The Snakes Read online

  ‘How was your childhood?’ asked Karen.

  ‘What?’ Dan spluttered – it was so weird she asked that.

  She looked back at Dufour, for confirmation, and he said something else.

  ‘He says: were you poor, growing up?’

  ‘Poor, like, money?’ said Dan stupidly.

  Karen nodded gravely. ‘Yes, money.’

  ‘I guess, kind of. No. We were good. We were OK.’

  Karen made an effort to translate his vagueness.

  ‘What work did she do?’

  ‘My mum? She was a teaching assistant. Now she’s a social worker.’

  Dufour leaned over the desk, speaking urgently. Dan pretended to be so relaxed that he wasn’t even trying to understand, and looked around the office, casually.

  ‘Detective Dufour says: Griff Adamson is a very rich businessman,’ said Karen. ‘How much did you know about the Adamsons, before you married Beatrice?’ She looked sympathetic, like a kindly dentist sticking a probe into his tooth.

  ‘I knew her family did OK,’ said Dan guardedly, and the image of Griff and the private jet popped into his head. ‘I didn’t know any details.’

  Dufour said something else, quick-fire, gesturing.

  ‘Yes. OK, Dan,’ said Karen. ‘He says: will you explain exactly, please, what you knew about your wife’s family, and the money they have. Specifically, please.’

  Luis looked up, his pencil clutched in his fist. Dan noticed he had a wrist tattoo. What a dick, he thought.

  Dufour said, ‘Yes?’ in English. His eyes were glassy beneath their pale lids, Flemish-looking eyes, Dan thought, like a Dutch portrait. He’d never liked those Dutch artists. He struggled with anything pre-twentieth century. He could do the Italian Renaissance, and get into the Baroque, but those Dutch painters bored him shitless. Except Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch was cool. He took his eyes from Dufour’s pallid face, and turned to Karen. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her head was bowed, as if she would hear better if she was not looking at his face. She had lace-up shoes and ankle socks. They looked sort of sweet to him, like she had corns or something. He wondered if she had children, or grandchildren, even. She could have been anything between thirty-five and sixty. Dufour was waiting.

  ‘What can I tell you?’ said Dan. ‘When I met Bea, we didn’t talk about money. She didn’t earn much, and nor did I, but she was middle-class, so I guess –’

  ‘Wait, please,’ said Karen.

  He stopped. She translated.

  ‘Continue,’ she said. She smiled encouragingly. He focused on her lace-up shoes and ankle socks, wondering why they reminded him of Bea – they weren’t what she’d wear. Maybe because Karen was guileless, like her.

  ‘I assumed her family had some money. You judge, don’t you? I mean, everyone does, right? Except Bea. She doesn’t.’

  He looked up from Karen’s shoes, into her eyes.

  ‘She never asked me the normal questions that people do. Class, money, whatever. She’s just not like that.’

  Karen kept translating, not looking at Dufour, looking straight at Dan. He could see Bea’s face in front of him while he talked, taken back to the night they met, as if under a spell.

  ‘It’s almost like she’s blind,’ he said to Karen. ‘Know what I mean? She sees everything and nothing. She didn’t describe herself in those terms. Rich, poor, posh – it’s not how she thinks.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘At this place near where I live. I had this art exhibition. She came to see it.’

  Dufour laughed and said something.

  ‘An art show?’ said Karen coldly. Not coldly to Dan, but because Dufour had been rude.

  Dan gave her a smile, to show her it was OK. ‘It was a student show.’

  ‘So when did you find out she was an heiress?’

  An heiress. It was an archaic word. To be an heiress, Bea would have to inherit, people only inherited on a death. It wasn’t the first time it had crossed his mind.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘She told me her dad was in property. She said she didn’t see her family, and she told me she never borrowed money from them. I respect that. That’s it.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dufour said something. He sounded sarcastic. Dan tried not to look uncomfortable, he didn’t mean to lie, but the truth he was telling was not the perfect truth. Karen turned to him.

  ‘He says: it must be exciting for you, to discover your father-in-law is a multimillionaire.’

  ‘Exciting?’ Dan’s mouth was dry. ‘No.’

  ‘Griff Adamson is a property developer,’ said Karen. ‘You are an estate agent.’

  Dan laughed. ‘Yeah, but –’

  ‘Were you interested in Beatrice for this reason?’

  ‘No.’ Dan looked at Dufour. ‘No,’ he said again, firmly. He looked back at Karen. ‘You can tell him, Bea doesn’t even like them. I’d only met them once, before coming to France, OK? I didn’t know anything about them, and to tell you the truth I’m not all that interested. Can you tell him that?’

  Karen nodded briskly, and translated, a long stream of French, while Dan watched Dufour’s face for a reaction, and saw none. Then Dufour asked something else.

  ‘He wants to know why Bea doesn’t like her family. What have they done to her?’

  ‘Done to her?’ Dan felt awkward. ‘They haven’t done anything. She doesn’t like their politics.’ He shrugged. ‘Her mother liked her brothers better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? I dunno. Just normal stuff. Bea’s very ethical. She’s very moral. She just doesn’t get on with them, OK?’

  Dufour spoke.

  ‘Your mother’s home,’ said Karen, ‘where you grew up. How big is it?’

  ‘Seriously?’ said Dan. ‘It’s a flat.’

  ‘Is it in a bad area?’

  ‘A “bad” area?’

  Karen made a face that said I know, humour him.

  ‘It’s an OK area,’ said Dan expressionlessly.

  Dufour spoke.

  ‘He says: did you have a rough childhood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He says: were you involved with gangs?’

  ‘Has he heard of racial stereotyping?’ said Dan. ‘You have that expression here, right?’

  Karen smiled. Then Dufour spoke and she stopped smiling. ‘He says: answer the question.’

  ‘Which one?’

  Dufour’s glassy eyes examined him, Luis’s pencil hovered over his pad. Dan knew what was being assumed, like the questions about drugs the day before; he had to let it roll off. He had to rise above. This guy had probably never been anywhere or seen anything like where Dan grew up. And there wasn’t any single word that could describe Dan’s first sixteen years, or anybody’s. Dufour was speaking, fast.

  ‘He says again: were you involved with gangs?’ said Karen.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever stolen anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have a police record?’

  ‘No, I don’t have a record. My mum was very strict.’

  ‘He says: where was your father?’

  ‘He didn’t live with us.’

  ‘Where did he live?’

  ‘In the country somewhere.’

  ‘What country?’

  ‘No, the countryside. Surrey or someplace.’

  ‘You didn’t see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were your parents married?’

  ‘None of his business. No, they weren’t.’

  ‘Was your mother a good mother?’

  ‘What is this?’

  Dufour’s words banged out like a military drum. Did she hate your father? Did she hate white people? Do you hate white people?

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘No,’ said Karen, ‘I’m sorry, he’s asking this.’

  Dan looked at Dufour, resting his chin on his clasped hands, with his eyebrows rais
ed, acting the big man, as the hairy one scribbled away in the corner.

  ‘This is all irrelevant,’ said Dan. ‘Can you tell him that?’

  Karen nodded, and he could tell she agreed with him. She said something to Dufour. He answered her back, and they had a brief exchange.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘He was explaining to me that this manner of questioning the interested parties, they do this so they can really understand. It’s not an interrogation, only –’

  Dufour stopped her, sharply. Chastened, she took a sip of water. Dufour spoke again. Very deliberately, Karen replaced her cup on the desk. Without looking at Dan, she translated.

  ‘He wants to know if you had a violent childhood. If your mother was violent, or if you witnessed violence. Domestic violence. Gang violence. Or at school. Violence in your life.’

  ‘My life? My whole life?’

  Dufour shrugged.

  Dan looked at the telephone on the desk, and the cord, snaking through a hole, out of sight. There had been gangs on the streets and at school, where there had also been a chess club, run by an ancient Hungarian woman, called Mrs Róheim who looked exactly like a man. Of Dan’s four closest friends from primary school he lost one to drugs, and one to excessive schoolwork. The third went off the radar, first for the streets, then a girl, then moved to Berlin. The fourth was still Dan’s best friend, and worked in TV production, and Dan didn’t see enough of him. Ten-year-old Damilola Taylor was murdered fifteen minutes from Dan’s home. They were the same age. Dan didn’t know Damilola, or any of the African kids, but he knew the gang that killed him by sight. The violence that was in the air most days had been in everything that day. You’d swear you could see it, in the cracks in the pavements and the bricks in the walls; violence and grief. And yes, Dan’s mother smacked him, when she was frightened for him, or desperate, for reasons of her own. She also held him close to her heart and kissed his head, and read to him. He’d felt her tears drip from her cheek to his. She had been angry at his father, and described his treatment of her, a woman of Jamaican heritage, as a political act. One of her boyfriends hit Dan in the head once, and when he told her about it she never saw him again. Another had taken them both up in a helicopter for her birthday, high above London. It had been one of the best days of Dan’s life. She had quit the boyfriends when she took up the Bible, but her embracing of the notion of sin was a kind of violence in itself. Did Dan have a violent childhood? It had been both playground and minefield, and his home had been his nest as well as his prison. A rough childhood in a bad area? Whatever.

  He looked from Dufour to Karen, who waited attentively, and back to Dufour.

  ‘Oh look, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What can I tell you? I told the other guy the same yesterday. I wasn’t in gangs, I didn’t deal drugs, I finished school. I went to college. That’s it.’

  Karen translated, with an air of finality. She seemed pleased with his answer, at least. ‘How big is your house?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Your home, with your wife, is it big, or small?’

  ‘This again? He likes his property, doesn’t he? It’s small.’

  ‘Why is it so small?’

  ‘It’s what we can afford,’ said Dan, and felt suddenly humiliated. He could see why Dufour would be suspicious of him. He was related to a multimillionaire, and he was still a failure.

  ‘Is it difficult for you, to live in a small home with your wife, when her family has a lot of money?’

  ‘If he says so. Whatever, right?’

  Karen nodded, and smiled, and translated. Dufour shrugged, and then said something with the word Adamson in it. That was a relief.

  ‘What did you think of Alex?’

  ‘I’ve told you. He was OK. A bit weak.’

  Dufour sat forward, and said one word.

  ‘Weak?’ translated Karen.

  Dufour sneered something that Dan didn’t like, even before he heard the English.

  ‘He says: is it unfair that you are not weak, and you have nothing, and Alex was a drug addict and had a lot of money?’

  Dan sighed and shrugged, again, like he was bored. He was doing all right, but he needed to not look at Dufour’s face.

  ‘We don’t “have nothing”. We’re fine.’

  ‘He says: did you resent Alex?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You weren’t jealous?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Do you resent your wife?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you resent her for not being rich, like her family?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He rubbed his hands over his face and head. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘We agreed, early on, that Bea doesn’t ask her parents for money and that’s fine by me.’ Like a nervous tic, he saw the private jet again, hovering, and blinked it away. Quite deliberately, he pictured Bea, with her arms held out, smiling. He imagined her taking his hand, and her flame tattoo, as if he were lifting her hair to kiss it.

  Dufour asked him a question. Karen, drinking water from her plastic cup, put it down impatiently. Her translation was deliberately expressionless and flat, to show what she thought of the question.

  ‘He says: you saw her father’s picture in the paper, and how rich he is, and that’s why you married her.’

  ‘He said that?’ said Dan. ‘That’s not even a question.’

  Karen said something to Dufour, who made an irritated noise, and leaned across the desk. He spoke nastily. Close up, his face was even worse. Dan almost didn’t need Karen’s translation.

  ‘He says: was that why you married her?’

  Dan smiled into Dufour’s eyes. ‘No, mate, that’s not why I married her.’ He was amazed how calm he felt, calm and uninhibited. ‘I married her because she’s matchless,’ said Dan. ‘The woman is matchless.’

  ‘Matchless?’ said Karen.

  ‘Outstanding,’ said Dan.

  Karen smiled. She blushed. She wasn’t gay. Dufour said something else, and she set her mouth, disapprovingly.

  ‘He says: but she is not your type.’

  Dan scratched his cheek, to give the impression of being mildly surprised, as if it had never occurred to him that he and Bea weren’t an obvious fit in the eyes of the world, and he was mulling it over.

  ‘Huh,’ he said, nodding. ‘OK.’

  ‘He says: your wife is – what’s the right word? Frumpy.’

  He hadn’t expected that. It was so unusual, and strange-sounding, with the German accent in the ‘r’.

  ‘Frumpy?’

  ‘Frumpy? Yes, I think so,’ said Karen. ‘I think this is the word. Frumpy? For instance, not-fashionable?’

  ‘Right,’ said Dan, bemused and offended. ‘I don’t know.’

  He thought of Bea, walking in from work in her jeans and green jumper, and telling him what she’d been doing, and that he often thought how brave she must have had to be all day, and how hard-working. She wasn’t a beauty until you got her clothes off. She could have made more of herself. She was quiet-looking. That these things were failings in the eyes of this ignorant snake-necked albino-lashed arsehole – Dufour asked him something, but Karen didn’t translate, she argued back at him, in rapid French.

  ‘What?’ said Dan. ‘What’s he saying?’

  Dufour insisted. She turned back to Dan. Her voice was neutral, but the red spots had come back, like little rashes on her cheeks.

  ‘He says: did your wife go with black men before she met you?’ She couldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘No,’ said Dan, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. ‘I was her first.’

  Karen translated. He felt sorry for her. She was clearly in a dilemma. Dufour spoke. Dan’s eyes were drawn to his face, he tried, but he couldn’t look away. Karen snapped something and Dufour hardly acknowledged her. His hair lay flat on his forehead. His hooded eyes held every insult.

  ‘He says: do you have a thing for white girls? And I am not happy to ask you this.’

  Dan smiled. ‘Don’t worry about i
t,’ he said evenly. ‘You can tell him it depends.’

  Karen passed this on, more embarrassed by the second.

  ‘What does it depend on?’ she said, quiet as a mouse.

  ‘Whether the white girls are multimillionaires,’ said Dan.

  Her eyes flew to his face, appalled on his behalf.

  ‘You can tell him,’ said Dan. ‘The only white girls I go for are minted. My wife has a shit-ton of money. And luckily she likes black cock. Result. Right?’

  He was calm, he didn’t give a fuck. Dufour got up and left the room. There was a pause.

  ‘Two minutes,’ said Luis, from his corner, in heavily accented English.

  Dan and Karen sat, not looking at one another. His detachment had evaporated. His heart was pounding. He terrified himself. He’d thought he was fine.

  Dufour came back into the room holding an A4 printout. It was a photograph.

  ‘Is this you?’ he said in English, holding it out to Dan.

  The photograph was very poor quality: a CCTV image from a petrol station. There was a car at the pumps, which could have been Alex’s Peugeot, and two men walking across the forecourt. One of them was Alex – or looked like Alex – and the other was taller, and dark, the top half of the body was a smudge, or in shadow.

  ‘Is it you?’ said Dufour, pointing.

  ‘No,’ said Dan, relieved and frightened at the same time.

  ‘Look again. Is it you?’

  ‘I don’t need to look. It’s not me,’ said Dan.

  Dufour put the printout on the desk.

  ‘It isn’t me. Karen? You can tell him that’s not me.’

  ‘Yes, I’m telling him.’

  ‘What is this? Are they stitching me up? I don’t know who that is. That guy has a beard. He looks like he has a beard. It’s not me. OK? I wasn’t there. I mean, I don’t even know where that is, or when that was taken. How would I know? I wouldn’t.’