Perhaps this is a good place to pause—and take stock, before we proceed.

  I am aware of the conventions of this genre. I know what’s meant to happen next. I know what you’re expecting. A murder investigation, a dénouement, a twist.

  That’s how it’s supposed to play out.

  But as I warned you at the start, that’s not the way this is going to go.

  So, before our story deviates entirely from this familiar sequence of events—before we take a series of dark turns—let us consider how an alternative narrative might unfold.

  Let us, for a moment, imagine a detective—a Greek version of Agatha Christie’s Belgian, perhaps? He appears on the island, a few hours later, once the wind has died down.

  An older man, he cautiously steps off the police boat, assisted by a junior officer. He is tall and lean, with gray hair and a small, neatly clipped black pencil mustache. His eyes are dark and piercing. “I am Inspector Mavropoulos, of the Mykonian police,” he says with a strong Greek accent.

  His name, Agathi informs us, means “blackbird”—messenger of death.

  Looking rather like a bird of prey, the inspector perches at the head of the kitchen table. Once he and his officers drink their little cups of Greek coffee, devouring the sweet biscuits conjured up by Agathi, the inspector begins his investigation.

  Brushing away some crumbs from his mustache, he requests to see us all—one by one—for an interrogation.

  During these interviews, Mavropoulos quickly establishes the facts.

  The ruin, where Lana’s body was found, is roughly a twelve-minute walk from the main house—along the path, through the olive grove. The murder itself took place at midnight—when the shots were heard. The body was found soon afterward.

  As Leo was the first to appear at the ruin, he is the first to be interviewed by Mavropoulos.

  “My boy,” he says, gently, “I am very sorry for your loss. I’m afraid I must ask you to put your grief aside for a moment and answer my questions as clearly as you can. Where were you when you heard the gunshots?”

  Leo explains that he was throwing up—in the newly dug vegetable garden that he and Nikos had been working on. The inspector assumes Leo was sick from alcohol—and Leo decides not to disillusion him, suspecting marijuana might still be illegal in Greece.

  The inspector, taking pity on Leo’s raw emotional state, doesn’t press him—and releases him after a few questions.

  Next to be interviewed is Jason. His responses strike Mavropoulos as evasive, even strange. Jason insists that, at midnight, he was on the other side of the island, by the cliffs. When pressed for a reason, Jason claims he was looking for Lana, as he couldn’t find her anywhere in the house. The cliffs seem an odd place to search, but the inspector doesn’t comment—for the moment.

  He simply notes Jason has no alibi.

  Nor does Kate, alone in the summerhouse.

  Nor does Agathi, asleep in bed.

  Nor does Nikos, dozing in his cottage.

  And where was I? you ask. Boozing in the living room—but you’ve only my word for it. In fact, none of us can prove where we were.

  Which means any of the six of us could have done it.

  But why would we?

  Why would any of us kill Lana? We all loved Lana.

  At least, I did. Although I’m not sure Inspector Mavropoulos fully grasps the concept of soulmates, I do my best to explain to him I had no motive to murder Lana.

  Which isn’t strictly true.

  I don’t inform him, for instance, that Lana left me a fortune in her will.

  How do I know this? She told me, when I was arranging the sale of the house Barbara West left me in Holland Park. Lana asked why I was selling the house, and I said that apart from that I loathed the place and all its memories, the bottom line was I needed some cash. I needed something to live on—otherwise I would end up destitute on the street. I was joking, but Lana looked grave. She told me she wouldn’t let that happen—that she’d always take care of me, as long as she lived; and she had left me seven million pounds in her will.

  I was stunned by her generosity, and deeply moved. Lana, perhaps regretting her indiscretion, asked me to forget what she had said—in particular, she requested I never mention it to Jason. The unspoken implication was that Jason would be furious. Of course he would—Jason was greedy, mean-spirited, ungenerous. The opposite of Lana and me, in fact.

  Knowing about this inheritance didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to my feelings. I certainly didn’t plot Lana’s murder, if that’s what you’re thinking.

  But you can think what you like—that’s the fun of a murder mystery, isn’t it? You can bet on whichever horse you choose.

  If I were you, I’d put my money on Jason.

  We all know how desperate he was, how much he needed money—which he doesn’t admit to Mavropoulos. But Jason has an air of guilt clinging to him like cigarette smoke. Any inspector worth his salt should pick up on it and become suspicious.

  And Kate? Well, her motive was not financial—in Kate’s case, it would be a crime passionnel, wouldn’t it? But the question remains whether Kate would actually kill Lana to steal her husband. I’m not convinced she would.

  Nor am I convinced that Agathi is a realistic suspect. She was also to receive an inheritance, like me—and, like me, was intensely loyal. There’s no reason to think she’d harm Lana. She loved Lana; perhaps even a little too much.

  Who is left?

  I don’t seriously consider Leo. Do you? Would a son kill the mother he adored simply because she wouldn’t let him go to drama school? Although, to be fair, I’m sure people have committed murder for less compelling reasons. And if it did turn out to be Leo, it would prove to be a sufficiently shocking surprise; a dramatic end to our tale.

  But a more savvy armchair detective might be likely to go for Nikos—shady from the get-go, increasingly obsessed with Lana, isolated and eccentric.

  Or is Nikos too obvious a suspect? A Greek island version of “the butler did it”?

  But then, who is left?

  Only one other solution is possible. A trick that Christie herself sometimes used. An outsider: someone whose name was not on the list of six suspects. Someone who landed illegally on the island, despite the bad weather, armed with a gun and the desire to kill. Someone from Lana’s past?

  Was it possible? Yes. Probable? No.

  But let’s not dismiss this idea entirely—not until Inspector Mavropoulos has reached his conclusion; when he asks us all to meet for the solution of the murder.

  The inspector gathers us in the living room of the main house—or at the ruin, if he’s feeling particularly theatrical. Six chairs, arranged in a row, in front of the columns.

  We sit and watch Mavropoulos pace back and forth, taking us through his investigation, all the twists and turns his thinking took. Finally, he deduces that, to everyone’s immense surprise, the murderer is …

  Well—that’s as far as I can go, for the moment.

  * * *

  All of the above is what might have happened—if this tale were being written by a firmer hand than my own—by Agatha Christie’s implacable, unshakable pen.

  But my hand isn’t firm. It’s weak and wildly erratic; like me. Disorganized and sentimental. You couldn’t imagine worse traits for a mystery writer. Thankfully I’m just an amateur—I’d never make a living at this.

  The truth is, none of it played out the way I have just described.

  There was no Inspector Mavropoulos, no investigation, nothing so orderly, methodical, or safe. When the police finally did arrive—by then, it was daylight, and the identity of the murderer was well-known. By then, there was chaos.

  By then, all hell had broken loose.

  So what happened? Allow me to refill your glass, and I’ll tell you.

  The truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction.

  ACT III

  It is not unnatural that the best writers are liars. A major part of their trade is to lie or invent and they will lie when they are drunk, or to themselves, or to strangers.

  —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

  1

  At this point, I suppose—like that poor bastard harangued by the Ancient Mariner, forced to endure his weird tale—you must be wondering what the hell you let yourself in for, agreeing to hear my story.

  It only gets weirder, I’m afraid.

  I wish I knew how you felt about me, right now. Are you slightly charmed, even beguiled, as Lana used to be? Or like Kate, do you find me irritating, self-dramatizing, self-indulgent?

  All of the above is probably closest to the truth.

  But we like to keep moral questions simple, don’t we? Good/bad, innocent/guilty. That’s fine in fiction; real life is not so clear-cut. Human beings are complex creatures, with shades of light and dark operating in all of us.

  If this sounds like I’m trying to justify myself, I assure you I’m not. I am well aware that as we proceed, and you hear the rest of this tale, you might not approve of my actions. That’s fine. I don’t seek your approval.

  What I seek—no, what I demand—is your understanding.

  Otherwise my story will never touch your heart. It will remain a two-a-penny thriller that you might pick up at an airport to devour on the beach—only to discard, forgotten, by the time you get home. I will not allow my life to be reduced to pulp. No, sir.

  If you are to understand what follows—if any of the incredible events I’m about to relate are to make any sense to you—I must explain some things about myself. Some things I felt I couldn’t reveal to you when we first met. Why not? I wanted you to get to know me a little better, I suppose. I hoped you might then excuse some of my less attractive traits.

  But now, it has overtaken me—this desire to unburden myself. I couldn’t stop now, even if I wanted to. Like the Ancient Mariner, I need to get it off my chest.

  I must warn you, what follows is, at times, hard to take. It’s certainly hard to write about. If you thought Lana’s murder was the climax of this sordid tale, you were sadly mistaken.

  The real horror is yet to come.

  * * *

  Once again, I must turn back the clock. Not to the Soho street in London, this time—but much, much further.

  I will tell you about Lana and me—about our friendship; strange and extraordinary thing that it was. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, to be frank. My relationship with Lana Farrar began a long time before we ever met.

  It began when I was someone else.

  2

  It’s funny, whenever the novelist Christopher Isherwood would write about his younger self, it was always in the third person.

  He would write about “him”—a kid named “Christopher.”

  Why? Because, I think, it allowed him to access empathy for himself. It’s so much easier to feel empathy for other people, isn’t it? If you see a scared little boy on the street, bullied, shamed, disrespected by an abusive parent, you instantly feel sympathy for him.

  But in the case of our own childhoods, it’s hard to see so clearly. Our perception is clouded by the need to comply, justify, and forgive. It takes an impartial outsider sometimes, like a skilled therapist, to help us see the truth—that as kids we were alone and afraid in a frightening place, and no one took any notice of our pain.

  We couldn’t admit this to ourselves, back then. It was too scary—so we swept it under an enormous carpet, hoping it would go away. But it didn’t. It remained there, lingering forever, like nuclear waste.

  High time, don’t you think, to lift up the rug and take a good look? Although, for safety’s sake, I shall borrow Christopher Isherwood’s technique.

  What follows is the kid’s story—not mine.

  * * *

  The kid’s early years were not happy.

  Having a child was no doubt an inconvenience to his parents. A failed experiment, never to be repeated. They provided him with food and shelter, but gave him precious little else—apart from occasional lessons in drunkenness and brutality.

  Home was bad. School was worse. The kid wasn’t popular. He wasn’t sporty, or cool, or clever. He was shy and withdrawn, and lonely. The only classmates who spoke to him with any regularity were the bullies—a gang of four mean boys in his class. He nicknamed them the Neanderthals.

  The Neanderthals would wait for the kid every morning by the school gates and empty his pockets, taking his lunch money, shoving him, tripping him up, and playing other pranks. They had a fondness for kicking footballs at his head—attempting to knock him over—while hurling insults at him, like weirdo and freak, or worse.

  And when he was face down in the dirt, there was always, behind his back, a chorus of laughter. High-pitched children’s laughter. Jeering and malevolent.

  I read somewhere that laughter is evil in origin—as it requires an object of ridicule, a butt, a fool. A bully is never the butt of his own jokes, is he?

  The leader of the Neanderthals was a real joker, called Paul. He was popular, in that way mean kids can be. He was a wag, a prankster. He sat at the back of the class, mocking teachers and students alike.

  Demonstrating a precocious grasp of psychological warfare, Paul decided that none of his classmates were allowed to speak to the kid. He was deemed a leper—too disgusting, too gross, too smelly, and too damn weird to be talked to, acknowledged, or touched. He must be avoided at any cost.

  From then on, girls would delight in running off, in fits of excited giggles and screams, if the kid neared them on the playground. Boys would pull faces and make retching noises if they passed him on the stairs. Cruel notes, wishing him harm, were left in his desk for him to find. And always, behind his back, that high-pitched mocking laughter.

  There were occasional respites from this misery.

  When he was twelve years old, he was in a play for the first time. A school production of that glorious old American warhorse—Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Possibly an odd choice of play for a comprehensive school outside London, but his drama teacher, Cassandra, hailed from the United States. She was probably homesick when she decided to stage this love letter to small-town America in Basildon, Essex.

  The kid liked Cassandra. She had a friendly horse face and wore a necklace of amber beads with prehistoric flies trapped in them. She gave him some of the closest moments he had ever known to happiness.

  She cast him (presumably without irony) as Simon Stimson, a cynical alcoholic choirmaster who ends up hanging himself. The kid relished the part to the full. Existential angst, sarcasm, despair—he had no idea what his lines meant literally, but trust me, he got the gist.

  That first night of the performance, the kid experienced applause for the first time in his life. He’d never known anything like it—it felt like a wave of affection, of love, flooding the stage, drenching him. The kid shut his eyes and drank it in.

  But then he opened his eyes—and saw Paul, and the other Neanderthals, sitting in the back row, laughing, making faces and obscene gestures. Their vengeful expressions told him there’d be a price to pay for his brief moment of happiness.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The following morning, at break time, he was dragged into the boys’ locker room. He was told he was going to be punished, for showing off. For thinking he was special.

  One Neanderthal stood guard by the door, making sure they weren’t disturbed. The other two pushed the kid down, onto his knees, and held him there, by the stinking urinal.

  Paul reached into his locker. He produced, with a magician’s flourish, a large carton of milk.

  I’ve been saving this for weeks, he said, brewing it—for a special occasion.

  He opened the carton slightly, cautiously sniffing it—then pulled a disgusted face, like he might throw up. The other boys tittered in anticipation.

  Get ready, said Paul. He ripped open the carton—and he was about to turn it upside down, over the kid’s head—when he suddenly had a better idea.

  He held the carton out to the kid. “You do it.”

  The kid shook his head, trying not to cry.

  “No. Please … no, please…”

  “It’s your punishment. Do it.”

  “No—”

  “Do it.”

  I wish I could say the kid fought back. But he didn’t. He took hold of the carton that was being thrust into his hands.

  And, slowly, ceremoniously, under Paul’s supervision, the kid poured the contents over his head. Rotten milk, white, sludgy, green, foul-smelling slime slid down his face—covering his eyes, filling his mouth. He gagged on it.

  He could hear the boys laughing; shrieking. Their sidesplitting laughter was almost as cruel as the punishment itself.

  Nothing can be worse than this, he thought. The shame, the humiliation, the anger bubbling inside—nothing could ever be as bad.

  He was wrong, of course. He had so much further to fall.

  Writing this, I feel such anger. Such outrage on his behalf. Even though it’s too late, and even though it’s only me, I’m glad someone is at last empathizing with him. No one else did—least of all himself.

  Heracleitus was right, you see—character is fate. Other children who had more successful childhoods, brought up to respect and stand up for themselves, might have fought back or at least alerted the authorities. But in the kid’s case, sadly, every time he took a beating, he felt he deserved it.

  He started skipping school after that. He’d hang around alone in town, at the mall, or sneak into the movies.

  And it was there, in the dark, he first encountered Lana Farrar.

  Lana was only a few years older than him; barely more than a child herself. It was one of Lana’s first films he saw, Starstruck, an early misfire—an unfunny romantic comedy about a movie starlet falling in love with a paparazzo, played by an actor old enough to be her father.

  The kid was oblivious of all the sexist jokes and contrived comic situations. All he could see was her. Those eyes, that face—projected up on the screen, thirty feet high—the loveliest face he’d ever seen. As every cinematographer who worked with her discovered, Lana had no bad angles; just perfect planes—the face of a Greek goddess.