The Shape of Snakes (20 page)

None of this sounds good when you read it back and I hope you aren't too shocked. The trouble is the truth is always worse when you tell it bald. It kind of ignores the fact that there are two sides to everything. I mean, we were dead scared of her because she was mad, and Alan's mum kept saying she practiced voodoo with chickens. I know that sounds pretty off the wall now, but at the time-hell, we thought we were heroes just going in there. Alan reckoned she could turn us into frogs or something just by looking at us!

Hoping this helps,
Your friend,
Michael

*13*

I don't know if it's enough to say I wanted revenge on Drury because I hated him. One should have reasons for hatred, not just a visceral antipathy that causes a red mist before the eyes at the mere mention of a name. Dr. Elias had asked me several times why I bothered to invest so much emotion in a man I had known for only a matter of weeks, but I could never bring myself to answer for fear of sounding paranoid.

He had changed very little in twenty years except that his hair was grayer and his eyes darker and more impenetrable. He was the same age as Sam, but he'd always been tougher, stronger and more attractive. He was a type that women invariably fell for and invariably wished they hadn't when the hard-man image-a thin disguise for misogyny-proved to be an immutable reality.

He studied us with amusement as we approached. "Mrs. Ranelagh." He gave an ironic nod in Danny's direction. "You're scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, aren't you? What is he? Toy boy or minder?"

I had to run my tongue around my mouth to stimulate some saliva. "Moral support," I replied.

His smile broadened. "Why would you need it?"

"Because you won't like these," I said, taking some photographs from my pocket and laying them on the bar.

He reached out a hand to pick them up but Danny was there before him. "Is this the black lady you were talking about?" he asked.

"Yes."

"She looks as if she's been hit with a baseball bat." he said, laying them back on the counter.

"She does, doesn't she?" I put my finger on the lop picture and pushed it aside to fan out the five others underneath. None of them was pleasant. Each showed Annie in death, bruised and battered about the face, and with a discolored right arm where blood had seeped under the skin to form an extended hematoma from shoulder to wrist. "Mr. Drury decided all these injuries came from a single glancing blow from a truck, which resulted in death within thirty minutes ... but I can't find anyone who agrees with him. These pictures were taken during her autopsy in 1978. I've had them examined by two independent pathologists and they both say the bruising to the arm points to severe physical trauma some hours before she died."

"What's that in English?"

"Annie was murdered."

The irritation from across the counter heightened abruptly, and I wondered why Drury thought I was there. A desire to renew an old friendship? Lust?

"Jesus wept!" he growled. "Don't you ever give up? It's like listening to a skipping record. Haven't you anything better to do with your life than make a martyr out of a miserable black who couldn't hold her drink?" He lifted the top picture and turned it over to inspect the back for an official stamp. "Where the hell did you get these?"

"PC Quentin sent them to me."

"Andrew?"

I nodded.

"He's been dead seven years," he said dismissively. "Died in a car crash after chasing a joyrider at high speed for three miles."

"I know. He sent them to me shortly after we left England. I wrote and asked him for copies because I knew he was unhappy with the inquest verdict."

Drury gave a grunt of irritation. "What would he know? The guy was still wet behind the ears. He had a half-assed degree in sociology, and he reckoned it gave him an edge over a home office pathologist and a beat copper with ten years' graft on the streets."

"He was right, though," I said. "This kind of bruising"-I touched one of the photographs-"takes time to develop. It also suggests more than one contact. If her arm was hit in several places, the individual hematomas would have spread out, darkening the skin from shoulder to wrist."

"A photograph proves nothing. She was black. You can't say what's a bruise and what's not."

"These are color photos," I pointed out mildly, "so unless you're blind you can certainly see the bruising."

He shook his head angrily. "What difference does it make? The accepted version was given by the man who performed the postmortem and he said her injuries were caused by a glancing blow from a truck."

"But not fifteen to thirty minutes before I found her. Two or three hours
perhaps
. And that means the people who say they saw her staggering about the road were probably looking at someone with severe head injuries."

His eyes flickered unwillingly toward the pictures again, as if he were both repelled and fascinated by them. "Even if that's true, you can't blame them for assuming she was drunk."

"I don't."

"Then what the hell is this in aid of?"

I licked the inside of my treacherous mouth again. "I'm going to have the case reopened," I said. "I want the way you handled it investigated. I want questions asked about why a rookie cop with a half-assed degree in sociology could see that something was wrong ... but
you
couldn't. I want to know why, when he tried to raise it with you, you had him thrown off the case."

He tore the photographs in half and tossed the pieces across the bar to flutter at my feet. "Problem sorted. And if that's all you've got to show for the last twenty years then you've been wasting your time."

Danny stooped to retrieve the bits. "You don't want to let him get to you," he said as he handed them back to me. "He's a bully. It's the only way he knows how to control people. He's busting a gut to change the subject rather than explain why he did fuck all about this poor black lady having her face smashed in."

Drury stared him down. "What would you know about it, shithead? You were still in nappies." He jerked his chin at me. "And you're backing the wrong horse if you back her. It was your dad she wanted locked up ... your dad she accused of murder. No one else."

There was a long silence.

Danny cast me an uncertain glance. "Is that true?"

"No," I said honestly. "Mr. Drury asked me if I knew of anyone who had a grudge against Annie, so I named your father, mother and Sharon Percy. I never at any point suggested they'd murdered her. That was Mr. Drury's interpretation."

Drury laughed. "You were always good at twisting the facts."

"Really? I thought that was your speciality."

He held my gaze for a moment, searching for chinks in my armor, then crossed his arms and turned to Danny. "Ask yourself why she brought you here and why she wanted you to see those photographs. She's planning to use you to get at your family, preferably by turning you against them first. It's what she's good at-manipulating people."

Danny hunched his shoulders unhappily as if all his worst fears had been confirmed, and my son's voice echoed uncomfortably in my ear.
I'd be sodding mad if it happened to me...

"Your father had an alibi from five o'clock until midnight," I told him, "and it was Mr. Drury who established it. He knows as well as I that Derek couldn't have killed Annie."

"Then why am I here?"

"Because Mr. Drury lied about me to your family. He told your parents I was saying things that I wasn't ... and I need you to pass on to your mother and brother that all I ever accused them of was racism. And that was true, Danny. They
were
racists-probably still are-and they weren't ashamed of it."

I touched a hand to his shoulder by way of apology because it was cruel to associate him with his family's hate when he'd stated so often in his e-mails to Luke that he didn't approve of white people living in South Africa. "But my argument isn't with the Slaters," I told Drury, "it's with
you
." I stirred the torn photographs with the point of my finger. "Because when I accused you and your colleagues of the same thing, it frightened you so badly that you manipulated every piece of evidence to support the theory that Annie had died in an accident. And I'd like to know why you did that."

Did I imagine the flicker of fear in his cold, reptilian eyes or was it real? "We didn't have to manipulate anything," he said sharply. "We accepted the inquest verdict ... accidental death after stumbling under a truck some fifteen to thirty minutes before you found her."

"But you didn't know what the verdict was going to be when you began the investigation into Annie's death."

"So?"

"So you can't claim it as justification for your refusal to make proper inquiries. The only evidence you put forward was a description of Annie's house after she was dead, but it didn't stop you weighing in with a conclusion that she was a chronic drunk, an abuser of animals and a mental incompetent who neglected herself. I even remember your words. You said that in view of 'Mad Annie's' numerous problems your only surprise was that she'd lived as long as she had."

"Which was a view endorsed by everyone except you."

"Her doctor didn't endorse it."

He looked beyond me toward the door. "Your husband did," he murmured. "He and Mr. Williams described Annie as paralytic outside your house when they came home an hour and a half before you did. They also implied it wasn't unusual."

I followed his gaze to where Sam was hovering uncertainly in the doorway. We'd tarried too long, I thought. In the end everyone's patience ran out, even the guilty's. "They were lying," I said flatly.

"So you kept saying in '78."

"It's the truth."

"Why would they want to? If anyone was going to back you it ought to have been the man you married."

Once upon a time that had been my view, too, but only because I'd believed that truth was simple. "He was trying to protect his friend," I said carefully. "The two people I saw under the street lamp that night were Jock Williams and Sharon Percy. I suppose Jock was afraid I'd seen him ... and didn't want his wife finding out he'd been with a prostitute. So he and Sam concocted their story about going back to our house for a beer."

Drury glanced toward the door again, but Sam had disappeared. "Why didn't you tell me this twenty years ago?"

"I did. I gave you Jock's name as the man I thought I saw."

"But that's the point," he said sarcastically. "You only
thought
you saw him ... and you didn't say he was with Sharon Percy."

"At the time I didn't know who she was."

He gave a dismissive shake of his head. "Sharon had an alibi and Mr. Williams was ruled out when your husband vouched for him."

"But you never even questioned him," I said, "just accepted Sam's word against mine. But why? Wasn't a woman's word as good as a man's?"

He leaned his hands on the counter and shoved his face close to mine. "You were 'round the bend, Mrs. Ranelagh. Nothing you said was believable. Everyone agreed with that ... even your husband and mother. And they should know because they had to live with you."

If I'd had a gun at that moment, I'd have killed him.
Bang! Straight between the eyes
. How dare he quote my family at me when he had been the cause of their distrust? But hatred is a futile emotion which damages the hater more than the hated. Yes, he'd have been dead ... but so would I ... to everything that mattered to me. Perhaps my expression said more than I realized because he straightened abruptly.

"Sam and Jock invented their story to conform with what you told Jock's wife the next morning," I said evenly. "You told Libby Williams, and anyone else who was interested, that Annie had been seen staggering about the road an hour before she died, you also mentioned the outside time she could have stumbled in front of the lorry. All Sam and Jock did was recycle that information to give you what you wanted-a stupid, drunk nigger lurching around from 7:45-and the fact that none of it was true didn't bother you one little bit."

"Why would your husband and Mr. Williams do that?"

I shrugged. "It was easier for everyone if she died in an accident. For !he police, too. It meant no one had to address the issue of racism."

He stared at me for a moment, his brows furrowed in what looked like genuine perplexity. "When did your husband tell you this?"

"Six months after we left England."

It was in the wake of the Hong Kong policeman debacle. Sam had drowned himself in whisky while stomping about the room, lecturing me on my behavior. Most of it-the issue of how my "madness" was affecting his career and social life-washed over me. Some of it did not, particularly when he started to feel sorry for himself at three o'clock in the morning. He was missing England ... and it was my fault. What the hell had induced me to go spouting off to the police about murder...? He could hardly switch horses midstream ... not when poor old Jock was caught between a rock and a hard place. Half the bloody road had seen the stupid woman roaring around like a bear with a sore head. All he did was agree with them ...

I fancied I could hear Drury's brain whirring.