Lady of the Shades (21 page)

I’ve made arrangements to check out of the hotel on Tuesday. I plan to work on
Spirit of the Fire
in Paris. I call Jonathan to inform him of my change of address. He’s
alarmed when I tell him I haven’t started writing, but relaxes when I state my intention to complete the book within a few months.

Monday passes with surprising speed. I’m so busy packing clothes, organizing my notes and checking my travel plans that before I know it I’m undressing for bed and falling asleep to
dream of Paris, Andeanna and our new life together.

Hotel account paid in full. Bags in order. Nothing left in the room. Train ticket tucked securely into my money belt, along with my passport and credit cards. A spare pair of socks and a
toothbrush in my travel bag in case I get delayed. A book. A map of Paris. The name and address of my new hotel.

Adieu!

I’m catching the Eurostar from St Pancras. Rather than drag all three of my bags with me, I send the pair filled with notes and books as registered baggage — they’ll follow on
after I’ve travelled, which means another trip to the train station in Paris to collect them, but I’m going to have plenty of time on my hands over there, so I don’t mind.

Before checking in and passing through security, I stroll around the shops, but nothing catches my interest. There’s still almost an hour before I board — not having been on the
Eurostar before, I allowed plenty of time. To distract myself, I buy a newspaper and scan it while sipping a cup of coffee. The front page reveals some kind of royal scoop and the next six are
devoted to the same story. Bored, I flick ahead. A few pages further on, I find an article devoted to the Mikis Menderes murder.

It’s trashily written, but that’s what I’m in the mood for. Having skimmed the first couple of lurid paragraphs, I settle back, intending to take my time chuckling wryly
through the rest of it. But something has unsettled me. It’s one of the pictures, a black-and-white photo of the Turk and Andeanna. They’re seated at a large table, smiling for the
camera. The Turk holds a fat cigar. Andeanna is sporting a tiara, which has slipped slightly.

Why am I disturbed by the photo? There’s nothing glaringly unusual about it. The Turk looks smug, as he did in most photos that he posed for. Andeanna is smiling in a sad way, which was
often the case. It’s only when I read the caption that I focus in on what I’d subconsciously clocked first time round. It says simply,
Mikis Menderes and his late wife
.

I blink dumbly and read it again, then a third time.

Late?

Hands trembling, I speed through the rest of the article until I find it, eight paragraphs down.

While it’s hard to muster any sympathy for Mikis Menderes, he does seem to have genuinely suffered when his young wife perished in a car crash. His beautiful bride burnt to death and
the grief-stricken gangster vowed never to remarry. True to his word, he never took another wife, although he has been linked with many glamorous women over the years.

I read the sickening paragraph again and again, unable to tear my eyes away. My train is called, but I don’t respond. I’m rooted to the chair, the paper glued to my hands, eyes
sliding from the photo to the words to the photo to the words to . . .

More calls for my train, but I pay them no heed. I’m off in a world of my own. A world of love and promises. Of Andeanna and the Turk. Of contradictory truths and looming madness. A world
of shades.

PART FOUR

FOURTEEN

Eventually life returns to my limbs. Paper grasped in one sweaty hand, I stumble through the station to the taxi rank and tell a cabbie to drive me back to the Royal Munster.
They’re surprised to see me return, but not half as surprised as I am. I mumble a story about a friend being taken seriously ill. The receptionist is genuinely concerned. When she realizes
I’ve returned without my bags, she says she’ll arrange for their retrieval. I mutter a subdued thank-you.

In my new room, I sink on to the bed and stare at the photograph in the paper.
Burnt to death
. I clutch it close the entire night, even as I drift in and out of sleep over the course of
the long, dark, crazy hours. The ghosts revel in my sickening bewilderment. They wrap themselves around me and coil and uncoil like snakes whenever my eyes flicker open.

In the morning, I order breakfast and eat mechanically, forcing down the food. After that I phone Andeanna, even though it’s dangerous, hoping the call will clear up the confusion. But the
number has been disconnected. I want to try the house, but if the paper got it wrong (it must have) and Andeanna is alive and well (she must be), then ringing the mansion could be the biggest
mistake of my life.

I pace the room to get the blood flowing to my brain. There has to be a logical explanation. The journalist might have been misinformed. Perhaps the article was a huge screw-up. I need to check
other sources.

If it’s not a mistake, maybe it’s a smokescreen. Andeanna might not have wanted to face the press. Perhaps she faked a rumour that she died years ago, so reporters wouldn’t
come bothering her.

No. No matter how hysterical I might be, I can see that I’m clutching at straws with that one. You can’t turn around, pretend to be dead and expect the press to buy it.

What if Andeanna was the Turk’s second wife? Maybe he was married before, and the paper mixed up the photographs. Or what if she was never married to him in the first place?

I pause in the middle of my pacing. Maybe Andeanna was only a mistress. I scan the photo again. It looks like the woman I know, but the similarity might be what drew Menderes to her.

I whip out my pad and pen and jot down
Deleena Emerson
. That could be her true name. Maybe the woman I initially fell for was the real deal, and Andeanna Menderes is the fake.

Relief floods my system. For a mad, unhinged period, I thought I’d fallen in love with a ghost. I knew it was lunacy, but I couldn’t see any other explanation. Now I know better.
Andeanna/Deleena is flesh and blood, like anybody else, but with some hidden, twisted agenda of her own. I hope she truly loves me, that she wasn’t acting just to trick me into killing the
Turk. I could forgive her anything if she loves me. But whatever her motives, she’s real, she exists, she’s alive.

And I’m going to find her.

By the weekend, I don’t know what to think. Was she real, a ghost, an impostor, a figment of my imagination? I can’t even hazard a guess.

I’ve spent the last three days in the library. It hasn’t been easy, especially with the ghosts continually taunting me, seeking to distract and further disorient me, but I forced
myself to focus. First I worked through this week’s papers and magazines, reading every published article about Mikis Menderes. I learnt more about the man than I ever cared to. There was
plenty about Andeanna, too. She was born to a decent family. Her father was a successful accountant, her mother –
Deleena Moore, née Emerson
– a housewife and amateur
actress. Andeanna was a bright student with a promising future, but fell in love with Menderes and married him shortly after her eighteenth birthday, against the wishes of her parents. She was a
dutiful wife who raised their son and had nothing to do with the Turk’s business affairs. She died one month short of her twenty-seventh birthday.

Twenty-seven. I recall how young I thought she was when we first met. I had her pegged for twenty-something. Later she convinced me that she was in her early forties, which is the age she would
be. If she was alive.

There were photos of the Turk with some of his lovers. None could pass for his wife’s double. I went back further and found snaps of his old flames, but no one who looked like
Andeanna.

Maybe one of the Turk’s foes found a doppelgänger, briefed her on Andeanna’s past and set her up to frame me. But why go to such lunatic lengths? There are far easier ways to
kill a man. It makes no sense. Unless . . .

Unless
I
was another Sebastian Dash. Perhaps the Turk’s enemy was on the inside and needed a fall guy. That would explain how Andeanna was able to get in and out of the mansion.
She might have been working for Bond Gardiner or one of the Turk’s other trusted aides, someone who had to distance themselves from the murder, by weaving as complex a web as possible.

So many theories, each more warped than the one before. I groan and push myself away from the photos, the papers, the computer, and head back to the hotel. On the way, I find myself digging out
my phone and dialling Joe’s number. I get his voicemail. As much as I hate leaving messages, I croak, ‘It’s Ed. I need to talk. Please call me or come to the hotel. It’s
important.’

It’s wrong to involve Joe. However perilous the situation was before, it’s ten times as likely to end in disaster now. But I need someone to bounce ideas off, a friend to steer me
straight. I’m going crazy on my own. Literally.

In my room, I ignore the notes and photocopies which have consumed my last few days and nights, and instead of poring over them, I sit by the window and stare at the sky. For once, the ghosts
leave me alone. I doubt they feel sorry for me. They probably just want to give me some quiet time, to soften me up, before launching a fresh offensive.

A couple of hours later, I haven’t moved. I’m chewing on my fingernails when someone knocks on the door. I cross the room suspiciously and open the door a crack. For a split second I
think it’s Andeanna, and my hopes flare. Then my eyes focus and it’s just Joe, looking bemused. ‘You rang, m’lord?’

‘Thanks for coming.’ I let him in.

Joe stares around at the mess. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘No,’ I choke. ‘Everything’s fucking horrible.’

It’s insanity, but I tell him the whole story, about my past, Andeanna, the Turk, Axel Nelke, Sebastian Dash, the murder. I tell him things that I didn’t even tell the fake Andeanna,
talking for the first time ever about my ghosts. Joe listens silently, asking no questions, though his eyes flicker nervously when I describe my ever-present shades. At the end, exhausted, I
trickle to a halt and await his response.

Without saying anything, he walks to the bathroom. He’s in there ten minutes. When he returns, his face is damp, pearls of water glistening on his moustache and beard. He shakes his head
and says, ‘Was that the truth, Ed?’

‘You think I’d make up something that crazy?’

‘You’re a writer. Crazy plots are your life. Maybe this is a new idea for a book and you’re testing it out on me to see how –’

‘It’s true,’ I stop him. ‘Every word. No bullshit.’

He sinks into a chair. ‘You killed people.’

‘Yes.’

‘That crap about not having my name associated with the book — was that to keep me out of this, to keep me safe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks,’ he says drily.

‘I couldn’t involve you. If something went wrong and you’d been sucked in . . . ’

‘So why involve me now?’

‘I had nobody else to turn to,’ I answer honestly.

‘Hah!’ Joe grins.

‘You can leave if you want. You don’t have to stay.’

‘After the story you’ve spun? I couldn’t walk away from a mystery like this, as you well know, you manipulative bastard.’

‘Do you hate me?’

‘Yes.’ He jumps to his feet. ‘But we’ll get into that another time. First we have to figure out what’s going on. Show me your notes. Maybe there’s something
you’ve missed. That is why you asked me over here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I say, shamefaced.

‘Then let’s not dilly-dally, as the actress said to the bishop.’ He strides to the nearest stack of papers then glances back at me. ‘If it’s any comfort, I’d
have called for help too in your shoes.’

‘Thanks,’ I smile.

‘But that doesn’t mean it’s right,’ he growls. ‘It just means I’m as dumb and selfish as you.’

With midnight approaching, we break for a coffee. Joe is as confused by now as I am. He favours the impostor theory, but proposes a new twist on who might have put her up to
it. ‘Maybe there was no middleman. What if this was personal, her looking to get even with Menderes? Let’s say she was his mistress and he pissed her off. She finds out who you really
are and –’

‘How?’ I interrupt. ‘I don’t advertise it in the biography on my website.’

‘People have a way of discovering things when they go looking for answers,’ he says. ‘She learns the truth about you and cons you into falling in love with her and killing
Menderes, having passed herself off as his dead wife to make sure the shit couldn’t rebound and stick to her.’

‘But she looks so much like the woman in the photos,’ I mutter.

‘Maybe they were related,’ Joe says, then his face lights up. ‘Maybe that’s it! A younger sister or daughter who wanted to kill Menderes for the way he treated his wife
when she was alive.’

‘The papers said she was an only child, and they didn’t mention any children apart from Gregory.’

‘Every family has secrets, Ed. Maybe she had another kid when she was too young to wed. The daughter grows up, finds out that Menderes used to bully her mother, comes looking for
revenge.’

‘You’re stretching, Joe.’

‘Sometimes the truth is so weird, you have to stand on your toes and reach at full stretch to touch it.’

‘Very poetic,’ I commend him.

‘You don’t buy it?’

I sigh. ‘It’s thin.’

Joe thinks again. ‘There’s another explanation,’ he says softly. ‘She might have been . . . ’ He stops and pulls a face.

‘A ghost?’ I finish for him. Joe nods glumly and looks away. ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘Ghosts aren’t real.’

Joe gawps at me. ‘How can you say that, having just told me about your own private posse?’

I chuckle sickly. ‘Just because I see them, it doesn’t mean they’re real.’

‘You think you’re crazy?’ Joe asks.

‘I don’t want to be,’ I mutter. ‘That’s why I went down the investigative road in the first place, to try to prove they were real, that there is an afterlife, that
the shades of the dead can come back. That seemed preferable to accepting the fact that I’d lost my mind.’