Angel of Death (19 page)

‘Sean, my boy, is in trouble.’

‘We were reading about him in the gossip columns only last week. Isn’t he marrying some rich banker’s daughter? Lucky boy.’

‘Yes, but he . . . well, he’s always after other women.’

‘Can’t keep his flies zipped? Takes after his mother, not you, then. Sandra was always chasing men.’

Terry had never known until the end when she went off with one of them. He felt stupid. Had everyone known? Why hadn’t someone drawn him a diagram?

‘Yeah, well, one of Sean’s girls got herself up the spout and threatened to tell Nicola – the fiancée – and Sean panicked and . . .’ He took a deep breath, then forced the words out, ‘And killed her.’

Bernie whistled softly. ‘So he’s in prison, waiting to be tried? Funny, we missed that story.’

‘He got rid of the body. The police know what happened but they can’t prove it, without the body.’ He quickly explained the background, how his publicity girl had overheard the murder, called the police and how he and Sean had been trying to silence her. ‘Now she’s vanished, and we haven’t a clue where she is – we think the police have her in a safe house somewhere. We must find her. The information has to be in the police computer, but how do we tap into that? Do you still have friends in the force?’

Bernie’s fingers tapped thoughtfully. ‘You want me to ask my friends in the police to find out where she is?’

Terry nodded. ‘Please. I’d be eternally grateful. We have to find this girl, deal with her, before she destroys my boy.’

Miranda turned east along the sea shore. After another five minutes she came in sight of the house Milo had visited. This morning the shutters were closed. Whoever was living there must have gone out.

She went right up to the house, slowly made her way all round both front and back. Had this been the original building on the site? Was it eighteenth-century, or had it been built more recently, in the style of two centuries ago?

She could imagine Lord Byron living in it, swimming naked in the sea below these windows, making love to some beautiful Greek girl in fluttering white muslin, by moonlight.

A plane tree grew close to the back of the house; the dappled, grey and pinky cream bark peeling in strips, the round green spiky fruit still hanging among the deep-lobed leaves. Miranda stood in its cooling shade for a while, gazing over the hotel grounds and orientating herself.

It was so pleasant there that she was reluctant to move, to walk back, to her bungalow, or the hotel. A quick look at her watch told her it was gone mid-day. Lunchtime. She could eat at the hotel today, but soon she must go to a shop and buy food she could cook herself in her bungalow.

She would get lots of salad and vegetables, some eggs, maybe a chicken she could put into the little fridge in her kitchen. The hotel staff were entitled to eat in the hotel, but she would prefer to make her own meals.

Setting off at a brisk pace she found lunch being served when she arrived at the restaurant. She queued at the buffet table and selected chicken soup from the great urn. As she turned to go she collided with another woman in the queue, spilling a drink the woman held in one hand.

‘Oh, I am sorry, stammered Miranda, uncomfortably observing the red stain the wine had made on the woman’s elegant peacock-blue dress.

She received a glacial, angry stare from black eyes. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ The words were English, but the accent was a peculiar mix of American and Greek.

Flushed, Miranda said sorry again. ‘Of course, I will pay the cleaning bill. Tell them at reception – my name is Miranda – they’ll see I get the bill.’

She hurried away, not daring to meet Milo’s watchful gaze, and sat down at a table to begin to eat. The soup was delicious; light and fragrant with what she thought must be lemon.

As she collected her main course – grilled sardines and salad – she noticed Milo talking to the woman she had bumped into. Was he apologising for her? Her job here was supposed to be liaising with guests – that had not been a good start.

After lunch she visited Pandora, whom she found in bed, drinking green tea.

‘Do you like that?’ asked Miranda.

‘It’s OK. I’m not supposed to touch coffee – they say caffeine is bad for me. But I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms.’

There were stains on her upper cheeks; Miranda could see she had been crying. ‘Is something wrong? What has upset you?’

‘Nothing!’ Pandora denied, unconvincingly, then yawned, deliberately. ‘I think I’ll have a nap now.’

Miranda left; knowing she was not wanted. Pandora did not want to talk about whatever was worrying her. The baby? Or was something else on her mind?

Walking back through the gardens she paused, mid-step, hearing Charles’ voice. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know that very well, Elena. There will be hell to pay if he hears about it.’

The wind stirred the leaves; one detached itself and floated down, turning in mid-air and fell almost at her feet. She shifted sideways, staring through the trees. Charles stood a few feet away, his back to her. Facing her, but all her attention fixed on Charles, was the woman in the peacock-blue dress.

Who was she? Did her appearance at the hotel explain Pandora’s tear-stained face and distress just now? And what did Charles mean – there will be hell to pay? If he hears about it? Or had he said: if
she
hears about it?

‘He doesn’t scare me. This is a hotel. I’ve a perfect right to be here.’ The woman’s voice warmed, grew sensual. ‘How are you, Charles? You look wonderful. You haven’t given me a kiss yet.’

Miranda moved again, in shock in time to see the woman leaning closer, her slender arm going round Charles’ neck. There was the sound of a kiss; their mouths together.

Had they been lovers? Was it over? Or was the woman Elena refusing to let him go?

She was so disturbed by her own thoughts that she crept back the way she had come and took another route to her bungalow, but she could not shake off what she had seen. If Pandora found out about her husband and that woman, it could bring on another miscarriage.

She skipped dinner that evening and stayed in her bungalow learning some more Greek, listening to an audio tape Milo had lent her.

Next morning she went out for a walk to the sea after an early breakfast. Fetching up near the isolated house again she stopped to stare, wondering again who lived there. While she was staring she heard a footstep, the sharp snap of a twig someone had stood upon, the rustle of grass parting as a body came through it.

Miranda turned in the direction of the sounds. A man in black shorts and a white t-shirt was only a few feet away, walking briskly towards her. She recognised him with a painful twist of the heart.

She could barely breath. It was him. On the beach two days ago, she had not been imagining things or hallucinating. It had been Alex Manoussi walking at the edge of the sea.

He saw her a second later and stopped moving, staring at her, then he came on in a calm, unhurried fashion, his long, bare brown legs gleaming in the sunlight, and gave her a polite bow of the head.

‘Mrs Grey. Good morning.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, then, before he could answer hysteria swept through her. ‘Did you follow me here? Are you stalking me? I suppose you’ve already told Terry where to find me so that he can send someone to kill me? Or has he asked you to do it?’

His hand came up and clamped over her mouth, his long, slim fingers cool.

‘You’re hysterical. Try to be calm.’

She tried to bite him but could only mumble at his palm, voice muffled by the flesh pushing down against her teeth. ‘You . . . bastard . . .’

‘Ssh . . .’ he murmured. ‘You don’t need to be frightened of me! I did not follow you here. I didn’t need to, I was already here.’

Then he let his hand drop away from her mouth. She took one long, unimpeded breath.

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It’s true. This is my hotel. I own it,’ he expanded. ‘Pan is my sister.’

A tide of disillusion and hurt swept over her. ‘She set me up? It was all a plot to get me here? She lied to me?’ She had liked Pandora and her husband the minute she met them, had never suspected for an instant that they might not be straight with her. Why should she?

While she had been busy feeling sorry for Pandora, worrying about her, trying to help her, Pandora had been conspiring with Alex Manoussi to lure her here.

Alex shook his head. ‘No, Pan didn’t tell you any lies. Everything she told you was the truth. Except . . .’

‘Except what she left out!’ Miranda said with fierce contempt. ‘She didn’t mention you, for instance, didn’t tell me you were her brother, or say she knew Terry Finnigan. I know he visited your home and met your family, he told me so. So she knew all about me!’

He sighed. ‘I did talk to her about you, and I asked her not to mention me, but I didn’t tell her anything about Terry. What she knows about that she heard from your mother. I simply said that you might not come if you knew I would be here.’

‘I don’t believe you. How can I trust a word you say?’ She moved sideways to get away, but he put both hands on the trunk of the plane tree and fenced her between them, leaning towards her, his body very close yet not actually touching hers, merely reminding her how much more powerful his body was than her own. Her senses rioted. She had never been so aware of any man.

His expression was very serious, even brooding. ‘Don’t you know my sister better than to believe she would conspire against you? She likes you. And she needs help; if she doesn’t carry this baby full-term I’m afraid she may crack up. She really needs you, Miranda. Don’t turn against her because of me.’

‘Of course it was a pure coincidence that she was in the hospital at the same time as me!’ she said with biting sarcasm.

‘She had been asked to spend a few days having tests to check that the baby was still OK but she hadn’t arranged a date. When I heard you were in that hospital I admit I asked her to ring up and book herself in at the same time. As a foreigner, she was a private patient anyway, so it wasn’t difficult.’

She was breathing in the scent of his skin, faintly salty, and smelling of pine – aftershave or shower gel? she thought inconsequentially, so disturbed by her reactions to him that she leaned away, her head back and touching the tree trunk. He was far too close.

‘Why lie to me, though? Why didn’t she tell me the truth?’

‘Because I asked her not to! I’ve explained that.’

‘You haven’t explained why you didn’t want me to know!’

‘If she had told you she was my sister would you have come?’

She looked away, very conscious of his long fingers only inches from her cheek. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I do. You would have refused.’

‘I wanted to find somewhere safe, to hide from the Finnigans. Now I know you own this hotel I know I’m not safe here. I shall have to leave.’

‘No! You can’t go. You’ve signed a contract, promised to do this job, I won’t let you leave!’

Terror leapt inside her, she felt all the colour rush out of her face and was suddenly very cold, despite the increasing heat of noon.

‘You can’t force me to stay!’

‘You have a legal obligation to stay for three months – that was the term specified in the contract, wasn’t it?’

She couldn’t even remember. She had signed the contract after one brief glance at the terms.

‘You already owe us a considerable amount,’ he added.

She was shaken by that, her voice thready and weak. ‘Owe you? What do you mean? I don’t owe you anything.’

‘Did you read that contract you signed? If you leave before the three months is up you must refund the cost of your fare out here.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘Well, check your own copy of the contract.’

She looked down, her breathing fast and uneven, trying to think, to work out what to do. ‘Have you told Terry I’m here?’

‘No.’

Her eyes lifted incredulously, stared into his dark ones. They had midnight’s blackness, the round pupils like dangerous mirrors, reflecting her own face, very small. ‘But you are going to tell him?’

He shrugged those wide shoulders, his face impassive. ‘No, why should I? I’m one of Terry Finnigan’s clients, I’m not a friend of his. I won’t speak to him again for months, unless there’s a problem with the shipment he’ll be sending me shortly.’

She searched his eyes. ‘You know about the murder, though, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said flatly.

‘You know he sacked me for telling the police I overheard his son with the girl?’

He nodded. ‘And I know about the hit and run driver who ran you down in the street. I have talked to the police, I was one of the witnesses who was interviewed after your accident. I saw what happened.’

‘Oh.’ That astonished her. ‘You were really there?’ She had not imagined that she saw him among the crowd surrounding her while she lay on the road.

One of his black brows lifted in sardonic mockery. ‘Did you think you were seeing things?’

‘I suppose I was concussed. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.’ She caught sight of his gold watch, realised time had flashed past. ‘Oh, I must go, it’s lunchtime.’

‘No, come in and eat with me,’ he ordered in an autocratic tone that she resented.

‘Don’t order me around!’

‘We have a lot to talk about, don’t we? I’ve only heard the police version of what happened. I haven’t discussed it with Terry. I’d like to hear the story from you.’

His face was sober, his gaze direct; she stared back at him uncertainly, biting her inner lip. Could she believe him? Did she dare trust him, this man who had haunted her nightmares for years?