Page 51 of Dead Fall

Bacon screwed up his face. ‘That ought to leave physical signs.’

‘Petechiae.’ The pinprick haemorrhages found in cases of asphyxiation.

‘Yeah. I’ll double-check with the pathologist – if I can get hold of him. Why don’t you talk to your chum at the mortuary?’ He nodded to himself. ‘She struck me as a smart cookie.’

After a pause, Flyte said, ‘So you speak fluent Mandarin. Clearly.’

‘Just enough to get by,’ he demurred, before sending her a sly look. ‘My Cantonese is pretty solid though.’

What the .?.?.? Flyte couldn’t think of a question that wouldn’t sound over-personal or intrusive. But after a pause Bacon put her out of her misery. ‘My wife comes from Hong Kong. We’ve been married thirty years.’

Chapter Thirty

That morning, when Cassie had been woken by the chirruping of the moorhens, her first conscious thought had been of Ethan. Venturing into the main cabin in her dressing gown she’d discovered that he’d already left. Of course he had. No note. No text.

Bronte’s face swum in to her mind. She was shaking her head. I wouldn’t if I were you.

She was on late shift so on impulse she headed over to her grandmother’s – feeling guilty about how long it had been since her last visit. She’d been putting it off, not looking forward to telling her about the split from Archie, who Babcia adored.

She used her key to let herself in, before halting at the sound of voices in the front room.

‘Cassandra! What a lovely surprise,’ her gran said, before gesturing towards her younger guest who sat in the upright armchair. ‘I think you have already met Chrysanthi Angelopoulos’ – looking a little embarrassed at this conjunction of visitors. ‘And you know my granddaughter, of course.’ Her careful tone recognising Chrysanthi’s loss and the fact she would never now have grandchildren of her own.

‘Of course. She’s been very kind,’ said Chrysanthi, managing a smile. ‘It has meant a lot to me knowing my child is being looked after by someone who cares.’

After a bit of awkward small talk she got to her feet. ‘I must be going. Thank you for the tea.’

When Babcia returned she was shaking her head. ‘That poor woman. She says her life is over. And she’s only in her mid-forties.’

Cassie did the maths: if Chrysanthi was say, forty-five, she could only have been eighteen when she’d had Bronte.

Cassie was concerned to see how the visit seemed to have extinguished her grandmother’s usual spark. The way she lowered herself down carefully into the armchair, her inward look – it took Cassie back to her months of convalescence after she’d had a mini-stroke. But she was nearly eighty after all.

‘I’m making you a strong coffee, with cream,’ she said.

She returned with a tray carrying the coffee and two slices of poppyseed cake. Babcia hadn’t moved or spoken. ‘I found some makowiec. It looks delicious.’ Knowing that if she ate some her grandmother would have to join in. ‘So have you been seeing much of Chrysanthi?’

She nodded, absent-mindedly breaking off a morsel of cake. ‘We have had coffee a few times. At the church and here. She is much younger than me, of course, but we understand each other.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘We both lost our only daughter. But of course it is so much more raw for her.’

They both looked at the age-bleached photo of Cassie’s mother – Kath – Babcia’s beloved only child, aged about sixteen, which had always occupied pride of place on the mantelpiece. Like an icon. Cassie had been inoculated by two decades of exposure to her mother’s hopeful, innocent look in the photo; and irritated too, during her teens, by the way her gran had held her daughter up as some kind of a saint. It was only recently that Cassie had discovered Kath’s wild streak, her troubles at school and, after she’d become a mother, the bouts of depression which she had treated with alcohol.

‘I remember being just where Chrysanthi is now,’ said Babcia. ‘The fury is all that sustains you. And hers is all directed against Sophia’s father, for no good reason that I can see.’

‘What does she say about him?’

‘That he is “mired in sin”.’ They exchanged a raised eyebrow. ‘When I ask why, she will only say that he’s a pig, who has spent his life rutting with anything that moves.’

Cassie grimaced. ‘But she doesn’t suggest that he had ever hurt Bronte .?.?. in any way?’ That ‘any way’ code for sexual abuse.

‘I asked her about that. Do you know what she said?’ Babcia arranged her face into a mask of vengeful fury and pointed to the sky – ‘“I swear by the Almighty Father, if he had ever laid one finger on my child, I would have killed him. Mortal sin or not.” And I believe her.’

Blimey.

‘What about the ex-boyfriend, this guy Ethan Fox?’ Cassie asked.

‘Oh she hates him, even more, if that’s possible. She’s convinced he was involved in the death of her child.’

Pushing her makowiec around the plate, Cassie recalled Ethan losing his rag at the bargirl in the ’Spoons at the lock. But having a quick temper didn’t make you a murderer.

---