Lie With Me (25 page)

‘Alice forgot to lie?’

‘
Lye
. For pickling. There’s all those raw olives knocking around. Alice has discovered a clever, quick way of pickling them. She found it online. But you need lye. They’ll have it anywhere – this is Greece.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tina?’

She had already turned away. ‘Yes?’

‘It wasn’t me who killed the dog. You do believe me, don’t you?’

She nodded. ‘It was a mistake. I know.’

I was comforted, as I drove off, though of course her answer was ambiguous.

Trigaki was a dusty little town, up a hill off the main road, the outskirts semi-industrial, with small roundabouts and a web of service roads around warehouses selling bathroom fittings and garden pots in trade quantities. The centre, under its overcast sky, was busy with old men playing backgammon, a spankingly modern chemist, women in headscarves queueing by a squawking van of live chickens.

For a moment, I fantasised about driving on, through the town, out through the other side, driving down to the airport, or anywhere really. The holiday was not what I’d expected, full of death and sadness, and violence – though not of a type any of us could have predicted.

I didn’t drive on. Perhaps it would have taken a different man to do so. But how much better it would have been if I had.

Instead, I found the supermarket and parked in one of the allotted spaces outside it. Inside, it was air-conditioned – a shivery shock of cool. Everything on Alice’s list was easy to find, and I collected the items – chicken legs, lamb chops, dried pasta, feta, tomatoes, beer, charcoal, firelighters. There was no sign of lye, though I wasn’t quite sure where I would find it. Not with the olives. Not with the vinegars. I asked at the checkout but the woman shrugged and pointed through the window in the direction of the town centre. I put the box of shopping in the boot of the car and wandered back down the main street, which was dirty, the gutters full of litter. No obvious outlets selling lye but I passed an ‘internet cafe’ and, on a whim, I went inside. It was empty and, peeling off one of Alice’s notes, I paid for a coffee and fifteen minutes of computer use.

I checked my emails first. I had 127 – most of them spam, or notifications from Amazon or Abe Books. One was from a woman called Katie, apologising for not having been in touch. She had been travelling in Vietnam and Laos (‘awesome’), but she was back and she’d love to pick my brains about journalism some time. Katie, I remembered eventually, was the young thing I’d met all those months ago in the Crown and Hart. How long ago that seemed. And how changed I was now. Why on earth would a girl like her be interested in my opinion? Why would I be interested in hers?

My agent had emailed too. He’d read through the last thing I’d sent him and he was very sorry but ‘it wasn’t quite for him’. He’d also ‘been thinking’ and in the course of trying to ‘pare down his list’, he wasn’t sure I was still ‘the right fit’.

I drank my bitter coffee down in two gulps and binned his email along with the spam.

The analogue clock counting down on the screen showed five more minutes. I was about to call it a day. Instead, I had an idea. I opened a new window, and in the header for Google search I wrote: ‘Florence Hopkins, suicide’ and waited.

The internet searched; a circular disc spun across the screen. Several results.

Florence Hopkins Death Records

Birth, Marriage & Death (BMD) Unwanted Certificate Services

Eighty Suicides Linked to Coalition Cuts

Alan Sugar Slams Katie Hopkins for Controversial Comments

But halfway down: Funeral for Tragic Cambridge Student

I clicked, waited while the disc spun again, and then a window opened on the screen – it was an article from the
Hampshire Chronicle
. Two photographs began slowly to download. One was a family group, of parents clinging to each other, a young man with his arm out to steer them into a car. The other was of a young girl holding a sparkler, the glitter throwing flints of light on to her face. She had spiky hair, and a wide smile, and a familiar large gap between her two front teeth.

The article was short: ‘David Hopkins, a local businessman, and his wife Cynthia are supported by their son Andrew at the funeral of their beloved daughter, Florence, who died two weeks ago. Florence, known as Florrie, a student at Cambridge University, had been suffering from depression since the spring. ‘She was a wonderful person, a joy to teach,’ said her former headmistress. ‘She is a great loss to the college community and to her family.’’

‘David Hopkins, who is understood to have stood down as managing director of Akorn Investments, was unavailable for comment.’

I looked at the date at the top of the article. July 1994.

It took a moment to sink in. Her funeral was a month after I left Cambridge.

A motorbike-scooter wailed past the cafe. I felt the legs of the plastic chair bow as I rocked back. My fingers held the table. I felt the scratch of sugar on the Formica table, the stickiness of it under my nails.

I have been in league with cruelty . . . and charmless callous ways.

She had killed herself a matter of weeks after we had dated – or whatever it was we had done. Hell: we
had
dated. I had thought of her death as nothing to do with me. But it was.
It was the girl I had known who had killed herself, not the imaginary person she had become. We had got to know each other in April or May that year. She killed herself so soon after, in July – a month I had spent being cosseted by publishers, making the deal, being interviewed for the
Bookseller
, my talent held up and marvelled at like a precious jewel.

I sat in the cafe and I thought about Florrie properly for the first time since any of this had happened. I remembered listening to music in her room, the roughness of the wall above her bed, the thin, cheap texture of her pillow. A sunflower motif. A polka-dot top in a slippery fabric. I remember kissing her. I must have slept with her, too, but the precise memory was just out of reach. I had seduced a couple of girls in her year – freshers’ week was particularly busy – but Florrie? Of course I had. All my relationships had been sexual. Why would it have been any different with her? I felt regret, and sadness, and a vague sense of guilt – that letter I’d scrunched up and thrown in the bin. Poor Florrie. And did this new information affect my relationship with Andrew? With Alice? Were there conversations I needed to review? Behaviour of my own I needed to think more about? Surely not. Florrie had been depressed, mentally ill. It was nothing to do with me.

The man behind the counter was staring at me. ‘More money?’ he said. ‘More internet?’

I shook my head and pushed back my chair. Its plastic legs tangled with the plastic legs of the chair behind, and I kicked at them to separate them. And then I was out in the street, walking away from the cafe.

I had already started the engine when I remembered the lye. Under normal circumstances, I would have given up. But I was in a mood, dazed still by the news about Florrie, and grateful for a task both to distract my mind and delay my return.

A man I asked outside the supermarket suggested another shop – a five-minute walk in the opposite direction to the town centre. It was more of a shack really, a hotchpotch of homewares, packet food, and what looked like car parts. Two men in vest tops sat on chairs outside it, drinking tiny glasses of coffee. One of them, overhearing my conversation with the owner, gestured me over and, after establishing I had wheels at my disposal, gave me complicated directions, which I only half followed, to Praktiker, a shop on the other side of town.

I returned to the car and drove aimlessly for a while in circles on the outskirts of Trigaki. I found myself deep in the mini-industrial area when I saw the large red sign reading Praktiker across a low-slung home improvement centre.

Inside, among the ranks of paints, buckets and small-scale agricultural equipment, I was directed to a row of large plastic bottles, which, I was assured by an overalled assistant, was lye – sodium hydroxide. As I paid, it struck me that the container was identical to the container I had picked up in the shed. Perhaps I needn’t have gone to so much effort.

The police were back. The same car parked in the yard – white with blue writing and a strip of rust above the front right wheel arch. Bloody hell. Groundhog Day. Were they ever going to leave us alone? I pulled up behind as close as I could.

Tina met me as I was getting out of the car. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said.

‘
I’ve
got a visitor? What do you mean?’

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing.’

She took the box of shopping out of the boot and carried it around the side of the house. I followed, hands empty but for the plastic bag containing the bottle of lye.

The terrace looked different without the sun, the view flat. No light and shade, no pools of sunshine, no pockets of shadow, just gloomy. The spikes of lavender in their black-streaked pots looked menacing.

Voices at the far end by the kitchen door. Gavras standing, a cup of coffee in his hand; a burst of laughter, all chummy.

He saw me coming towards him and he handed the cup of coffee to someone standing half in the kitchen, then made a wiping movement with the ball of his hands, knocking them together, removing crumbs.

‘Mr Morris,’ he said. ‘We were beginning to think you were never coming back.’

‘Just doing a spot of shopping,’ I said. ‘We’re having a barbecue.’

Alice stepped out of the kitchen doorway. She was wearing the Topshop bikini, with a towel over her shoulders – an odd choice, I had time to think, for an overcast day. She did her thing with her lip, biting it, twisting it to one side. ‘Paul. Lieutenant Gavras has some questions . . . Could you . . .’ She raised both hands, palms out. ‘Do you want to do it here?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, before realising she wasn’t addressing me. I had already sat down. The cushion was damp; I felt the wetness seep into the seat of my trousers. I rested the plastic bag at my feet.

Gavras looked at Alice, and he looked at his watch, and then, making a decision, he pulled the chair out opposite me and sat down, too. He was carrying a briefcase and he snapped the clasp and took out the notebook from the previous day.

I turned my head to catch Alice’s eye. Tina was moving about in the kitchen now, putting away the shopping. The suck of the fridge, the click of cupboards. Otherwise, the house seemed quiet. ‘Where are the others?’ I said.

‘They’ve gone into Stefanos for a coffee.’

I nodded, as if it were a matter on which my opinion had any bearing, and turned back to the policeman. ‘OK. So what’s this about? More about the dog? How can I help you?’

‘So, Mr Morris. I am sorry to inconvenience you in the middle of your holiday. Nothing . . . nothing . . . too important.’

‘Good.’

‘I can’t believe how busy I’ve been this week. A rape, a dog with his throat cut. Normally it is so quiet here in Agios Stefanos. How much more interesting life has been since you arrived, Mr Morris.’

I shrugged. ‘Neither of those things have anything to do with me.’

Gavras spun his open notebook round and peered down. ‘A few minor matters,’ he said in a conversational tone. ‘A couple of curiosities.’

‘Go on.’

‘You arrived, you say, on the Thomas Cook flight from Gatwick on Monday?’

I tried to will the blood not to rise to my face. I had a split second to decide. If Alice hadn’t been present, I’d have told the truth. But in that split second, I cared more for her opinion than his. I managed to say, ‘Yup . . .’

‘Do you still have your boarding pass, or ticket?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

He nodded very slightly. ‘So you were still at home in London on Sunday night?’

‘Yes.’

‘In the property you own at . . .’ He looked down at his notebook and read out Alex’s address in Bloomsbury.

I hardly faltered. ‘That would be correct.’

‘Odd,’ he said musingly. ‘The registered owner of that property is a Mr Alex Young.’

Alice took a step closer. She was frowning, her head on one side.

I said: ‘Alex Young is the freeholder.’

Gavras studied me, his chin lifted, the corners of his mouth downturned. ‘Ah. I see. We can return to that. At any rate, wherever you left home that morning, you took the Thomas Cook flight, leaving London Gatwick at 5.10 a.m., and landing at Ionnasis Vikelas International Airport, Pyros at 7.40 a.m.’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Morris,’ he said kindly. ‘It doesn’t take my team long to check these sorts of things. Passenger lists.’

I rotated my shoulders as if they were stiff.

‘Where are you going with this?’ Alice asked.

‘I am just keen to establish that Mr Morris was not in Pyros town on Sunday night at the Pig and Whistle bar?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘And Laura Cratchet is unknown to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Despite the fact that Mr Hopkins remembers you saying hello to her in Stefanos earlier during the evening of the rape, greeting her –’ he looked down again at his notes ‘– “like an old friend”?’

‘I think she said hello to me first. I had seen her on the bus.’

‘And noticed her?’

I closed my eyes briefly. ‘Enough to recognise her later, that’s all.’

‘And when I saw you in the nightclub on your own on Thursday night, you had just wandered in by accident?’

‘Not by accident, but as I explained, because I thought I saw Andrew going in there.’

Alice was standing right next to me now. She brought her hand up and rubbed the ball of it across her eye. Then, taking it away, she said, her voice cool: ‘Mr Morris has confirmed his address and the arrival of his flight from London, and has reassured you that he was neither in Pyros town on Sunday night, nor a close personal friend of the rape victim. Was that all you needed, Lieutenant Gavras?’

Gavras was writing in his notebook. He put his pen down on the table. ‘One other curiosity.’ He sighed. ‘A conversation we had regarding the guard dog.’