Lie With Me (31 page)

‘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 property, 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.

He sighed heavily. ‘Even more upsettingly, Mr Morris, your DNA was also found on this.’

He produced another evidence bag from the floor. Its contents looked like everything and nothing, familiar and foreign: a scrunch of fabric, an old rag, blackened in places, rusty in others, the faint strain of a floral pattern. I had seen it before, recently, but because now it was produced so reverently, I realised I had also come across it long ago, in a different setting. In another country.

‘What is it?’ I said.

Gavras let out a laugh, a laugh without a vestige of humour. ‘Oh, Mr Morris. Stop the act now.’

‘I don’t know what it is.’

The Anakritis wasn’t laughing. ‘It is a headscarf belonging to Jasmine Hurley, covered in your DNA, also found with her body.’

I peered more closely. The poster on the lamp-post and the flyers on Alice’s kitchen table: it was the bandana Jasmine had been wearing. The seat of the truck. The key that didn’t turn. The piece of old rag I had used as traction.

‘Again it was in the truck,’ I said. ‘I wiped my hand on it. I used it to turn the key. Ask Alice. She asked me to look at the truck. She asked me to buy the lye. I don’t know how the spanner and the headscarf ended up in the well. But it’s nothing to do with me.’

The two men looked at each other, something passed between them. ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘This is crazy. I want to go back to the cell. I want a lawyer. And I want to see Alice.’ I laid my head on the table.

‘Oh, Mr Morris.’ Gavras’s voice was like treacle. ‘And you were doing so well.’

I raised my head. ‘Tell me what you think I’ve done. Just tell me.’

The Anakritis stood up. He tucked in his shirt and nodded to the woman in the corner. She turned a page of her notebook, a scrunch of paper, a creak of binding, the threads stretching. When the Anakritis was sure she was ready, he sat down. He said: ‘On the night of the tenth of August, 2004, after taking a boat up from Elconda you separated from your companions. You were given money by Mr Andrew Hopkins to leave the village in a taxi, but instead you spent it drinking in Club 19. Is that not so?’

I had a moment of confusion. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘You left the club drunk and when you encountered Jasmine Hurley on the road down from the Barbati Beach Apartments, you were unable to restrain yourself.’

‘It’s not true.’

‘You raped her, didn’t you?’

‘Was Jasmine Hurley raped? Do you have any evidence for that? She was a
child
.’

He ignored me. ‘And to keep her quiet you killed her.’

‘You’re just making this up as you go along.’

‘You then carried her body through the olive groves until you found a suitable dumping ground: the well in the woods on the boundary of Circe’s House. Here you hid Jasmine Hurley, along with spanner you killed her with.’

‘You’re lying. I didn’t.’

‘Your DNA is all over Jasmine’s bandana and the murder weapon; both found with the body. How do you explain that?’

‘I can’t, but it didn’t happen as you said. It wasn’t me.’

‘If only I could believe that. But there is also the matter of the shirt.’

‘The shirt?’

Gavras brought out another piece of paper from his bag and spun it round to show me.

It was a photograph of a dirty, torn piece of clothing: a purple T-shirt with black letters that spelt ‘Let Zeus blow your mind’.

I felt something ugly pace along my veins, put its fingers tightly around my heart.

Gavras said, ‘It is quite distinctive, is it not?’

I swallowed. My mouth was dry. ‘I have one like it,’ I said. ‘But this isn’t it. I’ve worn mine recently.’

His expression was almost pitying. ‘DNA, Mr Morris.’ He shrugged, one hand outstretched, as if he would change the situation if he could.

‘I don’t know how it got into the well, but it’s a mistake. A joke. If it is mine, it can’t have been there for ten years. I wore it in London, a few weeks ago. If you let me go, I’ll send it to you. I’ve mislaid it, but . . .’ And then like an explosion at the front of my head, a firework, an eruption of hope. ‘You just have to ask Alice. She saw it. I showed it to her. A couple of weeks . . . three, four maybe . . . before we came out here.’

‘Ask Alice?’

‘Mrs Mackenzie – ask her. Ring her now. She can explain everything. Please.’

Chapter Twenty-two

Back in my cell, after the interrogation, I banged on the door shouting for her: ‘Get Alice. Get Alice.’ In the sullen quiet of the night, I stood on the bench, my face up to the bars of the small high window, and screamed: ‘ALICE!’ Did I think my pleas would reach her, that my words would carry over the hilltop, sneak under the door of her bedroom where she lay asleep and creep into her ears?

When the door opened, I was finally sleeping – a snatch of unconsciousness, my throat hoarse, my neck at an angle. In extremis, the body will take its rest anywhere: I’ve learnt this now.

She was standing in the doorway.

‘Alice!’ I struggled to my feet. ‘Finally. Thank God. You’ve come!’

I faltered. Gavras was at her side and it was partly the way he moved his body only fractionally to let her through, close against the frame, not allowing a crack; the way he snapped the door shut the moment they were both inside; the way he leant back against it, eyes hooded, nothing conceded. It was partly the fact her outfit was so smart – travelling clothes: three-quarter-length black trousers, a white shirt, a soft cotton jumper tied across her shoulders, navy ballet pumps. Had I lost all track of time? Was it already Sunday? Was she heading to the airport? But mainly it was her expression, the blankness of her eyes. I thought my heart would stop.

‘Paul,’ she said. She was holding my tweed coat out in her hand. ‘I thought you might need this where you’re going.’

‘Alice,’ I said. I took a step forwards. When I didn’t take the coat, she laid it on the floor. Gavras made a gesture to indicate I was to sit. I didn’t. I just stood there. ‘You will help me, won’t you?’ I said eventually. I put my hand out, trying to reach her. But she didn’t move any closer. My hand dropped.

‘Help you how, Paul?’

Had Gavras said something to turn her against me? I just needed her to understand. ‘Alice,’ I said, lowering my voice, trying to speak quickly so he might not follow. ‘They’ve made up all this stuff about me. It’s all wrong what they say.’ I looked over at Gavras, who shrugged. ‘Alice, please, I need you just to explain that I had nothing to do with Jasmine’s death. And the rape. It’s serious now. I need you to tell them the truth.’

She was standing very still. Did I imagine a softening in her shoulders? ‘What do I need to tell them, Paul?’