Evolution of Fear

by Paul E. Hardisty

  He stood a moment, ran his hand over the Beretta’s grip. She was up there. If he went now, could he find her, bring her out safely? He needed time. They all did.

  Forty minutes later he was back at the car, having completed the tour of the perimeter. Hope was standing by the side of the car, smoking a cigarette. She threw it to the ground as he approached, crushing it out with her foot. ‘I was starting to worry.’

  ‘How’s your son?’

  ‘It took some doing, but my ex has agreed to let Maria take Alexi to Greece. He’ll stay with his grandparents in Thessaloniki, in the countryside. They leave tomorrow. He’s excited about missing school.’ Her voice cracked with relief.

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘My ex can’t get away from work. Or so he says. Maria is the only other person I can trust. She needs a break, anyway.’

  An hour later they arrived at Hope’s cottage in the hills. The roads were deserted, the island quiet this time of year, empty of tourists. They hadn’t been followed.

  Clay stopped the car and switched off the lights. They sat a moment, the weight of all that had happened pushing down on them. The moon had risen, a pale arc that brushed the treetops and roof slates of the house in quivering grey and set black shadows scurrying like intruders through the underbrush. Finally they stepped from the car and started up the path. They had reached the front steps when Hope stopped. The front door was open.

  Clay touched Hope on the shoulder, reached for the Beretta, wedged the grip between his knees and pulled back the slide, arming the weapon. ‘Back way,’ he whispered.

  She took him by the arm and led him around the side of the house, past a huge, spreading cactus, to the edge of the patio where they’d sat with Koevoet not long ago. In the dim moonlight they could see that the outdoor furniture had been overturned, potted plants upended and smashed, the black soil strewn like bloodstains across the tile.

  The house was dark, quiet. The back shutters had been forced, pried from their mounts and tossed into the hedge.

  Clay stepped onto the patio, moved towards the doorway. He stopped at the kitchen window; the shutters were still intact; he pressed his ear to the slats, listened, waited. Nothing. Hope was beside him, her face luminescent and pale, carved in fear. He touched her arm with the end of his stump. ‘Stay here,’ he said, and then turned and walked through the doorway.

  The house was empty. Crowbar was gone.

  Hope lit a lantern, gave it to Clay and lit a second. It was as if a typhoon had raked through the place. Fragments of glass and ceramic lay scattered across the floor, the remnants of every cup and plate. Cupboard doors hung from twisted hinges. The stove looked as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer. They picked their way through the shambles to the sitting room. Books and CDs were strewn across the floor. The furniture had been upended. Hope’s bicycle, a nice Italian road model, lay in one corner, the frame bent nearly at right angles, the delicate wheels a tangle of spokes and shattered aluminium rims. She slumped to the floor amidst the chaos, bowed her head.

  Clay left her alone and moved through the rest of the house. Each room had received similar treatment, but he found no trace of blood, no sign that Koevoet had been here when it had happened. He went back to the kitchen and searched for the basket in which Hope kept recent newspapers; it was upended near the back door. He righted the kitchen table and chairs, gathered up the newspapers, dumped them onto the table, sat and turned up the lantern. In turn, he opened and smoothed out each paper, stacked them in chronological order. Then he grabbed a pen from the floor and opened up a copy of The Independent. An article by Rania was there on page eight; it had come out since she’d disappeared. He started reading, circling words.

  Hope came into the room and stood looking over his shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

  ‘Every tenth word.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Backwards.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Rania pretended not to know me. Every tenth word, that’s what she said. Didn’t you hear her? That she was sure I only read every tenth word of her articles, that I had it backwards, that I wrote well. She knows the longest thing I’ve ever written was a letter, and that was three lines.’

  He focused on the paper.

  ‘Today, commission, a, north.’ Hope read out the words as he circled them. ‘Until, for, the, soon, problem. It makes no sense.’

  Clay started again with the second word, counting out ten, underlining, transposing. ‘The, would, comprehensive, furthermore. There’s nothing there.’

  Clay started again at three, boxing words now, the string emerging unintelligible again. Hope turned away, started picking things up from the floor, placing them on the counter. ‘So this is what Chrisostomedes meant by “other arrangements”. The bastard.’

  Clay stood, gazed down on the page, distancing himself, literally decimating, looking for a pattern. ‘Do you have any snorkelling gear?’ he said.

  Hope stood with her hands on her hips, looking around the room. ‘What?’

  ‘Mask and fins.’

  ‘I’m a marine biologist, Clay.’

  ‘Can you grab a couple of sets? We need to go for a swim.’

  Clay was only half aware of Hope leaving the room. Something had emerged. He sat, grabbed the pen and started underlining words.

  Hope reappeared carrying a pair of masks.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said, holding out the paper to her. ‘The underlined stuff.’

  She read them out. ‘After, no, some, reaction, government, the, murder, threatening, here, relation, has, Chrisostomedes, falsehoods, writing, into, coerced, being, island, once–’

  ‘Stop,’ said Clay. Now cut out the first six words, and start backwards from “being”.’

  Hope stood looking at the paper. ‘My God.’

  ‘That’s how they got her to leave Istanbul. They have her relation. Could it be her aunt – Madame Debret? They must be holding her somewhere, using her to coerce Rania into writing what they want – writing falsehoods.’

  Clay banged the Beretta down onto the table. Was that how Zdravko had become involved? Having tracked Rania to Cyprus, had he offered his services to Chrisostomedes, realising they had a common goal? Had he been the one who had grabbed Madame Debret in Switzerland, burned down the chalet on Chrisostomedes’ behalf? And then Istanbul, working with Spearpoint. If Zdravko had been watching the hotel, then he would have known Clay was there, too. Why not kill Clay then and there? Had Medved’s people scared him off before he could finish the job?

  ‘So the stories she’s had published since she disappeared in Istanbul are garbage,’ said Hope. ‘Chrisostomedes’ version of events.’

  Clay nodded. ‘And if Rania stops cooperating, or if we try to get her out, they do something bad to her aunt.’

  ‘Limassol,’ said Hope.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s where her aunt is. She whispered it to me when we kissed, at the dinner tonight. Just that: “She’s in Limassol”.’

  ‘And now you, too, Hope. They know about your…’ Clay stopped, swallowed. ‘About your relationship with Rania. That was the other message tonight. Run the enquiry the way they want, or Rania will suffer.’

  ‘And my son.’ Hope put her hands to her face. She was crying. ‘I can’t, Clay,’ she said. ‘I can’t do what they ask.’ She stood, eyes wide. ‘I have to go to Nicosia.’ She started towards the door.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I have to see my son.’

  ‘I need your help, Hope. Rania needs you.’

  She spun around. Tears fell to the floor. ‘I can’t,’ she gasped.

  Clay stepped towards her. ‘Look, Hope. Don’t you see? As long as they think you’re cooperating, you’re safe. So is your son. We’ve got two days to find Rania’s aunt, and get Rania out of there.’

  Hope wiped her eyes. ‘What if I just resign from the commission? Let someone else lead the enquiry.’

  ‘You lose any influence
you may have had. Besides, could you live with the consequences?’

  Hope hung her head. ‘So I chair the enquiry. If I support Chrisostomedes and that slimeball Dimitriou, I get a new research programme, with nothing to research because the turtles are all gone. And then what? Will Chrisostomedes just let Rania walk free, after what he’s done to her? She’d have it all over the papers in a heartbeat.’ She looked up at him through her tears. ‘And if I don’t support them, the UN and the TRNC make a deal with the government, and Karpasia and Lara are wiped out. Whatever I do, it’s the end for the turtles. And nothing the Commission decides is going to help Rania, or her aunt.’

  ‘By then it won’t matter anyway,’ said Clay, picking up the handgun. ‘As soon as the enquiry starts, they’re both dead.’

  37

  Everything They Shared

  Clay and Hope left the house shortly afterwards. They found a small pension not far from Paphos, taking separate rooms. Early next morning, they drove west into Agamas. After a couple of hours of slow going on rough, unpaved tracks, Hope directed them seaward. They left the 4WD at the end of a steep track and Hope led Clay down a rocky footpath towards the lonely arc of a white sand beach. The hammered- lead surface of the sea sloshed under a wet, uncertain sky. A pair of gulls fled south across the water, kissing up feathers of white spray.

  ‘This is Toxeflora,’ said Hope. The soles of her feet squeaked as she walked over the sand. A chill gust sent her hair streaming. ‘In July and August, during the nesting season, we’ve managed to have a team down here most nights to monitor the turtles. There have been the usual problems with foxes, but in the last couple of years the numbers of nesting females has plummeted, and the survival of those eggs that have been laid has been catastrophically low. We’re very concerned.’

  Clay levered off his shoes. The sand was cool and damp. ‘Where do the turtles lay their eggs?’

  Hope walked to a point a few metres from the edge of the scour slope.

  ‘In winter, the storms pull sand from the beach and dump it out to sea. The profile becomes much steeper, like now. In summer, the sand is piled back onto the beach by the gentler waves, and the beach flattens out again. So in summer, it would be about here. Above the tide line.’

  Clay started walking along the beach, scanning the ground between the rock and the break in slope.

  Hope followed.

  ‘When will your son arrive in Thessaloniki?’ he asked, checking the rock for any signs of disturbance. So far, all he’d seen had been made by nature, not man.

  ‘This afternoon.’ Hope seemed to think about smiling, but let it die stillborn on her face. She’d been a lot more composed since she’d called Maria again a few hours ago, confirmed that her faxed letter of permission for Maria to accompany her son overseas had gone through, and most importantly that her ex had also signed a similar declaration. Everything was in order. They were now booked on the early flight, leaving Larnaca for Athens in just a couple of hours. ‘What about your friend, Koofoot?’

  Clay smiled at Hope’s mangled attempt at the Afrikaans pronunciation. He’d managed to reach Crowbar on Hope’s phone earlier that morning. After being treated by the doctor, Crowbar had locked up Hope’s place and gone to Limassol to check in with Medved’s people. Clay told him about Rania, the break-in at Hope’s, their suspicion that Rania’s aunt was being held somewhere in Limassol, probably by Zdravko Todorov. They had agreed to meet at noon in Pissouri, a seaside village halfway between Paphos and Limassol. ‘He’ll be okay,’ said Clay. ‘He’s tougher than he looks.’

  That got a half-smile from Hope.

  ‘He’s looking for Rania’s aunt right now.’

  They were halfway to the far point, about equidistant between the two rocky headlands that marked the ends of the beach, when Clay stopped. There, up ahead, in a sandy embayment in the rock, something caught his gaze. He sprinted across the sand.

  ‘What is it?’ called Hope, running to keep up.

  It wasn’t much, would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it. A steel pipe, half an inch in diameter, sticking up from the ground, capped at knee height with a simple gate valve. It was barely visible, nestled in a clump of acacia.

  ‘It’s a water tap,’ said Hope.

  Clay opened the valve. Nothing. ‘Do you remember what your friend from Karpasia said about the pipe? He said he saw a tanker truck there.’ Clay took Hope by the hand. ‘It’s not for getting something out of, Hope. It’s for putting something in.’

  Hope looked down at the pipe, at the surrounding ground. ‘There is no way you could get a vehicle in here.’

  Clay started inland, clambering up a rocky carbonate bluff, contouring a series of prominent outcrops. Hope followed. He’d gone about two hundred metres inland when he came across a set of twinned ruts twisting away through the rocks, faint, overgrown with winter grass, not recent.

  ‘Vehicle tracks,’ said Clay.

  Hope was looking back out towards the sea. ‘People come in here all the time for picnics, a swim. I don’t see that this means anything, Clay.’

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t.’ Clay clambered back down to the beach, located the standpipe, took five paces towards the sea, dropped to his knees and started digging like a three-legged jackal looking for a carcass. ‘How deep did you say these turtles lay their eggs?’ he said, reaching into the deepening hole. His fingers carved away at the banded, silica-rich sand, scraped through layers of coarser, pebbly material.

  ‘About where you are now.’

  Clay kneeled back, sat looking down into the hole. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Do you see that darker layer, just above the base. It’s softer, finer grained.’ He reached into the hole, scooped out a handful of the darker sand, smoothed the silt between his fingers, brought his hand to his nose and sniffed. ‘Hand me a bucket, would you?’

  Hope reached into her backpack, passed him one of the empty plastic ice-cream containers he’d appropriated from the hotel the night before. Clay scooped the dark silt into the container, retrieved four more handfuls, closed the lid and wrote on the lid with a black marker pen.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ said Hope, stashing the sample in her pack.

  ‘We’ll know soon.’

  After Clay had collected three more samples, all from the same depth and at the same point in the beach profile, but dotted along the length of the beach, he stood and looked out over the sea. ‘Fancy a swim?’ he said.

  Before she could answer, he stripped off his clothes, piled them on the sand and strode down to the water’s edge. He stood naked in the surf, the water lapping his ankles, felt the breeze flow cold over the dangerous frailty of his body. ‘Pass me a mask and snorkel, could you?’

  Hope stood with a smirk on her face, looking him over. She reached into her pack. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The water’s pretty cold this time of year.’

  Clay turned, started wading into the sea.

  ‘Wait,’ she called, scampering down the beach with a pair of masks hanging from her hand. Clay caught a glimpse of her long, pale legs, the patch of auburn between, and then she was in, wading up to her chest. Her nipples were pale, turgid. A beam of sunlight broke through the clouds, held them a moment in its warmth, coloured her face, her bare shoulders. She handed him a mask and snorkel and fitted hers.

  They swam out into the bay, the water cold then slightly warmer for a moment and colder again as they moved away from the beach. The water was clear here, so lacking in nutrients. Prisms of light searched down from the surface, scanned across the seabed for a moment, then faded away, replaced by a new cloudburst farther on. It was as if they were suspended in a dream of their own making, and there was nothing but the cold, clear water and the sky and the blue sand and everything that they shared. Clay knew what he would find. The cold and the thought of it made him shiver. He estimated a depth of four metres here. He searched the sea floor.

  And there it was, a subtle ridge in the sand, running parallel to the shore, sna
king in the shifting sealight. He waved to Hope, pointed along its length. She nodded, her eyes big behind the mask’s lens. Clay signalled down.

  He dived. Hope followed him. Pressure built. Clay equalised, released air from his lungs, reached out for the bottom. Head down, kicking to maintain position, he clawed at the ridge. Sediment erupted from the bed, hung like fog in the water before dispersing in the bottom current. He kept digging but the sand was like soup, flowed back to fill whatever depression he managed to create. Hope dropped down beside him, used her two hands.

  Moments later they burst to the surface.

  ‘It’s too deep,’ Hope panted. ‘The winter bedload is thick here.’

  ‘We’ll follow it along,’ said Clay, treading water. ‘Find a better place.’

  ‘This way,’ said Hope, teeth chattering. She bit down on the mouthpiece of her snorkel and started swimming towards the western end of the beach. He followed, watching her limbs move pale and goose-skinned through the sun-strobed water.

  The ridge grew in prominence, then faded. They kept going, picked it up again, moving steadily parallel to the shore, always in about four metres of water. As they approached the headlands, sand gave way to rock, dark and slick with seaweed. Clay looked at his watch. They’d been in the water for almost half an hour now. He reached out, touched Hope’s thigh. She twisted to face him, popped her head out of the water.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ he stuttered. ‘Warm up.’

  She nodded and started swimming towards the headland. He followed. They emerged from the sea, clambering naked over the rocks.

  They found a ledge cradled into the headland where they could shelter from the wind and sat looking out across the bay. The sun streamed from between the ranks of drifting cumulus in thick woolly beams, scattering over the surface of the sea like chaff in the breeze. There had been some early winter rain, and now the usually barren coastal hills shimmered with life, thick ephemeral grasses, gorse, the prism points of a million dewdrops. They were completely alone.