Page 52 of Dead Fall

‘And of course the poor thing has no family to turn to,’ Babcia went on. ‘Her mother died right after having her, and she never even knew her father.’

‘Does her faith give her any solace?’ asked Cassie. Believers often seem to cope best with bereavement: the conviction that everything was part of God’s plan, and the belief in an afterlife, bringing comfort.

‘She worships her priest, Father Michaelides, but he is a very stern man.’ Babcia gave a little shiver. ‘Not a lot of love and forgiveness in that church. Still, she has asked me to go there to pray with her and I said yes.’

Yikes. Cassie felt torn between two competing emotions: desperately sorry for Chrysanthi, but also worried about the effect exposure to all that grief and fury might have on her grandmother.

‘Will you tell me when you’re going? I’d like to come along. I could take you both for coffee afterwards.’ That way she could keep an eye on things.

She pulled on her jacket and bent to give her grandmother a kiss. ‘Does Chrysanthi ever go back to Cyprus?’ she asked.

That brought a grim chuckle. ‘Cyprus? No. She calls it Satan’s island.’

Half an hour later, she was climbing back on the boat, where she found a plastic bag standing beside the cabin door. It held a bottle of Wyborowa – her vodka of choice – and a scrawled Post-it note stuck to the label that made her smile despite herself. It read, ‘Thanks for looking after me last night, Nurse Raven. E x.’

Macavity wound himself round her ankles as she prepped his food, encouraging her with a deep purr. But when she set it down he sniffed at it once and threw her a look that said, What is this shit?!

‘It’s Sheba for Christ’s sake,’ she told him. ‘You used to love it.’ Looking at the food again, his back twitched once in disgust, and he left the cabin, scooting through the cat flap with unnecessary force.

Should she hold her ground over Macavity’s latest food fad? Or just roll over and bulk-buy tinned fish?

Her phone rang, making her heart do a little backflip. Ethan? But the sight of Flyte’s name on the screen triggered equally complicated emotions.

As ever, Flyte wasted no breath on social niceties. ‘A neighbour heard the sound of someone struggling for breath from Bronte’s place the night she died. Could somebody have choked or suffocated her without it leaving any physical evidence?’

Cassie pictured Bronte’s face, pale apart from the lividity on one side. ‘Her face wasn’t congested, although it’s not always a feature in asphyxiation. There was no sign of petechiae but that’s not—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Cassie?’

Cassie had been bending down to pick up the cat’s saucer of uneaten food. As she straightened to set it on the worktop, she heard a single, discordant guitar chord which stopped her breath in her throat.

It seemed to come from right behind her but also, somehow, from a yawning distance. She tried to breathe but her throat stayed closed. She tried to speak but only a choking sound came out.

‘Cassie, what’s wrong?!’

Starting to feel dizzy from lack of oxygen, Cassie made herself turn slowly, inch by inch, convinced that she’d find Bronte sat behind her, guitar on her lap.

The cabin was empty. She drew a gasping breath.

The fading jangle of that chord seemed to hang in the air still. Cassie’s brain was whirring like a fruit machine.

‘Sorry,’ she told Flyte. ‘Something just occurred to me. Meet me at the mortuary in half an hour.’

And ignoring Flyte’s questions she cut the call.

FLYTE

‘Are you going to tell me what the heck is going on?’

She was following Cassie down the corridor from the mortuary entrance.

‘In here.’ Cassie waved her into the body store, clearly impatient to show her something.

She tapped at a name marked on a drawer. Flyte squinted at it ‘Jake Ecclestone?’ she read. ‘What has he got to do with Bronte?’

‘He’s got nothing to do with her – except for the way he died’ – wearing a look of secret excitement that was starting to irritate Flyte.

She folded her arms. ‘And?’

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