Mortal Remains

by Margaret Yorke

  ‘We thank you for it, Dr Grant. You must know that,’ said the senior officer, earnestly. ‘But we want to know how you found out about the contraband.’

  ‘What was he carrying? I thought it might be drugs,’ said Patrick. ‘Archaeological finds of some sort?’

  ‘Votive offerings. Small figures, grave ornaments and jewellery. All very small, but worth very much money,’ said the officer. ‘Very, very old. You have to help us, please, Dr Grant. How did you know about this?’

  Patrick thought the Greek officer showed great restraint in not giving him hell for tipping off the British police instead of the Athens force. He described what he had seen from his hotel window and how he had then met Arthur Winterton.

  ‘I was in darkness in my room. They were not. When Winterton took the bag,’ he said, ‘they didn’t see me.’

  ‘They were careless, for professionals,’ said the younger policeman.

  ‘Perhaps they were not so professional in this matter,’ said the older man.

  ‘I think their plans must have miscarried,’ said Patrick. This needed some help from the fluent young man before the older officer was clear about the meaning. Patrick explained that the incident in the hotel might have had a perfectly innocent explanation; it was only when he went to Mikronisos himself and felt he was being watched that he became really suspicious. He recounted the whole story.

  ‘There was, some days before, that unfortunate accident on the island,’ frowned the senior officer.

  ‘Yes,’ said Patrick. He added, ‘The man who took the parcel – Arthur Winterton – is deaf. Now I realise that he is an expert lip-reader. He sat facing me at dinner, but some way further down the table, when I told Miss Watson I was going to the island the next day. He could have interpreted our conversation.’

  ‘Hm. So you think he warned his associates to watch for you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Or he could have come himself, aboard the Psyche, after the funeral. He said he was going to the Benaki museum; no one would have doubted him. The Psyche had been at Mikronisos at twelve: no, it could not be done in the time. If Arthur Winterton had gone to the island he had taken some other boat to get there. So he need not mention the Psyche even though there was some connection between Spiro’s friend, the young man with the moustache, and the man who had given Arthur Winterton the parcel, for he had seen them together on the Acropolis. Patrick was hoping very much that the Psyche was not mixed up in this affair; he did not want to find that Jill McLeod was involved with thieves, and even murderers.

  ‘This will not be the first time that precious remains have left the country in this way,’ said the senior police officer. ‘But we must stop it. We will see what there is on Mikronisos.’ He said something in Greek to the other man, who nodded. ‘Before the war some German archaeologists were planning to dig on that island. But the war came and it was never done. No one has tried since, but we believe the British have expressed interest.’

  ‘So someone who knew about that might have had a go alone,’ said Patrick slowly.

  ‘Yes. Or something might have been found by accident. There are plans for building a hotel. While surveying, some traces may have been found. We will discover the truth, Dr Grant. There is much to do.’

  Patrick could see that there was. They let him go at last, when he had given as full a description as he could of the man whom Arthur Winterton had visited. He promised not leave Athens without telling the police, and he was escorted back to the hotel by the younger officer, who inspected his room, identified the one opposite where the transaction had taken place, bade Patrick a brisk goodnight and then went into a huddle with the management about the identity of recent guests.

  By this time, Patrick was extremely hungry. He was about to go in search of dinner when the telephone rang. It was his sister Jane, calling from England.

  ‘Thank goodness I’ve found you. Are you all right?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Perfectly, thanks. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Wherever you go, you keep getting mixed up in things,’ she said. ‘Colin rang me from Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Well, this isn’t my show – it’s up to the police,’ said Patrick. ‘They’re very busy this end.’

  ‘So they are here. That man, Arthur Winterton, is dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. He was let out on bail. He fell in front of an underground train. It was on the news tonight. And Colin confirmed it.’

  ‘But he must have already spilt the beans,’ said Patrick. ‘Or not?’

  ‘Not wholly, I gather, but a good few.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Patrick. ‘This does sound rather nasty.’

  ‘Come home. Or go to Corfu.’

  ‘I won’t do that. I’ve things to attend to,’ said Patrick, grandly. ‘I may go back to Crete. I’m not happy about the Lomax business. Did Colin mention it?’

  ‘He did.’ She sighed. ‘You won’t learn, will you?’

  When they had both hung up he thought, tetchily, how she fussed. But then, it would be sad if there were no one who minded what became of him. Still, he did not want her to worry. He couldn’t believe that he was now in any danger himself; he’d already seen the police, and if the villains were watching him they would know that. If they had heard of Winterton’s arrest they would be clearing out of Mikronisos as fast as they could. He would not have been their only courier; other respectable-seeming tourists were probably taking fertility idols and oil jars back in their reticules each week. Stealing archaeological remains and disposing of them illegally was a deplorable business, but killing people who found out what was happening or got caught was a great deal worse. For of course, Arthur Winterton must have been murdered too.

  Patrick’s brain was churning with all this, and his stomach was churning from want of food.

  He would go to the Plaka for dinner, where there would be music.

  Even so, he picked up Martin Chuzzlewit, for company.

  He had neglected to give the police the squashed cigarette stub he had preserved so carefully.

  VIII

  Patrick went to the taverna where he had lunched on the day of his arrival in Athens; then, it had been quiet, but now it was busy. Most of the tables were occupied, and three bouzouki musicians were playing. The music throbbed, hauntingly plaintive yet stirring. Patrick had almost finished his meal when he saw Jill McLeod walk past the low wall surrounding the garden where he sat. She was alone, and although she glanced in at the diners, she did not see him in his corner under the mulberry tree.

  He was up and after her in a flash, and when she recognised him the dejected expression on her face fled. He invited her to join him, but she said she had already eaten. However, she thought she could manage some fruit salad, and she would help him to finish his wine. She returned with him to his table. She was dressed in the long, purple skirt he had seen her wearing before, and a skimpy black top.

  After she had drunk some wine, he said:

  ‘Have you left the Psyche?’

  She nodded.

  ‘They put me ashore on Hydra. Made me take the ferry to Piraeus. Said they didn’t want me any longer. After all these weeks.’

  Thank goodness for that, thought Patrick.

  ‘They?’ he asked.

  ‘Spiro and Yannis.’

  ‘Yannis?’ Patrick almost shot off his chair at the name.

  ‘Spiro’s friend. Oh, you never met him.’

  ‘The short man with the moustache? Older than Spiro?’

  As if he did not know it! Of course, it had been staring him in the face the whole time: and the mother: the woman on Mikronisos was Ilena. It must be so.

  ‘Mm,’ said Jill. ‘I didn’t like him much. There was always trouble when he was around.’

  ‘What was his other name?’ asked Patrick, just to be sure. ‘His surname?’

  But Jill had never heard it.

  ‘Have some more wine,’ said Patrick, and ordered another bottle.

  In the end she
told him all she knew, for she was hurt and unhappy, and glad to have found a friend and sympathy.

  Yannis had appeared during June. Each time he came, Spiro had to make special trips away from Crete. He had been to Mikronisos several times, and to a rendezvous with another boat off the coast of Libya. That time, various boxes had been loaded aboard, and both Spiro and Yannis had been very nervous. They had gone on to Mikronisos afterwards. Jill hated those excursions for the sea often blew up and was very rough, and she had been seasick.

  ‘What did you do on the island?’ asked Patrick.

  Sometimes they took passengers. They unloaded the boxes there, too. The passengers varied but there was often a man she heard called Kamal. She described him, and the description fitted the man who had given Arthur Winterton the parcel.

  ‘There was an Englishman, too,’ she said. ‘Last Saturday. Very deaf, with a hearing aid.’ They’d collected him at sea; he’d been brought out to their meeting place by a speed boat from somewhere, one of those vessels that carved through the sea at incredible speed. They’d dropped him back at Piraeus in the evening. The Psyche had a good engine and could make fair speed herself in calm seas.

  ‘Yannis’s mother lives on Mikronisos. We picked her up on Saturday too, from the harbour, and took her round to Kamal’s house on the other side,’ said Jill.

  ‘Yannis’s mother?’ Patrick was cautious.

  ‘Yes. She housekeeps or something for Kamal. Ilena, she’s called. She’s nice. Doesn’t speak much English. I think she’s a bit scared of Yannis,’ said Jill. ‘Imagine being scared of your own son!’

  It was not an uncommon condition, in Patrick’s experience. But he had learned enough.

  ‘What are your plans now?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go on to Turkey,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘Aren’t you due to go back to college?’

  ‘I’m due to begin. But I can put it off for a year,’ she said. ‘I might go to England. My folks aren’t expecting me home yet.’ She sounded slightly wistful and Patrick seized on this.

  ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Go back to Canada and get stuck in to your studies. You’ve had a splendid experience over here, but work’s the best cure now.’

  ‘I don’t need a cure,’ Jill said stubbornly. She drew a picture on the tablecloth with a knife. ‘Spiro had another girl all the time.’

  ‘Sophia,’ said Patrick.

  Jill stared at him.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m psychic,’ said Patrick. He thought for a minute. ‘No more passengers aboard the Psyche?’ he asked.

  There had been others besides Kamal, men who ignored her and jabbered away in Greek too fast for her to follow, she said. ‘And there was the English professor. We met him in Heraklion and took him to Challika with us. We often stopped off in Heraklion for stores,’ she added.

  ‘An English professor? When was that?’

  ‘About ten days ago – no, more.’ She racked her brains. ‘A nice old boy. He drank ouzo all the way.’

  ‘Did you meet him by appointment?’

  ‘No. Spiro ran into him in some bar and they got talking. He was looking for someone, he said, but they weren’t in Heraklion so he was going to try Challika.’

  ‘Did he tell you his name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did you know he was a professor, then?’

  ‘He just looked like one. And he spoke funny Greek – old-fashioned, Spiro said.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ demanded Patrick.

  ‘Oh, oldish. Thin hair, you know, and a bit wrinkly. He limped, too.’

  It must have been Felix. Though he would not have been pleased to hear himself described as oldish; he was fifty- four. It accounted for the ouzo, too, which Felix had drunk before death.

  ‘Where did you put him ashore? At the harbour?’

  ‘No, we didn’t. He asked us to put him off just below that old war-time fort or whatever it is. You know.’

  ‘The pillbox?’

  ‘Is that what they’re called? How funny.’

  ‘What an odd arrangement. Why did he want to go ashore there?’

  ‘He said he’d be staying at one of the hotels near there and it would save a walk.’

  ‘Did he have any luggage?’

  ‘Just one small bag.’

  That fitted. Lucy said he had left most of his stuff aboard the Persephone.

  ‘What time of day did you put him ashore?’

  ‘Oh, in the evening. It was nearly dark. He stumbled off over the rocks.’

  ‘Carrying his suitcase? He didn’t forget it?’

  ‘It wasn’t a suitcase. More like a holdall, you know, with a zip across. He took it.’

  Where was that, then?

  ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘No. Never. I wondered about that. You keep seeing people, in a small place like that.’

  She might never have heard of the drowning. The police were very discreet. But she had been one of the last people to see Felix alive.

  ‘Please go home to Canada, Jill,’ Patrick said. ‘Tomorrow, if possible. Have you your fare?’

  IX

  He took her back to his hotel and found, greatly to his relief, that they had a room free for her. She had left her luggage at the station, so they fetched that in a taxi and then went upstairs.

  Jill was disappointed at being banished to a room of her own and came to his to say so. He had plied her generously with wine to make her talk freely, and now had to face the consequences. At least she did not bracket him with Felix as being oldish, he thought, with wry relief, untwining her arms from around his neck. He felt vulnerable, but wanted no complications. He did not favour one-night stands with rejected young damsels.

  Outside, Athens still throbbed with life. They would go out, he decided, and told her so.

  ‘Have you ever been up Mount Lykabettos?’ he demanded.

  She had not.

  ‘Right. Then that’s where we’ll go. Get a sweater or something, it may be windy up there. I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes. Now scoot.’

  She made a face at him, but she smiled and left. He reflected that not twenty-four hours ago he had been fantasising about luscious young blondes; now here was one, and he was treating her as if she were ten years old.

  While she was getting her sweater, he went downstairs himself and set the desk-clerk to finding out about planes to Montreal. If one left the next morning and had a spare seat, he was to book the girl on to it. Patrick had discovered that she had kept her fare home intact, a promise she had made to her parents; had this not been so he would have paid it himself, to have made sure of her safety.

  ‘We’re walking,’ he said, when she arrived in the foyer carrying a much-washed Arran-knit cardigan over her arm. ‘It’s not very far.’

  If he got her physically tired, she would be less trouble when they returned, assuming she continued to feel affectionately drawn to him.

  She slid her hand into the crook of his arm as they set off down the road; it felt curiously comforting, and he let it remain. Her flowing skirt flapped round her legs and caught against his as they walked through Constitution Square, past the Parliament Building and on towards Kolonaki.

  ‘This is the expensive part of Athens. The smart area,’ he told her severely, striding along so that she was almost running to keep up. Her travels had not taken her to many such places, he was sure. He took her along Ploutarchou and showed her the British Embassy; her own consulate must be somewhere around here too, he supposed. At least he was saving them trouble, by getting her out. For she had agreed to go home.

  He was worrying in case they were being followed. Reason told him that Kamal and his friends would be too busy saving their own necks to be after his; but they had got rid of Arthur Winterton. They must have agents well dispersed over the globe. At least, in the hotel, he and Jill would have been safe from that sort of attack; it would be dreadful if, by bri
nging her out, he had exposed her to danger. But the gang would hesitate to involve Jill again, surely? She had been ditched; if she were assaulted now the trail would lead directly back to the culprits themselves, for someone would remember having seen her aboard the Psyche.

  He felt happier when his reflections reached this point and gave her hand an encouraging pat. As they approached the foot of the shining, cone-like mountain, there were fewer people about; he was sure that no one was following them. All the same, how could one tell for certain? He took great care at every street crossing.

  Jill cheered up when they reached the funicular station at the bottom of Lykabettos and boarded the train. There were a number of other passengers in their cabin, but this did not prevent her from clinging to him fondly; she said the funicular reminded her of ski-trips back home. She had not mentioned Spiro for some time; once away from Greece she would soon recover. Her pride had been hurt, as well as her heart, by the manner of her dismissal. Patrick had told her nothing about the activities of her former friends; the less she knew the better.

  She exclaimed with genuine delight about the view from the top of the mountain, and went silent in the church, which smelled of incense and glittered with gold and silver adornments. Then she yawned. So she was tiring; that was something. He’d walk her all the way back; that should do the trick. They moved towards the stairs at the side of the church and started the descent; as they did so two people who had been leaning on the parapet looking across the city turned also, to go the other way to the funicular. The woman’s white hair caught Patrick’s attention and he recognised Ursula Norris. She was holding the arm of a man about her own age, slightly shorter than she was; he had strongly marked brows, a fine, jutting nose, and thick iron-grey hair. Patrick knew at once by his clothes and his whole aspect that he was Greek. They were totally absorbed in one another and she did not notice Patrick standing only a few feet away.