‘It’s not an entirely unreasonable assumption.’

  ‘No.’ She sighed, a wispy, high-pitched sound. ‘No. But you can already guess that it wasn’t the case. I shouted for someone to call an ambulance, but it was too late. She – Eleni – was already dead. She’d gone to the bathroom, messaged her friends. By the time they’d seen it and gone to find her… that’s how it ended. She’d taken her own life, here, where she was supposed to be kept safe. You can speak to the local police, they’ll have all the details, exactly as I’ve said.’

  ‘We will, thank you.’ Michail fingered his notepad. ‘Do you mind me asking, in what manner did Eleni take her life? You mentioned that there was a lot of blood.’

  ‘She cut her wrists.’ Her voice wavered but she continued. ‘Apparently, this sort of thing can be a cry for help, which would explain why she texted her friends. Perhaps she was asking to be heard and it went horribly wrong. I don’t know.’

  ‘I see.’ Michail straightened his back, feeling his senses sharpen. He looked down at his notepad and frowned. ‘You mentioned something about keeping secrets earlier? You said that girls that age are secretive?’

  ‘The message to her friends. The police put it down to Eleni’s state of mind, which, of course, I can understand, especially since none of her friends claimed to know what she meant–’

  ‘What she meant?’

  ‘I wrote it down, I don’t know why. The girls waited in my office before speaking to the police and they showed me the text. I thought, well, I don’t know. Here…’ She turned her screen to face them again; this time it displayed a short paragraph.

  By the time you see this I’ll be gone and peaceful. I’m so sorry. You’re all so strong. You can all keep smiling. I can’t. It’s like an infection, like a disease. It’s inside my head. Every time I close my eyes it’s there. The images. The movements. I can hear the sounds. This is the only way. An escape. I love you all.

  Michail stared at the screen. It was quite possibly the saddest thing he had ever read. A teenager’s final desperate thoughts preserved on a stale, stagnant screen. It felt wrong for them to be reading them at all.

  ‘Her friends didn’t know what this infection was?’

  ‘No.’ Lena shook her head. ‘They were beside themselves, as you might imagine, but they were clever girls. None of them could explain what Eleni meant. I have no idea whether they were telling the truth or not.’

  ‘But you thought it was something to do with a boy?’ Yiorgos asked, his voice taking a dogged tone.

  Lena waited a moment before answering. ‘When I first read it, yes, I thought that she must have got herself in trouble. The infection, disease, I thought it could have something to do with a boy. I… the truth is that I don’t know.’

  ‘And then all of them left?’ Yiorgos stood, apparently deciding that the meeting had come to an end.

  ‘Yes, more or less. It was their final year and they all moved away. I can understand, to tell you the truth. This island will remind them of the worst thing in their lives. I’d want to get as far away as I could and never look back.’

  She stood, signalling that she had said everything she could, and showed them to the door. ‘If I can be of any further use…’

  ‘You have been most helpful,’ Michail replied, eyeing the corridor, which, following a bell, had begun to fill up with students. ‘We will be in touch if required.’

  Michail kept his eyes straight ahead of him as they walked through the school, past reception and through the car park. As soon as the car doors were firmly closed, he said, ‘I don’t believe that this is a coincidence.’

  Yiorgos, inexplicably, gave a low laugh as they pulled out onto the road. ‘Of course you don’t. You mean the method of suicide?’

  ‘First, Teddy, then Irene, and now Eleni.’

  ‘But not Alek. And it’s a common method for suicide, unfortunately. Especially amongst teenage girls.’

  ‘Yet we have been directed, through a series of leads, to learn about how Eleni Barlas killed herself. It would be irresponsible to assume that she is entirely unconnected to the investigation at hand.’

  ‘I’m more interested in the reasons behind her suicide. That text sets alarm bells ringing. As well as her friends all leaving. What if they were running away from something? Something other than Eleni’s death, I mean?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Michail squeezed his eyes shut momentarily. ‘You remember the thought nugget I mentioned earlier?’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Would you object to a trip to the Temple of Aphaia? I have an idea forming and believe that it will be best guided in that location.’

  ‘At the temple?’

  ‘Yes, precisely.’

  Intentions

  The flight had been turbulent, which Sofia had hated. However, it had given them time to get through the burgeoning paperwork that had been building up over the past few days. Katerina had spent much of the flight stooped awkwardly over her laptop, making notes about the Irene Kanatas scene. Now, in Sofia’s hotel room, they ran through the plan for that evening.

  ‘We’ll need to work quickly – two days is all I could get authorised, which is understandable. Remember, we’re not here officially in the capacity of the Hellenic Police. We’re just looking for anything and everything we can get on Domenico that will help aid the investigation in Aegina. He’ll know that we’ve left Saturn House, so, assuming he’s not entirely idiotic, he’ll have an idea that we suspect something.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know we’re attending tonight?’

  ‘No. Pete’s put aliases down on the guest list. He’s attending on a press pass, and so are we. To be honest, he’s probably better at this undercover thing than we are. Investigative journalists do this sort of thing all the time.’

  ‘We need to assume that Domenico knows what we look like.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sofia smiled and reapplied her lipstick. ‘That will be a good indication as to how high on alert he is. If he’s got people on the lookout for us – here, in London – then he’s scared. In any case, our job is to gather as much information as we can about the man, whether he knows who he’s talking to or not. All we have on him is a phone call to Innes and an odd turn of phrase. It’s hardly incriminating stuff. I’d be interested in listening to the conversations surrounding him: what’s his character, who is close to him, what are they saying?’

  ‘Got it.’ Katerina tugged at her dress. They’d had a short window of time to pick up formal wear at the airport. Sofia had opted for a backless black number, whilst Katerina had chosen a flowing cut of emerald silk. She looked beautiful and not nearly as fragile as that morning. It was as if a new confidence, a thread of assertion, had been pulled through her, making her stand taller than she had before. This was a good sign. ‘Are we acting like we know Pete?’

  Sofia paused momentarily, her arms lifted above her head as she fixed her hair, at the sound of his name on Katerina’s lips. ‘No reason for you to. If Domenico notices us, let him draw his own conclusions. I’m sure he’s doing his own digging, but no need to hand anything to him on a plate.’

  ‘He’s not as clever as he thinks.’

  ‘They never are.’

  Sofia observed herself in the mirror. She looked old. There was no escaping it. The fine lines around her eyes had multiplied and her cheekbones, which had always been a source of private pride, now seemed to sag, lifeless and tired. Pete would have aged too, of course, but that vain, unrealistic voice that berated herself for drinking, smoking, generally living, was persistent. Still, there was nothing that could be done now.

  Katerina answered the call for the taxis and they made their way to the front of the hotel. Sofia smiled and thanked the doorman, revving herself into character.

  ‘Where to?’ The taxi driver looked in his mirror, wearing a beaming grin for what must have seemed like two women dressed to the nines for a night out on the town.

  ‘National Portrait Gallery,’ Sofia replied.

  ‘Big event going on there. Taken a few people past it. Important night?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Michail stood between the tall shadows of the columns in the afternoon light. The air had deadened and the humidity draped across his face like an invisible veil. He was pleased that Yiorgos had chosen to remain in the air-conditioned car; this was precisely the solitude that he needed to think properly. He retrieved his book from his rucksack and conducted a slow walk around the temple. Here, as he had shown Katerina, would have been the archaic portrayal of the battle scene at Troy: the expression of the warrior pinched and smiling, an inaccurate, highly stylised depiction of the subject matter. He scratched his head and looked at the severed entablature where the pediment would have once been. Now, it was only the blue sky that looked down at him. However, with his book, he pieced together the marble in his mind’s eye, scooping the stones up and to the positions into which they would once have commanded. He nodded. It was clear. The smiling warrior greeted him, pulled his mind through the centuries and the stories and the wars and the intentions and imaginations of those who had created him. The intentions.

  Michail snapped his head back towards his book, jogging to the other side of the temple, where the early classical depiction of the same scene would have stood. He did the same here: he re-amalgamated the pediment, limb by limb, figure by figure, until he could see in the blank sky what was depicted in the photographs on the pages. Here, the scene was more natural. The warrior’s head was turned, the expression was less of a jarring smile and – as much as the sculptor could have managed at the time – more like a painful grimace. The intent was naturalism. The intent was real life, real pain.

  An excited hum seemed to rise up above his ears. The tzitzikas’ chorus. It was as if they knew that he was on the precipice of a breakthrough. He walked, this time more slowly, allowing his thoughts to converge and solidify, back to the archaic side. Here, there would have been no hint of real life. Here, the intent was symbolism. It was representation – a figurative structure, a geometric approach intended to spur thought, to nod in the direction of the thing, yet act as an artistic statement. The intentions.

  He stepped back. And then again. His eyes moved rapidly between his book and the temple. It made sense. It made perfect sense. The answers were so often found in the hidden voices of the past.

  ‘Michail!’ Yiorgos’s voice cut through his thoughts, but it didn’t matter. He had an answer, an explanation. ‘What are you doing?’

  Michail ran back towards the car. ‘Teddy’s wrists. There was something about them that didn’t ring true–’

  ‘Yes, he died of drowning, not blood loss.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but the way that the wounds were executed. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but, luckily, the Temple of Aphaia has come through for us.’

  ‘The temple has come through–’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Okay, so care to explain how the temple has anything to do with the case?’

  ‘Nothing. Everything. I just didn’t see it before. Unfortunately, it took another set of wrist wounds for me to come to my conclusion.’

  ‘You mean Irene Kanatas?’

  ‘Precisely. Her wrist wounds were not meticulous. Obviously, she did not inflict the wounds upon herself, but they were not executed in the same way as Teddy’s. They were more natural. The cuts on Teddy’s wrists were perfect; too perfect, like the archaic, symbolic dying warrior. Equal angles, the same length, the same diameter, which means the same steady pressure was applied for the duration of each cut.’

  ‘So, what are you saying? We have different perpetrators?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’ Michail nodded quickly. ‘But also, and more significantly, different intentions. Think of what a symbol is, in particular, why a symbol exists. It is the medium through which an idea is transferred. The archaic sculpture is a symbolic representation of a dying man. Teddy’s wounds are the same.’

  ‘Well, we already knew that they weren’t real, as in, Teddy didn’t do them.’

  ‘Of course not, that would be completely illogical.’ Michail gestured into the air with both hands, as if sculpting an invisible scene before him. ‘But their perfection, the cuts’ meticulous execution tells us something particular and revealing about the mindset of our murderer. The incisions were done in such a way that they suggest a meaning behind the wounds. I think that they are symbolic.’

  ‘So we’re looking for a murderer for whom slit wrists might mean more than just slit wrists?’

  Michail’s mind was whirring. ‘We’re looking for a murderer who might want to use this type of wound as a message. Perhaps someone who has been traumatised by the sight of it. Perhaps someone who was driven from their hometown due to it.’

  Michail was pleasantly surprised to see that Yiorgos was nodding, slowly, not entirely convincingly, but nodding all the same. ‘One of Eleni’s friends. Lena described the screams. I’d say that this type of wound left a deep impact on those girls. It would be difficult to forget something like that.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Still, it’s a stretch. But, to be honest, all we’ve got. So what next? We try and find these friends? How?’

  ‘Helpfully, I have a meeting tonight with Eleni’s older sister. I am sure that she will be able to help.’

  ‘A meeting?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Sofia shivered as she climbed out of the cab. By London standards, this was a pleasant summer evening; clearly, the blistering Greek summers had altered her tolerance. Her eyes fell upon his face with an almost comic immediacy.

  She had prepared herself as best as she could. However, the reality of seeing him in person, of knowing that only a short space of thin air separated him from her, made the back of her neck prickle.

  Pete waved from a short queue filled with well-dressed people spilling out from the tall glass doors of the entrance. He was thinner than she remembered. His eyes, which had always twinkled with a simmering, unyielding optimism, remained the same, although they were accentuated by new crinkles around his eyes. For a second, she wanted to run. It was a stupid thought, one grounded in pure instinct. An animal desire to dart between the tightly packed traffic snaking past the pub on the corner, to scurry down the steps of St Giles and hide in the crypt there until she was sure that he was gone. That she wouldn’t need to see him again.

  Instead, she made her way through the crowd, breathing in the soft scent of perfume and the undercurrent of the day’s sweat, towards him. ‘Quite the turnout.’

  ‘The Balcombe House Group funded the renovations, as “ardent patrons of the arts”,’ he read from a programme. ‘Tonight is a “celebration of Domenico’s generosity, unwavering dedication to the gallery and continued sponsorship”. Apparently a lot of people want to thank him.’

  Pete smiled, then looked impatiently as the queue crept forward. At the entrance were two heavy-set security guards dressed in black, flanking two women who were checking names off. ‘You look great,’ he said, without turning towards her.

  ‘Doubtful,’ she replied, scanning the people ahead of them. ‘Anything you think we should know?’

  ‘Nothing I haven’t already told you. It’s a classic: there’s something going on. I’m just not sure what yet.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ she breathed, taking a step forward.

  ‘Look–’ A car pulled up to the front of the gallery. She hadn’t been watching, but Katerina would by now have taken her place in the queue. The door opened and a small round of applause sounded as Domenico appeared. He played humble extremely well, tilting his head forwards as if embarrassed. As he made his way up the steps, one of the two women who had been checking names practically fell over trying to greet him. He steadied her by offering an arm and made some sort of joke as she flushed, giggling through the humiliation.

  ‘We know he’s here, at least,’ Sofia murmured.

  Just before he entered the building, he stopped suddenly, pushing the woman gently forwards ahead of him, and beckoned a security guard to his side. After Domenico had whispered something in his ear, the security guard nodded and jogged down the steps. Sofia strained to see where he was headed as Domenico entered the building. She was about to turn to see where Katerina was in the queue, when a warm weight pressed up behind her. Before she could turn around, a strong force wrapped about her right wrist – a man’s hand. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  Pete had his back to her, although she knew him well enough to gauge that he was aware of what was happening. Good. He was clever enough to know not to interfere and to listen as carefully as possible. She cleared her throat and twisted up to see the face that was nuzzled against her cheek. It was the security guard to whom Domenico had whispered. ‘Good to know.’

  ‘If you’ll follow me.’ He released her wrist with enough roughness to indicate force without harming her. She met his eyes to show that she understood: if she did as she was asked, then this didn’t need to escalate. The security guard stepped to one side and gestured for her to walk along the queue and up the steps.

  ‘This way.’

  The man tugged on her arm and led her past a table laden with champagne flutes and down a vast stone staircase. From memory, she thought this was the way to the cloakrooms. Her chest tightened as she descended. The walls were thick here and it didn’t look as if these cloakrooms were being used for the event. Nobody would hear a commotion.

  She’d been right: the stairs opened into a large room filled with tall lockers. A low electric hum vibrated gently through the cooler air – a sound one only hears in empty, isolated spaces. As they moved forwards, sections of the strip lighting beamed into action with each footstep. Her spine tingled as if physically warning her not to edge deeper into the building. Still, she was here for a reason. She was about to ask where she was being taken, when she heard a door open from behind the lockers. The security guard’s grip tightened on her arm and she tensed, readying herself to fight. She listened to the door close and waited as quick footsteps approached.