by Alison Fell
Daniel’s ‘nefarious schemes’ were intended to kill two birds with one stone. As a Professor at the U. of Pennsylvania, Alice Kober would also be on hand to assume charge of the Minoan epigraphical centre to be established at the Museum.
‘I have had some success in softening up the classicists and orientalists on the matter,’ he writes gaily, ‘and am about ready to make a frontal attack on the Dean … I would say that you are definitely considered a possibility for the job; the next step is to make you seem the only possibility. I certainly think it would be wonderful, for us at least, if this thing could be pulled off. It is just what we need to make this into a first class centre for the study of the Bronze Age in Greece and the Near East.’
In contrast to Kober’s self-confessed pessimism, Daniel bursts with optimism about the future, and signs off with what is obviously a private joke: ‘I must stop now and get back to my knitting.’
It took a brave man to assume the prerogative of teasing Alice Kober, and it is perhaps a measure of their intimacy that she responds in kind, reminding him with tart good humour that she only ever knits ‘while reading detective stories.’
After submitting her magisterial paper, ‘The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory’ – which Daniel thought an excellent and much-needed stocktaking – to the American Journal of Archaeology, Kober returned to her Linear B files.
‘Keep your fingers crossed,’ she wrote with unconcealed excitement, ‘I’m starting a tabulation of all the ‘‘cases’’ in the hope that I can tie them down. It gets very complicated, because some forms seem to be the same for two or more ‘‘cases’’, but I’m hoping for some results. If I can get them this way, just using my vocabulary and inscription lists, and the suffix and sign-juxtaposition file, I’ll save a couple of years’ work. If I can’t get at it that way, I’ll have to compile statistics on sign-use. You can figure out for yourself how long it will take to compare each of 78 signs with 78 other signs, at 15 minutes (with luck) for each comparison. That’s about 1500 hours. I did it on the little slide rule I just bought to hasten the arithmetic I’ll have to do.’
The letter ends on a gleefully bitchy note:
‘I’m a malicious creature. Boy, wouldn’t I like to decipher Minoan before Blegen publishes the Pylos material. But then he’d probably have to rewrite the whole thing, and hold everything up another decade or so.’
Clearly Kober knew she did not have to mince her words with John Franklin Daniel.
23
On the crude Flagstaff map Panomeli was roughly oblong in shape, bordered by the beach to the north and the main street to the south. The Totem Bar stood on the north-west corner, and the Shoestring on the south east. Little of the land between the beach-front and main street had been developed, leaving a sizeable central area to pomegranate trees, overgrown vines, and chicken runs.
At Yiannis’ request, Lynda had scribbled the clients’ names on the apartments. On main street, above the Minimarket, the Wilson-Wilsons were in the second floor Kiki studio, above Ingrid Laurie in Stella. Next door, in Jasmin, were the Shapcotts. All four Giffords had the larger detached house called the Captain’s, a new-build villa on the eastern edge of the central wilderness
On the other side of the village, the Harknesses – who, despite their apparent distress, hadn’t curtailed their holiday- were in Kalliopi, a first floor apartment in the new studio block opposite the Totem Bar while, on the ground floor, in Daphne, were the Misses Ottakar and Dodge.
In the office the desk and photocopier occupied most of the floor area, a space already narrowed by stacks of dry goods and brochure-laden shelves. There were Flagstaff posters on the walls, and a noticeboard given over to local ads which appeared to work on the principle, if it moves, hire it out. Yiannis wondered just what it took to secure a position on the board – the competition, he imagined, must be fierce. Favours would be called in, work done at discount, casks of wine deposited discreetly on doorsteps. In a tiny place like Panomeli, it paid to keep in with Flagstaff.
Lynda had cleared the clutter off the desk, and Demosthenes had provided water, an ashtray, and two small medios, one for Yiannis, and the other for Christos, who’d reappeared after a training stint at the Agios Nikolas station, and to whom Yiannis had entrusted the photocopying.
Yiannis had always found that as a nation the Brits were singularly attached to their passports. Even when the old navy blue one with its vainglorious royal crest had given way to the drab red EU model, their prideful attitude remained, as if they were clinging to some racial memory of the laissez-passer, the Grand Tour, and all the privileges of Empire. Although Lynda had suggested the clients drop off their passports and collect them from her later, he wasn’t surprised when most of them refused, opting instead for an orderly British queue outside the door of the office.
The Wilson-Wilsons were first to step through the open door and approach the desk, the girl’s wooden-soled sandals clip-clopping like shod hooves across the marble floor. They were ugly, presumably orthopaedic things, snub nosed, like jet-ski cowlings, and moulded from something hairy: goatskin, perhaps, or carpet underlay.
He opened the two passports and compared the details. Both, he noted, had been born in Wolverhampton, which he supposed to be somewhere in the north, where wolves once lived; presumably such sandals were manufactured there.
‘If I could have a cellphone number, please.’ He thanked them and handed the passports to Christos, who waited importantly by the photocopier.
From outside he heard a mellifluous laugh, easily identified as Zoe’s.
‘It’s kind of glamorous, though, isn’t it? Like being a suspect or something.’
‘Well I think they’ve got a cheek!’
The indignant voice belonged to Miss Ottakar, and was clearly meant to be overheard. She swept into the room, passport flattened to her breast like a badge of honour. Batting away the smoke from the cigarette which burned in the ashtray, she slapped the passport down on the desk.
‘I mean to say, Officer, is this really necessary?’
‘I’m afraid it is, Miss Ottakar.’ Nettled, he crushed out the cigarette. Perhaps she thought that lesbians should be exempt from suspicion. For criminal, read heterosexual, was that it?
‘Aye, love, and you’re a suitable case for Interpol and that’s the truth.’
The brawny Gifford man stood in the doorway, peeking through the plastic fly-strips. There was a loud Shush!, and laughter, quickly smothered.
Miss Ottakar bristled. Not the sort to take a joke, thought Yiannis. Probably in management; he could see her as a senior admin executive in some vast and cold-hearted bureaucracy – Health, or Tax, or Social Services.
Ignoring her protests, he gestured curtly at the photocopier – ‘If you don’t mind. My colleague will only take a moment’ – and beckoned the Giffords in.
Since the office wasn’t big enough to accommodate the whole family he dealt with the younger couple first, copying down their cellphone numbers and deflecting Ken Gifford’s questions. Surprisingly, no one else had asked about the progress of the case. Either they were aware he wasn’t allowed to discuss it, or else they were remarkably incurious.
The Gifford yia-yia, lipsticked and puckish in a straw stetson, steered her husband in. Yiannis offered her a chair, which she refused
‘We’re here for the third degree, Sergeant!’ she chirped, waving two passports at him.
‘What?’ said the old boy, who appeared to be deaf.
Yiannis smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs Gifford.’
Zoe came in apologising. ‘Dad’s having a lie-down, but I’ve got his passport here, if that’s okay.’ She wore a thin cotton shift with enough sky blue in it to be luminous; underneath Yiannis detected the shadowy lines of a bikini.
The visitation had frozen Christos in his tracks. His eyes were wide with reverence, the flood of colour plain on his face. Yiannis glanced at Zoe’s birthdate and calculated that she would be
seventeen in October. The address was in London – Hampstead, which even Yiannis had heard of. He took the details and passed her on to Christos, who received the passport like a votive offering, struggling manfully with his half-dozen words of English.
When Ingrid Laurie strode into the room he was so pleased to see her that for a second he forgot the occasion, and the need to find a face that fitted it. Her passport had a red spot on the front cover.
‘It’s a replacement,’ she said anxiously. ‘The last one was stolen when my flat was broken into.’
‘Ah yes.’ He flicked through the pages, pretending to examine the visas. ‘This was in London?’
‘Yes. Two years ago, I think.’
‘I see. And your cellphone number?’
She looked back at him, wide-eyed. Embarrassed, he tapped the list of phone numbers with his pen. Surely she didn’t think he was singling her out for special treatment?
Just then his own cellphone rang. It was D.S. Kyriaki, on her way to collect him, and could he please tell her exactly where the Minimarket was? He gave her instructions, feeling Ingrid’s’s eyes on him. When he snapped the phone shut he registered the white mark of sunglasses etched against the freckled bridge of her nose.
‘Actually I don’t have one,’ she said.
A sixth of a second is all it takes. The synapses redirect the electrical signals to the limbic brain, the ancient, animal part. With a flush of shame he remembered that it was Karen who’d told him this, Karen up to her eyes in Psych. revision.
He stared at Ingrid, shocked. A taste had flooded his mouth, a sharp insistent sweetness, like leatherwood honey. He tried to remember what they’d been talking about.
‘A cellphone,’ she said, frowning.
‘I see. Thank you.’ He consulted his watch, as if to terminate the interview, and pushed the passport across the desk. The breath of the fan was turning the sweat on the back of his neck to ice. His immediate thought was to get rid of her as fast as possible.
‘Don’t you want me to.?’ she began, casting a doubtful glance towards the photocopier.
‘Please, yes.’ Yiannis cut her off abruptly, shooing her away with a tight smile and a flick of the fingers. He was already beckoning the next clients in. When they stood before him he took their passports and frowned intently at the photographs. Several moments passed before he recognised the Harknesses, and remembered that he ought to be sympathetic.
24
At first Pericles wishes that he hadn’t come. He feels lost in the foreign crowd that throngs around the Palace, confused by the camera-flashes and the wide sun-dazed views. The place isn’t at all as he remembers it, that day he brought his mother on the bus. The walls that were faced with sparkling white marble look limy and ruined now; whole buildings have vanished with their colours, to be replaced by roofless shells of dull sandstone, and the white horns he remembers – high up, red-striped like candy-canes – have vanished too.
He remembers a maze of alleyways, and in them, coolness, the smell of manure. Dark doors through which he’d glimpsed grindstones and olive-presses, the glow of a bronze-caster’s forge. There were market stalls in the sunken square by the city gate, where ox-carts were unloading, and stone benches along the wall where grown men scratched their letters and their numbers on slates, just as he’d done himself in infant school.
Where before had been a laundry, timber-roofed and full of steam and shouts, Pericles sees only light and dust, as if there had been a war in the interim. Pericles wonders if this is possible. Jail was a world in itself, a seamless procession of keys and days; in jail everything passes you by, he knows that much. Everything but rumour.
That day his mother was wearing the black scarf she’d crocheted for church. She carried a heavy leather handbag and, inside, a plastic box full of fresh pineapple sliced into crescents.
He remembers his relief that she didn’t seem to notice the women – not just those on the high balconies, but specially those bare-chested brazen ones on the great terrace, making their volta under the cedars. Childless and unguarded, like prostitutes, whispering like butterflies.
And old wrinkled ones too, with long dry dugs. He could no more grasp the meaning of them than he could understand a flower.
Their black eyes crawled over him till the heat burst in his head.
See how she looks at you, Pericles.
But still his mother had said nothing, seen nothing. Sinking down on a bench, she wiped her forehead, fanned herself, unlocked the box of pineapple.
Pericles sees a guide approaching, in white socks like a schoolgirl, waving a little flag. He counts twenty people in the party that follows in her wake. Ignoring him, she climbs right up on his bench and speaks to the group in French and in German, pointing at pillars. Surrounded, Pericles is invisible, his view restricted for the moment to broad bellies, rucksacks and brightly coloured shoelaces. The thought of the pineapple has made him thirsty: his throat is dry as dust and tugs at his tongue.
The guide jumps down and strides off, her party trailing after her across the wide courtyard. Once again the view spreads out before him, and now Pericles can see that gold and yellow daisies have sprung up between the paving stones, and that here and there are clumps of scarlet poppies. There are cedars on the far side of the courtyard, cypresses.
Suddenly his friends appear, darting out of the shadows and bursting into a glaze of sun. The short one and the tall one, both oiled and dark.They skip down the low tier of steps that surrounds the arena, waving their hands about excitedly, as if on their way to a football game.
Today the tall one has flowers, lilies maybe, tangled among his long curls. He stops at the bottom of the steps and shields his eyes with his hand, squinting across the bright space, pointing straight at Pericles.
The guide has left her bottle of water behind. Pericles wipes the top carefully, as his mother taught him, and tilts the bottle to his lips until he has drained it.
Only then does he risk another look at his friends. They are smiling, the tall one beckoning to him in a way that tells him what a really unmissable game it’s going to be.
Embarrassed by the lilies, by their girlishness, Pericles covers his eyes with his hands. The other problem is that he has no money: every last cent had been counted out on the bus driver’s tray, and even then the driver had been sharp with him.
The guilt comes into him again and curls in his stomach. He remembers how the gifts they’d given him went straight to the Sergeant, and now he has nothing to give them in return.
Pericles shrinks back into himself. Shrugging apologetically at his friends, he indicates his mother, who is moaning softly as she nurses her swollen feet. He can’t just run off with them, can he, and leave the poor woman stranded with her big handbag on the bench. On the other hand, you don’t want to disappoint people, do you, you don’t want to insult their generosity.
He hears a peacock somewhere, crying like a baby, and remembers that they are blue and beautiful. Then the guide-girl stands before him, beak-faced, frowning at the empty bottle.
25
Androula had watched the couple walk up the track from the car – not a police car, although the man was in uniform – the girl making hard work of it in her tight skirt and high heels, the policeman pausing now and then to wait for her. Black blind eyes in sunglasses.
‘I am Detective Sergeant Kyriaki,’ the girl said, ‘and this is Sergeant Stephanoudakis. May we come in for a moment, Kyria Zois?’
Kyriaki, she thought. Not a name that rings a bell. Ignoring her, Androula peered at the policeman. ‘Not the son of Nikos Stephanoudakis the watchmaker?’
The policeman smiled. ‘The same.’
Androula was delighted. A handsome boy, she thought, with the same twinkling eyes as his father. ‘Do you know how many years ago he mended my old clock, and it’s never lost a minute since!’
‘I’m very glad to hear it, Kyria Androula.’
‘And your poor mother? How is she?’ Andro
ula searched for a name.Was it Dimitria? She remembered a picnic just before the war, when they were all teenagers. Nikos and his Dimitria, her own dear Vagelis, Asterios and cousin Angelika. It was Nikos who had spread wild flowers all around the rug they’d brought to sit on. When a shower of spring hail crashed down on their heads they’d hidden underneath it, she and Vagelis holding hands in the scandalous darkness.
‘Very well, thank you, Kyria. Of course she’s in Athens now.’
‘We’re conducting an investigation, Kyria,’ the girl cut in. ‘We need to ask you some questions.’
Androula frowned at her. ‘Questions?’
‘About last Saturday night. Maybe you noticed something strange in the village, or heard something?’
‘Me?’ Androula threw back her head and clicked her tongue against her teeth.‘What would I notice from up here? As for strangers, the English are everywhere, you can’t move for them.’
And with the English, she thought, comes nothing but trouble. Land-grabs, brawling and thieving, and now, as Asterios had said, dead bodies. Remembering her manners, even if the Kyriaki girl had forgotten hers, she invited them in.
‘You’ll want to talk to my brother. I’ll wake him.’ She led them through to the parlour and left them there. In the hall she banged loudly on Asterios’ bedroom door, glad of an excuse to disturb him. It would remind him yet again that she hadn’t forgiven him, and he needn’t waste his time trying to talk her round. Not much a man could do – a man who needed a signature – if a woman dug her heels in.
In the kitchen she heated up the coffee and spooned cherry jam on to saucers. She rinsed two cups, filled two glasses with water, and carried the tray in. The Stephanoudakis boy – a gentleman if ever she saw one – moved quickly to take the tray from her, and placed it on the coffee table. The woman glanced around and seemed reluctant to sit, as if the parlour wasn’t good enough for her, as if it wasn’t as clean as a whistle and scented with polish and incense. At last, with a glance at her watch, she perched on the edge of an armchair.