Levkas Man (19 page)

‘My father is dead. A car accident. It happened three years ago.' The tone of his voice discouraged further questions and we walked on in silence.

When we reached the cave Holroyd was standing back, sucking at his pipe and looking up at the overhang, his eyes narrowed against the glare. Cartwright was watching him anxiously. ‘I think you're going to have trouble here.' Holroyd turned to Leonodipoulos. ‘What we are concerned with is the fate of Neanderthal man when the oceanic climate changed to a continental one. The Neanderthalers went into a sort of decline and a new race of man—the Cro-Magnon or Aurignacian type—began to take over.'

‘I do not understand.' Leonodipoulos was frowning. ‘Why does this new type, this Cro-Magnon, take over?'

‘Aye, well, there you've put your finger on it.' Holroyd nodded. ‘That's the question we've all been asking ourselves. Mousterian man—the Neanderthalers—had been in existence a long time, sixty thousand years at least. We've found traces of him all over Europe, in Russia, in the Near East, in Africa, and with the passage of time you would expect his artefacts, his chippings of flint and chert and obsidian for use as weapons, to show a gradual improvement. And yet the reverse is the case, particularly after the emergence of Cro-Magnon man.'

‘You have told me,' Leonodipoulos said, ‘that this Cro-Magnon is our own species.'

‘Yes.
Homo sapiens sapiens
. He's named after the Cro-Magnon cave-shelter at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne. That was where the first skeletons were unearthed, in 1868. But where he came from, that too is a mystery. The general view is that he came from Asia. Dr Van der Voort thinks from Africa.' He put a match to his pipe. ‘So there you have it—two mysteries. Where did he come from? Why did Mousterian man disappear? Did this taller, more intelligent type of man—a man with a bigger brain capacity, with a head like ours, no apelike brow ridges and a square jaw—destroy the Neanderthalers, or did Mousterian man just fade away naturally, a sort of death wish, like an African under the spell of a witch doctor?' His pipe was drawing again, his round babyish face smiling. ‘Fascinating, isn't it? But whether this cave-shelter will throw any light on it—' He took his pipe out of his mouth, shaking his head, still smiling. ‘Difficult to say. But perhaps Van der Voort will be able to tell us.'

His inspection of the dig took about half an hour and most of his comments were directed to Leonodipoulos. He seemed very anxious to establish the importance of the research they were doing into the prehistory of man in Greece. Several times he referred to the tourist attraction of the caves in the Dordogne region of France. But what interested me, as I stood there listening to him, was the way he managed to convey how primitive man, and the animals he hunted, could be associated, through the juxtaposition of bone remains, with definite climatic conditions and the period of their existence established in geological time by relating each new find to others of the same period. It was, in fact, a short lecture on how early man had developed along similar lines in different parts of the world, and the way he put it, in his slow, matter-of-fact North country voice, even I could understand and appreciate why, once all the correlated parts of a discovery—human bones, animal bones, artefacts and the soil in which they had been found—had been established and the date determined, then the name given to that discovery was used to describe others of a similar type.

Finally, standing once again on the slope below the cave, he pointed the stem of his pipe at the overhang and said, ‘There's been a lot of water coming down this hillside. The evidence is there at the back of the cave.' He turned to Cartwright. ‘I'm afraid, when you get down a little deeper, you'll find that whole layers of occupation have been washed down the slope or are interspersed with detritus from above. It looks as though Van der Voort has put you to work on a dig of extreme complexity.'

We went back to the camp then. It was pleasant under the trees and Sonia had prepared a cold lunch. Holroyd seated himself next to me. ‘Now about your father … you will appreciate from what I've been saying that the whole success of this expedition depends on him.' His eyes were fixed on me. ‘You saw him yesterday?'

I nodded. In view of what he had said earlier there seemed no point in denying it.

‘Where?' And when I told him, he said, ‘Good. Then they'll pick him up today. Did he talk to you about the future at all? Did he say whether he planned to concentrate on this cave site or move on to another area?'

‘We were interrupted.'

‘I see. Well, it doesn't matter. He'll be able to tell us that himself, I hope.' He concentrated for a moment on his food. He was a very purposeful eater, the sort of man who regards food solely as fuel for his energy, and he talked and ate at the same time. ‘How did you know where to find him, eh?' He seized a glass of water and drank deeply, his little eyes watching me. ‘Alec didn't know. Nor did that Greek fellow—he had to follow you. Well?'

I hadn't expected the question and I hesitated.

‘You turn up here out of the blue, after the police have been searching the countryside for him without success for nearly three weeks, and the very next day you go straight to the place where he's been hiding out.' He jabbed at my arm with his forefinger. ‘You found something in his house—his notes—locations where he worked last year?'

I didn't say anything, and he smiled as though my silence was sufficient answer. ‘Now, how long did you have together before you were interrupted?'

‘I don't know. About fifteen or twenty minutes, I suppose.'

‘And what did you talk about?'

I hesitated. ‘The dunes mainly,' I said, and I began to explain to him the significance of that odd stretch of country. But he wasn't interested in that. He wanted to know whether I had been shown any excavations, any prehistoric bones or artefacts. He brushed aside my description of the ventilation shafts. ‘Modern—Roman,' he said impatiently. ‘I'm talking about things that are thirty-five thousand years old. Surely you realize that by now.'

The others had fallen suddenly silent and I looked up to find Kotiadis coming into the clearing. He was alone and he came straight to where I was sitting, walking fast and with purpose. ‘Here's your rucksack,' he said and dumped it on the table in front of me. ‘You know where I find it?'

‘Where is he?' I demanded.

‘That is what I come to ask you.' He was hot and tired and extremely angry. ‘He has been hiding out in the top of that old shaft for a long time. The evidence is everywhere.'

I was staring at him, barely listening to what he was saying.

‘He must be there,' I said.

‘Not now.'

There was finality in the way he said it, and the memory of his violent anti-Communism scared me for a moment. ‘Have you searched the dunes?'

‘Of course I searched the dunes—the whole area. He is not there.'

The intensity of his frustration convinced me and I relaxed. The old man must have realized they would come back. He had seen the trap and escaped. But where to? Weak as he was, where could he possibly have gone? Sonia caught my eye, the same question in her mind. I shook my head. I didn't know.

I put the rucksack on the ground beside me. Kotiadis had switched his attention to Leonodipoulos now, and as the changed situation was explained to him, he became very heated. Holroyd gripped my arm. ‘If you know where he is, laddie, you'd better tell me. It's for his own good. This Congress is a great opportunity. Where's he gone to ground now?'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I don't know.'

‘You must have some idea, surely?' And when I shook my head his grip on my arm tightened. ‘What else did you discover in his house? You knew he would be somewhere on those dunes. What was the next location?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You're lying.'

Sonia intervened then, leaning across the table. ‘He's telling you the truth. He'd never have found Dr Van der Voort if I hadn't told him about the dunes near Ayios Giorgios.'

‘You?' He let go of my arm and stared at her. ‘He was there last year, was he?'

The corners of her lips turned up in a little secret smile. ‘It was just something I typed for him, a description of the dunes. He was very interested in the geological aspect of his discovery. It confirmed, you see, the climatic conditions …'

‘Yes, but what else? Was there something near—a cave-dwelling? What was the next passage you typed for him?'

‘Nothing else.'

‘Nothing? But these were his notes. He was out here two seasons—'

‘I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.'

He hesitated, staring at her hard. Then he got abruptly to his feet, pulling his pipe out of his pocket, and went over to where the two Greeks were still arguing. Cartwright got up, too nervous, ill-at-ease, fumbling with his pipe. Hans followed him.

I turned to Sonia then. ‘Have you any idea where he is?'

She shook her head. ‘He may have gone up to the village of Ayios Giogios. He lived there for a time last year.'

‘Kotiadis will have searched there.'

‘Probably. But he could be in the hills, hiding. From what you've told me he's too weak to have gone very far.' And she added angrily, ‘All Professor Holroyd cares about is where those bones came from—the ones I sent to Dr Gilmore for dating. If it wasn't for that he'd be glad to see your father dead.' Her voice shook with the intensity of her feeling.

I leaned across the table. ‘And where
did
the bones come from?' I saw the muscles of her face tighten, her eyes go blank. ‘Was it Levkas?' I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper. But Levkas was an island. ‘He couldn't possibly have got there.'

‘You don't realize how desperate he is.' There were tears in her eyes. ‘This is his last chance. You mustn't—please you mustn't tell Holroyd about Levkas.'

But Holroyd was talking to Kotiadis now. They were standing together on the edge of the clearing, away from the others, and Kotiadis already knew about Levkas. He knew all the locations.

‘I think they'll decide to move camp to Ayios Giorgios now.'

‘Will Holroyd stay out here?' I asked.

She nodded. ‘I think so. He feels he's on to something now and he won't leave it to Alec. The time's too short if he's to read that paper. Yes,' she said with finality. ‘He'll stay.' And she added with a little jerk of her head to where Cartwright and her brother were standing alone and silent. ‘They're resigned to it already, both of them Alec is ambitious, and Hans is a dreamer. They thought this dig here—' She gave a little brittle laugh. ‘The academic world is full of conceit, you know.'

Cartwright's dejection I could understand. I had seen the way he had flushed like a girl up there at the dig when Holroyd had condemned it as a site of great complexity. But Hans Winters was still a student. ‘I should have thought your brother would be glad to work under a man like Holroyd.'

She gave a little shrug. ‘You can't dream dreams with a man like Professor Holroyd in charge, and Hans is my father all over again.'

‘Your father's dead. I believe.'

‘Yes, he's dead. Did Hans tell you?'

I nodded.

‘Did he tell you how?' She was looking at me very directly. ‘He committed suicide.'

‘I'm sorry,' I murmured.

‘No need to be,' she said harshly. ‘He wasn't cut out for this world. He was a Christian. A real Christian. And he thought everybody was like him. He was too bloody good to be true. And so unworldly … he drove his car straight off the road into the Amstel.'

‘You obviously don't take after him.'

‘No. I fake after my mother's side of the family, thank God. But—' Her face suddenly softened. ‘On the surface, that is; deep down—I'm not so sure.'

‘You're older than your brother.'

‘Yes. Two years.'

‘He says you studied biology.'

‘Foreign languages. Biology was only a side line.' The habitual tenseness of her face was lit fleetingly by that quick elfin smile of hers. ‘You're wondering how I came to be associated with Dr Van der Voort.'

‘I presumed it was through your brother.'

‘Yes. Indirectly. Dr Van der Voort's books have never been published in Holland, but Hans got hold of the East German editions, and German being one of my languages—' She gave a little shrug. ‘I just became fascinated, that's all. Not the writing. He writes very technically. But the ideas, the way he correlates man and his environment—the effects of the Würm Glaciation in particular—the extraordinary changes produced by the interstadials—hippopotamus, rhinoceros, reindeer, bison, mammoths, tropical animals, interchanging with an almost arctic fauna, and man himself evolving all the time. And then, when I realized he was in Amsterdam, actually lived just across the canal from us—'

I had never asked her what her feelings for him were, and now, when I felt she was just about to explain of her own accord, Holroyd interrupted us. ‘I've had a talk with Demetrios Kotiadis,' he said to me. He was looking pleased with himself, standing over me, puffing contentedly at his pipe. ‘He's done a very thorough job tracing your father's movements last year and during his earlier visit in 1965. He's going to check up now on all the likely places, and when he finds him, he'll keep him under surveillance. But that's all. Leonodipoulos was very emphatic. I don't think he convinced him, but Kotiadis has his orders and Dr Van der Voort will be free to rejoin the expedition, if that's what he wants.' He patted my shoulder. ‘So you've no cause to worry about him any more.'

I looked across at Kotiadis. He was still arguing with Leonodipoulos, the staccato sound of his voice ringing in the quiet of the glade as they walked towards the path that led to the village. ‘What are you planning to do?' I asked Holroyd.