The Pleasure Seekers (17 page)

‘That was great,’ he told her, and a smile broke across his face. He reached out and played with her long auburn hair, spreading fanlike on the surface of the water, undulating with the waves. He looked to D’Arcy like Neptune risen from the deep and come to capture her for his pleasure – all that was missing was his trident, the three-pronged fish-spear Neptune carried like a sceptre. Neptune, god of the sea. In many ways
Max was like some mythical god, not quite of this earth, too powerful, a man for himself and all seasons. But there was something different in the way he was looking at her today. His gaze had in it no more than a nuance of something more intimate for her than she had seen before. She put an immediate check on the closeness she felt towards him at that moment. Never, ever would she allow herself to fall into the Max trap.

She had seen too many women fall under the erotic spell he cast. He was famed for his sexual prowess and antics. Depravity and debauchery were his favourite pastimes; he seduced women and corrupted them for his and their sexual pleasure. As he had often pointed out to D’Arcy when he was making his yearly attempt at seducing her to his bed: ‘I never take a woman who isn’t willing and ready to come with me. I’m no rapist, I’m a libertine. One day I’ll prove it to you.’ It was a rare place you could go where his reputation hadn’t preceded him. And it wasn’t just the sex that made him so attractive. He was an adventurer, who did daring, thrilling things, a hard and ruthless competitor when he had to be, clever and witty and charming. And he had that thing most women adore: with Max to win was everything.

He told her, ‘One day you and I, we’ll no longer be able to dance around each other. We’ll go for it, the fuck of a lifetime.’

Before D’Arcy could reply, he placed his hands on her face and pulled her to him to kiss her. It was a long and lingering kiss where he licked and sucked on her lips, ran his tongue over them and between them. She tried to wriggle away from him but he was too strong for her,
and held her there with his kiss. She felt herself giving in to his sexy embrace and fought against it, resisted the sensations that kiss was engendering. Finally he released her but not before giving her a sharp but friendly slap on her cheek. She was still catching her breath, trying to compose herself, when he swam away.

Good company, laughter, intelligent conversation, men at their very best. There was an air of the erotic, sailing the sea in a restored hundred-year-old Greek wooden boat with Max at the helm. The hot sun and a clear blue sky . . . D’Arcy understood well that to seek your pleasures and gather them to you while you can was one of the essentials of life. This was something Brett had taught all her children and there was not a day that went by that D’Arcy was not grateful for a mother who had instilled the joys of life into her children. She threw back her head, and running her fingers through her wet hair and shaking it out she began to laugh: low laughter that gradually gained in volume. She was thinking of Laurence and his not being by her side. Max came to stand next to her in the bow. Her laughter had pulled him to her like a magnet and brought a great broad smile to his face. He asked her nothing, merely leaned against the rail and watched her.

Finally her laughter petered out and still with a smile on her face, she told him, ‘I was thinking about Laurence – well, more about Laurence and me, our love affair. I do so hate a mean man and especially one who is so mean he cheats himself.’

‘Women in love can never be told,’ was all Max said before he walked away from her to bring the boat into harbour.

It was close to three o’clock when the diving party arrived at the Kavouria for lunch bearing three magnificent large fish to be cooked for them. Max and two of the other men had speared them on their second and third dive of the day. Succulent fish, fresh from the sea little more than an hour before, lacquered with olive oil, encrusted with sea salt and grilled over charcoal. They were served with a salad of ripe red tomatoes with fresh basil and spring onions and chunks of feta cheese dressed with the purest and richest extra virgin olive oil. How rich, how sweet, how good life could be.

Laurence, Mark and Tom were at a table drinking wine, several other people were still eating, and Melina was at a table nearby with two of her boyfriends. D’Arcy and the others greeted her in passing. It registered in D’Arcy’s mind that since Arnold’s death Melina seemed happier, better dressed, more sure of herself, still acting in her usual cocky manner but seeming less diffident, more assertive. She seemed somehow to be around more, sitting in the cafes and at the Kavouria. Where was she getting the money? Where was she working now that Arnold was dead? Was she working? Why did she suddenly seem to be always on the fringes of their lives? D’Arcy disliked herself for asking these questions. The girl was probably just being there, the way so many others were just being there, so why did D’Arcy feel there was somehow an ulterior motive to her constant presence? In the light of day and without Manoussos’s leading questions, Melina hardly seemed a convincing candidate for murderer.
D’Arcy felt so relieved she turned round and smiled at the girl.

Three days later Melina Philopopolos was arrested for the murder of Arnold Topper.

Chapter 8

There was nothing clever about Melina; in fact she was simple. She was other things too: basically dishonest, very nearly illiterate, sly, and prepared to use whatever resources she had – sex, a certain hatred for her fellow man and the society he lived in, and a pathological belief that she had the right to do anything – in order to ensure her own survival. She was mean and corrupt and she was only fourteen years old.

The police chief and most all of the Cretans recognised her for what she was the very first day she arrived in Livakia and that was why they resisted her, waited for the time she would understand there was nothing for her in their village and go away. Their tacit resistance to her would have been their way of running her out of town had not Mark Obermann taken her up as his cause and dragged both the Cretan and the foreign community of Livakia into it: save a corrupt child, make an acceptable woman. Melina thought it was love. It was what she needed, what she wanted, and had never experienced before. She would do what she had to to keep it and so made tremendous efforts to please Mark. It was through those efforts that she was able to worm her way into the community, one
that was never really happy to have her there in the first place, one that had always remained wary of her even though it had been reluctantly won over.

Manoussos was reviewing all that in his mind while sitting in his office, champing on a cigar. He rose from his chair and went to sit on the ledge of the open window. He was going to arrest Melina for Arnold’s murder, not on suspicion of murder, but murder. He intended for her to make a full confession before he took her away to Iraklion and prison where she would be held until her trial. She might try a few lies, or maybe none at all. She was simple. Ignorance, Cretan pride, her own ego would demand that she tell him the truth about what really happened between the night Dimitrios put Arnold to bed and the morning two days later when he was found dead on the beach. He guessed she would have no remorse but instead be proud of what she had done.

Manoussos and his superiors in Iraklion had managed to keep news of the murder relatively quiet outside Livakia and would do so until someone was charged. Manoussos did not relish the thought of the media and outside world turning his village into a three-ring circus, but it was bound to happen. He would stave it off for as long as possible and do what he could to keep Livakia out of it. He made the decision that it would be better for the village and everyone concerned if he arrested Melina outside its limits and had her away and in Iraklion when the media got hold of the story. So far all that had appeared in the press was a small one-inch piece announcing that the body of a foreigner had been found on the beach. Would that they could have left it at that.

Manoussos called his team in to discuss the situation. When they were all seated in the one-room police station and the coffee boy had been and gone, Dimitrios passing round a paper bag of small sweet cakes, Manoussos went round his desk to sit on the end and tell them, ‘You men have done a first-class job. Interviewing as many people as you have done in this short period of time, keeping your eyes and your ears open, and the concise reports you have produced, have all contributed to my belief that Arnold Topper was murdered not by an outsider but by someone he knew.’

There was a tinkling of cups and saucers and mumbling between the men as Manoussos went to the cork bulletin board and pulled out several drawing pins to rearrange the names of people written on various coloured papers. These were people who were close to Arnold or with whom he had had dealings in one form or another. When he was finished there was one name, Melina Philopopolos, printed on a green piece of paper on the right-hand side of the board and a myriad of rejected coloured papers and names on the left.

Two of the men shook hands, all smiles; Dimitrios looked knowing but there was no smile on his face. Manoussos returned to sit on the end of his desk again. ‘I see we have some accord here. Let’s talk about this. I’m open to anything that might persuade me that I’m not right about this.’

For forty minutes they hashed over several points in the case and discussed Melina Philopopolos as the probable murderer. Finally Manoussos took over once more. ‘I would like to keep her arrest secret at least until I
have her safely away from here. And I want no one, and especially not her, to know I am going after her. If she knew, I’m quite sure she would run away. There is also the possibility that those sympathetic to her might tip her off. There is the possibility too that she was not working alone.

‘Here’s the plan, and it’s up to us all to see that it works and we get it right. I intend to ask Max de Bonn to hire Melina for the day to do some work for him on his boat. She’ll accept, Max will see to that. Then he’ll sail the caique to the scene of the crime, only at that point she won’t know where they’re going. That gets her out of Livakia without anyone the wiser. Dimitrios, you and I will already have started out on foot towards their destination, being conspicuous, greeting people. If asked, we’re just doing our normal coastal check. For the rest of you men, it’s business as usual, watching, listening, asking questions.’

Here Manoussos paused, waiting for questions. There were none. He picked up the telephone and called Max, asking if they could meet as soon as possible in the cafe. Manoussos began to laugh. ‘Well, Max, finish her off as soon as possible and
then
meet me. This is important, I need some favours.’

The men began to laugh, made several remarks of admiration for Max and his sexual appetites, and then it was back to business. Manoussos continued, ‘Max will pick us up as if by chance, offer to take us along the coast and back. Melina will still be unaware of what’s going on. I plan to return her to the scene of the crime and hope to get a confession from her there. Max will
then fly us directly from the beach to Iraklion, and I’ll call in when she’s been booked.’

‘It sounds good, if it goes according to plan,’ said one of the men.

‘Why bring in Kirios de Bonn?’ asked another.

‘Easier, he’s reliable, it’ll be clean and fast. I don’t much fancy a helicopter coming in and upsetting the whole village, and the huge operation Iraklion will throw at us for support when we don’t need it. Overland is too long and hard a drive, and by boat and overland involves too many people when there is an alternative like Max and his plane.’

‘You’ll get a commendation if you can pull this off,’ said one of the officers.

‘The team will gel the commendation,’ said Manoussos to his men. Everyone looked pleased.

The telephone rang, Dimitrios answered. It was Max with a message. ‘Kirios de Bonn says he’ll be there in twenty minutes, and to tell you outside intervention too can be a turn on.’ Even Dimitrios had to laugh.

Max did agree to help. He was extremely possessive about Livakia. He, like Manoussos, wanted his home and his privacy kept intact, shielded from the ugliness of the outside world. He had fought hard and gone through some seriously lean years and difficult times in order to find his place in the sun and was willing to go very far indeed to keep it. Right from the first, when he saw Arnold lying on the sand, he’d sensed something unnatural, mystery, deception, more than an accidental death, more than the loss of a friend of long standing. His first instinct had been that it was essential that everything must be done to
learn what had happened to Arnold and then to get rid of this dark intrusion into their lives as soon as possible.

He listened to Manoussos’s plan. Afterwards the two men remained silent for some time. Manoussos imagined that Max was thinking about Arnold. His first words to the police chief when he reported finding the body on the beach were in effect that, no matter how it looked, Arnold had not died a natural death. When the autopsy report came in, it was Max who said it was a crime of passion done by a woman with something to hide. He was therefore not at all surprised when Manoussos told him he was arresting Melina.

Max had always been indifferent to her. Some instinct had always told him to be pleasant but distant with her. He had heard the rumours about her sexual antics but had never wanted any involvement with her on that score. That was something, because Max – with the exception of D’Arcy and a couple of spinsters – had had, at one time or another, every willing female in Livakia. But she was not attractive or clever enough for him, certainly not pretty enough, although there was something raunchy about Melina. That, under normal circumstances, would have been enough for Max but somehow she had spelled danger to him, the kind of danger that was more sinister than fun.

He was thinking about those things while listening to Manoussos’s plan. It was what prompted him to say, ‘We have all been exceedingly stupid letting ourselves get sucked in by Mark’s rhetoric. Only he found something attractive enough in Melina to save and somehow poor Arnold got suckered into a bizarre triangle.’ Max was
angry and slammed his fist down hard on the table. The coffee cups did a gig, and the table turned over, taking them with it. That was the first time Manoussos had seen the tougher side of Max in all the years he had known him.