Shape of Snakes

'Why?'

'He's a boring little squirt with a power complex,' I said. 'Even his wife didn't fancy him, so I don't know what makes you think I would.'

'It was just a question,' he said huffily.

'What brought it on?'

'He wasn't surprised when I told him you'd taken up Annie's cause again. He said he'd been expecting it.'

'So?' I asked curiously.

'He seems to know you better than I do. I thought you'd forgotten all about her. You haven't mentioned her name in twenty years.'

'You asked me not to.'

'Did I?' he said with a puzzled frown. 'I don't remember.'

I wasn't sure how genuine the frown was, so I changed the subject. 'You shouldn't believe everything Jock tells you,' I said. 'He's needling you, just as he's needling you about how much money he has. He enjoys making you squirm.'

'Why?'

I shook my head at his naivete. The trouble with my husband, I sometimes thought, was that he was too ready to take people at face value. It should have been a disadvantage to him in his career, but oddly enough it worked the other way because people responded positively to his easy acceptance of the image they wanted to present. When I first knew him, I thought he was using a peculiarly sophisticated form of reverse psychology, but as time passed, I came to understand that he genuinely had no conception of the sides that exist in most people's natures. It was his most attractive quality ... It was also the most irritating...

'Jock's a stirrer,' I said lightly. 'He resents other people's happiness ... particularly where relationships are concerned. He's only ever known disasters ... divorced parents ... a brother who killed himself ... a failed marriage ... no children.' I pointed a pan scourer at Sam's heart. 'He wouldn't be needling you at all if you'd told him about your coronary and hadn't lied about how much money you've made. As far as he's concerned you've got everything. Health. Wealth. Happiness. Early retirement. A faithful wife. And sons.'

Sam laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the ceiling. 'He never got over his brother's death,' he said.

'So you always say, but you never explain why.'

'I didn't want you jumping to conclusions.'

I frowned at him. 'How did the brother kill himself?'

'Hanged himself from a tree one day. There was no suicide note so the police thought it was murder and most of the suspicion fell on Jock because he took some money from the kid's bedroom after he was dead. In the end the coroner accepted that the boy had been depressed about his parents' divorce and came down on the side of suicide, but it wrecked the entire family, according to Jock. They all ended up blaming each other.'

'That's sad,' I said, meaning it. 'How old was he?'

'Sixteen. Three years younger than Jock.'

'God, that really is sad. What happened to the parents?'

'Jock lost all contact with them after the divorce. I don't think he even knows where they are anymore ... whether they're alive ... or whether they still care about him. He claims it doesn't worry him, then spends every waking hour trying to prove he's a man to be reckoned with.' Sam lowered his eyes to look at me. 'It doesn't stop him being an arrogant, self-serving bastard but it probably explains the reasons behind it.'

It explained a lot, I thought, as I promised to make a point of being pleasant when Jock came back with the name of St. Mark's vicar. What it didn't explain was where Jock had found the extra money that had allowed him to trade up his share in 21 Graham Road for a more impressive, and expensive, property near Richmond Park.

It was Wednesday before I was able to speak to Peter Stanhope in person. My previous calls had been answered by a recorded message and it seemed unreasonable to fill his tape with long explanations of who I was and why I wanted to talk to him. His new parish was in Exeter, about sixty miles west of Dorchester, and I was about to begin a letter to him when he answered the phone on Wednesday morning.

I had spoken to him only once when we lived in Richmond, and I wasn't confident that he'd remember me as well as I remembered him. I gave him my name and said I wanted to talk to him about Annie Butts, 'the black woman who was run over by a truck.'

There was a long pause and I had time to recall Libby's description of him as 'a fat little bloke with sweaty palms.' I was beginning to wonder if the reason for the silence was because the phone had slipped from his hand, when he suddenly barked, 'Did you say Ranelagh? Any connection with the woman who claimed Annie was murdered?'

'That's who 1 am,' I said. 'I didn't realize the name would mean anything to you.'

'Oh, goodness me, yes! You were quite famous for a while.'

'For all of fifteen minutes,' I agreed dryly. 'They weren't the most pleasant fifteen minutes of my life.'

'No, I don't suppose they were.' A pause. 'You had quite a tough time of it afterward.'

'Yes.'

He clearly didn't like one-word answers and sought for a change of subject. 'Someone told me you and your husband went abroad. Did that work out all right?'

I guessed it was his polite way of asking me if I was still married, so I assured him I was, gave him a thumbnail sketch of our twenty years away, mentioned my two boys, then asked him if I might pay him a visit. 'To talk about Annie's neighbors,' I explained, wishing I could put a little more enthusiasm into my voice at the prospect of seeing him again. I was relying on his sense of duty to agree to the meeting, but I didn't believe he had any more relish for