by Nick Brown
Again he said nothing.
“It was Claire, wasn’t it?”
Theodrakis nodded.
“Oh God, poor Giles.”
Then, to the watching Theodrakis, it seemed that Watkins just slipped away; his body was still there rocking backwards and forwards but his mind was elsewhere. He tried to match what he was looking at with the man whose poem he had read just a few days ago sitting in the sun outside the bar. He should have questioned him there, found out about what had happened to him in England. What had ripped his ear and turned his hair white, what had made him write that horrific verse about living death in an ancient tomb.
Were there things he’d missed; things that would have avoided some of this? Too late for that now, but Vassilis wanted Watkins saving, repairing, knew he would be needed in whatever grotesque events were going to happen in some other place. He sat on the bench next to him took out his phone and called Giles.
Two hours later, having released the press statement and grabbed some sleep on a sofa, he was drinking a black coffee when Giles was shown in, looking pale, in poor shape and worried but pleased to see Theodrakis.
“Thank you for agreeing to help out with this, Dr Glover.”
“It’s OK, I would have been at a loose end anyway, Claire’s got to go back to England, she got a call from a friend who’s in trouble. She’s flying out later today.”
“A bit sudden.”
Theodrakis wondered why she had to leave so quickly; she’d seemed to be enjoying herself, acting as if she was untouchable. Which she was he supposed, he could hardly have arrested her without evidence for the murder of someone who never really existed with no motive and no body. So why leave the island?
“Yeah, but in a way it’s a relief, she’s been through a lot in the last few months and was getting a bit hyper here. I’m not sure the place suited her and Greece doesn’t seem a safe place to be these days.”
Theodrakis could only agree with this. He felt awkward with Giles and knew the feeling was reciprocated; there were things they couldn’t trust each other on, or rather one thing: Claire. He left a message with the duty sergeant for Kostandin who’d gone home for a few hours’ sleep, and had a squad car pull up by the back door. Then he and Giles got Steve to his feet and hustled him into the back seat. They sat either side of him as if he was a prisoner, driving through the square. No one threw anything or shouted: Kostandin would be all right.
Once round the other side of the island they got stuck behind a snaking convoy of pickup trucks packed with armed, wild-looking men. They were headed for Pyrgos and beyond that the Vassilis estate. The driver didn’t need to be told that this wasn’t part of their script. At the first opportunity he turned off onto a barely adequate track that cut across country. Giles must have noticed something but had the sense not to ask. Steve sat slumped and mute between them, like a collapsed concertina squeezed of air.
They rattled along the track, vision obscured by dust thrown up by the tyres, until after about forty minutes they crested a rise and saw the sea shimmering below them and in a natural fold of the land above it, the monastery. St Spiridon didn’t look much: drab, weathered brick surrounded by a wall that seemed too high for a monastery. It wasn’t an easy place to find and at first glance appeared abandoned; the vegetable gardens surrounding it had run wild through neglect and an air of melancholy decay presided as it languished under the pitiless Aegean sky. Steve was oblivious, but not Giles.
“What are we doing here? It’s like the end of the world.”
“This is where they’ll look after him.”
“You’re joking, there’s no way we’re leaving him here, it’s deserted; no one’s been here in years.”
Theodrakis looked round. Giles was right, there was something wrong about this. In the front of the car the driver crossed himself.
“Nevertheless, this is …”
Giles cut him off.
“No way, I’m not leaving him here, I’ll take him back to England, Claire can heal him, she’s done it before.”
Theodrakis was wondering how he could explain that Claire was the last person he needed when Giles sat upright and began to stare out of the window, as if he’d just recognised somebody or something he wished wasn’t there. Then, without warning, he got out of the car and walked towards the monastery gate. Half way he stopped and appeared to be talking to someone. Someone only he could see. Next to him in the back of the car, Steve seemed to have come round; he was staring out of the window towards Giles and fumbling at the door handle.
In the front, the driver had his hands over his eyes mumbling a half remembered prayer for protection. Then Giles was back by the car opening the door and helping Steve out. Theodrakis was in a dream; he started to get out but Giles spoke to him, soft, yet authoritive.
“No, it has to be me, better if you stay in the car. I’ll take him, you were right, this is where he belongs.”
He watched as, with Giles supporting Steve, the two men stumbled towards the monastery gate. It appeared to Theodrakis that they thought someone was with them, at least they seemed to be listening to someone and Steve was replying. As he watched for an instant Theodrakis caught a fleeting glimpse of something ragged and black with a dead white face, then it was gone; Father John. He saw Steve was at the door, going through the door and looked back at Giles.
The door slammed: Giles was outside. Theodrakis watched as he tried the handle but the door wouldn’t open. Then he appeared to be listening again but only momentarily, then with a shrug of his shoulders he turned and walked back to the car. He got in and said one word to the driver.
“Drive.”
No second invitation was required.
Some time later, Theodrakis and Giles sat on the terrace of a bar in Koumadrai looking over the sickening drop down towards the sea. Just below them, an aircraft was making the terrifyingly steep turn to avoid the mountain and land at Pythagoreio airport. They drank raki, the strongest, and sent one to the car for the driver. When the glass was empty, Theodrakis asked the question filling his head since the monastery.
“What happened back there?”
“We met someone.”
“Someone I couldn’t see.”
“Not this time, but you have before and perhaps will again. I think you know who it was.”
“Father John?”
“If that’s what he’s called over here.”
“Why you and not me?”
“We have unfinished business. He had something to tell me and anyway Steve’s my friend, not yours.”
Giles looked into his empty glass, his face was ash grey. Theodrakis prompted,
“What did he tell you?”
“That I’ll have to do something that will hurt me very much. Not very comforting.”
“And Steve?”
“Steve‘s staying.”
“And that’s it?”
Giles stared at him a moment before replying, Theodrakis couldn’t read his expression.
“I learnt it the hard way; you need to understand the dead travel fast. So for now, yes that’s it. Can we have another drink now, please? I need one.”
Envoi:
Stained with Mystic Horrors
Apart from an almost imperceptible whiff of something burning in the distance, it was a perfect evening. The type of beauty particularly Greek: a zephyr breeze, the softening of the light, the darkening of the sea. A vague sparkle of white sail near the ochre horizon where a yacht headed towards Patmos.
“So, Athenian policeman, you and your men knew nothing about the attack on Vassilis?”
Michales winked as he spoke, a conspiratorial wink, and raised his glass to Theodrakis.
“Stin Yassou.”
Theodrakis drank with him, noting the personal ending of the toast; Michales had come to accept him, it seemed. But the mention of Vassilis cut. Whatever his motives for guaranteeing there’d be no police guarding the Vassilis estate, it was something he would have to live with now
. Have to consider whether he could stay in the police. He sat facing the sea, not wanting to look landward at the column of smoke high above on the flanks of the mountain, over Vassilis’s demesne.
“So, will you stay on our island and make an honest woman out of Hippolyta? If you don’t, Yaya Eleni will hex you.”
He was about to reply she’d be somewhere towards the back of a long queue when he realised he was no longer looking at Michales. He was face to face with Samarakis: the dead Samarakis and death hadn’t been kind to him. He tried to scramble out of his chair but couldn’t move.
“It’s no good trying to shout out either, no one can see or hear us; they just see you and the good Captain Michales enjoying a drink together.”
He stared at the slippery, putrefying mass across the table from him and heard himself squeak like a child.
“What do you want?”
“I want to be alive, I want to be out of Hell, but it seems instead I must deliver a message to you.”
The face across the table seemed fatter, with looser jowls than Theodrakis remembered; yellowish, punctuated by dark crimson lesions like the artwork in a horror comic. Unsettlingly, a turbid dripping trail of thick viscous material was oozing onto the table. The analytical part of his brain wondered why, if they wanted to scare him, they couldn’t be more sophisticated. He felt as if he was dreaming but knew he wasn’t. The mouth opposite hung open and didn’t move as it spoke.
“You will end up in a different land: a colder, clinically violent place. Better brush up on your English.”
There was something that almost approximated to a laugh, then,
“I may be dead and in Hell, but you are the one cursed.”
The voice changed; for a moment Theodrakis heard Vassilis speaking.
“An imperceptible ripple in the universe is a cataclysm in yours; these economic and environmental disasters are just symptoms of things you have yet to diagnose. Remember Lucretius: there is always ‘something bitter which gives distress even among the flowers’. Look up, the evil is moving on.”
Theodrakis looked up; in the sky above, the Thomson Holidays plane he’d watched landing had taken off and was flying over Mount Kerkis, climbing into the violet twilight, headed for England. He looked down to ask the question he desperately needed an answer to and saw the face of Michales almost shouting across the table at him.
“Policeman, what have you been thinking that makes you ignore the woman who loves you?”
He looked up and saw Hippolyta.
”Take me home.”
Captain Michales sipped his ouzo, watching them disappear down the length of the harbour front; their arms tightly intertwined as if they imagined something might try to drag them apart. Then he got up and slowly walked to his boat to lay the nets for tomorrow’s trip.
“Could you put your seatbelt on for me, at all? Will you want any perfumes or gifts later on, at all?”
Claire looked up at the stewardess and smiled. The young woman in the seat next to her put down her copy of Heat magazine to ask what brands the plane carried, then turned to Claire and said,
“My boyfriend always gives me money for some: he’s a footbawla.”
Claire smiled encouragingly and the voice continued, trilling,
“Hiyaa, I’m Kylie, that’s a pretty necklace you’ve got. Did you get it here?”
Claire nodded.
“Thought so, it’s lovely, really unusual, like different types of ivory, looks quite old, like ethnic innit.”
Claire nodded and turned to look out of the window leaving Kylie to her iPhone. She ran her fingers across the mass of little bones surrounding her neck. It felt perfect, it was made for her; nothing had ever felt as good as this necklace, this “Throat of Ages.”
Outside, down on the mountain she could see flame, buildings were burning.
In the dark and heat below, while Captain Michales steered his boat out of the harbour mouth and Theodrakis and Hippolyta tumbled into bed, a lone dolphin disturbed the calm of the sea. Claire’s fingers played with the new bone in the necklace, the one she had added herself. It was slick, white and slippy, still smelt slightly of life but it added power. She sank blissfully into her seat as the flames on the mountain engulfed the demesne. She smiled her most beatific smile.
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”
Samos/ Bramhall 2011- 12
Map and illustration by Gaius Brown
About the Author
Nick Brown has an archaeological background and is the author of Luck Bringer and Skendleby. He lives with his wife, sons and a presence on the borders of Skendleby.
Also by Nick Brown
The Ancient Gramarye series
Skendleby
The Dead Travel Fast
The Luck Bringer series
Luck Bringer
Copyright
Published by Clink Street Publishing 2014
Copyright © 2014 Nick Brown
First edition.
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: 978–1–909477–06–3
Ebook: 978–1–909477–07–0
