One Way Ticket (10 page)

Addi positioned himself in front of the
door and rang the bell. “Let me ask the questions,” he reminded me again.

The photo hadn’t lied about Mr Richards’
bushy moustache, it still looked like he was munching on a squirrel. It hadn’t revealed
he was also about 6 foot 3. He and my tiny aunt would make a strange looking
couple.

Sitting in his Aztec themed living room, I
spotted a couple of photos on his wall. They looked like sporting teams not
family.

“Ah yes, poor Tina. She had a heart of
gold, that woman. When are you going to catch who did it?” he asked with a
slight Welsh lilt, after Addi explained why we were there. “Arsenal,” he said
to me.

I was about to be all affronted when I
realised he was talking about the football team in the photos I’d been staring
at.

“That’s just what we’re trying to do sir,”
Addi began, “trying to find her killer. Where were you during the afternoon of
the 2
^nd
October?”

“3
^rd
,” I corrected him.

“You can’t suspect me, surely?” Mr
Richards expostulated in a manner that didn’t surprise Addi, but made me glad I
wasn’t there on my own.

After he’d calmed down, Addi established
he didn’t have an alibi and Mr Richards got quite het up again. I tried not to
cower in my corner of the sofa. If this carried on, I would be asking for
danger money.

“How long had you known her for?” I
timidly interrupted his tirade.

“A few years.”

“How did she get on with her family?”

He seemed to be calming down again.
“Alright I guess, she didn’t say much about them.”

“You didn’t hear of any arguments?”

“No.”

 “Do you know a ‘Paul’ that Tina was
friendly with?” Addi said quickly before I could ask another question.

“No, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“There were quite a few men who were…
friendly with Tina though, weren’t there?” I continued.

“So?”

“How would you describe your relationship
with her?”

“Friendly,” he replied sarcastically.

“Nothing more than that?”

“No!” he roared at me.

“Do you know anyone Tina was more friendly
with?” Addi asked.

He sat back. “Why don’t you talk to Roger
Bale? He was always poking his nose in.”

That was a name we hadn’t heard before,
Addi actually got his pen out. “Roger Bale? Got an address for him?”

Mr Richards not only knew it, he was more
than happy to write it down for us. Addi took the note and we left, much to my
relief.

“Phew, no alibi and he has a bit of a
temper.”

“We’d better add him to the suspect list,”
Addi agreed.

“It didn’t feel like he did it though,” I
told him as I got in the car.

He slammed his door shut and gave me a
look.

“What?” I asked.

“I hope we’re not going to rely on your
‘feelings’ to solve this case.”

“I just believed him when he said he
wasn’t involved.”

“They all say that.”

“I know! Who’s next?”

He consulted the sheet of paper he’d left
on the dashboard. “Louise Allen probably lives the closest, let’s try her.”

“Louise Allen,” I read from his notes on
the way there, “51 years old, been here four years.”

“That’s about all we know about her.”

Not quite. We knew she lived on the far
side of Kythios in a small, quiet block of flats. We rang her doorbell for a
few minutes with no success before trying her neighbours.

“Haven’t seen her in weeks,” the one we
managed to find told us.

“Could she have gone back to England?” Addi asked.

“Maybe, she didn’t say anything about it.
A lot of people go back for Christmas though, don’t they? I did wonder what’s
happened with her job.”

“She works?”

“She did. The estate agents down the road,
a couple of days a week.”

We got the details and drove to the estate
agents. They were a small outfit with a lot of properties in the window and not
many clients inside.

“Louise took a leave of absence a little
over six weeks ago,” the manager, Mr Dimitriou, told Addi from his desk at the
back of the shop when he’d recovered from his disappointment that we weren’t
customers. “It was a bit out of the blue, no notice. She said her mother was
ill back home and she had to get back there.”

“Have you spoken to her since then?”

Mr Dimitriou rubbed his earlobe and looked
as if he was thinking (of course he could have just been passing wind for all I
know). “Not spoken, no. We had an email from her last week, her mother’s not
out of danger yet. She said she didn’t know when she’ll be back.”

“Bit awkward for you,” I commented.

“It’s our quiet time of the year.” He
lowered his voice. “Not that it’s been that busy the rest of the time. To be
frank, I’m not sure I’d have had enough work for Louise anyway. Has something
happened?”

“No, we just wanted to have a word with
her,” Addi said. “Can you give me a call if she comes back, or gets in touch
again?” he asked, handing over a business card.

“Six weeks,” I said as we left. “That
would have been just after Tina was killed.”

We went back to Louise Allen’s apartment
and found another neighbour had returned in the meantime. She hadn’t seen
Louise Allen for some considerable time either.

“And Miss Allen didn’t tell you she was
going away?”

“No. She usually does but not this time.”

“And you haven’t heard from her?”

“No.”

“Does she have any family here?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

I thought I could almost hear the small
wheels in Addi’s brain spinning.

“Is there a spare key to her flat
anywhere?” he asked.

“I have one but she wouldn’t like me to
use it if it wasn’t an emergency.”

“She hasn’t been seen or heard from for a
number of weeks. I think we should check her flat,” Addi told her, sounding all
authoritative again.

“Perhaps if I go in with you?” the
neighbour suggested.

“That’s fine.”

We waited for her to return with the key.

“You don’t think she’s, you know…dead?” I
whispered.

“I don’t know but I think it’s worth a
look. It doesn’t sound as if anyone’s spoken to her for a while. That email the
estate agent got could have been from anyone.”

A shiver ran over me as the neighbour
returned.

“Sorry,” she said, “took me a while to
find it.”

Addi got the key from her and inserted it
into the lock.

“You two should stay back,” he said, “in
case…” He didn’t finish the sentence but pressed down the handle and opened the
door.

A wave of putrid smelling air hit us and I
immediately thought the worst. I didn’t know what a dead body smelt like but I
knew it couldn’t be good.

Holding a hand up to his nose, Addi edged
nervously
forwards.

12 White Lies

From the doorway, we could see
him checking the floor of the living room and behind the sofa.

“Wait there till I’ve looked in the other
rooms,” Addi shouted, advancing further into the flat.

I felt a bit sick waiting for him to
return. It seemed like hours until he was back.

“It’s clear,” he announced to my surprise.

“What about that smell?” I asked, stepping
gingerly inside.

“It’s these vegetables, I think,” the
neighbour said, pointing at a box of rotting foodstuff by the open plan
kitchen.

The neighbour took the offensive items
outside whilst I checked the bedroom and bathroom myself. There was no body.

“That’s a relief,” her neighbour said when
I told her. “Oh, you had me going.”

“We’ll just look round for some contact
details in case she has gone to England.” Addi explained.

That was our excuse to rifle through the
paperwork on the coffee table and in a nearby desk whilst her neighbour
fidgeted nervously nearby.

“Jennifer!” Addi admonished me when I
opened the fridge door. 

“What? I’m just checking if she emptied
the fridge before she left. Which it looks like she did, by the way. There’s
not much in here. I guess she forgot to dump the veg outside.”

“She must have gone back to England, if she’s cleaned everything out,” her neighbour said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Addi told her.

“Of course she has,” I argued, “it’s the
only thing that makes sense.”

“No, she can’t have done,” he insisted.

He held up a burgundy coloured object in a
rather dramatic way. “I’ve just found her passport.”

We stood staring at it for a
while.

“But where’s she gone?” her neighbour
asked once the discovery had sunk in. “She hasn’t been here for weeks.”

Addi shrugged. “I don’t know but we need
to find out.” He motioned to me: “Get that address book, we’ll take that back
to the station with us.” He turned to the neighbour. “I’ll raise a missing
persons report for her. Can you give me a list of her friends?”

The neighbour went to her apartment to
check some phone numbers for us.

“We should have a look for her keys,” I
told Addi.

“What keys? Like these?” He pulled a
keyring with two keys on it from a drawer in the desk and handed it to me. I
tried both of them in the front door. Neither of them worked.

“No, not them. Try to find her front door
keys.” Walking over to a small coat rack by the side of the door, I rifled
through pockets.

“No keys,” I told him. “We haven’t found a
mobile phone, purse or wallet either.

“Handbag. Women always carry that stuff in
their handbag,” Addi said.

I ignored his stereotyping and looked
through a couple of handbags hanging on the coat rack. Addi checked the
bedroom.

“There are a couple more handbags in there
but they’re empty,” he reported.

“Wherever she is, she took her keys and
wallet with her. I don’t know how significant that is.”

The neighbour returned and handed her
information to Addi. We finished up and watched her lock the door behind us.

“So now we have a dead body and a missing
person to solve,” I pointed out on the way to the car. “We’re meant to be
getting rid of these cases not adding to them.”

“I’m surprised no one reported her
missing,” Addi mused.

“That’s the problem with expatriate life,
I suppose, it’s very transient.”

He looked at me, confused.

“They come and they go,” I tried to
explain. “It’s very suspicious that she vanished just after Tina’s death, isn’t
it?”

“She could be involved,” Addi agreed.

“Or she could be another victim?”

“Could be.”

“What d’you think we should do next?”

“I think I should look into Louise Allen’s
bank account and check if she’s used her bank cards lately.”

“And me?”

“I’m sure there’s something we can find
for you to do.”

Writing up accounts of our interviews
wasn’t what I’d had in mind. Why did I have to do all the admin, all the time?
Okay, so I was an admin assistant, okay, so it was in my job description, okay,
so I wasn’t actually the police officer, are they any reasons why it always had
to be me?

I wrote up the day’s dealings before
getting bored, packing up and going home.

Unfortunately, I surprised a couple of
people on the sideboard in the living room when I got there. I was grateful
they were still clothed but I’ll never look at that piece of furniture in the
same light again.

“Aunt June! Can’t you do that in your own
room? Jeez.”

She didn’t even have the decency to look
that embarrassed. Kostas, on the other hand, ran out of the room like a
frightened rabbit.

“Sorry Jennifer, I didn’t realise you were
going to be home early.”

“Can’t you keep it in your pants?”

“Keep what in my pants?”

“Never mind.” We’d slipped into the role
reversal thing again. I had a quick look through the slim pile of mail on the
table to confirm there wasn’t anything for me per usual.

“How’s the investigation going?”

She was just trying to change the subject
but I let her. “Advancing. Slowly. I met your Simon Richards today.”

“Ssh. Not so loud.”

“Kostas doesn’t know about you and him?”

“There’s nothing to know about.”

“Good,” I said, plonking myself down on
the sofa. “He’s a nasty customer. Got quite angry with us.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Have you heard anything about this murder?”
I asked.

She finished adjusting her bun and came to
join me.  “No, what am I meant to be listening for?”

“Oh, just wondered if there was any gossip
going around about Tina.”

“You want me to solve this case for you as
well?”

“No. Absolutely not. I can crack this case,
I’ve certainly read enough crime novels.”

“That’s hardly the same thing.”

“Well, I can manage, thank you. I was just
hoping for a little local knowledge.”

“I’m going to the Christian Fellowship on
Thursday, that’s always a hotbed of gossip and rumour, I suppose I could keep
my ears open. By the way,” she continued, “I’ve realised you need to get out
more. No, hear me out,” my aunt said as I opened my mouth to protest. “Kostas
pointed out you probably wouldn’t have gotten so drunk the other week if you
went out more often−”

“Kostas?”

“So I’ve decided to take you out
sometimes. Think about where you’d like to go.” She got up and moved to the
door. “I’d better go check Kostas is alright.”

She left me fuming at the thought of them
talking about me behind my back. This was starting to be a lot like living with
my mother.

“What are we going to do today?”
I asked Addi the next morning once he’d shown up for work. I’d noticed the
pressure he complained he was under hadn’t made him any more punctual.

“I’m going to check if there are updates
on Louise Allen’s whereabouts. I rang her mother in England last night. Louise
isn’t there. Her mother’s not ill, didn’t know why Louise would tell someone
that. She says Louise rang her last week and sounded fine. It wasn’t a number
her mother recognised but it was a Cyprus dialling code.”

“So she is definitely still here.”

“Louise told her mother she was waiting
for a friend to come out of a doctor’s appointment and she was using the
payphone outside.”

“To call England? That couldn’t be cheap.”

“Her mother said she wasn’t on the phone
long.”

“Too right, I’m surprised she could afford
to say more than hello. Did you get the phone number?”

“No, I got onto the phone company in Britain but I have to fill in a form before they’ll tell me anything. It could take some
time. I’ll go and check if they’ve faxed it through yet.”

“Alright, come and let me know. I suppose
I’ll go back to …the typing.”

Be still my beating heart.

I was two case notes in and on my second
coffee before Addi finally came back.

“They still haven’t faxed the form over.
But I have found out her bank card has been used three times lately.” He
continued: “Once at a supermarket twelve miles away to pay for some shopping,
then five days later at an ATM about thirty miles north-east, and last week at
an ATM fifty-five miles east of here. She withdrew 400 euros each time.”

“So she’s living somewhere else, on the
run?”

“It looks like it. We’d better start
ringing round this list of her friends. See if anyone else has heard from her.”

“We? Am I allowed to do that?”

“Sure, it’s fine.”

No doubt I would also be allowed to write
up the results.

Addi started me off on the list before
conveniently remembering a piece of paper he’d forgotten and leaving me to it.
After a mighty long time, he returned. By then, I’d already phoned half of
them.

“No one’s heard from her so far,” I said.

“You’re doing a good job, don’t let me
stop you.”

I held out the rest of the list. “You’re
the policeman, as you keep reminding me.”

“But it’s your job to liaise with the
expats,” he countered.

In the end, we agreed to split the rest of
the list between us. Of the ones we could reach, no one had spoken to Louise
Allen in the last six weeks.”

“She would appear to have vanished,” I
said, at the end. “What next?”

“I don’t know, the phone trace may be a
while yet.”

“We haven’t spoken to the other person on
our list, Elsie Meadows,” I reminded him. “Shall we go and have a word with
her? After lunch, obviously. Let’s hope she hasn’t gone missing either.”

I have been brought up to be
polite to my elders but Elsie Meadows would have been a challenge for Gandhi
himself. Hair set like a helmet, and a long, flowery apron were Elsie’s battle
armour.

“Don’t stand there, I’ve just mopped
that,” she shouted at us, coming round the back of her ground floor apartment
in a surprise attack manoeuvre as we stood like lambs at her front door.

“Sorry,” Addi muttered and shuffled along
in a cowed manner.

It seemed domineering older women could be
a problem for him. I decided I would have to take charge.

“Elsie Meadows?” I asked.

“I expect you’ve gotten finger marks on
the front door as well,” she complained, pushing past me and wiping the door
over with a cloth, seemingly pulled out of thin air.

“What would you rather we rang your
doorbell with?” I asked.

“Dirtying people’s front doors,” she
chastised us. “What do you want?”

“Police. We’d like to talk to you about
Tina Lloyd,” I told her crisply. Addi pulled his badge from his pocket and
showed it to her.

“Didn’t know her.”

“We have information to the contrary,” I
told her, the years of detective show watching finally paying off. “Shall we go
inside?”

“I didn’t know her,” Elsie repeated a
little louder.

“And yet, you sent her a birthday card a
few months ago.” (Okay, I wasn’t 100 per cent certain about that, Aunt June
hadn’t been sure she was the right ‘Elsie’ from the card, but I decided not to
let someone’s potential innocence stand in the way, I was working for the
police after all.)

Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.
She looked like she was trying hard to think of a way out.

“I didn’t know her
well
.”

“Shall we go in and discuss how well you
knew her? Or do you want your neighbours to hear?”

She pursed her lips for a few moments.
“Alright, but you’ll have to come round the back. I’m not cleaning the front
again.”

“I’m meant to be asking the questions,”
Addi hissed at me as we followed her round the corner.

“So ask them.”

“Take your shoes off,” Elsie ordered us,
the moment we stepped in the backdoor.

We spent a few minutes struggling with our
shoes before being led to a small, sparse, but immaculate, living room.

“I’m not making tea,” was Elsie’s next
declaration as we sat down. “I’ve got a lot to do today, so get on with it.
It’s about time you tried to find her killer, how you think anyone can sleep at
night knowing there’s a murderer around, I don’t know.”

I didn’t look around for any family photos
this time. Part of me couldn’t believe anyone could be married to this person,
part of me dreaded finding a photo of him and having to look at the poor sod’s
face. And as to the idea of her having children, I had to suppress a shudder at
the mere thought.

“Well? What’s this about?” she demanded
sharply.

“Well−” Addi and I both started
together. Ever the well mannered person, I motioned for him to continue.

“What was your relationship with Tina
Lloyd?” he asked.

“Relationship?” she practically barked. “I
didn’t have a relationship with her. I knew her from…” she waved her hands a
bit, “roundabout, that’s all.”

“What roundabout? Which road?” Addi asked,
confused.

“No, she means she knew her from the
general community,” I explained as Elsie Meadows rolled her eyes. “How long did
you know her?”

“A few years.” Her voice became mocking.
“I’m sure most people knew Tina.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, she got about a bit. She was no
stranger to the men round here, that’s for sure.”

“Any one in particular?”

“Oh, I don’t think she limited herself to
one.”

“You sound like you didn’t approve.”

“I didn’t, is that a crime?”

 “If you didn’t like her much, why did you
send her a birthday card?” I asked.

“As a joke.”

“Why?” Addi asked.

“I guess you’d have to have a sense of
humour to understand. Is that all? I have to get on.”

Addi shot me a look as Elsie got out of
her chair. We hadn’t learnt very much.