It had begun with that nice couple Bruce and Brenda from Macclesfield, who turned out not to be that nice after all, demanding a fifty per cent reduction in their bill or they were going to hit TripAdvisor with a list of complaints that they’d stacked up from the day they’d arrived and which, they assured us, would put anyone off ever coming anywhere near us again. And what was their problem? An hour without Wi-Fi. The sound of guitar music at night. The sighting of a solitary cockroach. What annoyed me was they had complained every morning, always with tight little smiles, and I’d known all along that they were going to try something on. I’d developed an antenna for the tourists who arrived with extortion as part of their holiday plans. You’d be amazed how many of them there were.
Panos didn’t show up. Vangelis was late. Andreas’s computer had a glitch – I’d asked him to get it looked at – and it had managed to send two room requests into spam. By the time we noticed, the clients had booked elsewhere. Before we went to bed, we had a glass of Metaxa, the Greek brandy that only tastes nice in Greece, but I was still in a bad mood and it was when Andreas asked me what the matter was that I finally snapped.
‘What do you think is the fucking matter, Andreas? Everything!’
I don’t usually swear … at least, not at people I like. Lying in bed, watching Andreas getting undressed, I was annoyed with myself. Part of me wanted to blame him for everything that had happened since I’d come to Crete, while another part blamed myself for letting him down. But the worst of it was the sense of helplessness – that events had taken over and I was being steered by them rather than the other way round. Had I really chosen a life where complete strangers could humiliate me for a few euros and where my entire well-being could be decided by a lost reservation?
Right then I knew I had to go back to England and that actually I’d known it for some time, even if I’d tried to pretend otherwise.
Andreas cleaned his teeth and came out of the bathroom naked, which is how he slept, looking every inch like one of those figures – an ephebe or a satyr perhaps – that you might see on the side of an ancient vase. And it did seem to me that he had become more Greek in the past couple of years. His black hair was a little shaggier, his eyes a little darker and he had a sort of swagger that I’m sure he’d never displayed when he was teaching at Westminster School. He’d put on some weight too – or perhaps it was just that I noticed his stomach more now that he was out of a suit. He was still a handsome man. I was still attracted to him. But suddenly I needed to be away from him.
I waited until he got into bed. We slept under a single sheet with the windows open. We hardly got any mosquitoes right next to the sea and I preferred the night air to the artificial chill of the air conditioning.
‘Andreas … ’ I said.
‘What?’ He would have fallen asleep in seconds if I’d let him. His voice was already drowsy.
‘I want to go back to London.’
‘What?’ He twisted round, propping himself up on his elbow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s something I have to do.’
‘In London?’
‘No. I have to go to Suffolk.’ He was looking at me, his face full of concern. ‘I won’t be long,’ I said. ‘Just a couple of weeks.’
‘We need you here, Susan.’
‘We need money, Andreas. We’re not going to be able to pay our bills if we don’t get some extra finance. And I’ve been offered a great deal of money to do a job. Ten thousand pounds. Cash!’
*
It was true.
After the Trehernes had told me about the murder at their hotel, they had gone on to explain how their daughter had disappeared.
‘It’s very unlike her to wander off without telling anyone,’ Lawrence had said. ‘And certainly to leave her daughter behind … ’
‘Who’s looking after the child?’ I asked.
‘Aiden’s there. And there’s a nanny.’
‘It’s not “unlike” her.’ Pauline gave her husband the most withering of scowls. ‘She’s never done anything like this in her life, and of course she wouldn’t leave Roxana on her own.’ She turned to me. ‘We’re worried sick, if you want the truth, Susan. And Lawrence may not agree, but I’m convinced it’s got something to do with this book.’
‘I do agree!’ Lawrence muttered.
‘Did anyone else know about her concerns?’ I asked.
‘I already told you that she telephoned us from Branlow Hall, so any one of a number of people could have overheard her.’
‘I mean, had she talked about her suspicions with anyone else?’
Pauline Treherne shook her head. ‘We tried several times to phone her from France and when she didn’t answer we called Aiden. He hadn’t rung because he didn’t want to worry us, but it turned out that he had contacted the police the same day she disappeared. Unfortunately, they didn’t take him very seriously … at least, not to begin with. They suggested the two of them might be having marriage difficulties.’
‘And were they?’
‘Not at all,’ Lawrence said. ‘They’ve always been very happy together. The police spoke to Eloise – she’s the nanny – and she said the same. She never heard any arguments.’
‘Aiden’s a perfect son-in-law. He’s clever and he’s hard-working. I only wish Lisa could find someone like him. And he’s as worried as we are!’
All the time Pauline had been speaking to me, I’d thought she was fighting something. Suddenly she pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. She smoked like someone who had just taken up the habit again after a long abstinence. She inhaled, then went on.
‘By the time we got back to England, the police had finally decided to take an interest. Not that they were very much help. Cecily had taken the dog for a walk. She has a shaggy golden retriever called Bear – we’ve always kept dogs. She left the hotel at about three o’clock in the afternoon and parked the car at Woodbridge station. She often used to take the river path. That’s the River Deben. There’s a circular walk that takes you along the edge and to begin with it’s well populated. But then it becomes wilder and more remote until you come to a wood and on the other side there’s a road that takes you back through Martlesham.’
‘So if someone attacked her—’
‘It’s not the sort of thing that ever happens in Suffolk. But yes, there were plenty of places where she would have been on her own, out of sight.’ Pauline took a breath and went on. ‘Aiden got worried when she didn’t come home for dinner and quite rightly called the police. Two uniformed officers came round and asked a few questions, but they didn’t raise the alarm until the next morning, which was much too late of course. By that time Bear had shown up, on his own, back at the station, and after that they took everything more seriously. They had people – and their own dogs – out searching the entire area from Martlesham all the way back to Melton. But it was no good. There are fields, woods, mudflats … a lot of ground to cover. They didn’t find anything.’
‘How long is it since she went missing?’ I asked.