The Phoenix Series Box Set 2

by Ted Tayler

  Athena tutted.

  “Don’t be silly and listen. ‘Cyanide poison is known to cause harm to the heart and the central nervous system. Just a small amount of cyanide will prevent the flow of oxygen in the body if it binds itself to the iron element in the blood. No circulation of oxygen will cause death to occur rapidly.’ Gavin said there he could see no obvious signs it was unnatural, but Erebus could have received a lethal dose with a pinprick. I need to inspect his body to put my mind at rest.”

  “Time isn’t on our side, Athena,” said Phoenix, “and you might be barking up the wrong tree. It’s perfectly plausible for the old chap to have keeled over after a few weeks of temperatures in the eighties. He was getting on, you know.”

  The plane landed at Ibiza airport and as Phoenix had suggested to Henry, passport control proved to be a breeze. The short taxi ride to the marina in Santa Eulalia confirmed the island to be both busy and uncomfortably warm. Gavin waited on the quayside by ‘Elizabeth’ to greet them.

  “Let’s get your bags on board the yacht and I can start filling you in on what’s happened in the past eighteen hours.”

  Athena seemed at home on ‘Elizabeth’ with all its nautical gadgetry and refined furnishings. Phoenix started to say he felt like a fish out of water, but he remembered the glare Athena had given him for the cyanide comment and held his tongue.

  Minutes later he was happy to be back on dry land and taking in his surroundings. No wonder the elderly gentleman had chosen this beautiful spot to retire. Everywhere there were yachts of various sizes and he lost count of the number of ‘Sunseeker’ logos. The water lapping at the keels of the boats and up against the marina walls teemed with fish. He hadn’t a clue what varieties. But the restaurants a few paces away wouldn’t run short of fish for a long time yet.

  “I’ve called a taxi to take us to the funeral parlour,” said Gavin.

  When they travelled en route to the closest tanatorio on the main road through town Gavin got them up to speed with his progress so far.

  “The consulate in Eivissa are working on the paperwork and that should be available tomorrow morning. Here in town, the authorities are putting the finishing touches on the documents for which they are responsible. I’m hoping we can get the body released to us tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest. I’ll pass the necessary paperwork to you, Athena so you can arrange to fly William home. I’ll bring ‘Elizabeth’ back to the UK. That will take around three weeks. In that time, I can arrange for a mooring until it’s decided what to do with her.”

  “Sorry this job didn’t turn out as you had hoped, Gavin,” said Athena. “We expected Erebus to be sailing around these islands, enjoying the high life for years.”

  “Me too,” said Gavin sadly. “Maybe I’ll find someone who needs a crewman on another vessel soon. I love the sea, and this yacht has been a joy to work on and to sail. Of course, William was great company too.”

  The taxi soon reached the funeral parlour; a fairly nondescript establishment behind red-painted wooden gates. The three of them entered. Gavin explained in Spanish to a female member of staff, who the people he had with him had come to see.

  “She told me to wait there while she gets the boss,” Gavin said as the girl disappeared behind a curtain.

  A lugubrious looking man in his fifties returned with the girl and he led them through to the back of the building. Phoenix thought that undertakers didn’t change a lot all over the world. Every one of them had that ‘hangdog’ expression. He guessed the job wasn’t a barrel of laughs and after a while, their faces got used to what they thought equated to an appropriately sombre expression.

  The casket with the body of William Horatio Hunt was ready to view. As soon as she saw it, Athena knew that it was too late. Any hopes for forensic evidence had gone. She inspected closely the face, neck and hands, searching for marks that might suggest he’d been scratched or injected. Did that look like a slight blemish on the neck, just behind the ear, up near the hairline? She urged Phoenix to take a look.

  “It might be,” he said, “but it’s not conclusive.”

  Gavin took an interest now.

  “What are you thinking? Do you think William may have been murdered? I can’t believe that. Nothing I saw suggested that. Okay, I’m not a doctor, but nobody here has any doubts about it being natural causes either. His heart gave out, pure and simple. The local doctor tells me he sees it all the time; elderly people retire here from abroad and fail to cope with the temperatures. He signed the documents without a second thought.”

  After Gavin had discussed the arrangements with the undertaker, they took a taxi back to the road entrance to the port. He wanted to show Athena where her old friend had died. The three of them walked the twenty metres to the bar and walked up the steps into the bar. Gavin paused at the doorway and pointed to his left.

  “That’s where he sat every day, after lunch. Coffee and a crossword, then a stroll along the promenade before returning to ‘Elizabeth’ for an afternoon nap. It had become his favourite spot. A place to people-watch and relax in the shade.”

  Phoenix walked into the interior of the bar. Hayden recognised Gavin and assumed that the two newcomers were possibly relatives of the old gentleman.

  “Hello there,” he said, offering a hand for Phoenix to shake, “sorry about the old feller, he was a proper gentleman. Are you a relative?”

  “William was our boss,” replied Phoenix. “He had no family, but we were probably as close to family as he had. We can’t get used to the fact that he’s dead.”

  Gavin and Athena had joined them and Phoenix ordered drinks.

  “Might as well, seeing as we’re in a bar,” he said, “it seems rude to refuse.”

  “It was so sudden,” said Yvette who appeared from the other room. “He didn’t have time to finish his crossword for the first day ever.”

  Gavin went down the steps to the toilets; pushing through the batwing doors.

  Hayden came from behind the bar and walked to a wooden dresser. Photographs and the odd ornament adorned the shelves. He slid open a drawer, removed something and brought it over to Phoenix.

  “Take a look at this; it’s yesterday’s Times. He had his first café con leche every day while he read through from front to back, then he folded the paper and started on the crossword clues. That became our signal to take him his second cup. He always finished the crossword in ten minutes or less.”

  Phoenix glanced at the copy of The Times; it had been folded precisely and the crossword barely started.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  “We both stood at the bar and saw him fold the newspaper,” said Yvette. “It was over ten minutes later I noticed he appeared to have fallen asleep. Yet he hadn’t done any more than what you see there,”

  Athena came to stand at Phoenix’s shoulder.

  “The answers he’s put in don’t all fit the clues,” she said excitedly, “he tried to leave a message. Notice how spidery the writing is on ‘4 Down’, that’s strange; he would have been disgusted to have written so poorly. The first few solutions are right and in his lovely script.”

  “Something prevented him from carrying on as normal, that’s for sure,” said Hayden. “One of us always called out to him to ask if he was ready for his second cup. He usually waved a hand and answered in his very proper English tone. Like an old schoolmaster.”

  “Many thanks,” said Phoenix to Hayden, “this will prove useful. We’ll get to the bottom of it now, with the clues he’s left.”

  Gavin trotted up the steps and picked up his glass of tonic water from the bar.

  “What did I miss?” he said.

  “Nothing much,” said Phoenix. “We were just hearing a few stories about Erebus from mine host here. Time for us to drink up and head back to the yacht.”

  “Come back soon,” called Yvette as they left the bar and walked the short distance to the promenade. A few metres later they descended the stone steps to the marina and in m
inutes, they climbed on board ‘Elizabeth.’

  Giles had a few details to follow up in town and final calls to make to Eivissa, to arrange times to collect the vital final documents. As soon as he disappeared, Athena asked Phoenix why he hadn’t told Gavin what they had discovered.

  “We don’t know his exact whereabouts when Erebus died. He reckons he was washing down the decks here and getting ready for a trip today. We haven’t had that corroborated. He’s been a familiar face in the marina and around town for six months; he could blend in easily enough. There are hundreds of visitors in the town at this time of year. Easy enough for him to mingle with the crowds, walk up from the marina, do the deed, then scurry back to continue with the tasks he was supposed to be doing. He said Hayden came to fetch him when they realised something was wrong. That’s the only time that we know for certain he was here, on board.”

  “Motive?” asked Athena, clearly not impressed with his logic.

  “Who knows? Money? Let’s check the crossword and see if we can make sense of it.”

  Phoenix and Athena placed the incomplete crossword page on the table in front of them and began.

  “We can ignore the perfectly written ones,” said Athena, “which do you think he wrote after the poison first took effect?”

  “This section here on the left-hand side seems less certain in the way the letters are formed.” said Phoenix, “The only one that’s really off is the one you spotted. What did that ‘4 Down’ clue say again?”

  “It says ‘school kid on vacation trapping brown bear’. Five letters.”

  “Are the answers in the back?” asked Phoenix.

  “The answer is ‘STAND’ obviously,” said Athena.

  “Not obvious to me,” said Phoenix.

  “When they say ‘on vacation’ it means that you ‘vacate’ the letters between the beginning and end of a word or phrase. The word ‘trapping’ suggests a word meaning ‘brown’ is trapped between those two letters. So ‘school kid’ becomes SD, and a three-letter word for ‘brown’ is TAN. The word ‘STAND’ can mean to ‘bear or tolerate’.”

  “Is our baby going to be as clever as you?” Phoenix asked.

  “The answer that Erebus scrawled is ‘DOLOS’ not ‘STAND’, There’s our clue.”

  Phoenix eyed Athena forlornly and waited for the explanation. That collection of letters meant nothing to him at first. Then he had a lightbulb moment. Something deep in the recesses of the mythological information he had studied when he first arrived at Larcombe suddenly came to the surface.

  “Dolos - the spirit of trickery and guile. A master of cunning deception, craftiness, and treachery. An apprentice of the Titan Prometheus.”

  Athena looked impressed.

  “Treachery,” she sighed, “I was right. Erebus was murdered. The reference to a character from Greek myth points to the killer either being one of the Olympians or someone they hired. The Titans ruled the world before the Olympians in the so-called Golden Age.”

  “We may well be right to be wary about those faces around the table in Curzon Street,” said Phoenix.

  “Precisely,” said Athena, “the battle for Olympus has just begun. The Titans have fired the first shot. That clue Erebus left us was the last act of a man who knew he was dying.”

  Phoenix vowed to take revenge on whoever ended the life of his mentor.

  “Our first task is to identify them,” he said grimly, “and then destroy them before they gain control of the Olympus Project. It’s obvious they mean to turn it into something with a far more sinister objective.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

  Gavin managed to get the final clearance for William Hunt’s body to be flown back to Bristol around lunchtime. Athena checked carriers and flight times and to take her old boss home in style, she abandoned the budget company that had flown them out. They travelled home with British Airways.

  Athena ensured everyone at Ibiza airport realised that she was the person accompanying the casket fellow passengers could see being respectfully wheeled across the tarmac to be loaded gently into the hold. She was smartly yet soberly dressed; thanks to her ability to forward think when she had packed her bag at Larcombe. A tearful dab of the eyes when checking in worked wonders.

  Phoenix was one step behind her at all stages of the process. Casually dressed, he wanted to allow Athena to attract the most attention. With luck, he could slip under the radar on the return journey as easy as he had on the way out. His one rebellious touch was the bright shiny ‘I Heart Ibiza’ badge on his carry-on bag.

  Their plane landed at Bristol International in the early evening. There were several holiday flights landing in rapid succession, so Passport Control and Baggage Retrieval were both busy.

  Athena was whisked away to be reunited with her loved one. The pre-arranged Olympus van had been positioned by a gate on the perimeter so that the transfer went smoothly and efficiently. Athena sent the driver on his way and went to the gate in Arrivals to wait for Phoenix to appear.

  He emerged unscathed after about twenty minutes.

  “Remind me to buy Henry a bottle of champagne,” he quipped as they embraced.

  “I was getting worried when I had to leave you on your own,” said Athena. “You usually get up to mischief if I’m not keeping you under tight control.”

  “There were enough tired and emotional kids in the queue in front of me to help me out. I spotted a few frazzled faces on the Border Control staff’s faces and headed for the one that gave the impression she wanted to be anywhere but there. It was a doddle.”

  “Our car should be pulling up outside in a minute or two. Let’s not keep the driver waiting,” said Athena. “We need to get back to Larcombe to make arrangements for William’s funeral.”

  “I wonder who will turn up?” said Phoenix. “Elizabeth’s funeral was a quiet affair, wasn’t it? Staff members from the home where she had been living were there. Plus a few of our people that could justifiably claim to have known him as head of the charitable organisation; but not many other family members, or people that he served with.”

  “You can’t go to the funeral I’m afraid,” said Athena. “I know you would want to be there, but we can’t risk it. The main charity officers at Larcombe will go, plus a few of the house staff. As for other family and colleagues, we’ll have to vet them closely before we go ahead. It’s sad, but it can’t be helped.”

  As Athena and Phoenix travelled towards Bath from the airport, Rusty was snatching a piece of quality time with Artemis in their quarters at Larcombe.

  “Giles keeps you busy doesn’t he?” he asked.

  “There’s a lot to learn,” replied Artemis, “and so much ground to cover. I had no idea the scope of intelligence-gathering undertaken here.”

  “It all comes in handy sooner or later,” said Rusty, “you’d be surprised.”

  “I can tell that you don’t want to talk about the job you were on at the weekend Rusty. But what were you up to last week? Anything interesting?”

  Rusty told her what had happened on his trip to the London boroughs, investigating the beds in sheds scandal.

  “It’s the rich-poor divide that sickens you. I saw Jaguars and BMW’s parked on driveways on one road while around the back there were as many as thirty garages. Those garages now have front doors with piles of rubbish stacked outside. It’s clear numerous streets similar to that exist across London where people are living in appalling conditions only yards away from people living in the lap of luxury. The overcrowded and unregulated conditions are at the very least a fire hazard as well as potentially hazardous to health. As the migrants have kept flooding in sheds, garages, and derelict properties are increasingly being used by people unable to afford to buy or rent housing and living outside the benefits system.”

  “It must be awful,” said Artemis, “especially for the elderly and for children.”

  “I haven’t given my final report to Athena and the others yet; per
haps we’ll confront the problem of the landlords after she and Phoenix get back from overseas. It’s not an easy choice. We can identify and locate the people who are making huge profits out of people’s misery, but what happens to the tenants of these ramshackle properties? The councils could go in mob-handed and clear them out, destroy the buildings so they can’t be exploited; but you’ve still got a moral duty to house these people. If they are illegals, fine, ship them back to wherever they were born; but if we accept them onto our shores, then we will have to find a place for them somewhere aren’t we?”

  Artemis squeezed Rusty’s arm affectionately.

  “Your heart’s in the right place, Rusty,” she said. “But with budget cuts, I doubt councils in the boroughs can afford to commit resources to clear the problem. Let alone find a solution for the thousands of migrants that would then be added to the housing lists.”

  “Olympus may stick to its principles of making the bad guys pay. We may be told to take out the exploiters and force the government to tackle the issue of unfettered immigration.”

  “That sounds like a problem for another day,” said Artemis.

  “Mmm, I had better check with Minos to see when our leaders are returning home. If you want to hang on here for a while, we can get a bite to eat later.”

  “I’m sure I can find something to occupy my time while you trot over to the big house,” said Artemis, “it would be nice to get an invitation one day.”

  Rusty smiled at her, “Patience, Artemis, patience. Everything will become clear in time.”

  Rusty left his partner and headed towards the manor house. He found Minos in the drawing-room.

  “What’s the latest then, Minos?” he asked, “have you heard from Athena?”

  “The van bringing Erebus home has left the airport. Athena and Phoenix will not be far behind it. They should all be with us in fifteen minutes. A sad day.”

  “A sad day indeed,” said Rusty.

  The door to the drawing-room opened and Alastor and Thanatos entered.