The Dead Travel Fast

by Nick Brown

  Vassilis was dressed in a soft broad brimmed hat and what looked like an old fashioned artist’s smock. Steve felt he wouldn’t have looked out of place knocking about Arles with Van Gogh and Gauguin in the nineteenth century. He didn’t look at Father John. Vassilis waved him to sit at the table.

  “Please eat and drink what you like, Doctor Watkins, I commend the wine to you. It’s grown in small quantities from our own vines, you passed them on your way here, light yet fragrant; probably the only wine grown here worth drinking. Thank you for coming to visit at such short notice but I hope you will appreciate the rather more interesting, and suitable, task that I suggested Professor Andraki confer on you.”

  Steve helped himself to food and wine; he knew despite the courteous words this was a power relationship: Vassilis commanded and people obeyed. Yet he was pleased to have the survey, the area had interested him since Alekka had first showed it to him, so he asked,

  “I’m really grateful for the chance to investigate the area, but why did you choose me?”

  “I think in your heart you know why.”

  Vassilis smiled and patted Steve on the knee, then, as if conceding a great favour, said,

  “But I will tell you all the same. In that ground there are things of great age: things you will feel are familiar to you because of your experience of one particular site. Yes, that’s right, the one you wish to forget. But no one can ever forget something like that, Doctor Watkins, can they? You thought you’d escaped didn’t you? A new life in the sun, but no one escapes what is intended. You must face what troubles you. I remember my good friend Michel De Montaigne saying, during a lively philosophical discussion about fear, that it is not the thing itself that is important or to be feared, it is what we make of it.”

  Vassilis paused to beam with pleasure at this memory.

  “So, you have been brought here to see if you can be more successful second time round. And yes, you did hear correctly, before you ask. I arranged the job for you on Samos. But even I did not foresee that you would save the life of Antonis; such is the way in which the gods play with us, is it not?”

  He paused to pour himself a glass of wine and favour Steve with what was intended as a reassuring smile before moving on.

  “I know you understand far more of this than you let on, Doctor Watkins, but I fear I might be pushing you a little too quickly so let me ask you a more prosaic and therefore less troubling question. What do you know of the history of this island? No, please do not attempt to answer, the question was rhetorical.”

  Ignoring his own wine glass, he poured another glass for Steve. Father John, although still deep in shade, had moved closer as if to hear better, and this disturbed Steve more than the teasing yet somehow threatening nature of Vassilis’s conversation. There was something about the bloodless priest that made him shudder, yet was familiar. Vassilis began again.

  “I do not mean the classical history concerning Polycrates, Pythagoras or Alcibiades and the Athenian fleet; nor the famous Romans who holidayed here. Although it is true the island troubled them, particularly Alcibiades, no, I mean the pattern of abandonment that was established. You know that for periods the island was completely deserted, that all its occupants fled in terror, and you will know then from your research the many different reasons that are trotted out for each period of exile. None of them, although each one is true up to a point, tell the real story. Nor is it true that the island was totally abandoned; Father John and I and our bloodline never left.”

  As he said the word bloodline he had turned his head with the suggestion of a smile towards the priest who, Steve noted to his alarm, moved closer as Vassilis spoke.

  “No, there is one very ancient common factor that explains all the evacuations, although at different times it manifested itself through different symptoms, rather like a contagion mutating with each infestation. But you have to be able to see things differently to understand the real causality, as my friend Montaigne so elegantly expounded in his discourse.”

  He again paused to favour Steve with his thick-lipped smile.

  “We understand, Doctor Watkins, that what appears to the common herd as a random yet deadly mixture of murder, fire, economic ruin and public disorder is in fact merely the first deadly symptoms of something older and infinitely more threatening. I think you are beginning to understand why you are here, and why I want you to excavate that feature which we have watched over through the ages. You, the man who excavated, albeit foolishly, Skendleby; does it surprise you that we know about that when you thought it was a secret? Well, mutatis mutandis, as they say.”

  Steve asked,

  “You want me to excavate a feature because you think something there is making all this happen?”

  “Exactly, ridiculous isn’t it. Who would believe such nonsense? Still, the police have no idea and they too have brought someone onto the island to investigate for them. Do you know that the local peasants believe the Devil has returned to walk amongst us, the socialists believe the bankers have caused it, the Greens that it is a particularly vicious local strain of global warming? And there is even a sect in the USA, also represented here, that believe that after they have been evacuated to Heaven the world will burn, probably sometime in October. So with all that going on, it won’t do any damage if you conduct a minor excavation on my land, will it?”

  Steve shook his head.

  “I think, Doctor Watkins, that you will know what it is when you see it. But I see Father John desires a word.”

  The priest was very close now, shrouded only by the shade of the immediately overhanging trees. Steve tried not to look into the blistered white face as the priest spoke in thin dry tones.

  “Peter Heylyn, a seventeenth century divine once told me ‘things have a secret inclination to change the one into the other and to make Pythagorical transmigration (as it were) into each other’s being’. You might find that useful.”

  He finished the sentence with a dry cough as if the strain on his vocal chords had been too severe and turned away, merging into the sylvan gloom. Vassilis watched him fade with a smile then said to Steve,

  “I wouldn’t be so alarmed by the good Father, it cost him considerable effort to tell you that. I think that one day, when you need him, you will recognise him for the friend he is. Now, as we have discussed weighty matters for so long and I am sure that you are tired, I will go to attend to other concerns and leave you here to relax; Alekka will then return to collect you. I have, as ever, enjoyed your company. I will see you again in the very near future.”

  Vassilis made a gesture of blessing then followed Father John into the grove heading towards the chapel; he walked slowly but immediately disappeared amongst the ancient trees. Steve felt as if he was watching an old film that had jumped a few frames, erasing a necessary time passage.

  He hadn’t eaten much and only drunk two small glasses of wine but felt pleasant lassitude creeping over him. He would sit back into his chair, listen to the drone of the insects in the wood and perhaps close his eyes for a few moments.

  Two cold hands were caressing his cheeks; he pushed his head languorously back towards them, hoping to stay in the dream.

  “So, you are worn out so easily that old men leave you in sleep?”

  There was a murmur of laughter and cold hands transferred to his forehead, pulling his head back to rest against her breasts while she gently massaged the pressure points above his temples after having gently run her hands over his damaged left ear.

  “You have slept many hours, but there is still time for you to swim before I show you the best place to eat on the island, and there you can tell me what it was that tore your ear. So get up now.”

  They walked back through the gardens towards the car and he noticed she was carrying two beach towels. She drove more carefully along the coast rode from Karlovasi and after about twenty minutes pulled off the highway to follow a short dust track down to the sea. The car pulled up in a tiny bay: a few metres of f
ine shingle framed by two jagged rock outcrops where the water shimmered in the early evening sunlight.

  “There, you have a short time to swim, to wake you up and give you big appetite.”

  “Are you going to swim with me?”

  “No, maybe later; afterwards. Here you don’t need swimming shorts and I have towel.”

  He wondered about swimming in his boxers, but understood the implications in her words so rushed in naked. The initial cold shock of the sea was replaced by a delicious cool, restoring power and energy. He was almost disappointed when she told him it was time to go and walked back to the car, leaving the towel spread and waiting on the beach.

  The drive in the open top dried his hair while the salt prickled his skin and he began to feel hungry. They turned off to the right on a narrow road that twisted and turned up the mountain and soon the sea was glittering far below. The car veered suddenly down the narrowest of tracks, crossed a stream over a wooden bridge just wide enough to take all four wheels, turned a blind bend then braked to narrowly avoid hitting a tiny ancient chapel.

  They parked in the small square shaded by species of plane tree, the trunks of which were painted with white distemper. Across a plank footbridge were a dozen rickety tables spread across four terraces on different levels. These were bisected by a noisy stream gushing out of the side of the rock. A waitress waved, and Alekka sat down at a table in a niche in the mountain where tree roots wove in and out of rock above their heads. Their view followed the spring through the groves and vines down to the indigo sea. The waitress brought them a homemade aperitif and briefly bent to fill a jug with water from the spring mouth; but no menu.

  “She knows what we will eat: some local herbs and flowers in a light batter then rabbit stifado and a jug of their wine, I like the red so that is what we will drink. If when you finish, you do not think this the best you have eaten, then I have misjudged you.”

  They finished as the sun passed behind the mountain and its only trace shimmered far out at sea. Alekka rose, waved to the waitress, and they returned to the car.

  “Do not look so worried, Steveymou, there is no need to pay, all is taken care of here. Now we go somewhere with a lovely view where we can swim without salt; now is the best time.”

  She drove along a winding track; dusk turned to twilight and they arrived at a small hotel high on a rock spur. They left the car and climbed the last thirty metres up a near-vertical path. The hotel was softly lit but deserted. Alekka led him through the vestibule and out onto a large terrace where a swimming pool projected over a sheer drop down to the sea. Twilight deepened; all they could see were isolated lights of scattered houses and a ship on the horizon.

  “I have a room here where we can change, come follow.”

  They entered a small suite with a large balcony. She shut the door behind her and looked at Steve.

  “Now we change.”

  She pulled the sundress over her head and stood shaking out her hair. She was wearing only a pair of white briefs and Steve was surprised to see her skin was scarcely darker.

  “Do you not like what you look at, Stevie?”

  She stepped out of the briefs and he reached for her.

  He woke some time later with moonlight on his face and lay a while, unable to get back to sleep. He remembered her asking him what happened to his ear and tried not to think about it. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was back on the mound at Skendleby with Lisa’s teeth shredding his ear; the sharp pain as they met through the membrane and he waited for the sharp knife to gouge into the place where his neck met his shoulder.

  The memory was so strong and frightening that he had to get out of bed, he padded onto the balcony and began his calming down process: deep breathing and a methodical listing of the mundane things he’d do over the next few days. He’d got as far as Thursday and his breathing was more regular when he remembered that was the day Giles and Claire were flying in to tell him something they couldn’t talk about over the phone. They’d told him Tim Thompson was dead, though, and that brought the letter back and the murders on the island and what Vassilis had told him that afternoon. He’d not escaped here; he had been lured.

  He couldn’t stay alone on the balcony he needed Alekka. As he approached the bed he saw her lying naked in the moonlight, alabaster or more accurately bone white, in her sleep. Beautiful like a classical figure etched on a sarcophagus, dead white. Suddenly chilly, he slid under the sheets and snuggled up to her; she was ice cold.

  Chapter 11:

  Second Sight

  Again the hotel was half empty. So Tuesday early evening found Theodrakis smoking on the balcony of the same seafront room he’d taken last time. This time he was in even worse shape; how had it come to this? How had he come to this? The urbane and arrogant society Athenian with his disdain for the provincial and his well-placed connections had become an empty shell, a broken husk. The carapace of silence he’d constructed to keep away the island and the murders protected nothing.

  He was lonely, frightened and unable to act. He wanted to hide somewhere and live like the slovenly peasant Oblomov in the Russian novel he’d read as a student. But even in this, he knew he deceived himself. Because deep down in some level of his subconscious, unsupported by any kind of logic, he believed that he had a better conception of what was happening on the island than anyone else. Except, of course, the killers.

  He didn’t believe the Devil walked amongst them in the way that the islanders did, and he didn’t buy the official line that it was the work of a particularly creative serial killer; although if pressed, he’d admit to himself that the Devil version was probably closer to the truth. His problem was that this intuition came from his recurring dream of the pale, dark haired woman standing on the rock shelf above the sea. The dream held some message for him, if only he could decipher it. The recent evidence from Lucca and his interrogation of the madman in the police station at Vathia bolstered this belief.

  The killing of Samarakis was more difficult to understand and he needed more time to think about that. This was the killing Lucca recognised as the most obviously different and it happened the day after his public attack on Samarakis. That attack had shaken Samarakis so much that he had promised to hand over all the evidence they’d been keeping from him; so his murder less than twenty four hours later seemed too close to be coincidental.

  It must have been done to keep the corrupt cop’s mouth shut. Clearly whoever killed him had an insider’s knowledge of the modus operandi of the other killings. But why kill Samarakis when they could have killed him? Maybe it was intended to incriminate him, but if that were the case why had his superiors been so quick to exonerate him and keep him on the case?

  He lit another cigarette from the butt of the last and gazed down at a group of local boys kicking a ball in the street between the taverna tables. He knew he was on a collision course with whatever was causing the deaths and that given time, piece by piece, he’d come to understand it.

  But this didn’t help with his job; he’d no practical idea what orders to give any more than the local cops did. The confession of the madman had been an accident as much as anything else and this confirmed the study he’d read at Police College of the three celebrated English murderers: Sutcliffe, Fred West and Dr Shipman. They’d been caught through their own complacency or chance. The police could have had all of them much earlier but had failed, despite all the expense and time lavished on the cases. So it didn’t much matter whether he behaved in the way his colleagues expected or sulked in his tent like Achilles, the end would be the same; but the Achilles option took pressure off, and that helped.

  He wouldn’t be able to explain this to the others. How could you explain that you felt stopping the killings depended on understanding something you didn’t yet know? But this is how it had worked out two years ago, in the kidnapping of the right wing Athenian industrialist Karamanlis. Then, he’d waited until he knew what to do, and that time had enabled him to get an insight
into the mindset of the kidnappers and broker the deal that released Karamanlis alive.

  The Media called it the Black Flag kidnapping after the syndico-anarchist group who had carried it out. It had made him well known for a few days and established his reputation. It also made him unpopular with his colleagues, whose more orthodox approach had been strongly criticised. Also, he reflected bitterly, it was probably why he had been sent here. Here, where he’d no idea what the next move was. He decided to shower but as the first jet of water hit him he heard his mobile chime.

  “Theodrakis, it’s Kostandin, you won’t like this but you’ve been overruled; they’ve gone public on the arrest. Are you still there? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “The story is that we’ve arrested a suspect who will be charged with murder in the morning. Did you get that? All the killings: the old man’s being given them all! So you need to be careful what you say.”

  “I’ll remember that. Who made the call, local or national?”

  “It was Adamidis; the story was hurting him and the island too much.”

  “Thanks for telling me, I appreciate it.”

  “What are you …?”

  He got no further; Theodrakis killed the call. Telling the press was a great piece of stupidity which would lead to embarrassment in the future; however he was unsurprised, and perhaps it would give the island a couple of anxiety free nights. But for him, he thought as he got back under the shower, it brought time. Now he didn’t have to make a move; that had been done for him. All he had to do was wait for the consequences.

  Twenty minutes later he was back on the balcony, washed and perfumed, in a tailored black suit and white silk shirt. He watched a moth fluttering round the electric light for some moments then went out.