Holy Terrors

by D M Greenwood

  ‘Review the facts,’ Theodora invited. ‘The Kostas family left Cyprus with an icon. Source, McGrath.’

  ‘If he’s reliable.’

  ‘If he’s reliable. Dick Pound and Troutbeck have a photograph of an icon, a maesta, by the sound of it, which they took in Cyprus before partition.’

  ‘So the hypothesis is …’

  ‘The Kostas brothers brought it out with others and then hung on to it.’

  ‘Why?’ Geoffrey asked.

  ‘Perhaps it was too hot to sell because it was well known to art historians. Or maybe because it was especially dear to them, their own personal family’s fortune, a sort of talisman. Or, conceivably, it represented their heritage: Greek? Cypriot?’

  ‘Not too much religion there,’ Geoffrey ruminated.

  ‘Religion’s always mixed up with other things. It’s rarely pure. You must have noticed.’

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘Say times changed,’ Theodora went on. ‘Say the Kostases had to sell and word to this effect got round in the Greek community. Say that became a danger to them. Some other Greek faction thought they ought not to sell or perhaps someone thought they had more right to the sale proceeds than the Kostases.’

  ‘So Kostas père put it in his boy’s school holdall for safety?’ Geoffrey suddenly recalled the facility with which the two Kostas boys had swapped the black bag between them when he’d met them in the corridor on his way to see Springer on Monday. It must have been within an hour of the boy’s death, he realised.

  ‘Our trouble is,’ Geoffrey said, ‘that we don’t know who kept the holdall.’

  ‘It’s a fair bet the other twin did, and that’s why he and his father decamped to Cyprus.’

  ‘Politically, it’s about the right time,’ Geoffrey conceded. ‘There are new moves afoot to reunite the island.’

  ‘And the Greeks see reuniting as reuniting under Greek, not Turkish sway.’

  ‘So what about Jessica’s icon collection?’

  ‘What we know for certain is that – ’ Theodora ticked off the information on her fingers – ‘one, Jessica had an icon, the Virgin and Child, given her by her grandfather and kept in an icon case in her room. I notice, by the way, that that icon case could be locked. I wonder if Jessica had the key with her when she was taken? However, that’s by the way. Two, she had access to another icon, an annunciation, which she made a copy of, which may have been my grandmother’s via the Bennet family, which she was showing round the school. Three, she was attending a class at the local Greek Orthodox church to learn how to use icons in prayer. Four, the man who kidnapped her did so without any trouble, which suggests she knew him or thought she did, which would fit if the kidnap driver was the twin brother of her usual driver, Michel Kostas. Five, her father reckons he can manage without the British police and that his daughter’s kidnap has something to do with his past career in Cyprus. So …’

  ‘So you need to go to Cyprus.’

  Theodora stared at him. ‘Oh, Geoffrey, I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well,’ said Theodora helplessly, ‘It’s Lent.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll ring Tim Littlejohn at St George’s in Kyrenia. That’s Northern Turkish Cyprus of course. You can stay with him and see what you turn up. If it doesn’t come to anything, we’ll try and interest the police in it.’

  The turbulence, Theodora realised had receded. The aircraft’s engines were purring more reassuringly. She looked at her watch. It read three in the morning local, Turkish, time. Below her, as she pressed her forehead to the cold glass, were what could only be the lights of Ercan airport. She noticed the man beside her was still asleep. His beard, she noticed, had perceptibly increased.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Travels

  The Turkish side of the green line – which divides northern Turkish Cyprus from southern Greek Cyprus – is very different from the Greek side. Greek officials are orientated towards tourists. Turks are not. It is, perhaps, the difference between a polis culture and what was for centuries a nomadic one. Pilgrims and wayfarers can be accommodated in the latter, but tourists have different, more degenerate demands, and they can’t. The Greeks remain jolly, curious, sanguine and welcoming; the Turks courteous but formal, pessimistic and reluctant.

  It took ages to get through customs. Theodora had felt it unfair to descend on the Littlejohns at three in the morning and had, therefore, booked in to the Rotunda in Kyrenia. The hotel, the most modern in the city, when at last reached, had a porter who slept under the reception desk. The Rotunda dated from the thirties and had been built to cater for the end of the British Empire. It had clean thirties lines, green shutters and, by now, lots of peeling plaster. It had a permanent air of ex-patriotism, though the real ex-patriots, finding it too expensive, had moved on to prop up counters in bars buried deep in the sand dunes and tall rushes which fringe the sea-coast area. Bullet holes incurred fifteen years ago at the time of the Turkish invasion made interesting patterns on the entrance-hall walls.

  There were compensations, however, for Turkish lack of modernity. The next morning, nothing in the hotel stirred until near eleven. Theodora slept on in her fourth-floor room, while below her the establishment failed to become a hive of activity. Cleaners leant on brooms, waiters and barmen spat on cutlery and glasses to clean off only the greasy bits.

  At ten forty-five the electricity came on. There were a great many appliances in the hotel which required electricity, but power was expensive and in short supply, and demanded the sort of mechanical expertise which was in even shorter supply in Turkish culture. So it came on suddenly and went off unpredictably over the whole of the northern part of the island. Its resurgence woke Theodora with a start. The airconditioning roared. The fridge thundered. A couple of Hoovers, inadvertently left switched on the night before, tuned up outside the door of her room. But the view over Kyrenia bay, when she’d drawn back the shutters, was without spot or stain. Even in April it was warm enough. Pale blue sky met pale blue sea, and to the landward side the curve of the bay showed deep green mountains rearing up near at hand.

  Theodora suddenly felt what her grandmother might have felt on her first visit to the Mediterranean, a sense of being off the lead, of things being allowed. The Mediterranean, our second home, Theodora thought, suddenly hopeful of her quixotic enterprise.

  She recalled herself to the task in hand. She was not here to enjoy herself, but to find out about a girl kidnapped and a boy dead; to trace, if possible, icons which appeared to be working for evil rather than good. She needed to pray, get some breakfast, and make a plan.

  She was surprised to find that the telephone, after only two or three attempts, worked, and the English for coffee and rolls seemed to be within the linguistic capability of whoever was at the other end.

  She compromised with the sensuous life so far as to take her office book out on to the verandah. Four hundred yards away, across the bay, under a palm tree, a solitary Turkish soldier stood, rifle in hand, facing the sea. Ready to repel what enemy, Theodora wondered, since the Greek part of Cyprus lay at his back. To the left and right of her, and below but not above – since she was on the top floor – were ranged the verandahs of the other rooms. One by one, shutters rattled and creaked open and guests emerged. Some stayed, others snuffed the air and then retired, like lizards into a wall.

  There was constant sudden or cautious movement. The man immediately to Theodora’s right, wrapped in an enormous plum-coloured bathrobe, scraped his table into place to receive his coffee tray. For an instant he turned his face towards her and, behind the dark glasses, she recognised the beard growth of her plane travelling companion of last night. The smell of his coffee drifted tantalisingly towards her. She could do with some of that right now.

  The telephone, when it shrilled, startled her. At the same moment there was a knock on her door.The small, dark-haired maid held a tray smilingly towards her. Theodora indicated the fridge as a possible s
urface, and reached for the phone. As she did so, she heard a scream. The maid lay on the floor, clutching her hand. The tray swayed at a precarious angle on top of the fridge.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Theodora said into the phone, and dashed towards the maid. She reached out to steady the tray and prevent it from falling. The maid cried out again, knocking Theodora’s hand away from the metal handles. ‘Yok. Forbid touch. It is the electrics.’

  Where have I heard that before? Theodora asked herself. She helped the still trembling girl towards the bed and reached cautiously for the phone.

  ‘Hello,’ said an anxious English voice. ‘Is that Miss Braithwaite? This is Tim Littlejohn. What’s happening?’

  Theodora took a grip on herself. She wasn’t sure what was happening, so best to play it down.

  ‘There’s been a slight accident with the electricity here. It seems to run wild rather and attack the innocent. One of the maids received a bit of a shock. I think she’s going to recover.’

  She glanced at the girl, whose crying had subsided.

  ‘We’re not too reliable in that quarter,’ said Mr Littlejohn apologetically. ‘I’ll be down in twenty minutes and we’ll sort something out.’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Theodora replied in answer to Tim Littlejohn’s question. ‘You see, the Kostas boy was killed by being thrown, the police think deliberately, against an electrical unit.’

  ‘So you said. On the other hand, as I said, I have to admit electricity isn’t one of the Turk’s things. Don’t mistake me,’ the Anglican priest continued, ‘the Turks are a very good sort of people.’ He thought for a moment. ‘They’re very good soldiers. Give them an order and they do it to the letter, until they’re told to stop.’ He paused again. ‘It has its disadvantages, of course, too.’

  ‘Like my soldier under the palm tree,’ Theodora said. ‘He looked very much as though he’d been given an order long ago and then been forgotten.’

  ‘Not impossible.’ Tim swung the four-wheel-drive Suzuki over the potholes in the main road at a good speed. He was a small whippet of a man in a faded blue Airtex shirt and grey flannels. He could not have been other than English. He perched on the high seat and handled the steering wheel, which looked too large for him, with great skill. The colours of the country were light yellow roads, light green herbage scattered with pink and yellow flowers, and dark green and grey mountains as a backdrop. As they left the suburbs of Kyrenia behind and noon approached, it got warmer.

  ‘Going to be hot?’ Theodora inquired.

  ‘Not really by our standards, but I expect it’ll feel so if you’re fresh from the Home Counties. Look,’ he added, turning to glance at her. ‘Geoffrey rang last night. He filled me in on the rough outline. I really think it would be better if you stayed with me and Gwyneth at the vicarage. In view of the electrics.’

  ‘It’s very kind. I’d love to if you don’t mind. Hotels are not really my thing. And if I’m going to have to watch it every time I see a socket, it’s going to be a bore.’

  ‘That’s settled then. The next thing is the plan of action. We need to find Jessica and the icon or icons. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the Kostases will have entered through Larnaca airport – the Greek side – since the Turks don’t let any Greeks in on this side.’

  Theodora nodded.

  ‘But the Kostases’ original village was here in the Turkish bit, at Montevento?’

  ‘So McGrath said.’

  ‘Is he trustworthy?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so in something like that. It could so easily be checked.’

  ‘Why do you suppose they’ve brought Jessica here – if she was the third person on the flight?’

  ‘One reason might be that they want to keep her out of someone else’s hands.’

  ‘You reckon there are a number of people, all after an icon or icons?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They have more than religious significance, don’t they? I mean, they can become political symbols as well.’

  ‘Too true. Think of that Polish madonna thing.’ The Reverend Tim’s voice suggested distaste. ‘It’s amazing what people think religious art can be used for.’

  Here Theodora could agree with him. ‘I’ve always thought hanging religious pictures in galleries is as bad as selling them for cash or using them for politics.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Tim said distantly. ‘I think myself that we’re better off without them in Christianity.’

  Theodora felt this was a perfectly respectable view. She just did not happen to share it. She had, however, no intention of arguing the point with her kind host.

  ‘And reunification’s in the air?’ Theodora pursued.

  ‘When isn’t it? We pray daily for it. But it can’t happen with present attitudes. You saw the soldier.’

  ‘But if someone thought there might be a possibility of uniting the island again, and wanted a symbol round which to unite interests?’

  ‘Greek interests, not Turkish, you mean?’

  ‘Greek interests, of course. Then couldn’t an icon serve the purpose?’

  Tim looked dubious.‘You might be right. I wouldn’t pretend to understand the Greek mentality any more than the Turkish.’ He changed gear to deal with a tricky concatenation of pot-holes.

  ‘The parish is mostly an expatriate one then; you don’t aim to bring in from outside?’ Theodora gestured in the direction of the countryside in general to indicate what she took to be Tim’s patch.

  ‘Turkish law, which more or less prevails here, allows, in practice, freedom of worship but no proselytising. For example, I’m not supposed to wear clerical dress outside the church building. The Greek Orthodox Church is bound by the same limitations, but actually it gets a worse deal than us. Their buildings were closed down after partition. Later a lot of them were ransacked. The Turks really didn’t behave at all well. A fair amount of stuff has seeped out on to the international art market from here, I believe.’

  ‘What about the monasteries: how did they fare?’

  ‘If they were fairly remote, had no more than a few old monks and nothing of value and kept their heads down, they got by. Now, of course, the Turks want (a) tourism and (b) the Common Market, so they’re treading more carefully.’ There was a pause as Tim renegotiated his way past a couple of coaches of German tourists.

  ‘So how many do you get in St George’s?’

  ‘Our average Sunday turn-out,’ said Tim modestly, ‘is about eighty at matins. We can double that at the festivals.’

  ‘The expatriate community is highly Christianised?’

  ‘Well, honesty compels me to say that it’s partly a social matter. We’re all middle aged to old. We’re mostly middle class, too, retired colonial service or armed services, where the C of E is part of the deal. People who’ve lived in warm climates since their twenties aren’t going to go back to Surbiton any more. The drink’s cheap and, as I say, the Turks are no trouble to us. But there’s a real commitment as well. Lots of sound Christian charity. Anyway,’ Tim was defensive, ‘they need God as well as the next person, and I’m happy to serve.’ He pushed the accelerator down to make his point.

  Theodora hadn’t wished to suggest otherwise, and turned the conversation back to the matter in hand. ‘So how could one go about learning whether there’s anything stirring politically?’

  ‘You mean whether anyone has come across the green line? It’s a very risky thing to do. The Turks brought in their own people after the invasion. And they literally set up in the houses of the Greeks they’d pushed out. I remember going down to Kyrenia to try and make contact with some Greek friends of ours soon after the takeover. I knocked at the door and there was an entire Turkish family eating off the very dinner plates on the very table our friends had left behind.’The Reverend Tim Littlejohn stamped on the brake, cornering with passion at the memory.

  ‘You could see it would make for
enmity.’ Theodora rocked back in her seat as they gathered speed again.

  ‘You can say that again.’ He pushed the accelerator in compensation.

  ‘So is there any way of getting information?’

  Tim changed gear to accommodate the sudden appearance of a shingle road surface, then braked suddenly. From the ditches on either side of the road rose up a dozen men in army fatigues. They had rifles trailing from their hands. They wore blue berets and had fair hair. Their leader stepped into the middle of the road and waved them down. He put his head into the driver’s side and said in excellent Swedish-accented English, ‘I can warn you the road in front is dangerous because there is a big fall of rocks.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tim cheerfully. ‘Thanks very much for telling me. Actually I did come down that way an hour ago, so I expect I’ll be all right.’

  ‘The United Nations train here,’ he said conversationally to Theodora as he got up speed again.

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘We always have fish on Friday in Lent, just to remind us,’ said Mrs Littlejohn, pushing the tomato sauce bottle towards Theodora. The flabby, tough, battered fish and the limp, large, greasy chips didn’t quite fit the house, which was general-issue Mediterranean modern villa. But it did fit the décor which was chintz and welsh dressers and it did fit Gwyneth Littlejohn’s accent which was Welsh too.

  Theodora had really only one thought in her mind. She resumed where the United Nations had interrupted. ‘If anything unusual was happening, who would know? I’m thinking about Jessica.’

  ‘That poor girl. How can people be so wicked,’ said Gwyneth. ‘Will they never rest from playing soldiers?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking of that,’ said Tim, evidently replying to Theodora rather than his wife. ‘The best bet is probably the Vounikis at the Paradise Garden.’

  Theodora glanced across at him. ‘We’ve got a Paradise Garden in Betterhouse. It’s a good restaurant,’ she added, looking at the remains of the fish on her plate.