The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  ‘What a beautiful spot,’ she said, and Giorgios nodded.

  ‘Come.’ He led her along a scrubby path to a gate that opened onto a graveyard. The tombs were a mixture of old and new – some boasted fresh flowers, others had decayed into gaping holes in the ground. Kate was glad of the darkness that prevented her from seeing what lay inside. Giorgios took her to the other side of the compound. In the far corner, overlooking the sea, a hand-made wooden cross stood sentinel over a mound of scrubby turf. In front of it, a bundle of bay leaves sat in a vase.

  Giorgios stood at the grave and looked down, crossing himself. ‘This is your friend. Jake.’

  ‘No.’ Kate almost stumbled with the blow of his words.

  ‘I’m sorry, but yes.’

  ‘But how can you be sure it’s him?’

  ‘I found him. I was fishing out there.’ He gestured to the sea. ‘I was looking for your beach, to bring you some barbounia. I saw him fall, I tried to get to him in time, but there was no hope for him. I pulled his body from the water.’ He pointed to Kate’s Triskelion. ‘I knew it was him. I saw this on you all when you were at my place that night.’

  ‘Did you see how he fell?’ Kate asked in a small voice.

  Giorgios briefly closed his eyes and, almost imperceptibly, nodded.

  So the nightmare had come back, but a million times worse.

  She had killed Jake.

  Then who the hell had her daughter? Who had picked her life apart at the seams? And why?

  Giorgios caught her by the elbow.

  ‘Sit, Kate. Sit.’ He guided her to the plinth of a more elaborate grave, lit a cigarette and passed it to her. Without hesitation she took it and drew the smoke deep into her lungs.

  ‘I’m sorry for this news,’ he said, lighting another for himself. ‘I saw a fight. I saw an accident. He was an angry boy. I saw that. I know nothing else.’ He shrugged. ‘You did what you had to do. You were young. It is past.’

  ‘But the police?’

  Giorgios smiled. ‘We did things our own way in Ikaria back then. There were no police here. Many times we find bodies washed up on our shore. The sea brings them from Turkey, from Africa. Who knows? We don’t know who they are. And I didn’t know who he was, your boy. Now there would be official this and official that, EU malakies and all that. But back then we just used to make sure they were buried, that’s all. It’s the honourable thing. So here he is. I buried him here, and I bring him laurel – Daphne – for Apollo, for Icarus, for the boy who fell.’

  ‘Thank you, Giorgios. Thank you.’

  They sat and finished their cigarettes in silence, as if they were holding a short vigil for dead Jake. Then Giorgios stood and turned to Kate.

  ‘And now we have to get back, to listen for the phone, in case anyone finds your daughter. Come with me. I have rooms. You must stay.’

  Kate took his proffered hand and stood to face him.

  ‘Could I have a minute alone?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’ He headed back towards the car. Kate stepped carefully over the uneven ground towards Jake’s grave. She knelt and put a hand where she supposed his heart had once been, and she tried to hold herself still inside.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  There was no reply, of course. Only the constant hushing of the sea as it crept up and down the shore.

  Twenty-five

  Had it been a different time in her life, Kate would have enjoyed spending the evening with Giorgios. It was as if he embodied something she had long ago shut out of herself.

  She had wanted to drive with him around the island, searching for Tilly. But he had argued that, since she could be anywhere, it was no use – they would be better placed listening out for the phone. So they sat up at the table outside Giorgios’s taverna drinking village wine and talking. The phone rang several times, pulling Giorgios indoors, and hope into Kate’s heart. But there was never any news, only concerned friends calling to ask if he’d had any luck. In between, Kate spelled out her unedited story, about how she had killed off Emma almost as soon as she had murdered Jake. Apart from Beattie, Giorgios was the only person who now knew the truth.

  He took her hand at this point and held it in his. ‘It was not murder, Kate. It was an accident, a terrible accident.’

  When he said this, she wept. She didn’t quite believe him but, nevertheless, it was a relief to hear it from someone so wise and so warm. It was like receiving the absolution she had craved all her life. She went on to tell him everything else, about her marriage to Mark, about Martha’s Wish, about how everything had turned sour the moment this bogus Jake had turned up demanding money.

  ‘Do you have any idea who he is?’ Giorgios asked.

  Kate shook her head. ‘No one else knew about Jake.’

  ‘Did he have a family? A brother, perhaps?’

  Kate shrugged. Jake had never mentioned a family, and she had always pushed the thought that he might have to the back of her mind. ‘No one knew except me, Beattie and, I suppose, you. Unless Beattie told someone else some time. I’ve not mentioned it to a soul.’

  ‘Call her,’ Giorgios said, leading her indoors to the phone. ‘Ask her now who else will know.’

  He left her to dial the long string of digits of Beattie’s phone number into the taverna phone.

  As she waited for Beattie to pick up, Kate thought about her at home in the London house. When she had said she had to go to Ikaria alone, strangely, and counter to all expectations, Beattie put up no opposition. Perhaps she was too scared. But as duped as Kate had been by this fake Jake, she couldn’t help feeling a flush of annoyance at her friend for also being so gullible. If it hadn’t been for that first meeting in the New Oxford Street Starbucks, Tilly would have been safe, Kate’s marriage to Mark would have been as strong as ever, everything would have been as it had always been behind her shield of lies.

  But Beattie had been desperate for Kate’s help. Who else in the world could she have turned to? And hadn’t she, Kate, been equally taken in by the story? True, with the benefit of hindsight, it sounded incredibly far-fetched. But might not her own life story, if told to a stranger, also sound too odd to be true?

  ‘There’s no reply. I’m afraid I need to go to bed,’ Kate said, joining Giorgios back out on the terrace. It was gone midnight and, even though Greece was two hours ahead of the UK, she was done in, a little drunk, and at the end of her wits.

  ‘Of course,’ Giorgios said. ‘You need to be fresh for tomorrow.’ He helped her fetch her bags from her car, then showed her inside.

  They went through to the kitchen, which Giorgios said his mother Elpiniki, despite her advancing age, still cooked in every morning. It was as sparklingly clean and well kept as Kate remembered from when she had visited it thirty-three years ago. Everything in the room seemed to be hand-made, solid, ancient, telling of a permanence that seemed impossibly exotic to her. A hefty wooden dining table stood proud in the middle of the room and antique woven rugs lay on stone seats by a massive stove. Above this hung the Madonna icon and an old rifle that Kate remembered from before, although the colours on both the painting and the embroidered strap of the gun had faded with time – she remembered them as being quite startling when she first saw them.

  Giorgios caught her looking at the weapon – she was wondering, in fact, if it were still in working order, if it could be of some use to her.

  ‘It was my great-grandfather’s,’ he said. ‘It has been used against Turks, pirates and Germans. A noble weapon.’ He reached up and touched it as if it were the icon and not the picture beneath it. Then he turned and smiled almost apologetically at her. ‘Although today it only gets used for hunting.’

  He led her upstairs, unlocked the door to her room and stood to one side to let her in, bowing slightly and bidding her kalinichta. The chaste goodnight mildly surprised Kate after she had bared herself so completely, so uniquely to him. But she was relieved. Anything else would have been wrong
, with Tilly out there in danger somewhere, and the shock of knowing that Jake was, actually, in a grave.

  She realised, too, that, at fifty, however well preserved she was, she wasn’t a young girl out travelling on her own any more. She could actually just go about her business as she pleased, without having to waste any energy on the unwelcome attentions of men. More than anyone, she knew she should view this as liberating, but, after having spent so many years trying to hide away, a part of her resented now being so invisible.

  And what about Tilly, who was young and alone?

  Fighting the urge to run out to her car and search – and she accepted Giorgios’s argument that this would be futile – she surveyed her simple, stone-walled room. It was on the upper floor and its shuttered windows looked out to sea. With better timing it would have been a romantic place to stay, although, she thought – before she remembered that this was no longer a relevant concern – it was hardly Mark’s style.

  She unzipped the portfolio and checked on the Rothko, which was still there, glowing vibrant red and orange into the dimly lit room. Reaching carefully into the inner pocket of her suitcase, she touched the hilt of the sharpened boning knife. She’d had this worry that it might have been removed by some psychic customs officer who would have somehow known that it wasn’t intended for butterflying lamb.

  She pulled out her nightdress and washbag, then stashed the case and portfolio in the bowels of a looming dark wood wardrobe. Finally, she flung open the shutters and lay on the bed. From there all she could see was the great watered satin of the Aegean.

  Her brain burned. She had thought many times during the course of the evening that she should call the police – Giorgios had said that there were now three small stations on the island. But she also knew that to do so would open a can of worms – quite literally, in the case of the grave – not only for herself, but for Beattie and Giorgios too. And anyway, this ‘Jake’ was using Tilly as bait to get at her. It would be far safer for her daughter if she were to play by his rules and turn up as arranged.

  With the windows open and the bedside light on, the room had started to fill with whining, droning mosquitos. Soon one landed on her arm and she squashed it just as it was tucking into her, leaving a burst bubble of her own blood where its body had been. She got up and turned on the ceiling fan. The bugs soon dispersed, but, not wanting to keep the fan going all night out of consideration for Giorgios’s electricity bill, she had to toss up between lights or open windows. With the heat of the night upon her, the latter won. She had realised by that point that sleep was out of the question. So she spent the time in the dark, sitting on a chair, looking out towards the coast, wondering where Tilly might be staying with – or being held hostage by – the man who had pretended to be Jake. She watched like a cat, every small movement catching her eye, drawing her attention, making her sit up straight.

  She thought that, somewhere down towards the sea, she could make out the shape of the bluff where she was to meet him the next day. She needed to make a plan. She would happily hand over the Rothko, but would that see an end to it? Would that guarantee Tilly’s future safety?

  She was prepared to do anything necessary in order to save her daughter.

  After all, she had already killed once.

  Twenty-six

  Unable to sit still any longer, at first light Kate left a note for Giorgios and slipped out. She spent the morning driving around the twisting roads that lined the coast either side of the village, craning her sore, tired eyes for any sign of Tilly or her captor. She stopped at every deserted or closed-down building – and there were many on this Greek island in 2013, which was suffering austerity measures like everywhere else in the country. Decay was all over, added to by the fact that the island was not yet into its modest tourist season, so even going concerns were still boarded up for the winter.

  She pulled up outside an idyllically positioned stone house perched on a promontory overlooking a small bay. Had she visited it with Mark in her old life – imagining that she had allowed herself to travel for pleasure and to Greece – she might have suggested that they buy it and do it up. But it would need a lot of work – half the roof was missing and the shutters swung broken and blind over missing windows. Graffiti, scrawled over the wall facing the road, declared allegiance to KKE, which, Kate remembered, was the communist party of Greece.

  Despite its dilapidation, the place held signs of life, so Kate thought it worthwhile to take a closer look. Someone had put a plastic container of water outside for the gaggle of stray cats that inhabited the overgrown garden to the side of the house. That was the kind of thing Tilly would do.

  Cautiously, her hand on the boning knife nestling in her handbag, Kate edged into the door at the side of the house. It opened onto a room that looked like it was trying to be a kitchen. A half-eaten loaf of bread sat on the shabby Formica table, beside an empty cup. Kate picked up the cup and sniffed it – it had contained Greek coffee, and the bread was only partly stale, so someone had certainly been there recently. Her heart racing, she edged further inside, forging through the darkness behind the shuttered windows, into a small room beyond, which was bare except for one upright chair set beside a fireplace that smelled as if it had been used recently. A doorway in the far wall was obscured behind a curtain of plastic streamers.

  Without warning, from behind those streamers, a black shape launched itself at her, batting at her with something hard and heavy. Flight won over fight. Forgetting about her knife, forgetting about Tilly, Kate turned and hared out of the house into the bright morning sunlight, scattering the cats, who shot away from their lazy haven, screeching and yowling. At her heels, the black shape, now screaming what sounded like a string of obscenities, chased her right off the perimeter of the garden.

  As Kate pelted out onto the road, she turned briefly to see who – or what – her pursuer was. To her shock and utter amazement the fierce shadow that had sent her running was a tiny, wizened old woman who looked at least a hundred years old. She was now standing guard at the gate to her property, waving her dustpan-and-brush weapons in the air above her, formidably spitting and cursing. Behind her, tethered to the grass, was the goat Kate hadn’t noticed before, and behind the goat was the vegetable patch, well tended among all the overgrowth of the other parts of the garden.

  She just hadn’t seen. She just hadn’t looked.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, not able to say it in Greek. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just looking for my daughter, I—’

  The woman, who clearly didn’t understand – why on earth should she? – made a move as if to have another go at her. It did the trick: Kate threw herself into her car, jarred the tinny engine into action, and drove off.

  She searched fruitlessly until three, when she knew that if she were to have her wits about her after her sleepless night, she needed to rest. So she went back up to Giorgios’s, where he gave her a coffee and listened thoughtfully to her story of her useless, futile day.

  Twenty-seven

  It was time for her to go to the cliff top.

  ‘I will come with you,’ Giorgios said.

  ‘Thank you, but I need to do this on my own.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ve already tangled you up too much in the mess of my life, Giorgios. Thank you, but I need to do this on my own.’

  ‘But he is seriously a big man, and if there’s trouble . . .’

  ‘I have what he wants, Giorgios. Enough, anyway, to make sure my daughter is safe for now.’

  With the portfolio clasped so tightly to her that her fingers cramped, she set off down the hill on foot. She wasn’t going to announce her arrival by driving there. Rather, she wanted to keep surprise on her side.

  She liked to think that, with the Rothko, she had a plan of sorts. But the new knowledge that she owed this stranger pretending to be Jake nothing whatsoever made her very aware of the knife in her bag. Part of her felt murderous about what he had cost her, the wreckage he had made of he
r life.

  But that grave overlooking the sea told her that, imposter Jake or not, she deserved every inch of that damage. She worked at controlling her breathing as she walked. The sun was still hot. An onset of wavy vision made her wonder if she was going to do one of her collapses again, but then she realised it was just ripples of heat from the dusty ground.

  She was going into a delicate, unforeseen situation, and the most important thing was to make sure Tilly was safe. She had to be careful. It wasn’t as if she was an old hand at this sort of thing. Apart from pushing a boy off a cliff and murdering him, losing a child – oh, and being raped (she always tended to forget that part, always pushed that to the very darkest recesses of her mind) – she had led a very sheltered life.

  As she worked her way down the rutted road towards the coast, careful to stay in the shade of trees to conserve her strength, she began to regret refusing Giorgios’s offer of help. She might have been able to use a strong man on her side.

  But she had to do this alone. His presence might provoke ‘Jake’, and anything that could endanger Tilly’s safety was out of the question.

  She reached the point where the village track joined the coastal road, which she crossed to meet the headland leading upwards to the cliff edge. It was, she remembered, quite a climb. But oddly, even with her thirty extra years, she found it a lot easier than she remembered. Of course she didn’t smoke now – the cigarette with Giorgios the night before excepted. And, she reminded herself, the last time she made this journey she had been taking a lot of drugs and was recovering from a nasty illness. That still niggled. What had made her ill that night? Had something poisoned her? Neither Jake nor Beattie were sick . . .

  Something began to turn in her brain. Cogs finally began to whirr.

  She arrived at the brow of the headland and at once she saw him. Big, lumbering, he was of such a size that she wondered how on earth he had made it up there.