Lie With Me

by Sabine Durrant

  Was it a coincidence meeting me at Andrew’s dinner? Already hating me for Florrie, blaming me in her twisted way for Jasmine’s death, did she see her chance to use me, to set me up for the killing? How clever she had been, if so. The redevelopment of the land would have unearthed the body. She needed a suspect. I thought back to how courted I felt that night, how flattered. She came into the garden to find me. She cadged a cigarette; her first and last, choking it back. The tactic worked, though. She got my attention.

  All the time I thought I had been playing her, she’d been playing me. She’d dangled the promise of a next stage, but never clinched it. She’d offered a holiday at Circe’s House and then withdrawn it. It was all hints and delay, and hard to get. I’d been manipulated. It was the chase that made me keen. It was not being invited to Pyros that had made me determined to come. And then, once I got here, squeezing me into the boot of the people carrier, making me feel like a spare part, when all along I’d been the main part. All the acting and the smokescreens, the cooked-up hysteria about ‘sightings’; I thought I was a witness to someone else’s drama, when all along I was the star of her show.

  How beautifully I had played the role she had written for me. Every one of my failings worked in her favour. My arrogance, my greed, my need to prove my own virility, my tendency to show off. My cheesy stab at seduction with the T-shirt – she must have been thrilled with that; it was the clinching piece of evidence she needed. And getting me into the truck, where she’d left the spanner and the headscarf: how easily I’d taken the bait, wanting to please her, convinced by my illusory sense of superiority that I might be able to fix it. Wonderfully underestimating my own incompetence, I had fiddled, left my DNA where she needed it, on the spanner, on Jasmine’s cotton bandana – all she had to do was move them into the well.

  Every step of the way, I had played into her hands – my laziness, my moral cowardice. If only I hadn’t lied about the flight; if I hadn’t stolen the condoms. I shouldn’t have fled from Circe’s House, but there you have it. It’s what I do: I run away. She had watched me, groomed me from the start, exploited my weaknesses every step of the way. She had reeled me in. But how easy I had made it.

  The van lurched to a halt. The back doors were thrown open and a man stood there in the narrow gap, with a gun at his hip. Behind him, a flat, faceless building with yellowing water-stained walls, and row upon row of small barred windows.

  ‘Welcome to Korydallos, your new home.’

  I got out, leaving my tweed coat on the seat.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I’ve been writing this at night in my cell – wanted to get it down before the trial in case it doesn’t go my way. The act of writing has been its own form of therapy. It’s clarified matters in my head. I’ve been here fifteen months. You know sometimes when you look back on things that have happened, you pity yourself, your own naivety, your own foolishness? Well, I don’t. I’m not that man any more.

  Ironic, really, that I’ve finally found a place to call my own.

  I’ve had more comfortable gaffes, no getting away from it. Six men to a cell, often more – particularly after the austerity riots. There was a period when a particularly nasty drug-dealer from Macedonia forced me on to the floor, but he’s moved on now and I have my own mattress again. The physical discomfort – the sores, the blackness on your fingers, in your pores (there is no hot water), the bone-cold in winter, the lice, the psoriasis, the scars from scuffles and beatings – you get used to that. It’s the psychological pressure that’s the hardest thing. The fear of violence, the dread of boredom, the guilt.

  My trial could be any day. Andrea Karalla, the lawyer assigned to my case, is hopeful we’ll go to court in the next few weeks, although we have reached this stage before. Always some delay or another, some lost paperwork, some witness inexplicably indisposed. Sometimes, I’m not sure she is worth the money. Or whether she isn’t simultaneously being paid by someone else. Other times, I’m simply grateful. She is a plain woman, heavy browed, fond of severe black suits, and of scraping her hair from her face. She is way out of my league, far too good for me. She wears no make-up and, I noticed last week when she reached across the table to take my hand, that she bites her nails. But she is kind and clever and careful with me, and her eyes are a beautiful chestnut brown. If I weren’t shackled to my chair, I would want to lay my head in her lap. God, just the thought of it makes me want to weep.

  My spirit isn’t broken (the phrase you are supposed to use in memoirs of this kind). I still have hopes of freedom. There have been useful developments in two of the cases. Karella is confident, for one thing, that the charge of physical assault against the woman we now know as Greta Muller will never reach court. Ironically, although we are convinced Alice persuaded her to press charges, it is the one crime of which I am, sort of, guilty. I did push the caravan door into her face and though I didn’t mean to hurt her, there was an aggression and force behind that push, a desire to impress, that I am not proud of. Karella says it doesn’t matter. Muller has proved evasive. She is no longer in Greece; in fact she is currently in Amsterdam partaking in a music festival called ‘the Cannabis Cup’. The owner of the supermarket in Stefanos has identified her as a petty thief. Even if she returns to speak against me, Karella feels her plausibility has been weakened by her ‘lifestyle choices’. So there you go – just as my personality traits count against me where I am innocent, hers count against her where I am not.

  It was me who engineered that encounter in the first place. Alice, I’m sure, kept ‘seeing’ Jasmine in an attempt to reinforce her own innocence, and how taken aback she must have been at my insistence that we pursued that particular sighting. She adapted quickly enough, though – introducing me to Niki Stenhouse, one of the witnesses to testify against me. That’s one thing you can say about Alice, how resourceful and inventive she has been. She couldn’t have predicted my attack on Muller, though she has clearly used it since, just as using the rape could never have been part of her initial plot against me. All she had to do after it happened was remove my alibi and leave the rest to me – my lies, my thieving, my casual sexism did the rest. Whether Louis was guilty, I still don’t know. During my first meeting with Karella, in a windowless room in the bowels of the prison, I explained about seeing him being brought home paralytic and about finding the condoms in Andrew’s bag. Karella was cautious at first. I think she assumed I’d raped Laura Cratchet, that it wouldn’t have been out of character. Lots of people carry condoms they don’t use, she said – the ones I found could have been in Andrew’s bag for years. But since then we have had two small breakthroughs. A private investigator employed by Michael has found a witness, the owner of a jewellery shop near Club 19, who remembers seeing Alice and Andrew hoisting Louis into a car at 1.15 a.m. – which at least proves she was lying when she said I was the one who hadn’t been in bed. Michael has done some research too. It’s a small thing, but the gold condoms, LifeStyles Skyn, not available in Greece, are sold in Johnson and Co, a small chemist around the corner from Louis’s school. They are also widely available in most branches of Boots and Superdrug, but we will keep quiet about that.

  Neither Alice nor Andrew has so far returned Karella’s requests to discuss either of these issues. She says she finds that unusual enough to be considered suspicious, ‘particularly from fellow lawyers’.

  Andrew’s role is an interesting one. I’ve thought about it a lot. Artan’s papers are not in order, it turns out, so with very little duress, he admitted to the private detective that Andrew had paid him to ‘get rid’ of the dog. It wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was a commission. Is that better or worse than having blood on your hands? Worse, surely. I mean, what kind of person takes out a hit on an animal? That Andrew also helped Alice cover for Louis is now obvious. But what else has he colluded in? Their closeness, their body language. I don’t think they were having an affair. It was deeper and darker than that. They watched each other – out of fear of what
the other might give away. He was in on Jasmine. I’m convinced of it. He helped Alice hide the body, encouraged her to do it. I’ve pictured the terrible impact, and her running down the road to find Andrew, on his way up to check she was all right. It would have been Andrew who persuaded her not to tell the police, who reminded her of the well, who said her children needed her, that it wasn’t her fault. I have decided it was Andrew who forced her to turn a tragic accident into a serious crime, to live with a lie.

  Karella says she wishes there was proof of an affair – that it would be leverage of some kind. She’s asked if I would write to Tina about it, but I’m not sure. I’ve been keeping the information about Artan and Daisy to myself, too. Tina was the only person who was genuinely nice to me. Despite everything, I don’t want to upset her.

  We have made some progress. The bandana, the one on which I wiped my hands, has my DNA on it, but none of Jasmine’s. The prosecution claims the lye destroyed that, but Michael has discovered the scarf was part of Cath Kidston’s ‘classic’ range. It’s our contention the original scarf was never found; this was a replacement. The spanner is also clear of Jasmine’s DNA. The prosecution claims I wiped it clean. But Karella has found a medical examiner who will testify that the injuries to Jasmine’s skull could also be explained by impact with a car, and a forensic expert who will argue that the damage to the front panel on the Toyota is commensurate with such an injury. As for the witnesses, Karella is working hard to discredit their credibility. Niki Stenhouse, who placed me in Agios Stefanos later on that night, is a friend of Alice’s and therefore biased, and the other, the elderly resident who saw me with a young girl, has recently taken possession of a 40-inch flat-screen TV. Our PI is confident it is only a matter of us finding the right price for her memory to begin to fail. Meanwhile, he is still trying to track down the Dutch tourist I had sex with that evening. My alibi. If only I had got her number. If only I had got her name.

  The case against me rests on the supposition that I raped Jasmine and killed her to keep her quiet. Her body, however, is too disintegrated to provide evidence and it’s my character Gavras has put forward to back the case. I am the main witness for the prosecution. I am literally my own worst enemy. And here it’s the dossier the Anakritis has compiled of my moral failings that has done me the most damage.

  To be honest, it’s shocked me. I didn’t see it coming. The character references sting. Nothing has gone unnoticed. They’ve closed ranks, the Mackenzies and the Hopkinses. Their central accusation that, when I discovered the property was to be redeveloped, I ‘groomed’ Alice in order to have a reason to return to the house and destroy evidence is patently absurd. But even Tina, who will now know all about my treatment of Florrie, has been turned against me. They’ve listed all my lies – that I don’t own my own flat, that I haven’t worked properly in years, that I am never where I say I am. They claim I am shadily unscrupulous: an affidavit from Hertz proving I drove the people carrier without insurance, that I ‘ride roughshod’ over laws and rules, believing myself above them. I am ‘devious’: nobody remembers Alice or Tina asking for lye. Alice has also provided examples of my ‘arrogance’, my ‘obsession’ with class and status. A section in the dossier reads: ‘He claimed to have been awarded an academic scholarship to his public school, whereas this was in fact a bursary, awarded to poorer students whose parents worked for the church.’ Big deal. More painful: ‘He lied about a publishing auction for his latest “novel”, and greatly exaggerates his earlier literary success. A work he describes as his “great oeuvre” [unfair, that – it was Andrew’s phrase], Annotations on a Life, sold only 1,500 copies and is out of print. It is important to him to be seen as a significant literary figure. It is the deceit that raises alarm, in conjunction with the raised sense of his own intellect – what psychologists call Delusional Disorder.’

  Andrew, in turn, provided examples of my dishonesty – not just the petty cash I stole at Circe’s, but the Diptyque candle lighter I fingered from his house, the Martin Amis first edition (actually it was a present) which I later ‘sold on the open market’ and the hostess gift he and Tina brought Alice which I took home to give my mother. They’ve pooled their information. Only Alice knew about the Amis; only Tina could possibly have caught me out on the soap.

  More painful still are the details of my ‘sexual appetites’. Phoebe has detailed times in which I made her ‘uncomfortable’. She includes the incident with the can of cold Diet Coke, in which, as we fell into the pool, I apparently ‘fondled’ her breasts, along with numerous occasions when I spied on her, or ‘undressed’ her with my eyes, including that moment, early on, when I watched her through the crack in her bedroom door. Andrew’s mobile phone has been taken in as evidence. I was confused by this when Karalla first told me. But then I remembered that photograph, the one of me watching Daisy on the beach. I wondered if there were more.

  One detail stings: an addendum from Tina, contending I made a sexually explicit pass at her the afternoon we were alone at the house. And the following day, I behaved in a manner that was ‘creepily intense’. I thought that was unfair. I was only being kind.

  At first, I thought a lot about the little things that change your life. If it hadn’t been raining, if I hadn’t walked into the bookshop, if I hadn’t been rejected by the girl behind the desk . . . But more recently I’ve realised it isn’t just fate – though that plays a part, like a backdrop. It’s the small things inside you, the slants and notches, the defects, that trap you. In the night, I feel afresh the force of Andrew’s hatred. It wasn’t a coincidence, that meeting in Charing Cross Road. He knew where to find me; he’d planned it. If he hadn’t bumped into me there, he’d have bumped into me somewhere else. And that wasn’t because of him, but me, and my unkindness to Florrie. It was only a matter of time before my behaviour caught me out. Poor Florrie, a sweet girl who should never have met me, whose life I ruined. One thing I’ve learnt – long-lasting damage can be caused by casual cruelty.

  I do deserve the blame for her death, if not for the one I’m here for.

  Alice was right.

  Saintly Alice. I saw her once more before I left Pyros. It was that last afternoon, as I stumbled out of the police station, Gavras’s hand on my elbow. We crossed a small square to reach the van on the other side, and I looked around desperately, absorbing every last detail, of the square, the buildings, and a wall, a fountain carved in stone, and behind it a dip, as the land fell into the valley. And then there they were, standing in the shadow by a small stone fountain, Alice and Yvonne Hurley, waiting for me. Yvonne’s face was riven, grey, desperate with grief. Alice was supporting her, but I caught an expression in her eyes – panic, dread. She was the one who looked trapped.

  I’ve wondered since which of us is actually in the worst kind of hell. It’s a pact with the devil Alice has made – not casual but considered cruelty. All these years she has watched Yvonne live with not knowing; the worst kind of agony as she herself so often said. And now, with the accusations against me, she has led a mother to believe that it wasn’t an accident that took her child, but the worst kind of death.

  If it wasn’t for that, I might even drop my defence and take what’s coming. Because the thing is, I’m writing properly for the first time in years. It’s amazing the things I’ve heard, the people I’ve met – the stories they tell you if you bother to ask. So no, I don’t feel sorry for myself. I am a different person now. This whole experience – it could be the making of me.

  Acknowledgements

  For invaluable help with research, thanks to Ben Thorne, Andrew Watson and Ruth Bouratinos. Thank you to my editor Ruth Tross and to everyone at Hodder; to Grainne Fox at Fletcher and Co, and to the team at Greene & Heaton, especially Judith Murray and Kate Rizzo. Thank you to Barney, Joe and Mabel and special gratitude, as ever, to Giles Smith.

  Also by Sabine Durrant

  UNDER YOUR SKIN

  'Will keep you gripped and guessing till the very end.' Grazia<
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  It's true what they say: one moment can change your life completely.

  I found a woman's body on the common.

  I touched her; that was all.

  But now the police won't leave me alone.

  Because all the evidence is leading to me.

  And I don't know who I can trust...

  Gaby Mortimer thought she had a perfect life: a high-powered job, loving husband, beautiful daughter. But then early one morning she discovers the body of a murdered woman – a woman who looks like her, and seems to be wearing her clothes...

  REMEMBER ME THIS WAY

  She thought losing him was the worst thing that could happen.

  She was wrong.

  They tell her not to worry. Her sister, the police. They say it's only natural, when someone close to you dies, to see him everywhere, sense him still nearby.