Lie With Me (28 page)

In the front yard, I opened the driver’s door for her and she got in. I walked in front of the car and then got in on the passenger side. ‘I’ll come too,’ I said. ‘Just down to the village. It’ll be nice to get out for a bit.’

She looked across at me. ‘OK,’ she said, switching on the engine. The car filled with 1980s alternative rock. Tracey Thorn sang about how much safer it was to break down and cry. Alice spun the air-conditioning to full – hot air blasting – and turned the car round. Angelo, the young policeman with the good looks, was standing at the entrance to the yard. Alice rolled her window down. ‘Lieutenant Gavras has said it’s OK for me to go into town.’

‘You can go. But him –’ he jerked his chin at me. ‘He must stay.’

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ Alice said. ‘We’re not going to be long.’

The policeman shook his head. I didn’t move, but Alice leant across me. A whiff of orange flower and fig; a tang of chlorine. She pulled the handle to open the passenger door, just a crack, as far as she could reach. ‘Maybe you’d better do what you’re told.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ She kissed my cheek. ‘I won’t be long.’

Angelo came round to my side of the car and pulled the door wide. I stepped out, put my hands up in an ironic gesture of surrender. The door shut behind me and I heard the bang of the policeman’s hand on the roof. The engine turned and Alice drove slowly off. I watched the vehicle bump down the drive and then I turned away and walked quickly around the side of the house, and headed for my fag bench. From inside the house, I could hear Andrew talking on the phone – pompous, lawyerly.

‘. . . Grounds for that would need to be verified . . .’

I lit up, hoping I was out of sight. I felt mildly disconcerted at being stuck there, trapped,
bored
. Nothing more.

Andrew came out of his bedroom doors, slipping his phone into his back pocket. He didn’t see me at first, but he looked around, chin forward, and then came straight towards me.

‘Paul,’ he said, sitting down on the bench. ‘Hi. I thought you’d gone with Alice.’

‘Apparently she’s the only one of us who is allowed to leave.’

He moved his head up and down slowly, a careful nod. ‘Hm.’ Boring, I know. Some things just won’t go away.’

‘I don’t know why he still wants to talk to me about the poor girl’s rape.’

‘Unfortunate it took place the night you arrived in Stefanos.’

‘A coincidence.’

‘Notice—’ he laughed, ‘I didn’t say “the night you arrived in
Pyros
”.’

‘A minor misunderstanding,’ I said, looking at Andrew carefully. ‘I’m going to clear that up when I speak to Gavras.’

He swept some invisible dirt from his shorts. ‘Of course it’s a misunderstanding, but you can see how Gavras might make the connection. Policemen being what they are.’

‘Luckily, I was up here at the house that evening. I was nowhere near Stefanos. I’ve got an alibi. Alice was with me.’

He said: ‘I think Gavras’s issue is that you don’t actually have an alibi?’ He used the upward intonation of his children, making a statement sound like a question. ‘The main problem, annoyingly, is that she wasn’t with you? She was with me?’

I tipped another cigarette out of the paper packet, though I didn’t light it, just rolled it between my fingers. ‘Yes,’ I said carefully. ‘I know. The two of you were collecting Louis from the harbour, later in the evening than anyone –’ I shrugged lightly ‘– sorry, than
Gavras
is aware of. I’m hoping he’s going to drop the matter, because I really don’t want to have to go into all that.’

‘Yes, he let a beat pass, stroking the carved wood of the bench between us. I don’t think he needs to know Louis was in the village, do you?’

‘I don’t want to tell him, but I’d tell the truth if necessary. I’m sure Alice will too, if she thinks I’m in any trouble. She loves me. She’ll back me.’

He pulled his chin in. ‘Back you over her son? I don’t think so.’

I felt something in me sink. ‘I don’t think he did it, but I still think he should be made to own up. I’m sure Alice does too. I don’t know why you would stop her.’

‘No, Paul,’ he said. ‘No one is going to make Louis do anything. Be realistic. Alice’ll do anything to protect her son, and under the circumstances, so will I.’

‘But the truth – that matters.’

Andrew said, ‘The truth is a strange thing, Paul. All truth is subjective. We all have responsibilities. Didn’t we all hear you suggest that what Louis needed was to have sexual intercourse? Do you think the other boys didn’t tell him? And didn’t you refer to those half-clad girls as slappers, or was it jailbait? I forget your exact term.’

‘But if there is the slightest doubt that Louis might be a
rapist
?’

‘Again – a subjective term. Take Florrie . . .’ His tone was so casual and calm, you wouldn’t have known there was any emotion behind his words. ‘My sister. You made certain assumptions. And she allowed you because she thought herself in love.’

‘What do you mean, “assumptions”?’

‘You know – that she was more experienced than she was, that she was “up for it”, an easy lay.’

‘I don’t think I—’

‘You did, Paul. She was a virgin and it meant a lot to her. Do me the favour of not even trying to pretend it meant anything to you.’

My chest had tightened. I felt floored, found it hard to breathe.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, unable to meet his eye.

I fumbled to light my cigarette.

‘It might just as well have been rape for the amount of thought you gave to her. You didn’t for a minute think about the damage you might be doing.’

I managed to bring a cigarette to my lips but I was having trouble lighting it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I didn’t realise . . .’

‘No, you didn’t.’ I was aware of him looking at me, sizing me up, and I wished he wouldn’t. ‘She loved you,’ he added after a moment, ‘that’s the thing.’

‘If I had had any idea . . .’

‘That she cared so much? Or that she would kill herself?’ He let out a laugh that had no humour in it.

I managed to light the cigarette. ‘It was a mistake.’

‘Yes. We all make mistakes. And sometimes we need to live with the consequences.’

I stood up and left him then, my eyes blurring, the world out of focus. In the bedroom I sat on the bed. My legs were shaking, my heart pounding. The heat of the room, the lazy, pointless droning of the fan. My clothes spilled from the holdall. My books – the Dickens, the Truman Capote,
Moby-Dick
– were on the floor. A bag of shopping I’d brought in here by mistake. I put my head between my legs and took some deep breaths. The walls were closing in. I couldn’t stay here any longer. I needed to get away. I didn’t want to look Andrew in the eye again. I didn’t want to think any more about Florrie. And I didn’t want to have to talk to Gavras, to wriggle and explain. I needed to get out of the house. If I got down to the village and found Alice before they did, if I explained, got her on side, then everything would be all right. This whole Greece thing – she was right, it had been a terrible mistake. I needed to get back to London, where she and I could be together properly, without Andrew, without Gavras, where everything could be sorted. That’s right. I just needed to get away. I went into the bathroom and had a long shower. When I came out, I put on my linen trousers, washed but a little crumpled, and a denim button-down shirt, slipping my passport and wallet into my back pocket, picked up
In Cold Blood
.

A shadow passed at the window, darkened the vertical crack between the two shutters, and stayed there. I heard someone clear their throat.

I opened the door. Angelo, the handsome policeman, was standing outside. He stepped back.

‘OK?’ I said.

He nodded.

Tina was sitting at the table, reading an old copy of
Vogue
, and I pulled one of the wicker chairs out from under the table and placed it a few feet from her.

‘Alice not back?’ I said.

‘No.’

A fly buzzed. A Coke can lay on its side at the edge of the flower bed; wasps hovered over it, one of them landed and crawled inside, its body quivering. Tina let out a deep sigh. I looked up. Her paints and watercolour book were at her feet. She was picking at her nails, then biting the skin to the side of her thumb, frowning, as if it were a job that had to be done.

I read for a bit, and then I put my book down carefully on the ground. ‘Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee? Glass of water?’

She looked at me for a moment, as if she needed time for the words to make sense, and then said, ‘Oh. A coffee. OK. If you’re making one.’

I stood up. ‘What about you?’ I said to Angelo. ‘Coffee?’

He moved his legs slightly apart, rooting himself in, and shook his head.

‘Lieutenant Gavras? Do you know where he is? He might want one.’

The policeman shrugged. I walked round the terrace to the front of the house and stood in the yard looking around. No sign of Gavras there. I walked a very small distance down the drive and then saw him, about 100 yards away. He had his back to me and he was talking into his phone, kicking at the wiry plants on the verge.

I went back the way I had come. ‘Can’t find him,’ I said.

In the kitchen, I filled the kettle to the brim with water and spooned coffee into the cafetiere. Then I stepped outside again. ‘Andrew want one, do you think?’ I said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about your colleagues?’ I said to the policeman. ‘Can I get them anything to drink? Hot work down there.’

He looked confused. I mimed drinking from a cup and pointed to the area beyond the pool. He shrugged.

‘Maybe water?’ I said. ‘I could go and ask.’

He shrugged again.

‘OK. I’ll do that.’

‘Or you could just take a jug down?’ Tina called, but I had already set off down the steps, taking them two at a time, adrenalin squeezing my chest, my eyes filled with explosions of light and colour.

I scrambled down to the bottom, tripping on the last step and stumbling on to my knees. I stood up, pulled myself together, and walked cautiously the few steps to the pool terrace. I glimpsed two of Gavras’s men, at the far side of the water, in the trees down the slope to the right – where I had explored earlier in the week. The flash of a white shirt. A bowed head. One of the two men walked a short distance and then stopped and said something. The other man grunted. They both had their backs to me.

On this side, the pool was built up on a platform. From the edge, the land dropped at an abrupt angle: a scarp of red earth tangled with low undergrowth that ended in a tumble of concrete, stones and bricks: rubble left by whoever had built the pool. I’d have to clamber down here, without attracting any attention, if I were to have any chance of getting into the field beyond.

I walked to the edge and shuffled slowly downwards on my bottom, using my arms as leverage. At the base of the slope, I crouched, listening for sounds of alarm. OK so far. Keeping my head down, bending over as far as I could, I didn’t so much run as lollop over some thistly rocky ground into an area of scrub where I fell to my knees and waited. In front of me was a haphazard pile of white stones, what was left of the wall, a dip in the land, a ditch, and beyond that the field where I could see the hulk of a rusty yellow digger, its claw resting like an elbow on the churned earth. Sweat had collected on my brow, and across my chest. I could taste blood at the back of my throat. My hands stung where I’d scratched them on a spiky plant.
Shit
. I didn’t have long.

I peered over the pile of stones, using it as cover. In the distance, I could see the headland, beyond which lay Agios Stefanos, and a triangle of dark blue sea. I’d have liked to have waited a moment, to have scouted out the field from this vantage point, to check there weren’t any more of Gavras’s men waiting beyond the brow, but I didn’t have time. I hoiked my leg over the pile of stones. They shifted under my weight, clattered off, a mini avalanche. I scraped my back, lowering myself into the ditch. I was at the edge of the construction site, the ground on this section riven with deeply grooved tracks. A hundred metres away what they’d built of the main hotel sat like an alien landing pad. On one side of it a heap of sand, on the other a mountain of gravel: for a moment I considered hiding in one of those, letting the weight slither over me, waiting until the heat passed.

No. Madness. Keep moving, that was the answer. I ran quickly, taking long strides, along the edge of the field, towards the gate, paused there to look up and down the lane. No sign of Gavras. Perhaps he had already gone back up to the house; perhaps he was looking for me.

I clambered over the gate and ran down the lane towards the main road. It was speed that counted now, putting distance between me and him, me and
them
, heels rubbing, chest hurting, getting the hell out of there.

I paused at the junction. Should I abandon my hopes of finding Alice and cut loose on my own? I could turn left, head away from the port, towards the relative anonymity of Trigaki, hitch a lift or hail a bus? Somehow get to the airport? And then I thought of her face, the way she twisted her mouth when she was thinking, how she laughed sometimes at the ordinary things I said. A moment of indecision. Has my whole life since been down to that moment? I don’t know. You can drive yourself mad wondering.

I turned right. The road here was wide but it narrowed as it fell downhill, the olive groves on either side pressing in. White heat, black shade: a chequerboard. I was running at a slower pace, in the gutter. A mini-bus came towards me, with Delfinos Beach Club written on the side, and I stood back as far as I could to let it pass.

I had reached the lay-by where the bus had dropped me on the first day, by the shrine, when I heard a car coming down the hill behind me. I leapt behind the shrine, ducking down. The car passed – a flash of white and blue. I strained my ears – a pitch in acceleration, the car slowing down, the swish and rattle of the wheel on the road, another car coming – and then the engine was killed. Slammed doors. Voices.