“Righting a wrong? Of this magnitude? Not possible. What you’re talking about is vengeance. Revenge, not pure and simple but impure, complex, and ultimately corrosive. I’m not going to preach to you or even explain. I’d be wasting my time. But I do need to understand: why Andrew? He tried to help you, didn’t he?”
“He became the focus of my hatred. With the gendarmes at the gate, he made an offer for my farm, my house, and everything in it.”
“A good offer?”
“A derisory offer! It was worth twenty times the price. He said it was the largest amount he could lay his hands on and I was lucky to get cash from any source at all in Salonika at that time. I had to accept his word. No one had money in those terrible days. The Jews and the bankers who might have dealt had been burned out of their livelihoods in the fire in ’17 and chaos still reigned. Paper money was worthless—when you could lay hands on it. I was to travel to a foreign country, not knowing what currency would be accepted on the journey or at the other end, open to attack by robbers and tricksters the moment we arrived at the docks. When Merriman promised me gold coins, a transportable means of exchange, what could I do but accept? I was cheated, of course. I presented Merriman’s chit at the British offices he’d told me to go to. I was expected. The cash was ready—but only half the amount I’d been promised. ‘Very sorry and all that, old chap, but resources somewhat stretched, don’t you know. Lucky to have scraped this much together. Only possible as a personal favour to old Andrew.’”
“How perfectly ghastly. But I don’t think Andrew was aware of that chicanery. He was an honest man, you know. I’m sure he did his best.” She spoke quietly, aware that her defence could have sounded warmer.
“And then the thieves, the confidence tricksters, the beggars, moved in. And worst of all: the so-called officials who are sorry but they have to charge you for a billet on the sheltered side of the boat, supplies, a drink of fresh water, and, in the end, a burial sack … I arrived with empty pockets and an empty life. All I was capable of feeling was a festering hatred of the man who had taken my farm and its rich past. That especially. It was my wife’s father’s land. Their family had tended it for centuries. They looked on themselves as guardians of the tombs and guarantors of their peace. And now here was a cheating Englishman, on his way already to the ironmongers to stock up on his spades and shovels. Booking a swift passage back to London in packing crates for the treasures that he’d dug out of the soil of my homeland. Pillager! I blame him for my loss.”
“You are still angry. Has killing him and Maud in any way been a solace to you?”
He turned to look at her in wonder. “I am delighted that they are dead. My spirits lift. They will lift further when I have dealt with the one who now holds my property; they will soar when—” He broke off and shook his head. “Your Western mind would not grasp this feeling of elation.”
“No. You’re right. Why don’t you explain to me what you meant when you said earlier that you might trade my life for something or other? Tell me what you have in mind.”
“Trading is my profession these days, Miss Talbot. If you attempt to bargain with me you will surely lose.”
“We’ve come all this way. I’m ready to listen to you at least.”
Without turning her head, Letty listened for the sound of a vehicle on the road. She heard nothing. Any minute now, surely?
“No one is coming, Miss Talbot. Concentrate on the business in hand, will you?”
“So—reveal your terms. If you won’t accept a gold chest full of valuable and beautiful artefacts, I can’t imagine what else I may offer in return for my life.”
“Let us look on this as a piece of bargaining between business associates. Imagine a pair of scales. Two pans which must balance to the satisfaction of both parties. Into one pan I put—your life. A weighty enough contribution and, really, I need say no more. It’s up to you to provide the counterweight. But I’m a generous and right-thinking man. I would not seek to punish an innocent party unless it were absolutely necessary in the pursuit of a higher good. I will help you. And a good trader—which I am—knows exactly how to sweeten the deal. I offer you an incentive. And here it is: I will reveal to you the identity of the person who killed Andrew and Maud Merriman. Yes, both. They died by the same hand. And that hand was not mine! You will need proof of my assertion. I can supply it. Or rather Demetrios can supply it. If you can fill your pan to my satisfaction, I shall be gone from the country before you get back to Athens. I have a passage on a boat from Piraeus. I shall be sorry to miss your play on Saturday. I’m sure it will be a memorable performance. But you will not see me again. More to the point—nor will the Athens police.”
“Are you telling me Demetrios had some involvement with this disgusting affair? He’s just a child!”
“Not in the slightest. The deaths would have occurred whoever was boot boy at the Kolonaki house.” He gave one of his rare smiles in self-mockery. “Two premature deaths, unplanned by me, and which could well have amounted to a considerable inconvenience. What I’m telling you is that it is to Demetrios you must apply for the evidence of guilt. He came upon it in the course of his household duties—which he performed diligently, I understand. When we have shaken hands on this, I will give you an address where he may be contacted. He has instructions to respond only to you. Go yourself. Send no one else. They will not find him. You will go unharmed.”
“You have my interest,” she said with a formal bow of the head. “Now, tell me what you want in exchange?”
Letty listened in growing astonishment as he set out his requirements.
Revving his engine aggressively, Gunning stormed dangerously into the village of Markopoulo. Ready to charge headfirst into an oncoming ton of metal, he had been thwarted. No taxi had appeared. Disgruntled, he stopped at the crossroads in the centre, an object of curiosity to the old men sipping coffee in the cafenion and of opportunity to the gang of small boys who gathered around the motorcar making rude comments they had no reason to suppose he understood.
He raised a shout of laughter when he quipped back at them in their own language. He added to their hilarity when he told them he was looking for a girl.
“My daughter, sons of hyenas!” he yelled good-humouredly. It had worked once, why not again? He fished a photograph of Letty sitting uncomfortably on a Cretan donkey and showed it to them. “She’s been kidnapped by some city slicker who’s run off with her in a taxi. There’s a reward for any lad who can tell me if he’s seen them.”
The leader stepped forward importantly. “Sir, we have not seen your daughter. But we have seen a taxi. Oh, just now. Five minutes ago?” He turned to his friends for confirmation.
“That’s not right. It was nearer fifteen! Christos’s ma had just called him in, remember? She always calls him at one on the dot.” The objection came from a smaller boy wearing a pair of spectacles repaired with a strip of elastoplast.
“That’s right.” The leader considered for a moment before agreeing. “Fifteen minutes, then.”
“You’re pulling my leg! I passed no taxi on the road out from Athens.”
“That’s because it didn’t go down the Athens road.” The leader took up the tale again, speaking with exaggerated clarity for the bumbling foreigner. He pointed round the corner. “It went down there. That’s the road to Vouliagmeni, on the coast. And from there it goes to Piraeus.”
“Thanks, lads!” Gunning put his hand in his pocket and took out a fistful of drachmas. He handed them out, to the glee of the company. As he started for his car the small boy who’d corrected the time seized him by the sleeve. “Sir!” he said, blinking earnestly, “the taxi did go that way but there was no girl in it. Just two men, the driver and one in the back.”
Somehow, in the depths of his despair, Gunning managed to dredge up more coins from his other pocket and hand them over with his thanks. His thanks for delivering the most chilling news of his life.
Chapter 38
Gunn
ing sat hunched over his steering wheel, head drooping, eyes shut, oblivious to his surroundings. Fifteen minutes. The rat would be in Piraeus in no time at all. Piraeus, gateway to the Mediterranean. Boats leaving every few minutes for a hundred islands, for Turkey, Europe, Egypt, America.
And good riddance to him. Gunning’s concern was all for his victim. Letty must have died in the last hour. In the time that had been lost in Athens. Calming himself, Gunning made himself ready to do the only thing left to him: reach the coast and lean out over the cliffs, calling hopelessly into the void. Mewing into the wind like a seagull. Perhaps, when no one answered his call, he would complete the action she herself had interrupted all those months before in Cambridge. He’d been resigned to his death and planning for it, when she’d stepped in, a stranger, full of joy and optimism, and she’d offered him half a crown and a reason to go on living.
He’d accepted both. But he had always known that it was her presence that linked him to life. Without her, he had no reason to go on. He’d kept the half crown. It was always in his breast pocket with her photograph. He would put the coin into his mouth before he leapt from the cliff top. Keep the Ferryman happy. He smiled bitterly as he remembered that it was from this headland that Theseus’s father, King of Athens, had hurled himself to his death in despair, thinking, mistakenly, that his son had died in Crete. Well, he’d be in good company.
“Sir! Sir! You all right?” The voice was anxious. Squeaky. Gunning turned to smile at the little boy with the broken glasses.
“Not very. No, son. Rather upset, in fact.” There was no point in pretending otherwise. Those earnest eyes saw a great deal through the ill-fitting spectacles.
He suddenly realised that the boy was grinning.
“You haven’t noticed, have you? Look! Up the road! Sight for sore eyes, eh? That what you’re looking for?”
Gunning followed the grubby, pointing finger.
He stared, gulped, stared again, and turned back to the lad. Solemnly, with tears beginning to trickle, he extended a hand and made the sign of the cross on the boy’s forehead, murmuring words of blessing.
He let in the clutch clumsily and juddered off, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Two hundred yards away. A hundred. Absurdly, he drove at a slow speed so as not to frighten her. She recognised the car but he waved anyway. Drawing level with Letty, he jumped out and pulled her into a tight embrace, distressed by what he saw. She was exhausted, panting, hot, and limping. Her feet were bleeding, her shoes in tatters. But she was laughing.
“Couldn’t run … Came as fast as I could … He chucked me out two miles up the road so that he could get away to Piraeus. Gunay! Utter bounder! Water … did you …?”
He helped her into the back of the car and produced the water flask.
Letty sat close to him for a few moments, relishing the familiar safety of the man and the car. “Water never tasted so good!” she said, handing back the cup. “No man ever smelled so good! And no flower ever looked so jaunty.” She took the pink bloom from the holder and sniffed at it. “I don’t know this one.”
“It’s a welcome-back-to-the-world gesture from Demeter,” he said.
“You were expecting me to resurface, then?”
“Of course!” He told a comforting lie. “The goddess and I—we never lost faith.”
After a few moments he decided she looked resilient enough to be asked: “What would you like me to do? Where would you like me to take you?”
“I’ll tell you what I don’t want you to do, and that’s set off in pursuit of Gunay. He’s heading for Piraeus—at least he said he was … But you’re not to go after him. He’s armed, for a start, and to go on—I promised we wouldn’t. Part of the bargain.”
“Bargain? I shall want to know all about that. I think I’d better take you to some quiet place where we can talk,” he said.
“Please—not Sounion!”
“No. I’ve had a much better idea. When I’ve turned this crate round we’re going to go left at the crossroads in the village and make for Vouliagmeni. They’ll have the telephone there. We can report back to Theotakis.” He grinned happily. “And then, duty done, dogs called off, we can have the rest of the day to ourselves. We can start with an ice cream and later have a meal of some sort and then hire a room for the rest of the day to recover. What about it?”
She smiled. “Very nearly perfect! Could we do all of those—but in reverse order, William?”
“Exactly what I had in mind, but I hesitate to put the suggestion to a girl who’s been run away with once already today.”
“Then I’ll snatch you away. Think of it like that.”
“Oh, Letty, as we pass through this village—Markopoulo, it’s called—I want you to wave happily at the inhabitants, especially the small ones. They think you’re my runaway daughter. Can you manage that?”
“I have your number for you … sir.” The desk clerk at the Hotel Apollo was frostily polite.
Gunning locked glares with him as he took the instrument from his hand. “Police headquarters? The Reverend Gunning here. Pass me Detective Chief Superintendent Theotakis, will you?…” He spoke with emphasis and in Greek, an eye still on the clerk. “Ah, Markos?” he said confidently, remembering with an effort the superintendent’s Christian name. “William here. I have Laetitia … safe and sound but a bit the worse for wear. I’m ringing from the Hotel Apollo in Vouliagmeni. Her guide and driver have gone on via the coast road to Piraeus. Forty minutes ago. She’ll give you the number.”
Letty took the phone and gave the taxi number. “Got that, Markos? I’ll pass you back to my husband,” she finished firmly.
“… Yes, there is something you can do,” said Gunning. “Letty’s exhausted by her cliff-top ramble … twisted ankle, lacerated feet … looks like something the cat brought in … you can imagine? She needs to rest for a while before coming back to Athens. Problem is—neither of us thought to bring a passport and we’re being looked at somewhat askance at the reception desk. They’re minded—and who shall blame them?—to tell us that they don’t have a room spare. I wonder if you could say a few words regarding the integrity, bank balance, and general social standing of the Reverend and Mrs. Gunning? Thank you … much obliged.”
He passed the instrument back to the clerk. “The Athens Criminal Investigation Department would like a word,” he said with a smile.
Letty woke to a glow of well-being and late afternoon sun. Concerned blue eyes above and a downy pillow below.
“Even heaven has its price. However much is this costing, William?”
“Not the faintest! And we haven’t finished yet. I’ve ordered up some food and more champagne. Will red mullet—I chose it myself in the kitchen—some roast chicken and a salad do you?… A month’s pay? Something like that. Discretion, Dom Pérignon, and French bed linen—they don’t come cheap!”
“Had you thought—we haven’t got any money with us? I’ve nothing but what I was standing up in—that ghastly tattered heap on the floor there—and you never have anything but coins about you.”
“Don’t worry! When I crept down to view the fish I telephoned Kolonaki. Got hold of Thetis. She was there with Montacute. They’re sending Harry out with some banknotes and a bag of things Thetis is sorting out for you. She was worried about you checking into a hotel without luggage.”
Letty gurgled with laughter. “She’s packing for me now! That girl and I will soon have no secrets from each other.”
“Not so sure of that …” he began. “I can tell you something that might rather surprise you—”
But, for once, Letty wasn’t about to listen to his gossip. Her laughter had stopped abruptly. “Luggage! Good Lord! He was lying! I thought so but I couldn’t put my finger on it … William, pass me that bathrobe, would you? I can’t think, naked.”
“Who was lying?”
“Soulios Gunay. He said farewell, in rather a marked manner, I’m now thinking. And said he was catching a boat at once from Piraeus. But,
William—there was no luggage in the luggage compartment in the taxi.”
William was not impressed. “He’d sent it ahead.”
“Yes, of course—the larger pieces that are to go in the hold—anyone would. But anyone would at least have a smaller case or bag to hand, and he hadn’t even an overnight bag for his shaving kit and cologne. And Gunay is a well-groomed man. He travels with more than a toothbrush in his pocket.” Eyes glinting, Letty came to a conclusion. “He’s still in Athens. He hasn’t got to the end of the line yet.”
“Dangerous for him. The police know so much about his background. Why would he risk staying on?”
“Because he’s got one more killing on his list! I’m trying to remember … He made one or two odd remarks … Strange how danger sharpens your perceptions … I really don’t think he could be bothered to chuck me over the cliff, you know. When he knew I wasn’t Andrew’s flesh and blood I ceased to count as a victim in his scheme of things. But being the man’s heir-well, that put me in a different category completely. I was someone he could bargain with once he’d frightened the life out of me with a sight of the drop into the Aegean—”
“Ah, yes, this bargain, this pact with the Devil, are you ever—?”
“Soon … soon … That’ll keep. Listen—Gunay didn’t kill Andrew and Maud and he’s given me the means of proving it. I intend to do that tomorrow morning. Though he had been planning their deaths. He lost his wife and two children in the expulsion from Greece. He was seeking three victims in retribution.”
“Two down and one to go, are you saying?”
“Not that simple. I offered Maud’s cousins and he wasn’t the least bit interested. I think he wrote off the third. He’s a merchant, William; he would know when the moment had come to cut his losses. You see, he’s not a wild-eyed madman. He’s rational. Ready to adjust. And very closely focussed on what he wants to achieve.”
A Darker God Page 32
