The Dead Travel Fast (8 page)

Steve couldn’t sleep, and by the first blurry streaks of dawn gave up trying. He’d read the letter three times. The first time skim read it, missed the detail but caught the terror, interspersed with flashes of malice. He decided not to read it again until the morning and went to bed.

The instant he closed his eyes, the image of Father John appeared to him. Thompson’s description of the creature in Venice was so very close to the priest of Vassilis’s chapel. He turned the light on and went to the fridge for a bottle of water, and stood looking out of the window at the night. The longer he stood there trying not to think about the letter, the more he could feel it lying open on the coffee table pulling at him. The second reading was worse; it was clear his escape to Samos had been organised to fulfil some purpose and the things that frightened him so badly at Skendleby were waiting here for him.

The letter shook in his hands. Before Skendleby he’d have laughed it off as a practical joke, but he knew better now. He read it a third time to try and pick up any message or nuance he might have missed.

When he finished, something uncharacteristic happened: he was overcome with pity for its nerdish author who, despite his pomposity, never deserved this. He’d been their dupe and paid with his life for their actions. He couldn’t get the idea of the frightened Thompson waiting in his Nice hotel room for what was coming for him out of his mind and wished he could turn back
time and save him. Then he began to think of his own position on the island as a peculiarly grimy dawn streaked the horizon.

He caught the whiff of smoke before he heard the shouting outside; he turned his head towards the source of the noise and saw one of the taverna owners standing on a jetty with his back to the sea, looking inland towards the mountains through a pair of binoculars. There were a few early morning fishing boats getting ready to head out to sea whose skippers had dropped their gear and were talking and asking what he could see. Steve’s first reaction was relief; something was happening, he could escape from the letter. He scrambled into some clothes and went down to join them.

Outside on the quay not much could be seen except a black cloud over the forested ridge that bisected the island: fire, according to relatives phoning from Marathakampos, had been first noticed about an hour before dawn.

Half the village had crowded into the taverna to sip coffee and speculate about the fire and who started it. They were sure it was arson because how else could a fire start at that time of night? By then it was light enough for the helicopters to fly and the first of them was hovering fifty metres out to sea filling the great bucket that hung below it with sea water to drop on the blaze. The fire service and army were on the ridge and the volunteer fire reserve had been alerted. This last was unnecessary, as everyone was awake and had gravitated towards the bars and tavernas on the waterfront to share stories and wait for news of the size of the blaze.

By the time the sun cleared the slopes above Spatherai across the bay, the smudges of smoke over the ridge had congealed into one black grey mass which was creeping down the hills towards them. By midday a decision was made that it would not be possible to contain the fire along the line they’d originally intended, and they must pull back to protect a line running up from just south of the village to Marathakampos near the ridge top.

This meant abandoning farms and vineyards on the slopes of the mountain and praying that the fire would burn itself out before it reached the coastline south of the village. If it didn’t, a large ribbon development of bars, shops, apartments and restaurants running for several kilometres along the beach front would
burn. By three the beach front was evacuated by the army, and the tourists were brought into the village in army trucks from where they were to wait until their tour companies moved them out to accommodation on the far side of the island. Every table at the village’s tavernas was occupied while the street was clogged up with a long column of refugees, eyes streaming either from the smoke or tears, each clinging to the one item of luggage they’d been allowed to bring. The two shops were rapidly stripped of all food and drinks in an effective burst of panic buying.

Steve was sitting at his usual table in the company of a family of four, who’d hired an apartment in the village independently and so had no choice other than to sit it out with the locals. Next to them was a young Swedish couple with a baby who’d chosen the wrong day to visit this part of the island. They’d abandoned their car and had nowhere to stay. So those who had nowhere to go sat and drank morosely, whilst those on package tours waited for their holiday reps to assign them a seat in the convoy of trucks and coaches that the army would escort out of the fire zone.

Steve knew if the village started to burn, he’d have a seat on Captain Michales’s boat which would put out to sea. So he observed the reps going about their business with grim humour. Some of them were calm and smiling while others spread panic with their wild-eyed exhortations to their customers not to panic. But, when they’d all been packed into army trucks and driven away, the place suddenly felt empty and the noise of the helicopters and fire planes seemed louder.

By late afternoon it was preternaturally dark; the mass of cloud extended over the sea and shut out the sun. Soon it would be night and the planes and helicopters would return to base. Then the wailing started; no one knew who started it, but within seconds everyone knew why.

Half way across the bay on the other side of the village from the fire there was smoke on the hillside. What made it worse for Steve was that it looked to be not far below where he figured Alekka’s house must be. In fact, it seemed centred on the area she’d shown him, the place where she had said something ancient was hidden, something that the inhabitants of the local village still feared. He remembered Tim Thompson’s letter.

A member of the village council started shouting down a loud hailer and making a confused noise; one of the boat captains took the thing off him and then went to each of the tavernas along the waterfront asking all the able-bodied men to move out to the new blaze to try and contain it until the overstretched fire service could redeploy some of its men. Villagers, including Steve, began to pile into trucks and vans which headed off up towards the fire. Looking behind him, he saw some of the old women go down on their knees and start to pray. The mother of one of the taverna owners shrouded in impeccable black was screaming out to anyone who would listen,

“Who can now doubt that we are cursed, two fires at once: one in the night and the other as night falls. We must drive out the evil, our island is cursed; it is happening again.”

As the pickup he was squatting in the back of passed her, Steve found it difficult to disagree. The convoy rattled along the rough track that followed the shoreline for a couple of kilometres before turning inland for the old road that wound its way up towards Spatherai. They emerged from the dark pall that hung over their village into bright sunlight, but drove towards another shroud of smoke that was gradually spreading to cover the far side of the bay. After twenty minutes, they were flagged down by a nervy and very young army officer with a smoke streaked face standing at a crossroads a few hundred metres from the village. He waved them out of the cars and trucks and showed Captain Michales the line of a firebreak he wanted to cut out.

“Listen to me kid, we have come to save the village of our neighbours. Not to cut them off behind a firebreak.”

“If you want to help you will go where I fucking tell you, this fire has more than one seat, it’s being driven from three different sources; we can’t save your neighbours houses and if we don’t hold it here this wind will drive it right across the island. Then we’ll all burn in Hell, do you want that?”

He pulled out an automatic hand gun from his holster and began to wave it in the air while pointing with his other hand towards the line of the firebreak. Steve noticed that there were two smudgy streaks running from below the boy’s eyes down his face. Michales gave a shrug of resignation and turned to the volunteers.

“Better do as he says before he wets himself.”

He picked up an axe and walked towards the start of the fire break pausing only to say to the officer as he walked past him,

“After this is over, boy, make sure you stay out of my village because gun or not, I’ll teach you some manners.”

Steve saw that the line had been well chosen; it cut through a patch of thin stony ground that only supported isolated trees and scrub, with forest on either side. He guessed it was not the young officer who had picked this site. Michales deployed the villagers and they began to clear the scrub and trees. It was hot and hard work, made worse as the acrid smoke crawled down the slope and began to sting their eyes and rasp in their throats.

After fifteen minutes his arms and back ached and his body ran with sweat. More volunteers arrived to help and gradually, a bare strip of earth and rock was created that split the vegetation like one swipe of a razor across a bearded face. Behind them three of the volunteer fire tenders and their crews were damping down the woods, while two helicopters were flying over them dumping bucket loads of water on the blaze. The man working next to him told Steve that planes and copters from other islands, and even the mainland, were on their way to help which was reassuring as whenever the wind shifted and dispersed the smoke he caught a glimpse of a ten metre high wall of advancing flame. His neighbour, a volunteer from Koumadrai higher up the mountain, stopped work to take a swig from a water bottle and then passed it to Steve saying,

“But soon it will go dark; the planes and choppers will go back to base until first light and if we cannot hold the fire at this line until then the island is finished, it will be worse than 2000. No tourists will come, we will be ruined, perhaps we will all leave the island like we did in the old days. For who would want to stay in a place with no jobs or money, just arsonists and the Devil murderer?”

Steve wasn’t quite sure that he understood the speech fully, or translated it correctly, but the passion behind the words was compelling. He was about to pass the bottle back with a word of thanks when he saw people in the trees ahead moving towards the fire,
they appeared to be dragging someone. He handed back the bottle and pointed to them.

“Look over there, those people are going towards the blaze, we should warn them.”

“Let them go, they know what they’re doing well enough; a pity they could not have done it a few hours earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“Work it out. Who would you be dragging towards the fire if you lived in that village?”

Steve realised the question was rhetorical and waited for the answer with a growing sense of anxiety; the man paused for a moment to drink from the bottle, rinsed some water round his mouth and spat it out before speaking again.

“They have caught the fire starter, a foreigner, immigrant, a man who lives off us and then tries to burn our island. Well, now he will be able to enjoy his work at close quarters, fitting don’t you think?”

He laughed and slapped Steve on the back.

“Good that sometimes there is justice, now forget that bastard, we must work more.”

Steve picked up the scythe he was using to clear the scrub and roots and started back to work, but couldn’t do it; he ran to where Captain Michales was working.

“Did you see them drag that man towards the fire?”

Michales ignored him and just grunted.

“Get back to work.”

“We have to do something, it’s murder.”

“Listen, we have to stop this fire here otherwise plenty more will die.”

“Well, at least call the police.”

Michales laughed.

“Where you think to find police? They do nothing when there is no fire, what you think they will do now the whole island burns. It’s not your business, either you work with us or go home.”

He went back to swinging his axe, and Steve realised he meant it and no help was going to be offered; he didn’t understand; it was one of the locked doors that island society lived behind. He
hovered for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other, then started to run uphill towards the approaching wall of flame. He heard shouts for him to stop but kept going. Ahead, above the grove where the man had been dragged, he saw the tops of some of the taller trees catch light as the wind swept the fire down across the mountain onto the lower slopes.

As he reached the grove the group of men were coming out of it, blood splatter staining their clothes. He rushed past them into the trees, the crackle of the leaves on the boughs above bursting into flame loud in his ears. At the centre of the grove, swinging like the hanged man in the Tarot, a figure hung upside-down, a leg strapped to the overhanging boughs of two trees. Steve recognised him as an Albanian who helped out in one of the village bars at weekends. His shirt was ripped off and streams of blood ran down to the dry earth from his battered face and wounds carved into his chest. Like Flaying of Marsyas by Titian, except here there was no dog licking at the blood: every living thing that could had run.

The Albanian waiter was mewling like a wounded animal and had wet himself. Steve stared at him, shaking with fear and disgust; he didn’t want to have to touch this awful ruined thing. He couldn’t make himself either cut it down or turn and run back out of the grove.

He did neither; he was seized from behind and thrown backwards against a scrub oak tree. Several men crowded round him, the point of a sharp knife was pricking his throat and he felt the trickle of blood oozing down the skin of his neck. The face of the man holding the knife was close up against his and he could smell ouzo breath as the man spoke.

“You have no place here English, if you love this foreign bastard you can join him, you can talk about how much you love each other as you cook.”

Then the man was pulled off him and the grove was filled with scuffling men; he saw Captain Michales knock down the man with the knife then shout to the others. He spoke rapid Greek. Steve couldn’t catch all of it, but the gist was if they left the man to die the army would hand them over to the police and if they killed the Englishman they’d have to kill Michales and every other man from the village as well.