Levkas Man (Mystery)

by Hammond Innes

  I was staring at him, barely listening to what he was saying.

  "He must be there," I said.

  "Not now."

  There was finality in the way he said it, and the memory of his violent anti-Communism scared me for a moment, "Have you searched the dunes?"

  "Of course I searched the dunes—the whole area. He is not there."

  The intensity of his frustration convinced me and I relaxed. The old man must have realized they would come back. He had seen the trap and escaped. But where to? Weak as he was, where could he possibly have gone? Sonia caught my eye, the same question in her mind. I shook my head. I didn't know.

  I put the rucksack on the ground beside me. Kotiadis had switched his attention to Leonodipoulos now, and as the changed situation was explained to him, he became very heated. Holroyd gripped my arm. "If you know where he is, laddie, you'd better tell me. It's for his own good. This Congress is a great opportunity. Where's he gone to ground now?"

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know."

  "You must have some idea, surely?" And when I shook my head his grip on my arm tightened. "What else did you discover in his house? You knew he would be somewhere on those dunes. What was the next location?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're lying."

  Sonia intervened then, leaning across the table. "He's telling you the truth. He'd never have found Dr.' Van der Voort if I hadn't told him about the dunes near Ayios Giorgios."

  "You?" He let go of my arm and stared at her. "He was there last year, was he?"

  The corners of her lips turned up in a little secret smile. "It was just something I typed for him, a description of the dunes. He was very interested in the geological aspect of his discovery. It confirmed, you see, the climatic conditions . . ."

  "Yes, but what else? Was there something near—a cave-dwelling? What was the next passage you typed for him?"

  "Nothing else."

  "Nothing? But these were his notes. He was out here two seasons—"

  "I'm afraid that's all I can tell you."

  He hesitated, staring at her hard. Then he got abruptly to his feet, pulling his pipe out of his pocket, and went over to where the two Greeks were still arguing. Cartwright got up, too, nervous, ill-at-ease, fumbling with his pipe. Hans followed him.

  I turned to Sonia then. "Have you any idea where he is?"

  She shook her head. "He may have gone up to the village of Ayios Giorgios. He lived there for a time last year."

  "Kotiadis will have searched there."

  "Probably. But he could be in the hills, hiding. From what you've told me he's too weak to have gone very far." And she added angrily, "All Professor Holroyd cares about is where those bones came from—the ones I sent to Dr. Gilmore for dating. If it wasn't for that he'd be glad to see your father dead." Her voice shook with the intensity of her feeling.

  I leaned across the table. "And where did the bones come from?" I saw the muscles of her face tighten, her eyes go blank. "Was it Levkas?" I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper. But Levkas was an island. "He couldn't possibly have got there."

  "You don't realize how desperate he is." There were tears in her eyes. "This is his last chance. You mustn't—please you mustn't tell Holroyd about Levkas."

  But Holroyd was talking to Kotiadis now. They were standing together on the edge of the clearing, away from the others, and Kotiadis already knew about Levkas. He knew all the locations.

  "I think they'll decide to move camp to Ayios Giorgios now."

  "Will Holroyd stay out here?" I asked.

  She nodded. "I think so. He feels he's on to something now and he won't leave it to Alec. The time's too short if he's to read that paper. Yes," she said with finality. "He'll stay." And she added with a little jerk of her head to where Cartwright

  and her brother were standing alone and silent, "They're resigned to it already, both of them. Alec is ambitious, and Hans is a dreamer. They thought this dig here—" She gave a little brittle laugh. "The academic world is full of conceit, you know."

  Cartwright's dejection I could understand. I had seen the way he had flushed like a girl up there at the dig when Hol-royd had condemned it as a site of great complexity. But Hans Winters was still a student. "I should have thought your brother would be glad to work under a man like Holroyd."

  She gave a little shrug. "You can't dream dreams with a man like Professor Holroyd in chajge, and Hans is my father all over again."

  "Your father's dead, I believe."

  "Yes, he's dead. Did Hans tell you?"

  I nodded.

  "Did he tell you how?" She was looking at me very directly. "He committed suicide."

  "I'm sorry," I murmured.

  "No need to be," she said harshly. "He wasn't cut out for this world. He was a Christian. A real Christian. And he thought everybody was like him. He was too bloody good to be true. And so unworldly ... he drove his car straight off the road into the Amstel."

  "You obviously don't take after him."

  "No. I take after my mother's side of the family, thank God. But—" Her face suddenly softened. "On the surface, that is; deep down—I'm not so sure."

  "You're older than your brother."

  "Yes. Two years."

  "He says you studied biology."

  "Foreign languages. Biology was only a sideline." The habitual tenseness of her face was lit fleetingly by that quick elfin smile of hers. "You're wondering how I came to be associated with Dr. Van der Voort."

  "I presumed it was through your brother."

  "Yes. Indirectly. Dr. Van der Voort's books have never been published in Holland, but Hans got hold of the East

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  German editions, and German being one of my languages—" She gave a little shrug. "I just became fascinated, that's all. Not the writing. He writes very technically. But the ideas, the way he correlates man and his environment—the effects of the Wiirm glaciation in particular—the extraordinary changes produced by the interstadials—hippopotamus, rhinoceros, reindeer, bison, mammoths, tropical animals interchanging with an almost arctic fauna, and man himself evolving all the time. And then, when I realized he was in Amsterdam, actually lived just across the canal from us—"

  I had never asked her what her feelings for him were, and now, when I felt she was just about to explain of her own accord, Holroyd interrupted us. "I've had a talk with Deme-trios Kotiadis," he said to me. He was looking pleased with himself, standing over me, puffing contentedly at his pipe. "He's done a very thorough job tracing your father's movements last year and during his earlier visit in 1965. He's going to check up now on all the likely places, and when he finds him, he'll keep him under surveillance. But that's all. Leono-dipoulos was very emphatic. I don't think he convinced him, but Kotiadis has his orders and Dr. Van der Voort will be free to rejoin the expedition, if that's what he wants." He patted my shoulder. "So you've no cause to worry about him any more."

  I looked across at Kotiadis. He was still arguing with Leonodipoulos, the staccato sound of his voice ringing in the quiet of the glade as they walked towards the path that led to the village. "What are you planning to do?" I asked Holroyd.

  "First thing tomorrow morning we'll move camp—to Ayios Giorgios first, and if that doesn't produce what I'm hoping for, then we'll be going to one of the islands. Levkas. Van der Voort seems to have been particularly interested in Levkas last year."

  Kotiadis was shaking hands with Leonodipoulos. I watched him turn and hurry away up the path. "So you've found out all you need."

  Holroyd nodded. "Enough I think to ensure that our time isn't wasted."

  There was a smugness in the way he said it that had me simmering with anger. "You've no further use for him now?"

  He was quick to understand my mood. "No man is indispensable, you know," he said mildly. "And from what Kotia-dis told me, he's not fit to be in charge of an expedition on his own. Would you agree with that?" And when I didn't say anythi
ng, he said, "Be honest now. He's not a fit man, is he?"

  "He's been without food for some time. He's very weak, that's all."

  It seemed to satisfy him. "In that case, he won't have gone far. He'll probably turn up at Ayios Giorgios. Kotiadis enquired there, of course, but—" He patted my shoulder in that aggravating way of his. "Any^vay, don't you worry. When he does turn up, I'm sure Miss Winters will see to it that he's properly looked after." He wanted to know my plans then. "Kotiadis told me you had a boat waiting for you at Preveza. Leonodipoulos will be leaving shortly for Athens. I'm quite certain he'd give you a lift—as far as Arta, at any rate."

  I looked across at Sonia, but she was already on her feet and moving away. I had a feeling then, a sudden urgent feeling, that I must visit Levkas—now, before Holroyd got there. "Yes," I said. "I'd be glad of a lift." Levkas was on our route to the Aegean, whether we took the Corinth Canal or went south round the bottom of Greece.

  Holroyd nodded as though the matter had never been in doubt. "Good. To be plain with you, I don't like people on a dig who are not a part of it. They get in the way. And as for your father, most of his life has been spent in strange countries. He's well able to look after himself."

  "I expect you're right," I said.

  "No doubt about it. And you've got your own life to live, eh—your own problems?" And he went off to fix it with Leonodipoulos.

  That night I slept in a private house in the old Roman town of Arta. Leonodipoulos arranged it at a taverna where he was known. They were kindly people who spoke a few words of

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  English and sent me to bed full of a strong local wine after showing me endless photographs of their son, who was about my own age and serving in a tank regiment somewhere up by the Bulgarian border. They had given me their best room, all Victorian style furniture and lace—lace curtains and the sheets and pillow cases of the big double bed edged with lace and smelling of lavender. A ewer and basin in blue china stood on a marble-topped wash-stand and there was even a chamber pot. Probably the room was typical of countless others belonging to the petit bourgeoisie in the country towns of Greece, so spotlessly clean, so lovingly cared for, that to me it was almost a museum piece. A single naked light bulb hanging from its flex in the middle of the ceiling was the only indication that the world had progressed in the last fifty years.

  Lying there in the faded splendour of that brass-trimmed bedstead, the camp at Despotiko already seemed remote, part of another world to which I did not belong. When we had left they had already started packing up for the move to Ayios Giorgios. In the morning the tents would be gone, the olive grove empty except for the goats. The involvement which I had begun to feel was a very tenuous one. I was on my own again now and even my concern for the old man faded as my mind began to grapple with the problems of the voyage ahead. Leonodipoulos has given me a lot of information about sea conditions in the Aegean. He had sailed there regularly in a friend's yacht out of Vouliagmeni. He not only knew Samos, but he knew the actual port I should be using and warned me against the severe down-draughts to be expected off Pythago-rion whenever the meltemi was blowing.

  This common interest in the sea had made the drive pleasant for both of us, and it amused me that Holroyd, in his haste to be rid of me, had made me a present of such a useful contact in the Greek Establishment. In fact, during our meal together in the taverna, Leonodipoulos had assured me that he would see to it that my father was all right; Kotiadis had orders to report to him as soon as he had located him.

  I was woken in the morning by the daughter-in-law bringing my breakfast in on a tray. She had put in a brief appear-

  ance the night before, leaving with a giggle and flash of dark eyes. I watched her now as she stretched up to pull the curtains. Like most of the girls I had seen in Greece she was too broad in the beam, too thick in the calves—a dumpy, unattractive figure. And yet somehow she managed to imbue her movements with a sensuous sexuality. And when she leaned over to put the tray on the bed I forgot about her figure; all I was conscious of was her eyes, big and shining and black like newly-washed grapes.

  "Kafe," she said firmly and almost filled the cup with hot milk before adding a little of the very strong black coffee. Her skin had the sheen of olives. She smiled at me, and the smile lit up her eyes, and then she gave that embarrassed little giggle and was gone in a swirl of skirt and fat little buttocks.

  I drank my coffee, wondering when the boy in those photographs would get home again. Six months they had said since he last had leave. She was too ripe a plum to be left on her own that long. She reminded me a little of Florrie. Florrie had that same southern sensuality—and there'd be another dawn, or perhaps a night watch . . .

  Somewhere above me a baby cried, and then I heard the murmur of the mother's soothing voice. Sex, procreation, birth, death—it all seemed much closer, more natural down here in the Mediterranean, an inevitable part of living. And the old people worrying. That had seemed inevitable, too. Worrying about their son, about themselves, about the future —that strange mixture of fear and human warmth and happiness that seems to be a characteristic of hot countries.

  I was stripped to the waist, shaving, when she returned for the tray, and she stood there, her body thrust out to take the edge of it as she tried a few words of conversation—"You— Preveza—Simera?

  She meant today, of course, and I nodded.

  "Autobus—ten half hours."

  She giggled, her eyes bright and liquid with the excitement of this contact with a stranger from another country. But then the baby started crying again, and as she listened the excite-

  ment in her eyes changed to something softer. "Stefan," she said, smiling gently, and she was gone—no swirl of skirt, but a mother to her young, quickly and with purpose.

  They saw me to the bus, the whole family, including the baby; made sure I got a seat and waved me goodbye as though I were the son of the house. It was a leisurely journey, for we stopped at every village, and the waits were sometimes long. It was afternoon before we saw the Gulf of Amvrakikos. The great expanse of water was a silken blue, arrowed by the wake of a few fishing boats, and the hills beyond were puffed up to twice their size by the clouds that hung over them.

  All the way down I had been seeing traces of that same aqueduct whose ventilation shafts marked the erosion in the red dunes. Now at last I was catching glimpses of the great city it had served, the ruins overgrown with creepers, half-buried in vegetation, but still gigantic in size. The outer wall ran like a stone rampart into green grass country where sheep and goats gazed. Beyond Nikopolis, the grass gave way to agriculture, and where there was irrigation, the land was intensively cultivated. And then at last we were in Preveza itself, swinging through an area of new building centred around a petrol storage depot and out on to the waterfront, a broad promenade built on the scale of a major seaside resort with the town behind it a low huddle of nondescript buildings.

  The water was absolutely still, a sheet of glass mirroring the blue of the sky. I pressed my face to the dirty window. But there were no boats. The whole length of that waterfront was absolutely empty. The emptiness of it came as a shock to me. I had been so certain the Barretts would be waiting for me there, the boat anchored stern-on. The weather had been perfect. There had been no gales. The bus came to a stop and I got out with the rest of the passengers, standing there, irresolute in the sunshine, my suitcase in my hand. A group of gypsies passed with a mule-drawn cart, two dogs slinking in the shade below the axle, the women following, free-striding and upright, their skirts and shawls bright with colour. The little band was a gay contrast to the drab black of the Greeks

  sitting over their coffee at the kafeneion, which was also the bus terminal, and out beyond the smooth strip of water that was the entrance to the Gulf of Amvrakikos, the further shore showed as a fringe of low-lying land. It was all flat country, the hills a long way away, and seaward I could see the buoys that marked the dredg
ed channel. No vessels were coming in and the only thing that moved on the flfat molten surface of the water was a small open fishing boat powered by an outboard.

  For a moment I was at a complete loss. Coromandel should have arrived two days ago. Standing there, conspicuous and somewhat forlorn, I realized how urgent had been my desire to get to Levkas, how committed I was to the idea of searching for a cave-shelter there similar to the one at Despotiko.

  "Say, fellow—you American?"

  I turned. A broad, grizzled man was staring at me with bright dark eyes from one of the tables. "No, English," I said.

  "Englezos, Americanos—same thing, eh? I sail many ports." He reeled off the English ports he had been in, most of them barely recognizable the way he pronounced them. "I was stoker, see. In the old Mauritania one time. Jeez! That was work. You like a kaffee, sump'n to drink? What you like?"

  He was a battered, garrulous old man who had knocked around the world in all sorts of ships. "Ain't many coal burners left now. They want greasers, not stokers. Anyways, I'm too old. An' I got dollars. Anybody got dollars in Greece, they can sit in the kafeneion an' do nothin'—jus' talk. That's a good life, eh?" He gave a toothless chuckle. "Not bad for an old man who's bin a stoker all his life. You in the war? No, too young, I guess. Torpedoed twice. Second time was on one of those P.Qs. Jeez, that was cold. We was in the goddam ice three days ..."

  I sat and drank my coffee and listened to that Ancient Mariner going on and on about the disaster that had hit a convoy to Murmansk. It was an incredible story, but difficult to follow. Finally he ran out of steam and I asked him if he had seen an English boat in Preveza during the last two days.

  "An old fishing boat with a bowsprit? Yeah. She come in

  Thursday evening, but she don't stay. She was lyin' right there." He indicated a position almost opposite us with a hand that had two fingers missing. "Woman spoke Greek. Very bad Greek. Said they gonna wait here for a friend. Guess that was you, eh? Well, they was gone next morning. Yesterday morn-ing."