Nemesis of the Dead

Title Page
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
Copyright

T
en people are bound for Katastrophos, a hypnotic Greek Island steeped in superstition and ancient myth. Ten disparate travellers whose lives will never be the same again, for not all are what they seem. Some have objectives much more sinister than a quiet holiday in the sun. And as the island slowly begins to work its timeless magic, even the most prosaic become disengaged from reality and capable of indiscretions they would never have believed possible. But on Katastrophos, anything is possible. Who could have guessed that of the ten who travelled so hopefully, not all would return?

It was going to be the perfect honeymoon. What could possibly go wrong this time? Detective Inspector Jack Dawes and his wife, Coriander, had already postponed one honeymoon – Jack to head up a murder investigation and Corrie to attend the inquest of her best customer who had dropped dead in the middle of a charity luncheon. The meal had been catered by ‘Coriander’s Cuisine’ and the customer had suffered violent stomach pains, casting an inevitable if unjustified slur on the caterer. No smoke without fire, people said. No stomach pains without food poisoning.

By the time she had dealt with the fall-out, Corrie was in serious need of her belated honeymoon. She didn’t care where they went as long as it was peaceful, relaxing and as far away from crime and catering as possible. A place where Jack’s phone couldn’t ring and people didn’t suddenly keel over clutching their stomachs.

Jack chose the location and it seemed ideal – a tiny Greek island, like a pebble dropped in the sparkling Ionian Sea. Afterwards, Corrie felt that the name of the island – Katastrophos – should have sounded a few alarm bells in the ear of a sensitive person like herself, but at the time all she could think about was the prospect of two blissful weeks with Jack knowing that she wouldn’t have to cook and he was at last off duty. Or was he?

A few miles away, sitting round the kitchen table in the bride’s home, another couple, some twenty years younger than Jack and Corrie, were also looking forward to their honeymoon. In a few days Tim and Ellie would become Mr and Mrs Watkins. They were so painfully young and so patently happy, sitting close together, holding hands, smiling round at their families as they discussed the final wedding details.

Everyone had known Tim and Ellie would marry. They had been inseparable since primary school. Ellie had been timid and delicate and Tim had immediately taken it upon himself to look after her. As teenagers they didn’t go clubbing like their friends, preferring to stay at home, making plans and saving. The longest they spent apart was when he went to his cashier’s job at the bank and she went to the nursery fifty yards down the road, where she worked as a nanny.

They were young lovers, desperate to be alone, so when they spotted tiny Katastrophos on a zoomed-in web map of the Ionian islands, they booked their honeymoon straight away. It was perfect, they said, secluded, unspoiled and completely cut off from the outside world. Ingenuous and quixotic, Tim and Ellie had no way of knowing that total isolation, whilst romantic in abstract, would prove terrifying in reality.

The last time Marjorie Dobson had had a holiday was on her honeymoon in Bournemouth, thirty years ago. She supposed she wouldn’t be having one now if she hadn’t come into a little money of her own. It had been very daring of her to go ahead and book it without asking Ambrose first, and of course he had been furious when he found out. Shouted a lot about how she was throwing ‘his’ money down the drain because they didn’t need a holiday. He might not but she did.

Marjorie had never been abroad and it had been quite difficult finding a resort that would suit. Ambrose had a weak heart and disliked most things associated with holidays. Tourists, children, noise, beaches, shops, foreign food, sunbathing, sightseeing – he seemed to object to anything where there was a risk of people enjoying themselves. Ambrose said people weren’t put on this earth to enjoy themselves.

With the help of a very nice young man in the travel agency, she had eventually chosen Katastrophos. It was unbelievably quiet, he assured her; no nightclubs or tourist attractions – no tourists, come to that. Just the occasional independent traveller. On Katastrophos, Ambrose could be as difficult as he liked without offending anyone. Of course, she could always go on her own, but that wouldn’t suit her purpose – which was to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary. Of course it was.

Professor Cuthbert Delauncey Gordon, respected botanist and author of several books on the subject, was feeling a tad miffed. Things had not been going according to plan of late and, as always,
tempus fugit
. He opened his sample case and began to pack the equipment he would need for the trip to Katastrophos. Wonderful little island. The most amazing flora in the world. There were plants growing in the olive groves that nobody but he had ever seen and soon his research and his remarkable discoveries would make him world famous.

He had been visiting Katastrophos to study the plants for some years, but this next trip was to be the most important – so much depended on it. On this occasion, he had persuaded his beautiful young American wife, Diana, to accompany him. She was never keen, finding his remote little paradise too dull for her exuberant, cosmopolitan lifestyle and, to be fair, he neglected her shamefully once his passion for plants took hold. This time, however, he proposed to pay her much more attention.

Sidney Foskett leapt to his feet and yelled: ‘Up the Gunners’ along with 50,000 other fans. His beloved Arsenal had scored their first goal of the season. Cheering himself hoarse down the home supporters’ end, he realized he would miss their next match because he’d be on holiday. It had been a busy year for plumbers. Burst pipes all winter, blocked drains and floods most of the summer and people wanting new, luxury bathrooms all the year round. Good for business but, come August, he was knackered. All the same, he had been in two minds about a Greek island. Greece was full of crumbling old ruins and as far as Sid was concerned, when you’ve seen
one
pile of bricks …

But his favourite hotel in Benidorm was full up and he’d left it too late to book anywhere decent in Majorca, so he had settled for a last-minute bargain break on an island called Katastrophos. He’d never heard of it and the girl in the bucket shop didn’t know a lot but she reckoned it had been around since 2000 BC. That should get the holiday adrenaline going, he thought wryly. Bloody funny name, Katastrophos, but as long as there was plenty of sun, beer and crumpet, he guessed it would do.

She would use the name Sky for the duration of her visit. Even among third- and fourth-generation travellers there were still too many Rainbows and Moonbeams, and such names did not reflect her wounded spirit. She was glad to be going home to Katastrophos where she knew she would find healing and comfort, but this was not how it was meant to be – not how they had planned it.

And now it seemed that Nemesis, that implacable executrix of justice, had taken a hand, urging her to wreak vengeance on the hubris of those who think that by abusing others, they make their own superiority the greater. She did not yet know what she must do or when. Once she reached Katastrophos, Nemesis would tell her.

I
t was a drab day for a smart funeral. Overcast with a drizzle of rain and a whippy north-westerly that lifted skirts and tugged at umbrellas. The priest read the prayers in a sonorous monotone as the coffin was lowered into the cold, damp grave and mourners began to file past, tossing in handfuls of earth and long-stemmed roses.

‘Good turn-out,’ whispered DI Jack Dawes, counting the Armani suits standing three-deep around the grave. ‘They’re not short of a few bob, this lot. Some of them have even brought chauffeurs. But then the deceased was well-minted herself, wasn’t she?’

His wife shot him a reproving look. ‘Lavinia was a warm, gracious person, never mind her money. And I wish you wouldn’t call her “the deceased” as though she were one of your suspicious deaths.’ Coriander Dawes pulled off her glove and stepped forward to throw a bunch of fragrant herbs on to the coffin. It was a last gastronomic goodbye to the lady who had been her favourite customer. She had also been by far the most lucrative. Corrie flung the bouquet garni and watched as it sailed into the grave rapidly followed by her glove, which landed on the coffin with an embarrassing plop.

Jack suppressed the appalling urge to laugh that always afflicted him at funerals. The smallest thing would set him off, which was particularly inconvenient for a Detective Inspector on Scotland Yard’s murder squad as funerals were a fairly inevitable part of his job. Struggling to control an erupting chortle, he peered down at Corrie’s brand-new leather glove disappearing beneath a growing pile of earth and roses.

‘Shall I jump in and get it?’

‘Certainly not.’ Red-faced, Corrie grasped Jack’s arm and hurried him away to her battered white van which was cowering in a corner of the cemetery away from the Porsches and Bentleys. They climbed in and belted up, thankful to be out of the rain.

‘Why do they always have funerals on such ruddy awful days? Let’s go home.’ Jack fiddled with the collar of his raincoat, trying to stop the accumulated rivulets of water from running down his neck.

‘I’m surprised you wanted to come in the first place.’ Corrie started the engine after several turns and a lot of cursing and nosed the van out of the cemetery gates and on to the roundabout. ‘It’s not as if you knew Lavinia that well. I shall really miss her.’ She glanced at Jack and read his expression. ‘No, not just because she spent a lot of money on dinner parties. She was a kind, considerate customer. Not like the ones who book you to cater for a party of twelve and when you get there, you find twenty have turned up.’ A nasty suspicion sneaked into her head. ‘Jack, why
did
you come? You’re not investigating one of the mourners, are you? Promise me you’re not still on duty. If we have to cancel another honeymoon …’

Detective Inspector Jack Dawes assumed his innocent ‘
Who, me
?’ face and held up blameless hands in mock submission. It was a ploy that worked quite well in tricky matrimonial situations. And this, if he didn’t handle it carefully, had all the makings of a
very
tricky matrimonial situation.

‘Sweetheart, trust me.’ It was true that DI Dawes had gone to Lavinia Braithwaite’s funeral to have a good look at the mourners but it wasn’t so much the ones who were there who interested him, it was the ones who were not. ‘I promise you we shan’t have to postpone our honeymoon a second time. We’re going to Katastrophos on Saturday, come hell or high water.’

Bold words, guaranteed to tempt the mischief of the gods.

On the other side of town in an unremarkable house on an unremarkable estate, Ellie Brown – soon to be Mrs Eleanor Watkins – stood in her mother’s bedroom, looking at herself in the old-fashioned mahogany cheval mirror that had belonged to her grandmother. Ellie had been a strict vegetarian since the age of five, when she discovered that piglets eventually turned into sausages. Now, at nineteen, she was thin and pale with short ginger hair and freckles. She never wore make-up and hated dressing up, preferring clothes that were practical rather than feminine. Her wedding dress, a plain satin affair with a short veil, hung on her sparse frame like a shroud. Like most brides, she was nervous about her wedding day on Saturday. It was the thought of being the centre of attention, having all those people staring at her. There had been times when she had longed just to marry Tim quietly, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, then sneak away without anyone knowing. But she knew she could never do that – it would break her mum’s heart.

She was to be given away by her uncle. Her mother had never married, having become pregnant in the middle of her college course in the days when it was still considered irresponsible. Loyal Ellie neither knew nor asked about the identity of her father, feeling instinctively that it had been a period in her mother’s life that she preferred not to discuss. Since she had grown up, Ellie rarely thought about her father, but family events such as her marriage inevitably caused her to wonder. She imagined him to be tall and handsome with twinkling eyes and a nice smile. She couldn’t think that her mother would have had anything to do with an unkind person. Briefly, she pictured herself walking down the aisle on his arm, then she shrugged off her dress and hung it back on its padded hanger. Uncle Bernard would do just as good a job of giving her away and soon she would be miles from all the fuss and attention, alone with Tim on Katastrophos – her dear little honeymoon island. She ran downstairs and was soon sitting cross-legged on the rug, playing happily with Poppy the Puppy, the spaniel Tim had given her as an early wedding present.

In a way, Marjorie Dobson could understand why her husband was permanently disagreeable. It couldn’t be much fun living with a dangerous heart condition, having to take tablets to stay alive – the exact amount at the same time every day. Ambrose continually reminded her that he must never tax himself, get excited or overdo it and often shouted at her for making him angry. He was very accommodating when it came to taking things easy, though. He never once complained about her doing all the heavy work at home and he always stayed overnight at a hotel when he went to his Lodge meetings so he wouldn’t overtire himself with travelling. He went to rather a lot of Lodge meetings.

This holiday was to celebrate their anniversary and would, she hoped, resolve a lot of the conflict in their marriage. Originally, she had fancied a cruise. There was no end of advantages to being out in the middle of the ocean among hundreds of holidaymakers but Ambrose would never have agreed to it. It had been hard enough persuading him to spend two weeks on a quiet island and even then he insisted that, if he disliked it, they would come straight back home to Hampshire. She finished ironing the last of her husband’s shirts – a fresh one for every day they would be away – then folded them carefully before placing them neatly in his suitcase.

Ambrose Dobson did not approve of casual holiday clothes. He could see no good reason, he said firmly, why spending two weeks abroad should constitute an excuse for sloppy dress standards. He would wear a collar and tie under his suit, regardless of the heat and no, Marjorie might not buy a bathing suit as he had no intention of permitting her to cavort half-naked in front of foreigners. As a concession to the climate, however, he had bought himself a new panama hat, mainly to protect his very expensive gentleman’s hair replacement system from the hot sun. The attractive young lady assistant in the shop had told him the hat looked very dashing on a gentleman with such a good head of hair. He wished there had been more time to cultivate her acquaintance.

Sidney Foskett was nudging forty and although he said it himself, he was in pretty good shape. He had broad shoulders, slim hips and biceps that bulged like a sock full of conkers. He had bought himself a pair of very brief speedos for the beach and reckoned he didn’t look half bad in them. Apart from these and some photochromic sunglasses, Sid had worn the same holiday gear for the last ten years, regardless of his destination. This consisted of a selection of off-white T-shirts printed with obscene lager slogans (free gifts from grateful breweries), army-surplus combat shorts that had seen action on beaches from Blackpool to Benidorm, market-stall trainers, the treads still clogged with hallowed Emirates Stadium turf and, unbelievably, a floor-length Arsenal scarf that went everywhere with him. Now all he needed was something to protect his head from the sun. The temperatures in the Greek islands that summer had soared to record levels. He grabbed last year’s sombrero with a Union Jack on it from the top of his wardrobe and crammed it into his holdall.

Sidney wondered idly what the plumbing was like on Katastrophos. If it was still the ancient Greek variety, it must be pretty grim by anyone’s standards. While he grappled routinely with ceramic disc technology and the hazards of differential pressures, he balked at the thought of a 4000-year-old khazi. But he wasn’t going there to work, he reminded himself, he was going to have a good time. He was a free spirit. No wife or girlfriend to worry about. Not for want of trying though. Unfortunately it was one of life’s vicissitudes that the ladies he fancied never seemed to fancy him, especially on holiday. Perhaps he’d meet a real stunner this time. No harm in dreaming.

In a stylish townhouse on the Upper East Side in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, between Central Park and the East River, Professor Gordon looked impatiently out of his dressing-room window at the humid afternoon. The five-square-kilometre neighbourhood, with its elegant rows of landmark mansions, once known as the ‘Silk Stocking District’ constituted some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. Some believed it to be the greatest concentration of individual wealth in the nation. Cuthbert Gordon was glad to be back in the States. He had wasted far too much time in England and to little advantage.

Behind him, his English valet was packing his clothes for the trip to Katastrophos. Whatever was the man doing packing silk shirts and his white tuxedo? He wouldn’t be needing anything of that nature. This was a working trip and a vital one in terms of the success of his ongoing research. Shorts, anoraks and plenty of surgical gloves, that was what was required. He sighed. No doubt his beautiful wife Diana had a hand in this. She rarely accompanied him on his trips to the island, finding it interminably boring. Having agreed to go with him this time, it seemed she proposed to liven things up, at least in the evenings, and was doubtless packing low-cut evening gowns at that very moment. Well, he had no problem with that. She was a party animal and no doubt she would soon find someone to party with. She usually did. Men flocked around Diana like scavenging flies around an
Amorphophallus
, although in fairness, she didn’t stink of rotting flesh like a carrion flower. Just the opposite, given the enormous sums she spent on perfume. He left his valet to finish packing. What harm would it do if he had to dress up a bit and spend some time with his wife? As long as he achieved his objective, nothing else mattered.

Corrie Dawes had been packing since seven in the morning. She peered into her wardrobe and chewed her lip. What kind of clothes do you take to a Greek island so small it isn’t even in the tourist guide? She took out her one posh frock – then put it back again. She and Jack were hardly likely to go clubbing. What did it matter what she wore, anyway? It would be enough just to have her husband to herself for two whole weeks without the blasted phone ringing and Jack grabbing his coat and shooting off to another crime scene. She wondered if she should have bought a new suitcase. She was still using the one she had taken on honeymoon with her first husband, twenty years ago. It was a bit the worse for wear now but still perfectly serviceable – like its owner. Would she ever forget that ghastly ill-fated honeymoon? She had spent the whole turbulent two weeks in a bathroom in Provence. It was her first and only encounter with escargots. Confined to the primitive facilities of a rustic
gîte
, she learned that snails moved very much faster after you’d eaten them than they did when they were alive. It wasn’t a good start to the marriage and a year later, Tom left her for a robust Scandinavian fitness instructor with her own sauna and a digestion like an incinerator.

Like many abandoned wives with bottle, Corrie dealt with the blow to her self-esteem by committing herself totally to work. Her catering business, Coriander’s Cuisine, became her top priority. She worked seven days a week and if the customer required it, late into the night as well. Her aim was to build up a stable of clientele who would support a gastronomically excellent but financially sound catering business. By the time she considered herself a success, she was more or less resigned to staying single.

But life can always be relied upon to chuck in something unexpected. Corrie had been serving drinks and savouries at the cocktail party of a wealthy and influential turf accountant when the then Detective Sergeant Jack Dawes and his squad had burst in like something out of
The Sweeney
and nicked everyone. By the time Corrie had persuaded him she wasn’t part of the bookie’s money-laundering racket, just an innocent creator of canapés and an impaler of things on sticks, they were on first-name terms and she was cooking him intimate gourmet dinners.

Afterwards, Corrie claimed that without her masterly intuition and tireless assistance throughout the investigation, DS Dawes would never have cracked the case and rounded up several of the nastier members of the underworld. She was equally convinced that it was thanks to her that he had been promoted to DI and transferred to the murder squad. At the time, he had been churlishly ungrateful, declaring that she mostly got in the way and even put herself at risk. She was lucky, he said, that her interference with dangerous criminals hadn’t landed her at the bottom of the Thames wearing a concrete apron.

Then, to Corrie’s complete and utter amazement, he proposed. It was for her own protection, he said. She wasn’t safe out on her own and as a copper, he couldn’t take responsibility for releasing her on her own cognizance. Either she married him or he would nick her for interfering with a policeman in the course of his duty.