Page 32 of Deep Blue Lies
“I wasn’t sure I still had it, but after we spoke I looked and…” He shakes his head. “You tell me you were born here, on Alythos? To Karen Whitaker?”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head.
“Then you must read this. I do not understand, but it will tell you the truth.”
He pulls the book now from his shirt, looks at it a moment longer, then holds it out to me. For a moment I’m unsure what to do. I just stare at it, in total shock. This is something real. Mum’s actual diary. I just blink at it for a few moments, and then I take it from him. I tuck it in the waistband of my shorts, because I can’t even look at it yet. He nods – I think at this – but then I see it’s at the rubber handle, telling me to hold on again. And moments later we’re flying again, as he powers the boat full-speed back towards the shore.
But I don’t feel I’m going forward anymore. I feel like I’m already falling backwards. Back into the past I’m so desperate to understand.
TWENTY-ONE
I’m still in shock as Kostas noses the boat back onto the beach and waits while I jump off. We don’t speak, except I tell him my shift is about to start, and then I hurry along to the bar. And then it’s the first really busy shift I’ve done. The season is just getting going, Hans tells me, and a hotel nearby has just opened up for the summer, with mostly German guests. It seems half of them have come down to the Sunset Bar to kick off their holidays, and they mean to start it drunk. So I spend the next six hours pulling pints and clearing glasses, and delivering plates of fries and burgers. And I almost forget about the diary I now have tucked away in my bag, and what it might tell me about my mother.
Almost.
Hans finally lets me go just before midnight, and I decide I’ll read it when I get home. On the way I grab another take-awaysouvlaki, because I didn’t get time to eat at work. I’m dead on my feet when I get back to my apartment block. But right away something feels off.
I don’t know what it is. I suppose it might just be that it’s dark, and the lighting around the entrance isn’t very bright. Half the places around here are rentals, and whoever is going to live here for the summer hasn’t arrived yet, so it has a creepy feel anyway. Butit’s more than that, I have a real sense I’m being watched. I resist the urge to run, but slip my key between my fingers, so it’s a kind of weapon. But it won’t be much good, the way my hand is shaking. There’s nothing else I can do but walk fast, and at the entrance to my building I concentrate hard to slip the key into the lock first time and not fumble. I do it, and push open the door, pulling it locked behind me. Then I finally breathe again. It’s nothing, I’m just freaked out, by what Kostas said, by what I’m doing here.
The lobby is pretty dark and dingy, illuminated only by a single dim bulb. And I’ll feel properly better when I get into my apartment. As I fit the key into the lock there, a thought suddenly comes into focus. I’m using the same key I just used. I don’t know how that works, but Klaus only gave me one, which operates both my door and the main door to the building. Does that mean anyone who lives in this block could get into my apartment too? Had someone already? I don’t really know, I’m not an expert on locks, but it seems odd. I try to forget it though as I put the key in again. I think about something nicer, the warmth I can feel from the food, which smells amazing. But I don’t have long to think about that either.
The moment I open the door, I know what’s happened. All my clothes were in the chest of drawers. Now they’re strewn all over the floor. The kitchen cupboards are open, two of my three plates smashed on the kitchen floor. And on the table, where I left my trusty MacBook Air, there’s nothing but an empty charging cable.
TWENTY-TWO
My first thought is whoever did this might still be in here.
I flicked the light on when I came in, so if there is, they’ll knowI’mhere. I think about turning it off again, but I don’t want to be in darkness. It’s a small apartment, but there’s still lots of places I can’t see from where I’m standing, lots of places where someone could hide.
Shit.
I go to shut the front door, but then change my mind. If whoever did thisisstill here, then I want to give them some way of escape. If I trap them, they’re more likely to hurt me.
I step forward cautiously into the bedroom. Look around, nothing. Another step and I’m in front of the wardrobe, it’s like the most obvious place. I reach out, hesitating on the handle, then pull it wide open. Nothing again. I turn, bend down and look under the bed. Nothing but dust. The room – apart from my clothes all over the floor – looks just how I left it. I check the bathroom next, I still haven’t put the shower curtain up, so at least no one can redo in reverse the wholePsychoshower scene on me. It’s obviously empty. I go back into the kitchen/living room part of the space, and there’s not really anywhere left to hide. I look behind the sofa, open therest of the cupboards, which are too small to hide in anyway, and then take a huge sigh of relief.
So then I go back to the door to my flat, and this time I shut it, I lock it, and I pull the kitchen table in front of it, so that no one can push it open again from the outside. At least not easily. Only then do I really stop to think.
I didn’t see any signs of forced entry. I mean, I’m not a detective or anything, and I’m not sure I’d know for sure. But the lock didn’t look any worse than it normally did – which is pretty shaky if I’m honest, like it was the cheapest option when it was fitted, and that was twenty or thirty years ago. Could someone have opened it with a pick? I don’t know. Or what about how the key opens the front door and this apartment, is that how they opened it? I look around the room again. What about the windows? I’m on the ground floor, but I’m certain the windows were closed when I left, and they still are now. But just like the door, they’re not the most secure-looking I’ve ever seen. Far from it. Yet the little levers that hold them shut are still in place.
Another thought hits me. Perhaps it’s someone who stayed here before and kept a key? Or even Klaus, my landlord? I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe this is how he makes extra money on the side?
And then I wonder, I’m assuming this was someone just breaking in to rob me – but what ifthat’swrong? Maybe there’s some other reason? But as soon as I think that it seems ridiculous. What other reason?
I don’t know. I think I’m just freaked out. Freaking out. Here all alone, and feeling super vulnerable. But what do I do now? Should I call the police?
This probably sounds stupid, but I actually have no idea how to do that, here in Greece. Obviously back home I’d call 999, but it isn’t 999 everywhere, right? In America it’s 911. So what is it in Greece? I have literally no idea.
I could Google it. But even if I do call them, what am I actually going to say?
It was pretty dumb, the way I left my computer on the table. I didn’t think, but anyone passing by in the street could look in and notice it. I removed the net curtains, I cleaned the windows, none of that helped. I guess I was just distracted, what with this being a beautiful Greek island and everything, I assumed there wouldn’t be any crime here. But of course there is. There’s crime everywhere, and a MacBook is going to be easy to sell, obviously valuable. I start to feel less freaked out, and a bit more…embarrassed.
It’s pretty obvious, now I think about it, that this was just a burglary. And I begin to count myself lucky that there wasn’t anything else to steal. I had my money and bank card on me, plus my phone, and my passport too, luckily, because I needed to show it to Hans. So the only thing of value was the computer.
And anyway, even though it was an expensive laptop – back when Mum bought it for me – that was a few years ago now, and it’s been well used since then. I’ve been thinking for a while I need to get a new one. So maybe there’s no need to tell the police? Maybe I just chalk this one up to experience?
And if I don’t have to call the police, I don’t have to tell them that some part of my brain is telling me to link what happened here to the person I thought I saw watching me at the ruins of the Aegean Dream Resort. Because I don’t want to do that at all.
