My Brother Michael (31 page)

She had stopped at the edge of the torchlight. She looked at once younger and much prettier than I had seen her. She had on the turquoise blouse and scarlet cotton skirt, and her haste had flushed her face and hurried her breathing, making her seem more normal and less cynically in control of herself. She hadn’t looked at Angelos. Her eyes were riveted on what remained of the cache of boxes.

‘So that’s it?’ Like him, she spoke in French.

‘That’s it.’ He regarded her sourly. ‘I told you last night we’d located it, didn’t I? So why the devil didn’t you do as you were told and stay out of sight till I came for you?’

She walked forward slowly while he was speaking, her eyes still on the stuff at his feet. Now she looked up
under her lashes with that provocative
gamine
grin. ‘I wanted to see for myself what was going on. Don’t be angry … nobody saw me come.’

‘Did you see Dimitrios on your way up?’

She shook her head. She was stooping over the pile, prodding with a toe at the broken box that showed the gleam of gold. I saw her breasts rise and fall quickly as if with excitement. He said sharply: ‘No sign of him?’

‘No.’

He swore and struck the spade almost savagely into the stones. ‘Then where the hell is he? I came by the high way – it’s shorter if you know your road … if you didn’t see him either—’

‘I came by the high way, too.’ Again that smiling look up through the lovely lashes. ‘How did you think I found my way here? I waited where I thought you’d come, and then I followed you.’

He grunted. ‘Clever, eh? Then that means he’s gone down the other way to look for me. Blast the man; he’s as jumpy as a bean on a griddle, and about as much use. And you – you should have stayed away till I came for you. I told you I didn’t want you up here.’

She laughed. ‘Maybe I didn’t trust you, Angelos. Maybe you wouldn’t have come for me.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Maybe.’

‘Well, I wanted to see
this
,’ she said, almost childishly, ‘and besides, I didn’t want to hang about down there all day. That damned jeep’s dynamite anyway.’

‘Why? The stuff’s not in it.’

‘No, but—’

‘Did you park it where I told you?’

‘Of course I did. Angelos, why d’you have to do this in daylight? You’re crazy.’

‘I know what I’m doing. There’s next to no moon just now, and this country’s murder with a mule on a black night, and I daren’t use a light. There’ll be nobody about between here and the place where I’m stacking the stuff, and we can ferry the whole lot from there to the jeep in a couple of hours after dusk.’ He added, with a sort of heavy irony: ‘Always providing, of course, that you do as you’re told, and that my cool-headed cousin gets back in time to give me a bit of help with the hard work!’

She laughed. She had recovered her breath now, and with it her own particular brand of throaty charm. She straightened up and gave him one of her long-lidded glinting looks. ‘Well. I can help instead, can’t I? You won’t send me back now? Don’t you think,
Angelos mou
, that you might pretend to be a little bit pleased to see me?’

She moved up close to him as she spoke, and he pulled her to him and kissed her in a way that managed to be perfunctory and yet lustful. I saw her press her thin body against him, and her hands crept up to move among the thick curls on the back of his head.

I drew back a little in my crevice, shutting my eyes momentarily as if against this new discovery.
Angelos
her lover.
Angelos
. Through the whirl of fear and confusion the facts twisted and readjusted themselves into a different pattern.

It had been Angelos, not Dimitrios, who had scraped acquaintance with Danielle on those long afternoons at
Itea; this deliberately, not only to while away the boredom of inaction, but because she had the use of the jeep, whereas to buy or hire other transport would involve inquiries later, and provoke the very gossip the cousins had to avoid.

And by the same token it had been Angelos, not Dimitrios, who had broken into the studio last night. I remembered now, quite clearly, that the hand which had reached back for the torch had not had a torn thumb. And I remembered Danielle’s little smile when I had so swiftly identified her lover as Dimitrios …

Angelos pushed her away, not too gently. ‘You know damned well you should have stayed away. There’s no room in the games I play for anyone with baby-nerves.’

She was lighting a cigarette and said, almost snappishly: ‘It wasn’t nerves; it was curiosity, and I’ve a right to know what’s going on. Baby-nerves, indeed, after what I’ve done for you! You’d never have got the jeep but for me, and I got you the tools and the mule on Monday night, didn’t I? And I’ve played spy on the Englishman and that wretched girl he’s taken in tow – and all you do is walk in last night out of the blue, stay with me half an hour, and tell me damn all except that today’s the day, and I’m to get the jeep to the quarry, and you expect that to be that! You might have landed me in the hell of a jam last night, but you never said a word to me!’

‘Whatd’you mean?’ He was working again, levering at a solid lump of rock that was wedging down a couple of boxes. The dislodged dirt and small stones hissed down to the floor. He seemed hardly to be listening to her.

She said sharply: ‘You know quite well what I mean. When you came to my room last night, you said you hadn’t seen Nigel, and—’

‘Nigel?’

‘The English artist. I told you. He was throwing out hints on Monday night about getting rich and famous, and he was drunk. After the others had left I gave him another couple of ouzos and took him for a walk … Did I tell you that?’ She was watching the man through the wisping smoke of her cigarette, and her tone was provocative. He neither looked up nor took the slightest notice.

She tapped ash off with a sharply pettish movement. ‘Well? It was obvious he’d found something up here on the hill. You said you were going to wait for him yesterday and find out what it was, and where—’

‘So what? We didn’t need to, did we? Your English friends came and showed us the way.’

‘They showed you the cave, too?’

He laughed shortly: ‘Hardly. If they’d found the cave yesterday we’d not have been able to get near it now for troops three deep round the door!’

She moved impatiently. ‘I didn’t mean that way. Of course they didn’t find it, or they wouldn’t be trailing harmlessly off to Levadia today. But you
did
find it pretty quickly, didn’t you? Dimitrios told me at the Shining Ones that you’d found the place, and that you were working on it then while he came down to do some final clearing-up.’

He had laid aside the crowbar, and was using the spade to shift some of the smaller debris. The thud of
digging echoed dully. He didn’t look up. He said: ‘When Stephanos showed them the spot where I broke Michael’s neck I knew where the cave lay. Everything was changed, but I knew the crack must open on the cave. I couldn’t get through it the way it was, but after I’d sent Dimitrios down I got to work and opened it up.’

‘I know. You told me this last night.’ She wasn’t, as usual, letting the cigarette hang from her lips as she talked. She was smoking in jerky movements that spoke of tightly-strung nerves. She said, making it sound like an accusation: ‘
But you never mentioned Nigel
.’

He straightened up from his work, eyeing her, his head thrust forward like a bull’s, his look at once formidable and wary. The fixed half-moon smile on the thick mouth was in its own way terrifying. He said roughly: ‘Come on. What is all this? Why the hell should I mention Nigel?’

She blew a long plume of smoke, then said flatly: ‘When you left me last night you went to Nigel’s room. Why?’

‘That’s simple enough, isn’t it? You’d told me he’d done a drawing of me as like as a photograph. I wanted to destroy it.’

‘But he’d cleared out – packed up and gone. You knew that. I’d told you that. I’d been in myself that evening to try and find the drawing, and all his stuff was gone. He’d taken it with him.’

‘Oh no,’ said Angelos, ‘he hadn’t.’

‘What d’you mean? You never saw him. How d’you know what he had on him?’

She stopped. I saw her eyes widen as they met his look. Her lips parted so that the cigarette fell to the ground and lay there smouldering. She ignored it. She was staring at him. He was standing very still, leaning on the spade, watching her. I could see sweat on the heavy face and on his hairy forearms.

He said again, softly: ‘Well?’

Her voice was shaken clear of any of its carefully affected overtones. It came clear and thin, like a little girl’s. ‘You did see him? Yesterday? He
did
tell you where the cave was?’

‘Yes, we saw him. But he didn’t tell us anything. I told you the truth about that.’

‘Then–then – why did you lie about seeing him?’

The smile deepened as the thick lips parted. ‘You know why. Don’t you?’

There was a long pause. I saw the pink tongue come out to lick once, quick as a lizard’s, across her rouged lips. ‘You – killed him? Nigel?’

No reply. He didn’t stir. I saw her throat muscles move as she swallowed. There was no horror or regret or fear in her face; it was blank of expression, with parted lips, and wide eyes fixed on the man. But her breathing hurried. ‘I … see. You didn’t tell me.’

His voice was soft, almost amused. ‘No, I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to scare you away.’

‘But – I still don’t understand. Didn’t he know about the cave? Wasn’t I right?’

‘He knew; you can be sure of that. But he didn’t tell us. We tried, but he wouldn’t come through with anything that made sense.’

She swallowed again. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him. She might have been a waxwork but for the eyes and the convulsive muscles of the throat. ‘Did you – have to kill him?’

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘We didn’t, in a manner of speaking. The bloody little pansy died on us. A pity.’ His head sank lower. The smile seemed to thicken. ‘Well? Scared? Going to scream and run?’

She moved then. She came close to him again, and her hands came up to the breast of his shirt. ‘Do I look as if I wanted to run,
Angelos mou?
Would I be the sort you’d want along with you if I had that kind of baby-nerve?’ The hands slid up his shoulders and over them to the back of his neck. She pressed closer. ‘I know all about you, Angelos Dragoumis … Don’t think that I don’t. They still tell quite a few stories about you, here in Delphi …’

A laugh shook him. ‘You surprise me.’

She pulled his head down, and said, against his mouth: ‘Do I? Does it surprise you to know that that’s why I’m here? That that’s why I like you?’

He kissed her, lingeringly this time, then thrust her away from him with his free hand. ‘No. Why should I? I’ve met women like you before.’ He still held the spade in his other hand, and now he turned back to his task. Danielle said, eyeing the broad back a little sulkily: ‘Where is he?’

‘Near enough.’

I saw her eyes show white for a moment as she gave a quick over-the-shoulder look into the shadowed corners. Then she shrugged and reached in her pocket for
another cigarette. ‘You may as well tell me what happened.’

‘All right. Only stand back out of the way. That’s better. Well … We waited beside the Delphi track for the boy, but he didn’t come that way. He must have started early and gone some other way round, because the first we saw of him was when he was away beyond us and almost up to these cliffs. We got up as close as we could without his seeing us, but when we’d worked our way up that gully that lies east of here, he’d vanished. We got up above the line of cliff, and separated; then waited. After a bit we saw him, just appearing walking out of the corrie here, as cool as you please. So we came down the cliff and got hold of him.’

‘Why did you have to do that? The English couple were coming. Once you saw the place where Michael died—’

‘A bird in the hand,’ said Angelos, and I saw the thick grin deepen again. ‘For all I knew, Stephanos wouldn’t remember the exact spot, and it was certain that your artist friend had just come out of some hiding-place. Besides, he’d done that drawing of me. He’d seen me.’

She was lighting another cigarette. The flame of the match wasn’t quite steady. Her eyes looked wide and brilliant above it. ‘What did you do?’

He sounded indifferent. ‘We tried to scare him into talking at first, but he wouldn’t come through. To tell you the truth I began to think you were wrong and he hadn’t found a thing, only then he began to babble something about a cave and “something beyond price”
and he was damned if he’d let us touch it. Then we really got going …’ He straightened up and got out a cigarette. He thrust it between his lips, and leaned forward to get a light from hers.

I thought, I shall see that smile in my dreams …

‘But he still wouldn’t say anything that made sense,’ said Angelos. ‘Babbled about water, and some flowers …’ The contempt in the thick French made the words sound obscene. ‘My English is fair enough, but I couldn’t get all the words. In the end there was something about gold, I’m pretty sure, but just as we were getting to that he died on us. God knows we’d hardly started. It looked to me as if he had a groggy heart.’

‘What happened then?’

‘We’d hardly finished with him when we saw Stephanos and the boy from Arachova bringing the English couple along. We threw the body behind some rocks and waited and watched till the old man took them to the corrie and showed them the place. It’s altered completely; I might have looked for a thousand years, let alone the last two. As soon as they’d gone, I got down into the corrie and started looking around. It was dead easy. Your Nigel helped us after all with his crazy blathering; there was only one place where grass grew, and flowers, and it was much where I expected the cave to lie, if Stephanos had been accurate. We soon saw where the entrance was. Getting into it was another matter, but, of course, with the boy dead on our hands we had to be sure there’d be no inquiries until we’d got clear off and no traces left. So I got on with the job alone while I sent Dimitrios down to see
you as arranged. I told him not to tell you about Nigel, but to get quietly into the studio and clear the stuff out of his room as if he’d packed up and gone. He did that. You’ll find all the boy’s stuff in the back of the jeep under the sacking. Dimitrios brought a big folder of drawings, but like a fool he was in too much of a hurry to check them, and he never saw that the picture of me wasn’t there … It mightn’t have mattered, but that’s the sort of detail that can sometimes matter the hell of a lot. I thought it worth attending to, anyway. I’m officially dead, and by God I’m staying that way, and no rumours!’