Nemesis of the Dead (5 page)

‘The prof’s right,’ he said. ‘Don’t eat the stuffed tomatoes.’

The band arrived shortly after. Three solemn old men from the town of St Sophia carrying
bouzoúki
. They seated themselves on the edge of the terrace, now twinkling with candle lanterns, and soon they were twanging away. It might have been a jolly dinner but the unpleasantness of the disagreement still hung over them.

Yanni, who had not understood the cause of the angry exchange but sensed an atmosphere, served copious quantities of wine from proper wine bottles, which was an improvement on the anonymous carafes, even though the bottles had no labels. Everyone agreed that for wine made locally on such a tiny island, it was astonishingly good. Sky took some food and went straight up to her room. She had come to Katastrophos, she said, to bathe her wounded spirit, not party with peasants.

‘What’s up with her?’ asked Sidney, refilling his glass. ‘Bit surly, isn’t she?’ He smiled his cheeky, lighthouse smile. ‘Sounds like a weather forecast.’ He pursed his lips and spoke in a camp voice. ‘Tomorrow the Sky will be Surly.’

The professor, in that conveniently absent-minded way that eccentrics cultivate, instantly forgot his angry outburst and was smiling lovingly at his young wife, radiant in emerald-green silk, her golden hair tied up with a matching scarf. By the time Maria arrived with the main course, a kind of glutinous stew with lumps of gristly meat floating in it, they were all merry enough to eat some without shuddering.

When the band stopped for a break, Maria took off her apron and stepped diffidently into the centre of the floor.

‘Tomorrow,’ she announced, ‘it is the Feast of St Sophia, the patron saint of our island, and my mother, she will prepare the special meal to celebrate.’

‘Oh good,’ muttered Sid, picking something stringy out of his teeth.

Maria’s eyes sparkled with hope and anticipation and she clasped her hands together excitedly. ‘This is a very special time for the women of Katastrophos. Before the feast, all the childless women will be given a lamp, then we make the pilgrimage up the many steps to the monastery where St Sophia’s precious relics are kept.’

She turned and pointed to the massive rock rising out of the amethyst sea, the monastery ruins now standing stark and forbidding against the moonlight.

‘There, we must first eat a small piece of the wick, then we light our lamps and make the journey back down. Those women whose lamps still burn after they reach the ground have consumed the blessing of our saint and will be …’ she tweaked the well-thumbed phrase book from her apron pocket and searched desperately for the English, ‘… they will be fruitful,’ she finished, triumphantly.

‘What does she mean – hic – fruitful?’ asked Sid, a bit drunk.

‘In the club, mate,’ translated Jack.

‘You mean they get pregnant just by going up there?’ said Sid, whose spiritual edge was somewhat blunted. After twenty years of unblocking other people’s lavatories, he saw the world for what it was. ‘But don’t they have to … you know …’ he gestured vaguely with his hands, ‘… first?’

Jack was spared from trying to explain the island’s mystic interaction between sex and superstition, because the
bouzoúki
players had started up again and Diana, in a cloud of Chanel, scooped Sidney up and swept him on to the tiny square of paved dance floor. With scant respect for ethnic accuracy, they began performing a spirited Spanish flamenco to the Greek music. Sid had tied Diana’s silk scarf around his head, bandit-style, and she wore his sombrero.

Diana was spectacular. She stamped her heels and twirled sinuously around Sidney, swishing her skirts in a way that gave the audience a sporadic but dazzling view of her minuscule knickers. Everybody clapped and laughed, enjoying the impromptu cabaret apart from Ambrose, who sat at the far end of the table wearing an expression that was part disapproval, and part something decidedly more visceral.

‘Would you like to dance?’ Yanni held out his hand to Marjorie. For an older lady, he felt she looked unnaturally subdued and downcast. He had, after all, been brought up on an island whose culture decreed that matriarchs automatically enjoyed respect and authority.

Immediately, Ambrose snapped, ‘Marjorie, I forbid you to get up on that floor and make a fool of yourself. Stay where you are.’

Marjorie shook her head regretfully at Yanni and said, ‘
Óchi
. No. Thank you, Yanni.’ Then, as if she felt her husband needed defending, she turned to Corrie sitting beside her. ‘Ambrose doesn’t like dancing. It’s not that he doesn’t like me to enjoy myself. I shouldn’t want people to think that. It’s just that he mustn’t dance himself because of his bad heart and it upsets him to watch other people doing it. He’s never really got over being deprived of his career, you see. He had to take early retirement on the grounds of ill-health.’

‘What work did he do?’ asked Corrie, wondering who would employ a man with such intolerant, outdated views.

‘He sold insurance. Life policies, mostly.’ She smiled. ‘Handy, really, because I was able to get him well insured before his heart complaint was diagnosed.’

The flamenco had developed into a Paso Doble. Diana held out her skirt like a matador’s cape and Sid, holding two forks against his head for the bull’s horns, bent down, pawed the ground and charged at it. His aim, impaired by several glasses of wine, was well off and he missed the target by miles. Head down, he carried on galloping and, as he shot past the end of the table, one of the forks caught in Ambrose’s toupee and whipped it clean off.

Diana collapsed in hysterics, as did most people including the dour
bouzoúki
players. Sheepishly, Sid held out the fork to Ambrose with the wig hanging upside down from the prongs like a hairy brown bat.

‘Sorry, mate. It must have been loose. I expect the heat melted the glue.’

Furious, Ambrose snatched it and stomped off inside the hotel and up to his room, presumably to gum it back on. Marjorie followed him.

It was one o’clock before the party broke up and people began drifting off to bed. Corrie was still giggling as they climbed the winding stairs.

‘Did you see Ambrose? He was livid.’

‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘I kept wanting to shout “keep your hair on”.’

‘No sense of humour at all,’ chortled Corrie. ‘He had a face like a smacked …’ she stopped and put a finger to her lips, pulling Jack back into a darkened recess in the stairs, out of sight.

The sounds of heavy breathing and urgent whispers were coming from the landing above and intuition told her this was not a good time to barge through.

‘Come on, love, I know you want it. You’ve been asking for it ever since you got here – going around half-naked, flaunting everything you’ve got. Well, how about it, then?’

Jack and Corrie looked at each other, shocked. The man had lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, but it was unmistakable nevertheless.

The now familiar Manhattan drawl came back, cool and unperturbed, with an edge of contempt. ‘If you don’t take your hand off my tit, you sad old creep, I’ll deck you.’

They heard a scuffle and Jack made a move to climb the stairs and intervene but Corrie stopped him. She suspected a woman like Diana would have handled similar situations many times before and with consummate ease, so it would be less embarrassing all round if she sorted it on her own without witnesses. The man whispered again, this time louder and with more insistence.

‘You know you don’t mean that, sweetheart. Women are all the same – saying “no” when they really mean “yes”. You’re gagging for it really. Just let me feel under that skirt and I’ll soon show you what I can—’

There was the sound of a slap and the wheedling whisper turned into angry abuse. The voice was panting with pent-up sexual excitement.

‘Don’t come the virtuous wife with me, you gold-digging little tart. I’ve watched you, teasing and flirting and playing hard to get. Well, you’ve asked for it and now you’re going to get it …’

There was a scream of pain. Seconds later, Ambrose Dobson limped past them down the stairs in a half-crouch, his hands between his legs.

‘If that was his best chat-up line,’ whispered Jack laconically, ‘it didn’t work.’

Then Diana appeared from the shadows, calmly smoothing down her skirt. She rubbed her knee briefly, then sashayed elegantly along the landing, hips swaying, and disappeared into the room she shared with the professor.

‘I don’t
believe
that man!’ exploded Corrie. ‘This isn’t even his floor. He must have been purposely lying in wait for her. Not only is he an insufferable, hypocritical pig, he’s a dirty old man as well. Treating his wife like a servant then trying it on with Diana behind her back.’

‘He has to be the world’s biggest optimist,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve never understood what makes blokes like that think they’re even in with a chance.’

‘Sheer arrogance, that’s what. To Ambrose, all women are fair game, like pieces of meat. He belongs in the Stone Age, shambling about carrying a club with his knuckles dragging on the ground.’

‘Why does Marjorie put up with him?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’d have shoved him off the ferry on the way over.’

Corrie suddenly stopped and bit her lip. She was thinking about life insurance, Medusa and Poseidon and what the professor had said about indiscretions outside the boundaries of their narrow domestic lives. This was indeed a strange, hypnotic island.

When they reached their room, Corrie opened the windows and went out on to the balcony. The air was hot and very still. Even the cicadas had stopped chirping. Katastrophos seemed to be holding its breath, sensing a storm. From the back of the hotel she had a clear view of the hills and, to the south, the monastery ruins soaring high above the dark, brooding sea. She stood for some time, not moving, then she called out suddenly to Jack.

‘Quick, come here and look at this!’

Jack ambled out on to the balcony wearing his pyjama bottoms and with a foaming toothbrush in his mouth. ‘What?’

‘Look.’ She gestured up at the summit of the towering rock. ‘Sidney was right. There
is
someone in the monastery. There’s a light flashing up there.’

Jack took the toothbrush out of his mouth and pointed with it. ‘Yes, and look there.’

Far out on the silent indigo sea, another light signalled back in response.

T
he next day dawned humid and heavy. The threat of a storm had become a promise. Jack had seen Greek island storms – they were dramatic and dangerous. It was a spectacle you never forgot and more important, it was distracting, so it was crucial that he stayed alert and ready to act.

He had known from the start that this assignment carried more than an acceptable degree of risk. Under normal conditions, he would have found a safer way to handle it but as the chief super had pointed out, the conditions were far from normal and there really was no other way.

‘You’ll be flying by the seat of your pants on this one, Jack.’ You could always rely on the DCS to dredge up a weary platitude to boost your confidence. There had been no time to plan properly or do sufficient groundwork and knee-jerk policing was not Jack’s style. Detection based on hunches and intuition had a nasty habit of going balls-up when you got to court. But he acknowledged that this was an exceptional case, requiring exceptional measures and the price of getting it wrong was high. What he had not foreseen was that he would be trying to operate whilst impeded by a bunch of muppets. What the hell was wrong with everybody? If he didn’t know better, he would say they were doing all they could to foul things up on purpose. According to his sparse background information, most of these individuals were reasonably rational, well-balanced people when in their natural habitat. But from the moment they arrived on the island, Katastrophos seemed to have loosened everyone’s screws.

There was that pompous old idiot Ambrose trying, impossibly, to jump Diana, whilst Diana was quite obviously planning to get into Sid’s shorts at the earliest possible opportunity. Ostensibly, that was none of Jack’s business except it could be a real complication if she managed it, and he had no doubt that she would. It was impossible to get any sense out of Tim and Ellie who were going about like a couple of tits in a trance. He had no clear idea of what, if anything, he should to do about them but the situation needed watching. As for Sky, the unhinged hippy – God alone knew what planet Sky was on. Nobody had briefed him about her.

The professor’s loony rant against murderous salad-eaters had come as no surprise, it was predictable and in character, but what with Maria and her mother summoning up saintly impregnation, Yanni looking shifty most of the time and ghostly lights flashing in the middle of the night, Jack was starting to wish he had access to some back-up. Even his lovely, wacky Corrie was weirder than usual – banging on about Greek gods and Marjorie’s life insurance. But that was nothing compared to the strop she’d go into if she knew he was still on duty on their honeymoon. Thank heavens for Sidney. What you saw was what you got. Nothing remotely inscrutable about good old Sid.

He just hoped that when push came to shove – as he was now certain it must – they wouldn’t get in his way. Or, even more important, that they wouldn’t get hurt in the cross-fire.

The storm was closing in. On the balcony, Corrie watched the sea churning, dark and restless, spawning tales of Poseidon riding the mistral and shipwrecking fleets. Diana was lying down, the atmospheric pressure, she said, had triggered one of her migraines. Tim and Ellie, the human book ends, had gone into town to see if they could buy matching rain-hoods. Ambrose was in the lobby, complaining to Yanni that his room had not been cleaned properly, while Marjorie stood patiently by, looking at her watch to ensure she gave him his tablets at the exact moment they were due. Nobody knew where Sky was. She had muttered something obscure about going out to look for a systemic ambience in which to balance her chakras.

‘Where’s the professor?’ asked Jack.

Corrie came in from the balcony. ‘Maria said he’s been out since dawn with his sample case, looking for specimens.’

‘I think I’ll just go and see if he’s all right,’ said Jack. ‘Will you be OK on your own?’

‘’Course. Since when have you been interested in botany?’

Jack grinned. ‘Just because I’m a big, hairy copper doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a pretty flower.’

Sidney was in the bar, looking bored. Good, thought Jack. His suspicion that Diana might not be lying down on her own was unfounded – at least for the moment.

‘Going somewhere interesting, squire?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Depends what you mean by interesting. I’m going to watch Professor Gordon nurturing his little friends.’

‘I’ll have some of that,’ said Sid, putting on his sombrero.

They spotted the professor’s orange anorak in the olive grove, flitting from flower to flower like a restless butterfly. Jack could see that he was totally engrossed and expected him to be annoyed at the intrusion, but he seemed genuinely delighted to see them and more than willing to give them a guided tour of the island’s flora.

‘It’s so gratifying that ordinary men like yourselves, from quite mundane walks of life, should nevertheless have sufficient intelligence to appreciate the fascinating botanical world that we are privileged to share with plants.’

The professor said this in wide-eyed innocence, simply stating a fact and quite oblivious to the condescension.

It would be interesting, thought Sid, to see how useful his plants were next time his pipes burst. He’d be blooming glad of a mundane plumber, then. He bent down to examine a small bristly cucumber growing out of the stony ground.

‘I wouldn’t touch …’ warned the professor. ‘Oh dear. Too late.’

The fruit exploded violently, squirting out a sticky liquid all over Sid’s hand.

‘That’s an
Ecballium elaterium
,’ said the professor affectionately. ‘The squirting cucumber. Active right through to September. Magnificently virile. See how far he spreads his seed in just one ejaculation.’

‘Very impressive,’ said Sid, wiping it on his shorts. ‘I went scuba-diving in Majorca to look at a cucumber but it wasn’t like that.’

‘What was it like?’ asked Jack.

‘Dunno. I couldn’t get me specs on under the face mask.’

‘I’d keep an eye on your hand, old boy. That mucilaginous liquid can cause mild irritation, even inflammation, if you’re susceptible. That’s why I wear these.’ The professor stroked the spent fruit with hands protected by surgical gloves. ‘He’s most efficient, this little chap. His juice is a very potent purgative.’

‘Nice for him,’ said Sid.

They watched the professor taking specimens expertly with a scalpel so as not to harm the host plants.

‘What a whopping great onion!’ Sid lifted a huge bulb out of the sample case. It must have weighed six pounds. ‘Don’t tell me you’re taking it back for Ariadne to cook for the feast tonight?’

‘Goodness me, no.’ Professor Gordon reclaimed it carefully from Sid and bent to put it back in the case. ‘That’s an
Urginea maritima
– the sea squill – and you’re right, it belongs to the same family as onions and garlic. But its uses are pharmaceutical, not culinary. This one is the white variety – used as a diuretic, stimulant, and expectorant, but frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it for medicinal purposes unless you know exactly what you are doing.’ He straightened up. ‘There’s also a red variety. Slightly toxic but nothing severe. Peasants on Katastrophos make rat poison from it.’

‘Does it work?’ asked Jack.

The professor shrugged. ‘Sometimes the rats die and sometimes they don’t.’

Professor Gordon meandered on slowly, his bulging eyes swivelling from right to left like a chameleon’s, on the look-out for more samples for his experiments. Jack reckoned he must have worked this part of the island for years, because he knew every inch. He and Sidney ambled alongside, watching with interest.

‘You certainly know your subject, Professor,’ said Jack. ‘I suppose you teach it to others through your books and lectures. It must be very rewarding to be able to share your knowledge with another generation of botanists.’

Professor Gordon stopped and took on the evangelical, almost fanatical gleam that he always acquired when speaking about his research.

‘My specialism, as you know, is in plant-based medicines. Did you know that more than eighty per cent of the world’s population uses plant remedies either in part or entirely?’

‘No, but I’m not surprised,’ said Sid. ‘My old gran was forever dosing us with jollop she’d boiled up on the stove. Senna pods were the worst. Didn’t half make you—’

‘Much work,’ continued the professor, swiftly, ‘has already been done based upon the traditions of the Chinese, Egyptians and American Indians. Information on plant medicines has been handed down over the centuries. Even as we speak, scientists are investigating newly discovered cultures and this has resulted in the introduction of a number of new plant compounds into pharmaceutical research.’

He paused and his face took on a fervent flush. ‘But I can assure you, gentlemen, those people have barely scratched the surface. They cannot begin to imagine the amazing discoveries I have made, the incredible power that I can unleash from my plants.’ He waved a scornful, dismissive hand. ‘A tuppenny-ha’penny botanist announces the discovery of a “wonder herbal medicine” responsible for miracle cures and suddenly everyone is using it. Well, very soon, I shall be more famous than any of them and my genius will at last be recognized world wide. I shall be numbered among the greatest botanists of our time.’ His staring eyes glazed over, dreaming of the adulation.

‘Really? And how’s that, Professor?’

‘Oh yes indeed. I’m honoured to say that I have been offered the position of master at a prestigious Swiss university. When I take up the post, which will be very soon, I plan to endow the Gordon Botany Research Scholarships. Botanists will flock there from all over the world to marvel at my revolutionary research and study at my feet.’

Jack’s eyebrows went up and he whistled. ‘Scholarships in Switzerland, eh? That’ll cost a few quid, won’t it?’

‘Naturally, funding any scholarship is expensive and these particularly so.’ He spread his hands modestly. ‘But happily, money isn’t a problem. It’s my work that’s important.’

‘Your missus is lying down with a migraine,’ said Sid. ‘Haven’t you got anything in your revolutionary research to cure it?’

‘My dear Foskett, I just wish Diana shared your confidence in me. She needs good old feverfew,
Tanacetum parthenium
. It contains a serotonin antagonist – very effective at lowering the frequency and severity of the headaches. It can even abort early attacks. If I could persuade her to chew a few fresh leaves she would find it most effective but she won’t try any of what she calls my “quack cures”. Insists on tablets from the doctor.’

While they were talking, Sidney had been ambling slowly backwards with his hands in his pockets. Suddenly, he tripped on a root and sat down hard in a large bush with purple flowers.

‘Oh, bad luck, old chap!’ exclaimed the professor. ‘You’ve found a
Vitex agnus-castus
. It’s called the chaste tree. Ancient Greeks and Crusaders believed that the scent of its flowers was an anti-aphrodisiac.’

‘That’s just what I need,’ muttered Sid, struggling to get up. Somehow, though, he didn’t think sniffing a flower would protect him from the irresistible and persistent attentions of the delicious Diana.

The professor laughed. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find you some saffron. That has the opposite effect, they say.’ He winked. ‘Its aphrodisiac properties are believed to be so powerful, you have to consult a doctor to obtain it on some Greek islands.’ He chuckled at their scepticism. ‘Oh yes. Like many others, this ancient belief has somehow managed to climb into the prescription book of the modern chemist. But of course, a prescription would be impossible here.’

‘Why?’ Sid wanted to know.

‘Because sadly, Katastrophos has no doctor or chemist.’

‘So what happens if you’re ill?’ asked Jack.

‘If you need any kind of medical attention other than from Ariadne, who delivers all the island’s babies, you have to go to the mainland for it, I’m afraid, and that means getting old Charon to ferry you across.’ He looked philosophical. ‘Unfortunately, he’s a bit elusive – something of an entrepreneur. In the past, when there’s been a serious accident or emergency, by the time they’ve found him and he’s come over and ferried the patient back to hospital, it’s usually been too late. I suppose that’s the price we pay for the isolation and seclusion we enjoy on this splendid little island.’

They continued in silence for a while, assimilating this rather uncomfortable piece of information. Then Professor Gordon stopped and bent to admire some exotic blooms with crimson centres and long yellow stamens, thick and swollen with pollen. He fondled one lovingly, almost sensually, then sniffed his fingers.

‘Look gentlemen.
Hibiscus syriacus
. The most beautiful, tenacious and feminine plant there is. What a joy to see her in high summer, thrusting her musky pudenda at us from beneath her flowing skirts.’

He straightened up to put an arm around Sid’s shoulders and spoke discreetly in his ear, man to man.

‘You know, in my erotic dreams, women and hibiscus are often interchangeable.’

Sid caught Jack’s eye but resisted the urge to tap his forehead.

They left Professor Gordon chatting up his hibiscus and sauntered back to the hotel for a cold beer.

‘Brilliant man, the professor,’ said Sid.

‘Brilliant,’ agreed Jack.

‘Loaded too. Did you see that Rolex on his wrist? Not much change out of twenty grand there.’

‘Nope.’

‘He must have a blinding brain to remember all that plant malarkey, never mind writing books and stuff.’

‘Blinding.’

‘And now he’s going to be Master of a University with scholarships named after him. Amazing bloke.’

‘Amazing.’

Sid strolled on in silence for a while, thinking about squirting cucumbers and chastity bushes and the pudenda of a hibiscus. Then he said:

‘You don’t think the prof could be ever so slightly barmy, do you?’

‘No “could be” about it,’ replied Jack.

Back at the Hotel Stasinopoulos, Corrie had wandered down to the kitchen to satisfy her caterer’s morbid curiosity regarding the special menu for the Feast of St Sophia. People would need something fairly substantial after their pilgrimage up to the monastery and in her view, a menu consisting of the superfluous parts of cephalopods swimming in olive oil would not be sufficient.