Flyte

FLYTE

After leaving Cassie Raven, DI Bacon wanted to stop at a greasy spoon for breakfast. He'd ordered an egg and bacon bap – making wonder if nominative determinism extended to food preferences – and having dispatched a good third of it in one messy bite, he wiped his mouth and asked, ‘So I'm gathering you and this Cassie Raven have previous?'

‘What do you mean by that?' she snapped. All her working life in the Job she'd had to deal with snide insinuations about her sexuality from male colleagues.

He shrugged. ‘Only that your paths appeared to have crossed in the past, professionally I assume?'

She gave a curt nod.

‘I assume this was when you were at Major Crimes?'

‘Yes, and CID before that,' she said, taking a sip of her tea and grimacing. The café didn't have Earl Grey and even the slice of lemon they'd drummed up couldn't rescue it, the tannin fierce enough to strip tooth enamel.

‘That business on her narrowboat, that was just a fishing expedition, right?' He inserted a finger into his back molar to dislodge some food fragment – a sight from which she averted her eyes – before continuing. ‘Fair enough – I've seen technicians spot stuff the pathologists missed on a routine PM, in a hurry to get to the golf club,' he chuckled.

just pulled a frosty smile.

Bacon clattered his knife and fork onto his empty plate and sat back. ‘Do you think she had anything to do with the dead girl's photos or leaking the PM report? Just for the record' – resting his eyes on hers. Intelligent eyes.

‘No,' said , ‘not in a million years.' Reaching for her bag, she said, ‘Anyway, I've got to do some stuff at the bank, so I'll see you back at the office.'

*

Chrysanthi Angelopoulos's imposing detached house stood in a large leafy plot a few minutes' walk from Hampstead Heath, the kind of house built for the wealthy that had sprung up on London's fringes in the thirties. Today it was probably worth ten million. had learned from the case notes that Sophia's parents were barely on speaking terms, but the husband, George, had clearly left her in good financial standing.

As she made her way through the well-tended front garden she saw a big man in work gear up a ladder at roof level, apparently clearing the gutters.

didn't feel guilty about fibbing to DI Bacon: she'd get more out of Bronte's mother woman to woman, she told herself. While Chrysanthi disappeared to make tea, took the opportunity to check out the living room. It felt like something from an earlier era: a large brass carriage clock ticked discreetly on the mantelpiece, lace antimacassars guarded the backs of sofa and armchairs, and a glass display cabinet crouched in the corner was stuffed with china figurines, silver-framed photographs, and a darkly varnished icon of a cross-looking Jesus.

As Chrysanthi poured their tea from a silver pot, discreetly looked her over. She was probably only eight or nine years older than – in her mid-forties – but her tweedy skirt and oversized cardigan, the way she held herself, gave off the air of someone older. Almost as though Chrysanthi had made a deliberate decision to make herself unattractive.

After offering her condolences, got down to business. ‘Mrs Angelopoulos, why don't you tell me in your own words why you made the complaint?'

‘The police made up their minds straightaway that Sophia had .?.?. done a terrible thing to herself – and I knew she would never, ever do that.' Chrysanthi pulled out her phone and handed it over to . ‘Look. You have seen the final text message I received, sent from her phone?'

had already seen a transcript of the message, which Bronte had sent just after 1 a.m., which had been a key factor in Sergeant Hickey concluding Bronte committed suicide.

Dear Mum , it read. I am so sorry to do this to you and Dad but I can't go on. I hate Melodik, I hate what they are trying to do to my music, and I can't see any future. Just blackness and despair. Everyone will be better off without me. Look after Peppa. I love you, and Dad. S.

got a sudden image of Poppy's little newborn face, the tiny hand curled under her chin as if in thought. ‘I'm so sorry, Chrysanthi. You woke up to this on that morning?'

Chrysanthi's hand shot to cover her mouth and she nodded.

‘You must have been devastated.'

‘When I saw it at six o'clock that morning, I went straight around to the flat, of course, but they had already taken my baby away.' Anger entering her voice.

left a respectful pause. ‘So you said on the phone that it was the mention of Peppa didn't sit right with you? Who is Peppa?'

‘It's just a fish, an angel fish.'

A fish?

‘From when she was a little girl Sophia always had a fish tank. I keep it in my bedroom. It's all I have left of her.' She took a shaky breath. ‘It was only later that I realised.' She opened a file lying on the coffee table – the kind with plastic sleeves inside – and pulled out a greetings card. ‘Look here.'

It was a birthday card, and inside, beneath the greeting ‘ To Mum ' in a large expressive hand was the message ‘ Love from Sophia and Pepper .'

‘You see?'

‘The spelling of Pepper.'

‘Exactly. She's had that fish since she first left home, oh nine years ago? She would never spell his name wrong.'

But someone in an overwrought state might not notice an overzealous auto-correction.

‘And your conclusion?'

‘That it was sent by somebody else. The man who killed her. To mislead everyone.'

‘And do you have a view as to who that might be?'

‘Ethan Fox, of course, her ex-boyfriend' – her eyes narrowing. ‘I always told her he was a bad man.' Chrysanthi embarked on a three-minute character assassination, while offering no evidence or any real motive for why he might murder his ex.

had seen the transcript of Sophia's text messages in the days before her death and had been struck by the fact that the conversation with her mother had been very one-sided. Chrysanthi sent her three or four messages a day, most of which went unanswered.

‘When was it you last saw Sophia?' she asked gently.

‘Not for a while,' said Chrysanthi, waving a hand, ‘but we talked on the phone. She would decide sometimes that I was interfering – when I was only trying to look out for her – and for a while that would be that.'

‘You used to message her about what she was eating – was there an issue there?'

Chrysanthi nodded. ‘Since she was a little girl Sophia had problems with her stomach and I worried about her diet. She would say that I was nagging her. You know how can it be between mothers and their daughters.'

nodded sympathetically: she and her mother could go weeks without contact and their occasional conversations often felt dutiful on 's side and chilly on Sylvia's.

Chrysanthi's face darkened. ‘All the time her father told her she could eat whatever she liked – things like ice cream, chocolate .?.?. far too rich for her.' The venom she packed into the reference to George was almost impressive. Then she pinned with an intense look. ‘You mustn't think that Sophia and I weren't close you know. We couldn't have been any closer.'

Suddenly, a figure in workmen's clothes filled the living-room doorway and started speaking Greek in a deep voice. A hulking, broad-chested man whom had seen up the ladder outside, he fell silent when he caught sight of her and put a hand on his heart. ‘Forgive me, Chrysanthi, I didn't know you had company.'

‘Don't worry, Themi, this is the lady dealing with my complaint against the police.'

Was it 's imagination or did Themi's eyes grow watchful at the word ‘police'?

‘I've cleared all the gutters front and back,' he went on in heavily accented English. ‘You shouldn't have any more trouble.' Themi looked to be around the same age as Chrysanthi, but noted approvingly the way he addressed her – with the traditional courtesy of a man addressing an older lady. ‘I noticed one of the downpipes is cracked so I'll get a new one and come back tomorrow to fit it.'

The pair of them lapsed into musical-sounding Greek. Before Themi left he sent a little bow of farewell – his politesse somewhat at odds with the old scimitar-shaped scar down one side of his face that made him look like a pirate.

As the front door closed, Chrysanthi told , ‘Themi isn't just my builder, he's my oldest friend. We met when we were thirteen in the children's home in Cyprus' – a rare smile inverted the usual downward cast of her face, giving a glimpse of her relative youthfulness. ‘I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have him looking out for me.'

wondered if there was any romance on the cards, but from the unembarrassed way Chrysanthi spoke, and her determinedly sexless aura, she decided it was unlikely.

She spent the next ten minutes reassuring Chrysanthi that she would be poring over every aspect of the police investigation to date, along with a new detective from another borough. Reading people wasn't her strongest suit, so she could only hope that her reassurances had worked.

As followed Chrysanthi out of the living room, her eye fell on the glass cabinet which held a faded colour photograph in an ornate silver photo frame: two tiny little children, a boy and a girl, holding hands. The picture brought her up short: the girl looked about three – around the same age as Poppy would have been had she lived.

Indicating it, she asked, ‘Is that Sophia?' A nod. ‘And the little boy .?.?.?'

‘Sophia's twin brother, Alexander.' Chrysanthi crossed herself. ‘God took him from me two days after his third birthday.'

‘Oh no, dear God.' couldn't stop herself reaching out to touch Chrysanthi's upper arm. ‘I'm so very sorry.'

‘He and Sophia were both sickly children, but of the two of them she was the fighter,' said Chrysanthi, appearing to welcome the consoling touch.

had to bite her lip to hold back the threat of unprofessional tears.

The two women's eyes met in a moment of shared feeling and gave Chrysanthi's arm a little squeeze before withdrawing her hand. ‘Do you have any family, here or back in Cyprus?'

‘My mother died of complications after giving birth to me. As for my father .?.?.' Chrysanthi dropped her gaze and made a contemptuous sound. ‘It would be better if I had never laid eyes on him .'

‘Did Sophia ever go back? To Cyprus?'

Chrysanthi stared at her. ‘Never. Why would she do that?'

As reached the end of the path through the front garden she turned and saw Chrysanthi still standing on the doorstep, looking old and .?.?. defeated.

Two children who had died before their time. Let down by the man in her life and without any family to turn to. And her closest friend an odd-job man. It was no wonder that Chrysanthi Angelopoulos seemed like a woman who had given up on life.