He looked over to the terrace. What was left of Charlie was lying under a bloody sheet. The hand had been removed from the back of the chair. In his daze, Ben wondered where they’d put the hand, and whether they’d found all of him. Then the paramedics got him inside the ambulance and made him lie on a bunk. Doors slammed, an engine revved and the siren started up.

He felt the ambulance accelerate hard up the street. He looked around him. Saw medical equipment, tubes dangling and rattling with the motion of the vehicle. A drip swinging on a stand above him.

He wasn’t alone. Hands were moving over his body, faces peering down at him, the sound of voices somewhere behind the constant ringing in his ears. The distant impressions began to blur. After that, he was drifting, spinning weightlessly into a black space. He dreamed of fire and explosions, saw Charlie’s face smiling at him. Then Charlie’s face was the child’s face, giving him a last look before he ran away into the crowd. Then it became nothing at all.

Chapter Seventeen

The twelfth day

Ben woke with a start and sat bolt upright. He blinked and looked around him, disorientated for a second. He was alone in a room. Everything white and clinical. The smell hit him – a sickly combination of disinfectant and hospital food. A trolley clattered past the open door, pushed by an orderly in a blue overall.

As he shifted on the hard bed, Ben winced at the tearing pain in his neck and shoulder. He reached his hand up and felt the big dressing. He remembered now. The moment of the blast. The shards of glass sticking in his neck. The paramedics taking him away.

Then he remembered something else.

Charlie was dead.

His diver’s watch and the wedding ring on its leather thong were on the bedside table. He reached for them gingerly, feeling the pull of the stitches. He stared at the date and time. Nearly twenty-two hours since the explosion. He’d been asleep all day and all night.

He climbed slowly out of bed and walked around his hospital room, slipping on the watch and hanging the ring around his neck. He found a small private bathroom and wandered in to inspect his dressing in the mirror. He peeled back the edge of it and looked at the wound.

He’d had worse. He couldn’t afford to let a couple of slivers of glass stop him. He pulled the hospital gown off over his head, washed quickly in the sink, then walked back into the room to dress. What was left of his clothes had been folded and left on a chair near the bedside. The ripped, bloody shirt was gone. He stepped into his jeans and shoes.

A nurse came into the room, stared at him and started talking in rapid Greek.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’

She gestured towards the bed, trying to shoo him back into it.

He shook his head. ‘I’m getting out of here. But I need a shirt.’

‘You no leave,’ she said, and pointed to his neck. ‘You hurt.’

‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘I want to leave now.’

‘I call the doctor.’ She turned and went off, shaking her head and muttering to herself. She slammed the door behind her.

He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, ruffled his hair and waited. After a couple of minutes there was a loud knock at the door. For a second Ben thought it was the doctor come to scold him for wanting to check out too early and to give him the whole bit about complications and infections.

But it wasn’t the doctor. The door swung open and a huge bear of a man walked in. He was several inches taller than Ben, and he had to stoop as he came through the doorway. He stared at Ben with glittering eyes and a wide grin as he strode across the room and grasped his hand in a strong fist. A small dark-skinned woman followed in his wake, beaming at Ben.

The big man shook Ben’s hand vigorously, clinging on as if he never wanted to let go. Tears welled in his eyes. ‘You are a hero,’ he rumbled in heavily accented English.

For a second Ben was bemused. But then he saw the child appear in the doorway. He had a plaster over his left eyebrow and a couple of scratches on his cheek. Ben knew him immediately. The boy with the ball.

‘You are a hero,’ the big man said again, still clutching Ben’s hand. ‘You saved our son.’

‘I didn’t do much,’ Ben replied. ‘He saved me as much as I saved him. If he hadn’t run out into the road, I’d have been blown to pieces.’

‘But if you had not acted, Aris would have been killed.’ A tear ran down the man’s cheek and he sniffed and wiped it away. ‘I am Spiro Thanatos. This is my wife Christina. We own the guesthouse where the bomb exploded.’ His gaze landed on Ben’s neck and bare shoulder. ‘You are hurt.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Ben said. ‘Just a few bits of glass. I’m leaving soon. Just need something to wear.’

Spiro smiled. He immediately started unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a Hotel Thanatos T-shirt underneath. ‘Take mine. No, please. I insist.’

Ben thanked him and slipped it on, wincing a little at the pull on his stitches. The shirt was light blue cotton, a little baggy on him, but it felt cool and crisp.

Spiro talked and talked. He and Christina had been in the kitchen when they’d heard the explosion. They’d thought their boy was surely lost. It was terrible. People dead, maimed, buildings ruined. Drug-dealing murderers on their peaceful island. The world was going to shit. Their business was devastated, but they didn’t care as long as Aris was unharmed. They would do anything, anything to repay their debt to him. Anything he wanted, anything they could do. They’d never forget…

Ben listened and protested, ‘anyone would have done the same.’

‘What hotel are you in?’ Spiro wanted to know.

‘None,’ Ben said. ‘I only just arrived. I wasn’t planning on staying.’

‘But you must stay for a while, and you must be our guest.’

‘I haven’t made my plans yet.’

‘Please,’ Spiro went on. ‘If you stay, you must not book into a hotel.’ He dug in his pocket and dangled a key from his fingers. ‘We have a place on the beach, just outside the town. It is simple, but it is yours until you leave Corfu.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Ben said.

Spiro grasped his wrist in a strong, dry hand and dropped the key in his palm. Attached to it was a small plastic tag with an address. ‘I insist. It is the least we can do for you.’

Spiro and Christina left reluctantly, with more smiles and gratitude. Ben was tucking the borrowed shirt into his jeans when the door swung open again.

He turned, expecting the angry doctor this time. But it was another visitor.

Rhonda Palmer’s face was pale, puffy and streaked with tears as she walked into the room. An older man and a woman came in behind her, watching him grimly. He knew them from the wedding. Her parents.

‘I wanted to see you,’ Rhonda said.

Ben didn’t reply. Didn’t know what to say to her.

‘I wanted to see the man who killed my husband, and tell him how I feel about that.’ There was a quaver in her voice. She reached up and wiped a tear away.

Ben felt suddenly weak at the knees. He wanted to tell her he hadn’t killed Charlie. That he would never have involved him in anything like this if he’d known.

But it seemed so lame, so pointless, to tell her those things. He stayed silent.

Rhonda’s face was twisted in fury and pain. ‘I knew, when you turned up at my wedding, that you would bring trouble into our lives somehow. Major Hope, luring my husband to his death.’

‘I’m not Major Hope any more,’ Ben said quietly.

‘I don’t care what you call yourself,’ she fired back at him. ‘You’ve ruined my life and my family. You took my child’s father away.’

Ben stared at her.

‘I only found out two days ago,’ she sobbed. ‘I was going to tell Charlie when he came back. But now he’s dead. My child will never know its father. Thanks to you.’