by Evie Evans
To make matters worse, Vara had other ideas of how she was going to spend her lunch break the next day.
“I’ve hurt my back,” she announced the next morning when I got to the office. Leaning back, she rubbed the offending area to stress her point. “I helped a friend change the engine in his car last night and when I got up this morning my back was so sore.”
“You changed what? Engine oil?”
“Not oil, the engine. We swapped it for a turbo version. Any running around today, I’m afraid you’ll have to do it.”
“Right. That’s awful.” It was, I needed her out of the way to get access to the file. It felt like there was a conspiracy against me solving this crime. “You’re meant to keep moving with a bad back. Why don’t you have a walk at lunchtime?”
“I was going to go shopping but I can’t do that now. I’ve told my mother she’ll have to get the bread today.”
“You don’t want it to seize up, why not try a little walk later, down to the seafront, get some fresh air?”
“No, not today, I’m going to rest it.” She eased herself down into her chair. “Maybe I’ll try a walk tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? I couldn’t wait that long. Depositing my bag in the desk drawer, I sat down. This meant plan B. There was nothing else for it. I would have to sacrifice my turn at ordering the stationery. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t see any other way. Uninterrupted access to the stationery cupboard was a cherished thing (not only was it a little variation on the day but you also got first pick of the post-it notes) and Vara and I took it in turns to do the order. It was a little perk I was just going to have to forego this week.
It still required a large breath before I could get the words out. “I don’t think I’m going to have time to do the stationery order. Can you do it?” I asked.
“Ooh, are you sure?” Vara asked, her eyes lighting up like a fruit machine.
“Yes, it needs to be done today though, someone said we’re running low on pens again, and with your back…”
“I think I can manage to get to the cupboard,” Vara said, standing up slowly and stiffly, grabbing her notepad and pen. “Yes, I’ll be careful but I should be able to do it okay.”
That was it, bye-bye orange post-it notes (they were her favourites).
“Walk slowly,” I called behind her as she moved awkwardly out of the office. All the better for giving me more time with the filing cabinet.
Stocktaking the stationery didn’t take long, even at a snail’s pace, so there was no time to lose. I was up and in the files in a flash. To be sneaky, I opened the folder still in the drawer and flicked to the witness interview sheets where I’d left off the day before.
I found the interview notes of Tina’s sister, nephew and niece, the ones taken before Addi and I visited. They weren’t particularly interesting until I got to the part where the niece had told the police officer before Addi that Tina had mentioned a man called Paul she’d met with a few times in the couple of months before her death. The police officer had gone back to Tina’s sister about it, but she hadn’t known any Paul who’d been friends with her sister. It was the same name as the man on the birthday card. I flicked through the rest of the file to see what else had been found out about ‘Paul’.
Nothing. There were notes on some of the other men my aunt had identified but nothing on what had been done to find this Paul bloke.
It was taking a long time to read through the pieces of paper because the notes had all been made differently - presumably because of the different officers involved - some pages had handwritten extras scrawled around the edges, some had headings which showed what they were about, others you had to read through to find out. It was all a bit frustrating. Anyway, my head was firmly in the filing cabinet trying to decipher some writing along the top of a page so I didn’t hear the door open or someone walk up behind me.
“I hope those aren’t my case notes,” I heard Addi’s voice ask.
I looked up. What would he do if they were? “No, course not,” I told him, quickly closing the file and pushing it back in its place.
He didn’t look too happy. “They were, weren’t they? You’ve been reading the notes!”
“Is it a crime?”
“Yes, you’re not on the case,” Addi started, pointing at me which I knew couldn’t be good.
“Which is a death knell for it, isn’t it? I bet you don’t even have a clue who did it. Again.”
Ooh. Where had that come from? I had a feeling I’d gone a bit too far. By the look on Addi’s face, I’d say he thought that too.
Vara chose that moment to come back in with two mugs of coffee. “Thought I’d bring back a drink,” she announced, handing me a mug. “Save me having to get up again this morning. Oh, did you want one Addi?”
“Outside,” Addi snarled at me, turned and walked out the door.
I put the mug down and followed him out, to Vara’s astonishment.
There we were, standing on the path at the back of the building that led down to the seafront again.
“How dare you!” he started as soon as the door closed behind me.
“How dare you,” I countered. “I have an interest in this case, you know. My aunt is an old lady, she doesn’t need to be worrying that she’s about to be bumped off.”
“So you’re telling me you’re doing this for your aunt? Really? What have you done for her since you arrived?”
“I help her out a lot, actually. I’ve done a lot of d.i.y. around the house for a start.” Well, I’d started a lot of projects around the house (I’d even finished a couple of them.) “I make her life easier.”
“Easier? She drives you around, I’ve seen her. She’s always cooking your meals, she even does your laundry, doesn’t she? You tell everyone you’re here to look after her but the fact is, you’ve made more work for her since you arrived.”
“Rubbish. I cooked dinner only last night actually,” I told him in a smartass sort of way. “And your mother does all that stuff for you as well, you hypocrite!”
“At least I treat her friends well. I’m not sick in their house.”
“I was not sick in their house!”
Addi gave me a hard look.
“It was their pond, get your facts right. Look, maybe it’s a British thing, we like to see justice done.”
“There you go again. You can be so patronising sometimes. And you talk to people as if they are stupid because British isn’t their first language−”
“English, the language is English.”
“−and for your information,” he continued quickly, “you are the foreigner here, not us. You only see us as…,” he held his hand up, “what’s the word – stereotypes!”
He’d done it now. “At least I’m not all up myself,” I countered, a bit childishly but I couldn’t stop now.
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve gotten very bigheaded since I solved that case.”
Addi pointed his finger at me again. “Jennifer, stay out of this investigation or I may have to report you to the chief.”
Oh-ho, resorting to threats, were we?
“Well, good luck trying to solve it on your own.” Wrenching the backdoor open, I stormed through it.
Arriving back at the office, flushed and angry, I was surprised to realise I was close to tears. I’d just had a big row with the only person who passed for anything like a friend around here.
“Is everything alright?” Vara asked tentatively.
Of course everything wasn’t alright. Swallowing hard, I pulled together my stiff upper lip again and told her yes.
I don’t know what Addi told the chief but the next day the case file had been removed from the filing cabinet and it didn’t return. No more notes from the case were handed to me or Vara. I could only assume they were being handled by the admin staff in another office. Online access to the case notes had also been revoked. I was off the case and no longer had access to what was going on. I hadn’t handled
things very well after all.
As I watched Addi bumbling around on the case from afar, the world outside moved quickly into winter (don’t get excited, it wasn’t like winter back home, this was mild with no snow or annoying Xmas jingles), and I was shocked when I found it was the middle of December already (probably because there hadn’t been any annoying Xmas jingles to remind me). Colourful lights started appearing outside shops and houses, signalling that the season would soon be upon us.
Unlike back home, Christmas here didn’t appear to be about how much you could spend on pointless items people would never use, but more about appreciating family and friends, and spreading good will. It’ll never catch on. The locals didn’t even go in for Christmas cards much, Aunt June explained. What a result! No more having to write out the same thing twenty times over (did I say twenty, I meant thirty, erm, thirty five times, whatever sounds like a lot of friends).
My party season wasn’t looking too festive, being a bit lacking on the friend front, so when our neighbour, Helena, invited us to her home for a Christmas drink, I happily agreed to relieve the boredom for a few hours.
“Get a grip on yourself tonight,” I warned Aunt June as we walked down the road to Helena’s house. Helena had a son around my age who was almost good looking and, most importantly to my aunt, single. “Just because we’re having a drink with her doesn’t mean I’m getting engaged to her son, alright?”
“I don’t know what you mean. You’re the one who needs to get a grip on themselves after Frank and Kate’s party.”
“Let it go already, that was weeks ago.”
“You could at least have worn a dress,” she berated me for the third time that evening as we walked up the driveway.
“There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing,” I hissed, looking down at my shirt and posh jeans.
“People are very conservative here, they like women to wear a dress.”
“Well, I’m very conservative; I like to think it’s up to me what I wear.”
“You’ll never get a man, dressed like that.”
“Promise?”
The front door opened suddenly and we both chorused “Merry Christmas!” with big smiles.
It was a slightly larger gathering than I’d expected with a dozen or so other people plus our host. The others all appeared to be locals which was a welcome break to me from the usual expats. For a start, I’d get to spend an evening not being interrogated about the Tina Lloyd case.
I was careful not to be patronising and assume they wouldn’t speak very good English. Not that Addi’s words had had any effect on me, he was totally mistaken and obviously didn’t understand me at all. The fact that I had started cooking a little more, and even done the laundry on my last day off, had nothing to do with what he’d said. We still hadn’t spoken since our argument, which was some feat considering the size of the police department. I just hoped he didn’t try crawling back asking for help again; I hated to see grown men cry.
Helena’s son, Michalis, a tall, dark, not-exactly-handsome-but-attractive-in-a-craggy-way thirtysomething, was in attendance. Despite my threat, Aunt June still managed to engineer it so I was standing next to him. She looked mighty pleased with herself as she made a pathetic excuse and walked off, leaving us alone together.
“Nice lady,” Michalis remarked.
“Sometimes.”
We stood awkwardly in silence for a few seconds.
“Are you here for Christmas?” I asked.
“I live in Demitra but I’ll be here on Christmas Eve. My mother and my Yiayia will want me to take them to the church, of course.”
“Of course. And will you be having turkey?” I had to admit I hadn’t gotten a grip on Christmas traditions around here, most homes seemed to have a tree but I didn’t know if the turkey dinner was a universal thing.
He laughed a little.
I’ll take that as a no, I thought.
“We’ll probably have pastitsio or hiromeni.”
What or what?
“Pork,” he explained, “or our version of pasta.”
A small, old Cypriot lady (even smaller than my aunt and more wrinkled), wearing a dress I noted, sidled up and offered a plate of delicious looking biscuits. Not wanting to look greedy, I just took two and attempted to nibble them politely instead of my usual wolfing action.
“These are traditional Christmas biscuits,” Michalis told me. “This is Yiayia, my grandmother.” The old woman pulled her face momentarily into what might have been a smile and sloped off before I could say hello.
“Lovely,” I tried to say with my mouth full of almond filling. I will say this, the Cypriots certainly know how to make a good biscuit.
“You will be having an English Christmas?” he asked.
“I don’t know, it depends on my aunt.”
“You like your Christmas pudding?”
Was that a comment on my size? I wasn’t what you’d call big but I certainly wasn’t skinny either. I looked down at the uneaten part of my second biscuit, appetite now gone.
“I mean, you like Christmas back home?” Michalis quickly followed up, perhaps seeing the look on my face.
Christmas back home? I’d enjoyed last year’s, but that was before everything had come to a head (and I had lost mine). It got me to thinking about people back home, one person in particular and the things he had said to me last Christmas. And how it had felt to discover they were lies, all lies. Would he give a thought to me this year?
“Not necessarily,” I told Michalis. “This year will certainly be different and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
My good humour was lost, dwelling on the past. Michalis spotted someone across the room and excused himself to go speak to her. You couldn’t blame him.
Aunt June was back within moments. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Rubbish, it must be serious if it’s put you off your food,” she said, indicating the biscuit I was nursing.
“Just thinking about Christmas back home.”
“Oh, you’re not going to miss all that surely? Overcooked sprouts, dry turkey, lumpy white sauce.”
Suddenly, I felt all homesick again.
“Do I get the feeling we aren’t going to be having a traditional Christmas dinner?” I asked.
“You’ll have to cook that yourself if you want it. I haven’t eaten that sort of thing for years. Let’s stand over there, there’s more room,” my aunt said, trying to nudge me along to where Michalis was now standing.
“Will you give it up already,” I told her, holding my ground. “I thought I was a xenos anyway.”
“Oh, Helena won’t think that. I’m sure she’d like to see Michalis settled.”
“Well he’s not settling for me.”
Aunt June looked like I’d spoilt her fun. “I think I’ll get a nice bit of pork or beef for Christmas. You don’t mind if Kostas comes over, do you? He’ll be on his own otherwise.”
Christmas was shaping up to be a bit of a letdown.
16 Let’s Get Down To Business
I couldn’t get over the fact there wasn’t going to be a Christmas do at work. I’d never worked anywhere before that didn’t have some kind of celebration. Party season back home usually meant a few outings to a pub, club, or someone’s house, all involving an excess of eating and drinking with numerous opportunities for personal humiliation. Apparently, getting rat-arsed and falling facedown in a gutter wasn’t the Cypriot way to celebrate Christmas. They didn’t know what they were missing.
Addi and I still weren’t talking, and Vara didn’t have time even for a Christmas drink amongst her many seasonal preparations, so it came down to the expat community’s Christmas celebrations to save me. They offered a ‘turkey and tinsel’ evening or ‘mince pies and carol singing’ at the community hall they called ‘the Club’. Neither one sounded like a right raving night out, but I bought two tickets to the turkey one to get back at Aunt June for not wanting a traditio
nal Christmas dinner.
I was disappointed to find, when we arrived, that Aunt June had arranged to be served a curry instead of the traditional fare. Curse her and her contacts.
“You’re missing out on all this nostalgia,” I told her as I forced down a soggy sprout, paper hat on head. The organisers had gone to a lot of effort, supplying snowman patterned paper table cloths and serviettes, and, I was delighted to see, Christmas crackers. There was even a large (fake) Christmas tree in the middle of the room.
“I’m happy with my turkey tikka,” my aunt smiled smugly, skewering a chunk with her fork.
Not for long, I reckoned. I’d told the kitchen staff my aunt liked her curry extra hot. I know it was a bit mean, but I was confident they came from the same school of cookery as my aunt, hot to them probably meant an extra twist of the pepper pot.
It became clear I had underestimated them when the perspiration started to become visible on my aunt’s brow. When mixing in some of the bread sauce didn’t help cool it down, I found myself swapping my beloved Christmas dinner for her stomach pumping nightmare.
“That wasn’t as bad as I thought,” she said, wiping the last of my turkey around the plate to pick up what was left of the gravy and cranberry sauce. “The turkey was lovely and moist, and those roast potatoes so crispy.”
“Really?” I said dryly, eyeing her plate enviously. I’d only managed a small amount of the curry and was picking at the boiled rice.
“Mmm. Best Christmas dinner I’ve had in ages.”
“Great,” I commented, trying not to look at the mess congealing on my plate.
“Maybe I will try a bit of Christmas pudding, after all, it’s a long time since I had any. Are you going to have some?”
The curry’s full effect hit me at that moment and I had to make a dash for the loo.
From inside the cubicle I could hear two women outside complaining about the police’s failure to catch Tina Lloyd’s murderer. Just what I needed. Couldn’t I go anywhere without hearing people banging on about this case? I let out a groan.
“Are you alright, Jennifer?” I heard my aunt call back. I hadn’t realises she’d come into the bathroom behind me. “It sounds serious.”