Page 99 of Deep Blue Lies

I blink at him.

“But she wasn’t evenhere. I called herafterImogen 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?”