After the Accident: A compelling and addictive psychological suspense novel

by Kerry Wilkinson

  Paul: I didn’t want to be the one to say it.

  Emma: He didn’t mention the similarity to what had happened with Alan, though he must have been thinking it.

  Paul: We moved on to chatting about other things. It was either that, or go our separate ways. She told me a bit more about the shop where she works and I told her how I’d got into film-making. It was one of those talks that lasts for hours and yet, at the end, you can’t remember what you were talking about.

  Emma: I didn’t tell him about prison, or the car crash. I thought about it but didn’t want to spoil the moment. I thought there was a chance he’d know, anyway. If you search for me on the internet, it’s impossible to escape stories of my sentencing.

  …

  I probably should have told him – but…

  …

  I think I probably liked him.

  Paul: We left the bar and walked back through the village. It was late by then and the sun was all the way down. The market stalls had been packed away and the only sound was the vague noise of music coming from the hotel bars. I saw the village in a different way that night. It wasn’t only the front that everyone gets to see, with the all-inclusive buffets and the sun-burned tourists. It felt like a real place, with real people.

  We stopped outside my hotel, tucked into the shadows underneath the palm trees where nobody could see us. It was a few degrees cooler. I held her hand.

  Emma: He asked if I’d give an interview for the documentary. Ever the romantic.

  Paul: It wasn’t like that was the only thing we talked about in those shadows. It was a private moment.

  Emma: I don’t think I want to say any more.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Day Five

  THE DAYS OF PIRATES

  Emma: I got up early the next morning. I’d probably only had four or five hours’ sleep – but I’d had such a good time with Paul that I was feeling fine anyway.

  I walked down to the village while people were still setting up. Café owners were trying to wave me inside, hoping I’d have breakfast, but I waved them away and kept walking.

  It probably took around twenty minutes or so until I spotted Lander. He was carrying trays of soft drink cans from the back of a truck into a restaurant. I waited until he’d finished and then asked if I could have a word.

  He hesitated and, if I’m honest, I know I probably shouldn’t have put him in that position. It was clear that his wife knew who I was and that she didn’t want him talking to me. He ummed and erred for a moment and said he’d be about fifteen minutes. When I said I didn’t mind waiting, he didn’t have much option, unless he outright told me to go away.

  Lander: I don’t have to do what I’m told. I’m my own man.

  Emma: I went to a café over the street, ordered a mountain tea and then waited. Lander came across after about half an hour. He might have been waiting for me to give up and go away – but I needed to talk to him.

  Lander: I cannot remember what she wanted that day. Something to do with a bank, I think. We talked, that’s all.

  Emma: Inside the envelope that I’d got from the PO box was a letter addressed to Alan Lee, with the name ‘Bank of Galanikos’ across the top. It was dated from more than a decade before, with a series of account numbers listed and linked to him.

  I’d been wondering why Dad had an ID with his photo but Alan’s details. I couldn’t come up with any reason other than that he wanted to move money from those accounts.

  It felt as if this was the reason we’d returned to Galanikos, as opposed to anything else. It was all being done under the guise of a family holiday – but then Dad went off that cliff on the first night and everything changed.

  That left all sorts of unanswered questions about what might have happened to Alan nine years before – but I had no way of answering those at that time.

  I’d also never heard of any sort of local bank, which was where Lander came in. I asked him about the Bank of Galanikos, which, it’s fair to say, confused him. He asked what I wanted to know and I said I’d never heard of it.

  Lander: I really can’t remember what she wanted.

  Emma: He asked if I was thinking of opening an account. When I said I wasn’t, he went quiet. He said: ‘What do you know?’ and there was this impasse where it felt like we were speaking a different language.

  I’d been visiting the island since I was a girl. My impression of a bank is something like a HSBC, or a Barclays. I thought that I’d have noticed a branch in all that time. Lander went quiet for a moment and I thought it might be something to do with Rhea and the fact that his wife didn’t want us talking. Then, suddenly, things started to make sense.

  He said that the Bank of Galanikos isn’t something used by locals. There are no high street branches, or special interest-rate deals for new mortgages. They don’t advertise on the TV or radio.

  He made the bank sound like a myth… something that may or may not exist. He said he didn’t know of any branches but that he’d heard it operated out of a fishing village to the north, close to the volcano. It was a word-of-mouth thing that wasn’t on any maps. There was no website, no logo or advertising.

  Rumours were that people who lived offshore would open accounts to hide money from their local governments. He said it went back to the days of pirates. Boats would turn up with gold and treasure that they wanted stored.

  It sounded… far-fetched – especially the pirate bit. But then I thought about stories like the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, with rich people doing everything they can to hide their money. And I thought about Dad and the way we had visited this island religiously year after year for such a long time. I’d often wondered why, with all Dad’s resources, we kept coming back here of all places.

  Then, in that café with Lander, it felt as if I knew.

  It felt as if Lander was worried for me after the talk. He reached across and took my hand. His skin always used to be so smooth, but it was rough in that moment. The hands of a man who’d spent nine years doing manual labour.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have let him touch me – but it didn’t mean anything, other than two people who used to know each other sharing a moment. It was comforting.

  He asked if I was OK – but it meant more than that. He was asking if I was safe. I wanted to ask what he meant – but didn’t get a chance because he suddenly pulled his hand away. His whole body went rigid – and I knew Rhea was behind me a moment before she said his name. She was like a ninja. That’s all it took, not even a proper sentence, and then he said that he had to go.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE SOGGY BAGEL

  Emma: The crew were setting things up so that the ‘Welcome to Galanikos’ sign was directly behind where I was standing. It’s not a traditional black-on-white sign like the ones from the UK. Someone had painted this beautiful sunshine and beach scene, with the words blended across the top. I had my photo taken in front of it when I would have been eleven or twelve. It was starting to fade, but it was still glorious. I remember I once asked Mum why places in the UK didn’t have these types of colourful ‘welcome to’ signs. I don’t think she ever answered.

  Paul: I told the crew that Emma and I had run into one another on the street and that I’d asked her if she’d do the interview. That’s all they knew about us at that time.

  Emma: The cliffs were behind the sign, with the ocean stretching into the distance. I saw the symbolism, obviously. I also knew that Mum and Dad wouldn’t be happy with what I was doing. At some point, a documentary would be released, with me as a part of it. Alan was the subject of which nobody dared speak in our family, so I knew a line was being crossed. I wanted to do it, even though I knew the trouble it would cause.

  It was Paul who did the prepping. He told me that I could stop at any point and that nobody wanted it to turn into some sort of ‘gotcha’ interview. I asked if that’s what their interviews were usually like and he laughed it away. They all did.

  Paul: It wa
s standard stuff. We often take it in turns to prep the interviewees, depending on circumstances. I’d persuaded Emma to speak on camera, so it was left to me.

  The interview itself was a bonus we didn’t expect. We came to the island to help flesh out what we already had – and then stumbled across Emma and her family. Plus, there was the second story about Emma’s father falling. Not to diminish anything that happened – and no disrespect to anyone – but, from a professional point of view, we couldn’t have asked for better luck.

  Emma: Paul picked up his boom mic and the cameraman did a bunch of light tests. After that, the questions began. There was a lot of background stuff about my earliest memories of the island and how often we came here.

  I felt so strange talking about all that in the moment because those memories now felt tainted. Perhaps they weren’t cosy family holidays – because Dad had more sinister reasons for coming to the island time after time.

  Paul: If she was nervous, then she didn’t seem it. I don’t remember any particular hesitations and the only breaks were for passing cars and things like that.

  Emma: There was a question about whether we stayed in the same hotel every time and I answered ‘yes’, but then I had to stop myself because there was a jolt of being in a villa that appeared from nowhere. One of those half memories that you can’t quite tell whether they’re true. I couldn’t remember if we’d stayed there or if it had been someone else’s and we were visiting.

  Julius: I don’t remember a villa – but then I didn’t go with Mum and Dad every year. I think it was probably just the hotel.

  Emma: They asked what drew my family to the island and it stumped me. The obvious answer is sunshine – but you can get that in so many places at that time of year. All I could come up with was: ‘I suppose Mum and Dad liked coming here.’ I could hardly say that I had a sneaking suspicion that Dad was coming here to launder money. I still hoped I was wrong at that point.

  Paul: I thought she was telling the truth. I would never have guessed she was so conflicted.

  Emma: That was the set-up and then things moved on to Alan. I genuinely struggled to remember some things because it was so long ago. I remembered more about growing up with Scott. I remembered this epic game of What’s The Time, Mr Wolf? that we played in Scott’s back garden. It must have gone on for hours, in the way those things can when you’re younger. We took it turns and somehow didn’t get bored. I think we only stopped because it was time for me to go home.

  There was an abrupt shift when they asked about Alan falling. I was well into my twenties by then and life was different. I’d been to university and then come back and ended up working for Dad. It wasn’t the career I wanted, but it was difficult at that age. Employers advertise for people with degrees – and then want to pay barely above the minimum wage. There was a part of me who wanted to do my own thing – and then another one who’d grown up into this privilege and was seduced by it.

  My priorities changed immediately after the car crash. My son had died and, suddenly, those materialistic things meant nothing. I stopped caring about money and, in particular, Dad’s money.

  That wasn’t the case when I was in my twenties, though. I wanted expensive shoes and bags. I wanted nights out where money was no object. The only way for me to get any of that was to work for Dad, because he’d pay me a salary that was much beyond anything I could get elsewhere.

  …

  I didn’t say any of that in the original interview by the sign outside Galanikos. I don’t think the crew knew about my son at the time. It’s not like I lied, more than I stuck to a particular time frame.

  What I told them is that I’d probably heard about Alan’s fall the morning after it happened. I have a vague memory of being the first person down for breakfast out of our family. That essentially never happened, so I had a feeling something wasn’t right. Then Mum came down and told me there had been an accident involving Alan the night before and that it was potentially serious. I’m pretty sure I was eating a soggy bagel at the time.

  Paul: The Emma we spoke to by the sign seemed very different from the Emma she was describing. She told us that, after breakfast, she went to lie by the pool for the morning, She wasn’t clear about the afternoon, although she said she’d probably have spent some time with a man she knew on the island.

  The strangest thing to me in all that is that I couldn’t picture an Emma who could lie by a pool for hours at a time. I didn’t know her very well – but what I did know about her felt like the opposite of that person. She didn’t wait for the world to come to her.

  Emma: I was watching Paul when I talked about Lander. I didn’t name him, not then, but I was trying to tell Paul with my eyes that I wasn’t the sort who came to Galanikos to hook up with people.

  Paul: That’s not what I thought at all.

  Emma: As I was telling them about what I did the day after Alan fell, I realised what a hypocrite I’d become. Liz and Daniel had spent the day at the pool after Dad fell, and I thought they were disrespectful. It took that interview for me to remember that I had done the same.

  I think you sometimes need that perspective… not that it changed much about the way I thought of Daniel and Liz. There were so many more reasons to dislike them.

  Paul: I’d never heard of Daniel Dorsey at that time, let alone met him. When Emma first started telling me about him, she would do this thing of wrinkling her nose every time she brought him up. It was like she was describing a smell. She made no attempt to hide her contempt for him.

  Emma: They asked how Dad took Alan’s death – but he wasn’t the type of person who’d ever talk about anything like that. Dad came from a generation when they’d ram their feelings deep down inside and refuse to acknowledge they were there. He got it from his dad, I think. It feels like that was the norm back then, but perhaps I’m generalising.

  The most I could say is that Dad was quiet for a few days afterwards. There was no big celebration, like we’d often have on our final night. That’s about as much as I remember.

  Paul: I didn’t think it was strange that Emma said she couldn’t remember a lot of what happened. Nine years had gone by and a lot had happened to her in those years. When we were doing that interview, I didn’t know much of what that was – but, if anything, if I had known, it would have only cemented my opinion. After what happened to her, it’s no surprise there are gaps in her memory.

  Emma: The complication was that Dad was named as a suspect in Alan’s death. The legal system is different on the island and there was a process the police had to go through, which enabled them to interview Dad. I think the closest equivalent in the UK is being cautioned.

  Because of that, people instantly thought that meant he was guilty. In the couple of days between the fall and the naming of Dad as a suspect, there had been no issue with Scott. Then, from nowhere, he was convinced Dad had killed his father.

  We were due to fly home the day after Dad was named but ended up delaying everything for a couple of days. I don’t know the official term, but, essentially, Dad was unnamed as a suspect. The police ended up concluding that Alan fell, but the damage was done by then. A few papers had picked it up back at home and were trying to turn it into a big story of a business rivalry. Once that was out, it was difficult to stop it.

  The stupid thing is, Dad was only named as a suspect because he wasn’t in his room at the time Alan went over the cliffs. He said he’d gone out for a walk, but there were no witnesses to that. It was all supposition and circumstantial. If it hadn’t been for that, things might have been a lot more amicable with Scott.

  Paul: I knew what had happened to Emma’s father in a legal sense, but it was interesting to hear her side of things. The simple fact is that her father left his room and said he went for a walk, even though there were no witnesses. He really could have been on the cliffs with Alan – but nobody knows except him.

  Emma: They wanted to know what happened to the business after that. I don’t think th
ey realised that I was working for Dad at the time of Alan’s death, so I knew more than they thought.

  After Dad was named as a suspect in Alan’s death, it was understandable that Alan’s wife and Scott wanted nothing to do with the business. Dad needed someone to buy out Alan’s half and he was already friends with Daniel, who ended up buying in. Dad bought one per cent of Alan’s share – taking him to fifty-one – and Daniel took on the other forty-nine. That’s how things had gone for the nine years up until the holiday.

  Paul: I remember glancing sideways to the cameraman when Emma said that. We hadn’t known any of it. It didn’t necessarily change anything – but the fact he went from fifty to fifty-one per cent ownership was something that piqued our interest. It was a motive that we hadn’t previously known about.

  Emma: When I said it, I think I knew that I’d told them something they didn’t know. That didn’t mean it counted for anything. They’d have discovered that sooner or later anyway.

  Things were winding down after that. Everyone thanked me for giving them my time and then started to pack away. I found a couple of minutes to talk with Paul away from the others and he told me they were all flying home that night.

  Paul: I probably should’ve told her before then, but plans were fluid and… we’d had a couple of good evenings together. I didn’t want to spoil things.