Page 77 of Dead Fall

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On the ward, Chrysanthi’s bed wasn’t curtained off and a nurse was hovering. Suicide watch.

‘I’ll leave you two on your own,’ she told Cassie with a meaningful look. ‘But I’ll be just over there’ – with a nod towards the nursing station.

Cassie sat in the bedside armchair. Chrysanthi was hooked up to an IV drip and to a monitor displaying her vital signs. In place of Cassie’s rudimentary tourniquet was a proper pressurised version and going by the candlewax pallor of Chrysanthi’s left hand below the bandages it was pumped so tight as to be seriously uncomfortable – not to mention damaging to her nerves and blood vessels the longer it stayed on.

Cassie smiled at her.

‘Listen, Chrysanthi, I know we don’t know each other very well. But you really need to give consent for this op – or you could end up losing your arm, or even dying.’

Chrysanthi raised her good hand in a dismissive gesture. Translation: Like I care. It was clear that the minute she got the opportunity she’d be finishing the job she started in St Ioannis.

How to argue with someone who had just graphically demonstrated their lack of interest in living? Cassie pictured her wounds – those long cuts right down the mainline had aimed for swift and unstoppable bleed-out. Which is what would’ve happened if Cassie hadn’t been there.

She found herself thinking, What would Flyte say in this situation? Visualising those ice-blue laser-like eyes she got her answer: Put the screws on.

‘Dying by your own hand is against the teaching of your church, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Which means that if you try again and succeed they won’t bury you in their churchyard with Sophia. Do you want to end up in a random plot in Golders Green cemetery, miles away from where your daughter is buried?’

Going by the tremor of regret that crossed Chrysanthi’s face, that had hit home.

Cassie pressed her advantage. ‘If you choose to live out your natural life you will be laid to rest alongside Sophia one day. Isn’t that worth living for?’

‘You don’t understand!’ Chrysanthi burst out. ‘It’s too late. There has been too much sin!’ She banged her good arm on the bedspread for emphasis, her dark eyes under those winged brows boring into Cassie, as though willing her to understand.

Cassie got the strangest feeling – that she knew nothing, and the little she did know she’d been viewing as if through a series of blurred and shifting filters. If Chrysanthi hadn’t killed her own children then who had, and what was this terrible sin that haunted her?

The nurse came to check Chrysanthi’s vitals and her IV line, and Cassie took the opportunity to duck out, miming that she needed to make a call. Outside the doors of the ward, she walked up and down for a couple of minutes before pulling up Flyte’s last text, the one saying that Bronte had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. What Chrysanthi had said after slashing her artery came back to her: Sins of the blood can never be washed away.

Then she called Xavier, a mate in the specialist DNA lab which the mortuary sometimes had dealings with, praying that he’d answer.

‘Hey, Xav. Can I pick your brains about something?’

Ten minutes later, she was back at Chrysanthi’s bedside with a heavy heart – and a powerful conviction about the ‘sin’ that had led to her desperate act.

‘I think I know what happened,’ she told her gently, once they were alone again. She was viewing Chrysanthi through new eyes, and with profound compassion. ‘And I am so sorry I ever suspected you. You were a loving mother to your two children and you didn’t deserve to have them taken from you.’ She put a tentative hand on Chrysanthi’s uninjured right arm. ‘I think you need to share what happened with someone who understands’ – her tone and emphasis signalling not Father Michaelides. ‘Someone who knows what it’s like to grow up as an orphan.’

Chrysanthi didn’t move her arm from under Cassie’s hand. She returned her look, saying, ‘Nobody can ever know these .?.?. things. I will not have my daughter’s name besmirched for my sins.’

‘You have my absolute promise it will go no further. I swear it, on the soul of my mother.’ Cassie crossed herself to demonstrate the unbreakable nature of her vow. In any event, whatever Chrysanthi told her would be inadmissible in any court of law. But if she just took that first step perhaps she might eventually come round to talking to the cops. To ensure that punishment fell on the guilty.

Still Chrysanthi hesitated, and Cassie realised she would have to begin the story for her.

‘How old were you when he first came to find you?’ No need to utter his name.

George.

‘Fifteen,’ she said. ‘A little girl.’

‘So you were still in care.’

A nod. ‘In a children’s home on the outskirts of Larnaca.’

‘But permitted to work in the flower shop, at the weekend?’

‘Yes, they approved of us getting “labour market experience” ready for when we left.’ She plucked at the bedcover. ‘I suppose he told you that was where we met.’

A nod.

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