The Dead Travel Fast

by Nick Brown

  “What’s going on over there, then?”

  “Don’t know but we think someone’s been murdered.”

  “I heard a cop’s been killed.”

  “Christos told me it was in Andraki’s room, he said there was an ambulance.”

  No one really knew but the general consensus was that Professor Andraki was involved either as victim or assailant and that he’d been whisked away in an ambulance or police car. Steve felt a griping in his guts, certain the bones in his car were linked to whatever had happened here. He remembered how vehement Andraki had been that anything out of context be reported back to him.

  What could be more out of context on an ancient site than disarticulated twenty-first century bones with scraps of soft tissue still attached? He tried to ring Alekka but only got her answer phone; he didn’t want to go to the police until he knew more so decided to go back home and wait for Giles. He returned to the car with its grisly cargo and drove back over the mountain spine towards the village. As he entered Marathakampos he realised he was out of cigarettes and rather than pay the tourist prices in the village store, he stopped off at a cheap cafenion on the main street.

  He parked Greek style: just stopped the car in the road and walked off through the tables under the awning and into the bar. There was a very old man in a corner away from the window singing to himself, otherwise the place was empty. Eventually the owner, a one-eyed fat man in a greasy stained vest, walked out of the back room to serve him. He bought forty cigarettes and ouzo to settle his nerves which he took to a table outside.

  He sat under the trellis of vines watching passing traffic manoeuvre round the obstruction caused by his parking. He began to feel that he was being observed. When he couldn’t resist the compulsion any more he looked round and saw a man in a black robe and broad-brimmed hat sitting under the deepest shade of the trellis. He hadn’t been there when he arrived and no one had come in since he had. The apparition lifted its hand as if it were a great effort and beckoned him over.

  Steve couldn’t see the man’s face in the shadows but was horribly certain it was the cadaverous priest from the Vassilis estate. He sat havering in indecision and watched as the pale and bony finger beckoned again. He stood up and walked across to the priest’s table; up close he looked even worse. The red pustules on the dead white skin were weeping, the skin was so thin Steve could see the bone. He preferred to avert his eyes from the bandage wrapped round the throat and the discolouration that was leeching through. He wondered could such a thing be considered alive.

  “Welcome, Doctor Watkins, I thought I would find you here.”

  The voice was dry and thin like newspaper rustling in the wind. How could he have expected to find him in this dirty, depressing cafenion?

  “Father John, how are you?”

  He mentally kicked himself for asking such a stupid question. He needn’t have worried, the priest ignored the question and gestured for him to sit. He sat at the edge of the table furthest away and waited to hear whatever it was that Father John had to tell him. Despite his surprise he’d worked out that although he didn’t know how the priest found him he did know this meeting was not by chance. He didn’t have long to wait. Father John gestured him closer then spoke.

  “Listen carefully, I do not want to have to repeat myself.”

  Steve reluctantly drew nearer.

  “There is no need to be so afraid, I mean you no harm and one day you may need me. Andraki has been infected, you will not see him again.”

  Steve was about to ask what he meant but Father John raised an almost translucent hand to silence him.

  “Listen, don’t speak; finish your work on the site without delay, your friend who arrives today will help. Bring what you find to Vassilis, show it to no one else; talk to no one else. No one, you understand.”

  There was a silence; the priest’s eyes were closed and Steve thought maybe he was asleep or perhaps dead, but they opened and with an obvious effort he added,

  “Bring the woman too, now go.”

  Steve needed no second invitation; he got up and walked quickly to his car. The walk took less than a few seconds but when he looked back the table in the shade was empty. He pulled off immediately; half way down the mountain to the village he wondered how the priest could have known about Andraki or Giles arriving later today and why Vassilis would want to see Claire. He assumed that it was Claire he had meant by ‘the woman’. But he hadn’t mentioned the bones and Steve couldn’t figure out if that was good or bad.

  The mobile lying in the coin tray bleeped as he was negotiating the hairpin bends leading down to the village. He saw it was Alekka. He didn’t share the local’s skills in driving this road with one arm holding a cigarette and the other holding a phone, so he pulled up into the grove.

  “Steveymou, I am sorry I could not talk to you earlier but I look forward so much to seeing your friends from England tonight.”

  Steve was pleased but thrown by this; he hadn’t told her about Giles and Claire arriving and made no arrangement for her to meet them. In fact, he’d wondered when he’d see her next. But this was a minor quibble compared to his desire to see her and show her off to his friends and he soon forgot it. A few minutes later as he was parking up outside his apartment Captain Michales slouched across.

  “Steve, I will tell you about big things that have happened here, come have one drink.”

  The idea of a drink appealed, but the ouzo he’d just drunk was lurking as an incipient headache at the front of his skull.

  “Sorry, I’ve got to get to the airport but I’ll be in the bar tonight and you can meet my friends.”

  He ignored the captain’s grimace and got back into his car; he’d intended to hide the bones before he went to the airport but with Michales showing up he couldn’t, so he drove off. He’d checked the airport staff weren’t on strike and was reasonably sure, or as sure as you could be in Greece these days, that the flight would get in roughly on time.

  But when he pulled into the approach road to the terminal he saw there was trouble. The airport staff were working, but the taxi drivers were on strike and they were out in force to prevent any bits of private enterprise by other drivers. There were scuffles outside the arrivals hall, flustered holiday reps were ushering their charges into a variety of coaches and mini-buses, some of the more battered had obviously been brought out of either retirement or the scrap yard. The taxi drivers let these through but tried to prevent any private cars picking up individuals, so there were a number of distressed families with their luggage sitting in the sun with no way of crossing the mountains to begin the holiday. He recognised Yanni, a taxi driver from the village, and explained what he was doing.

  “When your friends come on the London flight, show them to me and I will bring them to you, we don’t want to upset tourists but we will not let cockroaches take our work.”

  So Steve passed the time until the London passengers got through baggage reclamation hiding the sack of bones, which had begun to smell, under the spare wheel. The sight of Giles shepherding Claire through the crowd brought tears to his eyes, it had been so long since he’d been with people who knew what he had gone through at Skendleby. He pointed them out to Yanni and moments later they were slaloming through the mass of obstructively parked taxis towards the main road. In the car conversation was muted, how could you pick up normally after what had happened? Giles and Claire were tired, and gradually lapsed into staring out of the window at scenes of breathtaking beauty alternating with the blackened tree stumps and scorched earth of fire damage.

  The accommodation Steve had reserved for them was in a small development of eight houses in an olive grove overlooking the sea, a few hundred metres above the village; a great place for a holiday but now, like much of the accommodation on the island, empty. So they had the grove, the pool and the views to themselves. They fixed up to meet in the bar at seven and Steve left them with mixed emotions.

  Back in the village he couldn’t
settle, and by six he was nursing a drink in the bar. Slowly the village and alcohol worked their magic and he sat back inhaling the mixed scent of drifting tobacco smoke and sea air. He stared at the sea: flat and limpid with occasional dazzles. Condensation gathered on his glass and he began to feel lulled, time didn’t matter; feral cats dozed and stretched, eyes half closed in the dust under a tree. He rolled a smoke and gazed out towards the horizon where Patmos drifted in and out of focus in the heat haze.

  He sensed, rather than saw, a man take a seat at the table behind him and ask for a coffee. After a while he turned his head and recognised the detective he’d seen in Andraki’s office. He looked pale, his left hand was heavily bandaged and he was writing in a leather backed notebook. As he sat and watched and the fragrant smoke dispersed into the air he felt an urge, suppressed for years, to write himself. Without thinking he asked for a sheet of paper, the detective looked surprised but with an air of reluctance tore out a leaf from the notebook and passed it across.

  He began to write and as he did he temporarily forgot Alekka, the numbness in his fingers and the other anxieties infesting his consciousness. He lost himself trying to distil thought into the minimum number of words. Sometime later he put down his pen and re-emerged into the world. He looked round and saw that the fastidious detective was re-reading whatever he’d written. He looked up and their eyes met and, on an uncharacteristic impulse, Steve asked,

  “May I see what you’ve written?”

  “If you can read Greek then help yourself.”

  Steve stretched out his hand and Theodrakis passed across the paper; on it was a short poem neatly written and despite the crossings-out, beautifully symmetrical.

  ‘The rattle of Tric Trac the prattle of logos

  Life sweet and sharp as a pear.

  Is it

  The slit eyed cat in the dust who watches the bird on the twig?

  Or

  The slow rotation of an ancient potsherd through crumbling

  earth?

  Through time’s passages the planets turn.’

  Steve handed it back.

  “That’s good; far better than I could manage.”

  “Thank you that is most kind but it reads like a poor pastiche of Elytis don’t you agree? Perhaps you would show me the use to which you put my paper?”

  “If you can read English help yourself.”

  “I read it fluently, thanks to a year’s internship in Cambridge.”

  Steve looked down at his scrawl with crossings out spreading like a rash across the paper then passed it across; Theodrakis took it with the semblance of a bow in return. He read and then re-read it before handing it back.

  “Strange don’t you think how both of us, strangers here, end up in the same cafe writing poems full of images of the past? Instructive for me to see how ancient death affects you, and how great are the similarities between your work and mine. I know who you are, and before long would have come to question you. You are the English archaeologist who works for Vassilis.”

  “I know Vassilis, but if I work for anyone it would be Professor Andraki.”

  Steve saw a spasm of emotion distort Theodrakis face so he continued.

  “Perhaps you can tell me what is going on with Andraki, there was a police cordon round his office this morning.”

  “No, all I can say is that the statement of who you work for is now wrong on both counts. But I am more interested in what you have to say about bones and death in your poem.”

  Steve missed most of this; Giles and Claire with their arms round each other were almost at the table. He was about to get up when Theodrakis asked him,

  “Please tell me. What happened to your ear?”

  But he got no answer; Giles had reached the table.

  “Sorry to be so late, Steve, but we got sort of distracted and time seems to run to a different drum beat here.”

  Claire giggled and Steve began introductions. Theodrakis saw her, turned his head away, gathered his things and got up to leave.

  “I must go, I have an appointment but we fellow poets will soon meet again and you can give me your answers then; I will be in touch.”

  With a perfunctory nod to Giles, he rushed off towards the hotel. Claire kissed Steve on the cheek and said,

  “What’s wrong with him? It was like he’d seen a ghost.”

  Steve noticed too but hadn’t bothered, as the detective was weird and beyond the normal conventions of social discourse, and anyway Giles was unusually enthusiastic and vocal.

  “Great place, Steve, really chilled. We had a lie down and after Claire dropped off I went down to the pool and sat looking out across the olive groves to the sea, beautiful. I can’t believe we’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”

  Steve was surprised at how pleased he was his friends liked the place, and gave Giles a rundown of all the hidden pleasures of the island while Claire sat staring out across the rippling waters of the bay. They finished their drinks then ambled along the quayside to Maria’s taverna to eat, stopping from time to time so that Steve could introduce his friends to the locals. Halfway through eating, as if conjured out of nowhere, Alekka appeared at the table, lightly kissed him on the forehead and demanded, “So, Steve, are you going to introduce me to your friends about whom you tell me so much?”

  She turned with a smile to Giles and he saw from the expression on his friend’s face that he was impressed; they shook hands and then she turned to Claire. It was more an impression than anything more concrete but as the two women locked eyes, the atmosphere round the table chilled several degrees. After a pause long enough to have become uncomfortable, Alekka looked away and said to Steve,

  “I am sorry, I have no time tonight, but I would like you to call me later.”

  She walked away from the table and into the night and before Steve thought of anything to say by way of apology Claire sniggered,

  “What a real lulu; well you certainly know how to pick them, Steve.”

  Later, when Claire, pleading tiredness, went back to the house to sleep and the two men were sitting over glasses of brandy, Giles leaned forwards in his chair.

  “That was strange, people have started to react to her like that.”

  “It was probably because of that letchy look you gave Alekka.”

  “No, it’s more than that. We had a weird experience in France, stopped off at a roadside bar in the middle of the Central Massif and walked into this large room full of locals and bikers drinking. It was real noisy in there but by the time we reached the bar the whole room was silent; it was eerie, everyone watching her, but the bartender ignored us.

  “After a while an old guy with a scarred face and squint walked up and said it was a private bar and we weren’t welcome. It wasn’t private and I don’t think he meant unwelcome only in there. Same thing at the hotel that night; said they’d no record of our booking but after a load of argument they put us up in a type of fixed caravan that hadn’t been used for years a couple of miles down the road. We, or Claire mainly, were made to feel like lepers. Then the car packed up and the zombies at the local garage claimed they couldn’t get the parts and we got trailered home. Tell the truth I was glad to get back, strange thing was it didn’t seem to bother her, she just laughed. I’m glad to be here Steve, but I’m tired and I don’t think I want to talk about Tim tonight, maybe tomorrow.”

  He got up and Steve hugged him, something he wouldn’t have done before Skendleby. Giles cut back through the village backstreets towards the villa, Steve watched him noticing the black shapes of birds circling his accommodation.

  Chapter 15:

  Here Among the Vanishing

  Theodrakis walked rapidly from the bar. Why had the shock of seeing the English woman been so unsettling? He was early for Hippolyta and needed time to compose himself, so he walked the length of the seafront then followed the harbour wall to its end. He sat on one of the concrete blocks dumped outside the wall to protect it from the winter storms, lit a cigare
tte with surprisingly steady hands, and tried to put events into a credible sequence.

  The fight with Andraki, once it ended, gave him the least anxiety. Afterwards, when Andraki had been taken off in the ambulance and the cops had arrived, he felt calmer than he had at any time since he arrived on the island. Like he’d felt during the political kidnapping in Athens when he gained his reputation.

  He was better when he took control. It was a good result; he was sure Andraki’s DNA and prints would be all over at least one of the victims, and from what he saw on the desk he was pretty certain they had one of the murder weapons. He was unhappy about the surge of anger that had led him to kick Andraki in the balls: that had been a first and he’d enjoyed it. He’d need to watch that.

  He analysed his feelings for Hippolyta; was he in love with her? If he was this was also a first, at least with a woman. Not that he was sure he had ever really been in love with a man either; he was too sexually insecure for that, too worried he’d be unable to function when put to the test. He was celibate but was this to protect himself from the humiliation of failure or a genuine preference?

  He knew from private practice that he was in good working order but this had deserted him in the few fumbling failures that constituted his sex life with a consenting other. He knew he’d reached the fumbling stage with her, and that worried him because she was special and he didn’t want to screw it up through being unable to perform.

  The uncertainty over one woman conjured his fear of the other: the English woman. She’d flashed him a look of distilled hate. There was something terrible hiding inside her which recognised and hated him. Yet no one else seemed to feel that, she’d been giggling with the Englishman, Giles, who’d obviously just been doing with her what he feared to do with Hippolyta.