by Jason Foss
Flint picked the pen out of the pile of belongings on the floor and tossed it to her.
‘What does it tell you?’ he asked.
She read the name Byron F. Nichols, commenting on the antique styling and the heavy feel.
‘Artefacts are text,’ he mumbled, ‘they can be read, each object tells a story.’
‘What?’
‘Hermeneutics — the assignment of meaning to objects. Forget it, you’ll accuse me of bullshitting again.’
‘You are — and you’re going to ignore my idea.’
‘I like the idea, it’s just a little...’ he thought around for a polite putdown, ‘it’s too ironic. My theory is as follows: Embury discovered something important.’
‘Like what?’ came a bleary voice.
‘Dunno, but he shunted me out of the way so he would get all the glory. Someone else heard about it and for whatever reason, they told him to stop. If this had been some routine bureaucratic cock-up, he would have grumbled to Emma, then to Doctor D., the site guardian, but both of them denied knowing anything...’
‘But Ennismore said Dr D. knew about it.’
‘So the pair of them are telling porky pies. They might have had a hand in trying to warn Embury off, but he simply turned manic. He telephoned everyone he could think of, but gave away no detail. This was his discovery, the only one he has ever made, and he was keeping it to himself.
‘Next, someone nicked the minibus just to show they were serious, and he agreed to a secret meeting. There was an argument, the bad guys roughed him up, he died, and I got framed in order to terminate the excavation. As a final twist, someone paid for the best lawyer in town to get me off the hook to avoid a trial.
‘Now, Embury, an Old School Imperialist, thought the English had God’s right to excavate anywhere they choose. He’d have taken his complaints to the top. He could write pretty fierce letters when he got angry. I bet someone in the Ministry received a letter, or at least holds notes on a phone call from him. He’d make a fuss, name names if he was being pressured.’
‘A fierce, fussy archaeologist?’ Lisa asked, ‘Convinced he’s right, listening to no one else, going straight to the top, even if it kills him?’
‘That’s right: that was Embury.’
‘I was talking about you.’
‘Touché, Lisa.’
She smiled and nodded at the compliment.
‘So, my brilliant, witty, surrogate wife, I’m afraid you’re going to have to get into the Ministry and see if you can find that woman Ennismore mentioned.’
‘Nope.’
‘Come on Lisa.’
‘Not me.’
‘It’s the only way.’
‘To get caught. I know the system here, I will need to write for an appointment, they will want to write back. It will take time, we’ll need a postal address which will lead the police here. Or, they might check up on this Pamela woman I’m supposed to be playing. It’s not a good cover story Jeff, I didn’t know the old boy well enough to play his niece.’
‘Okay, say you’re a reporter.’
‘And then they will pass me on to the Press Secretary who probably drinks with all the reporters in Athens. I’m not your Vikki, remember?’
Ooh, out came the claws and in they sank! Flint edged around his opponent, trying to find a vulnerable flank. ‘Don’t be negative.’
‘I’m being practical and trying to save your lily-white skin.’ She tossed her notebook onto the pile of paperwork. ‘You’ve marked my homework, one out of ten, failed again.’
Lisa lowered herself back into the face-down posture with her hands supporting her chin and looked away from him, into the dim, unswept corners of the room. Both were silent for several minutes whilst the passion dispersed and became something else.
‘I think we’re just playing games,’ she said quietly. The bed creaked as he sat beside her.
‘We don’t stand a chance of finding any real clues.’ He lay a hand on the seat of her pants.
‘We’re going to sit in this room every night, drowning in our own sweat and every day we’re going to run around Athens like idiots asking idiotic questions, until my money runs out or we get caught. We find out nothing, you go to jail and I go to jail, all for some stupid old git who you never liked anyway. And if the police don’t get us, someone else will.’
‘Eight out of ten—with a little note in red biro saying “see me”.’
‘Go away. Go away, damn you! I wish you were guilty, so I could turn you in for a reward.’ She rolled to face him. ‘You’re an old ghost come back to haunt me.’
‘I thought we had something going.’
‘That’s a line from one of your damned movies — I never thought we had anything going.’
‘I thought, perhaps, you and I could see the world. You always wanted to see the world.’
‘Not like this,’ she said. ‘Not sleeping in sleazy fleapits and eating in the cheapest caffs in town. Young, exciting men are good for one thing, Jeffrey Flint. I need a fat old man with pots of money.’
‘You tried that.’
‘So I did, but you and your friendly lawyer screwed that up for me.’
‘My lawyer?’
‘Boukaris, the big-shot. He’s one of the directors of a company called Korifi; they own a whole load of hotels and bars. George borrowed his money from them. Your man doesn’t offer charity anymore.’
‘He’s been got at,’ Flint stated. ‘That’s why he wouldn’t defend me this time. Who’s the money in Korifi?’
She frowned deeply, ‘Someone Charamboulos: he’s the banker. There’s a developer among them too, I think he’s called Scarlatos.’
Flint the anarchist almost smiled; bankers and developers were tribes he would enjoy taking on.
Chapter Twenty
Korifi Corporation (1975). Land (agricultural), Hotels, Restaurants.
Directors: V. Boukaris, D. Charamboulos, A. Scarlatos.
Within the library of the Chamber of Commerce, Lisa translated the information and Flint filled in his index card.
‘There’s no mention of Doctor D. there?’
‘No.’
‘That would have been convenient, but we don’t know which part of the food chain he occupies—is he a shark or a minnow? Where did the orders come from?’
When Lisa smiled, arrows of age pointed the way to her wide brown eyes. ‘Korifi own three hotels in Nauplion and Tolon,’ she said, tantalising him with the details. ‘Pentelikon, Niki, guess the name of the third.’
He knew instantly, ‘Daedelus.’
Where the waiter worked, the one with the perfect night vision and the delayed memory. Linking the property company to the case opened up a wide new field of motives for Embury’s death. It was time to meet Hugh Owlett, vulture of the press, and throw some morsels his way.
*
Seeing the white bones of the Parthenon a dozen times a day had gnawed at his dedication. All he needed was one excuse and he would be climbing the Acropolis and touching the vanishing stonework.
Hugh Owlett had been lured to the Acropolis by a deliberately mysterious phone call. Flint wanted crowds, lots of foreigners and a hint of drama to excite the journalist’s imagination. Confused by Athenian topography, unable to read street signs, he also wanted a place he could find. In the sultry late afternoon, he pushed his way up the worn steps of the sanctuary, remembering too late that he would be charged entry and regretting every drachma spent.
Owlett was leaning over a parapet below the Erecthion, sun on his back, adding more smoke to the smog which was dissolving the monument. He carried a black umbrella as a signal and beneath the Panama hat, a light safari suit sat uncomfortably on his frame. Flint tagged behind a group of Dutch, looking for alert tourist police or suspicious men lurking in shadows. Satisfied that the man with the brolly was Owlett, and that Owlett was alone, he detached from the tourists and dropped alongside.
‘Hi.’
The reporter frowned, leaned
to look under the brim of the cheap white sun hat, checked the short hair, then said, ‘So who are you?’
‘Jeffrey Flint; I’m the communist revolutionary you may have read about in the Express.’ Flint pulled himself onto the ancient wall and sat facing the crowds.
Owlett was a red-faced, pugnacious man whose waistline advertised too much good living at trade lunches. He pushed out a hand. ‘You know Vikki Corbett?’
‘Fairly well.’
‘Nice girl, Vikki. So what can I do for you?’
‘Is there a brown envelope?’
‘It’s white.’ Owlett passed the money under his palm, as if paying off a crack dealer, then also turned to face inwards.
Despite long-standing contact with Vikki, journalists ranked just above developers, bankers and policemen in Flint’s personal bestiary.
‘Vikki tells me you were accused of murder seven years ago and let off on a technicality?’
‘I was framed and the cops were too embarrassed to admit it.’
‘Fine. Then you come back and they frame you again?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Forgive me, Doctor Flint, I hate to sound the cynical old hack, but it sounds to me like the police have a case this time,’ Owlett rumbled in his north Kentish accent.
‘I’m innocent.’
‘The gaols are full of innocent men. Why don’t you bugger off back to England and let the law sort it out?’
‘Ever read Sun Tzu, or Mao? There were thirty-six basic stratagems known to the Ancient Chinese. Stratagem thirty-six is “Run away”, I’ve tried that. This time, I’m going on the offensive, asking questions and picking up facts, but I need to stay undercover until I have enough data to prove who was behind Embury’s death. If the cops catch me before I’ve amassed my evidence, I won’t stand a chance of clearing my name in court.’
‘You’d be surprised. Greece has changed. It’s not like it was under the Colonels, this isn’t the third world. If you’re innocent, what’s the problem?’
‘If you were a murderer, would you mind doubling your score?’
Owlett had a wary, even cunning look in his eyes. ‘Do you smoke?’ Owlett clearly did and groped for an inner pocket.
‘No, it pollutes the soul.’
The smoker frowned and tried to smile at the off-beat comment. Owlett slid his hand into a different pocket and withdrew a leather-bound notepad. ‘So who did it?’
‘I don’t know; I hoped you could help.’
Any flicker of enthusiasm in Owlett’s expression promptly died. ‘Vikki told me there was a story in this, but you want me to go out and find my own story?’
‘I’ll find the scoop for you, if you’ll perform a few services in return.’ Flint stopped. A pair of tourist police had appeared, walking slowly through the multitude.
‘Shall we walk?’ Owlett suggested nervously.
Flint slipped off the wall and walked in the shadow of the journalist.
‘You were saying, services? Remember, I’m freelance, I need a story at the end of the day.’ Owlett watched where he was walking to give the impression of disinterest.
‘Do you have contacts at the Ministry of Culture?’
A non-committal movement of the head acknowledged that he might. Flint related the series of messages he suspected had passed through the Ministry. Owlett stopped walking, dropped his indifferent expression and jotted down a few notes.
‘How much more of this do you have?’
‘Heaps. It’s like I’m doing a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. I’ve got a dozen pieces from somewhere down the bottom left and a few chunks of sky, but I can only guess what the picture is.’
‘Very poetic. Sure you can handle all this?’
‘Of course I can handle it! It’s my job, piecing together the past is what I do. Last week, or last millennium, it’s all the same.’
The pen suddenly launched into a fury of shorthand.
‘What’s that you’re writing?’
‘I’m quoting you, kiddo.’
Flint laid a hand on the pen. ‘Don’t write anything about meeting me.’
Owlett spread his hands. ‘Where’s the story if I don’t?’
Out came a sheet of paper, two sides crammed with close hand-written text. ‘I sent you a letter: it’s all in here, just don’t mention that I’m in Athens and don’t say I’m doing my own investigating. I don’t want a demarcation dispute with the Union of Private Detectives.’
The reporter took the letter and read it. ‘Nauplion...Dracopoulos, Korifi; who are they?...What’s this say? Byron who?...’
‘Forget him, not all the detail is relevant, I just wrote everything down, hoping something would click.’
Half closing one eye, Owlett glanced up at Flint, then around himself at another archaeological jigsaw-puzzle. He was weighing up risk and gain. ‘The Greeks are going to have my arse on a kebab if they find out I’ve helped you. Secrecy works two ways.’
‘Officially I’m in hiding, waiting for a chance to get out of the country. If the police catch me, I never saw you.’
‘Huh.’ Owlett snorted and closed his notebook. ‘Will you be around the next few days?’
‘I can be.’
‘Here’s my card.’ He gave Flint a crisp business card. ‘Call me, say the beginning of next week, after I’ve had time to check these details.’
‘Next week?’
‘You don’t get instant answers from civil servants. This will take time.’
Owlett tipped the point of his hat and walked away. The archaeologist quickly dodged into a large group of Britons gawping at the Parthenon, half hearing tales of gunpowder stores and lightning strikes. He was safe, no one was tailing him, no one was watching him. A glance at his watch confirmed it was still early. His eyes were drawn upward by Periclean marble, then across to be seduced by Caryatids in silhouette. Lisa would understand, he reasoned; it was time for a treat.
Chapter Twenty-One
The week passed in which the days saw continuous charades and the nights ran together as a blur of lust; less inventive, less energetic than a decade before, but age blunts inclination just as time embellishes memory. Only in the dark were Flint and Lisa truly together. In the mornings they parted, he to a library, she to another rendez-vous. All her enquiries were throwing up blanks, uncovering nothing beyond the usual bitching and polite backstabbing endemic in the rarefied world of academia. None of Embury’s cronies knew of any vices, any debts, or any dark personal secrets. His world had been archaeology, and nothing outside seemed to affect or interest him.
Flint took great delight in continuing to evade the police and his confidence increased with each day he remained free. A telegram was waiting for Paul Adams at the British School. Tyrone had been instructed to be discreet and succinct. Both criteria had been taken to extreme:
ZILCH.
It was signed D. Duck. Very funny, thought Flint.
He could see little further use for Tyrone in the investigation. Inviting a ‘known associate’ to Athens might attract attention; contacting Jules had been a mistake that had won no profit. Flint had always believed that the optimum size for any organisation is one.
His philosophy had been slightly compromised: one-man bands were fine if they could speak the language. Within the panelled, period gloom of the National Library of Greece, Flint found a new task for his partner.
‘I’ve done as much research as I can into modern Nauplion and my student has drawn a blank in London. Next I’m going to work through the approved reading Embury gave me before I was appointed; there were only twenty or so references. I’m going to look for ancient texts, classical allusions, archaeological reports, things which Embury might have found since he wrote his last paper. Do you follow the logic of all this?’
Lisa looked bemused, even patronised, but nodded quietly.
‘So, I want you to search out any Greek reference to Nauplion or Palaeokastro: maps, newspapers, history books, folklore, anything. Any mention
of Korifi, or Messrs Charamboulos, Boukaris, Scarlatos or Doctor D.’
She cast her eyes around. A very large number of books stared back at her. ‘So where do I start?’
‘You look at the modern stuff and work backwards: I’ll meet you in the twelfth century. Anything in English I’ve probably read by now.’
‘But what am I looking for?’ she said between her teeth.
‘When you find it, it will bite you.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ Lisa bowed slightly in mock submission.
*
Flint walked to the German School of Archaeology on Fidou Street with Lisa on his mind, hoping she could keep her head above water. Already a week had been expended since the flight to Athens and he had found no likely motive for Embury’s death. Perhaps he had been over-optimistic, or perhaps he needed to work harder, or perhaps there was value in Lisa’s love triangle and it was the archaeological theory that was romantic illusion.
Smiles, fibs, letters of introduction, a pleasant German student named Katrina and anecdotes about his time spent working in the Romisch-Germanisch Museum, Koln, bought his way into the German School. He began to assault the tedious pile of references, skimming through, ignoring any line that seemed irrelevant, aiming at completing a dozen works that day. At three, his head fell onto the centre of a copy of Bonner Jahrbuch 1930. He had read these books before; he had read them all twice. Palaeokastro was not a well-known site, its bibliography short and dull. What little was known about the Roman and Greek town was published. There were no tantalising suggestions of hidden wonders, no partly revealed secrets, only total blank spaces where no work had been done. If Athens was the cradle of Democracy, Palaeokastro was where they had thrown the dirty nappies. His energy and enthusiasm were beginning to wear thin, the whole exercise seeming gratuitously irrelevant.
He would work all day Saturday, and drive Lisa to work too; who knew how long their game could continue? Sunday could be the day of rest, they could explore Strefi Hill and lie in the sun, distracting each other for a few hours. The age gap seemed to matter less now, and intimacy was pulling them together. Flint opened his eyes; next book, Bonner Jahrbuch 1931.
