged. Dan thought he’d seen enough of French shrugging.

  ‘I liked him,’ said Dan. ‘Bea and him were very close.’

  Dufour responded immediately. Dan realised he understood. Maybe he just didn’t want to speak English, and was only using Karen to translate his questions. He thought maybe they all spoke English, and with the thought, all the men in the room became eavesdroppers. It had been comforting, the sense of being overseen, but now it was the opposite. He needed to relax. He was thirty years old. He was a professional. He went to work in a suit. He wasn’t a fourteen-year-old boy, crying for his mother in the Peckham cop shop, the mother he would lie to about it later, so as not to upset her, and get in trouble for staying out.