Lie With Me (27 page)

A small procession. The women in the white overalls came first. When they reached the terrace, they stood silently on either side of the path, waiting. Two men were bringing something up, carrying it between them, at the lowest reach of their arms, slowly, carefully, gingerly, keeping their burden level, trying not to jolt it. It was light. The men weren’t struggling under the physical weight. But there was something in their posture, in their expression, as if this was the heaviest burden they’d ever carried. The first man, Gavras’s handsome sidekick, appeared at the top of the path; following him a few feet behind, the bald policeman from the beach. When they were both on the flat of the terrace, they laid their burden down.

It was a stretcher. On it was a piece of plastic sheeting. And under the plastic sheeting was an angular mass, flat, pale, soft, darkness, a smear of mud. Cloth and bones, and sinew. Not much. A handful of dust and dirt. The bald policeman leant forward with his elbows on his knees to get back his breath. Angelo, Gavras’s sidekick, crouched down to readjust the plastic, to tuck it in at one side. He did it delicately, with reverence. His throat moved; he swallowed, closing his eyes.

‘I am very sorry.’ Gavras had come up behind and was standing at the top of the path, his face grim. ‘Mrs Mackenzie – I . . . I am so very sorry.’

Alice had stood up. Her hands were pressed to her cheeks. She was staring at the body on the ground with pity and terror in her eyes. Blotches had appeared on her throat.

Andrew took a couple of steps forward and the chair behind him clattered over. His eyes were hollow. ‘Is it a body?’ he said. ‘Is it Jasmine?’

Tina in the kitchen doorway let out a moan.

‘I can’t say anything for sure, but we have found some remains. I’m sorry.’

I felt a hard lump at the back of my throat. Even at this point I was still expecting a different explanation. Some ancient horror, some mechanical mishap, some misunderstanding. Now I could feel their shock like ice on the surface of my own skin. I could feel it burning on every nerve ending.

Angelo got back into position, checked he was in sync with his partner, and the two policemen lifted the stretcher up again and carried it, past the teenage girls, around the side of the house and out of sight. The women in the white overalls followed. Gavras stayed where he was.

‘It seems extraordinary if she was here on this land, so close to the house for all these years,’ I said.

Alice spoke for the first time. Her voice came out gravelly, almost inaudible: ‘Have you told Yvonne?’ She cleared her throat and repeated the question more loudly. ‘Have you told Yvonne?’

Gavras put his head on one side. ‘We don’t know for sure that it is Jasmine Hurley. Relevant procedures need to take place.’

‘You’ve found a body, haven’t you? Who else is it going to be? Of course it’s Jasmine.’

‘Mrs Mackenzie, I understand you are upset . . .’

‘HAVE  YOU  TOLD  YVONNE?’

Gavras stood up. ‘I’m on my way to talk to Mrs Hurley now. Some of my men will stay on the property while we arrange for a thorough search.’ He looked quickly from left to right, apparently overcome by indecision. ‘Um, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Is it all right if . . . We’ll need to search. We’ll need to talk to you, if it’s . . . Even if it isn’t . . .’ He seemed to have lost his confidence, his arrogance.

Andrew stood up and took control. He put his hand out – an invitation to Gavras to shake it. ‘We’ll be here. No one is going anywhere,’ he said. ‘Is it all right if we use the house? Yes? That OK? We’ll just be here.’

Gavras took his hand. ‘Thank you. Yes. Yes. I am sure that is . . . yes. I will . . . I will be back in, um, due course.’

He turned and took a step away and then he paused. ‘Mr Hopkins? If I could have a word?’

Andrew peeled himself from the table, resting his hand very lightly for a moment on Alice’s shoulder, and the two men walked together across the terrace where they stood in conversation.

I tried to follow their lips, to read what they were saying.

‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ I said to Alice.

She didn’t answer. I turned. Her phone was on the table but she’d gone.

‘Alice?’ I called. ‘Tina?’

No answer.

Andrew was walking back across the terrace.

‘Paul,’ he said. ‘A word, if I may.’

A word
. Same phrase Gavras had used. I didn’t answer but nodded. He had to run everything, organise everyone.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

‘No.’

‘OK, then. I should tell you the lieutenant is particularly keen that you shouldn’t leave the house for the time being. I’ve told him I will ensure that.’

‘Me?’

‘I know a lot else is going on but he still has a few further questions for you, regarding your relationship with Laura Cratchet. Nothing to worry about unduly.’

‘
Laura Cratchet
?’ It took me a second to work out who he meant. ‘I have no relationship with Laura Cratchet.’

‘I’m only repeating what he said.’ He was loving it. The little fucker.

I stared at him but I wasn’t going to stare him out. Behind him the sea crawled. A motorboat sped, churning a tiny white path like an aeroplane trail.

I went straight to the bedroom to look for Alice. Tina was leaving as I got there. She brushed past me in the doorway. ‘Be kind,’ she murmured.

Alice was lying on the bed, her dress wrinkled up and twisted around her thighs, damp, her face buried in the pillow.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you were wrong.’ I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair, noticed the pearls of perspiration on her forehead. ‘I’m so sorry. If it’s right. It’s just awful – for Yvonne, for you, for everyone.’

She let out a deep, long, trembling sigh, and I forgot my own worry as another of those overwhelming tides of tenderness and pity crashed over me. I thought about all the time and money she had spent on this campaign, how much of her own heart she had given over to it, how the loss of Jasmine, a girl she had never met, had driven her half mad, and I wanted to wrap her in a blanket, and to hold her in my arms, close to my chest.

I pulled a strand of hair loose and smoothed it back. I said quite a lot more about how much I knew people depended on her, and how extraordinarily self-sacrificing she had been, how much she had supported Yvonne, how much she had personally shouldered, what a burden the hope had been, and what an amazing mother she was. ‘I think you’re . . .’ I began to say, and then my voice cracked, ‘wonderful.’

She didn’t say anything.

The afternoon lengthened, the heat sank from the day. After a while, I lay down next to her.

Andrew was standing in the doorway. A dark shape. He couldn’t have been there long, watching us. He stretched out his hand. Alice’s phone lay on his palm. He said, cupping it with his other hand, ‘It’s Karl. I answered. I couldn’t not.’

She sat up, stared at him. Her hair clung, damp, to her face. Red creases from the pillow.

I thought of Salome bringing the head of John the Baptist to Herodias.

Andrew said: ‘He wants to speak to you.’

Alice swept her legs sideways off the bed and stumbled across to him, her dress crinkled. She tucked her hair behind her ears and, taking the phone from him, pushed open the door to the terrace. I heard her voice, distinct, outside. ‘My dear Karl. How is she? . . . I’m sure . . . Unimaginable . . . The worst . . .’ A noise, half-sigh, half-shudder. ‘Can she bear to? If she wants to. If she can. Yes, of course.’

A long silence, and then, her voice clear again, ‘Darling. My darling girl. We don’t know for sure yet, but yes . . . Words can’t express . . .’ A long silence and then: ‘Yes. I know.’

Andrew had followed her out. I wondered if he had his arm around her.

‘We’ve been asked to stay here,’ she said. ‘But I’ll come to see you the moment I can.’ A long pause, and then her voice softer: ‘We don’t know . . .’ Another silence. ‘All my thoughts, all my love . . . Yvonne. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Nothing for a moment, and then she said: ‘She’s gone. She’s hung up.’

Alice came back into the room alone. I was lying where I’d been when she left. I hadn’t moved. ‘How is she taking it?’ I said.

‘Still in shock. The police are with her.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘If nothing else, they’ll want to see how she reacts.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Haven’t you ever wondered?’

‘Paul. Don’t.’

‘Would she have known about the well? Whoever killed Jasmine might have known about the well. How close was the apartment block where they were staying?’

‘For goodness sake, Paul, not now.’

She crossed to the bathroom and I heard the sound of water splashing into the sink. She washed her face, I think, and cleaned her teeth. I sensed the dampness of her cheeks when she lay back down, smelt the mint of her breath.

It wasn’t me that started it. I wouldn’t have dared. She peeled her dress off, followed by the red bikini she was wearing underneath – and, naked, she rolled on top of me, pressing the length of her body against mine, and brought her mouth down hard. I kissed her with some alarm, but equally hard as it seemed to be what she was expecting. She pinned my arms above my head and pulled up my T-shirt. Her hands moved under the waistband of my shorts, her knee thrust between my thighs, her breasts against my chest. She rubbed her body from side to side, pushing much harder than I would have dared.

In one movement I wriggled my arms free and lifted her until she was underneath me. Her breathing was fast, her eyes tightly closed. She tugged again at my zip. I bent to graze her mouth and then kept her waiting for as long as I could before I was inside her. Her mouth opened, her tongue sought mine. When I lowered my face, I felt her teeth pushing hard against my lower lip. I pulled away. Her hands were tangled in my hair. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said. ‘Don’t you fucking stop.’

So I didn’t. But I slowed it down. I slowed it right down until she could bear it no longer. And I watched her face again as she cried out, as, finally, she came.

We didn’t eat that evening, or leave the room. I don’t know what the others did, whether Andrew forced them to carry on as if nothing had happened. I don’t know if the police left the house alone for the night, or whether one of Gavras’s men stood guard at the gate. Alice and I stayed where we were. When we were thirsty we drank from the tap. Mainly she slept and I lay next to her, listening to her breathe.

I should have felt wonderful. The big man. Her first orgasm in more than ten years. She didn’t any more, she had said.
I don’t come.
Why didn’t I feel pleased with myself? Six months previously that’s all I’d have thought about. But something in me had changed. I felt a deep, heart-ripping tenderness for her, and with it a terror I couldn’t explain.

Chapter Nineteen

Gavras was back early the next morning, with a search warrant for the house and grounds. There were men in overalls everywhere, in the yard, and in the garage, in the pool area, in the copse. It was like being invaded by ants. I felt itchy and claustrophobic, desperate to get out.

I was sitting on the terrace with Alice, Andrew and Tina – all four of us in a mood that was both desultory and tense – when Gavras came over to join us. He was cleanly shaved, and wearing a newly ironed white shirt, which looked a little tight around the collar. He kept moving his neck, jutting his chin forward, as if trying to loosen it. He sat next to me, his hand on my chair, apologised for ‘ruining our holiday’ and, at a prompt from Andrew, cautiously filled us in on what he knew so far.

The remains had been sent to the medical examiner in Pyros town for DNA testing and it now seemed very likely that they belonged to Jasmine. The coroner – the middle-aged man in the blue suit, it turned out – had been unable to pinpoint the date of death with any exactitude, but had agreed that the body had been in the well for ‘between five and ten years’. Growth plates, bone composition and sutures in the skull suggested it belonged to a Caucasoid teenager, between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, not fully grown. The skeleton had a female pelvic structure. Most importantly fabric fragments found with the body matched the description of clothes Jasmine had been wearing, though there was another garment that didn’t. There was no doubt this was a murder enquiry. She hadn’t fallen. She had been thrown in the well, after death. A blunt force trauma to the head. Subsequent to that, someone had recently tried to destroy evidence.

‘I can’t believe she has been here all this time,’ Tina said. ‘I just don’t understand.’

Gavras told us he personally would be taking a back seat in the investigation – a superior officer would be arriving soon, and he would be handing over to him. In the meantime, he was keen to tie up a few loose threads regarding other recent crimes. He was getting close, he said, smiling.

He turned to me. ‘In fact, Mr Morris, I have a few more questions regarding the inconsistencies we discussed on Saturday.’

I nodded, unperturbed. I had known this moment would come. ‘Yes. I understand.’

‘Maybe we could meet in private later this morning?’

‘That would be fine by me.’

He looked at me for a moment, and then also nodded. Directing his attention to Alice, he told her that Yvonne was in ‘an extreme state of emotion’. A doctor had been called and was on his way up from Trigaki. But Yvonne was adamant she wanted to speak to Alice first.

I caught Tina’s eye. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘So I give my permission,’ Gavras continued, ‘for you to join her in the hotel. One of my officers will be there when you get there.’

Alice stood up. ‘I’ll go now.’ She picked up her car keys from the table. ‘Tina, could you check the kids are OK when they wake? I haven’t had a chance to talk to them properly. Andrew, we should start working on a press release. It’s going to leak, isn’t it? We need to do that before it does.’

‘I’ll come with you to the car,’ I said. As we walked away from the table, I put my arm around her shoulders and felt her tremble.