Levkas Man (35 page)

At Vathy, Kotiadis promised to see Holroyd himself as soon as conditions made it possible for him to get down the channel. Meantime, he advised us to call in at Skropio on our way to Levkas in the hope of finding a doctor there. This was fortunate, for among the guests on that millionaire's island we found an eminent Athens surgeon. He not only set Bert's broken arm, but insisted that he and Florrie stay at the villa till he had recovered from the shock and the mild concussion.

‘You'd better take
Coromandel
,' Florrie said. ‘I'm sure Bert would agree.' I would have taken it anyway. I think she knew that. This was after she had come back for the clothes they needed, the varnished launch alongside and a car waiting for her on the jetty. There followed a long list of instructions about the food on board and the need to turn off the gas to the galley stove, and then she was in the launch and with a quick wave she was whisked away towards the pine-dark loom of the island.

The time was 21.34 by the wheelhouse clock, and ten minutes later we had the anchor up and were motoring out of the little natural harbour, the resin scent of the pines following us until we were into the open water of Port Drepano.

It was the first time we had had the ship to ourselves. Such an opportunity for two people in love, and all we did was hold each other's hand and peer into the night, watching for Elia light on the north-east corner of Meganisi, which would enable us to clear the shoals between Skropio and Port Vathy. And at Vathy … if the news were good, then we could relax here on board, the ship to ourselves, nobody else. And suddenly I was thinking of Florrie.

But Sonia wasn't like Florrie. She wasn't like any girl I'd had before. And even while I was imagining how it would be, I knew that when it did happen, it would somehow be entirely different.

‘If there's no news …' her fingers tightened on mine. ‘You'll try to get in underwater—the dive Bert did?'

Our minds had been on entirely different tracks. There's the rope,' I said. ‘They should have got him out by now.'

But some intuitive sense seemed to warn her it wouldn't be as simple as that. She wanted to know how much practice I had had, how expert I was. I didn't tell her I'd only had two dives under Bert's instructions. The deepest I'd gone was twenty feet and that in the crystal clear water of the Aegean. ‘Bert had bad luck, that's all,' I said. No point in two of us being scared.

It was almost midnight when we finally reached Port Vathy, the village in darkness, not a light to be seen anywhere. As soon as the anchor was down, we went ashore in the dinghy. Zavelas had seen us coming in and he met us on the quay. His face was grave. Part of the roof of the main cave had collapsed. Vassilios had just brought the news. ‘He says it could take two days, maybe more, to clear the fall, and they will need timber to support the roof.' It had collapsed at the point where we had broken through the earlier fall.

‘Anybody hurt?' I asked.

‘Vassilios didn't say, so I guess not.' He glanced at Sonia. ‘Your brother's okay. He was out in the open with the ánghlos constructing a ladder of rope.'

‘Which ánghlos?' I asked. ‘Cartwright?'

‘Né—Cartwright.'

‘What about Holroyd?'

‘Professor Holerod is missing. Also a Greek man from Siglia—Thomasis.'

‘You mean they're trapped the other side of the fall?'

‘I guess so. But no worry. Kotiadis is there and in the morning we will take timber over to support the roof. Also a caique leaves here for Levkas an hour ago with instructions for the patrol boat to come here with more timber.' A hairy hand gripped my arm. ‘Don't you worry. Two days and we have them out. Okay? That's not too much. Just time to decide if there is a God or not, eh?' And he patted my shoulder, smiling gently. ‘Tomorrow we load timber and begin to dig. Maybe we're inside in one day. And there is a friend of yours arrived by caique tonight—the old guy who is with you when you first come.'

‘Dr Gilmore?'

‘Yeah, that's him. He's gone to sleep with the Pappas at his house.'

‘Is he all right?' Sonia asked.

‘Sure, he's okay. I guess he's tougher than he looks. Two days in a caique—that's a long time for a man his age.' And he added, ‘You go and see him in the morning. I tell him what happens, but I think he is too tired to understand. He kept shaking his head and saying the Professor and Dr Van der Voort should not be together. It seemed to worry him that Professor Holerod was trapped inside the cave with the Doctor.'

It worried me, too, and Sonia's face was a white mask in the darkness. But at least she hadn't heard Bert's rambling reference to a body.

We arranged that the baulks of timber to shore up the roof would be ferried out to
Coromandel
first thing in the morning, and then Zavelas went off to his house. Sonia went with him, leaving me to pull back to
Coromandel
on my own. It wasn't at all what I had planned.

I made the dinghy fast to the cleat aft and then relieved myself by the light of the stars. The night was soft and very still, the water brilliantly phosphorescent. It was the first time I had had the ship to myself, and when I went below the saloon seemed strangely empty. Complete and utter silence enveloped me. I poured myself a brandy and sat for a moment thinking about the cave with its unstable roof, Holroyd and the Greek marooned in the dark by that new fall.

A faint buzzing invaded the silence. Leaning my head back I could hear it vibrating in the hull, gradually getting louder. An outboard.

I went up on deck. The sound came from the entrance to the inlet. And soon I could make out the dim, dark shape of the boat. It passed quite close, Vassilios bringing Kotiadis back. But though I hailed them, they held on for the quay, my voice drowned in the ugly band-saw noise of the engine. I went down into the workshop then and looked over Bert's diving equipment, noting that there were still two cylinders full, mentally checking over the routine.

It was almost one o'clock before I got to bed. It had been a long, exhausting day, and I was tired, too tired perhaps, for in spite of the brandy, my mind kept going over all the details, particularly the details of Bert's dive.

I was woken shortly after six-thirty by the bump of a boat alongside and the sound of Greek voices. The first baulk of timber had been dumped on deck by the time I had my shorts on and had reached the wheelhouse. It was a glorious day, the sun already warm and a slight haze shimmering on the water. The timber was rough, the Greeks none too gentle, and by the time I had seen to the stowing of it, Zavelas was alongside with Dr Gilmore.

He didn't look tired at all. Bright as a button, I thought, as I helped him aboard, while Sonia held the boat steady. ‘I haven't kept you waiting, I hope.' He shook my hand, formal and dapper in his grey suit and panama hat. ‘A beautiful morning.' He stood smiling and gazing round him. ‘It's so nice to be on the water again. London was very hot—a heat wave. But I had a day at Wimbledon—some very good tennis, a superb men's four.' Sonia passed me his suitcase and a handgrip. ‘Book presents,' he said. ‘That's why it's so heavy. I managed to get an excellent treatise on submarine archæology for Mr Barrett. Do you think he'll like that?'

‘I'm sure he will,' I murmured.

‘Good, good. And there's a book by Holroyd. I thought it would interest you. Also a typescript of the paper he read. Most revealing.' And then, almost without pausing for breath, ‘And I'm sorry to hear about Mr Barrett. Poor fellow. I was so looking forward to seeing him again. Is he in much pain?'

‘He'll be all right,' I said.

Sonia swung her leg over the bulwark. ‘Dr Gilmore. I think we should leave now.'

‘Yes, yes, of course, my dear.' He smiled at me, that same quick, bird-like glance. ‘I talk too much and you're in a hurry, naturally. But it is so nice seeing you again.'

She took him below and I started the engine, while the two Greeks, who had been stowing the timber, dealt with the anchor. Zavelas took them off, and as I headed up the inlet, Sonia poked her head up the saloon companionway. ‘Paul. Have you had any breakfast?'

‘It'll wait,' I told her. I wasn't all that hungry.

‘No it won't. Not if you have to make that dive.' She was tense, excited, and it showed in her eyes. ‘Coffee and eggs? I know there are eggs on board. I got them for Florrie myself—fresh laid and about the size of ping pong balls.'

Soon the smell of coffee began to drift up from below. And then Gilmore came up into the wheelhouse, looking a little incongruous in pale seersucker trousers and a blue shirt decorated with crimson sea horses. ‘I hope my rather strange apparel doesn't put you off your course.'

‘Very suitable,' I said.

He smiled, a little self-consciously. ‘One of my students—a very distinguished professor now—insisted on taking my wardrobe in hand. It was really quite fun—I think he enjoyed it.' He was silent for a moment, gazing at the bulk of Levkas straight ahead, his eyes crinkled at the glare. ‘Now, I want to talk to you about your father and this man Holroyd. There may not be time after we get to the cave, so I'd better tell you briefly now.' He perched himself on the flap-seat at the side of the wheelhouse.

Quickly he ran over the situation as he had found it on his return to Cambridge. Holroyd had been entirely co-operative, submitting his specimens to the test called for by the committee, with only one proviso, that he was present throughout and that the bones and artefacts were never out of his sight. This the committee had regarded as reasonable, since he was not only being accused of pilfering another man's work, but also of faking the basis of his paper.

Gilmore had reached Cambridge on June 1, only two days before the decisive meeting of the committee. By then all the tests had been completed; and the results known. Without exception they had proved satisfactory. He gave me a short summary of the results, covering chronometric and relative dating, with reference to the geological structure in which they had been found, and finally the carbon-14 method. ‘This last gave a date for all three skull fragments of around 27,000 years ago, and the teeth and bones were of the same period. They'd even passed the fluorine test, so that when I arrived fellow members of the committee greeted me with a certain coolness, in some cases outright hostility. They were all, of course, considerably younger than I was, a fact that Holroyd had used to advantage, the implication being that my ideas were ante-diluvian and the doubts I had expressed about his discovery and theory due to senility.'

Sonia appeared with a tray, wafted into the wheelhouse by the smell of coffee. ‘You might have waited. I want to hear it, too.' She poured the coffee, while he repeated what he had just told me. ‘Well, if Professor Holroyd regards you as senile, he'll get a shock when he sees you in that shirt.'

‘It wasn't just Holroyd. It was most of the Committee.' He was smiling, his arms folded, and so pleased he seemed to be hugging himself. ‘Even Stefan thought I had gone too far. And Grauers made it clear that he doubted whether I had any evidence whatsoever to support my attack on such a distinguished member of the academic world.'

We were off Spiglia then and Sonia took the wheel, while I sat on the starboard flap-seat eating my breakfast and listening, fascinated, to Gilmore's account of the scene as the Investigating Committee gathered in the lecture room at Trinity College. Including Holroyd and himself, there were eight men and one woman present. The proceedings were not expected to take long, a mere formality to clear Holroyd's name. The specimens were laid out on the table before him.

‘I must tell you,' Gilmore said, ‘that his statement that the skull fragments had been found by himself and the two other members of the expedition, and that their discovery was not in any way connected with Pieter Van der Voort had been accepted, and for reasons that will become self-evident I did not challenge this.

‘The proceedings were opened by Professor Grauers, a short statement of the reasons for forming an investigating committee. He then called upon me to reiterate the charge. “Or you may wish to withdraw them, in view of the rigorous tests which have been made?” I said I did not wish to withdraw anything, except the first charge of taking credit for another man's work. I then put the question to Holroyd again, asking him point-blank—had the discovery of the skull fragments been connected in any way with Dr Van der Voort? “The answer to that is No,” he said, directing his reply, not to me, but to the Committee—Grauers, in particular. I suppose any man as politically astute as Holroyd learns to be a consummate liar. He said it categorically, and then, still facing the Committee and speaking in that bluff, honest, North Country voice of his, he said, “Van der Voort had been working in the area the previous year. This I have never tried to conceal from you, gentlemen. Owing to the circumstances, which you already know about, I had no opportunity of discussing it with him. As I have said before, the information which led me to the site was from a Greek source. He may have visited the site. In fact, I believe now that he did. But he failed entirely to recognize it for what it was. Instead—and this I learned subsequently—he concentrated on quite another site, not on the island of Meganisi, but in a bay known as Dessimo on Levkas”.'

Gilmore smiled. ‘A half truth, you see. So much more convincing. And they believed him. But to make it absolutely clear, I asked him whether, in that case, he took full responsibility for the authenticity of the specimens. He was looking at me then, and I thought I saw a mounting flicker of doubt in his eyes. But by then he had committed himself too deeply. “Of course.” And that was it. I had him then, provided I had guessed Pieter's intentions correctly.'

He paused, his eyes searching the wheelhouse. ‘You haven't got a cigarette, have you?'