by David Carter
Aris nodded and muttered, ‘Usually.’
‘Didn’t he ever get tired of it? Screwing women?’
Aris smiled.
‘Nico? What do you think? This house was a screwing factory. If I had a hundred euro for every woman that came back here, I’d be a multimillionaire. The foreign women couldn’t leave him alone. You know how it is, not for a minute, and he could never say no. And every week they’d change, a fresh batch. Changeover day, Nico called it, with relish, every seven days a fresh crop of willing flesh for him to sift through.’
Aris listened as Christos spoke to his superiors on the mainland. He reported the murder and requested assistance, though it annoyed him to have to do so. He was doing everything by the book before an officious idiot arrived and picked holes in everything he’d done, or not done.
‘Oh and another thing, can you give me the number for the Corinth Cruising Company?’
There was a lull while the person on the other end sought the number. Christos held the phone tightly to his ear and wrote the digits in his pocket diary. ‘Thanks. I’ll keep you informed.’
The phone at Corinth Cruisers rang three times before a man answered. Christos announced himself and asked, ‘Have a Brian and Brenda Nichols hired a boat from you?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘Just answer my question. When are they due back?’
‘They came back two hours ago.’
‘Was everything in order?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Did you retain their passports?’
‘Yes, when they had the boat, I did.’
‘And you’ve returned them?’
‘Of course.’
Christos cursed, as the man shouted, ‘Look what’s going on? I knew there was something wrong with that couple from the moment I set eyes on them.’
‘What made you say that? And why did you call them a couple?’
‘They had loads of money to spend, cash too, not plastic, and were crazy in love.’
‘Not here they weren’t, they were brother and sister.’
‘You’re kidding me! But you’re wrong! He kept boasting about what he was going to do to her when they were alone. But beneath it all, there was something odd about them. They seemed a little nervous, a bit cocky, too. I had an idea they might have been drug running from Turkey.’
‘So you supplied them with a boat?’
‘Well, yeah, but...’
‘What gave you the drugs idea?’
‘Nothing concrete, just a feeling, and I thought they were recently married, newlyweds, that’s the impression they gave.’
‘Did they say where they were heading?’
‘No. He just said they’d be back in three months.’
‘I doubt that.’
The boatyard man didn’t reply.
‘Thanks for your help.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Christos disconnected and rang Athens airport. He had to do it twice because he rang a wrong number the first time. His fat fingers were too big for the tiny numbers, or so he imagined. First time he’d disturbed a sleeping old lady in one of the wealthier Athenian suburbs, and she seemed happy to prolong the conversation.
The security department at the airport was one of the few numbers he knew by heart, for it wasn’t unusual to be chasing someone for unpaid debts, or worse, trying to catch them before they left the country, and they were often scruffy British.
‘Brenda and Brian Nichols,’ he shouted. ‘That’s correct, they’re possibly married, maybe brother and sister. They must not leave the country! Understand? They’re wanted on suspicion of murdering a Greek citizen. This is most important!’
The security police ran a sweep through their newly installed American computer system. No passengers by that name had left the country that day, and a confidential red warning tag was placed by their names. If they attempted to check in they would be detained. It would be impossible for them to board an aircraft. The land border police weren’t so helpful, or efficient. But eventually Christos satisfied himself if the Nichols people tried to leave the country on any main road, they would be arrested.
He scratched his ample chin and pondered what else he should do. He wondered what the young detective would say he should have done when he arrived on the scene, whenever that might be, all big ideas and cocky ways. Christos pursed his lips at the thought, just as the doctor arrived and hunched down over the body.
‘Nasty one, Chris,’ he murmured, ‘I’d say he died nearly twenty-four hours ago, but I’m sure the autopsy will give us a more accurate time of death. Do you want me to organise it?’
Christos nodded, and the body was taken away for interrogation, if it was possible to interrogate a dead man. To Aris, fell the task of breaking the news to the Emperikos family. Christos didn’t envy him that. Nicoliades’ Bar would not open that day; and the truth was, Nicoliades’ Bar would never be the same again.
Christos ambled down the hill. He was heading home to get washed and shaved. He was lost in thought and couldn’t accept he’d never banter with Nico again. He’d miss the nice little on-the-side earners too. He’d have to cut back somewhere and his wife would not like that.
It had been four years since the last murder on the island. They were English too. A man who claimed his wife had poisoned his coffee. He’d hit her over the head with the new anchor he’d bought from the chandlers in Edris, an anchor that Chris could barely lift from the ground. It had, not surprisingly, killed her instantly, and the man was rotting in the prison up in Thessalonica, and probably would be for as long as Christos walked the earth. A real shithole it was, that prison in Thessa. Christos had the misfortune to visit it twice in his younger days, and he wouldn’t wish a life sentence there on anyone, except for the murderous scum who had deprived him of his friend.
His mind returned to Nicoliades. He had no proof the Nichols people were responsible, no actual evidence, nor did he have the weapon. If they’d taken the knife with them, he figured they would have tossed it into the Aegean, where it could lie for a thousand years before a diver might stumble on it, and imagine they’d discovered an historic artefact. The police would never find the murder weapon, he was sure of that, and he wasn’t a fingerprint man. There was nothing for it but to wait for the cavalry to arrive, and he hated the thought of that.
Bossy, metropolitan, they would treat him as if he had been banished to the island because of his incompetence, stuck in an outpost where he could do the least damage. He could see it now, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. If only he could solve the case before they arrived. If only he could arrest someone, anyone. But no matter how much he racked his brain, he couldn’t figure a way to do it. But what if it wasn’t the Nichols pair? Who else could it have been? True, Nicoliades had many enemies, but none so far as he knew who might want to murder him. There was plenty of bad blood around, but not desperately bad, not rancid or murderous.
And if the Nichols weren’t responsible, he’d still bet it was tied up with a woman. Perhaps a jealous husband, or a spurned girlfriend? That wasn’t hard to imagine. It could have been a woman alone. Why not? But it seemed unlikely a woman would have stabbed him from behind.
In his mind, Christos saw Nico in the company of women, as he usually was. He would be advancing on his prey, his eyes bright and wide and steady like a hunting wolf. If one of the women had killed him, the wound would have been in his chest, or his eye, not in his back. Christos would sniff around the transient drinkers and listen to the gossip. He’d speak to the mayor and ask him to put up a decent reward. Someone must know something, but who, and where, and when?
IT WAS IRRELEVANT WHAT time Christos rang the Athens security police because Brian and Brenda Nichols had reverted to being Michael and Coral Ridge. The police were searching for the wrong people. Midge and Coral boarded the plane without a care in the world, and by the time Christos finished shaving and his mind had turned to thoughts of lunch, Midge and Coral Ridge were safe
ly back in the UK.
They collected the Mercedes from the long stay car park and headed west along the M4 towards Bristol. At Swindon, they pulled off the motorway and turned south on the straight Roman road that runs through gentle chalk hills. They weren’t aware there were devils on the road. It’s a narrow Roman road, rarely deviating, running north to south, fast and unlit, dangerous, harbouring countless treacherous dips, the hollows deep enough to swallow articulated wagons. At night-time they rear up on unsuspecting sleepy drivers, headlights monstrous and frightening, thundering wheels running as if returning from Hades itself, dazzling prey, like fire-breathing dragons.
Another serious traffic accident has been reported on the A338 just south of Swindon.
No accident.
The devils are of Roman origin from two millennia ago, when legionaries rapid-marched that same highway northwards from Sarum to Corinium and Glevum beyond. They would return a week later, driving columns of lashed slaves to the coast for export to Gaul and on to Rome. In the winter, some of the wretches would succumb on those exposed hillsides through inadequate clothing and little food. Others would collapse and perish on the wayside where their tormented souls remained, watching, locked into an eternity of terror, dazzling and mesmerising the unsuspecting, the unwary, and the disbelieving.
That sunny afternoon, the Ridge siblings did not notice the presence of devils, for the spirits were sleeping. They would not appear until darkness returned. Midge and Coral were lucky as they roared through the dips. The latest fatal accident would not be theirs.
Their minds were preoccupied with their own evil, as they sped up the hill towards the fancy-dan town of Marlborough. They crossed the River Kennet and headed up the steep winding hill into the Savernake Forest. Deep in the woodland, a little past the ancient stubby oak whose remaining pathetic branches resemble thalidomide-affected limbs, Midge turned left off the main road onto a Forestry Commission track. Half a mile later, the track widened as Midge pulled the car to a stop.
‘What are we doing here?’ asked Coral, as the bonnet cracked noisily, and began to cool.
‘I want to destroy the passports. I should have done it earlier.’
He rooted in the holdall in the boot, found the documents and shouted through the window, ‘I won’t be long,’ and disappeared into the trees. He walked fifty yards from the track, skirting between the mixed woodland until he came to a clearing. He crouched down and gathered together dried grasses and twigs. For a second, he remained still, looking about and listening. He thought he heard someone close by, yet the only sound was the wind rustling through a stand of silver birch, a tiding of magpies squabbling in the treetops to the east, and the steady drone of muffled traffic on the A338 to the west from whence they’d come.
He lit the kindling.
The wood was dry and the fire soon caught, as he ripped the passports into small pieces and placed them on the yellow flames. It took longer than he imagined for them to burn away. An image of his face stared up at him, before curling and vanishing to nothing. He stood and waited until every shred had turned to ash. A narrow stream of grey smoke drifted vertically before his eyes and dissipated into the canopy. He wondered if other keener, sharper eyes might see it too.
Midge unzipped his trousers and doused the flames, before scuffing the sopping ash with his heel into the ground. He rubbed his shoe on the thick grass at the edge of the clearing as if he’d stepped in dog muck, and stood still for a second. He imagined someone might be watching, listening, but there was no one there. He hurried back to the car where Coral was singing along to the latest boy band tune on the radio without a care in the world. She turned it off and said, ‘All right?’
He nodded and jumped in.
‘Brian and Brenda Nichols have ceased to exist.’
‘Hurray!’ she grinned, ‘I hated Brenda... so common!’
They forced a laugh as he started the car, turned it round and headed back toward the main road, where he turned south again, heading for the army garrison town of Tidworth. They saw Army tanks on manoeuvres, and others on trailers, and several motorcycle police shepherding the delayed traffic. Coral remained silent and slipped on her sunglasses and slumped in her seat. But they weren’t stopped and motored on.
Beyond Shipton Bellinger they turned westwards again, eager to join the busier, sometimes dual carriageway A303, as they headed towards the setting sun, and their alibis, who were partying their heads away in Cornwall. They’d be only too keen to assist in return for a crate of booze and five hundred quid. The traffic thickened as they crawled past Stonehenge, and out of the blue she said, ‘Would you have done it? If I hadn’t?’
Midge paused. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’
‘You had doubts?’
‘A few. Some of the things he said struck a chord. I began to wonder at Lisa’s story.’
‘The man was a bastard!’ Coral spat out. ‘I met him, remember? He got what was coming. God knows how many girls and women he and his family have raped and molested, and maybe worse. I wouldn’t put murder past that lot! He would have raped me too if you hadn’t come barging in.’
‘Maybe.’
‘There’s no “maybe” about it! I’m glad we did it, I enjoyed it, and I’d do it again.’
Midge glanced across at her and saw a look on her face he’d not seen before. Coldness, yes, but more than that, a look of total indifference, and as he drove forever westwards, he tried to think of happier things, of Lisa waiting at home for news, of the commodity markets and making money, of returning to Misnomer and getting back to normal, and of his forthcoming marriage to Lisa Greystone, for he would marry her. He was eager to prolong the dynasty, and he wanted to accomplish that with her. But no matter how many pleasant thoughts crushed into his tired mind, all he could think of was the Greek’s crumpled, bloodied body that had lain before him. It was an image that remained in his brain forever.
Chapter Thirty-Two
DIANE SHEARSTON SKIPPED into the office with a spring in her step. It was Monday morning, and she’d enjoyed a fab weekend and was looking forward to resuming work. She loved working for Vimy Ridge and adored her job.
She’d gained a first at Manchester University in politics and had taken a job with Alders Shipping in Liverpool under their graduate intake programme. But it soon became apparent they didn’t value women in the workplace.
It seemed she’d been recruited for her looks and damn all else. She was placed on reception and advised to look smart, a euphemism for sexy, encouraged to beam at bosses and their clients when they returned from boozy lunches. She was expected to make coffee, serve it with a smile, and be forever on hand to soothe fragile egos, and if she wore a short skirt or low cut dress, so much the better. Be sweet, look good, and don’t waste time thinking, was her lot at Alders Shipping, and she didn’t care for it. It was the 1970s and things were different back then.
It took her eight days to realise Alders was not the company for her. Shortly afterwards, she spotted an ad in the Liverpool Echo for trainee commodity traders and analysts with a company called Ridge Commodities. She asked around and everyone who knew the business said the Ridge family were well known, a genuine business with a good reputation, and more to the point, women were valued for their intellect.
She applied in her neatest backward sloping handwriting on the best-woven writing paper she could find, and soon afterwards was interviewed by Vimy Ridge. A week later, she’d landed the job. She liked the man from the first moment. He was handsome and young and smiled often and easy, and was both interesting to talk to, and interested in what she had to say, and that made a welcome change. From the outset, she worshipped her job and the responsibility he gave her, and she couldn’t believe her luck when he tossed her the keys to a brand-new maroon Mini Cooper.
She had little idea about commodity trading before she joined the firm. She’d never even thought about it, how complex it was, and how exciting it could be, and she developed a long-standin
g passion in events that happened behind the Iron Curtain. At Uni she’d written a dissertation on The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin. She found everything about the communist state fascinating. An entire society, dark and shrouded in mystery, divorced from the free world, a parallel planet where official communiqués had to be read in line with current Soviet thinking. Analysing official Soviet data, trying to make sense of it, sifting fact from fiction.
No two days were ever the same. The company and staff were young, dynamic, charismatic, and successful. She could never have imagined that working for a commodity company could be glamorous, but it was. The people, the pay, and the definite feeling they could achieve unbelievable things. She skipped by her boss’s open door, saw he was in and gabbing on the phone.
‘Morning, Vimy,’ she called out, as she headed for her desk, ‘want a coffee?’
She had no qualms about making coffee for him because it was not an obligation. Sometimes he made coffee for her, and for all the staff too, with a smile and a joke. She made him coffee because she liked to, for him and anyone else who was thirsty. Most of the others did the same.
‘Diane?’ she heard him shout. ‘Come and have a chat.’
She wondered what was on the cards. There were no major problems so far as she knew, but when the boss asked for a chat, it was a fair bet something was up. She stepped through his open door and waited to be invited to sit.
He motioned at the chair. ‘Shut the door, take a seat.’
She sat in front of him, crossed her legs, and placed her hands together on her lap. She thought he looked tired and beginning to show his age. Perhaps he had been pushing himself too hard. Vimy didn’t notice the smartness of her navy blue suit. Why should he? She was always well dressed. She wore nothing under the jacket other than a bra, and the lack of a blouse showed off her tanned neck and throat. She was a striking young woman, perfect figure, wavy auburn hair that bounced on her shoulders, and she was always happy. He noticed that, and it was obvious why. She was deeply in love.
