Nemesis of the Dead (12 page)

Jack was on him in a flash. He dragged him to his feet, pulled back the hood and shone the torch in his face.

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ exclaimed Sid. ‘It’s old Charon.’

Almost instantly the agile smuggler who, seconds before, had been ducking and diving so nimbly to escape capture reverted to the poor old Greek ferryman with total amnesia. He knew nothing, he gestured. He had little English. He didn’t understand what they were saying. They should leave him alone. He had done nothing. He was a sick man. He coughed and spat spectacularly to prove it. It was then that Jack recognized the pungent smell – cheap Greek roll-ups. The sinister garb which in the half-light had looked so like a monk’s habit turned out to be a long, hooded fisherman’s coat.

‘So if Charon’s up here with us,’ reasoned Corrie, now calm and trying to make sense of it, ‘who’s down below unloading the stolen icons from his ferry and tying them to the rope?’ Her hand flew to her mouth as she realized the full meaning of what they had done. ‘Oh my God, Jack! We’ve just smashed umpteen priceless Greek artefacts on the rocks. They’ll probably deport us. We’ll be public enemies of the Greek Culture Department, like Lord Elgin after he had it away with their marbles. What on earth are we going to do?’

Sidney, pragmatic as ever, was over by the winch, looking down at the sea.

‘Jack, come and have a butcher’s at this. What a terrible waste.’

Jack went over to the window, still gripping Charon by the collar of his coat. Corrie followed and they peered down. Dawn was breaking and in the early morning mist Corrie thought it was dark-red blood she could see all over the rocks. Then she spotted the dozens of shattered wine bottles. While they stared down, appalled at the scale of the Dionysian disaster, a figure appeared dressed in dark-coloured trousers and donkey jacket with a cap pulled down over his eyes. Only when he stepped back and looked up to see what had gone wrong with the winch did they recognize the gaunt, swarthy features. It was Yanni.

Further investigation of the abbey vestry revealed case upon case of top quality Greek wine, hidden among St Sophia’s precious relics. Jack had no interest in a wine scam. The cursory search he had made of the monastery had not revealed what he was looking for, what he had hoped to find. He frowned, disappointed that yet another hunch had led to nothing and he had only five days left. It confirmed his misgivings about police work based on intuition. He was about to let Charon go when he had one of his better ideas.

‘I take it your ferry is anchored down there somewhere?’

The old man nodded and began gabbling again. ‘But I am innocent. I know nothing.’

Back, fleetingly, in her parallel universe, Corrie decided Charon was the perfect nickname for this dreadful old reprobate, as the mythological ferryman of the dead was invariably depicted as a sulky, bad-tempered old man. The classical prototype of an undertaker.

‘Right,’ said Jack firmly. ‘We’ve got a very sick girl on the island. What you’re going to do is take her across to the mainland and get her to hospital pronto. Do you understand? Erm …
subito
…
vite
…’

‘
Amésos
,’ offered Sid, who hadn’t wasted
all
his time in the
kafeneíon
drinking and playing cards.

Corrie viewed him afresh and liked him even better. There was much more to this Dionysus than a sombrero with a Union Jack on it.

The old ferryman, aware that he had form as long as his grimy arm for theft and receiving stolen goods, reckoned this was one rap he might avoid if he complied.

‘Yes, sir. I go now. I bring ferry round to hotel, sir.’ He wriggled free and scuttled off, mumbling Greek oaths and gesturing obscenely at Jack behind his back.

Dawn had barely broken when they eventually got back down to safe ground again. Rather than disturb the other guests, they trooped wearily into the hotel via the kitchen door, which stood conveniently open.

Sidney spotted the bread, cheese and pickled onions on the table.

‘Oh good – grub. I’m starving.’

‘So am I,’ said Corrie. ‘I suspect Maria left the food for Yanni but I doubt if he’ll show up for a while. We may as well eat it.’

They sat round the kitchen table and Sid poured them each a glass of the illicit wine, wondering if that made them accessories to the crime. With hindsight, he reckoned the Prof must have known about it – all that winking and joking in Greek with Yanni every time he opened a bottle – so that made him an accessory too. He smiled at the thought. It was impossible to imagine the old Prof being involved in any kind of crime. He bet he’d never even had a parking ticket.

Jack grinned at Corrie. ‘Looks like you were wrong, Sherlock. Not valuable Greek artefacts – just hookey wine.’

‘I was very nearly right.’ Corrie bridled. ‘I just got some of the finer detail wrong. I said thieves were stashing stolen goods from the mainland up here in the monastery and so they were.’ She held up the bottle with no label. ‘This wine’s obviously nicked or they wouldn’t be sneaking it across in the middle of the night. If I’m not much mistaken, what we’ve been glugging in gargantuan quantities every night is a single variety
Agiorgitíko
. Wine experts have compared it to a good Merlot. It’s much too good to be cheap local plonk. Haven’t I’ve said so all along?’

‘Yes, dear.’ Jack continued to grin infuriatingly.

‘
Agio
– what?’ Sid asked.

‘It’s a red grape grown in the Nemea region of the Peloponnese since ancient times and I bet that’s where they pinched the wine from.’

‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Sid winked. ‘I still think you’re wasted in that shoe shop, Corrie. Why don’t you pack it in and have a go at catering?’

She winked back. ‘Old Charon receives the wine from whoever nicks it in Greece, then ferries it across to Katastrophos where he sells it to Yanni at a profit. Yanni steams off all the labels so nobody recognizes it and sells it to his guests at a bit more profit.’

‘Nice little earner all round.’ Sid helped himself to more goat’s cheese. ‘Nice little Greek earner, in fact.’ He nudged Jack and winked. ‘Geddit? Nice little Greek URN-er?’

‘Yes, Sid, very funny,’ said Jack wearily. ‘I understand the process all right. What I don’t see is why they went to all the trouble of smuggling it in at night. And why hide it in the monastery? It’s a hell of a business getting it up there. Why didn’t they just put it in Yanni’s cellar and have done with it? I doubt whether anyone would have noticed, much less cared. It’s not as if there’s any vigilant law and order on the island.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sid, cheerfully. ‘You could get away with murder, here.’

‘Come to think of it,’ said Corrie, ‘when we came across on Charon’s ferry, he had some cases of wine in the stern then. Sky sat on them. He brought those across in broad daylight and unloaded them on the quay. Why all the cloak and dagger stuff now?’

‘Obvious, isn’t it?’ Sid mis-speared an onion and it shot across the table and snookered itself behind the wine bottle. ‘They had to change their
modus operandi
when they found out Jack was a copper. Must have given them a very nasty turn. I expect they thought you’d been sent to investigate ’em. ’Course, it all went a bit pear-shaped when the storm knocked out the phones because Charon wouldn’t have been able to tip off Yanni he was bringing another consignment across. They had to rely on the flashing lights.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Jack was concerned. ‘How did they find out I was a policeman? We didn’t tell a soul. Made a point of it, actually.’ It had been considered imperative to the success of his assignment that nobody on the island knew.

‘Do me a favour, mate,’ laughed Sid. ‘You’ve got Old Bill written all over you. Smartly ironed shirts, sharp haircut, nice shiny Plod boots – dead give-away.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, sheepishly. He glanced down at his lovingly polished black brogues, wondering why he had not had the gumption to look more like a scruffy holidaymaker. Too little time to plan properly. Always a mistake.

‘Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered what you looked like really,’ finished Sid, ‘because Sky told everyone you were a copper when we first arrived.’

The penny dropped then. Sky had said something odd during their hostile exchange over Ellie but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it at the time. Now he remembered what it was. She had addressed him as Inspector Dawes. How the blue blazes would a Greek hippy he’d never seen before in his life know he was a copper? Not just a copper, but an inspector. It was worrying because it had the potential to foul things up completely if everyone knew. Still, too late to do anything about it now. He would just have to stay alert but look relaxed. He broke off a chunk of bread.

‘They needn’t have worried. Katastrophos is well outside my jurisdiction. Anyway, I’m off duty. It’s for the Greek police to sort out their little fiddle, if they ever manage to track it down to a minuscule island miles from anywhere.’

Sidney uncorked their third bottle of wine. He liked old Yanni so he reckoned it was only right to help dispose of as much of the evidence as possible. He filled Jack’s empty glass. ‘Is your name really Jack Dawes?’ he asked, curious.

‘No, it’s Rupert actually. I got the daft nickname when I joined the force.’

Sid grinned at Corrie, blearily. ‘I bet you’re not really called Coriander either.’

‘Oh yes I am,’ said Corrie. ‘It was my mum’s fault. She was a cook, too, and she was stuffing a noisette of lamb with herbs when she went into labour with me and my twin brother. She must have been light-headed from the gas and air because she called me Coriander and my brother Basil.’

Sid whistled. ‘Lucky she wasn’t stuffing a chicken. She might have called you Sage and Onion.’

‘Or Parsley and Thyme.’ Corrie giggled tipsily. ‘Sid, you do make me laugh and you have a lovely smile. How come you’re not married? I’d have thought some nice girl would have snapped you up years ago.’

Sid fiddled with the tassels on his scarf. ‘I’ve never had much luck with nice girls. Most of ’em are looking for someone suave and sophisticated, like James Bond, not a plumber who works twenty-four-seven, lives on takeaways and supports Arsenal. I don’t understand what makes women tick a lot of the time.’

‘Join the club,’ mumbled Jack.

Sid peered into the depths of his glass, as if expecting to find the answer there. ‘They seem to prefer the bastards who treat them like dirt to a genuine bloke who wants to take care of them. Look at that nice Marjorie Dobson. Thirty years she’s been married to Old Misery Guts. Why does she put up with it?’

Corrie shrugged. ‘No good asking me. The feminine tendency to self-sacrifice has always been entirely absent in my disposition. Maybe you have to have a child before it kicks in.’ Corrie emptied her glass and poured another. ‘But I think you underestimate your pulling power, Sid. Diana Gordon finds you very attractive, anyone can see that.’ She ignored the cautionary glare from Jack, telling her she was drinking too much and trampling blithely about on sensitive territory.

Sid laughed dismissively. ‘She’s a cut above the sorts that get down the Stoke Newington Arms on karaoke night, that’s for sure. Diana’s a lovely lady but it’s only a bit of a lark. She’s just bored because the Prof’s too busy working to spend time with her and like you say, I make her laugh.’

‘I think you’re very fond of her.’ Corrie, more than a little drunk, leaned precariously sideways to whisper confidentially in his ear and lurched almost off her chair. She grabbed the table to steady herself. ‘Why don’t you say something – hic – instead of pretending it’s just a holiday fling? You never know what might happen.’

Sidney fidgeted, uncomfortably. ‘Leave off, Corrie. You sound like one of those god-awful women’s magazines – all heart-warming and syrupy where everyone lives happily ever after. Real life’s nothing like that. Diana’s used to the best. She’s used to a seriously rich husband, which I’m never going to be. It just couldn’t work, could it? I’ve nothing to offer her.’ He’d been absently unpicking the fringe of his Arsenal scarf and now it began to unravel. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Well, one good thing’s come out of last night’s fiasco,’ said Jack, brightly, sensing Sid and Corrie were in danger of getting maudlin, having consumed awe-inspiring quantities of wine. ‘In a couple of hours Ellie will be on her way to hospital.’

‘Yeah, that’s good. Really good,’ slurred Sid. ‘Been a heck of a long day, hasn’t it? I’m knackered.’ He picked up another bottle and staggered towards the stairs for a couple of hours’ kip before morning. ‘G’night all.’

For once, Jack and Corrie fell into their beds and just lay there, too exhausted for their usual post mortem on the day. Their minds, however, remained determinedly restless. Jack planned to speak to Tim as soon as it was properly daylight and then go down to the landing stage to see them both safely on to Charon’s ferry and off to the mainland and hospital. It would be an uncomfortable journey for Ellie but she would have Tim with her and he was confident it was the best thing to do. Jack made a mental note to find out what hospital they took her to. Eventually, they might be able to shed some light on what had poisoned her although it would be too late to help him in the short term. At least she would be safe once he got her away from Katastrophos. This blasted island! It had a way of sidetracking you, upsetting your concentration. He had known Ellie was at risk; all the background information had pointed to it, yet he had still stood by and allowed it to happen. Well, he wouldn’t be caught off guard next time – and he knew there would be a next time. He was beginning to gain some insight now, although there were still some aspects that defied logic. What had been the motive for poisoning Maria, or could it simply have been just a rotten egg? Why hadn’t his briefing on Marjorie Dobson picked up on her connection to Lavinia Braithwaite? Where did the weird and stroppy Sky fit into all this and how did she find out his name? And the business of Sid’s rash on the wrong hand still niggled at the back of his mind. But the thing that exercised his brain the most, the crux of the whole operation that he had come to Katastrophos to find, still eluded him. He had been so confident the answer was up in the ruined monastery, but he was wrong. He’d wasted a week already and he was running out of places to look. Only seven days left.