by Adam Croft
‘Erm, what exactly do you mean by “took to spoil”?’ one slightly concerned holidaymaker asked.
‘That’s it!’ Hardwick barked. Ellis, what did I tell you? What time is it?’
‘Four o’clock.’
‘Damn. We need to get back to the resort, and quickly,’ he said, dragging Ellis from the tour as the other holidaymakers looked on.
‘Can’t stop them, can you? One mention of sex and they’re off,’ the American woman muttered.
32
The taxi driver did as Hardwick said, and drove back to the Kollidis Beach Hotel as quickly as he could.
‘Kempston, are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ Ellis asked.
‘Yes. I think I know who killed Jennifer Alexander.’
‘What, because of a vase?’
‘Yes, Ellis. Because of a vase. And a flower.’
‘Kempston, for crying out loud! Why do you always have to be so cryptic? What flower?’
‘Did you not hear the tour guide talking about the story of Apollo and Hyakinthos? Hyakinthos was Apollo’s lover. They were in a homosexual relationship. So were Zeus and Ganymede. And Zeus’s wife, Hera, had cottoned on and become jealous and nasty. Don’t you see it, Ellis? This is history repeating itself. It’s Greek legend being played out again, in Greece! The secretive homosexual relationship, the jealous wife! And Apollo and Hyakinthos, his young lover. Hyakinthos is the Greek word for hyacinth. And who had a picture of a hyacinth on his mobile phone?’
‘Darryl Potts!’ Ellis exclaimed.
‘Yes. Darryl Potts. Our Apollo’s young lover.’
Hardwick flung twenty euros at the driver as the cab pulled up outside the Kollidis Beach Resort and clambered out, jogging towards the bar area.
‘Arjun, where are Darryl, James and Alicia?’
‘Good afternoon to you too, Kempston. I am not sure. Perhaps they have already gone. Would you like a drink?’
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘To the airport,’ the barman replied.
Before another word was spoken, Hardwick had spun on his heels and jogged back towards the taxi, calling for the driver to wait. Ellis, who had only just reached the bar area and was almost out of breath, groaned noisily as he attempted to follow.
33
The journey to the airport was tense, with Hardwick muttering to himself and tapping the sides of his nose with his index fingers as he had wont to do when agitated and “in overdrive”, as Ellis liked to call it.
‘Is there no quicker way?’ Ellis asked the driver, sensing Hardwick’s immense discomfort and agitation.
‘Quicker? Quicker than the motorway? The motorway which links Kakagoustos and the airport? Hah!’ The driver did not even deign to answer the question properly.
Hardwick seemed oblivious to the brief conversation, his brain racing at a million miles an hour as he tried to calculate each of the permutations of what he had suddenly come to realise: that everything they had been led to believe was, in fact, wrong. That James Garfield and Darryl Alexander did not detest each other, but that they had continued the act to throw everyone off the scent that they were, in fact, in a secret relationship. That the odd choice of a picture of a hyacinth on Darryl’s iPhone wallpaper had been his own private joke and reminder, that he was Hyakinthos to James’s Apollo. That they had, too, been Zeus and Ganymedes, with James ready to pluck Darryl and sweep him away to their very own Mount Olympos. That Jennifer had found out, or realised what was going on and had become their very own Hera — jealous, nasty and all too powerful in her knowledge. And that was why they had to kill her.
‘But how, Ellis?’ Hardwick asked, as his brain moved on to the logistics of the operation.
‘Hmmm?’
‘How did they do it? James was on the sun lounger all night, on CCTV. And Darryl was in his apartment all night, as Alicia has testified. She was awake all night as she was so ill.’
‘There’s only one option, then,’ Ellis said. ‘That she wasn’t killed overnight at all.’
Hardwick snapped out of his psychological stupor. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, if we’re assuming that Darryl and James were the ones who were involved, we also assume that Alicia wasn’t and therefore her statements are true. Which means that Darryl couldn’t have killed her overnight. And neither could James, as he was on the sun lounger — on CCTV. So therefore Jennifer couldn’t have been killed during that time, and it must have been earlier. Alicia said she heard James knocking at the door and some sort of muffled argument which Darryl was witnessing, that Jennifer wouldn’t let James into the apartment. Alicia couldn’t hear exactly what was said, and she was very ill and disorientated, and we already know that Darryl’s witness statement isn’t worth the paper it’s not even written on, so what if James wasn’t arguing with Jennifer? What if the knocking had been on Darryl and Alicia’s door, and that the argument wasn’t outside James and Jennifer’s door, but theirs, and between Jennifer and Darryl? Suppose Jennifer had decided to confront Darryl that night, and with him having gone back to the apartment earlier she went off to have it out with him. Then the argument that Alicia heard wasn’t between James and Jennifer and witnessed by Darryl, but between Darryl and Jennifer.’
Hardwick was silent, mulling over the logistics and permutations of what Ellis was proposing.
‘And the argument is ended by Darryl killing Jennifer. James gets back to the apartment just as the deed has been done, and they solidify their account of what they’d say happened. James and Jennifer’s apartment would still be open — it was never locked in the first place, as James had never tried to get in. The knocking was Jennifer knocking on Darryl’s door. That’s why the door was ajar when I came by in the morning.’
‘Ellis. I think you’ve got it!’ Hardwick said, as he pumped his fists in joy. ‘My god, Ellis, I could kiss you!’
The taxi driver raised only one eyebrow as he kept his vision firmly on the road ahead.
34
The roads leading up to the airport slowed and slowed until they came to a complete stop with the airport terminal in sight. It was always the way. Airports, the homes of planes, being clogged up with bloody cars.
The queue slewed back towards where Hardwick and Flint’s taxi sat, those at the front unloading their passengers and luggage seemingly as slowly as they possibly could, finally causing Hardwick to open the passenger-side door of the taxi, narrowly missing a fast-moving cyclist, before racing around to the back of the taxi and flinging open Ellis’s door before he’d even realised what was happening.
‘Kempston! We can’t just—‘
‘Yes we can, Ellis. It’s quicker than driving. Come on,’ Hardwick said as he tugged on Ellis’s arm with one hand and threw a bundle of Euros at the driver with the other.
The pair jogged up the side of the road, dodging tourists and suitcases as they made their way to the main airport terminal as quickly as they could, darting into the revolving doors marked Departures.
The main terminal building was thronged with people as Hardwick and Flint scanned the crowds as quickly and efficiently as they could to try and find Darryl and James. Everywhere they looked, identikit tourists dressed in shorts and t-shirts lined the tiles, dragging their multi-coloured suitcases behind them, either bronzed or bright red as they grimaced at the thought of having to go back home.
The check-in desks were doing good business in the background, the luggage belts whirring as they whisked people’s luggage away to some unknown area at the back of the airport. Coffee kiosks and bureaux de change were busy with their own customers seeking either a caffeine fix or the reassuring familiarity of the pound sterling. Hardwick had never liked the Euro or its one-size-fits-all approach, denying each of its partner countries their tradition and soul that comes with having its own currency.
All the time, he was on the look out for Darryl Potts and James Garfield. Would Alicia be with them? Or was she also seen as somewhat expendable to Darryl; something which
needed to be got rid of? Hardwick had a better idea.
He darted through the thronging crowds, Ellis Flint struggling to keep up with him as his head bobbed about, left, right and centre amongst the countless number of tourists who were all making their ways in different directions. Ellis lost sight of Hardwick for a few moments, before spotting his head popping up from behind a coffee kiosk. He jogged after him, knocking suitcases and small children out of the way as he did so. This was no time for social niceties.
Hardwick reached the airline’s information desk at the far end of the concourse and the bespectacled, shy young woman behind the desk looked aghast as the pair pushed through the waiting queue of people and made their way to the front of the desk.
‘My name’s DI Kempston Hardwick, and this is Ellis Flint. We’re from the UK and we’re investigating a murder. Can you tell us if Darryl Potts and James Garfield have checked in today, please?’
Ellis, almost imperceptibly, shook his head at Hardwick’s slight twisting of the truth. This was a line he’d pulled before, and which, in Hardwick’s mind, was perfectly legitimate. He had, after all, technically been born with the full name Dagwood Isambard Kempston Hardwick, although, as he’d once told Ellis, if those were your three names, which one would you choose to use?
‘Excuse me!’ a bright red and rather large woman shouted. ‘But there’s a queue here! You can’t just go barging around, knocking people out of the way. Who do you think you are?’
‘Madam, we are investigating a murder,’ Hardwick said, before turning back away from her and whispering to himself: ‘Two, if you don’t shut up.’
The woman behind the airline information desk tapped the names of Darryl Potts and James Garfield into her computer.
‘Jason Garfield… no, I can’t see anything,’ she said.
‘Oh, for— No, not Jason! James! James Garfield! This is a murder case, woman!’ Hardwick shouted, furious at the time they were losing.
‘Sorry,’ the woman said, receding into her shell even further. ‘No, it is not showing on my computer,’ the young woman replied. ‘But I can try and—‘
‘Kempston!’ Ellis barked, pointing towards the newsagent’s kiosk, where Darryl, James and Alicia were quite casually perusing the selection of magazines on offer, oblivious to the fact that their lives were about to change forever.
35
The crowds seemed to grow and swarm as Hardwick and Flint tried to push their way through to the newsagent’s kiosk, desperately trying not to lose sight of Darryl Potts amidst the rabble of tourists who were zig-zagging across their paths.
When they finally made it over to Darryl, James and Alicia, Darryl seemed visibly taken aback at the sight of Hardwick and Flint.
‘Darryl, how lovely to see you here,’ Hardwick said, panting through his lack of breath.
‘Lovely to see you too, Kempston, Ellis. No suitcases with you?’
‘Just a flying visit,’ Hardwick replied. ‘But not of the usual type. Off home today, are you?’
‘Yes, our flight leaves in an hour, so we can’t hang around. We’re going to arrange for Jennifer’s body to be flown over on a later flight.’
Hardwick smiled and chuckled a little. ‘How do you propose they’re going to fly a dead body over, exactly? I mean, yes, if the death had been reported officially and the case had been settled, the Greek authorities would repatriate her body. That would mean informing the police, wouldn’t it? And I don’t think you really want us to do that, do you?’
Darryl scoffed and made a noise like bus’s air brakes. ‘And what do you mean by that, exactly?’
‘Well,’ Hardwick said, cocking his head to one side. ‘I’m not entirely sure that the repatriation of Jennifer’s body was ever really on your mind. I should imagine you’d be quite happy with her staying in the cold store at the Kollidis, wouldn’t you?’
‘If you don’t mind, Kempston, her fiancé is right here. How can you be so bloody insensitive and say things like that in front of him?’
‘Oh, I don’t think he’s all that bothered, do you. What was the plan? Fly back to England, spin some story about Jennifer staying there? Hope it’d all be lost in the system somewhere along the line? Or did you even think that far ahead? Because this whole week has been one huge catastrophic mess. No plans, no strategy. Just a hodgepodge of circumstances and cracks which you’d managed to plaster over very quickly. You see, we thought we were after some sort of criminal mastermind, but we were wrong.’
‘Are you drunk, Kempston?’ Alicia asked, still not having cottoned on to what Hardwick was saying.
‘Ah, yes. Alicia. And what were you going to do with her? I mean, you couldn’t exactly have her running around England telling everyone that Jennifer was dead, could you? But she couldn’t just disappear as well, wiped off the face of the earth as if she didn’t exist. Was anything planned at all? Or were you just hoping another hastily-hatched plan would fall into place?’
Alicia spoke again. ‘Are you trying to say that—‘
‘Oh, yes. I am. It was your boyfriend who killed Jennifer. It wasn’t James banging on Jennifer’s door, but Jennifer banging on Darryl’s door — your door. When Darryl went to “see what was going on”, Jennifer was outside confronting him. That’s when he ended up killing her, just as James got back from the bar and they hatched the plan to cover it up, being the perfect alibis for each other due to their apparently hating each other, with you as the third alibi. Quite clever for an on-the-spot plan, I must admit.’
‘But… I don’t— Confronting him about what? Alicia asked, looking suspiciously at Darryl and James as she spoke.
‘About the fact that your boyfriend and James have been having a secret affair, Alicia. About the fact that Jennifer had found out and was going to expose them. When you heard Jennifer telling James that she felt embarrassed and ashamed, she was talking to Darryl. She wasn’t embarrassed and ashamed that James had left her to be chatted up by Nick Roder, but that Darryl and James had made a fool of her by carrying on behind her back. So what was the plan?’ Hardwick said, turning to Darryl and James. ‘If there was a plan, that is. Was Alicia going to be next?’
A sob came from Alicia’s mouth as her hand rose to subdue it. ‘Darryl… Tell me it’s not true. Please!’
Before an answer came, Darryl had hot-footed it off towards the terminal doors, up-ending a stand full of newspapers as he went. Hardwick darted after him almost as quickly, as the pair headed for the exit.
Another push through the growing crowds of tourists ensued before Hardwick finally got out of the terminal doors, the sun beating down on him once again as he saw Darryl Potts bounce off the bonnet of the braking taxi.
36
‘I feel so stupid!’ Alicia said, as she sobbed into her hands, her and Hardwick sat in the cold, soulless room at the airport. ‘They say you can always tell, don’t they? How did I not see it?’
Hardwick, who had not one shred of romantic understanding in his being, tried to be as poignant and prophetic as possible.
‘You were blinded. Perhaps you did see it. But if it’s not something you want to see or believe in, your mind won’t let you see it. We’re all blind to our own minds.’
The door opened and Ellis came in, accompanied by the airport manager who had brought a pot of tea.
After Darryl had been handily stopped in his tracks by a ton of metal, he had been detained by Hardwick and a security guard until the police and ambulance service had been called. Ellis, meanwhile, had stayed with James and Alicia, the security team in the airport having been on the scene pretty quickly after the commotion was noticed.
As far as Hardwick was concerned, his week had been a success: he’d finally seen evidence of some uncharacteristic Greek efficiency. The airport staff, once Ellis had told them what had happened, were more than accommodating, having shuffled him and Alicia off into a side room whilst the security staff detained James until the police arrived.
‘I spoke to the ambulance
crew,’ Ellis said. ‘It looks as though Darryl’s going to survive. The police are waiting to speak to him as well. They’ve arrested James. They’ll probably want to speak to you too, Alicia.’
‘But what can I say? I don’t know anything. I only found out myself five minutes ago!’
‘I know, but Ellis and I will do all we can to help,’ Hardwick said. ‘From what I saw, James looked just about ready to admit to everything. Now the police are involved, they can use DNA evidence and all sorts of things to prove it. All you have to do is tell them your version of events.’
‘I… I don’t even know what’s real any more. I just feel so sorry for Jennifer. I mean, not only was she murdered but it wasn't even her fault. The only thing she did wrong was to find out the truth.’
‘Sometimes the truth can be far more dangerous than fiction,’ Hardwick said. ’There’s a lot to be said for living in your own dreamworld.’
It was at that point that the door to the side room flew open and two burly, very Greek-looking police officers entered.
‘You are Mr Hardwick, yes?’ the older and sweatier of the two said.
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Hardwick said, with his hand extended and a proud smile plastered across his face.
‘And this is Mr Flint?’
‘That’s right, yes. I suppose you want me to explain how we worked it all out?’
‘No, I want you to come with me. We are arresting you both. We would like to speak to you about why you seem to have obstructed justice and interfered with a crime scene.’ He turned to his younger colleague. ‘Put handcuffs on them both.’