The Dead Travel Fast (13 page)

“By the police?”

“Just leave it to me.”

“Should we be moving anything? It’s all evidence.”

“Well, we’re not harming it, are we?”

“What about the context?”

“Fuck the context, we know where it was found, mark the spot if you’re so bothered; and listen, no mention of this to anyone, this site could be really big for us. We don’t want it getting messed up. The bones will probably turn out to be animal, or it could be some type of practical joke.”

“What if these bones are connected to the murders?”

“Oh, come on, if there’d been some weird stuff about cutting out bones don’t you think it would be all over the papers? Or are you suggesting that the murders were carried out in the anatomy labs of a hospital? Grow up, for Christ’s sake.”

He realised he was shouting and saw that both the girls were staring at him and Maria was crying. He softened his tone.

“Sorry; sorry, we’re obviously wound up. Look, you can trust me to do the responsible thing about the bones, I promise. But you need to be responsible too; if there’s been some sort of crime here or even just a practical joke, then we all have to keep quiet about it, that’s what the police would say.”

He looked at each of their faces and saw they weren’t convinced.

“Obviously we’ll have to close the site down for a bit, so I’ll text you over the next couple of days, keep you in the picture, yeah?”

Thomas gave him the bag with the bloodied bones and as he passed them across, Steve could see from his eyes that although he didn’t trust him, he was glad to have handed over the responsibility. They packed up and walked back towards the bus, but before they reached it a silver sports car pulled up alongside. Alekka got out and came towards them; Steve could see she was agitated.

“Steve, have you seen my brother Antonis here?”

Steve stopped to talk but the others walked on with their eyes averted; he saw Anna spit on the ground and Thomas cross himself. If Alekka noticed this, she chose not to react.

“No, no one’s been here but us. Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem but I have not time to talk. I will ring you soon.”

She walked quickly back to her car and screeched off. They took down the awning and packed up the bus. On the drive back to the university no one spoke. When he dropped them off he just said,

“I’ll deal with the authorities and when it’s OK to start again I’ll text you. Remember, not a word to anyone.”

They shuffled off together in silence. Steve knew they didn’t trust him and he didn’t blame them, he didn’t trust himself. But he was spooked; this was frighteningly familiar.

That night he sat in the bar by the harbour drinking ouzo; he needed time to think. Needed someone to talk to. After half a bottle he decided to wait until Giles arrived on the afternoon plane. He’d been at Skendleby, if anyone would understand he would.

Telling the others to keep quiet hadn’t been about protecting the integrity of the site. He was afraid of what an investigation would dig up, and he wasn’t going to make the Skendleby mistake a second time. The thin sliver of moon disappeared behind a wisp of cloud and he decided to go back to his apartment. As he walked by his car he remembered the bones locked in the trunk and shivered.

Theodrakis woke early, and by the time Hippolyta arrived to collect him he had sourced a pair of swimming shorts from the village general store. Normally a tourist picnic boat trip was something he would have found distasteful, however in his present circumstances it presented several attractions; not the least of which were a day with Hippolyta and a temporary state of anonymity as part of a group.

Out on a boat no one could find him or expect anything from him. So he took time considering how he should dress for the occasion. His wardrobe didn’t extend to sports casual and he had to settle for the trousers of a cream linen suit worn with a yellow polo shirt and some expensive Italian loafers: just the type of outfit de rigueur at a Glyfada soiree. In his opinion, Hippolyta hadn’t taken similar time over her wardrobe and wore what appeared to be a man’s shirt, several sizes too large, and a pair of flip flops. These latter he appreciated as without heels she wasn’t so much taller than he was.

She drove them through the nearby resort of Kampos, which like all the vacation strips on the island seemed depressingly empty, to a small wooden jetty at the far end. There they found a collection of about thirty holiday makers waiting to board an old pleasure boat moored at the pier end.

Hippolyta pushed through the tourists to the boat where she was greeted by a bulky unshaven man wearing a grubby T shirt bearing the legend ‘Captain Zorba No Problems’. She greeted him
with a kiss, introduced him to Theodrakis and let him help her across the gangplank onto the boat. Captain Zorba escorted them to the best seats and only when they were comfortably established did he admit the other passengers. Most of these were middle aged and heavily built, but friendly and determined on a good time.

Theodrakis was the only passenger not wearing shorts or a bulging swimming suit. A group of Northern Europeans squeezed themselves into the remaining seats in the prow. Theodrakis’s new neighbour, a man with a large bare belly and chest covered with scars, grunted amiably and offered him a swig out of a hip flask. Theodrakis refused politely so the man took a large gulp himself, belched, and passed the flask to his companions, who all accepted.

A teenage boy, also wearing a ‘Captain Zorba No Problems’ shirt, untied the ropes and they pulled away from shore. Hippolyta tied her hair back, put on a sun hat and told him that they would sail for about forty minutes to where the captain had laid his nets last night and then stop to gather them in. He would describe different fish they caught, which would later be grilled for lunch.

He didn’t know what to say and she seemed similarly nervous so they sat in companionable silence and watched the coastline as it passed. The day was warm, but the breeze generated by the ship’s motion was refreshing and the drone of the engine comforting. They were squeezed together so he enjoyed the feel of the naked skin of her arm against his.

He felt good, relaxed by the boat but stimulated by Hippolyta and wanted the day to go on forever. Even when a party of Germans attempted to start everyone singing drinking songs he stayed in his blissed-out zone, and in any case the singing didn’t catch on. A pod of dolphins followed the boat for a while and as everyone scrambled for their cameras Theodrakis watched a sleek dolphin arch up out of the water, with sunlight glistening on its svelte skin, before splashing back under the waves.

It seemed so natural and clean that he felt tears starting at the back of his eyes. Hippolyta noticed, asked if he was all right and slipped her arm through his. Sometime later she pointed forwards and said,

“Look, there it is.”

He looked and saw in the distance a white rectangular plastic container bobbing on the water.

“Yes, there, that’s the float, that’s where the nets are, that’s where we catch our fish.”

She was beaming with childish anticipation and he thought that maybe she was as happy as he was.

“When we get to the float, he will haul in the nets and then gut and clean the catch; he’s not as good as Captain Michales but it is quite interesting and sometimes funny.”

Captain Zorba came round with a collection of plastic cups which his son filled from a large and much-used styrofoam container of ouzo and water. When all the cups were filled, the Captain started the winding gear and the nets began their journey up from the sea bed. Only two people on the boat were British, but the talk was delivered in a form of English that everyone seemed to understand and as Hippolyta predicted, it was a good act.

The captain drew up a bucket of sea water, took out a sharp gutting knife and stopped the net as each fish appeared. Anyone who looked nervous about the growing pile of fish gasping and wriggling their last on the deck had a fish thrown to them by the captain, to the amusement of everyone else. Soon Zorba was well into his act.

“This fish here is Scorpios fish, is bad if the spikes stick in you. For us is no good, but if you are careful you can make soup with this fish. This one is small so I throw it back.”

He paused for effect.

“I throw back because I feel very big fish coming up next, very big fish, perhaps shark or dolphin.”

Theodrakis neighbour shouted out at this.

“Gut, then ve eat dolphin, plenty for all.”

Everyone laughed and Hippolyta whispered,

“This is always the joke he ends with, the heavy fish is really the rock that weights the nets.”

Theodrakis sat back getting ready to laugh as Zorba moved to the climax.

“Here it comes, get ready to shout hoopah.”

But he didn’t shout hoopah and Theodrakis didn’t laugh. All
eyes were on the net as first a white human arm appeared over the side of the boat followed by the hair, matted with seawrack, then the head and the rest of the naked body. Theodrakis pulled Hippolyta’s head into his chest so she couldn’t see what he did. The body hadn’t been in the water long, no more than a day; the fish had hardly got to work on it.

But the hallmark of the killer was plainly stamped, and hanging naked in the nets above the deck made the imprimatur of mutilations somehow look worse. For an instant there was deep silence on the boat, broken only by the whooshing sounds of a squid slowly asphyxiating in the pile of dying fish on the deck. Then the screaming started.

Hours later, after the police at the dockside had taken the body away, Theodrakis walked through the demonstrators in Lion Square, Vathia, to report to Adamidis. The protest had attracted a large crowd, more than even the organisers had expected and it seemed that all strands of island life were represented. The banners ranged from the official protest rejecting the Euro-zone bail out terms and calling for pensions to be protected to the anarchist demands for bankers to be hanged; the mood was angry but Theodrakis hardly noticed.

It was difficult to push his way through the crowd and even more difficult to talk his way into the civic building where Adamidis had his office. Fortunately, one of the cops on duty recognised him and persuaded security to open up.

Once through the solid doors he entered an entirely different and much quieter world; in fact too quiet, and the tension he could sense inside the old high ceilinged building was so palpable it unsettled him. He removed his jacket to brush off the grime and dust, noticed that his yellow polo shirt was sweat-stained at the armpits, and quickly put it back on.

A secretary led him down the dimly lit and stale-smelling internal corridor leading to the office from which Adamidis monitored the island. Despite the polystyrene tiles and strip lighting of the
recently lowered ceiling, installed as part of a project to modernise the building, it conveyed a sepulchral atmosphere of decay. The secretary knocked softly on the door at the end of the corridor then pushed it open and indicated Theodrakis should enter.

Adamidis was seated behind a vast dark wood desk beneath a fan mounted in the ceiling. He didn’t look well and offered no greeting, just motioned Theodrakis to sit.

“Don’t think that you can just sit there and say nothing this time, Theodrakis. We’re all in the shit on this one and if I go down, you go down first, understand?”

Theodrakis understood that despite having been urged to speak, this question was rhetorical so he remained silent.

“We can’t hush this up; can’t hush any of it up now. Not now your little fishing trip has demonstrated at first hand, not only that the murderer is still out there but also what he does with the bodies. You can bet those tourists will be on their mobiles selling the details to every fucking tabloid in Europe.”

He put his head in his hands and for a moment Theodrakis felt sympathy for him. After a while, he sat up again and continued.

“So, you’ve found another who has ‘died unknown, dazed with dreadful face’.”

Theodrakis knew he was quoting but couldn’t place the source.

“We know this country’s fucked, the economy’s fucked, the climate’s fucked and that’s what those angry scared people out there are shouting about. But they’re the lucky ones aren’t they? They are the lucky ones because they don’t know what we know: how fucked we really are. So now I want you to tell me truthfully what you think it is that we’re really up against and how we deal with it.”

Theodrakis let out a breath of ironic laughter.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it is or what we do about it. You know as well as I do that all the evidence from pathology points to every murder using the same prehistoric weapons and mutilating the bodies in an identical manner. That suggests they all followed the same guide book to conduct a common ritual.”

Adamidis ignored the bitter sarcasm, just sat silent, head lowered.

“Yet the evidence is equally clear that each murder was committed by a different person and we have to accept that, especially now that, thanks to your press release, everyone will know that this latest murder was carried out while the main suspect was in a police cell.”

He waited for Adamidis to respond but there was no reaction, just silence interrupted by the whirring of the fan and the ticking of the electric clock on the wall; so for the first time he tried to explain to his superior what he actually thought.

“I don’t think we can treat this as a murder case, none of our procedures are adequate. This is more like some type of epidemic and the killers are just its agents, perhaps like the rats that spread the Black Death. I know it sounds incredible but it’s logical. That mad old man killed one and we got him; but it takes us nowhere. It’s likely that we will get others, but by then it will have moved on and we’ll be no wiser. I think we need to try and understand the significance of the missing evidence.

“We have to find the bones; once we have those, particularly if they are all in one place then we have a context and we might understand something about the ritual. At least we have a pattern now; we know it’s not random, so we need to study this pattern, to interrogate the evidence in a different way, to try to see it in a different way. The bones are the key.”

He paused, surprised that Adamidis hadn’t tried to shut him up, then articulated his wildest theory: the one that gave him nightmares.

“I think this could be an infection of the mind, a type of possession if you like. Half those people out there demonstrating believe these murders involve a curse or black magic; we know this is just superstitious nonsense, but their belief makes it real to them. You know from psychology it’s a short step from believing something to making it real, even police college teaches that. How many murderers claim that they were driven to kill by voices only they could hear? I think there’s something on the island encouraging this. Something beyond the a priori that we don’t perceive. I also know that there are things that you’ve kept hidden from me, things that Samarakis was going to tell me before he was killed.”

Again Adamidis said nothing, so he pressed on.

“I think we should try other lines of enquiry: we should find out where the bones are, we should deviate from procedure and try hypnosis on that mad man in the cells. When I interviewed him he underwent personality change, it was like interviewing two people, one of which was hidden inside. It spooked all the cops in the station. Let’s see if we can put together a picture or pattern, however strange or warped, of what the purpose of this thing is.”

He paused again, for a moment undecided whether to continue, but Adamidis was staring expectantly at him so he did.

“I need you to tell me what you’ve been hiding and if things like this have happened on this island before. As you said earlier your career’s ruined, this place is going to Hell; what have you got to lose?”

There was a silence then Adamidis took his head out of his hands and sat up straight.

“What you say makes no sense but then neither does anything else at present and you’re right about us withholding information from you. The first of these killings occurred shortly after Professor Andraki discovered that some ancient sites had been disturbed and robbed. Then the killer sent that message to the press, no one could make any sense of it; we thought it was some kind of code. No one could crack it so, as a last resort, we showed it to Andraki and he identified it as what he thought might be a type of very early Mesopotamian proto script. To prevent panic we were advised to keep it from the public.”