Until Death

by Knight, Ali

  ‘And what’s so special about this ship?’

  ‘It’s got an engine that makes it go fast.’

  ‘Yes it has, Yannis.’

  ‘And it’s unsinkable.’ He jumped up and down on his short legs.

  Christos turned to his guests. ‘This ship is the triumph of man over his environment. In the past, when man crossed the oceans he had to wait and he had to pray. His livelihood, his very life, were at the mercy of the wind, the currents and the ocean. There were so many hurdles on his voyage. Time and tide used to wait for no man – we used to say that you couldn’t swim against the tide. But that’s not true any more. We have tamed nature, beaten it into submission with technology. We control it, not the other way round. The Saracen is powerful enough to ride out a hurricane – it is unsinkable. I would like to propose a toast, to the Saracen, to Malamatos Shipping, to our power to face down our competitors, and to the future of this company – to Yannis here!’

  The room roared its approval, glasses rising towards the lights in the ceiling. Kelly dug her fingernails into her palms to keep herself under control. Her eyes had come to rest not on the ships in their glass cases, but the fish tank, with its little stream of air bubbles that rose to the surface and disappeared. Amber and Michael had not had the air they needed. They hadn’t been able to swim against the tide …

  She retreated downstairs to the ensuite bathroom and splashed water on her face, concentrating on calming herself till the panic attack faded. She needed a pill for the anxiety that was beginning to dance up her spine, that threatened to burst through the top of her skull. She wasn’t proud but sometimes those pills were the crutch that got her through the days, that made it all seem better. They were also the threat that Christos held so effectively over her head. The reason why she was still here suffering the indignities thrown her way by his mistress. Why she lived in fear of the man she had once loved.

  Why had Sylvie said to Florence that Kelly was going away? Where was she supposed to be going? She redid the mask of her make-up and dragged herself back to the party. As she climbed the stairs she met Sylvie coming down again. ‘Did you miss Yannis and Christos’s speech? It was a blast. Your son holds a room just like his father.’

  Christos will never leave me for you, she thought. How she hated this woman spouting her superficial platitudes. Christos doted on the children, that much was clear. They had tried for children of their own for eighteen months with no success until they had discovered his low sperm count. They had adopted Yannis soon after and the subject was never mentioned again but she had always been made to feel that the fertility failure was hers rather than his. Even Medea had once alluded to it as her problem.

  She went back into the room, walked towards Christos. ‘Hey there.’ She turned and was blinded by a camera flash. She grabbed the man’s arm with so much force he actually winced.

  ‘No photos. There are to be no photos. Delete it now.’ She couldn’t even manage a smile. ‘Please.’

  4

  Kelly was dragged from sleep the next morning at six thirty by the drilling of the doorbell. She staggered from bed, confused at who could be calling so early. Christos was in the shower so Kelly answered the door. A woman stared up at her through the video camera. ‘This is Customs and Excise at the Port of London. We have a warrant to search your property. Can we come in please?’

  Kelly typed in the code to work the lift and ran into the bathroom to tell Christos. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a top and came back out into the corridor and stood staring at the lift doors, straining to hear the faint clanking as it rose towards her. Two seconds and they would be here. The shower fell silent. Kelly swallowed, mentally checking where the children were: Yannis was pulling on socks in his bedroom opposite her, Florence was upstairs, probably slurping milk from a cereal bowl. Before she had time to process what this visit might mean, the lift doors opened. Four people were suddenly in the foyer as Christos emerged from the bedroom in a towelling robe, his hair glossy with water.

  A young woman who wasn’t yet thirty stepped forward. ‘Mr Malamatos, my name’s Georgie Bell. I’m a criminal investigation officer at Customs and Excise. We have a warrant to search your property for evidence of suspected customs fraud.’ She handed Christos a piece of paper. ‘Your offices are also being searched—’

  ‘What fraud?’

  ‘A shipment of Brazilian rosewood was found when your ship the SS Sea Shuttle docked at Silvertown on the 3rd of October. Your company is listed as the shipper and owner of the goods. We had a tip-off the wood was on a banned list and the accompanying paperwork forged. This has now been confirmed—’

  ‘Who’s the tip-off?’

  ‘Anonymous. Mature Brazilian rosewood trees are on a list of banned materials that—’

  Christos didn’t let her finish. ‘This is about wood?’ He sounded incredulous. Kelly didn’t hear the rest as the rage that was always pulsing just beneath the surface in Christos burst out and he began shouting about taxpayers and scroungers and drug dealers and terrorists. Kelly stood back against the corridor wall and put her arms around Yannis’s shoulders. The boy had emerged from his room and was staring, open-mouthed.

  Georgie Bell was saying that anything they took away from the flat would be logged and returned as soon as possible. She would need to take Christos’s mobile phone and any portable devices. She was unfazed by the big man shouting; in fact, Georgie looked like she was enjoying herself. Kelly noticed that the three men with her took a good look at the size of the flat and stared at the view out of the master bedroom window. A moment later they began to shuffle deeper into the flat to open doors and look in rooms. Christos angrily left a message with someone before he handed over the mobile, a damp patch of shower water collecting underneath him on the carpet.

  Georgie tried to open the door opposite Kelly, next to the lift. ‘What’s in here?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s the office,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Can you open it for me, please?’

  ‘I don’t have the key, my husband does.’ She felt shame lance her that parts of her own home were off limits to her.

  Georgie’s brown hair was tied back in an efficient ponytail with what looked like a rubber band. She had a big mouth that suited her face and when she spoke Kelly could see there was an attractive gap between her front teeth. ‘Is the office always locked?’ She smiled at Kelly in an open, inviting way.

  Kelly shrugged, her mind churning over how Christos would react to this intrusion. With a control she didn’t feel she asked Yannis to go upstairs and get his breakfast. She watched him retreat up the stairs to the kitchen and then turned to Georgie. ‘Do you want to start in my studio?’ Georgie held out her arm for Kelly to go first. Kelly opened the door next to her bedroom as Christos watched her from the corridor. ‘It must look chaotic to you, but it’s very well ordered to me,’ Kelly said. Her small talk was a way of keeping a lid on her nerves.

  The middle of the room was dominated by a large trestle table on which lay a half-finished papier-mâché mask, paint pots, brushes and tubes of paint. There was a paint-spattered office chair on wheels, and a dressmaker’s dummy stood in the corner by one of the windows. A sewing machine sat on a chest of drawers in the other corner. Opposite the windows along the wall was a series of deep shelves that held bales of fabric, piles of newspapers, prototypes of mask models, ‘look books’ and scraps of papers that were inspirations for designs.

  A man probably just a few years older than Georgie came into the studio. ‘I’m Mo Khan.’ He nodded towards the view. ‘It must be hard to work when you could look at that all day,’ he said, staring out of the window.

  Kelly didn’t reply. The view was south from this room, the morning still and sullen. She could see the London Eye where Christos had proposed and she had cried with joy and accepted. To the left were the fantastical pointed tips of the Royal Courts of Justice, as remote and unhelpful to her current situation as Sleeping Beauty’s fairytale castle,
surrounded by thorns. Kelly knew all the weight of the law and people’s good intentions were on her side, the police, the courts, women’s refuges, social services. And it all meant nothing. They couldn’t stop the fear, they couldn’t stop Christos exercising his power and using his money. The law worked too slowly to help her escape. She had visited her doctor for depression, she had been prescribed pills. It would be too easy for him to make her look like an unfit mother. And the fear that pressed down every waking hour was that he would take away her children. She had lost one child for ever; she would endure anything to cling to the remaining two.

  ‘This is quite a production you have here.’ Georgie was looking round the room, assessing, judging.

  ‘I make masks and sometimes puppets for theatre shows.’

  ‘That sounds interesting. Did you train in that?’

  Kelly swallowed, keen to steer the conversation in another direction. ‘I’m largely self-taught. Papier-mâché is my speciality. It’s great for making larger masks as it’s light yet strong and you can build it up really well. It’s very flexible too. That’s why I keep so much newspaper in here.’

  ‘Do you have a laptop?’

  Kelly shook her head and saw Georgie looking at the blinking green light in the corner.

  ‘There are a lot of cameras in this flat.’

  ‘I want to protect my family.’ Christos’s voice seemed to boom as he entered the room.

  ‘From what?’ asked Georgie. She turned towards him, her large eyes holding him in a steady gaze.

  Kelly gripped the edge of the trestle table, torn between fascination that this woman could so casually defy Christos and fear that it would end very badly for her. She didn’t know what Christos really did in the course of his business, but she had been given a glimpse. Six months ago he had taken her with him in the car one evening to the docks. He’d had a meeting with someone. He had ordered her to sit in the car with the driver and he had got out with another man. They had met a third, younger man and had walked partly round a corner. A conversation had begun, which after a couple of minutes had turned into a lot of shouting that had ended when Christos had picked up an iron bar and pummelled the young man across the shoulders and then around the head. Christos’s friend had laughed. The young man had crumpled to the floor and stayed there as her husband and his mate had walked calmly back to the car. Christos got in next to her, the tangy scent of sweat and adrenalin rising from him and lifted a hand to her head. He let out a strangled groan, every sinew in his neck standing to attention. Kelly knew then that Christos, far from being a man who couldn’t control his violence, was someone far worse: a man who could choose exactly when to maim and when to stop. He had lowered his hand. He had great reserves of self-control – and he had let her know it then.

  ‘When you’ve got money, lots of people want to take it from you,’ Christos said now.

  ‘Do they?’ Georgie looked genuinely puzzled. ‘There’s only one group who can legitimately take money from your business and that’s Revenue and Customs. That’s us. If anyone else is trying to take your money it’s a matter for the police and they will help you.’

  Christos smiled, looking incredulous. He had a very good smile and Kelly wondered how Georgie would react to it. ‘How long have you been doing this job?’

  ‘Not long, but I intend to do it for many years.’ Georgie’s voice was flat London with hints of Essex in it. She had no wedding ring, Kelly noticed, and was wearing lace-up brogues and black trousers with a turn-up. She had an easy grace to her movements and Kelly figured she was sporty, but she looked too urban to be someone who strode across a moor in walking boots, too substantial and bold to be a dancer.

  ‘If someone your age is leading this investigation it’s obviously not an important case. I’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Georgie remained calm. ‘We need to get into the office. Do you have the key, Mr Malamatos?’

  Christos was still in his bathrobe, his legs wide apart, a pair of calves as thick as Henry VIII’s protruding from the bottom.

  ‘I’ve got it here. I’ve got nothing to hide.’ Christos’s bathrobe was loosely tied at his waist. He put his hand in its deep pocket and as he did so the cord undid itself and his towelling robe fell open. Kelly felt the visitors tense to waxwork dummies. ‘Oh, look at that,’ Christos casually said. Georgie and Mo were treated to a full frontal view of her husband, his dick hanging thick and heavy. Georgie looked like she wouldn’t react, then Kelly saw a deep blush start at the woman’s neck and spread over her cheeks. Christos was proud of his big cock and he was trying to rile and humiliate the young woman with it. A moment later, Christos retied the bathrobe. He pulled the office key from his pocket and held it up, his eyes never leaving Georgie’s face.

  Georgie had to step towards him to get the key, her cheeks aflame. ‘After you, sir.’ Her voice was neutral, those telltale cheeks the only giveaway that he had riled her. Christos wasn’t smiling now, his face was hard. He left the room abruptly and Georgie turned to Kelly. Their eyes met and for a glorious second Kelly hoped that this young girl could be her way out – before despair rushed back in and she discounted the idea.

  They left Mo searching the studio and walked to the office. Christos opened the door and entered with Georgie, who instructed two men to look through it. Kelly watched from the corridor. She had rarely been in this room. It was Christos’s private space, where he retreated for certain phone calls, occasionally where male visitors with three-day stubble or the dark, tanned skin of the newly arrived from foreign climes came. The walls were lined with shelving containing photographs of dead family members and idyllic, isolated beaches of Medea’s homeland, and a few books. Facing the door was a large, dark wooden desk, empty except for a second phone line, a computer and a pen in a holder. The room smelled faintly of the furniture polish Medea used to buff the surfaces to a sterile shine. At right angles to the desk sat a green filing cabinet. Christos unlocked the cabinet and an officer slid out the top drawer.

  The passports were in the cabinet.

  She’d noticed, only once, about seven months ago. They’d come home from a holiday in Greece. The plane had been delayed and they were all tired and as she hurried the kids into their beds she had come out of their room to see the office door bounce against the run of shelving and begin to swing shut on Christos. In the three seconds before the closing door cut him from her view she had seen him pull the passports from his pocket and put them in their resting place. She had bent instantly to untie her sandal. Better if he didn’t know she had seen.

  ‘Mr Malamatos? What is this machine here?’

  ‘It stores the recordings from the cameras. They’re backed up on disk.’

  ‘We’ll need to take them.’ Georgie’s cheeks had returned to a normal colour, she was trying to reassert her authority.

  Christos wasn’t interested any more, he had his victory and the woman was just a nuisance now. He pressed a button and the green light on the camera nearest Kelly went black. The security system was off. She heard the home phone ringing and a moment later Florence called out from the top of the stairs that Sylvie needed to talk to Christos urgently. Kelly watched Christos walk out of the office and past her in the corridor to enter their bedroom. The nearest landline point was on the far side of the bed. He had to get round the king-size to the phone – twelve steps at least and then back out into the corridor.

  Kelly was halfway across the office before she even realised what she was about to do.

  Georgie was leafing through the filing cabinet as she reached it. She turned, surprised, but didn’t stop her as Kelly shut the top drawer with a confidence she didn’t feel and opened the one below it, hearing its screech above the battering of her heart. She prayed the noise wouldn’t bring Christos running; he knew people were in here. She reached in and pulled out the passports, not pausing to discard the one she didn’t need. Georgie looked at the passports in her hand and carried on searching.

&nbs
p; ‘What are you doing?’

  Kelly froze, and turned. Yannis was standing in the doorway, his palms pressed into the door frame on either side of him.

  ‘I’m helping the officers. Now get your school uniform on.’ She shoved the passports in the back pocket of her jeans. Yannis didn’t move as Kelly crossed the room towards him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Christos stood behind Yannis in the doorway, the portable landline to his ear.

  Kelly wondered if she could find her voice. ‘The number of times I have to nag this boy to get ready for school …’ Kelly trailed off, walking past both of them and up the stairs. She felt Christos’s eyes boring into her back. The passports were a brick in her back pocket. Three steps, two steps, one step. She prayed Sylvie’s charms were enough at this moment to distract him sufficiently for her to get up the stairs and away. When she got to the living room her strength failed her and she had to sit on the sofa and let her heart return to normal. She saw the light above the camera in the corner of the room turn green.

  A few moments later she heard someone jogging up the stairs and Georgie appeared. She began walking around the room, assessing, forming opinions. ‘We won’t be here for that long.’ She opened the lid on the piano and glanced inside, looked over and smiled at Kelly. ‘It seems like a big intrusion, but by this afternoon it’ll be like we were never here.’ She stopped by the fish tank, put her hands in the pockets of her trousers and leaned in to look more closely. ‘I’ve got a goldfish at home.’ She tapped the glass, trying to get a reaction from the fish. They ignored her. ‘I have to make sure the lid’s always on, otherwise the cat would get him like that.’ She clicked her fingers as she said it. ‘What’s this boat at the bottom here?’ She was looking at the vessel half submerged in the stones at the bottom of the tank.

  ‘It’s a model of a competitor’s ship.’