Page 86 of Deep Blue Lies

EIGHTY-FIVE

I’ve never known a moment like this. I thought I had – I thought it was something to discover that the only parent you’ve ever known isn’t your real mother.

I thought that was enough. I thought it was going to be something that hits me, again and again, over the course of my life.

No matter how long I’ll live. But now I know it’s nothing.

It’s this moment. Sitting here, in this shitty little kitchen, this is the moment that will echo forever through the rest of my life.

I don’t know what to say. There isn’t a single thing I can say. Nothing anyone can say.

“You didn’t have anything to drink?” Duncan asks. “I sort of need something. Like I said, it’s a bit heavy.” I suddenly remember the stupid bottle of Metaxa I bought, and get up, find it in a cupboard and pour some in his empty glass.

“That can’t be true,” Sophia says from somewhere. I don’t understand how she has the presence of mind to say anything.

“Oh I’m quite sure it is. I mean, why would Imogen confess to it if it wasn’t true?

” He doesn’t thank me, but takes a large sip from the glass.

“And you should have seen her, the way she explained it on the video. It was quite clear how much this weighed on her mind.” The weird, matter-of-fact Duncan that told the final details of the story seems to have gone now.

He seems to have recovered a little now that the story is told, the job done.

He’s back to the man he was before, fretting, self-loathing.

“And now she’s gone. Imogen’s gone, and the one thing she asked me to do, the one time she trusted me, I let her down.” He drinks again. More this time.

This shakes something loose in my mind, I’ve lost the thread on this.

“Tell me again. What was it she wanted you to do?”

He frowns at me. “Isn’t it obvious?” He shakes his head again.

“She was worried about Karen killing her. Silencing her. Karen – I suppose – was also worried, about Imogen confessing to what they’d done.

And Karen had good reason to be concerned.

After all, Imogen sent me the video file.

But also she told me, in the video, how often she’d begged Karen to go with her to the police, to confess what they’d done.

But Karen refused of course, because she thought they’d got away with it.

And they did, after a fashion.” He closes his eyes, like all this is giving him a hell of a migraine.

“It was an insurance policy,” he tries again. “Imogen’s video file was an insurance policy. She sent it to me, in case Karen ever did her harm, so that the truth could finally come out. And now Karen’s killed her, but I’ve deleted the file, so I can’t prove a thing.”

Sophia gets down again and takes the bottle of Metaxa. She pours herself a glass, then another for me. She leaves the bottle out of Duncan’s reach as he glances at it hungrily.

“Why not just go to the police anyway, tell them what you’ve just told us?”

He shakes his head. “The only piece of evidence that proves Karen did anything wrong is gone. Evidentially, everything I could tell the police would count as hearsay. It’s inadmissible in a Greek court.

And for a crime where the case was closed over twenty years ago…

they wouldn’t even listen to me. Believe me, I researched this thoroughly for a book I?—”

“Wait, hold on, what are you saying?” I try to filter his words.

“What am I saying? That I failed her. I loved that woman, I would have done anything for her, and what do I actually do? I let her down. I meant to protect her but I did the exact opposite. The one thing she asks me to do?—”

“No. You said Karen…you think my mum…” I stop, trying to order my thoughts. “Are you saying it was Karen who attacked Imogen on the beach?”

“Of course. I thought you realised that?”

I blink at him.

“But she wasn’t even here . I called her after Imogen was attacked. She was at home. In England.”

Gregory shakes his head with a chuckle. “No she was not. I was watching you, remember? And I wasn’t the only one. I was pretty shaken up the first time I saw her, when I was waiting outside your apartment. I didn’t even believe it was her at first, but she doesn’t look so different.”

“But she was at home. When I called!”

He looks at me steadily. “How do you know that, Ava? For sure?”

I try to think. “She told me.” As the words leave my mouth I can see how easy it would have been.

Gregory shrugs. “Presumably you called her mobile? Or if not she could have redirected calls to a mobile if you called a landline…”

I don’t believe this, but of course it makes sense. She told me she was at home. I press my eyes closed, trying to remember. She told me she was watching television. So my imagination furnished me with an image of her at home, sitting in our lounge with her wine glass.

“Oh my God.”

“Exactly. And this was why I hoped you might have the file,” Gregory goes on. “So we’d have some proof to finally stop her. But you don’t, so we have nothing…there’s nothing we can do to stop her, nothing...”

“I don’t have it,” I barely hear him. “I don’t have the file.”

Finally he seems to understand that I’m in shock, and that’s why I’m finding it so hard to keep up with him. He pauses a moment, then nods his head.

“That’s the problem, Ava. That’s why she’s going to get away with murder. Again.”

A thought attaches itself to those words, like a piece of cloth caught on the bare branches of a winter tree. Red cloth. Blood-red.

“Mum pushed for the body to be repatriated without having a post mortem,” I say, not really following through with what I’m saying. “What if she didn’t attack Imogen once, but two times? The second time in the hospital?”

“That’s what I’ve been—” Duncan begins, but Sophia speaks over him.

“Could she have done that? Can you make something look like a heart attack?”

I don’t reply at first, but the answer is screaming at me inside my head. We had to be so careful when we treated actual patients.

“Imogen was on an IV. If Karen had got into her room she could have injected air into it. It would have given her an air embolism. It wouldn’t have acted immediately, it would have given Karen time to escape, but soon after, Imogen’s heart would have stopped.

It would look just like a heart attack.”

“This is exactly what I’m saying,” Duncan replied. “And there’s not a thing we can do about it, she’s beaten us. Beaten me…”

“Is there anything we can do?” Sophia turns to me.

“If we asked for a post mortem now, would they find it? Would they open a proper investigation?” Her mouth stays open when she finishes speaking.

But I don’t know the answer, I just look at her, and open my hands into a shrug.

In response she pulls out her phone and starts quickly tapping away at it. A moment later she speaks.

“What airport did you say Imogen’s body was being flown out of?”

“Panachoria, the local one,” I tell her.

“Shit. ”

“What is it?”

“I’m just checking the flight departures. The only one for London left half an hour ago. She’s already gone.”

I don’t say anything, then there’s a car horn coming from outside. Sophia goes to the window to look.

“It’s a taxi.”

“Oh shit.”

“It’s for you?”

Sophia’s question reconnects me to the world I was living just an hour before. I almost laugh.

“I’m supposed to go back there. Karen sent a taxi to take me back to the hotel. Then tomorrow she and I are flying back to England.”

Sophia’s quiet for a moment.

“Well, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she says at last.