Lie With Me

by Sabine Durrant

  She took a step towards me, frowning. ‘What about the meeting with your publisher?’

  ‘I lied about that.’

  ‘And the book deal?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Another lie,’ Gavras said. ‘You seem to make a habit of them.’

  ‘But I didn’t follow her.’ I turned back to him. ‘I was already on the bus when she got on. She wasn’t even staying in Pyros town. She was staying in Elconda. And I didn’t stalk her. I saw her after supper but it was a coincidence, that’s all. And I certainly didn’t wait for her outside the club. You know that, Alice – I came back to the house with you that night.’

  She lifted her chin but didn’t answer.

  Gavras was drawing another photograph out of the folder. He placed it on top of the picture of Laura Cratchet. ‘Does this look familiar to you?’

  I bent to look closely. It was a close-up of a small crinkled object, gold, on the ground, next to some gravel. ‘Not really. A packet of some kind.’

  ‘Do you have your wallet on you, Mr Morris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it be a huge inconvenience to hand it over to me? You are quite within your rights to refuse.’

  ‘It’s fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  I pulled it out of my back pocket and threw it across the table.

  He opened it carefully, and with a small smile, produced the three gold condoms. ‘Interesting. The photograph is of a condom wrapper, found in the alleyway where Miss Cratchet was sexually attacked. This make of condom is not available in Greece. LifeStyles Skyn.’ He made a face. ‘An identical condom packet to the ones we find unopened in your wallet.’

  ‘They’re not mine. They’re Andrew’s. Or at least . . . I took them from his washbag. As a joke.’

  Alice let out a small noise, a muffled gasp.

  ‘A joke?’ Gavras made a movement with his hand, as if waving away an invisible fly.

  I stood up. ‘Listen. I didn’t rape Laura Cratchet. I couldn’t have. I was here at the house, already in bed, when it happened. Wasn’t I? Alice, tell him. I was with you. Alice –’ I turned.

  She was standing very still, head up, breath held.

  ‘Alice – I was in bed all evening. Tell him.’

  Her body had stiffened. ‘But you weren’t.’

  Gavras got to his feet. I felt a prickle of fear deep in my stomach. ‘I was,’ I said. ‘I got up and . . . oh, I see, this is about Louis. Tell him the truth. You have to.’

  The corners of her mouth dipped down. Her fingers were knotting and unknotting. ‘Tell him what?’

  I studied her for a moment. Andrew had been right. Of course she would choose her son over me. What mother wouldn’t? Would she hate me for telling the truth? I had no choice. I turned back to Gavras. ‘I got up in the night and saw Alice and Andrew helping her son Louis out of the car. It was well after the girls had got home. It was 1.30 a.m. or later.’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about,’ Alice said. She spoke slowly and clearly, her hands clasped in front of her, as if already preparing for court. ‘I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw Mr Morris standing on the terrace. He was fully dressed. I don’t know where he had been all evening. As far as I was aware he had not yet come to bed.’

  ‘Alice, why would you say that? Don’t do this.’

  I stared at her, pleadingly. But in the dusk, with the light behind, her face was in shadow.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Gavras took me to a building on the other side of Trigaki. It was dark when we got there. Outside: the edge of an escarpment, a dried-up fountain. Inside: concrete pillars, a web of narrow corridors. The room was bare, save for a stinking bucket and a wooden bench, on which I lay motionless, staring at mosquitoes as they abseiled down dirty grey walls.

  The heat was pressing, airless, unbearable. He took my phone and I lost track of time. Muted light glowed weakly from a high window. A plate of food – some sort of sausage, a heap of flabby courgette – congealed by the door. My innards solidified, turned to chalk. I had believed in the power of charm. It had served me well, throughout my gilded life, but it had lost its power. Looks, clever words, lies – all useless.

  In the morning, I was taken by a short, thickset official with no English to a different room in the same building. Gavras was waiting for me behind a solid wooden desk. A woman with heavy make-up and glasses on the top of her head was sitting by a smaller desk in the corner. A shorthand pad rested on her knee. The room smelt of pine and sweat. A vase of silk flowers collected dust on a windowsill.

  When I sat down, Gavras pushed a piece of paper across the table towards me. ‘This is a warrant for your arrest.’

  I twisted it round and studied it, then spun it back. ‘Can I see a translation?’

  ‘You will be provided with an interpreter in due course.’

  ‘Do I need a lawyer?’

  ‘Mr Morris. You find yourself a fortunate man. You are blessed with very useful friends. Mr Hopkins, he has volunteered to represent you legally.’

  ‘I don’t want Andrew. I’m here because of him.’

  ‘You are refusing the help of Mr Hopkins?’

  ‘I don’t want Mr Hopkins anywhere near me.’

  ‘Ah – Alethea – please could you record that Mr Morris is refusing the offer of a lawyer.’

  I let out a hollow laugh. ‘Are you being deliberately belligerent?’

  ‘Please also record that Mr Morris is being abusive.’

  I spoke between gritted teeth. ‘Perhaps you could outline to me my rights? Or do I not have rights here? You have kept me locked up overnight. I’m innocent. I’ve been set up. It’s Louis, Alice’s son, you need to look into. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  Gavras studied me hard. ‘Why did you try and run away, Mr Morris?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘You have no obligation to answer my questions. Your silence cannot be used against you. That – Mr Morris – is one of your rights.’

  He smiled, and then nodded at the middle-aged woman, making sure she had got every word.

  I was led to a different room to be photographed and for a DNA swab. I thought about refusing, but what would be the point? They’d take it anyway – rip out my hair or scrape out my nails in my sleep. The police station seemed semi-deserted – a series of empty rooms, echoing doors, the air somnolent and torpid. But the languor of this police force, their sluggishness, it was all an act. I was in the care of wolves.

  Back in my cell, flies buzzed above last night’s food, and against the small high window. Fresh mosquito bites rose in weals across my neck and ankles. I heard the whine of a motorbike, and the braying of a donkey. The water they had brought tasted chemical and sour. I lay down on the wooden bench, aware of every bone in my own head, and finally slept.

  I did eat. Fresh food was brought, if you can call it fresh. A piece of gnarled fatty lamb in a watery sauce. On the side a boiled potato and a raw tomato. I was too hungry to avoid it, though I worried about my stomach. The bucket they had left me in a corner already stank.

  Time crawled. I felt filthy with heat and sweat. I banged on the door several times and on the fifth attempt a slot in the door opened and the eyes of my squat jailor appeared. He moved his head. ‘Eh?’ his mouth said.

  ‘How long will I be here? You can’t keep me here forever. Not without charge. It must have been twenty-four hours now. You’ve got to let me go.’

  The slot closed.

  Later, when it got dark, I banged again. Over and over until the heel of my hand was raw. No one came.

  I had no cause for complaint, Gavras told me calmly when he came to get me the following day. Thirty-six hours: it was nothing. Well within their rights. I should conserve my energy.

  Something in his manner had changed, the sleepiness in his eyes replaced by an excitement, a hunger.

  He escorted me, his hand firmly under my elbow, into the room where I had been shown the warran
t. Someone else was sitting behind the desk – a larger man in a black suit, a pale striped shirt and a wide navy tie. Grey hair, black eyebrows: another wolf. He was the superior officer Gavras had been expecting. I could tell by the small obsequious nod Gavras gave as he came into the room. He also had an authority about him, an insolence, his chin resting low on his neck, his eyes narrow. He was big, but his jacket was too wide across the shoulders and the wedding ring he was fiddling with was loose. I wondered whether he had recently lost weight.

  He was introduced to me by his title not his name. ‘Anakritis,’ Gavras said, with a slight nod of his head. ‘He is the prosecuting judge. He collects evidence.’

  ‘I see.’

  Gavras asked again if I wanted a lawyer. I told him I didn’t, that this was an absurd fuss about nothing, that I had done nothing wrong. He sat down next to his colleague and put his leather satchel on the table in front of him. The woman in the corner had switched on a small recording device on the table next to her. She picked up her notepad and pen.

  I asked them why they were keeping me.

  A long silence.

  ‘Are you an honest man, Mr Morris?’ Gavras’s gaze was steady.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Do you tend to tell the truth?’

  ‘I’m telling the truth now.’

  ‘Were you telling the truth when you insisted you visited the Helladic Settelment at Okarta, ruins that are closed for renovation on a bus that no longer runs on Fridays?’

  I tried to keep my own gaze level. ‘OK. I didn’t get the bus to the ruins, but there is an innocent explanation. A group holiday, you know. Other people’s kids. I just needed a day on my own.’

  ‘Do you live at the address you gave me?’

  ‘Well, not presently. But I did, until . . . Look, why does this matter?’

  I had raised my voice. The Anakritis hadn’t yet spoken, but now he said, in an impeccable English accent, ‘Do you have a violent temper, Mr Morris?’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I do not have a violent temper.’

  I sat back in my chair, glancing over at the woman writing notes. She was looking at me, but she bent her head again and carried on scribbling.

  ‘When things don’t go your way? When you are tired. When you have –’ He mimed swigging from a bottle. He was still smiling.

  ‘No,’ I said again.

  ‘And your appetites, Mr Morris, would you describe them as normal?’

  ‘My appetites? Normal? Well, yes, of course I would say my appetites were normal. My “appetites”, as you call them, ARE normal.’

  The judge said, ‘Did you see Laura Cratchet outside Club 19 at 1.20 a.m. on the morning of the fifth of August and grab her from behind?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you take her into the alley between Club 19 and Athena Jewellery, thrust her against the wall and pull down her underwear?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you put on a condom and rape her, Mr Morris?’

  ‘No. No. I certainly did not. I wasn’t there and I wouldn’t have . . . No.’

  I was aware of the woman’s pen tip-tapping in her notebook, of a shaft of sun casting a square on the floor, the thickness of the dust on the fake flowers, a fly banging its head against the glass.

  Gavras said: ‘Would you like to rethink your decision about a lawyer, Mr Morris?’

  ‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ I snapped. ‘I wasn’t there and I am entirely innocent of the crime that you are accusing me of. And, as such, we’re done here and I would like you to release me.’

  The woman turned a page in her notebook. She raised her pen. The Anakritis readjusted the waistband of his trousers.

  Gavras put his hands together, as if he were in a church. He breathed in deeply. ‘So, Mr Morris – let us move on to another matter.’

  ‘What other matter?’

  He stared at me impassively. ‘Mrs Hurley mentioned yesterday, while you were attempting to leave Agios Stefanos, that you were in the village ten years ago. I was under the impression this week was your first visit to the island but here you were on the night her daughter went missing.’

  My heart began to pound. ‘Yvonne told you that? Yvonne told you I was in the village?’

  ‘She is understandably keen to leave no stone unturned.’

  ‘It’s maybe that she’s just making trouble – have you thought of that? It’s no secret that I was in Stefanos that night. But I’d left long before any of the drama happened. Andrew put me in a taxi.’

  As I said it, I remembered Alice saying: poured you into a taxi. Fragments: the slam of the door, Andrew’s narrow face sideways at the window, the slap on the roof as the vehicle moved off, the world spinning, nausea.

  ‘Two witnesses place you in Stefanos later that evening – one of them, an English woman who now lives in Epitara, remembers seeing you in Club 19.’

  ‘What English woman? Niki Stenhouse? I only met her on Wednesday. She didn’t mention having met me before then.’

  ‘The second witness, an elderly resident in the village, remembers seeing you walking up the hill towards the entrance to what is now Delfinos Resort but what was then the Barbati Beach Apartments.’

  ‘What? That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘You were with a young girl.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You were not with a young girl?’

  I racked my brain. ‘It’s true I met a girl at the club – though this was much earlier, in the afternoon. But she was Dutch. I went back to her room, but it wasn’t even dark then. And no, don’t ask me what her name was – I’ve forgotten it, if I ever knew it.’

  ‘And this girl. This Dutch girl. She was how young?’

  ‘I don’t know. Eighteen? Nineteen?’

  ‘Not fourteen?’

  A vein at the back of my neck began to throb. ‘This is absurd. Are you seriously interviewing me about the death of Jasmine?’ I looked from one man to the other, searching for some chink, some break in their heavy expressions, some indication that this was all a joke. ‘This is madness.’

  Gavras looked down at the notes and without raising his eyes said: ‘Why did you buy sodium hydroxide?’

  A moment passed, while I tried to make sense of the question.

  ‘For the olives,’ I said eventually.

  ‘What olives?’

  ‘Alice wanted to pickle some olives.’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘Why would she want to pickle olives? She has no olives. She is not an olive grower.’

  ‘Well, she had some. She had bought some raw ones by mistake that needed pickling.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Thursday? Friday? I don’t know.’

  ‘So this week. She had visitors staying in the house; Yvonne and Karl had just arrived; it was nearing the anniversary of Jasmine Hurley’s disappearance. You might have thought her mind was on other things, and yet she wanted to pickle olives?’

  ‘She asked me to buy lye. It was on a shopping list she gave me.’ I shrugged. ‘I was only doing what I was told.’

  A moment of consultation in Greek between the two men. Gavras opened his leather bag and produced a piece of paper in protective plastic.

  ‘This shopping list?’

  Alice’s writing photocopied on to the page, the scrap of paper at an angle, blurred at the edges. ‘Chicken legs, lamb chops, dried pasta, feta . . .’

  I remembered her writing it, her look of concentration, the twist in her lower lip as she chewed it.

  Gavras said: ‘No sodium hydroxide.’

  Tina’s voice clear and loud calling to me, her image reduced in the rearview mirror. ‘Tina chased after me. Alice forgot to write it down. Ask her. Ask Tina. One of them will tell you.’

  ‘The bottle of lye was found in your bedroom, Mr Morris. Not in the kitchen with the other groceries.’

  ‘I don’t remember where I put it.’

  ‘And another empty bottle of lye was found on the pr
operty, bearing your fingerprints.’

  A memory fought its way through the muddle and tiredness and panic. I nodded. ‘In the shed. Yes.’

  ‘It bears your fingerprints.’

  ‘I picked it up. I used it to prop open the shed door.’

  Gavras made a face, shaking his head as if this was a ridiculous excuse.

  ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  The Anakritis leant forward then, his face as close to mine as he could get it. ‘Whoever killed Jasmine Hurley attempted over the last couple of days to further destroy evidence by pouring sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as lye, into the well.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘For Christ’s sake. No.’ I racked my brain. ‘Artan. Alice’s caretaker. Have you talked to him? He’s in and out of the shed. He was in the village ten years ago. And he’s creepy.’ I bent forward. ‘He’s having a relationship with Daisy. Andrew Hopkins’s daughter.’

  Gavras waved his hand, dismissing gossip that was of no interest to him. ‘Moving on. When Jasmine Hurley’s body was exhumed various items were discovered with her.’ He produced a larger bag from his satchel and poked it, rolling the contents, several items wrapped in their own plastic casing, apart. ‘Does this look familiar, Mr Morris?’

  The bag he had isolated contained a large rusty spanner.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, staring at it. ‘I have seen it before.’

  ‘Ten years ago, Mr Morris?’

  ‘No, the other day.’

  ‘The other day? I don’t think so. It was discovered in the well, Mr Morris, along with Jasmine’s body.’

  ‘Then it’s a different one. I saw a spanner like that recently but it was in the shed, inside the bonnet of the Toyota.’

  ‘What would you say if I told you Jasmine Hurley’s skull bears fractures in keeping with a blow from an instrument such as this.’

  ‘I’d say I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘What would you say if I said the spanner is covered in your fingerprints?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. Someone must have put the one from the shed in the well. I don’t know why.’ My hands were beginning to shake.