‘Yes.’
‘I don’t suppose … you wouldn’t by any chance be Susan Ryeland?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I wonder if I might have a word with you, Miss Ryeland? My name is Lawrence Treherne. This is my wife, Pauline.’
‘How do you do.’ Pauline Treherne smiled at me but not in a friendly way. She didn’t trust me and she hadn’t even met me yet.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ I phrased the question carefully. I wasn’t offering to buy them one. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m mean, but this was something else preying on my mind. I had sold my flat in north London and ploughed most of my savings into Polydorus, but so far I hadn’t made any profit. Quite the reverse: although I’m not sure that Andreas and I were doing anything wrong, we had still managed to find ourselves almost ten thousand euros in debt. Our funds were leaking away and I sometimes felt that the distance between me and bankruptcy could be measured by the froth on a free cappuccino.
‘No. We’re all right, thank you.’
I steered them towards one of the tables in the bar. The terrace was already crowded, but Vangelis, who worked as a waiter when he wasn’t playing his guitar, was managing fine and it was cooler out of the heat. ‘So how can I help you, Mr Treherne?’
‘Lawrence, please.’ He took off the hat, revealing thinning silver hair and a scalp that had still managed to catch the sun. He placed the hat in front of him. ‘I hope you’ll forgive us for tracking you down. We have a mutual friend – Sajid Khan. He sends you his regards, by the way.’
Sajid Khan? It took me a moment to remember that he was a solicitor, living in the Suffolk town of Framlingham. He had been a friend of Alan Conway, the author of Magpie Murders. When Alan died, Sajid Khan was the one who had discovered the body. But I’d only met him a couple of times. I wouldn’t have called him a friend, mutual or otherwise.
‘Do you live in Suffolk?’ I asked.
‘Yes. We own a hotel near Woodbridge. Mr Khan has helped us on one or two occasions.’ Lawrence hesitated, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I was speaking to him last week about a rather difficult matter and he suggested we talk to you.’
I wondered how Khan had known I was here in Crete. Someone else must have told him because I certainly hadn’t. ‘You came all this way to talk to me?’ I asked.
‘It’s not really that far and we travel quite a bit anyway. We’re staying at the Minos Beach.’ He pointed in the direction of his hotel, which was on the other side of a tennis court, right next to mine. It confirmed my first opinion that the Trehernes were rich. The Minos Beach was a boutique hotel with private villas and a garden full of sculptures. It cost around three hundred pounds a night. ‘I did think about ringing,’ he went on. ‘But it’s not something I’d want to discuss over the phone.’
This was getting more mysterious – and, frankly, annoying – by the minute. A four-hour flight from Stansted. A one-hour drive from Heraklion. Getting here had hardly been a stroll. ‘What is this about?’ I asked.
‘It’s about a murder.’
That last word hung in the air for a moment. On the other side of the terrace, the sun was shining. A bunch of local children were laughing and shouting, splashing about in the Aegean. Families were packed together around the tables. I watched Vangelis go past with a tray laden with orange juice and iced coffee.
‘What murder?’ I asked.
‘A man called Frank Parris. You won’t have heard of him but you might know the hotel where the murder took place. It’s called Branlow Hall.’
‘And that’s your hotel.’
‘Yes. It is.’ It was Pauline Treherne who answered, speaking for the first time. She sounded like a minor royal, cutting each word as if with a pair of scissors before allowing it to escape. And yet I got the feeling that she was as middle class as I was.
‘He had booked in for three nights,’ Lawrence said. ‘He was killed on the second.’
A host of different questions were going through my mind. Who was Frank Parris? Who killed him? Why should I care? But I didn’t say that. ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.
‘About eight years ago,’ Lawrence Treherne said.
Pauline Treherne set her clutch bag on the table, next to the panama hat, as if it was some agreed signal for her to take over. There was something about her – the way she used silence, her lack of emotion – that made me think she was always the one who made the important decisions. Her sunglasses were so dark that as she spoke to me I found myself almost transfixed by two images of myself listening.
‘It might help if I tell you the entire story,’ she said in that grating voice of hers. ‘That way, you’ll understand why we’re here. I take it you’re not too pressed for time?’
I had about fifty things I needed to be doing. ‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘Thank you.’ She collected herself. ‘Frank Parris worked in advertising,’ she began. ‘He’d just come back to England from Australia, where he’d lived for several years. He was killed very brutally in his hotel room on the night of June the fifteenth, 2008. I’ll always remember the date because it coincided with the wedding weekend of our daughter, Cecily.’
‘Was he a guest?’
‘No. We’d never met him. We’d taken over a dozen or so rooms for the wedding. We put up close family and friends. The hotel has thirty-two rooms in total and we’d decided, against my better judgement – my husband, I’m afraid, did not agree – to stay open to the public. Mr Parris was in Suffolk visiting relatives. He’d booked in for three nights. He was killed late on Friday night, although the body wasn’t discovered until Saturday afternoon.’
‘After the wedding,’ Lawrence Treherne muttered.
‘How was he killed?’
‘He was struck several times with a hammer. His face was very badly disfigured and but for his wallet and his passport, which was found in his safe, the police would have been unable to identify him.’
‘Cecily was most dreadfully upset,’ Lawrence cut in. ‘Well, we all were. It had been such a beautiful day. We had the wedding service in the garden and then lunch for a hundred guests. We couldn’t have asked for better weather. And all the time, we were unaware that in a room actually overlooking the marquee, he’d been lying there in a pool of his own blood.’
‘Cecily and Aiden had to postpone their honeymoon,’ Pauline added, a tremor of indignation still there in her voice even after all these years. ‘The police wouldn’t allow them to leave. They said there was no question of it even though it was clear the murder had nothing to do with them.’
‘Aiden is her husband?’
‘Aiden MacNeil. Yes. Our son-in-law. They were meant to be leaving on the Sunday morning for Antigua, but in the end it was two weeks before they were allowed to go and by then the police had arrested the killer, so there was really no need for such a long delay.’
‘So they knew who did it,’ I said.
‘Oh yes. It was all very straightforward,’ Lawrence explained. ‘It was actually someone we employed, a Romanian by the name of Stefan Codrescu. He was working as a general maintenance man and he lived in the hotel. He actually had a criminal record – we knew that when we employed him. In fact, it was rather the point, I’m afraid to say.’ His eyes flickered downwards. ‘My wife and I used to run a programme at the hotel. We employed young offenders – in the kitchen, cleaning, gardening – after they were released. We’re great believers in prison reform and giving young men and women a second chance. I’m sure you’re aware that the reoffending rate is astronomical. That’s because these people don’t get a chance to integrate themselves back into society. We worked closely with the probation service and they assured us that Stefan would be suitable for our programme.’ He sighed heavily. ‘They were wrong.’