Authors: Roberta Latow
The moment Manoussos walked into the building and up the stairs to his office he was acutely aware of a changed atmosphere: the phones were ringing and men were stomping around in heavy boots. Chadwick vanished from his mind. Manoussos was a
policeman first, a man in love second. There was much excitement in the station house; several of Manoussos’s men had arrived from the remote mountain villages where they had been conducting a surveillance operation for months. Manoussos and his men had been on the trail of a ring of art smugglers who were robbing the small Byzantine churches rich in rare icons, Minoan archaeological sites and museums for the much-coveted and sought after painted vases or
amphorae,
very large ceramic
pithos,
jewellery and coins, even the much prized mosaics.
Manoussos had deduced that the way the smugglers worked was systematically to rob specific sites and then bury or hide the objects in various places around the island for long periods of time, months, years even, before they moved them. These were not farmers digging up the odd relic for a few drachmas, these were very well-organised and wealthy, extremely knowledgeable smugglers thieving most likely to order for the rich antiquities dealers and collectors in London, Paris and New York. When the hunt for the missing treasures had cooled down, only then would they move them out, most likely by boat at night, on the first leg of their journey. This was no small operation and although Manoussos and his men had known for months some of the Cretans who were involved, they had never moved on them but bided their time. Manoussos wanted not the little men but the ring leaders, and to follow their route. When the art smugglers did finally make their move with the treasures in hand and had left the island, the police chief intended to nab them once he knew their destination and before they left Greece or its territorial waters.
It was dark when Manoussos’s men left Livakia and that was only after he had treated them all to a meal at the Kavouria. They made their exit, having been briefed on the next stage of their investigation, riding on donkeys and guided by the donkey men, to the stony terrace at the top of the village. The men had not come by car: they were undercover agents pretending to be hunters and looked every bit the part with their game bags and shotguns slung over their shoulders, dressed in Cretan hunter’s gear, white leather boots and all. The donkeys would take them a few miles down the very bad crushed stone and dirt road, the only one
leading across the mountain range to Livakia, and from there they would walk the rest of the way by the bright white light of the waning moon. These were men who knew the mountains.
Manoussos had walked with them part of the way through the village and then turned back, intending to call for Chadwick, but he was joined on the path by Max. The two old friends decided to stop and have a drink together at Manoussos’s house while Manoussos bathed and changed from his uniform. Dressed in a pair of cream-coloured cords and sitting on the bed putting on his socks and shoes, Manoussos laughed with Max about Mark and his fascist theorising.
‘You would have thought he would have learned his lesson on how destructive his theories are, and downright lethal combined with his oratory. Melina is a case in point,’ said Max.
There was an awkward silence. Max and Manoussos didn’t often mention the young girl who had murdered their friend Arnold in Livakia only months before. Both men believed that she would never have killed their friend had she not been under Mark’s influence. It had been a nasty and unhappy time that had torn the community apart for a short while and no one ever spoke of it now. Max’s comment killed the moment of levity. But that soon passed and he changed the subject to Chadwick.
‘You know, you really owe me for Chadwick, Manoussos.’
‘You know, you really owe me for D’Arcy, Max.’
‘Hell, what are good friends for if not to be generous and make each other happy?’ quipped Max.
‘I am going to marry her, Max.’
‘And so, what else is new?’
‘That’s all you have to say?’
‘She’s well worth marrying. I find Chadwick as intriguing today, Manoussos, as I did that moment I walked into the restaurant and saw her for the first time. I can imagine she will be just as intriguing on your fiftieth anniversary. Have you told her yet?’
‘No, but she knows it.’
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘She comes from a different world, a different culture. To
marry a Cretan like me and live this life … I want to make sure this is what she wants as much as I do.’
Max knew Manoussos very well. They had been friends for years and had seen each other through many love affairs and one night stands. They had womanised together, hunted together, Max had piloted his sea plane for Manoussos when he was on the hunt for smugglers, they had played poker every Thursday night when Max was in residence in Livakia for the last ten years. There was more to that statement than what was said. It was not that Manoussos was unsure of his love for Chadwick, it was more that something was wrong with his love for Chadwick.
As if Manoussos knew what Max was thinking? he looked up at his friend, rose from the bed and took the shirt that Max had chosen for him and began undoing the buttons.
‘There are inconsistencies between what I know about Chadwick and her behaviour. She has a close-knit family apparently but has never made a phone call or received one from them. Not once in four months has she gone to the post office for her mail yet she claims they know where she is, and love her. She and her husband shared a great love, were sexually besotted with each other and had an adventurous, somewhat bizarre sex life, yet something she said in a moment of uncontrolled lust leads me to believe that her husband tortured her psychologically about their sexual excesses. He held back on her. She weeps with lust and passion when I come inside her. Each time it’s as if she has been set free. For me it’s bliss to be there like that, but for her it seems to be life itself as she has never known it.’
‘Why don’t you ask her what’s going on?’
‘Maybe because in my heart I think I’d better not know,
if
there is anything.’
‘You could make enquiries elsewhere. Jesus, you’re a policeman, you can manage that discreetly.’
‘Wouldn’t think of it, and don’t you either. I want your word on that.’
‘Done.’
Besides, you won’t believe this, Max, but I swear she is so enchanting that every time I see Chadwick or touch her, it’s as if
for the first time. She’s always new and fresh and original and I never know what to expect. With a woman like that, what’s to know?’
Max began to laugh and slapped Manoussos on the back. ‘You’ve got it bad.’
‘What?’
‘Love. You’re a fool in love, my friend. Join the club.’
Elefherakis Khaliadakis was an erudite, fiftyish womaniser and his adoration of women was something they could rarely resist. Former lovers were constantly turning up at his door. Chadwick was no different from those women he had loved and sent away: she found him quite irresistible to be with. He was the best of company, and hospitable, his house a constant salon of changing faces from all walks of life, interesting people, never dull. He was a master at how to mix and match people: statesmen, former kings, minor royals and actors with young and beautiful travellers: back packers out to find themselves and the world. Famous artists, writers, philosophers and art historians rubbed shoulders with a range of clever beauties, lady intellects with pretty faces and stunning bodies, expensive ladies of the night, or rugged Cretan shepherds down from the mountains who talked Greek history with Oxford dons.
He was extremely sensual; there was always a scent of sex about Elefherakis. However, he was anything but obvious about the libertine life he led behind closed doors. He was more the Cretan aristocrat with the bearing of a duke whose invitations to house-parties were hard-won.
The several-hundred-year-old, very beautifully restored family house was large and behind walls, set on a precipice at the very end of the harbour. From the sea it was a breathtaking introduction to Livakia as you rounded the headland and it and its many small courtyards and gardens came into view. It was run like all great island houses by a large, mostly invisible staff of old retainers, many of whom had known Elefherakis since he was a child. An art historian and some-time writer, he spent a great deal
of time reading when he wasn’t playing at life or cooking. He was a brilliant chef. Chadwick and Manoussos had spoken about her attraction to him which was no more than her attraction to Max, normal for a woman who was a lustful creature. One of the exciting things about being in Elefherakis’s house was the ambience. There was an air of cultivated decadence that teased the senses. Inhibitions vanished; one’s secret desires were constantly tweaked.
No one had been at all surprised, in the late-afternoon while everyone who had lunched at the Kavouria was having coffee and cakes with Elefherakis at his house, when one of his old loves came knocking at his door. She had arrived in Livakia having hitched a ride on a fishing boat making its way down the coast to its home port of Sfakia. That was how just about everyone arrived in Livakia unless you knew the very loose timetable of the vessels that made their weekly stop off at the village with the post or supplies. It was either that, if you came by water, or hire a boat. She was received by everyone enthusiastically, except for Chadwick who had never met her before.
For those first few minutes after her arrival she described most amusingly what hell it had been getting from the airport at the Chania end of the island by taxi across the mountains to Skafidia Padromi and then the drama of finding a boat. Everyone gathered around her and listened as if they had never heard or experienced the same story dozens of times, which they had. They were so attentive to Astrid that it took more than several minutes before they realised she had arrived with a man.
Not so Chadwick. Her first sight of him was shortly after Astrid Hammunson had entered the room and was engulfed by her old friends. He just seemed to arrive and stand in the doorway to the large and very grand living room, eventually to lean against the door jamb and light a cigarette. He was attractive in a quintessentially English way. Sandy-coloured hair worn on the long side, very much the English public school – Oxbridge sort of haircut. His face was handsome, expressionless, yet his eyes, dark blue and bright, were not. Chadwick immediately saw them as
observant eyes. He was a man who knew how to see things in the deeper meaning of instantly understanding. He had the same sort of understated sexuality that Laurence Hart, an Englishman and old love of D’Arcy’s who lived in Livakia when he wasn’t lecturing at Oxford. There was something about the stranger’s face, his body language, that was appealing and yet gave nothing away.
He was dressed oddly for travelling to Livakia, as if he had just stepped out of a taxi to enter his West End gentleman’s club. A Savile Row-tailored black suit with a pencil thin stripe, a white shirt open at the collar; she guessed a black silk tie with a tiny white pattern in it had been removed and was now in his pocket. Casually slung over his shoulder was a Burberry raincoat which he would most assuredly have needed to keep warm on a sail down the coast of Crete in late-afternoon in early-spring. On the floor next to him was a small well-travelled leather case. Chadwick could glean nothing from his looks. He was inscrutable.
Possibly as much as ten minutes went by before Astrid remembered that he was there and introduced him to everyone. ‘I am so sorry, I got carried away with seeing my old friends again,’ she said to the man as she walked to the doorway and, taking him by the hand, ushered him into the room.
‘Elefherakis, may I introduce you to Larry Snell? I met him in Skafidia Padromi. He too was looking for a ride down the coast. Amazingly he wanted to come here, so he actually gave me a ride.’
The two men shook hands and Elefherakis made the introductions with a short biography of each of the group: ‘Most of the people here are long-time residents – Mark’s a writer, Rachel a poet, I’m a sometime dilettante and an all-the-time lazy pleasure seeker as I am sure Astrid has already told you. How about a coffee and a sweet or would you rather have a scotch?’
Larry took the scotch whisky. He was well-spoken with an upper-class accent that went with his look and clothes. It was evident to everyone that if Astrid had returned to rekindle a romance with Elefherakis, she now had a second interest in tow.
It was, however, difficult to tell just how interested Larry Snell was in the Swedish blonde. He gave little away. Chadwick was amused to see Rachel’s compact of blusher materialise. She dusted her cheeks, wiped her tongue over her teeth to erase any trace of lipstick, and having kissed the air on either side of Astrid’s cheeks, made a bee-line for Larry Snell.
Chadwick was sitting on a settee with Elefherakis and Larry, Rachel on a cushion on the floor at their feet. They were talking about Crete. Larry appeared to be very knowledgeable about the island though he confessed that he had never been there before this visit. It never occurred to anyone to ask what he was doing here, they all assumed he, as they were, was here on a getaway of one sort or another. It simply wasn’t done to ask – expatriate courtesy, or was it traveller’s protocol? Chadwick could never quite figure out which.
‘Where are you staying?’ asked Elefherakis.
‘I’m not sure,’ came the answer.
Chadwick had not missed the glance that passed between Astrid and Elefherakis. It was evident that she would have liked Elefherakis to invite Larry to stay with them but dare not ask. Chadwick picked something up that was happening between the three, Larry, Elefherakis and Astrid. A sex scene? Astrid wanted them both and both men knew it, liked it, and were considering it. There was something so very sexy and decadent about their intentions. Not a word had been said, hardly a look had passed between them to suggest such a thing … and yet it was there, explicitly so. The very thought of Astrid’s being held by one man as the other had her was thrilling. Chadwick had been there many times: two, sometimes three men at the same time had been part of her and Hannibal’s sex life. His insistence on it had brought her untold pleasure, had satisfied his need to see her in lust and orgasm, and assuaged his guilt of depriving her of being awash with his seed, that vaginal orgasm she so craved to have with him and he had refused her. He had explained his sense of guilt so many times to her. His anxiety for lusting after his adopted daughter. But still his rejection pained her. Chadwick fantasised for a few seconds about the sex and outrageous lust that the three
might generate for one another. It made her hot and bothered for Manoussos. He had no problems about brushing her womb with his come.
‘You’re welcome to stay here in the house with us,’ invited Elefherakis.
And there it was. For the first time since Chadwick had seen Larry Snell standing in the door, a window into this man opened. Lust came into the steady, passive blue eyes but instead of training them on Astrid they focused on Chadwick. He answered Elefherakis but his words were for her. ‘That’s very generous of you but I have someone to see before I can accept. Why don’t I do that now? May I leave my bag here? I won’t be long.’ Before anyone could say a word, Larry smiled and was on his feet and making for the door.
Chadwick was used to men wanting her. It sometimes excited her lust. Men lusting after her had always been a way of life for her. Sometimes she liked it more than other times; this was one of the more times. Manoussos knew some of her sexual history, he would understand – that is if she were to tell him.
It was dusk, very nearly dark, when Larry closed the gate to Elefherakis’s house and walked down the steep path to the harbour. The port and the quay were busy getting ready for the evening: lights being turned on, tables laid at the Kavouria, coffee shops open and the tric-trac boards ready for play. The boats were secured for the night and a string of donkeys was waiting on the quay, their keepers sitting on rickety wooden chairs having a drink and talking politics. He walked along the quay, unable to get Chadwick Chase out of his mind.
Larry had recognised her at once from the many photographs he had seen of her, from the interviews he had had with Warren Chase and his sister Diana Chase Ogden, Andrew Coggs Senior and his son Andrew Junior. Dr Bill Ogden’s, Diana’s husband’s, interview now came to mind because though the others insisted that they only wanted proof that Chadwick had had nothing to do with the sudden death of Hannibal Chase, it had been Dr Ogden who had declared outright he was against the investigation, that Chadwick was incapable of harming Hannibal but Hannibal was
not incapable of harming her. He had strongly advised that Diana and Warren were opening a can of worms – the very private sex life that his children knew nothing about was better left sealed. His inference was that they might learn more than they might want to know.
Larry Snell rarely acted as an operative for his company. A case had really to attract his interest: a firm of strait-laced, ultra-conservative WASP American lawyers such as Chambers, Lodge, Dewy & Coggs hiring a private investigation firm to enquire into the death of Hannibal Chase and the movements of Chadwick Chase, his widow, whom the family believed might have murdered their father, had certainly been interesting. But it had been one brief glance at a close-up photograph of the suspect that had made it intriguing enough for Larry to take on the commission personally.
He stopped walking and leaned against a boatbuilder’s workshop, slipped into his Burberry, lit a cigarette and watched the port coming alive with people drifting down from their houses. He thought of those interviews in New York, a world away from this place, and how the Chase brother and sister were forcing this investigation on two counts: to break the will their father had cut them out of, and to satisfy their belief that their father had not died a natural death. All that in spite of the fact that they had loved, admired and respected Chadwick Chase, their once adoptive sister, and though more than a decade younger than themselves, the step-mother they had admitted had been their best friend and who had loved their father utterly and faithfully.
Larry had conducted his interviews with his clients once as a group and then individually. It was his private interview with Bill Ogden that had fascinated him. It gave him a clue as to what had really happened to Hannibal Chase. Those interviews in New York had also painted a portrait of Chadwick Chase that had first teased his mind and then slowly drawn him towards her. Gathering a portfolio of information on Chadwick and her life with Hannibal had taken real sleuthing and proved to be time well spent. Bill Ogden had been right: the family were going to have some shocks about dear old dad to deal with.
Chadwick Chase … she had the answer as to what really happened, the how and why Hannibal had died so suddenly. Larry was in Livakia to spy on her so he could finish his report. It hadn’t been all that difficult to track her down as having been living somewhere in Crete these last four months; exactly where had been marginally more difficult, at some point she’d begun covering her tracks. Why? He didn’t much like playing the operative again, but he was so besotted by Chadwick and her life that more often than not it felt less like being a detective and more like chasing after an elusive creature you were out to snare for your own pleasure.
Astrid had been a find, a diversion. She had what a friend of his called a ‘fuck me for fun, the ecstasy, the trip, and so long, big boy’, attitude and that kind of sexual diversion was just what was needed. So he had gone along with her to Elefherakis’s house, never expecting Chadwick to be very nearly the first person he would meet on landing in Livakia. The only thing that he did expect was that he would want to fuck Chadwick Chase. One look across a room and he knew his expectations were correct: she had a most unusual and provocative sexual charisma.
Larry Snell had been around, seen and done intriguing work for most of his life. He was a former MI5 man who left the service at the top of his career to form a specialist private detective agency with his American CIA equivalent. The partners were well matched in age, in their late forties, and personality. Their minds worked in the same way and they made excellent workmates, dealing with the top of the market in clandestine investigations for private individuals as well as governments.
Snell & Martin had offices in New York, London and Paris and was a powerful name in that very secret world such agencies worked in. The Chase investigation was not exactly their sort of case but Hank Martin felt obliged to take it on; his father-in-law was Alfred Chambers, a senior partner in the firm of Chambers, Lodge, Dewy & Coggs. He had been surprised and amused when going over the agency’s case load, as the partners did once a month, to find that Larry had taken on the Chase file and wanted to handle it himself. He said he needed a change but Hank had
known him for too long: Larry obviously liked the idea of a beautiful and mysterious murderess who would never come to trial or be punished if indeed she did do it. Scandal was always to be avoided with the old guard.