The Dead Travel Fast (18 page)

“I notice that you said one perpetrator, and yet you know we have arrested multiple killers.”

“Only because your men are stupid and incompetent.”

The room was growing colder as he spoke; again Antonis turned to look behind him. Theodrakis saw he wasn’t as cocky now.

“Still, if you claim to know, why not tell me about the one who is responsible for these killings?”

“You are beginning to waste my time, Syntagmatarchis. It seems, after all, that you are a clown.”

Then he changed. His face went dead white, his eyes rolled up, staring at something that Theodrakis couldn’t see. The light flickered and went out; Theodrakis felt someone else in the room. It was freezing and smelled of decaying earth. Antonis looked terrified, his jaw locked with the mouth wide open. From somewhere within him came a voice, stentorian and distorted. It sounded far away but reverberated against the cell walls, rolling round and round trapping him in sound. It spoke direct to Theodrakis.

“Deep down in the part of your mind where fear dwells you know who I am, who I have always been. This one was not so easy to enter and will, I think, be even more damaged than the others as a result. For you, there is nowhere to run. Time has run out.”

There was an electrical smell of burning; the cell lurched like a boat in rough seas. Then, to Theodrakis’s relief, the light came back on and the temperature stabilised. Antonis reached out a hand to him. He was whimpering like a small child.

“Please, I want to go home now; I don’t like it here anymore.”

“Just answer this next question and I’ll see what I can do.”

But he never got chance to answer; there were the sounds of commotion outside and Kostandin burst into the room.

“Theodrakis, there’s been another; but not the same, it’s changing, the pattern’s changing; what’s happening? When will we wake up?”

Steve didn’t call Giles the next day, events overtook him. Handing over the bones and the responsibility lifted the sense of dread engulfing him. He parked the car outside his apartment and was fumbling for his door keys when he heard his name called. Looking round, he saw Claire outside the bar at the table by the water’s edge where he and Michales liked to sit late at night.

“Steve, I saw your car and I’ve ordered you a beer; I bet you can use one after a hot day on site.”

He thought he could use one too; she kissed him on both cheeks, as he sat down she was still holding his hand. This was unusually affectionate; he didn’t think she liked him much after he’d excavated the chamber at Skendleby and unleashed Hell.

“I’m glad to have caught you on your own, Steve, I wanted a word; we’ve been so worried about you.”

She put out a hand and stroked his cheek; he thought maybe he’d misjudged her, this was certainly the loving woman that Giles talked about, and he began to understand why his friend was so in love. Hippolyta brought the beer, smiled at Steve, ignored Claire and walked back inside.

“And I have to say, Stevie love, that I’m a bit more worried since last night. Tell me, how serious are you about that woman?”

“Alekka? I don’t really know, it’s been kind of unexpected.”

“You mean like Lisa.”

Steve didn’t want to be reminded about Lisa: of the moment
at Skendleby when she stopped kissing him and he felt her sharp teeth shredding his left ear as she brought the flint knife down into the side of his neck. He was reminded about it often enough in his nightmares. These dreams always ended at the point the black disarticulated presence came jerking out of the tree line and Lisa fled screaming in rage. So any comparison with Alekka was the last thing he wanted.

“I don’t mean she’s the same as Lisa of course, Steve, it’s just we don’t want to see you hurt again, or threatened.”

She smiled at him with her mouth and her eyes and he envied Giles the love bites. He was right, she was wonderful. If he’d met her first it would have been him with her and not Giles. The fact that he had seen her first and thought her mad he conveniently forgot. She still held his hand.

“It’s just that you haven’t got a very steady record with women have you, Stevie? And.”

She paused and it was obvious she was teetering on the brink of saying something more but stopped herself.

“You were going to say something else Claire?”

“No, it’s none of my business and I’m probably worrying over nothing.”

“But, there is a but isn’t there, come on Claire tell me.”

“I’m only saying this because we care about you Steve and not because of what the locals are saying about her. I’m sure most of that could be jealousy and I hate gossip. But I felt something when I met her last night, something bad, dark, frightening, so much so that it’s still making me shudder.”

She stopped and took a sip of her drink, looked at Steve, licked her lips and said,

“Perhaps I’ve got everything out of proportion since I conducted the exorcism on Lisa, but last night that feeling of horror returned. Alekka means you harm, Steve; I sense danger for you.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that Claire, I really like her.”

“Why are you the only one with access to the site, Steve? Which came first? That or your relationship with Alekka?”

“Alekka showed me the site the first time I met her.”

“Why do you think they waited so long to have it investigated?
Sounds like they were expecting you.”

“No, that’s not right, no way; it was the fire that uncovered the site.”

“But they knew it was there before the fire. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“So it didn’t need looking at as long as it was hidden. Remind you of somewhere else, Skendleby for instance?”

“No way.”

“Well, is there something hidden there they don’t want anyone else to see or is it just such a fantastic archaeological heritage site that they want to open it up to the island?”

Claire giggled as she said this, took another drink ran her tongue over her lips and patted Steve’s hand.

“No, it’s not a great site, hardly anything really, but something’s wrong with it. I found a secondary burial at least five thousand years old. It’s got no real context, but there’s something under it. Something much older; something too old to be there. There’s human bone from millennia before the Neolithic. If that’s in context something seriously weird is going on.”

“So what could be that old and so important that they want kept secret? And why can’t they get it themselves? I’d think long and hard about that if I were you, Stevie boy.”

“You think the same thing hasn’t occurred to me?”

“Well, perhaps you should tell me all about the site and what you’re expected to find. Better to tell me than Giles, his professional appetite could get whetted by this. I’m more objective.”

“I think that would be a relief. Thanks Claire, let me get you another drink.”

But half an hour later, after Claire had gone back up to the villa, he wasn’t sure. She’d wanted more detail on the bones than he was comfortable with. He sat on in the bar until the call he was expecting from Alekka came. He didn’t know if he wanted to see her or not, but when his mobile rang he answered eagerly.

“Steveymou, I do not want to come to your silly village, you will please meet me at the beach taverna at Limnionas in one half hour.”

Limnionas, when he arrived, was in the magical transition between daylight and twilight: twenty metres out to sea the sun
sparkled on the water while beneath the shadow of the mountain, the shallows were dark indigo. The moon was palely visible in the blue sky and the heat of the day had dissipated. It was perfect.

Alekka was sitting on the terrace watching the sea lapping the beach less than ten metres away. In denim shorts and a diaphanous white blouse, he’d never seen her so beautiful; nor had he seen her look so troubled. If Claire hadn’t warned him he was being exploited he’d have thought Alekka was vulnerable.

He padded along the beach and slipped into the seat next to her before she noticed him. She smiled, gently placed a hand behind his neck and pulled his face towards hers to be kissed. The waitress brought him a drink. Alekka had already ordered the food so he sat back with her arm still round his shoulders and they gazed out across the sea towards where the gathering twilight occluded Patmos, the island of Revelations.

In the few days that remained, Steve looked back on this night as a glimpse of what might have been. She’d arranged they were the only diners at this exquisite place and he relaxed into the vibrations of the languorous velvet night. They ate lobster, grilled squid and an unctuous fish soup, washed down with chilled Samina Gold, followed by honey cakes; serenaded by the lapping water being washed across the shingle at the sea’s edge. Every time he tried to speak she shushed him.

“Tonight is not for talk; tonight is for the beauty of this beach which has seen many things: the hero Miltiades stopped here on his way to glory at Marathon, a friend of Pythagoras was exiled here by the tyrant Polycrates. But for tonight it is ours.”

She stood up, took his hand and led him along the terrace and down to the beach. They didn’t follow the path back to the cars as he expected. Instead they followed the edge of the sea along the full curve of the bay, she in bare feet and him in the heavy work boots. Glancing back over his shoulder, their footprints in the sand looked as if they had been made by a nymph and a monster from the island’s mythical past. The bay ended where a headland covered in wild olives stuck out into the sea. The only light was from the moon, but as they drew close to the trees he could vaguely discern a light flickering through the branches.

“See that light up there, Steve? Tonight, that is ours; we will sleep amongst the ancient trees above the water.”

At the foot of the headland lay the ghost of an old path leading up from a ruined jetty into the grove. She led him along the twisting way, surefooted in the dark as the flickering light grew brighter. They entered a glade where a small single-floored villa, old enough to have walked out of the pages of a fairy tale, waited. Five steps on to a veranda with a small table on which an ancient Hellenistic oil lamp was softly glowing. In the single chamber beyond, Steve could see a large bed with crisp white sheets hung with a mosquito net.

“The net is of course for you, Steveymou, only English would need such a silly object; it was the only difficult thing to arrange.”

She slipped out of her blouse and shorts, blew out the lamp and led him to the bed.

He stirred once in the night, surprised to feel her draped around him as they slept, her skin just cool against his no longer cold. He woke again just after dawn as the sun pushed its head above the surface of the water, filling the room with rosy light. She was already up.

“Come, Steve, you smell so we will swim.”

Naked, she set off down the path and he groggily lurched after her, arriving at the crumbling jetty as she dived into the sea. He stood on the rotten planking watching her emerge from the water with the grace of a dolphin. She saw him watching and waved him in; he sloughed off his jeans and dived in. The water was cool and beautiful. Alekka swam out to sea following the contours of the headland.

He followed slowly in her wake for about ten minutes until, looking up, he saw she’d disappeared. He splashed on bewildered, becoming alarmed and almost missing a tiny rock inlet leading to a small cove with a fringe of sandy beach. Alekka sat in the shallows, concentrating on wet sand trailing through her fingers. He swam towards her. The water had a quality of translucence he’d never seen before and apart from the lapping of the water there was no sound. Naked they were like a pre-lapsarian Adam and Eve in a new and empty world. He waded up onto the beach to sit on the sand with her.

“Steve, in this sand there are tiny pearls, take some sand in your hands and see if you can find any. They could be older than any of the old pots you are so interested in.”

Steve scooped up a handful of wet sand and let it trickle through his fingers. They sat side by side filtering sand for pearls, silent and contented. Alekka found three and Steve none; soon the sun was high enough to be hot on their skin and the night fishing boats were crossing the bay on their way home to port. She stood up.

“We must go now.”

She walked into the water and he followed reluctantly; back on the jetty she put on her shorts and blouse, brushed back her wet hair and tied it with a band. It made her look young and innocent. She reached out a hand and gently stroked his cheek and gazed directly into his eyes; for a moment he thought she was going to speak a three word sentence to him. But the moment passed and instead she said,

“Steve, there are things I must do now.”

She hesitated for a moment.

“I would like to meet you this afternoon on the site on my father’s estate.”

Again she hesitated.

“Then we can go to eat somewhere and perhaps spend the night together, I hope you would like that.”

He was about to tell her he didn’t want to meet at the site, and perhaps she sensed this as she spoke before he could.

“There will be no problem, Steve, I promise you.”

She turned and lightly jumped down to the beach, shouting back over her shoulder.

“When you have finished here go to the place we ate last night, they will have breakfast for you. Five o’clock tonight and remember be punctual: German time, not Greek time.”

He sat on the jetty and watched as she receded down the beach. Later, after he’d eaten a bowl of yoghurt and local honey and was smoking a third cigarette, he still couldn’t work out what to think. He didn’t want to ever see the site again and Claire’s words still rang in his head; and yet. And yet this time with Alekka had been perfect.

By the time he clocked out of the university sometime around three, after a refreshingly uneventful day, he wanted to see her. Without knowing how, he found himself driving through the winding streets of Marathakampos. The motor stalled, jerking him to a stop outside the cafenion. In a dread of anticipation he looked towards the terrace where, to his horror, he saw Father John beckoning as if wishing to impart an urgent message. As he watched, the black robed priest flickered and faded then reappeared briefly, mouth open, desperately trying to speak. Then it was gone.

He sat in the car in shock; the engine was running and the taxi behind was hooting at him to move. He gunned the engine and drove out of town. When he reached the bypass he pulled in and cut the ignition, his heart racing. It was 4.30; somewhere he’d lost a full hour. Where had he been?

He started the car and as he drove, he remembered Tim Thompson’s letter. In particular he remembered the black draped corpselike figure that lured him to his death, and he remembered Father John.

Turning onto the track leading to the site he was dazed and confused. He saw her car and pulled in behind. As he was opening the car door it came to him in a flash that no one knew where he was: no one except Alekka and maybe Father John. He fumbled in his work bag for his mobile; it wasn’t there, and besides whom could he ring? Then he saw her. She too seemed uneasy, that morning had been so good, what was happening? She took his hand; there was an expression in her eyes he couldn’t read.

“Come quickly, Steve, there is something we must do before we can leave this place; I think neither of us wants to be here.”

This was true enough, but there was something else. The sky had a bruised and livid aspect; the waters in the bay below had darkened and begun to swell as if a storm was advancing. Above him, below the growing dark cloud, large black birds were circling.

“Come on, Steve, we must hurry.”

“Hurry, why? Alekka, what are we here for, what’s happening?”

She didn’t answer, just pulled him across the dead ground towards the mound.

“No, Alekka, what is it here you need so much?”

“Please Steve, do not ask me that, just trust me; please trust me.”