The Judas Boy

by Simon Raven

  Fielding rested his bag on one of the broad window-sills and began to sort out his mid-day provisions. I too will dine here, he thought. I too will drink my wine where the castellans drank the sweet and heavy wine of Cyprus, and then dreamed of home.

  Tom Llewyllyn and Gregory Stem were having lunch with Captain Detterling, who had arrived back in London the night before.

  'So Fielding got a nasty shock,' Detterling was saying, 'the second inside a week, but he wasn't much hurt thanks to that homburg he was wearing. The Greeks were very apologetic. They explained that the matchet belonged to the sailor, who had lent it to our boatman, who was the sailor's uncle's wife's brother. The sailor was asking for it back, and the boatman wanted to keep it for another week, so they were having an argument... at the end of which the boatman gave way and threw up the matchet. But just then the boat gave a lurch, the matchet was falling short, the sailor had to reach down too far and mistimed his swing ... etcetera, etcetera.'

  'And what do you think?' said Tom. 'Was it an accident?'

  'Impossible to say. But of course Fielding's mind was made up anyhow. The business in Yugoslavia—that certainly hadn't been an accident, and it was that which had made him so determined to go ahead in the first place. And now here was this fellow Percival telling him just how to set about it—and saying that he'd probably be safer once he was in Cyprus, a judgment apparently confirmed when a sailor takes a shy at him with a rusty matchet. There was no holding Fielding after that. The very next morning he rang you up at the BBC and then took off for Cyprus. He didn't even wait to buy himself some more kit, though he'd only got the suit he stood up in. That was nearly a week ago, and I haven't heard a word from him since.'

  This man Percival,' said Gregory: 'is he to be relied on?'

  'He plays a pretty sharp game of backgammon,' Detterling said, 'and Max de Freville thinks well of him.'

  'What what about Max de Freville?' asked Tom.

  'He's good at giving the right marks to men like Percival.'

  'And this story of theirs ... about the American who called himself Diomedes?'

  'If it's true,' said Detterling. 'it'll be worth every penny you're paying to get it.'

  'I'd sooner have Fielding back home in one piece.'

  'Amen to that,' Gregory said.

  Both Tom and Gregory looked accusingly at Detterling. He had failed to offer them a ready-made solution; the ex-officer had let them down.

  'Now you listen to me,' Detterling said. He drank off his port and put the glass down with a click. 'I asked Fielding, I urged him, to go back home. Since he refused to listen, since he was dead set on carrying on, I procured him the best advice I could about how to do so. Any complaints?'

  This was too reasonable to be gainsaid. Gregory signed the bill and they all three departed. Tom to the Television Centre, Gregory and Detterling to the former's office, where they spent an acrid afternoon wrangling about Cavafy.

  Fielding too had finished his food and wine. He put the remains of his meal back in his bag, then went to one of the windows in the south wall of the gallery. By craning his neck, he managed to get a view of his taxi, which was away below him to his left. The door was open and the driver's legs were sprawling out over the seat. Good. He had told the man he would eat and take his time up here, so that it would be a long while yet, even if the driver woke up, before his absence gave any cause for suspicion. There was no need to hurry. He picked up his bag, walked down the gallery and through another room, smaller and windowless, beyond it, and found, as he had expected, that there was a flight of steps leading down between two walls of stone to his right.

  Somerset Lloyd-James and Lord Canteloupe were taking an afternoon walk in St James's Park.

  'I've heard from the Director of Features at the BBC,' Somerset said. 'Some days ago, it seems, Fielding Gray rang up Tom Llewyllyn from Athens and said he was going straight on to Cyprus no matter what anyone said or did. He would hardly have acted with such precipitation unless he now has a definite lead.'

  'Which might,' said Canteloupe, 'be any kind of lead.'

  'Including the one kind which we don't want him to follow. If he has got on to that, then our Yankee friends are going to be very discommoded.'

  'Serve them right. They should never have interfered in Cyprus in the first place.'

  'But the point is,' said Somerset, 'that most of them haven't the faintest idea that they ever did interfere, and they'll be genuinely shocked when they find out. And what matters much more is that they're going to be made to look silly. Here, people will say, is the richest and most powerful government on earth, which is forever lecturing and hectoring the rest of us—and it doesn't even know what its own secret service is up to. This will be very irritating for the Americans, who will find some way of taking it out on us, although it isn't our fault. This in turn could be very damaging for the PM—'

  '—Who will find some way of taking it out on me, although it isn't my fault.'

  'Precisely.'

  They paused on the iron bridge and looked down at the lake.

  'Bloody ducks,' said Canteloupe, 'what do they care? It's all so unfair,' he went on crossly. 'This isn't a Fascist state. If the BBC sends a man to dig up the shit in Cyprus, what the hell can I do about it?'

  'You are responsible to the Prime Minister,' said Somerset, 'for the suitable guidance of the popular media. If you fail, there are plenty of other people who will be glad of the place and the money.'

  'Bloody ducks,' Canteloupe said.

  'Of course,' said Somerset, 'I could have a word with Tom, but I hardly think he'd see the matter our way. He is very old-fashioned and still believes in publishing the truth, however manifestly inconvenient it may be. Whatever Fielding can prove, Tom will broadcast.'

  There's always this Director chappie. He seems ready to help. What sort of man is he?'

  'He's a vegetarian,' said Somerset, 'and therefore a crank. Like all cranks, he is self-important and obstinate. A little man. obsessed with his own rank ... which doesn't apply in this case, because Tom's been promised a free hand and only comes under the Director for administrative purposes.'

  'He did what the Director asked about telling Gray to stay in Athens.'

  'He was bound to listen to suggestions ... at first. But now Fielding's settled all that by taking off on his own.'

  Then it doesn't look as if either of them—either Llewyllyn or this Director—can be much use.'

  They walked on towards the palace. Bellies and buttocks squirmed on the grass all round them. Lechery, thought Somerset: oestrus. Aloud he said:

  'The Director, because he is a little man, knows the rules very well. The rules, you will remember, were originally drawn up by Lord Reith, a puritanical Scotsman who deprecated scandal among his employees.'

  'Well?'

  'Tom, although he is now respectably married, has a multi-coloured past. Now, it is just possible that his contract, as it extends over quite a long period, is governed by Reithian rules about correct moral behaviour, and that a public relapse into the habits of earlier days might disqualify him from his post. This much at least the Director will be able to tell us—the provisions of Tom's contract and the severity or otherwise with which these are currently enforced.'

  'I see,' said Canteloupe. 'If the rules are still a bit stodgy—'

  '—And if they were picturesquely contravened by Tom ... who, after all, has endured three years of marriage and might be grateful, given opportunity, for some light relief—'

  '—Then he would be liable to dismissal—'

  '—And it wouldn't matter so much where Fielding went or what he discovered—'

  '—Because when he got back Llewyllyn would have gone, and no Llewyllyn, no programme. Very neat,' said Canteloupe; 'only what happens if he gets, say, the Billingsgate press to take his story instead of the BBC?'

  'At least we've kept it off television. And Billingsgate talks the same language as we do.'

  'Billingsgate,' said C
anteloupe, 'is a counter-jumper from the colonies.'

  'He still talks our language. And now,' said Somerset, 'I must go and have a word or two in that language with the Director of Features.'

  After going straight down for about twenty yards between walls on either side, the flight of steps which Fielding was descending emerged on to the open hillside, plunged steeply towards the sea for ten yards, and then swerved off to the left. Beyond this corner the steps continued some thirty yards further, now slanting gently across the slope between shallow banks covered with scrub; then they stopped, having deposited Fielding at the edge of a copse of fir-trees which grew out along a flat, wide spur. In the centre of the copse was a small open area, roughly circular and perhaps ten yards in diameter. Here Fielding put down his grip and carefully surveyed the scene in front of him.

  'It is always said,' Max de Freville had told him, 'that the oldest Jewish cemetery surviving in Europe is in Worms. In fact it is at Castle Buffavento—if, that is, you can count Cyprus as being in Europe and a collection of three graves as a cemetery.'

  And there they were: two square-topped head-stones, so deeply sunk that only three inches of either protruded above ground; and a long box-tomb, also sunk but still two feet in height and bearing, on the side which now faced him, an inscription in Hebrew characters.

  'The Jew Elisha ben Habbakuk,' Max had said, 'made himself very useful to Richard I by lending him large sums of money while the king was on the island. Soon afterwards, when someone got up a nasty local programme in protest against current rates of interest, Elisha asked for help from Richard's followers and was given refuge, with his two daughters, up in Buffavento, which at that time was in English hands. All three were then murdered by the castle commander, who wanted the money Elisha brought with him. and buried just outside the precincts. The commander's knights, being offended by this treacherous behaviour, pushed the commander off the ramparts, announced that he had fallen when drunk, shared out Elisha's money between them and raised a subscription to put up decent tomb-stones where the old Jew and his daughters were buried. Even then, it seems, hypocrisy was a British speciality.'

  Fielding circled the box-tomb. He was not looking forward to what must come next.

  'So much for the antiquarian background,' Leonard Percival had said. 'Now for some modern history. When the insurrection was at its worst a Jewish-Greek schoolboy who was attending the Gymnasium at Nicosia accidentally learnt of a plan which some of his schoolfellows had made to blow up the local synagogue in protest against the neutralist attitude of the Jews in Cyprus. The boy informed the police of the plan and the incendiaries were caught in the act. Now, it was not at all unusual, as you will certainly remember, for school-children to chuck explosives about but what was very unusual indeed was that someone should have dared to inform against them. Since that someone was obviously a Jew, and since there were very few Jews at the Gymnasium, they soon found out who had gone to the police, and Diomedes decided that a particularly striking example must be made, in order to deter other would-be delators. In fact he had the boy killed by the old-fashioned method of bending back two springy young trees, tying one of the boy's ankles to the top of each, and then letting the trees go ... This on the edge of the main road from Kyrenia into Nicosia, with a large notice set up to inform passers-by that this was what DIOMEDES OF EOKA had in store for anyone who failed to mind his own business. It was improbable that the police would allow this exhibit to stay there for long, but it was thought that enough people would see it at daybreak for the world at large to get the message.

  'But as it happened, the police were on the scene only just too late to rescue the boy and in time to cut down his remains before anyone at all had seen them. There was then a swift consultation, which ended in rather a surprising decision. The point was, you see. that although this very ugly murder could have been used to stir up indignation against EOKA, there was also no doubt that if it were made public it would have just the effect Diomedes wanted it to have— of deterring all informers whatever from then on. Since there were few enough of them as it was, this would have been most unhelpful for the authorities. It was therefore decided to hush up the whole business and hide the body—if that's what it could still be called—so securely that no one would ever see it or make any kind of report on its condition.'

  'How do you know all this?' Holding had asked.

  'I was there when the boy was found ... Even in these circumstances, however, good old British hypocrisy was in evidence: as much respect as possible must be had for the corpse. So since the boy was half Jewish, and since someone knew of this burial ground up at Buffavento, the body was whipped away up to the castle, where it would be right out of everyone's way but lying in ground that was more or less hallowed in its associations. The whole thing had to be done there and then and before it got light, without giving anyone a chance to know what was happening, so there was no time to make a coffin; and the most respectful thing to do—or so it seemed to the chap in charge—was to place the corpse in the hollow tomb which the knights had set up over old Elisha. So that was what they did ... and drove back down the mountain some hours later, as though they were returning from a routine patrol, and nobody any the wiser.'

  For some time, as he stood by the box-tomb, Fielding considered the Hebrew lettering. Although it was meaningless to him, its cabbalistic apparatus gave it a weird significance: such mysterious characters, he felt, must surely spell out a prayer or rune of the most powerful kind, perhaps a curse on any man who dared to disturb the grave.

  He went back to his bag and took out a chisel and a small metal lever.

  'You should not find it difficult,' Percival had said, 'to shift the slab on top. Though I'm told the police had quite a job of it...'

  Fielding inserted the chisel under the overlapping edge of the slab. He pressed the handle down and felt the slab lift very slightly; with his other hand he pushed the lever in beside the chisel.

  'It was careless of me,' Percival had told him when instructing him what to look for: 'I should have taken it off the boy's remains as soon as we found him. But there were so many things to think about and just then it didn't seem important. All this happened, you understand, before I had really begun to equate Diomedes with my old colleague Restarick. It was only much later on. after I had left the island, that I finally became sure of this, and it was then I remembered what had been on that wretched boy's body. It went with him when they drove him away up the mountain. It must be there with him still.'

  Fielding tested the lever. He would prise up the slab about six inches, he decided, get one hand underneath it and then the other (releasing the lever as he did so), and push the slab over until the far edge tilted to the ground. That should leave me plenty of room, he thought. Here goes.

  Six seconds later he reeled back from the tomb and stumbled away to the trees, trembling helplessly and emitting great gouts of vomit. Gradually, however, he became calmer. At length he went to his bag, look out a bottle of water, dampened his handkerchief and tied it over his mouth and nose, making a knot behind his head. Then he went back to the tomb and looked firmly and steadily down. Yes; that must be it—if Percival was right. He leant forward, put both hands down and round the neck, and began to fumble.

  'Restarick/Diomedes/ Percival had said, 'isn't really a cruel man. He wouldn't have wanted to cause avoidable pain—not under his own nose. He would have been quite content with leaving the impression—such a very horrible impression—that pain had been caused. Furthermore, he would not have wanted noise or struggle. So what more natural than that he should have chloroformed the boy before he killed him? Or killed him first with chloroform? In the car on the way, perhaps. He would have soaked a handkerchief in chloroform to make a pad, held it to the boy's face until he ceased to struggle, and then, wanting to make quite sure but also to leave his own hands free to handle ropes and torches and the rest, he would have secured the pad to the boy's face with a second handkerchief, tied lik
e a mask. Something like that. It must have been.'

  'How can you possibly know?'

  'Because there was a handkerchief tied round the boy's neck when we found him. I didn't take much notice, 1 thought it was the boy's own, which he had been sporting as some kind of neckwear. It was only years later, when I was finally sure that Restarick was Diomedes, that I remembered two things about that handkerchief. First, the knot was at the back of the neck—as though the handkerchief had been fastened round the face and then slipped down.

  And secondly, it had been immaculately clean and of very fine linen. Not at all the sort of handkerchief usually owned by sixth-formers from the Nicosia Gymnasium—though I was much too preoccupied and upset to think of that at the time. You see. the whole body, right up to the chest... was bisected.'

  Desperately. Fielding's fingers now clawed at the knot, which he had worked round to one side of the neck. Gangrene, he thought; people who muck about with dead bodies get their blood poisoned, it's always happening to students, the tiniest cut or flaw in the skin and the infection, seeps through ...

  'Now, one of the things about Restarick,' Percival had said, 'is that he's rather a dandy. He had beautiful suits. And he used to have all his personal linen specially made up by a firm in Dover Street—like all Americans, he greatly admired British clothes. And so if, as I'm sure, the handkerchief round that poor little Jew's neck was Restarick's—'

  '—Then the firm in Dover Street will be able to identify it?'

  'Very easily. On all his shirts and handkerchiefs and the rest he used to have his personal mark embroidered, like a kind of crest. A Maltese Cross.'