A Darker God

by Barbara Cleverly

  Thetis opened her eyes wide, then shook her head in evident puzzlement.

  The sound of a cheerful rendering of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” on the stairs made them freeze with dismay and indecision. Gunning came in and shot a look at the silent pair, noting that they took an unnecessary two steps away from each other on his entrance. “Ah!” he said, raising his eyebrows, “this is where I leave in haste, having scribbled a note: Vicar called. Sorry to have found you out.”

  “No, Gunning. It’s a case of offering the other cheek. Here it is. Take a swing.”

  “Good Lord, man! What are you on about? And please put your ugly mug away. I’ve seen enough of it for a lifetime.” He looked at them steadily, the good humour fading from his face. “Now—which one of you is going to tell me where Letty is?”

  “Not your fault, Montacute. Nor Letty’s, most probably.” Gunning glanced at his watch and spoke swiftly, his voice tense but positive. “I’m not going to blame her. She does take risks, but always well-calculated ones. If she’s been snatched, it must have been done with some skill. And you say she’s got her Webley with her? Could do more harm than good. And it’s very likely this Gunay, we’re saying? Seems quite a leap … but where else do we have to jump? Tell me what steps you’ve taken …”

  He listened without interrupting to the inspector’s recital, then: “Now, a minute’s quiet planning is worth more than a week’s thoughtless dashing about, Letty always says. Roadblocks are going up, but we’re half an hour behind them at least. And it’s a Sunday … officers not at their desks, cars being serviced … you’ll have a job to get anything like a useful level of response. They’re well out of Athens by now. The other centres will be alerted? Corinth? Piraeus? North of here, what have we? Delphi? Marathon? Oh, Lord—Thessalonike, if you keep going long enough. Your chaps have details of the car they’re using? Cream Delage, isn’t it? No one will be particularly concerned that a foreign girl’s gone off for a jaunt in a jazzy motorcar with a gentleman. Happens every Sunday.”

  “That’s how they’ll see it,” the inspector admitted. “Probably stop them and sell them an ice-cream cornet.”

  “Montacute, I’m assuming the worst possible intentions behind this disappearance. And this is a pretty weird sort of bloke we’re contemplating … I’m trying to put myself into his skin … We have to think he’s going to kill her and dump the body. His first thought was a cliff top at Eleusis. That sets his style. Simple. Dramatic. Undetectable. But he’s a devious villain—clever enough to get hold of Letty, and she’s not easily deceived … I’m thinking that he’s thinking we’ll cross that scenario off our list. And he seems to be a bloke who has to get his own way. He won’t have enjoyed being thwarted—and by a woman—made to look foolish in front of his men. One of them injured … He’ll want to win the last trick. With a flourish. ‘This is how you do it, boys!’ he might even be saying at this moment.” Gunning frowned, wriggling his way down into the criminal depths of an unknown man’s mind.

  They waited to hear his conclusion.

  “Look, Montacute, you may think this sounds a bit mad, but—what would you say to zipping off to Eleusis when Philippos gets here with the car? That’s where we should direct our firepower. He’s going to get it right this time. Cock a snook. He’s taken her to Eleusis.”

  Montacute nodded grimly. He seemed to be aware of what the suggestion had cost Gunning, whose every instinct must have been to put himself in the front line, dash off instantly, and carry out his own plans.

  They all started on hearing a car hoot by the front door. Montacute paused long enough to say decisively: “That’s Philippos! Agreed, then. I’ll go westwards, on the Eleusis road. The port and the southerly exits will be covered. Possibly not the east—leads nowhere. But then, that may be what he’s looking for … a road going nowhere …” He hesitated for a moment. “Why don’t you get the Dodge out and see what you can see along the Sounion road, Gunning?”

  “Good idea.”

  The words were crisply delivered but they rang hollow. They avoided each other’s eyes, each aware that there were no good ideas left to them, merely futile time-occupying schemes. But if the troops are agitated, give them a channel for their agitation.

  As the inspector clattered down the stairs, Thetis and Gunning exchanged anguished looks.

  “Letty has some regard for him, you know. And so have I. If anyone can find her, he will,” Thetis murmured. “But—Sounion! End of the world! Frightening place! I’m coming with you, William.”

  “No. No. You stay here by the telephone, Thetis.”

  “Then at least give her my good news when you find her, William. And you will find her—hang on to that! Wait a minute … I’ll run down to the garage with you and tell you the news as we go.”

  It had all taken so long. Gunning had fumed as he hurried around the corner to the garage, butting against the tide of noisy worshippers turning out of church. He’d cursed as the car failed to start, had forced himself to breathe deeply when he was held up at a crossroads. He only began to cease gnashing his teeth when he was at last out on the open road.

  No easy progress here either, though. He’d taken the road to Sounion, following the rocky spine down the centre of the promontory. Skirting round the bleak bulk of Mount Hymettus, he had expected the road to be empty but after a few minutes, when he spurred the car up to twenty miles an hour, he had to rein it in to negotiate a file of mules laden with firewood, a herd of sheep, and several black-clad old ladies with supercilious stares, riding sidesaddle on donkeys and determined to keep him from overtaking. He was on a wild-goose chase but activity, almost any activity, was the only response to his tension and he couldn’t stop. He pressed on, heart-sickeningly certain that Laetitia was lost to him. He was tempted to pull off the road and offer up a quiet prayer but dismissed the corrosive old superstition as a weakness.

  He pulled off the road anyway to calm himself and check the distance on the map. He sat watching as a herd of silky black goats poured past him. Big and muscular, they raised their heads to stare at him with mad amber eyes. They buffeted the car, they scratched it with their horns, all deliberately done, he was sure. They went on their way, resenting his foreign presence in his stinking modern machine. He breathed in with relief when the last one had gone by. A trace of their feral odour lingered, laced with the scent of herbs they had crushed under their hooves. He moved away from the car and sat with his back to it, hearing nothing now but the distant call of a shepherd boy, echoed close at hand by the desolate cry of a meadow pipit. The countryside had turned into a garigue of low scrub starred with golden crocuses and autumn cyclamens. To left and right, where the land dipped down into a valley bottom, he caught glimpses of a dark blue sea.

  A sea which pounded itself into foam at the foot of sheer cliffs. Cliffs which stretched for mile after desolate mile. Would he catch sight of her body? What had she been wearing? He had no idea. It was well over an hour since she’d disappeared. Time enough to reach the headland. There was nothing he could achieve now. He was alone and adrift with his loss and grief. He plucked a small pink flower he didn’t recognise. Persephone had been plucking flowers when she was snatched away by Hades. And her mother, Demeter, had been struck down by sorrow, but she had roused herself and travelled the world, shouting, fussing, demanding that her daughter be restored to her.

  Gunning got up and went to the car. There was a frivolous little silver flower holder in the back, he remembered, for the delectation of the passengers. He filled it with water from the flask he’d thought to throw onto the backseat before he left and popped the flower into it. Well, it was no gardenia, but he resolved to give it to Letty when he found her.

  He looked up on hearing a donkey’s hooves clipping along the stony road surface. A solitary man smoking a cigarette and coming towards him from the direction of Sounion stopped to peer inquisitively at him. They exchanged greetings and the man threw his cigarette butt away. Gunning politely stamped it int
o the dust and then, on impulse, took his packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered them. The stranger got off his donkey and took one with a smile of thanks, and they puffed amiably together for a moment.

  “Car broken down?” the man asked.

  “No. I’m out hunting,” Gunning improvised. “Couldn’t help me locate my quarry, could you, I wonder?”

  “What are you after? There’s not much up here in this scrub … a few rabbits … partridge or two …”

  “No, I’m hunting a person … I’m guessing you’re a family man?” he said tentatively.

  “Wife and six kids!” came the proud reply.

  “Daughters?”

  “Two. Fourteen and twelve.”

  “Then you’ll understand. I’m chasing after my daughter. My eldest. And silliest. She’s a total innocent and she’s run off with a bloke I don’t approve of. Old enough to be her father … twice married … total wastrel … perverted idiot. But one of those city smooth talkers—you know? They took off on this road, according to my neighbours. But so far no sign of them. They may be in a cream-coloured Delage.”

  The man thought for a moment and shook his head. “Fancy car. They know how to turn a girl’s head! Nothing like that on the road this morning. Are you sure they’ve not headed for Vouliagmeni? A man and a girl? That’s where all the nonsense goes on … Take the road to the right when you get to Markopoulo. It’s not far. No, the only motor that’s come past me on the road is a taxi. Out from Athens with a party of tourists.”

  “Taxi? Tourists? How many tourists?”

  “Well, two and the driver.”

  “Two passengers?”

  “Two. Man and a woman in the back. Sitting close together. The man had a hat on, the woman didn’t. Fair hair.” He looked suspiciously at Gunning’s dark head. “Nothing like you.”

  “She takes after her mother. That’s my Anna! How long ago was this?”

  The man looked at Gunning blankly and then at the sky.

  “You’re a smoker,” said Gunning. “How many cigarettes since you passed the taxi?”

  The man grinned and showed his pack. “Five,” he announced.

  “An hour and a quarter?”

  The man nodded in agreement.

  Gunning ground out his cigarette and clapped the stranger on the shoulder. “Thank you! I may be in time!”

  “Give her hide a good tanning!” called the man as Gunning fired up the engine again. “And as for the bloke—you’d do well to …”

  Gunning was glad his Greek didn’t stretch as far as understanding the anatomically precise details of the advice so cheerily given, but he acknowledged the helpful spirit in which it was delivered with a wave as he let in the clutch and moved off.

  “I may be in time!” he’d said. It had been a polite and convincing leave-taking. He didn’t believe it. An hour and fifteen minutes ago they’d had ten miles further to travel. Even if he pushed the car along recklessly down this rough road, risking overheating and burst tyres, when he reached the headland they would still have had plenty of time to … He refused to contemplate the scene, setting his brain instead to work out speeds and distances. He came up with the same conclusion each time he ran the calculation. If his worst nightmare came true, they would be returning from the headland, just the two men in a taxi, and he would meet it head-on just this side of Markopoulo.

  He smiled grimly and accelerated. Head-on is exactly how he planned to meet them.

  Chapter 37

  Good. We have the place to ourselves. I thought before we inspect the temple we’d first go to the edge and look over the two-hundred-foot drop into the Aegean.”

  “Stun the sacrificial victim with a further show of the horrors on offer? No, thank you. I’m going nowhere near the edge. I’m not dressed for a cliff-top ramble.” Letty glanced down at her Sunday-morning-at-leisure outfit: espadrilles on her feet—canvas confections that wouldn’t last two minutes scrambling over a stony headland studded with thornbushes—baggy Chanel lounging pants in a fashionable shade of ultramarine, white blouse. Her body would be a long time crashing about in the foam before anyone noticed.

  They strolled arm in arm away from the parked taxi, two tourists looking about them, enjoying the solitude and the staggering beauty of the scene. Letty gestured at the car. “Not bringing the lad along on this educational jaunt?” She was trying to hold down her panic and, by adopting a cheerfully unconcerned approach, thought she might even lead him into a more rational frame of mind. If she started to scream and run about he’d put a bullet in her in seconds. And every second counted. They’d surely known for over an hour now that she was missing. Maria had seen her go off with this man. Montacute was on his way. So was Gunning. They could only be minutes behind. She kept herself from looking back down the Athens road. She must do nothing to increase the pressure on him.

  “He takes no interest in the past. He is young.”

  “Mmm … not quite house-trained yet. I had thought so. Look—you clearly have things to confide. Why don’t we go and sit in the middle of the temple floor? The views through the columns are so beautiful. And, do you know? I’ve never been here before in the morning. Always at sunset.”

  Surrounded by an expanse of white marble, she and Gunay would offer a clearer target to a police marksman firing from a distance, she reckoned. With a bit of luck they’d have sent Harry. She would take care to sit as far as possible from her companion if he acceded to her suggestion.

  He did.

  She settled with her legs by her side, ready to spring up and dash to cover when the chance arose. “Now, Mr. Gunay, I hate to start at the end of any story. Why don’t you begin at the beginning? It all goes back to Andrew meeting you in Salonika, doesn’t it? Don’t pull that face! You know you’re going to tell me. Because none of this makes any sense at all unless you tell someone what’s on your mind. Does that young oaf in the car have any appreciation of what you’re trying to achieve? No. Well, I may not approve, but at least I’ll understand. What on earth did Andrew do to cost him his life, that of his wife, who never knew you, and, potentially, me? Three lives? Is that the value you choose to put on the contents of the funeral chest?”

  “Ah … it’s surfaced again, has it?”

  Surprised that he was so little moved by her mention of the box, she enlarged: “For a moment. It’s gone straight back underground again, I’m afraid. But at least it’s very safe. It’s in a bank vault. We realised it was not what it at first appeared …”

  He nodded. “Gold. Wouldn’t fool anyone for longer than a second. My father-in-law painted it.”

  “Is that what you’re after? Look, Gunay: It was left to me. I’m willing to trade—my instant and safe return to Athens against the box and contents. You have my word that I’ll make the arrangements for transfer as soon as the bank opens tomorrow morning. How about it?”

  “I have learned the value of an Englishman’s word!” he sneered. “This is not the arrangement I am seeking. Money does not interest me. I am not a rich man but I have sufficient for my needs and the needs of my family.”

  “What are you seeking?”

  “Justice. A life for a life. Three lives for three innocent lives, and one above all for a nation’s pains,” he whispered.

  “Not sure I quite understand you. Are you going to tell me the names of the three innocents, Mr. Gunay?” She asked it quietly.

  “My wife, my daughter, and my son.”

  “Where did they die?”

  “On the Bosphorus. A refugee transport ship. Bad crossing.” The words were coming slowly from him. “Many died from malnutrition on the way. The water was bad. And then disease broke out. Almost everyone died. We were not allowed to land until it had run its course, for fear of its spreading to the rest of the population. We were anchored, helpless, in torment, on a ship of death. The few remaining of the thousand who had started the journey ministered to the dying and threw their bodies overboard. I could not save my family. My Kater
ina, my Adriana, my Andreas. I watched them sinking in each other’s arms. I should have sunk with them to the bottom. I should not have abandoned them.”

  Letty left a long silence, head bowed.

  He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You are weeping? For people you never met?”

  “For all the poor souls who died and the ones who lived on. Whether I knew them or not,” she replied softly. “‘They wept and shared in human miseries,’ Homer says of the Horses of Achilles. If a horse may feel pity, I’m sure you may allow an English girl to do so. We have our insights and sympathies. Please don’t scoff when I say I can imagine a little of your grief. I lost my mother when I was a girl, and my only brother died, shot down in the war. I think if I were to multiply the pain I knew, I might be approaching an understanding of yours.”

  “You would need to multiply by two million, Miss Talbot. No one can do that. And the injustice goes uncorrected, even unacknowledged. The men who signed away Greek and Turkish lives sleep easy in their beds and climb the ladder of political success. A ladder whose rungs are slippery with the blood of children. And who is there to scream this injustice from the rooftops? The victims who managed to live this far are too busy struggling to make a new life for themselves. They bow their heads and scratch a living. I am the exception.”

  “You seem to have prospered in your new land?”

  He grunted. “With half a million leaving Greece and one and a half million going the other way, there was no shortage of land for us Greeks. I was a farmer. Tobacco, corn, olives. I was given a piece of land twice the size of that I’d had in Macedonia. I put it all down to tobacco. A gamble, but I had calculated before I left Greece the increase in demand. I was not wrong. At a time when it hardly mattered to me anymore, Nature smiled on me. Good season followed good season. I found an abundance of capable workers, an efficient manager. I opened my own tobacco processing factory. That too thrived. I began to trade more widely. It seems that when I no longer care about success, she favours me. And now I have the time, the resources, and still the energy to right a wrong.”