Page 28 of Dead Fall

Flyte had seen the transcript of Sophia’s text messages in the days before her death and had been struck by the fact that the conversation with her mother had been very one-sided. Chrysanthi sent her three or four messages a day, most of which went unanswered.

‘When was it you last saw Sophia?’ she asked gently.

‘Not for a while,’ said Chrysanthi, waving a hand, ‘but we talked on the phone. She would decide sometimes that I was interfering – when I was only trying to look out for her – and for a while that would be that.’

‘You used to message her about what she was eating – was there an issue there?’

Chrysanthi nodded. ‘Since she was a little girl Sophia had problems with her stomach and I worried about her diet. She would say that I was nagging her. You know how can it be between mothers and their daughters.’

Flyte nodded sympathetically: she and her mother could go weeks without contact and their occasional conversations often felt dutiful on Flyte’s side and chilly on Sylvia’s.

Chrysanthi’s face darkened. ‘All the time her father told her she could eat whatever she liked – things like ice cream, chocolate .?.?. far too rich for her.’ The venom she packed into the reference to George was almost impressive. Then she pinned Flyte with an intense look. ‘You mustn’t think that Sophia and I weren’t close you know. We couldn’t have been any closer.’

Suddenly, a figure in workmen’s clothes filled the living-room doorway and started speaking Greek in a deep voice. A hulking, broad-chested man whom Flyte had seen up the ladder outside, he fell silent when he caught sight of her and put a hand on his heart. ‘Forgive me, Chrysanthi, I didn’t know you had company.’

‘Don’t worry, Themi, this is the lady dealing with my complaint against the police.’

Was it Flyte’s imagination or did Themi’s eyes grow watchful at the word ‘police’?

‘I’ve cleared all the gutters front and back,’ he went on in heavily accented English. ‘You shouldn’t have any more trouble.’ Themi looked to be around the same age as Chrysanthi, but Flyte noted approvingly the way he addressed her – with the traditional courtesy of a man addressing an older lady. ‘I noticed one of the downpipes is cracked so I’ll get a new one and come back tomorrow to fit it.’

The pair of them lapsed into musical-sounding Greek. Before Themi left he sent Flyte a little bow of farewell – his politesse somewhat at odds with the old scimitar-shaped scar down one side of his face that made him look like a pirate.

As the front door closed, Chrysanthi told Flyte, ‘Themi isn’t just my builder, he’s my oldest friend. We met when we were thirteen in the children’s home in Cyprus’ – a rare smile inverted the usual downward cast of her face, giving a glimpse of her relative youthfulness. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have him looking out for me.’

Flyte wondered if there was any romance on the cards, but from the unembarrassed way Chrysanthi spoke, and her determinedly sexless aura, she decided it was unlikely.

She spent the next ten minutes reassuring Chrysanthi that she would be poring over every aspect of the police investigation to date, along with a new detective from another borough. Reading people wasn’t her strongest suit, so she could only hope that her reassurances had worked.

As Flyte followed Chrysanthi out of the living room, her eye fell on the glass cabinet which held a faded colour photograph in an ornate silver photo frame: two tiny little children, a boy and a girl, holding hands. The picture brought her up short: the girl looked about three – around the same age as Poppy would have been had she lived.

Indicating it, she asked, ‘Is that Sophia?’ A nod. ‘And the little boy .?.?.?’

‘Sophia’s twin brother, Alexander.’ Chrysanthi crossed herself. ‘God took him from me two days after his third birthday.’

‘Oh no, dear God.’ Flyte couldn’t stop herself reaching out to touch Chrysanthi’s upper arm. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

‘He and Sophia were both sickly children, but of the two of them she was the fighter,’ said Chrysanthi, appearing to welcome the consoling touch.

Flyte had to bite her lip to hold back the threat of unprofessional tears.

The two women’s eyes met in a moment of shared feeling and Flyte gave Chrysanthi’s arm a little squeeze before withdrawing her hand. ‘Do you have any family, here or back in Cyprus?’

‘My mother died of complications after giving birth to me. As for my father .?.?.’ Chrysanthi dropped her gaze and made a contemptuous sound. ‘It would be better if I had never laid eyes on him.’

‘Did Sophia ever go back? To Cyprus?’

Chrysanthi stared at her. ‘Never. Why would she do that?’

As Flyte reached the end of the path through the front garden she turned and saw Chrysanthi still standing on the doorstep, looking old and .?.?. defeated.

Two children who had died before their time. Let down by the man in her life and without any family to turn to. And her closest friend an odd-job man. It was no wonder that Chrysanthi Angelopoulos seemed like a woman who had given up on life.

Chapter Eighteen

Phyllida Flyte’s early morning visit left Cassie fuming. It felt as if their relationship had rewound to a time before they’d overcome their mutual suspicion to cooperate on cases and become almost-friends. Almost-lovers even.

After work she took a bag of washing down to the laundrette and went over the morning’s encounter again as she loaded the machine. It dawned on her that Flyte had simply been putting on the tough cop act. It must be difficult for her being a freshly minted civilian after all those years in the police and she could hardly act chummy in front of her minder, the ginger gorilla in the brown suit.

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