When she protested, he insisted that she couldn’t continue to live at the staff house and that he would explain the situation to Helena, making sure neither she nor her loyal staff troubled Oriel again. She didn’t demur further, realizing that Damian had enough worries without her adding to them.
A few minutes after he left, Oriel had already slung a few things into her canvas bag and left the house. The drive in the open Volkswagen cabriolet was cool and refreshing. She headed for the stretch of coast where Mattias had told her there were some interesting isolated coves where she could swim without being disturbed. Although some were only accessible by boat, she was sure she would find a path down to one of the beaches. She parked the car not far from Manoli’s, having decided to explore from there.
It was warm for walking but she had taken a hat with her and was carrying her bikini and peignoir in her bag. The journey along the dusty road made her hot and sticky. Still, there was a cooling breeze. After half an hour she came to a bluff that jutted out over a small half moon of pure white sand. On one side Mediterranean pine trees shaded the edge of the beach, where rocks tumbled steeply into the deep blue sea with the great conical mass of Typhoeus behind them. Along the rocky side of the coast, she could see the cavernous dark entrance of a cave, lying just beyond the shoreline.
The view from here was magnificent. Oriel stood a moment on top of the cliff with a new awareness of Damian in her heart as she watched the white sails of outbound yachts in the distance, billowing out before the steady breeze. She had sailed with him across that same stretch of ocean just three days ago, with the wind on their faces, and now she marvelled at how much things had changed in that short space of time.
It had been only an hour since she’d left Damian and already she was missing him as if she had lost a part of herself. She stood a while looking down on the bay, at the changing colours of the water as it reached outwards from the shore. It merged from palest green to turquoise, then to the deep, deep blue beyond the reef, so inviting that she couldn’t wait to plunge into the clear, cool water. Surely over there – just beyond the cave – was a track, zigzagging its way through the rocks and vegetation. It looked very steep but it would be worth the effort. Oriel made her way along the bluff until she found the path. She scrambled down it then ran across the sand, stripping down to her bikini on the way and throwing herself into the calm water.
Oriel swam far out into the bay, towards the reef that she could make out in the distance. The water was crystal clear, making it possible for her to see right to the bottom where the reflection of the sun-kissed waves rippled the smooth white sand. Revelling in the warm blue-green water, she paddled leisurely, allowing the gentle swell to caress her cheeks and chin as thoughts about Damian and the hours they had spent together making love washed over her. It was clear out towards the rocks too, a brilliant turquoise blue with a gold dusting of sunlight on the surface. The sea was so placid there was no danger. Oriel reflected contentedly that it was well worth the dusty walk to be allowed to swim in peace. Everything today felt new and sparkling – a wonderful world, just for her – and she swam quite far out, aware of a new vigour in her strokes.
After she had come out of the sea, Oriel sat on an outcrop of rock and dried herself in the sun, shaking her wet hair free. It fell in thick damp strands over her face and she combed her fingers through it with slow, leisurely strokes. Then she paused, suddenly aware that something in the air had changed. It felt heavier now; the breeze had gone and a deadly hush weighed down the atmosphere.
It was then that she realized that the crickets were silent and the birds had stopped singing; a palpable stillness surrounded her as if Nature herself was waiting with bated breath for some tremendous catastrophe. Now, looking out across the sea, not even the shadow of a ship broke the silver sheet of water stretching to the vague horizon’s rim. It was time to go back to the car.
Then abruptly the sky grew dark, as though a cloak had enveloped the island. A moment later, a sudden wind tore into the bay, swelling the sea so that strong waves began to hurl themselves at the rocks. Suddenly frightened, Oriel made her way quickly along the small beach, watching the pine trees on the far side shiver and sway under the dark storm clouds. It began to rain, in great heavy drops that hammered their way like bullets strafing the sand. Oriel grabbed her bag and clothes and, bent almost double under the driving rain, she headed quickly for the cave, thankful for any shelter it might offer.
She paused at the entrance and reached into her bag for her peignoir. There was no point in putting her clothes back on: they were soaked. She shrugged it on over her bathing costume and looked out at the hell-world that had erupted outside. The storm was turning circles in the bay; the sea that roared and beat itself against the cliffs of Helios was a furious monster and bore no relation to the smiling, placid water she had swum in half an hour ago. She looked at the pines, under which the cool shade had seemed so inviting before. Now the wind and rain were bending their branches in a violent assault, knocking the cones to the ground like a hail of huge stones.
Inside the cave a cool dankness prevailed, its customary dark pierced by the flickering, ghostly light cast by the white sheets of lightning. Oriel stood under the lip of the entrance for a while, looking out through the curtain of rain, gnawing her lip and staring at the pandemonium Nature was creating outside. Although the sounds of the storm filled the air, she turned suddenly and looked upwards. There was a rhythmic beat coming from above her – one that had nothing to do with the rain. It wasn’t loud but she could distinguish it clearly above the hissing and wailing of the tempest.
Every muscle in her body stiffened instinctively. For perhaps a couple of seconds it was quiet and she could only make out the sound of the wind howling outside. Then, clear and unmistakable, she could hear steps echoing. There was someone in the cave, maybe more than one person, she thought with a shiver, her imagination working at one hundred miles an hour. Had she stumbled on a smugglers’ den?
Her mind flicked to Damian and Mattias’s conversation in the taverna the night of the sponge divers’ farewell. There had been talk of boats slinking through the water like dark shadows in the night. Pirates, too.
Don’t be foolish, she chided herself, but all the while the cave seemed increasingly lonely and sinister in this eerie half light. If only she hadn’t parked her car so far away … but the storm was raging and she knew it would be pure idiocy to venture outside. Maybe she hadn’t been alone on the beach before and these sounds came from other beachgoers stranded in the storm like her, who had taken shelter before her. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew she had been alone in the bay.
There were more steps now and then a shuffling sound, as though something was being dragged. Then the noise stopped.
It was very quiet – too quiet, Oriel felt – with no sound other than that of the blustering tempest and the sigh of a chilling breeze spiralling upwards to the vaulted roof of the cave. Her nerves tensed, waiting for something to happen. Then she remembered something and delved quickly into her bag. The day after Damian had ridden out on horseback to find her in the dark, she had put a torch in among her things. Here it was. She took it out and turned it on, aiming the beam at the back of the cave … Except the cave didn’t seem to have a back, it looked as if it went deep into the cliff. She ventured a few metres into the cavern. With every step, the air grew more damp and musty. The floor was no longer rock now, but earth. Oriel could hear the angry scream of wind but it was a little fainter now, howling down the crevices and in through the cracks in the rocky wall, punctuated by loud claps of thunder with barely a break between. The storm must be right overhead.
Suddenly she was aware that the cave had widened out and she could see some steep, narrow steps carved into the rock wall ahead. She hesitated and then, leaving her bag on the ground and plucking up courage, put her foot on the bottom step. Oriel could definitely hear movement above her and, being careful to avoid any noise, moved up stealthily. Befor
e even reaching the top – her eyes just peeping over the edge – she took in just how large the space above her was. The great cavern seemed to be part of a veritable warren, with more than one tunnel leading off it.
Straining her eyes, Oriel saw that great cave was full of cases of bottles set in an orderly array. It was an impressive number, quite a stash. She moved cautiously into the room and went over to one of the cases. She stooped and picked up a bottle, aiming the beam of her torch at its label. Her brow creased in puzzlement: it was affioramento olive oil, the Lekkas’s best. What was it doing here? Surely Damian wouldn’t have stored these bottles in this place – why would he? He had shown her the storage rooms at the factory. On the other hand, maybe they had been brought here after the fire? Still, it was rather a long way from the factory and, as far as she knew, Stavros hadn’t made any mention of the fire being bad enough to need to move the stock. The factory had certainly not burned to the ground. In fact, hadn’t Damian told her that the only room destroyed was the one where the fire had started: the office where they held the accounts and archives?
Oriel stood still. Now she could definitely hear voices coming from one of the short tunnels leading off the room. She took a breath. If something untoward was going on here she needed to tell Damian about it. There were, she noticed, more steps leading up from the tunnel to a level above – probably another storage room.
Slowly she continued her progress up the stone stairway, taking careful steps and hesitating at the slightest sound. As she stood at the top in the semi-darkness, back against the wall, she caught sight of a movement in the shadows at the far end of the short tunnel. She thought she could make out the shapes of three blurred, bulky figures, and they were talking in muffled tones. Her heart was thumping wildly and as her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Oriel recognized a familiar stocky frame.
Yorgos!
She didn’t call out, the feeling in the pit of her stomach warning her against doing so. But still, she had seen enough. Damian’s estate manager, whom she had distrusted from the start, was definitely up to something. All she could think of now was how to get out of the cave as quickly as possible so that she could warn Damian.
Retreating quickly, Oriel had just started to climb back down the steps when her sandal caught on an uneven edge. She tripped and the torch flew out of her hand, toppling with her down the remainder of the stairs. She found herself sprawling on the floor of the cave below, her hands clutching the dirt. Winded, she lay there a moment, then gingerly pushed herself up to a sitting position: she was shocked but not badly hurt.
Fortunately, the torch hadn’t broken. It lay on the ground, casting a faint glimmer on the wall. She picked it up with her right hand and as she did so, she became aware that her other hand, still clutching at the dirt floor, was resting on something hard. It was hurting her palm and she shifted it, wincing a little. She aimed the torch at the offending object – which might have been a stone, she supposed, but didn’t feel like one. In the feeble light she saw a large square sapphire earring with diamond surround. She recognized it instantly. The last time she had seen that blue stone it had been dangling from Yolanda’s ear on the evening she had visited Oriel at the staff house.
Oriel barely had time for the meaning of her discovery to sink in before she heard the soft echo of footsteps: someone was coming down the stairs. She looked up, the piece of jewellery still in her open hand. She gave a small gasp and swallowed convulsively.
Yorgos was standing on the steps above her.
‘What has Despinis Anderson been doing in this cave, eh? Curious, eh?’ he asked with a smile that didn’t quite make it to his lizard-like eyes. ‘Have you never heard our Greek proverb? Min rotate schetika me oti den sas aforá, kai pote den tha echete kaka prágmata sti zoi sas, if you don’t ask about what doesn’t concern you, bad things won’t happen to you.’
Oriel didn’t like the sound of Yorgos’s voice. She managed a shaky smile and hastily thrust the earring and the torch into the pocket of her peignoir, praying he hadn’t seen them. ‘I was caught in the storm. Luckily for me there was this cave. I was just exploring it.’
Yorgos’s hoarse voice was menacing. ‘Exploring the cave, eh? But there isn’t anything to see down here, Despinis.’
Except for an impressive amount of affioramento olive oil, which I presume you’re trafficking, Oriel thought to herself, but refrained from saying. ‘No, nothing at all.’
Yorgos’s thin, unpleasant face smiled. He took in Oriel’s dishevelled state. ‘Despinis fell down the steps, eh? You need to take more care.’
‘I didn’t go up them,’ she retorted rather too quickly. ‘I was about to but tripped over the first step. The edge of the stone is broken and it got caught in my shoe.’
‘The edge of the stone on the bottom step is not broken,’ Yorgos said drily, shining his torch over it. He gave Oriel a hard stare. ‘I think that the Despinis, if you don’t mind my saying, was eavesdropping upstairs. Then, as she was hurrying back down, she stumbled. You just couldn’t keep your little nose out of other people’s affairs, eh? You’re all the same, you women.’
Oriel had never liked Yorgos, finding him ingratiating and sly, but now, standing on the stairs looking down on her, he seemed downright sinister. The bones of his skull made shiny patches on his cheeks where the skin was tightly stretched. It looked like a death’s head, she thought, her imagination working overtime – not helped by the eerie torchlight in the cave. But Oriel was more than simply unnerved: she was afraid, really afraid.
Yorgos came down the rest of the steps slowly on noiseless feet. ‘You must understand that I can’t let you go, not now. Not like I did that snivelling Frenchwoman.’
Oriel’s eyes widened. ‘Chantal Hervé,’ she murmured.
‘Né, she wasn’t worth worrying about.’ A vacant smile was fixed to his pockmarked face like a mask. ‘It was obvious she’d leave the island and wouldn’t talk, mouse that she was, so I didn’t need to get my hands dirty.’ He cocked his head to one side, his eyes gleaming malevolently. ‘But you’re different, you have the Kyrios’s ear. I knew you were trouble the minute I met you. Typical pig-headed sort of woman, the worst type. At least that other nosy little bitch just needed money to keep her mouth shut.’
Oriel stared at him. Her panicked mind told her to keep him talking to buy herself some more time. ‘The Dutch student … so that’s why she left. She found out about all this too, didn’t she? How you were betraying Damian.’
‘Betraying?’ Yorgos gave a nasty laugh. ‘Ah yes, the great Drákon Damian. He always thought he was better than me, always looking down his nose. If Pericles had only lived, I’d have been his right-hand man. Then I’d have got the respect I deserve.’ He paused with a self-righteous squaring of the shoulders. ‘Look at it this way, I’m just taking what I’m owed.’
Yorgos took a step towards her. Oriel’s heart was pounding but she tried not to let her fear show. He stopped in front of her. ‘You think you’re so intelligent, eh?’
He knelt down and shone the torch in her face for a moment, making her wince and screw up her eyes against the light. ‘Not so clever now, are you?’ He lowered the beam and looked her in the eye, and Oriel glared back at him. ‘It’ll be different for you, Despinis. I’m afraid it won’t be a quick end.’
He made a movement with his hand nervously, the large gold watch glinting on his wrist in the torchlight. ‘I’m a little squeamish about blood, you see, so I can’t put you out of your misery with a knife to the throat or anything like that.’
Yorgos watched Oriel as the sickening realization of what he planned to do dawned on her. ‘Ah, you see now, don’t you? All I need to do is tie you up. And as no one knows where you are, they’ll never guess you’re down here. Come to think of it, you’ll be dying a perfectly normal death of starvation and thirst.’
‘It’ll be murder. And they’ll get you for it, Yorgos,’ Oriel said with a cold fury. ‘Damian will hunt you down. You’l
l never get away.’
Yorgos’s eyes shifted uneasily. His hands gripping hers were hard, soil-roughened, and he spoke with a kind of nervous intensity. ‘It’s too late. I can’t let you go, you understand. You know too much.’ His grasp tightened sharply and Oriel cried out, screaming with all her might.
Her terrified shriek seemed to bring out the sadist in Yorgos and he laughed. ‘Stop howling like a hyena,’ he ordered and, with one hand in her hair, he jerked Oriel’s head back to expose the long, vulnerable column of her throat. The other he placed over her mouth, forcing it open, trying to shove his handkerchief between her teeth. Fuelled by anger, Oriel bit him hard. He smothered an oath and slapped her twice across the face – so hard she thought he’d cracked her jaw. Momentarily stunned, she allowed him to gag her, the kerchief he had removed from around his neck strangling the wild scream she tried to utter.
But Oriel didn’t give up. Although trembling violently, she still fought Yorgos, trying to push him away with her hands, but it wasn’t long before he caught them in his without any great difficulty – he was so much stronger – and he bound her wrists together tightly with a small coil of thin rope that he took out of his pocket.
‘Always useful,’ he muttered, as if to himself.
Meanwhile Oriel continued to fight, kicking out with her feet, but he forced her to her knees and tied her ankles together. She knew then she was beaten. Only her eyes continued to snap, burning with a fury denied her limbs. Yorgos, who had been crouching beside her, now stood up and straightened his back, hands on hips. He looked down at her with such malevolence in his black eyes that she shuddered, involuntarily recoiling, her back against the wall. Then he turned and headed in the direction of the cave’s entrance.
It was very quiet when he had gone. Where were the other men? Presumably they had left by a different route. Oriel remembered seeing at least two other tunnels upstairs. From what she could see, it was a large operation – a roaring trade, no doubt.
Aphrodite's Tears Page 57
