Page 55 of Deep Blue Lies
I think about it. I’m not sure.
“You said there were two things?” Sophia asks.
Maria turns to her, a sharp look on her face, just for a moment. Then she looks back to me.
“Yes.” She falls quiet.
“This is perhaps a more difficult thing to say. And I see how this is already a lot for you to bear, but I believe I have to say it. You come here to find your father, and you learn he might have been a murderer. I don’t know if that’s true. I knew Jason Wright. I’m not sure I ever believed that he was responsible.”
There’s a silence. Finally Sophia breaks it.
“Isn’t that what the police said?” she asks.
“Yes. They did but?—”
“But what? I mean, surely they’d know, they were there, the ones who?—”
“Ava, there’s something I need to tell you at this juncture.” Maria interrupts Sophia quietly.
“OK,” I say, unsure where this is going. I wait while Maria composes herself, before she goes on, keeping her eyes on me.
“If you are the child that was left alive that day, then I was the person who found you.”
I see my own expression of surprise mirrored in Sophia’s face, but she gives it voice too.
“What do you mean?”
“I was the person who found the bodies. I was delivering groceries to the hotel that morning, and I had to see Jason, a problem with the billing. He wasn’t in the hotel, which was unusual, and I was sent to the room where he and Mandy were staying. Up past the old staff house.”
I look to Sophia. I can see she knows the places that Maria’s mentioning, and I think I’ve seen them too, when I looked over the resort.
“The door was ajar, so I knew something was wrong. When I pushed it open, I saw Jason lying there. He was clearly dead, and I knew he’d shot himself – or been shot. I’d never seen a gunshot victim before, but I knew.” She waits, swallows.
“And I knew about the baby, so I went into the room, looking for her. That’s when I found Mandy. She wasn’t shot, she’d been hit over the head, but very hard. There was no doubt she was dead too. And as horrible as it was, that’s when I heard the sound of breathing. At first I was scared, I thought that perhaps whoever had done this was still there. But they weren’t, not alive at least. But the baby was. It was just lying there, in a crib by the side of the bed. I picked it up and took it out of there.”
It seems as she’s speaking that she’s not really here, but now she’s finished she comes back into herself. She offers me a smile.
“So if you’re somehow connected to whatever horrible thing happened that day, in a way I am too.”
FIFTY-THREE
I have another evening shift at Bar Sunset, and I walk down along the road this time. On the way, as I go past Aetos Diving, I see a figure I recognise in a restaurant, hunched over a laptop. It’s Gregory Duncan, the writer who I spoke to up in the hills. He pretends not to see me – or not to recognise me – but I think he does really. I remember how Sophia told me he sits at this table sometimes to work, so there’s no reason to be concerned by it, but once I walk past I look back, and sure enough I catch him watching me. He drops his head at once, as if he’s just absorbed in his work, but I know what I saw. I see Kostas too, working at the back of the dive centre, lifting heavy bottles of compressed air onto a rack as if they were nothing. He notices me too, but doesn’t try to hide it. I don’t know what the expression on his face means, but it’s not friendly. He gives me a curt nod and turns his broad back.
The bar is busy, which is good, because it allows me to just exist and serve customers and clear tables rather than stress over who I am. It’s just a shame Hans is in a mood with me. He says I let him down the other day, and if I do it again I’ll be easy to replace. So it’s nice to know I’m valued. That punctures my mood a bit, and then I’m just unsettled further when Sophia drops by. She tells me the detective, Papadakis, has agreed to speak. It’s dark when Ifinish work, and I glance at the restaurants as I pass by, looking to see if Duncan’s there again. But if he is I don’t see him.
It’s two days before the meeting with Papadakis takes place, during which I stew a little in the growing heat of the island. But finally I find myself sitting beside Sophia as she drives her mother’s car towards the island capital. Maria is with us too, sitting in the back. But the time passed has changed the atmosphere somewhat.
“So what’s he like, this Nikos guy?” Sophia asks, turning to look at Maria.
“I’m not sure. I’ve not seen him in a long time.”
“But you two were what? Like boyfriend and girlfriend, back in school?”
“Absolutely not. Where did you get that impression?”
“So he liked you, and you weren’t interested?” Sophia grins at me, I think she senses that a big part of me doesn’t want to go today, and she’s lightening the mood.
“Well, would that be such a surprise?” Maria answers after a moment. “I was popular enough with the boys when I was younger.”
