Close to Home

by Peter Robinson

  “A few pennies, half a crown, sixpence, a threepenny bit.”

  “All old coinage?”

  “Before decimalization, at any rate.”

  “So that’s pre-1971.” She picked up a flat, triangular object with rounded edges. “What’s this?”

  David polished away some of the grime and revealed a tortoiseshell pattern. “I think it’s a plectrum,” he said. “You know, for a guitar.”

  “A musician, then?” Michelle picked up a chain bracelet of some sort, crusted and corroded, with a flat, elongated oval at its center and something written on it.

  Dr. Cooper came over. “Yes, I thought that was interesting,” she said. “You know what it is?”

  “A bracelet of some kind?”

  “Yes. I think it’s an identity bracelet. They became very popular with teenage boys during the mid-sixties. I remember my brother had one. David was able to clean this one up a bit. All the silver plating’s gone, of course, but luckily the engraver’s drill went deep into the alloy underneath. You can read part of the name if you look very closely. Here, use this.” She passed Michelle a magnifying glass. Michelle looked through it and was able to make out the faint edges of some of the engraved letters: GR-HA-. That was all.

  “Graham, I’d guess,” said Dr. Cooper.

  Michelle looked at the collection of bones, trying to imagine the warm living, breathing human being that they had once formed. A boy. “Graham,” she whispered. “Pity he didn’t have his last name engraved, too. It’d make our job a lot simpler.”

  Dr. Cooper put her hands on her ample hips and laughed. “To be honest, my dear,” she said, “I don’t think you can have it much simpler than this, can you? If I’m right so far, you’re looking for a left-handed boy named Graham, aged between, say twelve and fifteen, who once broke his upper right arm and went missing at least twenty or thirty years ago, maybe in summer. Oh, and he played marbles and the guitar. Am I forgetting anything? I’ll bet there can’t be too many matching that description in your files.”

  Banks walked down the hill and through the winding streets of the village at about seven every evening. He loved the quality of the light at that time of day, the way the small white houses with their colorful wooden steps seemed to glow, and the flowers—a profusion of purple, pink and red—seemed incandescent. The scent of gardenia mingled with thyme and oregano. Below him, the wine-dark sea stretched all the way back to the mainland, just as it had done in Homer’s day. Although it wasn’t exactly wine-dark, Banks noticed. Not all of it, anyway. Some of the areas closer to land were deep blue or green, and it only darkened to the purple of a young Greek wine much farther out.

  One or two of the shopkeepers greeted him as he passed. He had been on the island for a little over two weeks now, which was longer than most tourists stayed, and while he wasn’t accepted, his presence was at least acknowledged. It was much the same as in a Yorkshire village, where you remain an incomer until you have wintered out several years. Maybe he would stay here that long, learn the language, become a mysterious hermit, merge into the rhythms of island life. He even looked a bit Greek, with his lean frame, closely cropped black hair and tanned skin.

  He picked up the two-day-old English newspapers that came on the last boat of the day and carried them with him to Philippe’s quayside taverna, where he spent most of his evenings at an outside table overlooking the harbor. He would have an ouzo as an aperitif, make his mind up about what to eat, then drink retsina with dinner. He found that he’d come to enjoy the odd, oily taste of the local resinated wine.

  Banks lit a cigarette and watched the tourists getting into the launch that would take them back to their cruise ship and the evening’s entertainment, probably Cheryl from Cheadle Hulme dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils, or a group of Beatles imitators from Heckmondwike. Tomorrow they would disembark on a new island, where they would buy overpriced trinkets and take photographs they wouldn’t look at more than once. A group of German tourists, who must have been staying overnight at one of the island’s few small hotels, took a table at the other side of the patio and ordered beer. They were the only other people sitting outside.

  Banks sipped ouzo and nibbled on some olives and dolmades as he settled on fish à la Grecque and a green salad for dinner. The last of the tourists had returned to the cruise ship, and as soon as he had cleared away his stock, Alex would come by to play chess. In the meantime, Banks turned to the newspapers.

  His attention was caught by an article on the bottom right of the front page, headed DNA CONFIRMS IDENTITY OF LONG-BURIED BODY. Intrigued, Banks read on:

  A week ago the skeleton of a young boy was unearthed by workers digging the foundations of a new shopping centre next to the A1 west of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Information discovered at the scene and provided by forensic anthropologist Dr. Wendy Cooper led to a very narrow list of possibilities. “It was almost a gift,” Dr. Cooper told our reporter. “Usually old bones don’t tell you so much, but in this case we knew early on that he was a young boy who had broken his right arm once and was most likely left-handed.” An identity bracelet, popular with teenage boys in the mid-sixties, was found near the scene and bore a partial name. Detective Inspector Michelle Hart of the Cambridge Constabulary commented, “Dr. Cooper gave us a lot to work with. It was simply a matter of going through the files, narrowing the possibilities.” When police came up with one strong candidate, Graham Marshall, the boy’s parents were approached for DNA samples, and the testing proved positive. “It’s a relief to know they’ve found our Graham after all these years,” said Mrs. Marshall at her home. “Even though we lived in hope.” Graham Marshall disappeared on Sunday, 22nd August, 1965, at the age of 14 while walking his regular newspaper round near his council estate home in Peterborough. No trace of him has ever been found until now. “The police at the time exhausted every possible lead,” DI Hart told our reporter, “but there’s always a chance that this discovery will bring new clues.” Asked if there is likely to be a new investigation into the case, DI Hart would only state that “Missing persons are never written off until they are found, and if there’s the possibility of foul play, then justice must be pursued.” As yet, there are no clear indications of cause of death, though Dr. Cooper did point out that the boy could hardly bury himself under three feet of earth.

  Banks felt his stomach clench. He put the paper down and stared out to sea, where the setting sun was sprinkling rose dust over the horizon. Everything around him began to shimmer and feel unreal. As if on cue, the tape of Greek music came to “Zorba’s Dance,” as it did every night. The taverna, the harbor, the brittle laughter all seemed to vanish into the distance, and there was only Banks with his memories and the stark words in the newspaper.

  “Alan? What is it you say: A penny for them?”

  Banks looked up and saw the dark, squat figure of Alex standing over him. “Alex. Sorry. Good to see you. Sit down.”

  Alex sat, looking concerned. “You look as if you’ve had bad news.”

  “You could say that.” Banks lit a cigarette and stared out over the darkening sea. He could smell salt and a whiff of dead fish. Alex gestured to Andrea, and in moments a bottle of ouzo appeared on the table in front of them, along with another plate of olives and dolmades. Philippe lit the lanterns that hung around the outside patio and they swayed in the breeze, casting fleeting shadows over the tables. Alex took out his portable chess set from its leather bag and arranged the pieces.

  Banks knew that Alex wouldn’t press him. It was one of the things he liked about his new friend. Alex had been born on the island, and after university in Athens had traveled the world as an executive for a Greek shipping line before deciding to pack it all in ten years ago at the age of forty. Now, he made a living from tooling leather belts, which he sold to tourists on the quayside. Alex was an extremely cultured man, Banks had soon discovered, with a passion for Greek art and architecture, and his English was almost perfect. He also possessed what seemed
to Banks a very deep-rooted sense of himself and a contentment with the simple life which Banks wished he could attain. Of course, he hadn’t told Alex what he did for a living, merely that he was a civil servant. He had found that telling strangers you meet on holiday that you’re a policeman tends to put them off. Either that or they have a mystery for you to solve, the way people always seem to have strange ailments to ask about when they are introduced to doctors.

  “Perhaps it’s not a good idea tonight,” Alex said, and Banks noticed he was putting the chess set away. It had always been a mere backdrop to conversation, anyway, as neither was a skilled player.

  “I’m sorry,” said Banks. “I just don’t seem to be in the mood. I’d only lose.”

  “You usually do. But it’s all right, my friend. Clearly there is something troubling you.” Alex stood to leave, but Banks reached out and touched his arm. Oddly enough, he wanted to tell someone. “No, stay,” he said, pouring them both a generous glass of ouzo. Alex looked at him for a moment with those serious brown eyes and sat down again.

  “When I was fourteen,” said Banks, looking out at the lights in the harbor and listening to the stays on the fishing boats rattle, “a close school friend of mine disappeared. He was never seen again. Nobody ever found out what happened to him. Not a trace.” He smiled and turned to look at Alex. “It’s funny because this music seemed to be playing constantly back then: ‘Zorba’s Dance.’ It was a big hit in England at the time. Marcello Minerbi. Funny, the little things you remember, isn’t it?”

  Alex nodded. “Memory is indeed a mysterious process.”

  “And often not to be trusted.”

  “True, it seems that as things lie there, they are…strangely metamorphosed.”

  “A lovely Greek word, metamorphosed.”

  “It is. One thinks of Ovid, of course.”

  “But it happens to the past, doesn’t it? To our memories.”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyway,” Banks went on, “there was a general assumption at the time that my friend, Graham was his name, had been abducted by a pedophile—another Greek word, but not so lovely—and done away with.”

  “It seems a reasonable assumption, given life in the cities. But might he not have simply run away from home?”

  “That was another theory, but he had no reason to, as far as anyone knew. He was happy enough, and he never talked about running off. Anyway,” Banks went on, “all attempts to find him failed and he never turned up again. The thing is, about two months earlier, I was playing down by the river when a man came and grabbed me and tried to push me in.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was wiry and slippery enough to wriggle my way free and run off.”

  “But you never told the authorities?”

  “I never even told my parents.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know what kids are like, Alex. I wasn’t meant to be playing down there, for a start. It was quite a long way from home. I was also playing truant. I was supposed to be at school. And I suppose I blamed myself. I just didn’t want to get into trouble.”

  Alex poured more ouzo. “So when your friend disappeared, you assumed it was the same man?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve been carrying the guilt all these years?”

  “I suppose so. I never really thought about it that way, but every once in a while, when I think about it, I feel…it’s like an old wound that never quite heals. I don’t know. I think it was partly why I…”

  “Why you what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Why you became a policeman?”

  Banks looked at him in astonishment. “How did you know?”

  Alex was smiling. “I’ve met a few in my time. You get to recognize the signs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, watchfulness, curiosity, a certain way of walking and sitting. Little things.”

  Banks laughed. “By the sound of it, you’d make a pretty good policeman yourself, Alex.”

  “Oh, no. I think not.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I could ever be quite certain that I was on the right side.”

  “And are you now?”

  “I try to be.”

  “So do I,” said Banks.

  “I’m sure you are a good policeman. You must remember, though, in Greece…well, we’ve had our share of regimes. But please go on.”

  Banks tapped the folded newspaper. “They’ve found him,” he said. “Buried by the roadside about eight miles away from where he disappeared.”

  Alex whistled between his teeth.

  “They don’t know the cause of death yet,” Banks went on, “but he couldn’t have got there by himself.”

  “So perhaps the assumptions were right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that makes you feel bad all over again, does it?”

  “Terrible. What if I was responsible, Alex? What if it was the same man? If I’d spoken up…”

  “Even if you had reported what happened, it doesn’t mean he would have been caught. These men can be very clever, as I’m sure you have learned over the years.” Alex shook his head. “But I’m not foolish enough to believe that one can talk a man out of his guilt when he’s set on feeling it. Do you believe in fate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We Greeks are great believers in fate, in destiny.”

  “What does it matter, anyway?”

  “Because it exonerates you. Don’t you see? It’s like the Catholic Church absolving you of sin. If it’s fate, then you were meant to survive and not tell anyone, and your friend was destined to be abducted and killed and his body discovered many years later.”

  “Then I don’t believe in fate.”

  “Well, it was worth a try,” said Alex. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing I can do, really, is there? The local police will investigate, and they’ll either find out what happened, or they won’t. My bet is that after all these years they won’t.”

  Alex said nothing for a moment, just toyed with his ouzo glass, then he took a long sip and sighed.

  “What?” said Banks.

  “I have a feeling I’m going to miss you, my friend.”

  “Why? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You know the Germans occupied this island during the war?”

  “Of course,” said Banks, surprised by Alex’s abrupt change of subject. “I’ve explored the old fortifications. You know I have. We talked about it. It wasn’t exactly The Guns of Navarone, but I was impressed.”

  Alex waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “You and I can only imagine what life was like under the Nazi occupation,” he said, “but my father lived through it. He once told me a story about when he was a boy, not much older than you and your friend were. The German officer in command of the island was called von Braun, and everyone thought he must have been an incompetent bastard to be sent somewhere like this. As you say, my friend, not exactly The Guns of Navarone, not exactly the most strategic position in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, someone had to keep an eye on the populace, and von Braun was the man. It wasn’t a very exacting task, and I’m sure the soldiers posted here became very sloppy.

  “One day, my father and three of his friends stole a German jeep. The roads are bad, as you can see even now, and they couldn’t drive, of course, and knew nothing beyond the rudiments, so they crashed into a boulder after they’d barely gone half a mile. Luckily, they were uninjured and ran away before the soldiers were alerted to what had happened, though apparently one soldier saw them and told von Braun there were four kids.” Alex paused and lit one of his Turkish cigarettes. Banks had once questioned him on the political correctness of a Greek smoking Turkish tobacco, but all he’d said was that it tasted better.

  “Anyway,” Alex went on, expelling a plume of smoke, “whatever the reason, von Braun took it upon himself to seek retribution, make an exa
mple, in the same way the Nazis did in many occupied villages. He probably wanted to prove that he wasn’t just some soft, incompetent idiot sent to the middle of nowhere to keep him out of harm’s way. He rounded up four teenage boys—the same number the soldier had counted—and had them shot just over there.” Alex pointed to where the main street met the quayside. “Two of them had actually been involved; the other two were innocent. None of them was my father.”

  The German tourists laughed at something one of the women had said and called Andrea to order more beer. They were already pretty drunk in Banks’s opinion, and there’s not much worse than a drunken German, unless it’s a drunken English football fan.

  Alex ignored them and went on. “My father was guilt-stricken for not speaking up, as was his friend, but what could they have done? The Nazis would probably have shot them in addition to the four others they had chosen. It was what the Americans call a no-win situation. He carried that shame and that guilt with him all his life.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “He’s been dead for years now. But the point is, von Braun was one of the minor war criminals tried after the war, and do you know what? My father went to the trial. He’d never left the island before in his life, except for one visit to Athens to have his appendix removed, but he had to go. To bear witness.”

  Banks felt oppressed by Alex’s story and the weight of history, felt as if there was nothing he could say that would not be inappropriately light. Finally, he found his voice. “Are you trying to tell me you think I ought to go back?”

  Alex looked at him and smiled sadly. “I’m not the one who thinks you ought to go back.”

  “Ah, shit.” Banks lit a cigarette and tilted the ouzo bottle again. It was nearly empty.

  “Am I right?” Alex persisted.

  Banks looked out at the sea, dark now, twisting the lights reflected on its shimmering surface, and nodded. There was nothing he could do tonight, of course, but Alex was right; he would have to go. He had been carrying his guilty secret around for so long now that it had become a part of him, and he could no more put the discovery of Graham Marshall’s bones out of his mind than he could all the other things he had thought he’d left behind: Sandra and her pregnancy, Annie Cabbot, the Job.