‘I’m sure you do,’ said the fat man. He flattened the box that had held the pastries and slipped it into a front pocket of his hold-all for later disposal. ‘What was it that they wanted from him that they were prepared to go to such lengths?’
She shrugged.
‘Who knows? Money, I suppose. Some say gold. They say he has a chest full of it up there. Or did have, until they came and took it.’
‘And did these robbers rob anyone else?’
‘No. I suppose they didn’t need to. They robbed him, ran back down to their boat and made their getaway.’
The fat man looked up towards the promontory’s summit.
‘Then they must have had him very much in mind as their target,’ he said. ‘There’s no logic otherwise in their robbing the house furthest from their means of escape. Who were these men?’
‘They were never caught,’ said Olympia. ‘Which is no surprise, given our police force. The one man who tried to stop them, they ran down with their boat as they were leaving. Socrates, they called him, Socrates Rokos. He’s at the bottom of the sea still. If you listen to the old women, they’ll tell you he can be heard wailing, at night when the moon is full.’
‘You don’t believe in that tale?’
‘No, I don’t. Dead is dead, in my book.’ She glanced at her wristwatch, and tapped its face to make sure it was working. ‘I must go back to my charge.’
Olympia picked up her water bottles, the fat man his hold-all, and they walked together along the upward path.
‘Do you work at the clinic?’ asked the fat man.
‘I used to. Now I take on private clients.’
‘I suppose the pay is better.’
She shook her head.
‘Sometimes I get no pay at all.’
‘So why do you do it?’
They were passing a garden, and she pulled a leaf from a rose bush, then absently let it fall.
‘I used to work in Crete. I had a job in the hospital there, but it didn’t suit me. It seemed less about nursing and caring for the patients than it was about forcing them back on to their feet and out of the door as soon as possible. Then I got word from home that a neighbour of ours was ill. She was very elderly, poor soul; she had one son, but he’d died before her, and she had no one to care for her in her final days. When you get to the end of life, no one wants you. They all want you gone and out of the way. So I came back to nurse her, and when her time came I held her hand. I intended going back to Crete, but someone else asked for me, a woman very ill, with no close family. So I nursed her too. And then there was another, and another. Sometimes they get well; mostly they don’t. If they can pay me, they do, or sometimes I just get room and board. Sometimes they give me something – a ring, or a necklace – and tell me to sell it to pay their fees, but there’s never been anything of any value, so I keep what they give me as souvenirs. Something to remind the world they were once here.’
‘That is thoughtful of you. The world is too quick to forget those who have lit no fires at Posterity’s altar. As for the gifts your charges give you – who knows? If you appreciate what is given you that has little value, maybe one day someone will be more generous.’
She stopped outside a house where the whitewash was cracked and long unpainted, but the shutters and the windows were open to let in air and light.
‘This is where I’m staying,’ she said. ‘Keep going straight up until you reach a path leading to the left. Follow that, bear left, and take the first left again. That’ll take you to the villa.’
‘Thank you for your company, Olympia.’
‘Thank you for the bougatsa.’
She went into the courtyard, and shut the door. He waited until he heard her go inside the house; but instead of following her directions up to the Governor’s Villa, he took the path back down the way they’d come.
Lillis bolted back into place the part he’d tinkered with for days, and reconnected the wiring. He called out to Gounaris, who sat stripped to the waist in the driver’s seat of the Jeep, drumming the rhythm of the song in his head on the hot steering-wheel.
‘Ready!’
Gounaris leaned forward, and carelessly turned the key in the ignition.
The engine fired. Its rhythm was faltering, and it sputtered and shuddered, and blew black smoke from the exhaust. But Lillis held his breath and prayed, and Gounaris held his hands up in amazement, and somehow, the engine kept going. Outside the guardhouse, the captain looked up from his newspaper; Kastellanos opened his eyes from his doze. Skafidis came running from the kitchen, and gave a cheer. Manolis – who had changed back into his shorts and was lying on his back in the shallows, staring up at the sky – made no discernible reaction at all.
In the ears of the men on the beach, the Jeep’s engine drowned the noise of the fast boat approaching round the headland. But the water carried its sound to Manolis, and hearing it, he slipped on to his front, and watched the boat approach.
All the soldiers were moving towards the Jeep.
Gounaris climbed out of the driver’s seat, and clapped Lillis on the back.
‘Bravo, malaka,’ he said. ‘At last.’
The Jeep’s engine died. Kastellanos and Skafidis jeered, and turned to walk away.
‘It’s out of fuel!’ protested Lillis. ‘Believe me, it’s fixed!’
Gounaris shook his head, and followed the others towards the guardhouse.
In the new quiet, the boat’s approach was loud. As it closed in on the beach, its driver cut the engine, and glided competently alongside the jetty.
Manolis began to swim lazily towards the beach. The driver of the boat – a red-hulled Donzi speedboat, with white trim and ivory upholstery – jumped ashore. As he tied up, the captain called out to him.
‘Yassou, Spiros! How are you doing?’
The coastguard officer – not in his usual immaculate uniform, but wearing smart shorts and a well-ironed T-shirt – checked his fenders, and raised a hand to the captain as he came up the beach.
‘Yassou, Captain Fanis,’ he said.
He took a seat at the table, across from the captain.
‘Gounaris!’ shouted the captain. ‘Coffee!’
Manolis walked slowly towards the guardhouse.
‘What brings you here?’ the captain asked Spiros. ‘Have you just come to rub my face in it, with that pretty boat of yours? I still don’t get how you afforded it, on your salary. Maybe I’m in the wrong job.’
Spiros shrugged.
‘I got it for a good price,’ he said. ‘I told you, it was second-hand.’
‘Even so,’ said the captain. ‘It’s a beautiful toy. Come on, tell us – did you win the lottery?’
Spiros laughed.
‘If I’d won the lottery, you’d have heard me shouting from here to the harbour. My shift doesn’t start until four, so I thought I’d give her a run out. I came to see how you’re getting on with our friend.’
‘He’s still here, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I suppose it is,’ said Spiros. ‘As long as he hasn’t slipped away in the night. Just keep him sweet for another day or so, that’s all I ask. When we’ve found out for certain who he is, he’ll be out of your hair.’
‘If I must,’ said the captain. ‘But you owe me for this one, my friend.’
‘Yassas,’ said Spiros, politely, as Manolis joined them. ‘How’re things?’
‘Tedious,’ said Manolis, taking a seat uninvited at the table. ‘I hope you’ve come to tell me I’m free to go.’
Spiros laughed.
‘You talk as if someone had put you under house arrest,’ he said. ‘The checks we’re making are routine, no more than that. Unless you tell me we should be thinking otherwise.’
Manolis sighed.
‘How much longer, then?’
‘That depends,’ said Spiros. ‘Your friends are proving hard to find. They seem to have vanished without trace.’
‘I told you, they’re not my friends,�
� said Manolis. ‘I never met them before. It was a business arrangement.’
‘We expected they’d have put in somewhere by now, for supplies and fuel,’ said Spiros. ‘Only they don’t seem to have done so. Not on Greek soil, anyway.’
‘I can’t help you,’ said Manolis. ‘They didn’t leave me a chart of where they were heading.’
‘Alexandria, you said.’
‘That’s what they told me.’
Gounaris brought out two coffees. He put one in front of the captain, and handed the other to Spiros. As he left them, Manolis called him back.
‘Hey, son,’ he said. ‘Can you bring me one of those?’
Gounaris was about to object, but a warning in the captain’s eye kept him silent.
‘Go ahead, Gounaris,’ said the captain. ‘Make our guest a coffee.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ said Gounaris. ‘If you say so.’
‘So,’ said Captain Fanis, ‘tell us what’s new in the harbour. Here in our isolation, we’ve no idea what’s going on.’
Spiros tasted his coffee.
‘Your boy there makes a good cup,’ he said. ‘There was some excitement today, as it turns out. There’s another film crew arrived, doing a news story on the bull. They sent that reporter from ANT1, the blonde. She’s a good-looking woman in the flesh, I’ll tell you. If you like, I’ll see if I can put in a word.’
‘If she’s here, no doubt the local Lotharios are out in droves,’ said the captain. ‘But is she journalist enough to make news out of our old story?’
Spiros turned to Manolis.
‘You know the story of our bull, I suppose?’
‘Yes, I know the story,’ said Manolis.
‘Shall I tell you what I think?’ said Spiros. ‘I think it’s only a matter of time until it’s found. Don’t you agree, Fanis?’
The captain gave a snort of laughter.
‘If that’s what you say.’
‘Think about it,’ said Spiros. ‘Why is there a news crew here? They say they’ve had a tip-off. I think someone wants to stir up interest in the bull, so when it’s found, there’ll be more bidders. Push the price up. Makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Again, the captain laughed.
‘What would you do with that kind of money, eh, friend?’ Spiros asked Manolis, giving him a nudge. ‘If you found that bull, you could just name your price. What would a collector pay for such a treasure? There’s some Onassis out there who’d pay millions, tens of millions. All your life’s problems’d be over, if you found that bull. You wouldn’t be needing money for a boat-ticket then, would you? You wouldn’t need a boat-ticket, because you could buy the whole shipping line.’
Gounaris brought out Manolis’s coffee. Most of it was spilled in the saucer.
‘If I had that kind of money, imagine how it would be,’ went on Spiros. ‘Women like that reporter would be falling at my feet.’ He smoothed his T-shirt, and ran his hand over his hair. ‘What do you think, eh? How could she resist a body like this, and a wallet full of cash? What do you think?’
The captain smiled.
‘What I think is, sometimes you talk absolutely no sense at all,’ he said.
When the day’s heat diminished and became bearable, Olympia carried a cane-bottomed chair outside, and set it at the centre of the courtyard. In the bedroom, she helped the frail woman into a cotton robe, and supported her in the slow, short walk from bed to chair. The woman – all bones, wasted and weak – leaned her meagre weight on Olympia’s arm, and concentrated on every harrowing step.
‘Take your time, theia,’ said Olympia. ‘There’s no rush.’
The woman squeezed her skeletal hand on Olympia’s forearm.
‘Time is what I don’t have,’ she said. ‘This might be the last time.’
‘No,’ said Olympia, guiding her through the doorway, bending down to lift her feet for her over the stoop. ‘You’ll have many more times, yet.’
On the far side of the doorway, they stopped to rest. The woman winced.
‘Are you in pain?’ asked Olympia.
‘A little,’ said the woman. ‘The sun will ease it.’
They reached the chair, at last. Olympia placed the woman’s hands on its back.
‘Hold on to that,’ she said, ‘whilst I take off your robe.’
She lifted the robe from the woman’s shoulders, and taking the woman’s hands one at a time from the chair-back, slipped it down her arms to leave her naked. The loose skin of her back and buttocks was a mess of lesions: fresh sores which wept clear liquid, and others part-healed and crusted with golden scabs, around which more liquid bled.
Olympia ran her eyes over the sores.
‘Your skin’s looking better,’ she lied; the lesions were spreading further every day. ‘Let’s sit you down.’
She helped the naked woman on to the chair. The woman closed her eyes, and sat half-smiling in the light. The bottles Olympia had filled at the beach had been standing in the sun; she unscrewed the cap of one and poured water over her fingertips, finding it a little warmer than tepid. As the spilt water splashed on the stones, the woman opened her eyes.
‘If you can’t go to the sea, then the sea must come to you,’ said Olympia. ‘Are you ready?’
The woman smiled.
‘Ready,’ she said.
Slowly, Olympia poured warm seawater over the woman’s shoulders, and let it run down her arms and back. She dribbled it over her thighs, and let it run down her calves, and poured the last of the bottle over her feet. The woman wriggled her toes. Putting aside the empty bottle, Olympia opened the second, concentrating as she poured it on the worst sores. Water ran down the chair-legs and dripped from the struts, and the air smelled of the water, and very faintly, of the ozone of the sea.
‘The salt’ll really help your skin,’ Olympia lied.
‘I love the sea. The sea is good for everything,’ said the woman. ‘Every single day in summer, my sister and I used to swim. Like mermaids we were, in love with the water. Those were good days.’
‘We could phone your sister, later, if you’d like,’ said Olympia. ‘She’ll want to know how you’re getting on. You can tell her you’ve been bathing in the sea.’
‘Yes,’ said the woman, dreamily. ‘We’ll phone her, later on.’
In the same way, Olympia poured the third bottle, and the fourth.
‘That’s it,’ she said, shaking the last drops from the last bottle. ‘That’s all there is for today.’
‘Wonderful,’ said the woman. Her pale skin glistened wet, and on her shins, salt crystals were drying white.
‘Shall I fetch a towel?’ asked Olympia.
‘No, no towel,’ said the woman. ‘I want to dry out here.’
‘Shall I leave you a few minutes, then?’ asked Olympia. ‘I could go and change your sheets whilst you relax.’
‘Yes,’ said the woman. She looked squinting up at the sky. ‘Yes, you can leave me a few minutes.’
‘I won’t be far away,’ said Olympia. ‘You call me if you need me. Are you in pain?’
The woman shook her head.
‘The pain is better,’ she said. ‘And I shan’t be needing anything, kori mou. Let me just sit here, and have a talk with my friend, the sun. I’ve everything I need, for a while.’
Seven
Captain Fanis was hungry. The rota showed Lillis as the evening’s cook, but Lillis had gone to take a shower half an hour ago, and hadn’t yet returned. In the kitchen, Gounaris was making iced coffee. Spills of milk and sugar were unwiped on the table; the empty wrapper from a packet of biscuits lay on the floor.
‘Clear that up,’ said the captain. He opened the fridge, and was relieved to find Lillis had remembered to defrost the chickens. ‘And tell Lillis to get in here, double quick. I need him as my sous-chef. I’m taking over as cook, for tonight.’
Behind the bunkhouse, the captain hauled the barbecue out from under the junk that had been piled on it since its last use, and carried it to a piece
of level ground close to the kitchen. He tipped in charcoal from a sack – charcoal still in its olive-wood form, in the knots and twists of its sawn branches, but as light, piece by piece, as a handful of the leaves it once bore, and pure carbon, with not an atom’s deviation from black. He lit it with a sprinkling of lighter-fuel and a dropped-on match; there was the whoomph of a small explosion, and the kindling under the charcoal began to burn. Quickly it set light to the charcoal, which tinkled as it sent up stinging sparks like tiny firecrackers; and when the charcoal was red at its heart, the glow spread slowly outwards, and the fuel began to transform into ash, caught by the breeze to rise in powdery dust. The captain raked the charcoal through and placed the clumsily butchered chickens on the rack; the dripping oils and fats sizzled on the heat, and gave off the appetising smell of roasting flesh.
When the chicken was almost cooked, Manolis came up the beach. He carried an octopus, soapy with slapping on the jetty to make it tender. He held it up, the slimy tentacles draped around his wrist.
‘I brought an offering,’ he said. ‘A contribution to the feast.’
‘Well caught,’ said the captain. He moved some of the chicken from grill to plate, and made room for the octopus. Laid out on the rack, its body hissed and steamed. ‘The lads will enjoy that.’
‘Regard it as a thank you,’ said Manolis. ‘The very least I could do.’
The soldiers ate, cleared away the remains of the meal, and returned to their places at the table. The captain sat amongst them, indulgent of their banter. Manolis kept silent, sipping on warm lemonade, his eyes on the blackness of the night sea, on the lookout for the lights of approaching boats.
‘I’ll fetch the cards,’ said Skafidis.
Kastellanos yawned, stretching his arms over his head.
‘Count me out, pedia,’ he said. ‘Bedtime for me. I didn’t get to sleep a single hour last night in that damned hammock.’
Skafidis slid the battered cards from their fragile box.
‘You’re crazy,’ said Lillis. ‘You’ll never sleep in that bunkhouse. It’s hot enough to toast your balls. Might as well stay out here, and play.’
Kastellanos wagged a finger in his direction.
The Bull of Mithros Page 10
