He climbed a flight of stone steps and entered a high-roofed hall. Ahead, a woman was laboriously polishing the parquet floor. To his left he could hear a raised female voice, apparently engaged in a telephone conversation. She was speaking English in a clipped and hectoring tone.
‘That is not acceptable … No … Absolutely not … The choice is yours … It was almost certainly explained to you at the time …’
He followed the voice to its source: a brightly-lit room furnished like the centre-spread in an office equipment catalogue. The only occupant, the woman on the telephone, was as sleek and hard as her voice, clad in shimmering purple, with rings on every finger and a face like a hungry eagle.
‘As you please … No, the deposit will be forfeited … Very well … Goodbye, then.’ She cast a cold appraising eye over Harry. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Ah, I hope so. I believe Miss Cox is a teacher here. Miss Sheila Cox.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, would it be possible to see her?’
‘The college is not in session at present. Miss Cox is not here.’
‘Ah, I see. Would it be possible, then, for you to let me have her address?’
‘That would be contrary to our policy. I can disclose no personal details of our staff. If you care to leave a message, however, I will see that Miss Cox receives it.’
‘Oh, right. When, er, when would that be?’
‘The spring term commences next week.’
‘Next week? I can’t, um, can’t really wait that long. Is there any chance … of getting in touch with her sooner?’
‘No.’ Her expression assured Harry that none of the obvious devices – persistence, flattery, ingratiation, bribery – would advance his case. ‘There’s nothing—’ She broke off as the telephone rang. ‘Excuse me … Shelley College … Ah, Mr Rossi … Yes, of course … You too … Did you not? … No, it’s a full pre-term staff meeting … The Principal’s office, ten o’clock tomorrow … You’re welcome … Goodbye, Mr Rossi.’ She looked back at Harry. ‘As I said, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you. Do you wish to leave a message?’
‘No thanks,’ said Harry, exerting himself to suppress a smile. ‘On reflection, I don’t think I want to leave any message at all.’
52
ATHENS, FRIDAY. HARRY sat at the wheel of an anonymous grey hire-car, parked in the shade of a bedraggled pepper tree opposite the entrance to Shelley College. Around him the villas and avenues of Kifissia had slipped into a silent midday languor and the wintry sun falling on the windscreen compounded the effect: Harry was barely holding sleep at bay. He had lain awake most of last night rehearsing the varied uncertainties of the day ahead and now, sluggish from too much metaxa and too little rest, felt ill-equipped to cope with what he had so carefully planned. In an office in that large building on the other side of the road, Sheila Cox sat debating timetable clashes and examination dates with fellow-teachers. He had seen her go in, had scanned her features and compared them with those of the woman in the photographs, had concluded beyond reasonable doubt that she was the same person. All he had to do now was keep his eyes trained on her car and wait for her to reappear.
But waiting was not easy. Harry looked at his watch. It was gone half past eleven: he had been at his post for two numbingly inactive hours. He looked at the photographs again and Sheila Cox’s face gazed back, her expression familiar to him in every much-studied detail. Was she really sheltering Heather? Could it really be that simple? Another glance at his watch. Eleven thirty-five. Therefore nine thirty-five in London. What was Zohra thinking at this moment? he wondered. What had Dysart made of his failure to return promptly from Geneva? He should have explained, he supposed, he should have told them what was in his mind. But the clue had seemed so flimsy, the hope so frail. How could he have justified to them a journey he had scarcely been able to justify to himself?
And yet it was no fool’s errand. Of that he was certain. As he replaced the photographs in his pocket and massaged his forehead into alertness, he suddenly became aware that the moment had come. From the front door of Shelley College a straggling group of men and women had appeared, ambling towards the car park. The pre-term staff meeting was at an end.
Harry sat up and looked anxiously from one member of the group to another. At first he could not see her; panic threatened. Then he relaxed: there she was, lingering with a colleague at the top of the steps. Her hair was shorter than in the photographs. This, combined with the leather coat and slender valise, gave her a groomed and efficient look in stark contrast to her companion: a shambling, chaotically clad man with a briefcase so crammed and bulging he could not close it. The forgetful Mr Rossi, Harry surmised.
Most of the others had driven or walked away by the time Sheila Cox reached her car, but Rossi showed no inclination to emulate them. He was still gabbling away excitedly, still struggling to fasten his briefcase. She unlocked her car and opened the door, but did not climb in. Harry supposed she was too polite to cut the conversation short. Then Rossi grew more animated still, smiling and gesticulating. In gratitude, it transpired, for the lift that had been offered to him. He galumphed round to the other side of the car and they started off.
Sheila Cox was a sedate driver; her car was a distinctive yellow; the roads were quiet. At first, therefore, Harry had no difficulty in following at a discreet distance as they headed south from Shelley College. The route was familiar to him and remained so all the way to the metro station. There, amidst much hand-waving and briefcase-grappling, Rossi was set down. Fortunately, with taxis and buses backing and blaring around them, she was unlikely to have noticed Harry waiting for her to continue.
She drove faster without a passenger and there was more traffic to contend with as they left Kifissia and headed south-west along less exclusive residential streets. Harry was compelled to abandon the map by which he had hoped to trace their progress and concentrate on keeping the little yellow car within sight. What with motorbikes forever cutting in and his unfamiliarity with left-hand drive, it was as much as he could do not to slip disastrously behind.
They joined what seemed a major route. There were more lorries and vans, more vehicles of every size and kind. Roadworks, dust, traffic lights, congestion, confusion: Harry found himself cursing the city and its crazy transport system. So flustered was he becoming that his grasp of the Greek alphabet deserted him. ΛYKOBPYΣH, one destination board declared. METAMOPΦΣIΣ, HPAKΛEIO. It might as well have listed Venus, Mars and Jupiter for all the help it gave him. But whether he was lost or not made in the end no difference. For all the panicky manoeuvres and heart-stopping separations, he still clung to Sheila Cox’s tail.
They must have covered four or five kilometres before leaving the major route. They were in a good-class suburb now, less affluent than Kifissia but still prosperous enough for a well paid teacher. Three- and four-storey apartment blocks were commoner here than villas, but they were generously spaced and shaded. The parked cars looked new, the shopfronts smart. Sheila Cox, driving from memory along ever narrower streets, was surely nearing her destination.
She turned into a side-street and slowed noticeably. Harry did the same. Then a dead stop, right-hand indicator winking. Harry dropped to a crawl. She began reversing into a parking space just as Harry spotted another space three cars behind her and steered uncertainly into it. With no time for delicate positioning, he settled for an acute angle against the kerb, turned off the engine, grabbed the map and peered cautiously over it.
Sheila Cox climbed from her car, then leaned back in for her valise. On the other side of the road was a three-storey apartment block with stepped and whitewashed balconies, decorative railings and smoked-glass picture windows, pine trees flanking the communal entrance. If this was her home, it was clearly a comfortable one. She slammed the car door, locked it and began to cross the road, then stopped halfway and looked back past Harry as if something had just caught her attention. She shaded her eyes, peered uncertainly
for a moment, then raised her hand and waved. Harry looked in the wing-mirror but was met only by a reflection of the petrol-cap. He was about to risk a glance over his shoulder when a cycle-bell sounded from close behind. Then a figure on a bicycle swept past the car window, braked to a halt and dismounted. It was Heather.
‘Take the keys,’ she had said, ‘in case you want to go back to the car.’ Harry could not breathe, could not think, could not react to what he saw. ‘Don’t worry.’ The rising panic of being unable to find her, the sheet blind headlong terror of losing her, washed back across his memory. ‘I’ll keep to the path.’ And with it came the recollection of every hard and winding trail he had followed in search of her. ‘And I won’t be long.’ Every week of her absence was a scar: the interrogations, the questions, the accusations, the doubts, the suspicions. ‘It’s just that I can’t turn back now, can I?’ Turn back? How could he not? To Profitis Ilias in cold, clear, silent air, November’s dusk threatening, her loss gouging at his self-control. She had smiled back at him once and then gone on. From that day to this. From a mountaintop in Rhodes to a street in Athens. From her departure to her return. Heather stood before him.
She dismounted alongside Sheila Cox and leaned against the handlebars, smiling breathlessly. She was wearing jeans and training shoes, her sweater was white rather then red, but the black corduroy jacket and the dark woollen gloves were the same. Her hair was shorter, cropped and bobbed in a way that made her look younger, her flaxen hair that he remembered brushing against her shoulders. And she was laughing, laughing so easily and thoughtlessly that he could scarcely bear to hear it. How dare she be so relaxed and carefree? How dare she be so normal? He had never expected it to be like this. He had never hoped or feared to find her as now he did.
They were crossing the road, joking with each other as Sheila sifted through the shopping in Heather’s cycle-basket, squeezing a loaf of bread here and prodding a cauliflower there. And Harry, paralysed by the humiliation their every casual gesture deepened, could only watch as they went. To leap from the car, to make himself known, to accuse, to protest, to demand, was as unthinkable as the conclusion he could no longer keep at bay. She had not been murdered or abducted. She had not been set upon or spirited away. She had not lost her memory or her hold on reason. On the contrary, she had been calm and methodical throughout. She had planned and prepared the whole charade from start to finish. And he was merely a witless stooge she had accommodated in her calculations, an obliging fall-guy to distract enquiries, an honest witness who would not know he was telling a lie. She had used him and discarded him. She had made of him an utter fool.
Heather propped the bicycle against a post and locked it, then took the shopping from the basket and followed Sheila to the door of the apartment block. A key was flourished, another laugh exchanged. They entered. And the last Harry. saw of her, as the door closed, was a smile of girlish mirth at the anecdote of a friend.
A friend, as Harry had fondly believed himself to be. A friend, as now he knew he had never been. They must have found it easy, he supposed. A pre-arranged signal – perhaps the whistle he had heard – a lonely road on the other side of Profitis Ilias, then a fast drive to the airport. They could have been in Athens before the alarm was even raised. They could have read and laughed at every newspaper article, could have hugged themselves with glee at the success of their plan. And the best joke, the biggest laugh, the greatest dupe of all? Why that was Harry of course. That was the man who sat alone on an Athens street and stared bleakly at the closed door of his own folly. That was the man whom Heather had deceived – but not eluded.
‘Dysart.’
Alan, this is Harry Barnett.’
‘Harry! Where are you? I’ve been wondering when I’d hear from you. I got your message.’
‘I’m in Athens.’
‘Athens? What took you there?’
‘Heather. I’ve found her.’
‘You’ve found her? In Athens?’
‘Yes. Alive and well. She’s staying with a woman called Sheila Cox, a friend from Hollisdane School who teaches here.’
‘But … this is incredible. You’ve spoken to her?’
‘No. But I have seen her. There’s no doubt about it. She’s here, in hiding. I don’t know why and I don’t know for how long. All I know is the search is over.’
‘Does she know you’ve found her?’
‘No. When I realized she was lying low here of her own accord, I couldn’t face speaking to her. She looked so contented, so pleased with herself. I’ve been a fool, Alan, a gullible fool. I thought she needed help. I thought she wanted to be found. I thought I’d be rescuing a damsel in distress. Instead … We were wrong. Kingdom can’t have had anything to do with it. The disappearance was all her own idea. She staged it with this Cox woman and left you and me to pick up the pieces.’
‘You sound angry.’
‘I am. Aren’t you?’
‘I’m relieved, certainly. Do you want me to tell her parents?’
‘Why not? They’ve a right to know. Her address is—’
‘Hold on. I’ll need a pen. Right: go ahead.’
‘Flat three, twenty-four Odos Farnakos, Iraklio, Athens. The flat belongs to Sheila Cox, who teaches at Shelley Colllege, Kifissia.’
‘I’ll let Charlie know straightaway. What will you do now?’
‘I’m not sure. Come home, I suppose. I may stay here a few days yet.’
‘To see Heather?’
‘No. I never want to see her again. If I did …Well, the best thing I can do is forget the whole rotten business.’
‘Do you think you can?’
‘Probably not. But I intend to try.’
53
This excellently preserved bronze statuette of Silenus, a demon in Dionysus’s thiasos combining the features of man and horse, comes from Dodona. The ithyphallic attendant of Dionysus leaps with enthusiasm, his left arm high in the air, his right resting on his buttock. His pointed ears, long tail and hoofed legs are equine traits, while his demonic nature is emphasised by the distorted features of his face, the bulbous nose and bestial eyes. The curls on his long hair and beard are indicated by incised lines. An excellent work of Archaic miniature art fashioned with technical expertise. Height 0.192m. Circa 530/520 B.C.
HARRY CLOSED THE guidebook and confronted through a thin sheet of glass the infamous original of the satyr whose likeness he had been carrying with him since leaving Rhodes. It was smaller than he had expected, and more finely wrought, this proudly preserved piece of antique vulgarity. For two and a half thousand years it had been grinning and flaunting itself at all who cared to look. Harry did not suppose he was the first to find reflected in it the shame of a personal memory. But he could scarcely have left Athens without paying the lusty old devil a visit, so it was with a faint but genuine smile that he turned away and headed towards the exit.
The National Archaeological Museum was crowded with guided tour groups for whom Silenus was no more than an amusing postscript to the glories of Mycenaean sculpture. Harry threaded between them, oblivious to what they were admiring, remembering as he went what Miltiades had told him about Silenus. ‘According to Euripides, he was incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood.’ If that had been the point Heather was trying to make by leaving a postcard of Silenus for him to find, then he had abundantly proved it for her.
Emerging at the top of the steps leading down from the museum entrance, Harry paused and took several breaths of what passed in Athens for fresh air. What a fool he had been. What a purblind nose-led fool. He wondered if Heather had anticipated the lengths he would go to in order to find her and reckoned on balance that she had not. After all, she could not have expected him to obtain the photographs and without them there would have been no false trail to follow. To do her justice – which was not his inclination – she could never have intended him to discover how she had deceived him. In that sense, his humiliation was of his own making.
; He descended the steps and sat down on one of the benches ringing the circular lawn in front of the museum. From his pocket he took the envelope containing the postcards of Silenus and Aphrodite. He slid them out into his hand, carefully tore them into four pieces and dropped the fragments one by one into the bin beside the bench. Miltiades might have called it destruction of evidence, but Harry preferred to think of it as an act of resignation. His role in Heather’s life, and hers in his, was at an end. His fantasy of friendship was over. This morning he had very nearly succumbed to temptation, travelled to Iraklio and confronted her, but in the end he had settled for a visit to his ancient alter ego at the museum and now he was sure he had made the right decision. He must either face her or forget her. And by ridding himself of the postcards she had left him he could hope to do the latter.
There were still the photographs, of course. Rightfully they were Heather’s, though she must have given them up as lost long since. He took them out and looked through them once more, one last valedictory time. Twenty-four photographs, from Mallender Marine to Heather at the Villa ton Navarkhon, two dozen deceptive images which he had faithfully followed. He smiled grimly. Since they belonged to Heather, she should have them back. He replaced the photographs in their wallet along with the strip of negatives, slipped the wallet into the empty envelope, gummed down the flap and wrote Heather’s name and address on the front. He would post it the day he left Athens, he decided. She would recognize his handwriting and realize what the gesture meant. By then, her parents would probably already be in touch with her. If so, she would know from them that he had led them to her and the photographs would tell her how. It was a petty revenge, perhaps, but it was the only one available to him: to bring to her attention the one mistake she had made.
Into the Blue Page 41