by Adam Croft
‘Good night’s sleep?’ Hardwick asked with a smirk.
‘Had better. Still, better to let Jennifer calm down for a bit. Wouldn’t have done me much good to go back there last night.’
‘Well, hopefully she’ll have calmed down and seen sense by the time she gets up,’ Hardwick offered.
‘Probably. She’s pretty irritating like that. Sure, she can hold a grudge, but she’s also got this uncanny way of being able to just forget about something if it suits her. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she seemed absolutely fine. Women, eh?’
Hardwick, who tried to have very little to do with romantic relationships of any kind, just smiled.
12
Ellis Flint had woken up with a hangover that raged like Dante’s Inferno. He hadn’t yet dared to open his eyes but he knew that he must. He always had weird thoughts after he’d been drinking. What would happen if he just got up and got on with his day but never once opened his eyes? Would he feel any better? Hell, it was bad enough now when his eyes were closed. He dreaded opening them. He knew he had to. Couldn’t go around the whole day with his eyes shut. Just the one for now, then, he decided, and steered his one eye towards the clock on the side table.
Just gone half seven. That was a good sign. If he was feeling pretty rough now, it was good that it was early. A sign that he’d probably feel all right by lunchtime. It was when you woke up at ten or eleven feeling like this that it was going to be a painful one.
Not knowing whether he needed a hair of the dog (the thought made him feel physically sick) or simply a nice greasy bacon butty, he convinced himself he needed to get up. He pulled one leg over onto the floor and eased himself up onto his elbow. His neck and back ached like hell from sleeping on the sofa all night. With the amount he’d had to drink, he probably hadn’t moved all night. He gently rolled his neck and arched his back, being extra careful to make sure his spine hadn’t actually set in place overnight.
His head was thick with the hangover, and his mouth tasted like a badger’s backside. He could almost feel the fur. The thought made him feel physically ill, but strangely much better than the thought of another drink.
He eased himself up further until he was sat up, his back arched over, the rolls of fat from his beer-bloated belly rested on his lap. Breakfast. That’d sort it. Sure, it was Greece, but even here they must be able to rustle up a nice warm bacon butty, dripping with fat. And coffee. Lots of coffee. His stomach rumbled at the thought, and Ellis translated that as a wholehearted agreement and stumbled to his feet before heading to the bathroom.
He splashed some cold water on his face, changed his underwear and put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt before fumbling around for a few minutes trying to unlock the door to get out of the apartment.
The sun hit him full in the face like a punch from Mohammed Ali. He visibly took a step back, his cheeks puffed out as he felt the assault on his entire body, reaching desperately for his sunglasses. They said sun was good for the metabolism. Ellis hoped it’d speed his up pretty quickly and get rid of the alcohol which was making him feel like a dead man walking.
He stumbled around in the porch, closing the door behind him and taking a few minutes to manage to lock it properly. As he was about to round the corner past the first apartment, which belonged to Jennifer and James, he noticed that the front door was open, indicating that Jennifer had clearly got over her most recent hissy fit and was duly rested from the early night.
The seven steps he’d already taken were more than enough, and facing much more of the sun right now was not an attractive proposition. He knocked on the door, hoping to see Jennifer or James and see what they had planned for the day. Anything was better than the sun. When no reply came, he poked his head inside the door and listened for the sound of running water or other generally bathroomy sounds which meant that he should beat a hasty and polite retreat. There was no sound at all.
He called out. ‘Hello?’
Still no response.
Ellis pushed the door open a little further and saw that the bathroom door was also slightly ajar. For reasons completely unknown to him, he headed for the bathroom and pushed the door open. As the door thudded against something solid but soft, he stepped inside and recoiled in horror at what he saw: Jennifer’s body hung limply over the side of the bath, her head lolled against the porcelain, her extremities blue.
13
Ellis’s first instinct was to fetch Hardwick. Well, if truth be told his first instinct was to rid himself of the contents of his stomach, but yet again even the sight of a dead body was more appetising than alcohol right now.
He stumbled out of the apartment and back into the blinding sun, the world around him swerving and swaying in the heat, the alcohol sloshing around behind his eyes as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.
Knowing Hardwick wasn’t in the apartment, and also knowing that he was prone to rising early, Ellis headed for the pool area. He had to stop a couple of times to steady himself and make sure he wasn’t going to be ill.
He glanced over at the sun loungers. On seeing James, he turned as white as a sheet and said nothing, simply beckoning Hardwick over towards the bar area to speak to him more quietly.
‘Christ, Ellis, you look like death warmed up,’ Hardwick said, with a cheeky smile which told him that he was less than sympathetic.
‘That’s not so far from the truth. There’s been a murder.’
‘What?’
‘A murder. Someone’s been killed.’
‘I know what a murder is, Ellis. I mean, how do you know? Are you sure this isn’t just another one of your alcohol-induced dreams?’
‘Yes, I’m sure! I just found her! Unless she’s shoved her own head in a bath full of water and drowned herself, it’s bloody murder, Kempston!’
‘Ellis, calm down. What do you mean her? Who is it?’
‘Jennifer!’ Ellis said with the growl of a wild animal in his voice, despite not raising his voice much above a whisper.
‘Where?’
‘Her apartment,’ Ellis replied, trying to swallow down the rising vomit. ‘The door was open, so I called out but there was no answer, so I—‘
‘Open?’
‘Yes,’ Ellis replied. ‘Only slightly, but enough that it was obvious.’
‘Interesting. Find the owner, let him know what’s happened. But don’t tell anyone else. I’ll meet you back at Jennifer’s apartment.’
Hardwick headed in the direction of the apartment, deliberately not looking in James’s direction as he passed him, sure that his eyes would betray him if he did so.
Ellis, meanwhile, found the closest bush and retched.
14
When Ellis had finally recovered and managed to find Stavros Giannakopoulos, the hotel’s owner was visibly taken aback by what he had been told. His main concern, though, seemed to be financial.
Once Hardwick had established that Jennifer Alexander was, indeed, very much dead, he came to find Ellis and Stavros. His first thought was that Ellis seemed to be looking much better.
‘This is terrible news,’ Stavros said as Hardwick told him what had happened in apartment number one.
‘Yes, it is. Please call the police and we’ll let them deal with it,’ Hardwick said, before turning to head for the door. Ellis shook his dead in disbelief, but Stavros beat him to speaking.
‘No! Please, no police! I will lose everything! This place is all I have. I am almost bankrupt now anyway, and this will finish me!’ he implored, his face pained at the prospect of what could be. His words had clearly had an effect on Ellis, who turned to Hardwick — someone who clearly had not been swayed at all.
‘Kempston, surely we could…’ Ellis started, before Stavros spoke again. Hardwick simply closed his eyes and sighed.
‘The Kollidis has not made much money in years, not since the economy collapsed. Me and my family are hanging on, but we cannot lose our home and our life. Things will get better. The country will get better. B
ut until then, we must hold on. If you call the police, they will close down the Kollidis and I will be finished! Please, Mr Hardwick. I know you are a detective. I have seen your name in the newspapers and all over the internet. You can help me. You can find out who did this and save my business also. Please.’
Hardwick thought for a moment. ‘No. Sorry. I decided yesterday I was going to make the most of this holiday and I’m certainly not going to go around solving murders while I’m here. As far as I’m concerned, I’m off work for the week.’
‘But you are the only person who can help me, Mr Hardwick! Please!’ Stavros begged, by now on his knees in front of him, tears streaming down his face.
‘Ellis has helped me in the past,’ Hardwick said, doing his level best not to look the hotel owner in the eye, lest he cave. ‘I’m sure he’d be able to offer his opinion and expertise. To the police.’
Ellis took Hardwick by the arm and pulled him aside.
‘Before you say it, Ellis, no.’
‘Kempston, just think about it. You’re not thinking straight. Look at the man! If we call the police, his business will be ruined and his life will be over. How can you possibly consider doing that to a man?’
‘Ellis, things have to be done through the proper channels.’
‘And since when were you one for going through the proper channels?’ Ellis half-whispered half-barked. ‘It’s never bothered you before, so don’t you dare wheel that one out now. Now, I know you, Kempston. You’re a good man and you know what’s right. What’s happened to your passion for justice?’
‘It’s in England, Ellis, and I’m not. Now let that be an end to it,’ Hardwick said, attempting to pull away from Ellis.
‘No! I won’t!’ Ellis said, suddenly stepping his anger up a notch and pulling Hardwick in even closer. ‘A young woman has died here and the person who killed her is going to get away scot free and this man’s business and livelihood is going to collapse if you don’t help. Do you really want that on your conscience?’
Kempston Hardwick, a man who had dedicated his life to doing good wherever possible, had been put into an impossible situation. He bowed his head and sighed heavily.
‘Ellis, it wouldn’t work. I can hardly imagine any of the holidaymakers would accept the notion of a murder having taken place, the police not being called and the two of us investigating it instead.’
‘We’ve managed before,’ Ellis replied.
‘No, we have always worked with the police before. Or certainly at the same time as them, anyway,’ Hardwick added, remembering that Detective Inspector Rob Warner of Tollinghill Police had not always been entirely keen on their “interference” as he put it.
‘No! No police!’ Stavros said, clearly agitated at the suggestion.
‘No, you’ve already said,’ Hardwick replied. ‘But we do have to find a way to make this credible. If — if — we do it.’
There was silence for a few moments before Stavros perked up again.
‘I have an idea! I have a cousin who was in the Greek police. If I call him, he can come here and say that you are to investigate.’
Hardwick thought for a moment. ‘Mr Giannakopoulos, when you say your cousin was a police officer, what do you mean exactly?’
‘He was a police officer. Now he is not.’
‘Yes, I understood that much. But why is he no longer a police officer?’
‘Is a long story,’ Stavros said, taking Hardwick by the arm. ‘So tell me. You are in, yes?’
15
Hardwick sighed as he stood in the tiled bathroom and looked at the body of Jennifer Alexander. Her back was arched at an unnatural angle, her body folded over the edge of the bath. Her muscles would’ve relaxed after she’d died, and the human spine is a remarkably flexible piece of machinery when it isn’t being held up by muscular tension and nerve feedback.
She looked like a rag doll, just carelessly flung over the side of the bath like a used towel. Dead bodies never looked particularly human, but Jennifer’s looked even less so. The clean, tidy domestic surroundings of the bathroom seemed completely at odds with the reality of the situation — that a woman had died in here.
Her tousled hair clung to her arm like seaweed, her entire upper body inside the bath, save for her other arm, which was arched over the side. Her hair was bedraggled, but didn’t look like it had been made wet by water, but rather by sweat. Hardwick very quickly ruled out drowning. He wasn’t dismissive of the idea, though; he knew how much careless assumptions could affect a murder investigation. Indeed, the bruising around her neck seemed to indicate the true cause of death.
‘Looks like she’s been strangled,’ Hardwick offered.
‘With what?’ Ellis asked, noting the bruising but still at a loss to explain exactly what had happened.
‘Hard to say. A combination of things, by the looks of it. Could be hands here,’ he said, pointing to an area on the upper half of her neck which had become mottled and bruised. ‘But these marks here look like some sort of rope. Or this,’ he said, picking up a white fluffy cord. ‘Looks like the belt from the dressing gown on the back of the door.’
‘The killer must have grabbed it as the closest thing at hand, so presumably she died in here,’ Ellis said, proud of his deduction.
‘So it seems. Rather a messy and fussy way to kill someone, strangulation. Not the hallmark of a planned murder, if you ask me. If you’re planning to kill someone you’d do it somewhere away from other people, perhaps with poisoning or something a little more definite and less risky. A tricky one to get away with, strangulation, especially in the middle of the night,’ Hardwick said, manoeuvring to inspect the tiled walls and other aspects of the bathroom in a better light. He could see no blood, nor anything which would help identify the killer. Jennifer Alexander appeared to have put up, or been able to put up, very little of a struggle.
‘You reckon it was a spur of the moment thing then?’ Ellis asked.
‘I’d say so. No forced entry, so Jennifer must have known her killer — or at least known who they were, else she wouldn’t have let them in voluntarily. Don’t forget that she wouldn’t even open the door to her fiancé a few hours earlier. And it doesn’t look as though anything has been stolen, either. Her mobile phone and purse are in plain sight on the dresser and her handbag wasn’t far from the door, so I think we can rule out robbery as a motive. Notice anything else odd?’
‘You mean apart from the fact there’s a dead woman lumped over the side of her bath?’ Ellis replied facetiously.
‘Yes, Ellis,’ Hardwick said, ignoring Ellis’s sarcasm. ‘She’s still wearing the dress she had on last night. Which means she hadn’t gone to bed by the time her killer arrived.’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing,’ Ellis said. ‘I quite often sit up watching some TV when I get in from a night out. Maybe that’s what Jennifer did. Or maybe she read a book or just sat about for a bit, waiting for James to get back.’
‘Ellis, she kicked him out for the night. She wasn’t waiting for anyone.’
‘Well, maybe she’d had a bit too much to drink then. A few times I’ve fallen asleep fully clothed after a night on the tiles.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me one bit, Ellis. But from the very little I saw of Jennifer Alexander, I wouldn’t have put her down as the type of person who would fall asleep fully clothed. It’s possible, but to me it points to her killer having struck sooner rather than later.’
Hardwick took a step back and examined the bathroom with a wider viewing angle. Sometimes, he knew, you could be a little too close to see what was actually happening, or had happened. The old maxim that sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees was a very true one.
‘Ellis, you’re going to have to help me round up everybody who’s staying here at the moment. We’re going to need to speak to everyone. Without being able to get the police involved we’re going to have to use logic, deduction and our own noses. Ah. And time.’
‘Time?’ Ellis
asked, his brain still pounding from the previous night’s excesses.
‘Indeed. James, Darryl and Alicia leave for home in a few days’ time, as do the others who were here for a fortnight and had already had a week here. That gives us only a few days to find our killer.’
16
Spiros Stephanidis looked much the same as his cousin, Stavros, but with a decidedly shiftier air about him. He embraced Stavros with a very manly hug and a kiss on each cheek as he arrived some half an hour after his cousin’s phone call.
Hardwick spoke some Greek, but the odd local dialect and slang which Stavros and Spiros were speaking made much of it completely incomprehensible.
The introductions and formalities having been got out of the way, Hardwick, Flint and the two cousins made their way to the pool bar, where the holidaymakers had been asked to assemble following the news of Jennifer Alexander’s death.
Spiros was straight into police officer mode, clearly relishing his lost years since he had last worked as a detective.
‘Good morning. I am Police Lieutenant Stephanidis,’ he said, his chest pushed out proudly.
Hardwick raised one eyebrow slightly, sure that any attentive person would’ve realised that the Greek police force no longer used the old military-style titles, but that his equivalent rank would now be referred to as Chief Inspector.
‘I am sure that you will now all know — Miss Jennifer Alexander was murdered in her room at some point last night.’
‘Murdered?’ Alicia said as her hand shot to her mouth.