by Anni Taylor
“You know him? He often comes in here like—?” I broke off, suddenly embarrassed. He had to be a boyfriend or some such, surprising her. He’d been naked, after all.
Sethi grinned. “Bad decision.” His accent was deep, melodious, Greek.
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head, not knowing where to put myself. “Goodness, how silly was I?”
Jennifer’s laugh tinkled in the air. “You weren’t to know. Sethi and I are very good friends. He’s been away for a couple of weeks on a fishing trawler. He’s a fisherman.”
“Apologies,” I said to Sethi. “I must have given you a shock, screaming like that.”
“I was more scared than you.” He winked.
“Clothes are optional in my house,” said Jennifer lightly. “That’s why Sethi didn’t think anything of coming in here au naturel. He likes to surprise me sometimes.”
I frowned, remembering something. “The man in your paintings. It’s Sethi, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes. We’ve been together for seven years. We don’t live together. I like my space. It works better this way.”
I eyed Sethi intently. “The paintings of you underwater just looked so . . . free.”
“Ah,” he said. “Those paintings are from the stories I told Jenny of my younger years. I grew up on Kalymnos Island. My brothers and cousins and I were all sponge divers. We learned to dive deep and hold our breath a long time.”
The way Jennifer gazed at him as he spoke, I could tell she was besotted with him.
“I should leave you two alone . . . to catch up.” I beat a hasty retreat to my room and closed the door.
The same sultry island breeze that had been filtering into Jennifer’s room had found its way into mine, too.
I pictured the catch-up that Jennifer and Sethi must be having. And then tried to shake it from my mind. But still, my mind wandered back to the paintings. They’d been so sensual and lovingly drawn they made me ache.
James had never been anything like Sethi. He wasn’t spontaneous or sensual. His eyes didn’t light up at me in the way Sethi’s did when he looked at Jennifer. He’d never surprised me the way in which Sethi apparently liked to surprise Jennifer.
Life with James had been very ordinary. Go for a run every Saturday morning, walk the dog, check in with each other about basic things to do with the running of the house. Of course, James was away a lot on business trips, but he’d always maintain the routine when he was there. He was fit and lean and expected me to be too. Perhaps that was a good thing. Without his standard to adhere to, I was sure I would have indulged my sweet tooth more. I’d probably be fat. I’d been fat when I was with Otto. Now, I looked good. I never had to worry that the clothes I bought wouldn’t fit well. I had a lot of pride wrapped in my toned thighs and flat stomach and the feeling of a belt cinching in my small waist. When James would come up behind me and place his hands on my waist, I used to glow. He’d fit his hands to me like I was a finely tooled machine that was beautiful to touch and hold.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me—James had given me so much. I couldn’t expect to have everything. Passionate men weren’t rich businessmen, it seemed. Did Jennifer and Sethi have the right idea in living apart? Did it make them desire each other more, fuelling a lust that often disappeared too soon in a relationship?
Next door, the bed creaked softly, the headboard knocking against the wall twice.
Dressing quickly, I headed out to the garden to have a cigarette. Smoking was my guilty secret. I only indulged a few times a year, strangely feeling like I was regaining a little of my former self when I did. The cigarettes were my dirty little touchstone.
I found a secluded spot inside an olive vine grown wild over a trellis. I smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, just for good measure.
Someone jumped in front of me.
Gray. He must have had a two-minute shower to be out here so fast.
“Caught ya red handed,” he joked, his hair soaking wet and plastered to his head.
I felt fourteen again, when my father had found me smoking in the back shed. “I don’t normally do this. I don’t even know why I bought a pack. I haven’t smoked for at least ten years.”
He shot me a broad smile. “Quit explaining. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Hey, where’s Jennifer? I didn’t see her in the house. She hasn’t run out on us, has she?”
“She’s . . . busy.”
“Mind if I have one of your smokes?”
I held the pack out to him. “You, too?”
“Yeah.”
“I felt like one as soon as I got to Athens. I’ve never seen so many people smoking. It was kind of freeing. I guess that sounds ridiculous.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He paused to light the cigarette from my lighter.
I sighed. “I feel bad about being so persistent with Jennifer. I’m not like that normally.”
Blowing out a stream of smoke, he threw back his head, nodding. “People like us, we don’t do things like this. We don’t run about interrogating people and tracking people down. I almost feel like I can’t get a grip. Do you know what I’m saying? Like whatever Jennifer tells us is just going to send us further down the rabbit hole. And things are going to get crazier, but we’re not going to get any closer.”
In that moment, Gray sounded like the twenty-four-year old that he was. He’d held up a front since I’d met up with him here in Greece. But he wasn’t much more than a kid, just seven years older than Kara.
“I know,” I sympathised. “I’m on edge every second.”
Gray found himself a seat on a log and launched into a set of stories about his two girls, as though trying to ground himself. It was easy to tell that he was besotted with them.
Jennifer and Sethi walked out into the garden, carrying trays. They’d made sandwiches on sourdough bread, piled high with different cheeses and tomatoes.
“Hope you’re hungry.” Jennifer set her tray of drinks down on a nearby table made of the same stone as some of the walls of the house. Sethi placed his tray beside hers. “I brought the bread and tomatoes with me today. I didn’t know Jenny would have visitors, so it is good timing.”
“Count me in.” Gray picked up a sandwich. “Hey, ef-ha-ri-sto. I hope that means thank you. I’ve been hearing people say it here.”
Sethi raised his eyebrows, smiling. “Almost right. Say it with more gusto and I’ll know you meant it. And, hey, you’re welcome.”
We ate while Sethi talked about the catch and life at sea on a fishing trawler. Jennifer was clearly entranced by him, watching him closely as he spoke.
The humidity out here was making me sweat. Already, I needed another shower. I realised that I was barely ever in humid environments at home. Everything was air conditioned: the house—all five thousand square feet of it, the shopping malls, my car. I jogged around the lake in winter and autumn and swam in our heated pool during the summer. I was never really uncomfortable. But here, it was a different world. I could imagine sleeping in the shade outside during the hottest part of the day and then staying up late at night chatting and socialising. I could step into a different mood, like stepping straight into one of Jennifer’s paintings. It was a vision that stood outside of everything else—a life that only someone who wasn’t me could lead.
Jennifer sipped on a glass of iced lime and soda. “I guess we should start.”
“I’d like that,” I said, my vision of lazy Greek days dissolving in an instant.
“I’m not so sure that you will like it when I’m through,” she said in a quiet tone.
Gray took a wary, sideways glance at Sethi, and Jennifer caught it.
“Sethi knows all that I do,” Jennifer told us quickly. “You can feel comfortable talking in front of him. He served in the Hellenic Army for six years—all Greek men have to serve about a year. He saw some of the worst things people can do to each other.” She paused then, glancing briefly at him as if for confirmation that she could continue. “But
the worst thing that he experienced happened back at home, when a thief broke into his house and murdered his wife, right in front of their child. Sethi was away in the army at the time. He was left with a burning hate of those who treat human life so cheaply.”
“Damn. I’m sorry about your wife, mate,” Gray told him.
I sighed in horror. “So awful. How did you manage with your child after your wife was gone?”
“I have a close family,” he replied. “We all helped raise Anxo—my son. He’s grown now.”
Jennifer leaned back on her seat, holding onto Sethi’s arm. “I have files and files of disconnected clues. Enough to create a media storm. But not enough to convict anyone or provide enough evidence to the police, and so I’m holding back. But I’ve learned terrible things. I’ll tell you a little about everything, from the beginning.” She paused, as if figuring out exactly where to start. “When I turned seventeen, I left the home that Rico and Petrina had given me, and I went to live on my own. In Athens. They wanted me to go on to university, but I had other plans. I took up odd jobs—enough to live on and pay rent. More often, I had night jobs—waitressing and things. By day, I slept and followed people. I followed them all over Europe.”
“So dangerous for a young girl,” I gasped.
“Yes, but no one else was looking for Noah by this time. The police had stopped many years ago. Rico and Petrina had spent a lot of money hiring private investigators, but it all came to nothing. I had to do what I could, for Noah.” She licked her bottom lip, stopping to take another drink. “I could tell Rico and Petrina were growing suspicious. I thought maybe they suspected I was going the same way my brother had—into the seedier side of life. They thought maybe becoming addicted to drugs. When I was twenty-two, I decided I had to move further away, where they wouldn’t see or hear of anything I was doing.”
“That’s how you ended up here?” asked Gray.
“Yes. Somehow. I can’t even tell you why I chose this island.”
“She knew she would meet me,” Sethi quipped.
“Maybe I did.” Jennifer flashed a smile at Sethi. “I felt safer here. I began painting for a living, and I’ve been doing that ever since.” Her eyes became a little distant. “I found out about other people who’d gone missing. And I found out about the Yeqon’s Saviours society. It was by luck I found out about them. One morning about five years ago, a London lawyer named Alastair Bastwright turned up at St James’s Park, London, with cuts to his head, rampaging and yelling out strange things. He’d been in a car accident near the park and had sustained a number of injuries. He was raving about the thirty steps to enlightenment and boasting that he’d killed more people than people had had hot dinners. He said he was going to kill more and that no one could stop him.”
I recoiled. “Oh God.”
Jennifer nodded. “Everyone just thought the head injury had caused him some sort of temporary madness. He was a respected lawyer, a married man with four children. He was placed in a London psychiatric ward. When I heard about it, it gave me an odd feeling that everyone was missing the real story. I went to London and convinced the hospital staff that I was a close relative of Alastair’s and needed to see him. I spent only fifteen minutes alone with Alastair in his room—that’s all the time they would allow me because they said the things he spoke of were too disturbing for a young woman to hear. But what I found out in that space of time . . .”
Sethi squeezed Jennifer’s shoulder while she took a breather.
Swallowing and growing pale, she continued. “Alastair spoke in horrific detail about tortures and murders. Not just by him but by a large group of people. I won’t tell you these things in detail, but it all made me sick to my core. I listened, and then I fed him names—names of people I knew had gone missing either in Greece or in a country close to Greece. I also gave him Noah’s name. He didn’t know Noah, but he knew three of the names. Two women and a man. Hailey, Andrew and Yanis. He described them, and his descriptions were correct. There was no doubt at all that he knew them. It isn’t as though these people had been in the news. They’d just been among the thousands of people who quietly go missing every year. He described their tortures and how they begged for mercy. He described—”
Jennifer’s body grew rigid, as if she were reliving the scene in the psychiatric ward. From behind her, Sethi gently stroked her arms. My instinct was to tell her she didn’t have to go on—it was obviously too painful and still raw. But I couldn’t do that. I needed her to tell her story. In the back of my mind, I was pushing thoughts of Kara away. I didn’t want to associate her with the victims Jennifer was talking about. I couldn’t bear it. I glanced at Gray, and I saw something approaching murderousness in his eyes. I knew he was thinking of his wife being at the hands of these people.
Jennifer shook her head. “He described how they took their last breaths and what their last words were. After that, he began speaking so fast that half of it was gibberish. Talking about predators behind walls that no one could see, watching their victims.” She took a shuddering breath, gathering herself. “I went to the police with what he’d told me. Barely an hour later, someone crept into the ward where he was being held and killed him. In the media, it was reported as a suicide.”
“How do you know it wasn’t—a suicide?” I asked.
“They said he hung himself with his belt. He hadn’t been wearing any belt. He’d been wearing hospital pyjamas. The police dismissed everything I’d told them, saying that the knock to his head had merely triggered a psychotic episode. My best guess is that the accident didn’t cause a psychosis but just released the inner workings of his mind. The head injury affected his ability to keep his mouth zipped about the things he’d been involved in and about Yeqon’s Saviours.”
“We know the name, Yeqon’s Saviours,” I said bitterly.
“A few people know of it,” said Sethi. “But ranks seem to close around the name. As soon as mention is made of it, it is shut down. People die.”
Jennifer bent her head in acknowledgment. “I have come close to finding out where these people gather so many times, but I am always blocked at some point along the line. I admit that I still can’t quite grasp the whole thing. How is it possible such a thing as this has survived for so long? For centuries? How is it possible that more than a handful of people are involved? There has never been anything like this in the world.”
I became aware of my surrounds again, realising I’d been holding my breath and caught deep inside Jennifer’s story. I’d seen the ancient illustrations in Rico’s book, but some part of me had desperately hoped that the modern-day version of this group just practiced rituals and that they weren’t the same as they’d been in the distant past. “It just doesn’t seem like it can be real . . .”
Jennifer inhaled deeply, letting her eyes drift open to the sky. “And I think that’s why no one has believed me. It’s impossible. Less than one percent of the world’s population are serial killers. They’re rare.”
Gray rose suddenly and strode away to the side of the house, his shoulders hunched, stopping to stare out at the ocean.
“I fear the talk of serial killers has become too much for him,” Sethi said to me.
I nodded softly. “It’s too much for me, too. I need a break.”
Pressing her lips in firmly, Jennifer reached to touch my arm. “Go. We’ll talk more when you two are ready.”
I stepped along the stone path to where Gray was standing. Silently, I offered him a cigarette. We remained there for the next several minutes, puffing away furiously, trying to find an equilibrium on the horizon. But the whole world had been tipped.
“I’ll tear these people apart if they’ve touched a hair on Evie’s head,” Gray said finally.
I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to put a coherent voice to my thoughts.
Gray stubbed the cigarette out on the ground then strode into the house. He returned a moment later with a folder and laid it on the table where Sethi and Jennif
er were. “This symbol. The thirty steps. The same stuff that the Alastair guy was raving about. We need to find out the source of the symbol.” He sounded desperate, showing them his photocopy of the monks descending the thirty rungs of the ladder.
Walking back to the table, I looked on.
“Rico and Petrina told me they showed you the historical books containing this symbol,” Jennifer said to Gray. “For a while there, many years ago, I confessed to them what I was doing. Just after the incident with Alastair Bastwright. I was horrified and terrified, and I needed support. I drip-fed them tiny pieces of information, certainly not everything, because if they knew it all, I knew they’d throw everything at trying to stop me. For the next year, they researched the Saviours with me. But it became too dangerous. Good people that I talked to about this symbol began dying—murdered.”
“Are Rico and Petrina still looking for clues about the Saviours with you?” I asked her.
“No,” she replied with a definite tone. “After the spate of murders years ago, I pulled back. I couldn’t risk more people dying. I didn’t tell them about the murders, but Rico and Petrina could still see how dangerous it was getting. They made me promise I’d give up the search, and I promised them I would. I was lying, of course.”
Gray eyed her with a heavy expression. “I can see why you had to stop involving other people. So, did you ever find out anything else about the symbol?”
Jennifer shook her head. “Not anything useful. I’ve been concentrating on finding on who’s in the group and what they’re doing. But that’s proved damned difficult, too. They’ve wrapped themselves in many layers of secrecy.”
A short spell of silence followed.
I sat myself down on one of the wrought-iron chairs. “Do you happen to know anything about Wilson Carlisle, Jennifer?”
“Yes, I’ve got a couple of folders of information on Mr Carlisle,” Jennifer told me. “Nothing that could incriminate him. I’ve followed him many times on his trips to London. But I can’t follow when he takes off on a boat, helicopter or plane. I always lose him.”
