The Orpheus Descent (21 page)

Euphemus’ constant smile stretched tight. The motion of the sea seemed to be upsetting him.

‘It’s a hypothetical situation.’

‘You can’t say it.’ Now I was smiling. I could feel the sun warm on my back. ‘You say the world is a cauldron, all boiling against all. You say we use convention to mask the grasping, selfish truth. But I think you’re hiding the opposite. Strip away convention and social expectation, like the ring of Gyges, and you might find you actually have some good in you.’

He picked at the end of a rope, pulling apart its strands. ‘Who can be sure what we’d do in extreme circumstances?’

‘Are you saying that in extreme circumstances, if you had absolutely no choice, you might actually do the right thing?’

‘Very good. No, I’m thinking of Orpheus.’

I didn’t see the connection.

‘When Hades snatched his wife, he wanted to go down to the underworld to rescue her. He said he’d do anything for her. But he tricked his way in. That’s why the gods didn’t let him bring her back – because he wouldn’t make the ultimate sacrifice. He thought his love was perfect, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t. He didn’t dare die for love, so the gods didn’t feel compelled to let her live.’

The crack in the earth. A lone man picking his way over the rocks that are loose as ashes. He has a lyre slung over his back and a crown of black ivy wrapped in his hair. It could be Gyges. But there’s no ring or bronze horse at the bottom of the ravine – only a dark hole leading deeper into the earth. If you put your ear to it, you can hear waves crashing.

We must have changed course while Euphemus was speaking. The sail shaded the sun. ‘That’s an extreme situation,’ I murmured.

‘Extreme situations reveal the truth.’ The rope-end had become three separate strands, twisting into the air like the triple-headed serpent of Apollo. ‘Your elusive friend, Agathon. Is he a good man?’

‘One of the best.’

‘Just? Virtuous?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And yet he broke open the tomb and stole something.’

His eyes tracked me like a hawk following a mouse. How much had he seen in my bedroom? Did he know what the tablet was? Did he guess? I balled my hand into a fist so that I wouldn’t touch the locket hanging around my neck.

I wanted to change the subject – but so much talk of Orpheus and tombs reminded me of something I’d been meaning to ask.

‘That story you told me, that Pythagoras found his knowledge in the underworld. Did it say if he wrote anything down about it?’

He shook his head. ‘Pythagoras never wrote anything down. He’s notorious for it. That’s why you get people like Archytas and Eurytus, all arguing about what he actually said. Why?’

Pythagoras wasn’t enough. Agathon wanted to go further, to find what came before. The source of Pythagoras’ ideas.

Agathon hadn’t gone down to the underworld like some latter-day Orpheus, I told myself firmly. He’d gone to Locris, to buy a book.

Euphemus tossed the rope aside. ‘Perhaps he did find it.’

‘Find what?’

‘The ring of Gyges.’ He saw I’d lost him. ‘Agathon. That would explain why you’ve travelled the length of Italy and never seen him.’

A crack from above. Even in that split second, I knew it was different from the usual run of the ship’s sounds. Perhaps I started to look up.

Shouted warnings came too late. It was already in motion.

Something tore through the air and landed hard on my head.

It was only Tuesday and the torture had already become routine. The trembling as he unlocked the door, like waiting to go on stage. Imagining her there – her smile, her arms around him – the vision so painfully real it
had
to be true. There was no reason in the world why she
couldn’t
be there, so why
shouldn’t
she be?

Calling her name through the open door. Looking into each room, just in case she’d fallen asleep, waiting. The slump of despair. Checking voicemails, text messages, e-mails, missed calls. Each piece of nothing seemed to take a bite out of his soul. He wondered how long before it was all gone?

The warm day had made him sweat, and the sweat had cooled to something sticky and unpleasant. He was furious with himself. He’d gone to the Eikasia Foundation with so many unanswered questions – the tablet, Ari, her trip to Athens – and instead he’d been blindsided by their story that Lily was a thief.

Was it true?

Lily’s letter, the tablet transcription, lay on the sofa beside him. He held it to his face, sniffing for any trace of scent, but Lily never wore perfume on the digs.
Your hands always smell like earth
anyway
, she said.

Why did she send it?

She was a self-confessed trowel monkey. She didn’t date pottery, or piece things together, or read ancient Greek. She left conservators and academics to explain the things she found: she just pulled them out of the ground. So why did she spend the last hours before she disappeared copying the text?

If she was going to steal it, why would she bother to copy it out and send it to her sister beforehand?

Why
did
she bother?

He called Charis. Her voice went artificially bright when she heard him.

‘Haven’t got long – Bill’s got a do. Just getting ready now. Any news of Lily?’

No mention of how they’d parted. By mutual agreement, it had never happened.

‘Nothing yet.’
Yet.
In the cold hard corner of his mind that provided a running commentary, he wondered when
yet
became
ever
.

‘Did you translate the tablet?’ he said.

‘I did what I could. There’s not a lot there, darling. More or less the same as the others that have already been published.’

‘Can you send it to me?’

‘If you like. I’ll e-mail it. I’d better go now and get dressed. Look after yourself.’

He put the phone down. On the bookcase, he saw the book he’d brought back from Sibari, the battered old Penguin Classic of Plato’s
Republic
. He took it down and flipped through, wondering if it had anything to do with Orphic tablets. But there wasn’t an index, and he was too tired to process the snatches he read.

He saw the inscription on the inside cover again.

To Lily—

Love is Truth, Adam

He snapped the book shut and went to the fridge. He was out of beer, but he found vodka in the cupboard. He splashed it over a couple of ice cubes and drank quickly, glad of the cold in his mouth. It calmed the shaking inside him. He poured another glass.

A chime from the open laptop said an e-mail had arrived. The familiar stab of hope subsided as he saw it was from Charis, sending through her translation. He started reading but stopped halfway.

The text was no different – and it unnerved him. Reading it seemed to lock up his brain, to drop him in a dream chasing down an endless tunnel.

The words of Memory, carved in gold

For the hour of your death.

Why was that the last thing Lily wrote?

While he had the computer on, he tabbed back to Lily’s Facebook page. The message he’d left the day before was still at the top – but now there was a comment underneath it. Someone called Sandi McConn had replied.

I was on the dig. I was the conservator.

The message had come through five minutes ago – she was still online. He hit the chat button.

Jonah: Can I talk to you? About the dig?

Sandi: NDA

Jonah: ?

Sandi: Non-disclosure agreement. I signed one

They were in a public thread. Did that have something to do with it?

Jonah: Where are you in the real world?

Sandi: Right now London. Flying home tomorrow

Jonah: Can we meet?

This time, he had to wait for her answer. Time for doubts to flood in. Had she wandered off? Was she really in London? Was she even who she said she was – or just words on a screen?

Sandi: Can you come to Paddington?

Jonah: When?

Sandi: Now

Sandi McConn was a slim, pretty woman, about the same age as Jonah, with a short brown bob and three silver rings in each ear. She stood and waved at him across the coffee shop.

‘I recognised you from your photos. Lily liked to show you off.’

Jonah flushed. His throat tightened; tears threatened, though he knew they wouldn’t come. Watertight, Lily used to call him.

‘I’ll get a coffee.’

By the time he’d navigated the queue, he’d calmed down. He sat opposite her and stirred swirls in his cup.

Only three people on the dig knew the safe combination. Doctor Andrews himself, the conservator …

‘I saw what you put on Facebook about Lily,’ Sandi said. She hesitated. ‘I hope she turns up.’

‘Thanks. And thanks for seeing me. It’s lucky you were in London.’

‘For you, I guess.’

‘I know how busy you are.’

She gave him an odd look. ‘Yeah?’

‘Richard said you were off to another job.’

‘Did he?’

He was missing something. ‘Is that not true?’

Sandi leaned back. ‘I told you, I signed a non-disclosure agreement when I started, and another one when I left. They don’t like people talking about the dig. And they
really
don’t like people talking about how they got fired.’

‘You? But they said you were one of the best people they had.’

‘Gee, that’s nice.’ A savage smile. ‘Maybe they’ll give me a reference.’

He held up his hands in a ‘way over my head’ gesture.

‘I was supposed to finish the dig yesterday, lay over a day in London and head back to Canada tomorrow. I’ve been sitting on my ass in London for the last week because I couldn’t change my flight.’

‘What happened?’

‘That would be the “non-disclosure” part of my non-disclosure agreement.’

‘Was it to do with the gold tablet?’ he guessed.

Sandi leaned back on the seat. Her slim fingers wrapped around her coffee mug. ‘Unless I read it wrong, that’s covered by the NDA too.’

‘I spoke to Richard Andrews this afternoon. He told me all about it.’

‘Really?’

‘The tablet’s been stolen. He said the only three people who had the safe code were himself, Lily and you.’

‘Is he trying to frame me for stealing now?’

Jonah hesitated, then decided he had nothing to lose. ‘He thinks Lily did it.’

‘Maybe he’s right.’

‘No way.’ His voice rose; he could feel himself losing control. ‘She’d never.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

But something in her voice made him pause. A coded warning, a sly poke in the ribs.
You don’t know as much as you think you do.

‘Tell me something,’ Sandi said. ‘You went to Sibari, right? Were you there when the tablet got stolen?’

Jonah nodded.

‘Was it a big deal? Police crawling everywhere, searching everyone’s rooms, that kind of thing?’

‘I didn’t see any police.’ In fact, now that he thought about it, Richard hadn’t mentioned it once that day. The whole dig team had sat down to dinner as normal that night, and no one had said a thing.

Only three people on the dig knew the safe combination. Doctor Andrews himself, the conservator, and Lily.

Sandi hadn’t been there. He was certain Lily couldn’t have done it. That left …

‘Did Richard take it?’

A long pause. Sandi stared at her coffee. Jonah wanted to lift her off her seat and shake the truth out of her.

‘Am I right? Is that why he fired you?’ He took out Andreas’s card and started dialling the number.

‘Who are you calling?’

‘Richard’s still in Sibari. I need to alert the Eikasia people so they can get him.’ He fumbled over the numbers, his fingers jabbing the screen.
Richard stole the tablet and made Lily disappear to cover it up. He took her phone and used it to send the bogus messages. That was how he knew about her mother, to make it plausible. He knocked my phone into the pool, so I couldn’t call England and find out it was a lie.

Sandi put out her hand and laid it over the phone’s screen. ‘The problem with what you’re saying is, he didn’t fire Lily.’

‘He made her disappear.’

She glanced over her shoulder. ‘You want to be careful saying things like that. Especially about people who have lots of money and scary lawyers. And it’s not like these guys are the Illuminati. If they wanted Lily off their case, they’d give her a plane ticket and a payoff and an NDA.’

‘She must have surprised him. He didn’t have a choice.’

‘You’re very confident about Lily.’

‘Yes.’

‘You trust her.’

He stared into her eyes. Anger throbbed through him – but didn’t make him completely deaf.

‘What are you saying?’

Sandi turned the coffee spoon between her fingers, watching her reflection bow and distort in the bowl. ‘I trusted her too. I thought she was one of the good guys. Until she came back from Athens.’

Reality check. He remembered the bank statement, the trip to Athens Lily never mentioned.

‘What happened in Athens?’

‘Richard wanted me out. Lily went out to speak with the Eikasia Foundation guys who were funding the dig. She said she’d get them to change their mind. Instead, she brought one of them back to fire me.’

Part of him was relieved to hear there was a simple reason for Lily’s trip to Athens. Part of him said if it was that simple, why hadn’t she told him about it?

‘She must have done her best.’

Sandi dropped the spoon in her cup and fixed him with a look.

‘Don’t you get it? They were all in this together. All college friends, all in each other’s pockets. Once Adam got me out of the way, they could do what they wanted.’

He must have heard wrong. The coffee shop was filling up; a group of students at the next table were all trying to out-shout each other. ‘
Who?
’

‘Adam, the program director. Weird, uptight guy. He was the one who fired me.’

‘Adam
who
?’

‘Adam Shaw.’ She saw the look on his face and raised an eyebrow.