Byron's Shadow

by Jason Foss

  *

  The following morning, Lisa dressed him in a very cheap, ill-fitting black cotton jacket. The plain shirt looked good, but she warned it would probably wash badly.

  ‘You look the part of a sad little academic now, Mr Adams,’ she began, pecked him on the cheek and laid on a gently Americanised accent. ‘Have a nice day at the office, honey.’

  Paul Adams, no longer a bank clerk, had rapidly graduated from Cardiff University, and was even now preparing a doctoral research project at the London Institute. Flint had used their library hundreds of times, he knew plenty of names and faces. His only gamble was that he’d avoid meeting inquisitive Cardiff alumni.

  Flint held ambiguous views about the British School at Athens. He resented its colonial overtones, yet empathised with its deep roots in Greek archaeology. Many great names had passed through its doors and it was one of those calm, yet intense havens of academia which entranced him.

  The white-walled building sits amongst neatly tended gardens. Flint braved the blue doors, armed with a pack of fabricated credentials and thoroughly rehearsed lies. A pair of startled professors in London had been telephoned and persuaded to perjure themselves as Paul Adams’ referees. Flint breezed inside, put on his most serious, elevated facial expression and spent twenty minutes moulding a case for admittance. Prim but earnest, a Mrs Edith Hopkins frowned as he waffled and fibbed within the sheltered, echoing calm of the vestibule.

  The administrators had not received his letter, he was not expected. Oh dear. He waved fake cards, fake documents, fake copies of fake letters. He needed to register in order to stay at the School. There was a procedure, there were forms, he needed a referee. But he knew enough names and managed to connect Mrs Hopkins with the perjured professors in London and this credible fiction led to his eventual admittance.

  Mixing charm with evasion he muddled through the formalities, paid his fee and let his hand hover over a document stating that he would not become involved in Greek internal affairs, politics or publish articles which could cause offence to the Greek state. He thought of Vikki and headlines incorporating the words UNJUST or CORRUPT or FRAMED, then the innocuous Paul Adams signed the form.

  Flint had stayed in Athens overnight with Embury all those years ago but had kept in the background whilst the director glad-handed old acquaintances, and there was no one whom he still recognised. Paul Adams took the librarian’s hand in a firm shake and smiled a deep, broad smile. Loose amongst shelves of books and racks of catalogues, Flint was at home. Within days he would be able to use his newfound credibility to gain access to a dozen other institutions in the city. A little subtle small talk and he might worm his way into academic lunches, tea parties and soirees. Information was the key: he would hunt the motive, leaving Lisa to pursue the suspects.

  Emma had hinted that Sebastian Embury may have been on the brink of that lifetime discovery at Palaeokastro; a discovery that could have made his name, or his fortune, but had brought only death. Flint doubted that any mysterious ancient wonder lay buried at Palaeokastro, but these things happened, it was what even the most puritan archaeologists privately dreamed of. If the site held a secret, someone had obviously found evidence as to what it was. All Flint had to do was repeat the feat.

  *

  Tame PhD students have their uses, even if the student is an unreformed Thatcherite like Tyrone Drake. Tyrone was ambitious and had a good sense of where his best interests lay.

  ‘Tyrone?’ Flint was using the telephone in the vestibule of the British School. His student was using his infernal Vodaphone.

  ‘Hi Doc, I read about your latest adventures.’

  ‘Safest thing to do. Meanwhile, ditch Burkes Warren and get back to London PDQ.’

  ‘But, we’ve found the late bath-house!’

  ‘It’s been there for sixteen hundred years, one more won’t make any difference. Excavate me out of a hole. I want you to read three papers: two by Sebastian Embury on Palaeokastro, plus the original German excavation report. Next, work back through the references, checking what Embury said about the site.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Something he deliberately missed out of his last paper. Something worth dying for. Send a telemessage to the British School, addressed to Paul Adams.’

  ‘Who he?’

  ‘A sad little academic. Keep it brief and be discreet.’

  Tyrone seemed to be clicking his tongue. ‘I can’t read Greek.’

  ‘Drag Anna Georgiou out of the library. Tell her that if she helps you, I’ll re-mark her last essay.’

  ‘That’s corrupt!’

  ‘It’s a sad, sick world, Tyrone.’

  *

  Pamela Shrivenhurst had been Sebastian Embury’s niece and the subject of many monologues concerning Estate Agencies in the Cotswolds. She’d never been to Greece, knew little about archaeology, so even a doubtful Lisa could impersonate her without risk. She cautiously followed Flint into the British School that same morning, carrying a list of the names Embury had dropped, in descending order of frequency. Dr Neil Ennismore was tall, dark (if one discounted greying strands) and had the weathered good looks of a footballer, or square-jawed ocean yachtsman. He also knew a family restaurant high in the Plaka, where the service was polite and the bill could be contained.

  ‘No,’ he declared, shaking his head. Ennismore held his wine badly.

  Lisa held hers rather better, trying not to enjoy the balmy night air, the buoyant bustle of the narrow street and the obvious advances of the academic. Role playing was difficult when sober, but she continued the act. ‘I spoke to Juliette Howe at her little bungalow in Epidaurus. She said my uncle had lost his work permit.’

  ‘Ooh dear, let me see, yes. He rang me, it must have been a day or two before he died…’

  ‘Day, or two?’ Lisa pressed, hoping to God she’d remember all this.

  ‘I can’t remember, honest scout, he’d gone to the Bungalow…’ Ennismore rambled slightly, ‘...he had a problem with his terms of reference for his excavation; some dispute with the site guardian. He asked me to put a word in at the Ministry of Culture. I knew this woman there — professionally, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘There was no problem, the Min. of C. were happy as birds. Dear old Embers could carry on excavating for all they cared.’

  Lisa took a paper napkin and a pen and scribbled a few notes.

  ‘You must have been close.’ Ennismore slurred.

  ‘Mmm,’ Lisa said, ‘But someone wanted him to stop digging?’

  ‘Most definitely, but Zeus knows who.’

  ‘Doctor Dracopoulos?’

  ‘Old Christos? He’s a queer bird — is he still alive? I never had much time for collectors, too shady for my likes, smuggling of portable antiquities, underhand deals in brown paper parcels...’

  ‘But wasn’t he the one trusted to look after the site at Palaeokastro?’

  Ennismore nodded, then scowled at an empty Achaia bottle. ‘He was site guardian, the one who keeps an eye on we foreigners, makes sure we don’t march off with any treasures.’

  ‘And he was the one Seb…my uncle, complained about?’

  ‘Indirectly, I suppose, yes.’

  Why was this prat talking backwards? ‘What do you know about Emma Woodfine?’ she asked, knowing the wine was going to win.

  ‘Dreadful woman. Sorry, do you know her?’

  ‘Awful. I don’t understand what my uncle saw in her.’

  One eyebrow flicked upwards, indicating this was news — perhaps Ennismore absorbed gossip badly. ‘I say Pam, can I call you Pam? This wine has evaporated, it must be the heat. Shall I order more? No? How about a raki or an ouzo?’

  What the hell, she wasn’t paying.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jules Torpevitch had chosen a golden yellow college sweatshirt that day: its innumerable creases betrayed the fact that he was missing his wife. The tall, dark-skinned, round-cheeked Bostonian looked at himse
lf in the mirror within the gent’s lavatory of the American School. Using the crack between door and toilet cubicle, Flint watched as Jules smoothed a hand across his bald pate. Jules followed the instructions on the cryptic message to the letter, indeed to the note. Sounding foolish, he whistled the opening bars of the ‘Star Trek’ signature tune.

  ‘We come in peace!’ Flint stepped out of the door.

  ‘Fuck me!’

  ‘No thanks, but it’s a kind offer Jules.’

  ‘Jeff, kid, what are you on?’

  ‘I’m Paul Adams — did you read the papers?’

  ‘Yeah, you made the Athens Times, but...what’s with the U.S. Marine haircut?’

  ‘I’m in disguise, I’m in hiding.’ Flint gave a brief resume of his newly adopted persona.

  ‘Brilliant ruse, kid. An English academic wants to hide, so he disguises himself as an English academic.’

  Flint grabbed both elbows of Jules’ sweatshirt. ‘No fooling: I need to be able to mingle.’

  ‘Hey, they’ll think we’re perverts.’ Jules broke free.

  ‘Homophobe!’

  ‘Cross-dresser!’ Jules slapped Flint on the shoulder. ‘Sink a beer?’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Sure thing...Paul.’

  *

  Paint flaked from the walls, tablecloths were fixed by clothes pegs and the flies seemed to dine well. Whilst Lisa was being charmed by Dr Neil Ennismore at some chic joint in the Plaka, Flint skipped down the menu of one of the cheapest downtown tavernas. It was no longer as cheap as the night Sebastian Embury had brought him here: a supposed big-hearted gesture from the old Hellenophile. Greece was in the EC now, no longer a poor relation, but sitting at the rich man’s table. Prices were beginning to rise towards London levels; impoverished Englishmen would not be able to play the wealthy colonial forever.

  His anarchic thoughts were interrupted by a group of blatantly American students joking and jostling their way into the bar. Jules was towards the rear of the group, searching the taverna with nervous glances.

  ‘Paul! Fancy meeting you here,’ Jules forced the rehearsed line from his lips.

  ‘Jules, long time no see.’

  The dozen polyglot Americans tumbled into seats with a barrage of jokes. Flint caught the eye of the one who seemed to be the self-appointed Organiser. Max Halleck, star of the group, was stocky, broad-handed, with a bushy red moustache to match his unwieldy hairstyle and co-ordinated sunburnt nose. He seized upon Jules’ long-lost friend, made the introductions, ordered the wine, forced menu choices on the doubters and finally led the others in song. Paul Adams lifted into the mood. They were archaeologists, the taverna owner accepted their eccentricities; laissez-faire was the rule and the students let rip. Jules sat at the opposite end of the table, saying little, drinking rather more, seeming to find it hard to play the lie.

  ‘We’ve got a little Bronze Age site over near Marathon. You know the battle of Marathon?’ Max’s lips hovered on the brink of a guffaw at the end of each sentence, as though he had just retold a risqué joke.

  ‘Marathon? Greeks one, Persians nil: Athens through to the next round.’

  Max burst into an unreasonable belly laugh. ‘Soccer, right?’

  Before Flint began to regret the football analogy, Max switched back to archaeology. ‘We’re about halfway done now, finishing up by the end of August. And what’s your field, Paul?’

  Paul Adams was not the sort to push himself too far. ‘I’m re-assessing Kevin Andrew’s work on fortifications in the Peloponnese.’ He suddenly sensed danger, ‘Or I intend to,’ he added. ‘I’ve just started the background reading.’

  The qualifier allowed him to be ignorant if someone in the group happened to be a fortification fanatic. ‘Basically I’m going to do a photo-mosaic of a dozen fortress walls.’

  ‘Walls, he had us weeding walls,’ Angie, the Afro-American drawled, pointing a knife at Max, ‘and Lincoln thought he’d abolished slavery.’

  Max suddenly noticed Jules playing with a leftover chicken bone. ‘Put it down, Jules, it ain’t dead yet!’

  Jules waggled the leg bone, ‘There is more bone here,’ he slurred, ‘there is more bone in this sad, sorry meal than on our whole sad, sorry site. Honestly, Jeffrey, it’s pathetic...’

  ‘Bones, bones, bones: why did he marry a vegetarian?’ Flint launched in a panicked flurry, glaring at Jules.

  Jules closed his eyes very tightly, then blinked.

  ‘Have you met Sasha? Gorgeous, too gorgeous…’ Max crooned.

  No one was sober enough, or alert enough to have spotted Jules’ gaffe. Flint tried to relax once more. Diggers’ tales flowed around him and Paul Adams was forced to respond with stories belonging to Jeffrey Flint. Max lectured the Englishman on his great brain-child: ground-penetrating radar. His father’s company was experimenting with it to search out utilities beneath city streets.

  ‘Will it improve on a resistivity meter?’ Flint asked.

  ‘That’s yesterday’s technology; this is the future. Resistivity is dead, digging will be for losers. We’re talking direct linkage to computers, which draw three-dimensional plans without human participation. One day, this kind of gizmo is going to put you shovel-and-pick merchants out of business.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  ‘Come on out to Marathon.’

  ‘I may do so.’

  Flint thought back to his own resistivity survey in the olive grove at Palaeokastro, then of another shovel-and-pick merchant who had been put permanently out of business. What an irrelevance that survey had been! A notebook had been filled with completely useless data. The hubbub of the room faded as a perverse thought came into his head. If Embury’s great discovery had been at the bottom of the site, why had he not taken the equipment down there?

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘That Neil Ennismore was a real character, I mean a real character.’

  Morning-after hangovers had been dispersed by more street-corner coffees and Lisa walked beside Flint, nibbling the long koulouri that dangled from her wrist and trading good-time-tales.

  ‘I think he fancied his chances; you academics are desperately oversexed.’

  ‘It’s what keeps us sane.’

  ‘Or drives you insane. Honest, we got through two bottles of wine plus the ouzos and raki. He was pissed as a newt when I loaded him into the taxi.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh I’m immune.’ She rolled her head slightly. ‘My head just hurts from too much thinking. The last thing I want to do is go back to that stinking room and start shuffling your cards again.’

  Back in the room, below the fading (and disapproving) Madonna, she stripped down to panties and T-shirt and lolled face-down on the bed. Grabbing at her notepad, Lisa frowned at what she had scrawled the night before. Flint sat in the chair, cards at the ready, cool and clinical.

  Lisa propped herself on her elbows and summarised her evening. ‘Embury went to see Ennismore a day or two before the murder.’

  ‘It was the day before,’ Flint said, ‘We wanted the minibus to go to the pictures.’

  ‘Shall I tell the story, or shall you?’

  He waved his hand with good grace and listened to her news, ignoring the litany of good food and flowing wine, jotting down the key points.

  ‘So we can forget anything relating to work permits, synergasia, permission to excavate or whatever. The survey had the backing of the authorities or it would never have begun. So, whoever was pressurising Embury was unable to influence the Ministry of Culture.’

  ‘Or didn’t have the time,’ Lisa said. ‘Everyone knows civil servants take forever to do anything. Greek civil servants take twice as long.’

  ‘True. So let’s say the problem came up quickly; too late to stop Embury getting his permission renewed, probably after we actually started on site. You know, we were chatting about resistivity surveys last night...’

  ‘What? Remember, I’m a bear of little brain.’

 
‘It’s a way of looking beneath the soil for hidden features. It saves a hell of a lot of digging. I ran this excruciatingly futile survey of the olive grove at Palaeokastro, when by all the laws of logic, Embury should have deployed the equipment at the bottom of the site, where he was directing his main effort. It’s just one more irrational fact that doesn’t tally.’

  Lisa stared at him, a creeping expression of disquiet invading her face. ‘Jeff, is all this my fault?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you remember, everyone in town had heard you found gold in your olive grove. When we were in Andreas’ place in Nauplion and I showed everyone your crunched up old pen, they all wanted to know about the treasure from Palaeokastro.’

  ‘No, it can’t be.’ He dismissed her with a wave and a shake of the head.

  She became animated, raising her voice. ‘But why not? We’re looking for a motive. Have you thought about a local gang of crooks getting to hear about your gold and trying to get your Prof. to share it with them?’

  ‘Which of course he couldn’t, because I never told him about the pen.’ Flint looked back out of the window, obviously troubled by her suggestion. Slowly he added, ‘That is, not until the night he died.’