by Will Adams
She grimaced as she pushed herself back to her feet, went over to it. Yes. There was a pattern in its surface, two symbols chiselled into it like ancient graffiti: a man marching and then an outstretched hand, though both so faded it was hard for her to be sure. She turned on her camera-phone and took a photograph. The signal was weak and fluctuating, but at least there was one. There surely wouldn't be if they ever made down into Petitier's plain. She didn't feel comfortable that no-one knew where they were, however experienced Iain might be, so she went to the escarpment rim and took a photograph of the plain and the farmhouse, another of herself blowing a kiss to the camera. Then she sat back down and composed a text to Knox, updating him on their progress, before sending it and the photos on their way.
It was another five minutes before Iain returned. 'Good news,' he said. 'I've found a path. Of sorts, at least.'
'Of sorts?' she asked, her soles clenching with a little anticipatory vertigo. 'What if it's not Petitier's house down there?'
'It has to be. It's where that shop-woman said it was. Besides, who else would live out here? The Cretans go crazy without company: it's only us foreigners who like to be alone.'
'And if it's locked?'
'Not a problem. I've got my tent and all the supplies we could need. Besides, if we turn back now, we'll only have to come back in the morning. And didn't I kind of get the impression that speed was of the essence, what with your French friend's name to clear?'
The invocation of Augustin was the prod Gaille needed. 'You're right,' she said, getting to her feet. 'Let's do it.'
IV
Sokratis drove in silent umbrage to the centre of Athens, wanting Nadya to know he resented the way she'd treated him. Traffic was light, they were soon at her hotel. He dropped her outside, popped his trunk so that she could take out her overnight bag and laptop, then sped off without a backward glance.
His anger was only a facade, however; he needed it to conceal his guilt. He drove around the block, parked two hundred metres up the street, then watched the hotel's front door. It wasn't long before his suspicion was vindicated. A taxi pulled up and Nadya reappeared with her bags, looking furtively around as she limped down the steps.
The bitch! He'd known she'd try something.
He gave her a healthy head-start. She was clearly on her guard. The taxi headed into Plaka, the network of narrow tourist streets at the foot of the Acropolis, then stopped outside another hotel. Sokratis pulled in behind a van to avoid being spotted. He watched as a hotel porter helped her with her bags. She paid off her driver then limped inside.
When he settled on his plan, Sokratis felt a twinge of shame, but he stamped down hard on it. A roof for his head, food for his table, a little money to show a woman a good time, once in a while. That was all he asked. Besides, his website made it quite clear he was a divorce specialist. It was her own damned fault for putting him in such an intolerable situation. Yes. It was her own damned fault.
TWENTY-THREE
I
Knox leaned against the Metro carriage door as a woman in mourning black weaved between the passengers with her right hand outstretched, a swaddled infant cradled against her left hip, reciting a half-hearted plea, not expecting alms, nor getting them either. The tracks were elevated here, offering a view over the city. Nico was right. You could indeed see the Olympic Stadium from a distance, its gleaming white arches towering over ugly suburban housing made even uglier by graffiti and satellite dishes.
He got out at Irini, down the steps and between two shallow ornamental pools onto a windswept concourse. A brass band was somewhat unexpectedly thumping out Souza while marching on the spot, as though playing and moving simultaneously was still beyond them. A mini-cyclone fluttered the pages of a discarded phone-book like applause, while paper bags and empty sweet wrappers whirled in impressively tight circles, like gymnasts with their ribbons.
He took out the scrap of paper on which Nico had scribbled Antonius' address, then asked the people he met until one pointed him on his way. He walked through a vast parking lot, empty except for a few families visiting the swimming pool, from which he could hear splashing and squeals of delight. He hurried across a main road. A woman out walking her dog directed him to a street of plush semidetached homes with sleeping policemen and neat rows of polished cars, interspersed with occasional skips filled with ripped-out carpeting. But there was no such gentrification taking place at Antonius' house, a rotten tooth in an otherwise perfect register. His front garden was a jungle, his walls overrun by ivy. The house had withdrawn into itself, like its owner.
Knox rang the bell. No reply. He put his ear to the door, but the neighbours had the builders in, their hammers and drills making it impossible to hear. He pounded on the front door, then looked up at the first floor windows. Not a sign of life. The letter box attached to the front gate was overflowing with junk mail. His apprehension grew. Maybe Antonius had hated the noise of construction so much that he'd decamped: but with Petitier dead, and Mikhail Nergadze on the loose, it was hard not to worry.
A narrow passageway led down the side of the house. The paintwork was scarred and blistered, as though it had come second in a knife-fight. A sash window was raised a few inches, allowing the house to breathe. He tried it and it lifted easily. Surely Antonius would have locked up properly if he'd left for a few days. He glanced around to make sure that no one was looking, then clambered inside. There was a sour smell to the place, as though something was rotting. 'Hello!' he called out. 'Anyone home?'
No answer. He walked along a short corridor into the kitchen. The shades were down over the back windows; the door was blocked by stacks of crates and boxes. A half-eaten crust of sliced bread on a plate had curled up its corners and turned green.
He turned the other way. The carpet in the downstairs loo was soaked. He reached a gloomy room with a cheap pine table and chairs, their joints splashed with clumsy archipelagos of white glue. The walls were so damp that the old lining paper was peeling freely. Afternoon sunlight through the slat blinds threw a grid on the brown-cord carpet, half-covered by discarded envelopes and their onetime enclosures: bills, summonses, demands, furiously-phrased letters from small tradesmen. A life falling apart.
The hammering next door grew so violent that the walls shook, releasing motes of dust into the air that caught in Knox's throat, so that he had to cough quietly into his fist to clear it.
There was a stack of books on the table, as though Antonius had been going through them. Knox glanced down their spines. Robert Graves, Apollonius, others with equally obvious connections to the golden fleece. There was a pile of Internet print-outs too. He flipped through them. Stories of the mega-rich buying up art and history, names underlined or highlighted. He kept looking until he found a story about Ilya Nergadze celebrating the purchase of a cache of Georgian gold from Turkmenistan.
A green light was blinking on the answer-phone. He pressed play with his knuckle, wary of leaving prints. Beeps and silences mostly, people calling but not leaving messages, save for a woman who yelled abuse and a man demanding payment or else. The last messages were both from Nico, sounding anxious, asking him to call him back. The tape finished and rewound. Knox's sense of foreboding, already strong, turned to fatalism. He went out into the hall and turned towards the stairs, and found what he'd almost been expecting.
II
Back at the house, Mikhail's anger was building. For one thing, Olympia hadn't yet shown up, despite the clear instructions he'd given her the previous night. For another, his men were making little headway in tracking down the owner of the Volvo. He stood on the stairs with folded arms and watched them work their phones and the Internet, wondering who to take it out on. He'd promised consequences, after all. It was time to demonstrate that he meant what he said.
The doorbell sounded at that moment. Olympia, no doubt. He'd known she'd turn up eventually. Whores like her couldn't help themselves. He went to let her in, but found instead a teenager with lank bro
wn hair sitting astride a moped. 'Michael Nergadze?' he asked, holding up a brown paper bag. 'I've got a delivery.'
'Who from?'
'A man.' The kid gestured vaguely over his shoulder. 'He didn't give his name. Just this bag and twenty euros.'
'I'm Nergadze,' Mikhail told him.
'If you say so,' said the kid.
The bag was stapled closed. Mikhail ripped it open and pulled out a pay-as-you-go mobile. 'You can go now,' he told the delivery boy.
'What about a tip?'
'I said you can go.' He waited until he was out of sight before turning on the mobile. It searched for and found a signal, then beeped to alert him to a message. It turned out to be a telephone number. He called it. 'You don't know me,' said a man, answering almost instantly. 'I was in that Volvo earlier.'
The fear in his voice was gratifying to Mikhail. 'You followed me,' he said.
'It was the woman. I didn't know what she was up to, I swear I didn't. She said you were her husband.'
'Who is she?'
'All she said was Nadya. She found me through my website, yesterday. She asked me to tail you guys from the airport when you arrived, so I did. It's what I do. Divorces, I mean. Not this kind of shit. And then this morning I collected her from the airport. But that's all.'
'Describe her to me.'
'I can't. I swear I can't. She wore a scarf and glasses the whole time. All I know is she's maybe forty, short, thin, pale skin. And she has a slight limp when she walks.'
'Which side?'
A pause. 'Her right, I think. But you know how it is with limps. Both legs go funny. But the thing is, I know which hotel she's staying at.'
'And?'
'You won't come after me?' pleaded the man. 'Promise you won't come after me.'
'We won't come after you,' said Mikhail. 'Not if your information is good.'
'She's at the Acropolis View. It's in Plaka.' Then he added vengefully: 'Stupid bitch thought she could switch on me.'
'What about the man you picked up?'
'I dropped him off outside Sepolia. I think she arranged to meet him again, but I can't swear to it, they were talking French.'
'Thanks,' said Mikhail. 'Now keep your mouth shut and get out of town.'
'I'm on my way.'
'If I should ever see or hear of you again…'
'You won't. I swear you won't.'
Mikhail ended the call then stood there brooding. He was curious about this woman in her own right, and she also seemed his best way of finding Knox. She'd seen the black Mercedes earlier, however, and his Ferrari was hardly the most discreet of vehicles. He went back inside, beckoned to Zaal. 'Get me a van,' he told him. 'Nothing flashy; just make sure it's roomy and private in the back.'
'Yes, boss,' said Zaal.
A woman called Nadya who walked with a slight limp and who'd flown all the way from Georgia to track him down. He felt, for a moment, a mild but pleasurable buzz. Life was getting interesting.
III
Antonius was hanging from a short noose tied to the base of the banisters above, his feet dangling just an inch or two from the bottom step, as though he could reach it if he just stretched out his toes. But of course he'd be doing no such thing ever again. Knox had seen death before, but nothing quite this ugly. He was an old man, and thin. Rigor mortis was already making grotesque contortions of his limbs and rucking up the sleeves of his blue jacket. There was a bulge in his grey trousers from a post-mortem erection, and his feet were so badly swollen that the laces on one of his scuffed black shoes had actually popped, while the other merely bulged like a joint of sirloin wrapped in string. A folded sheet of note-paper lay on the second bottom step. Knox lifted the flap carefully with his fingernail, just enough to read the scrawled message upon it. A simple and direct expression of regret, exactly what you'd expect. But with Petitier so recently dead, and a clear connection to Mikhail Nergadze, not entirely convincing.
Knox's heart sank, partly in sympathy for Antonius, but also-less commendably-because of the fix he now found himself in. He couldn't just leave the poor old sod hanging there, but he dared not cut him down either, in case this proved to be a crime scene. And if he notified his new friends in the Athens police, they'd doubtless use his presence here to throw more muck at him. He needed an intermediary.
The noises started up again next door, making it impossible to think. He left the way he'd come in, through the gate and a little way down the street, then called Charissa on his mobile and filled her in on his day so far, on Nergadze and Nadya and now Antonius. 'Good grief!' she muttered when he'd finished. 'Things certainly happen around you, don't they?'
'I think I'm beginning to see it,' he told her. 'Your brother-in-law emailed photographs of the seals to a lot of people, including Antonius. He must have deciphered them himself and realised the implication. He's been struggling for money. I mean really struggling. So he tried to find people who'd pay for the information. Unfortunately, he went to a family called the Nergadzes.'
'This man you met earlier?'
'He's one of them, yes.'
'And you think they murdered him?'
'There has to be a chance.'
'Good Christ!' muttered Charissa.
'Will you call the police for me?' he asked. 'I don't fancy having to explain another death to them. And you'd better let Nico know too. Antonius was his friend.'
'I'll take care of it,' she promised. 'And look after yourself.'
'You know it,' he assured her.
IV
The escarpment wall was so steep that Gaille felt queasy even where the path was relatively wide and the footing secure. But it wasn't all like that. Several sections were so treacherous with shale that she had to get down onto her backside and slide across. They came across a goat lying down on its haunches. It seemed to be sleeping, except for the trickle of blood from its mouth, the flies settling on it that scattered in a cloud as they approached. It did little for her confidence that even goats could fall and kill themselves on these cliffs. She looked squeamishly away as she stepped over it. But even that was nothing like as bad as when they came across a shrub growing sideways out of a crevice in the cliff-face, blocking most of the path. Iain simply grabbed it and swung himself around, as if oblivious to the toe-curling drop yawning beneath him. 'Piece of piss,' he assured her. 'You'll be fine.'
'I can't,' she said.
'Of course you can,' he said. 'If it will take me with my pack on, it'll take you for sure.'
'There has to be another path,' she said. 'Petitier can't have brought a mule down this.'
'Well, this is the path we're on.' He reached out for her. 'Here. I won't let you fall, I promise.'
She hesitated a moment more, then reached out and took his hand. His skin was dry and rough, but his grip was strong and reassuring. She took hold of the shrub with her other hand and swung herself around to the other side.
His eyes twinkled as he let her go. 'See,' he said.
'I just don't like heights. That's all.'
'I know.' He looked at the path ahead. 'But we'd better push on. This is taking longer than I thought.'
'I'm doing my best.'
'I know you are.' He turned and marched on down. The going thankfully grew easier. The sun nuzzled the western hills as they reached the foot of the escarpment; daylight subsided into dusk. They passed through a thin fringe of walnut trees out into the fertile heart of the plateau, fields separated by tumbledown stone walls, mottled by moss and lichen: vines, barley, tomatoes, groves of orange and lemon trees with their lush green leaves and young fruit glittering like exquisite jewels. Her legs were almost done, however, so it was an immense relief when, through the gathering darkness, she glimpsed the house ahead.
The dog came out of nowhere. It must have been asleep until they were almost upon it. But then it sprang to its feet and charged, a huge black-and-tawny German shepherd hurtling across the broken ground, its eyes fixed upon her. Iain didn't hesitate, he simply turned and fle
d, leaving Gaille to face it all by herself. She gave a piercing shriek of terror and threw up her arms to protect her throat and face as it bunched its muscles and leapt at her with open slavering jaws.
TWENTY-FOUR
I
Night had fallen in Athens. The beautiful people had come out onto the streets. Pretty girls chattered into fashionably thin mobiles, while young men in leather jackets sat astride their fat motorbikes and roared their engines in approval, like bull moose in the rutting season.
Knox grabbed a chicken gyros at a fast-food restaurant and ate it standing up at one of their tables, hot juices trickling down his chin and forearm. What now? He dared not visit Augustin, lest the Nergadzes or the police be waiting; but he needed to let Claire know what had been going on, and find out the latest about his French friend too. He called the hospital, was put through to intensive care. 'He's still asleep,' Claire told him, when she came to the phone. 'But that's as expected. They've put him into a coma to stop the brain swelling. It's helped, I think. And his scans aren't as bad as they might have been. No fragments in his brain tissue, which is the main thing, so no immediate need for surgery.'
'That's terrific,' said Knox.
'He's not better yet,' she warned, trying to tamp down her own hopes, as well as his.