Nemesis of the Dead (15 page)

‘Corrie, for pity’s sake!’ Jack passed a weary hand over his eyes. ‘Ambrose Dobson is a retired insurance man with a weak heart. Not a convicted criminal, not an escaped gangster and not the person who pushed Medusa off the roof. The effort would probably have killed him rather than me. He’s just a harmless, rather unpleasant little man who—’

‘… hits his wife,’ finished Corrie defiantly. ‘How do you know he’s not a wanted criminal?’

‘I just do, that’s all. You’ll have to take my word for it.’

‘So
he
isn’t the one you’ve been keeping an eye on since you got here, either?’

‘No. Now please give him back his hair and try not to interfere any more, my darling. Especially don’t go snooping about in people’s rooms. It’s breaking and entering.’

‘What if I pinch the key?’

‘Corrie, promise me!’

‘Oh, all right,’ Corrie said grudgingly. ‘I’ll hang it on his door handle in the morning. But if it wasn’t him, how did his wig get on the roof?’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe someone wanted me to think it was Dobson.’

‘I see what you mean.’ Her imagination went into overdrive again. ‘Someone nicked it this morning while Ambrose was in the shower, then planted it at the scene of the crime to make him chief suspect in a murder. But who dislikes him enough to put him in the frame like that? He’s only been here a week.’ She had a sudden thought. ‘Oh Jack, you don’t think it was Marjorie, do you? I mean, she’s an obvious suspect and she had motive and opportunity. She must loathe the miserable little bugger after thirty years of being bullied. It would be the perfect way to get shot of him. What’s the prison sentence for attempted murder?’

‘Don’t be daft. Marjorie isn’t strong enough to heave a statue off the roof and in any case, I don’t think she’d be prepared to kill someone just to get her old man put away.’

‘No, course not. And she wouldn’t be able to claim on his life insurance, either. She needs him to be dead, not just in the nick. I wasn’t thinking it through properly. OK, so what we have to do now is—’

‘Corrie, you’re not going to do anything. This isn’t a game of Cluedo, it’s serious and people have been hurt already, including you. Look at your knees.’

She looked down. They were raw and inflamed and very sore.

‘So please, do me a favour and stay out of it. I’ll tell you everything when it’s all over.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

T
he following morning, Jack and Sidney went fishing in Katastrophos Bay. One of the local fishermen made a bit of cash from the occasional independent traveller by offering trips in his boat, rods and bait provided. He had optimistically come by the hotel to see if anyone was interested. Sid was keen and Jack agreed to go with him, which surprised Corrie. For a start he got seasick just watching the sponge floating in the bath and she didn’t think he’d want to be out at sea after what he’d said about keeping a close eye on things on the island. She wondered how he was still able to do it from a fishing boat. Or could it be that Sidney was the one he was keeping an eye on? In any event, Corrie decided it was the perfect opportunity to do a bit of fishing of her own, now she had discovered Jack was on some kind of mission. She knew she’d promised not to interfere, but then hadn’t he promised he was off duty? It was a diabolical liberty, working when he was meant to be on honeymoon. Anyway, where was the harm in a bit of snooping? If she found something useful, it would be a bonus and if she didn’t, no one would be any the wiser. She’d been thinking about it during a hot, sleepless night and there were lots of questions milling around in her head. Vague recollections of a shove in the back during the storm, towels stained with dark-blue dye, and the undisguised malice of Nemesis. She was especially intrigued by Nemesis. It was time to find some answers.

By mid-morning the hotel was deserted of guests. Corrie went down to the reception desk and pretended to write postcards until Maria bustled off to the kitchen to help Ariadne with lunch. The Medusa incident had been passed off as just an accident waiting to happen in a building as old as Hotel Stasinopoulos and Yanni had climbed up on to the roof to check the stability of the two remaining Gorgons. He was pleased because he had found his missing crowbar up there. Only Ariadne suspected foul play. She was sure St Sophia had been responsible and that it was Corrie she had intended to kill, not Jack. She still swore by her premonition that the saint had cursed the women involved in the pilgrimage and gradually they would all die. As far as Ariadne was concerned, the saint had simply been having an off-day and missed her target.

Corrie slipped behind the desk and took one of the keys from its hook. Good old-fashioned iron keys – not those electronic cards they used in modern hotels that only worked when they felt like it and usually on the wrong door. She crept cautiously up the stairs. There was one particular room where Corrie wanted to have a good poke around. She hesitated briefly outside the door, wondering if this was a good idea after all and whether it still constituted breaking and entering if you had obtained the key by stealth. Then she decided the end justified the means, turned the key quietly and stepped inside. To start with, she just stood and looked. It was impersonal, practically bare of the considerable holiday clutter that had accumulated in Jack and Corrie’s own room. The bed was made with clinical precision and the only personal items on show were a make-up bag on the wash stand and a pair of black flip-flops under the chair. It almost looked as if the person whose room it was only occupied it intermittently and stayed elsewhere on the island the rest of the time. Corrie moved across the room to the chest of drawers, taking care not to disturb anything. She found what she was looking for in the very first drawer she opened.

‘Look what I’ve got!’ Jack was in the deserted hotel kitchen, proudly holding up three plump red mullet.

‘And look what I’ve got!’ Corrie had seen him coming from the balcony and ran down to meet him, keen to impress him with her detective work. She was holding up a passport.

Jack dropped the fish in the sink for Ariadne to clean for supper and approached Corrie with a scowl of deep suspicion. ‘What have you been up to? Whose passport is that? I’ve only been gone a couple of hours and you promised—’

‘Listen to what I’ve found out before you go into one of your lectures. While Sky was out seeking the Incredible Light, I was in her room seeking her incredible identity. I suspected all along there was something not quite right about that young woman. Why should she hate and despise mankind generally and us in particular, when she’s never even met us before?’ She opened the passport. ‘According to this, she’s a Greek citizen, born on Katastrophos, and her real name is Katina Stephanides.’

Jack looked blank. ‘So…? I’ve never heard of her.’

‘No, but what about Tina Stephens? Doesn’t that name ring a bell?’

Jack smote his gashed forehead with his palm and flinched. ‘Of course it does. She was the fiancée of the young man I put away for knifing that drug dealer. He was studying to be a doctor and got engaged to a Greek nurse in the same teaching hospital.’

‘How come you didn’t recognize her?’

‘During the investigation I only ever saw her in a nurse’s uniform – I genuinely didn’t know her with purple hair, tattoos and all that black stuff on her eyes.’

‘It explains her medical know-how, though.’

Jack ran cautious fingers through his hair. ‘God, no wonder she hates me. She must blame me for the long prison sentence.’

‘And me too, by association.’

‘What made you suspicious?’

‘It was that night of St Sophia’s pilgrimage, when we were coming down those ghastly steps in the storm. Someone tried to shove me off. At the time, everyone was panicking and I put it down as an accident. But later I noticed Sky’s tattoos had come off on the towels Yanni brought us, and she had purple streaks running down her face from her coloured hair. And did you see her nails? Clean, short and manicured. She was no genuine hippy and I started to think she was hiding something. I couldn’t understand why she was so bitter and hostile all the time. Then yesterday, when Medusa nearly flattened you and you were so sure it wasn’t Ambrose Dobson, I decided Sky could bear a bit of investigation.’

‘Of course, we can’t be sure it was her.’ Jack sighed, watching yet another of his cast-iron theories disintegrate. He’d been ninety-nine per cent sure he knew who’d done it but he certainly hadn’t suspected Sky, not for a moment. ‘She’s very slight – I wouldn’t have thought she had the strength to push half a ton of stone off the roof.’

‘She levered it off. There was a rusty old crowbar of Yanni’s up there, I didn’t pay much attention at the time because I was convinced a man had been responsible. I don’t think there’s any doubt it was her, now we know who she is. And she was born and brought up here, so she probably knows the olive groves like the back of her hand. No trouble escaping across the roof and losing herself in the hills.’

‘But surely she didn’t follow us all the way over from England just to get some kind of revenge.’ The Squad had checked the travel bookings and given Jack a briefing on all the people going to Katastrophos on this trip, including the one he was interested in, but there hadn’t been much time and they had warned him it wasn’t comprehensive. They could find no background at all on a wandering traveller called Sky.

‘I doubt it. More likely she was hurt and unhappy after her fiancé went to prison so she was going home for a while to find some peace and comfort. Then she discovered that by some incredible quirk of fate, you and I were going to Katastrophos at the same time. I expect she recognized you straight away, probably at the airport, but she didn’t want you to recognize her, hence the hippy disguise. It worked very well.’

‘But why try to kill me? What good would that have done?’

‘You can’t apply logic to this, Jack. Don’t forget she was brought up on this grisly, superstitious island. She may have been a practical, disciplined nurse in London but it’s my guess that as soon as she returned here the whole grotesque influence kicked in. You remember all that stuff she spouted about vengeance and retribution the morning after we arrived?’

‘Yes, it was something about the daughter of justice ruling here.’

Corrie nodded. ‘Nemesis. I think Sky believed that the dark-faced goddess had purposely engineered our simultaneous journeys to Katastrophos so that she could settle a score.’

‘Or it could just be that the poor girl was so depressed at seeing me again, it temporarily unhinged her. You have to admit, it was a terrible coincidence.’

‘No, Inspector Dawes,’ said a voice in clipped, formal English with a soft Greek lisp. ‘Terrible I agree – but coincidence has nothing to do with it.’ Sky stood in the doorway. She had picked up Ariadne’s meat cleaver and was holding it tightly in both hands. The black lipstick and kohl had gone and her pale face was red and swollen with crying. Her misery was so raw, it was almost tangible.

‘Your wife is right. I have Nemesis to thank for this encounter. Such a cruel, tormenting paradox, don’t you think? You are here on your honeymoon, happy together and enjoying yourselves.’ Her voice shook and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. ‘It’s so unfair! Mark and I should also have been here on honeymoon but we are not, because you have locked him away in a cell for years and years. He was sick. Gambling is an illness. Why could you not leave him alone? The man he killed was filth, getting rich and fat by preying on other people’s misery. Mark was simply exterminating vermin. Even you must see that.’

Sky was hysterical now and advancing on them unsteadily, holding the meat cleaver aloft in both hands like an avenging angel. Corrie knew from using it to cut through joints of stringy goat that it was razor sharp, lethal in careless hands.

‘I’m going to kill you – both of you. You deserve to die for what you have done. Then I shall kill myself, because I have nothing to live for!’ She began sobbing violently, completely out of control. Her mind had finally cracked under the weight of relentless grief and animosity. She brandished the cleaver wildly, close enough now to strike.

‘Tina,’ said Corrie quietly. ‘Tina, listen to me. Jack did what he had to do, what he’s trained to do, just as you did when you nursed Maria and Ellie. You did it automatically, without hesitating, because it’s your job and you knew it was right. You saved Ellie’s life. That’s an amazing thing to have done. How can you think of taking lives, now?’

Tina hesitated, unsure just for a second, and Jack would have rushed her, made a grab at the cleaver. Sensing it, Corrie put out a restraining arm. Getting his head split open twice in as many days wouldn’t improve his mental dexterity. She carried on speaking, surprised to hear her voice calm and persuasive, despite the turmoil going on inside her.

‘If you kill us and yourself, who will be there for Mark when he comes out of prison? Who will help him to rebuild his life? Don’t do it, Tina. Don’t abandon Mark when he needs you most.’

Tina looked frantically from one to the other, desperately uncertain now. She shrieked, a single sharp howl of pain and anguish, and Corrie felt sure she was going to run at them, slicing and slashing. Then the cleaver dropped slowly from her grasp and she sank to her knees, weeping as though her world had finally ended. Nothing left to lose and nothing more to gain.

‘Blimey, that was close.’ Jack and Corrie were sitting on their balcony sipping their third medicinal Metaxa. Maria and Marjorie had helped Corrie put Tina to bed. It was symptomatic of the bizarre atmosphere that had developed in Hotel Stasinopoulos over the last week that neither felt the need to ask any questions. Despite the late-afternoon sunshine, Jack shivered slightly. ‘For a minute, there, I really thought she was going to bury the hatchet – in my head.’

Corrie sipped pensively. ‘Did you see her face when she finally let it go? It was if all the hatred and bitterness drained out of her in that single moment. She must be completely exhausted with the strain of bearing her anguish all these weeks. I felt so sorry for her.’

‘It
was
Tina who levered Medusa off the roof intending to smash my skull, remember.’ Jack felt just a tad aggrieved.

‘Yes. And when that didn’t work, she tried a more direct approach. But don’t be too hard on her; it wasn’t the real Tina Stephens – the trained, caring professional. This was Tina as Nemesis. I believe her mind was unbalanced by this horrible, malevolent island. Too much solitude to dwell on her resentment and her need for revenge, fuelled by the bitter irony of coming home to Katastrophos only to find that the policeman who put her lover in prison is here too, under her very nose, and as a final insult – on his honeymoon. Imagine what affect that must have had on her state of mind. Instead of going to her family in St Sophia for comfort, she decided to take a room here in Hotel Stasinopoulos, where she could stay close to us, waiting for her chance of retribution. Of course, she knows what she did was wrong and she certainly shouldn’t have compounded the felony by pinching Ambrose Dobson’s wig and trying to frame him.’

‘Yes, that was odd, wasn’t it? Why did she do that?’

‘Nemesis again. She said he was another cruel, heartless pig who needed teaching a lesson.’

‘Very perceptive. She wasn’t totally unhinged, then?’

‘No, just full of a fierce, self-destructive kind of poison, poor girl.’

‘Talking of poison …’ Jack began.

‘Don’t start!’

It was late evening. Out in the west, beyond the furthest Katastrophan hills, Helios was sinking beneath the darkening world and black night Nyx let friendly shadows veil the light. At least, that’s what Corrie had said before she went to bed. She was asleep now, no doubt dreaming of her Greek gods and goddesses. Jack sat alone on the balcony with a nightcap, assessing his progress – or rather, the lack of it. This was a bloody funny island. It made simple, ordinary people do wild, impulsive things. Standard criminal profiling was useless here, he needed a degree in flipping psychoanalysis if he was going keep ahead of them.

He had only a few days left and in terms of crime-stopping, all he had done so far was stumble across a local wine fiddle that was none of his business. It had been Corrie who solved the Medusa thing and stopped Tina from braining him with an axe – she’d been brilliant actually, although he dared not tell her. It was hard enough as it was preventing her from leaping in every five minutes with her sensational and totally unlikely crime scenarios. The worst part was that sometimes her barmy intuition was actually right. All
he
had done was stand by like a spare part at a wedding while two women were poisoned – one nearly fatally.