The Dead Travel Fast (7 page)

Later, showered and changed, Steve joined the party in the garden as below them the burnished red sun sunk into the waters of the Aegean. The gardens were lit by candle lanterns and two sheep were turning on spits. He took a glass of champagne offered by one of the servants and set off to find Alekka. Before he could, he was called over to join a group that included Dougie, Toggers and others from the team whose nicknames he couldn’t remember and got stuck in a bantering conversation which revolved around money, cars and golf: none of which Steve either had or could play. Then a gong sounded loudly and he followed them through a gap between two trees into the far garden where a long table, able to seat the sixty-odd of them, was laid.

Above, on a natural rock projecting out of the mountain, a young woman dressed in an ancient Greek Peplos with an olive circlet holding her hair, played a great harp. This time he was not seated near Vassilis and it occurred to him that this was because Antonis seemed to resent him, so he sat amongst the cricketers eating, drinking and feeling the enjoyable post match lassitude he remembered from his cricketing past. He was not anxious about Alekka. He just knew that at the right time she would come for him; and she did, dancing out of nowhere as fruit and liqueurs were being passed around.

By this time several of the party had drifted off to wander in the gardens and along the paths above the sea. Alekka looked at him, held out her hand; he got up and took it, and they walked away from the candlelit table into the darkness of the trees and the sound of the harp faded behind them.

“Come walk with me, Steveymou, and I will show you my favourite place on this island where no one will disturb us. But you must promise not to talk about how well you played that stupid game.”

Shortly, after the lights faded behind them, they heard a disturbance and the sound of a woman moaning in either pain or pleasure in the grove to their left. Alekka tugged at his hand pulling him towards a path leading in the direction of the sea.

“That woman, the wife of Dougie, shames him and all you English; if she was one of us things would be done.”

Steve said nothing as she led him further into the darkness.
After a while he realised they’d begun to climb a steep gradient. There was a change in the feel of the air as they walked out from the cover of the trees and the sea lay moonlit hundreds of feet below. They’d emerged into a natural arbour in the cliff; a small gently sloping patch of grass perched high up flanked by sheer slabs of rock.

“I have loved this place all through time, this place is for me only, yet tonight I share it with you.”

Under normal circumstances he might have wondered about the phrase ‘all through time’ but tonight he felt that, having been tested on the cricket field, this was his reward. The place was magical, away from the world and for a while they stood together in the perfect stillness looking out across the glimmering Aegean. He could smell her perfume, hear the rustle of the thin material of her dress when she moved, and feel the place where their hips touched and her sweet breath kissed his face.

He waited for her and after a time that could have been seconds or hours she turned to him, as he had expected, and put her arms round his neck pulling his face towards hers. The kiss, soft at first, then urgent, sucked him in. Her tongue and gently biting teeth teased and excited him and his hand slipped down to her buttocks feeling the firm flesh beneath the thin material. She began to move her hips and press against him and he knew what would follow.

But it didn’t. Suddenly she stiffened and pulled away.

“Steve, we must go to my father now, he needs to see you.”

Strangely, despite his frustration and the lack of logic, he knew she was genuine and as sorry as he was they’d had to stop. She took his hand and they walked back through the woods to the house. Vassilis was in his study sitting within the narrow cone of light from an antique lamp; the rest of the room was shrouded in dark but Steve felt the presence of other people in the room he couldn’t see. Vassilis called him over and gestured for him to sit.

“I am sorry, Doctor Watkins, but your stay must be cut short, there are things on the island which demand my urgent attention.”

Steve could not stop himself blurting out,

“What things?”

Vassilis was not used to being questioned as Steve knew, but he
answered him patiently in the manner of one explaining something to a child.

“This might surprise you but as yet we do not know; fire is near, it is circling as if dancing with these killings. Something is changing, changing irreversibly.”

While he said this, Steve sensed a movement in the darkness and the creak of wooden floorboards told him that someone was leaving the room. He turned to look and saw a shadowy figure move towards the door; he was certain it was Antonis. The figure joined hands with Alekka and together they left the study.

“Don’t worry, you will see her again soon; all I can tell you is that this in your best interest, it is better that you do not stay here tonight, think of it as being a precaution that we are taking, as caring hosts, for your safety.”

Steve started to speak but Vassilis raised a pudgy hand to silence him.

“Believe me, there are things you have no wish to see, you are a stranger and do not understand what transpires. Perhaps you have a part to play; but not yet I think. I will explain no more. Change, you see, can only be understood in retrospect. Are you familiar with the 17th century Japanese master Basho? No, I thought not, this quote is as close as I can get to your purpose.

“Now Dieter will drive you home.”

Steve turned and saw the shaven-headed driver standing behind him, though he’d heard no sound. Dieter motioned him to follow and as Vassilis turned back to his desk he saw the sepulchral figure of Father John emerge from the gloom and move to join him. Not a word was exchanged on the journey, which passed like a dream. In his apartment he saw his phone had a voice message waiting for him. He hoped it was Alekka and retrieved it.

“Hi, Steve, it’s Giles. I can’t explain on the phone but Claire and I have to see you, we’ll be on the first available flight either
Monday or Thursday. There’s something else, I don’t suppose you get much news over there. Tim Thompson is dead; killed in Nice, the circumstances are unclear. Listen, Steve, I think you need to be careful OK? See you soon.”

Steve slumped onto the sofa and sat in the silence, and then he rummaged in his workbag and took out the unread letter from Tim Thompson.

At least it was cool in the police morgue. Lucca drew the sheet back over the body to give it some sense of decency, he felt sick, knew he shouldn’t, knew it was meant to be part of the job. But what he’d had to examine, eviscerate and reconfigure these last few months wasn’t what he had signed up and left Italy for.

This one was the worst: one of their own; it made it too personal, too close to home. The thought of home made him grimace; this stuff, these mutilated unresting dead came home with him and filled his dreams. Made him not want to touch his wife or small children with his slender-fingered hands, no matter how hard he scrubbed them in the lab sink at the end of each day.

This one was extra pressure; every cop on the island needed him to find some evidence that would let them nail the bastard who was doing it. Before, they had wanted to nail him of course, but now they all felt threatened. To kill the others was bad enough but they’d been strangers, in fact some of them had been foreigners, tourists, and the way some of them walked about the place it was almost like they had been asking for it.

But this was a cop: it could have been any one of them lying on that table, under that sheet with an identification tag on their big toe, while back in darkened houses their wives, mothers and children wailed and mourned. It didn’t matter that it was a cop none of them had liked: now he was dead he was their brother, and this bastard who had done these terrible things to his body might now have them in his sights. Whatever the political bosses
might say the old women had got it right; he had risen and now he moved among them spreading his contagion.

This one wasn’t the same in another respect too, it had been butchered differently; just as horrible but the pattern of killing and harvesting was horridly dissimilar. Perhaps it was meant to send an alternative message, or worse, perhaps it was a different thing doing the killing. The word ‘thing’ came to his mind more easily than man or person, as Lucca couldn’t envisage how a human being could do such things. How could a human being take so much care, expend such patience and time over these works of horror?

He heard the door of the morgue lab open and a pale man in an elegant suit came in.

“Syntagmatarchis Theodrakis, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I’ve no doubt of that, you probably expected that I was still in for questioning. However even the police authority on this island is not stupid enough to think for a moment that I was involved in this; there’s no evidence and whatever else they think of me, they credit me with some intelligence.”

“So, it’s still your case then?”

“Unfortunately yes. I can’t put it off any longer, you’d better show him to me.”

Lucca pulled back the sheet and waited as Theodrakis looked over the body. He pulled a scented handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his mouth and signalled to Lucca to replace the sheet.

“He looks more frightening dead than he did alive, how could such a bull of a man allow this to happen to him? Lucca, would you mind if we discussed this somewhere else? I don’t think I can do it in here with him lying there like that.”

Lucca replaced the sheet and they walked to the door and as he reached to turn off the light Theodrakis said,

“No, leave it on, he shouldn’t be alone in there with the dark.”

After that Theodrakis didn’t speak again until they were some distance away from the building; they walked towards Lion Square where there was a selection of coffee houses and cafes. Theodrakis stopped at the first table of the first bar and asked the waiter who was sitting reading a paper for two large Samos brandies.

“Listen Lucca, I need one of these and I’m not drinking alone, when he comes back I’ll ask for some coffee.”

The waiter appeared with two tall glasses with an inch of the sweet sticky liquid in the bottom of each, Theodrakis picked his up with a shaky hand, drank half with one swallow and ordered two more and two espressos.

“Drink your brandy, you’ve got a lot of talking to do. I need to know how this one was different and your conclusions, if any, on what it signifies.”

Lucca took a sip of the brandy and felt it burn its way down his throat. The only conclusions came from a nightmare, but he had some nevertheless. First he asked a question of his own: one that had been worrying at him for some time.

“What about the bones? What does he do with the bones? Where does he put them?”

“Go on, expatiate.”

“Well, on each body, even Samarakis, bones are taken, carefully removed, mainly long bones from the left hand side of the body. Some are relatively easy to get at but others take skill and precision, five from each body except Samarakis where I think he was either short of time or felt the body was not important enough to warrant so much effort. Why take these bones? If it’s a message it’s one no one understands. Why haven’t we found any of them? Does he keep them and if he does, where? There are a lot of bones from five bodies and that’s only the ones we know about.”

He reached for his coffee and as he raised it to his lips caught a glimpse of the square; the small group of ragged men standing over at the far side by the National Bank had increased in number. These days Greeks struggled to find work but it was much harder for the immigrants, particularly the illegals. He sensed Theodrakis getting impatient, so continued.

“Listen, hear me out before you say anything, but it’s not only what was taken from Samarakis: it’s the way it was done. Have you considered that there might be more than one killer?”

Theodrakis rinsed the brandy round his mouth before answering.

“That makes no sense at all; we have a series of extreme murders with no precedent, no motive, nothing, so it’s hardly likely that
someone else has suddenly hit upon the same idea for killing. That would stretch coincidence beyond credulity, don’t you think? And it can’t be a copycat murder because, for obvious reasons, we’ve not released any of the details of how the murderer operates.”

“I know how it sounds, but I’m certain that whoever butchered Samarakis is not the same person who killed the others. In my business you recognise the patterns, the way the knife was used. The way the cuts were made are all different, for instance all the others were done by someone using the knife in the right hand; this one was left handed.”

Lucca felt relief at having shared this dreadful suspicion with someone else and hoped that Theodrakis would have some logical explanation to prove him wrong. He swallowed the dregs of his cold coffee and noticed that the group of men in the square was still growing, some were shouting. Theodrakis asked him,

“What about the weapon, the knife, was that different too?”

“All the bodies could have had different blades used on them, but if you mean was it a flint blade like the others then I’m pretty sure it was.”

“That’ll give the archaeologists a field day, I can just see the headlines: ‘Stone Age man alive and well on Greek island’, although looking round this place perhaps it’s not so strange.”

He said this without a trace of humour, just bitterness. He turned to look at Lucca and softened his tone.

“I hope you’re wrong. The victims weren’t connected as far as we can establish and there’s no indication of any sexual element. So why would two people on a quiet island suddenly start killing strangers and mutilating their bodies with Stone Age technology?”

“Are you sure that the intention was to mutilate? The careful way it was done is more like ritual than frenzy. It’s not only the cutting; the tearing of the left ear lobes is common to them all.”

“You think this is some type of religious craze or something? Maybe we should bring all the priests in for questioning.”

“I’m only observing what is put before me, Syntagmatarchis, you’re the detective.”

He got no further; there was a sudden increase in shouting and the sound of breaking glass at the far end of the square. They
got to their feet and saw that the ragged men had been joined by younger ones dressed in black with scarves covering their faces. They were throwing stones at the bank and there was smoke. People in the square scattered as the group began to smash the windows of parked cars. Theodrakis could see a number of political banners being waved alongside the black anarchist flag. He took Lucca by the arm.

“The uniform boys can deal with this; let’s get out of here before it gets nasty.”

The disturbance in the square slowed the traffic on the busy dual carriageway to a standstill. Picking their way between the crawling cars and stepping over the wilting bushes of the central reservation, they reached the far side and walked through the thin strip of car park until they reached the sea wall that stretched to the deep water births of the ferry port. They leaned back against the wall and Lucca fumbled for a cigarette; across the road in the square the rioters, having made their mark, dispersed and the traffic began to move again. No police had arrived.

Looking down, Theodrakis saw the asphalt paving was cracked. It was a deep crack about ten centimetres wide stretching several hundred metres; through it, he could see the sea sloshing about beneath his feet undermining the foundations of the sea wall and the road. A metaphor for the island, for Greece, and for him in particular.

A small group of black clad anarchists walked across the road and passed them, talking cheerfully; they’d removed the scarves and bandannas from their faces and looked like any other students. Theodrakis thought of challenging them but immediately changed his mind; what would be the point? He was shaken out of his internal communion by Lucca.

“There’s something else, Samarakis was killed the night you and he clashed on the police steps. He directed the investigations until you were sent from Athens. I’m certain he wasn’t killed by the creature we’re looking for, I think it was a copycat murder, the only people who know anything about the method of the murders are cops and politicians and not many of them. Do you really think there’s no connection between one of us and the killings?”

“That’s just wild talk, Lucca, even if you’re right about another killer; it doesn’t fit with any of our lines of investigation. From what you’ve said there must be a deal of DNA evidence.”

“So, you do have some leads, do you? That’s a relief. I don’t want to have to work on any more bodies like these. With regards to the DNA, the results are held up somewhere in the system, I’ll chase them up. I’d better get back; I’ll have a full report for you later. Thanks for the drinks.”

Theodrakis watched him go. He didn’t have any leads, didn’t have a clue. He just felt homesick and down. Staring at the ferries and cruise ships made it worse; they were going to leave the island today, he couldn’t even imagine when he would be able to go. He watched the surface of the sea shifting and shimmering for a while then made his way back to the bar.

Some time later, he called in to the central police station to check if anything had happened in his longer than expected absence. It hadn’t, and apart from a few sullen stares he received from old stagers who had been cronies of Samarakis he was ignored as usual, but as he was leaving the building Costas on the desk called him back.

“Syntagmatarchis Theodrakis, the old man was back today, he asked for you.”

“Which old man?”

“You know the confessor, he owns up to all the crimes committed on the island and lots that aren’t. He’s already owned up to one of the murders.”

“Presumably he came to confess to the murder of inspector Samarakis then.”

“No, that was the strange thing; he was quite agitated about that. He said he didn’t want that one pinned on him. He said some kind of imposter had done that. Talking about killing the boss got some of the lads a bit worked up and I had to step in before he got roughed up too much. As I was putting him out, he said he wanted to see you to prove he hadn’t killed the boss: he said this killing had been different and he could tell you how.”

“And you didn’t think to keep him here till I got back?”

“Keep him here? It’s obvious you’ve never been close enough to smell him, Sir, anyway he’s gone in the head but harmless.”

Theodrakis was sure Costas was right, but then how could the old man know it was a different style of killing?

“Smell or not, have him pulled in and this time let me know.”

He walked back to his lodgings, picking up a copy of the local paper on the way. He read it eating the mountainous and sticky macaroni pie his landlady had made earlier for his dinner and reheated. There were two main stories: the killing of Samarakis and fires. Fires that the paper suspected were being started deliberately, to further damage the island which had already suffered at the hands of the bankers. Even a rationalist and cynic like Theodrakis was infected by threat and paranoia after he finished reading. Still, it was good copy for the paper and tomorrow they’d have the disturbance in Lion Square for a front page.

That night he dreamt the dream of the woman with the thick black hair again, and this time it was more frightening than erotic. He tried to blame it on the macaroni but it disturbed him, she seemed too real. He turned on the light and tried to read but couldn’t concentrate so he opened the window and stared out into the night.

He thought of the waitress and wished he’d had the resolution to go back and see her the second night. He wondered if she’d been disappointed. It was near morning when he got to sleep and he didn’t sleep for long as he was woken at first light by a roaring sound above him. He groped his way to the window to see helicopters passing overhead. His landlady must have heard him because she shouted up,

“Syntagmatarchis Theodrakis, it has come. Fire, they say all the other side of the island is ablaze, we have truly been cursed.”