Nemesis of the Dead (3 page)

The quayside was practically deserted. It was that time of the evening when holidaymakers are indoors getting dressed up for the clubs or a meal at their favourite
taverna
. Apart from the Katastrophos group, there was just one young woman, sitting cross-legged on the sea wall reading a Greek magazine propped up on her backpack. She was dressed in the old hippy style with braided, purple-streaked hair, black lips and eyes and an awesome array of tattoos.

‘I suppose we’re in the right place,’ said Corrie, drowsily. ‘I can’t see anything remotely like a ferry – only that tatty old fishing-boat.’

Just below them, a salt-encrusted vessel with six inches of dirty water sloshing around in the bilge, bobbed gently up and down on its moorings. Jack checked the travel documents again.

‘This is the place all right. I expected more people to be waiting here, though.’

‘But didn’t you say very few tourists visit Katastrophos?’

‘Yeah. Apparently the ferry can only carry a handful of passengers and the service is sporadic, which seems to mean “when the ferryman feels like it”. I guess the island
is
very remote. People who go there, go mainly for a specific reason. It isn’t the kind of place travel agents normally recommend. Obviously you and I and Tim and Ellie are here for a private, romantic honeymoon. I suspect the Dobsons are here because he’s a miserable old sod and doesn’t want to socialize with anybody.’

‘You don’t know that. He might just be shy,’ said Corrie charitably.

The prospect of being alone with Jack had seemed like bliss when Corrie was at home. Now, she was slightly uneasy about being cut off completely from civilization for two weeks with not even a mobile phone for comfort. They would never find a signal on an island in the middle of the Ionian Sea. Mindful of her honeymoon hex, she was starting to wonder whether it might not be safer to stay where they were on the mainland. These mental meanderings were cut short when a taxi pulled up and a tall, stooping, spindly-legged man in shorts and a fluorescent orange anorak jumped out. He ran round to the boot and dragged out several pieces of expensive-looking Louis Vuitton luggage with huge bony hands. Then he ran back round to the front and dragged an equally expensive-looking blonde away from the drooling taxi driver. He gathered everything up, including the blonde, and struggled across to the jetty.

‘Well, here we all are then!’ He beamed at everyone as though he were greeting old friends. He had a thin, blotchy face with a hawklike nose, slightly bulging eyes and tufts of ginger hair sprouting from everywhere except his bald head.

‘Gordon’s the name. Professor Cuthbert Gordon. I’m a botanist. You may have read my books.’

‘For Chrissakes, Cuthbert, of course they haven’t. Normal guys read thrillers and spy novels and porn. They sure as hell aren’t interested in books about boring old plants.’ The nasal drawl, Corrie reckoned, was definitely New York, probably Manhattan. The designer shirt and skintight jeans might have been Madison Avenue, or Paris, or Rome. The blonde, drop-dead gorgeous and oozing sex, homed in on Jack like a testosterone-seeking missile and offered him a slim hand with a huge diamond on the scarlet-tipped middle finger. A cloud of musky perfume settled over them like acid rain.

‘Hi there, honey. I’m Diana Gordon.’ She tossed back a thick curtain of golden hair and smiled seductively at him from beneath impossibly long eyelashes. ‘I hope you’re coming to Katastrophos. We’ll have a real good time.’

Over my dead body, fumed Corrie. She glanced at Jack. He was holding Diana’s hand and his mouth was open but no sound was coming out, so Corrie decided she had better take charge of the introductions.

‘Hello, dear. I’m Corrie Dawes and that hand you’re holding belongs to my husband, Jack.’ She smiled sweetly.

‘Corridors?’ repeated Diana, amused. ‘Your name is Corridors?’

‘Yes, I know. Awful, isn’t it? It’s short for Coriander.’

‘Not at all awful.’ The professor’s face lit up. ‘
Coriander sativum
is an excellent herb. Solid ridged stems and sensible bipinnate leaves. Relieves flatulence and aids the digestion.’

Thanks a bunch, thought Corrie.

Diana teetered off on four-inch Blahnik heels to repeat the vamping routine with Tim Watkins, but her husky voice was drowned out by a deafening racket like a huge, defective lawn mower starting up. Clouds of smelly blue smoke billowed up from the old fishing-boat moored below.

Professor Gordon rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. ‘Splendid!’ he bellowed over the din. ‘Old Charon’s woken up at last. On board, everyone, he won’t wait for dawdlers.’

Jack and Corrie exchanged glances.

‘That’s never the ferry,’ said Corrie, horrified.

‘Charon?’ Ellie giggled nervously. ‘Wasn’t that someone nasty in Greek mythology?’

‘The ferryman of the dead,’ said Professor Gordon. ‘Just a macabre nickname, my dear. They have a droll sense of humour, the Katastrophans.’

They watched as a wizened old man in a filthy peaked cap clambered, wheezing, on to the jetty. He hawked and spat a couple of times, then began throwing everyone’s luggage down into the bilge water in the bottom of the boat. Glowing embers fell from his stinking cigarette and etched themselves into Diana Gordon’s Vuitton vanity case.

The prospect of putting out to sea in a decaying old rust bucket with a wheezing pensioner at the helm was not an appealing one. Nobody seemed keen except Professor Gordon, who was clearly eager to be off.

‘Damned outrage!’ blustered Ambrose Dobson, predictably. ‘Call that a ferry? It’s a blasted disgrace. So is the captain. I’m going nowhere in that wreck. I shall write a strong letter to the travel company, sue the blighters. Come away, Marjorie.’

Tim and Ellie simply clutched each other even tighter and waited to see what everyone else was going to do.

‘I take it you’ve been on this ferry before, Professor?’ said Jack.

‘Oh yes – many times. Safe as houses. Been coming here for years. It’s the flora, you see. There are plants on Katastrophos that you won’t find growing anywhere else in the world. Fascinating, don’t you think? Of course, my lovely wife doesn’t always come. She’s very much younger than me, as you can see. Prefers a bit of excitement, don’t you, old girl?’

‘You bet,’ drawled Diana, winking at Jack.

Old Charon began gesturing wildly at them to get on board. ‘
Ghríghora
!’ he screeched. ‘Hurry!’

Corrie looked uncertainly at Jack. If she wanted to spend her long-awaited honeymoon on Katastrophos, she had little choice.

‘Come on.’ Jack took her arm. ‘I’ll look after you if you look after me.’

Bracing themselves, they followed the Gordons down into the boat which rocked precariously. Tim and Ellie separated just long enough to climb in, then re-entwined anxiously. The Dobsons appeared to be having a heated debate on the quay during which she could be heard pleading, ‘Please, Ambrose.’ Then they too picked their way down the weed-slimy steps and into the boat.

The young Greek hippy who had been sitting, staring out to sea, stood up and walked briskly down the jetty. She threw her backpack into the boat, jumped nimbly down and settled herself on some cases of wine stacked up in the stern – as far away from everyone else as possible.

The old ferryman opened the throttle and the engine changed up an octave from a moaning wail to a high-pitched scream.

‘Oi! Wait for me!’ Another passenger came tearing along the jetty and flung himself and his bags headlong into the boat just as it was moving away. He staggered unsteadily to his feet, swayed a bit, then wriggled his behind into a gap between the Dobsons.

‘Evening all,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That was a close one.’

He had a smile that lit up not only his face, but a goodish part of the world around him, like a lighthouse.

‘Are you all right, dear?’ asked Marjorie, concerned. ‘You landed with a terrible wallop. You haven’t broken anything, have you?’

The newcomer peered anxiously into an airport carrier bag and checked the bottles. ‘No, it’s all right, love. Nothing’s broken.’ He rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a deck of business cards and handed them round. ‘Sidney Arthur Foskett. Master plumber. Anything from a dripping tap to a rat up your downpipe. Pleased to meet you.’

The engine belched a plume of oily smoke high up into the sky and next minute they were bucketing out of the harbour in an erratic zigzag, mainly because half the rudder was missing and Charon had let go of the wheel to light another fag. The old fishing-boat wobbled and dawdled across the dark-blue crescent of the harbour, through the narrow strait between the Oinousai islands and out into the open sea beyond. Somewhere out there, Corrie remembered, were the far lagoons where the Battle of Actium was fought and lost. The thud and swing of the open sea began to make itself felt.

‘Well, this is very jolly, I must say. We don’t normally have such good company, do we, Diana?’

Professor Gordon beamed at everyone over his half-moon spectacles like a benevolent scoutmaster rallying his troop. They were several miles out to sea and the swell was tossing the boat up and down like a roller-coaster. The professor turned to Sidney, who was an unfetching shade of green.

‘Have you been to Katastrophos before, old chap?’

‘No, squire, and I’m starting to wish I wasn’t going now.’ He put a hand over his mouth and gulped.

Corrie didn’t dare look at Jack. He got seasick just listening to the shipping forecast. Even the glamorous Diana looked a tad ruffled. Tim and Ellie were leaning over the side, still welded together, even while throwing up. Only Marjorie seemed calm, passing tissues to Ambrose who alternated between vicious defamation of the travel company and saying goodbye to his breakfast, lunch and tea. The young woman in the stern, whilst not physically sick, was clutching the rails and looking grimly at the horizon. Blithely oblivious to the angst going on around him, Professor Gordon took a paper bag out of his backpack and peered inside.

‘Anyone hungry? I seem to have far too many garlic-sausage sandwiches here.’

That did it. The combined odours of garlic and diesel kept them bent grimly over the gunwales for the remainder of the trip, while the old boat pitched and rolled its way across the Ionian Sea to Katastrophos.

I
t was late into the night. Darkness had fallen slowly over the cobalt sea, veil upon veil, turning it first to lead and then silver under the full moon. Corrie had begun to believe her honeymoon hex had struck again and they were doomed to drift ‘
for two nights and two days … wandering in the swell of the sea … hearts boded of death
’ like Homer’s luckless Odysseus. Suddenly Charon shouted ‘
Ayoo
’ and pointed a finger, its nail black beyond scrubbing, at a row of lights, twinkling in the far distance.

Fifteen minutes later they dropped anchor at Katastrophos Island and tied up at the tiny landing stage belonging to the Hotel Stasinopoulos. Exhausted, the small band of ten disembarked on wobbly legs, pathetically grateful to be on dry land. Old Charon hovered at the end of the gangplank, his grin a dentist’s nightmare. As the group tottered past, he held out his hand optimistically. Sid put a business card in it.

Hotel Stasinopoulos was the only hotel on the island and with just eight bedrooms; the guests and staff now filled it to capacity for the first time in living memory. Yanni and Maria Stasinopoulos, the owners, greeted everyone with typically polite Greek island hospitality, despite the late hour. Then they fell upon Professor Gordon as though he were an old uncle with vigorous handshakes and cries of ‘
Kalós írthate
!’ Welcome! He hugged them both in return and showing little sign of weariness, he introduced the rest of the bedraggled travellers.

Despite Yanni and Maria’s insistence, nobody but the professor could face anything to eat, and without even signing the register, which could wait until morning, everyone trooped up to their rooms with hot drinks before falling gratefully into bed.

Jack’s face fell when he saw the twin beds. It was clearly not what he had in mind for a romantic honeymoon.

‘Don’t worry.’ He flexed his muscles and spat on his hands. ‘I’ll push them together.’

‘No, I don’t think so—’ Corrie began.

‘It’s all right. It won’t take a minute.’

At first, Corrie was too tired to argue, then, fearing he would do himself an injury that would blight the rest of their honeymoon, maybe even the rest of their married life, she pointed out that the beds were set into concrete and cemented to the floor.

Although they were both exhausted, neither could sleep. They tossed and turned in the oppressive heat, listening to the relentlessly cheerful chirping of the cicadas outside the window. Jack lay on his back, his arms behind his head. Suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing, he said into the darkness:

‘Why do people do it, Corrie? Why kill someone just for money? I mean, how much money does one person need to be happy? And how can they ever be happy knowing that they’ve taken a life to get it? I’m pretty hard-nosed after twenty years in the Force, but I still don’t understand it. Probably never will, no matter how long I stay in the murder squad.’

Corrie sat up and put on the light. She assumed that exhaustion and sleeplessness had conjured up demons from Jack’s last murder case. A young man from a decent, loving family, engaged to be married and with a promising career as a doctor, had foolishly got into massive debt through gambling. His debtors had threatened both him and his fiancée and pressured him into supplying drugs to pay off his debts. Eventually, under the intolerable strain of getting deeper into crime and with discovery imminent, he had lost control and stabbed the drug dealer. He died instantly. Good riddance people had said at the time, but even a first-class mitigation plea had not saved the young man from being sentenced to a long stretch in prison, his career in ruins. Jack had been the DI in charge of the case and as always, had been scrupulous in his investigations. But, pragmatic as he was, he could not forget the despair of the parents and fiancée when sentence was passed.

In the hollow hours of the night, that deceiving time when every problem seems larger than life and impossible to solve, Corrie could find no comforting or credible answers to Jack’s questions. She climbed out of her bed, slid into his, and put her arms around him.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart. But if we’re honest, I guess we’re all capable of one murder. It’s just that most of us are fortunate enough never to be forced into a situation where we’re tested.’

They were silent for a while. Despite her original anxiety, Corrie was glad they were effectively incommunicado for a fortnight. Jack needed a complete rest. She changed the subject.

‘The Gordons are a strange couple aren’t they? She’s young and glamorous and he’s a crusty old boffin, and he’s got to be at least twenty years older than her. Mind you, it isn’t hard to see why she married him, is it? Did you see the size of that diamond on her finger?’

Jack nodded pensively. ‘Money would certainly seem to have been the incentive for the marriage. And Diana’s clearly used to spending it.’

Corrie sighed, envious, but only for a nanosecond.

‘What do you make of Ambrose and Marjorie?’

‘He’s an obnoxious, bad-mannered little twerp in a badly fitting wig and she lets him bully her.’

‘I know! I keep wanting her to stand up for herself. She’s like the stereotypical “little woman” from the fifties. I asked her if she’d had a job since she was married and she said no, Ambrose would never allow it. Apparently, he makes enough fuss about her bit of charity work. Wives like her set the rest of us back decades in terms of the equality we’re all supposed to have earned. I bet she doesn’t even vote.’

‘And men like him make the rest of us blokes feel uncomfortable. I suppose they’re both a couple of dinosaurs in terms of modern marriage.’

Corrie frowned. ‘Funny though, I’m sure I’ve seen her before, somewhere.’

Jack yawned. ‘You have. She was sitting next to him when he was holding up the queue at Gatwick.’

Corrie frowned. ‘No, I mean before that. And not with her husband – on her own. Her face is familiar. I know I’ve seen her before.’

‘Doubt it. He’d never let her go anywhere on her own. I expect you’re confusing her with someone else. She’s got one of those ordinary, commonplace faces.’ He grinned. ‘I really like Sid, don’t you? I reckon he could be a good laugh. He’d better watch out though, I think Diana’s got her predatory eye on him.’

‘Diana’s got her eye on all the men. Be careful her Medusa gaze doesn’t turn you all to stone. This is a Greek island, after all. Not Tim though, he’s adorable. So much in love he probably hasn’t even noticed Diana’s rather obvious charms. I hope he and Ellie have a super honeymoon.’

‘Me too. If only they weren’t so flipping young. They keep looking at us like we should be in a home.’

Corrie stifled a yawn. ‘All the same, it’s nice to think that although we’re twice their age, we’re still young enough to be on honeymoon, doing the same thing they are.’

‘Yes, darling,’ said Jack, yawning again, ‘but I expect they do it more often and much faster.’ He turned over and began to snore.

Nine o’clock next morning: the sun, already fierce, scorched down out of a cloudless sky. Corrie got up first, leaving Jack still in the shower, and went outside to have her first glimpse of Katastrophos in daylight.

Hills dominated the landscape, rising the length of the island from east to west, craggy but slight, like the bumpy vertebrae of a dinosaur. Because they rose so sharply and the island was small, they assumed a dominance far greater than their modest altitude warranted. Corrie reckoned they were probably limestone as the peaks had that bare and eroded look. Around the foothills were low-lying olive groves, rich and very old with huge-trunked trees, some of them marvellously twisted.

The Hotel Stasinopoulos was not the ugliest building Corrie had ever seen but it came pretty close. It was built into the side of a slope so that it had three storeys at the front but only one at the back. She and Jack were at the back with a balcony view of the hills and olive groves. The balconies at the front looked out across the turquoise crescent of Katastrophos Bay.

The crumpled information leaflet for
touristas
that Corrie had found on the reception desk was in peculiar English and badly misspelled but she worked out that the hotel used to be an old merchant’s house in the days when pirates regularly raided the sea villages on the Greek mainland. They hid the booty (and themselves) in the hills and sea caves of obscure, hard-to-access islands like Katastrophos.

Corrie wandered around to the front and glanced up at the flaking façade of the ugly house. There were three large and hideous stone sculptures gazing down from the flat roof. She recognized them from her school days as the Gorgons – three female monsters with wings, claws, and repulsive human heads. The middle one was Medusa, which was a spooky coincidence after what she had said to Jack the previous night about Diana eyeing all the men and turning them to stone. Mischievously, Corrie recalled a particular myth in which Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden with long golden tresses, but she made the mistake of desecrating Athena’s temple by lying there with Poseidon, god of the sea. Hardly a big deal, thought Corrie, because randy Poseidon exerted his power over women whenever he could. He had it off with virtually everyone in the mythological world, including his own sister. Not surprisingly, his many love affairs resulted in some strange children, including one by a sea nymph that was half-human, half-fish, and Pegasus, the flying horse, a product of his hanky-panky with Medusa. Athena, however, was outraged and turned Medusa’s beautiful golden hair into living snakes.

Poseidon, thought Corrie dreamily, was a maddening personification of male bigotry and chauvinism. If you looked hard enough, you could find a parallel for everyone in Greek mythology. If Diana’s roving eye made her Medusa then Ambrose, sexist and domineering, was clearly Poseidon. Corrie shielded her eyes with her hand and gazed out at the aching glitter of the sea, unaware that the ancient myth and mystery of Katastrophos were already working their powerful magic on her.

Breakfast was served outdoors, under the vine-covered pergola where Jack had promised Corrie a romantic meal alone. However, the Greek tradition of conviviality meant that everyone dipped into the same dish, so they were seated together around a big oval table made of gnarled olive wood. Not totally together, because the young Greek woman sat a little away from them, eating her breakfast under a tree. The meal consisted of orange juice, slices of seed-cake, Greek yogurt and honey. Maria fussed round them with slices of juicy melon and tiny cups of thick, sweet coffee.

Ambrose Dobson, still wearing a collar and tie and braces but with his jacket hung carefully over the back of his chair, made a huge fuss about how he couldn’t drink coffee, especially strong coffee. He had a serious congestive heart complaint, he said importantly, that needed constant medication to control its pumping rate. He took tablets at exactly the same time every day and Marjorie saw to it that he had the accurate dose. Caffeine, he said, and anything else that might interfere with it, was out of the question. He turned on Maria unpleasantly.

‘What do you mean, there’s no decaffeinated coffee? What sort of a hotel is this?’ He sighed. ‘Oh very well. I’ll have some camomile tea.’

Maria looked anxious and fished a dog-eared phrase book out of her apron pocket. She turned the pages nervously while Ambrose continued to grunt and grumble.

‘Sorry. No camomile,’ she said inevitably.

Ambrose turned scarlet. ‘All right, bring me some water then,’ he retorted. ‘I take it you’ve got some of that, or do we have to get our own from a well?’ He turned angrily on his wife. ‘I told you we should have gone to Bournemouth again but oh no, you wanted to go abroad. Well, look where it’s got you. An eighteen-hour journey under appalling conditions followed by two weeks in a primitive foreign boarding house without even the most basic requirements. I hope you’re satisfied.’

Marjorie, as usual, said nothing but looked apologetic and everyone felt sorry for her except Corrie, who was willing her to stand up and give Ambrose a good clip round the ear.

Professor Gordon filled the embarrassed silence that followed by giving them a potted lecture on Katastrophos, to the undisguised boredom of his wife who had clearly heard it many times before. But to those who had not, his obvious affinity with the island and everything on it was compelling.

‘Katastrophos is a sleepy, rocky, some might even say a dull little island where time, if not standing still, is at best wandering about rather aimlessly. The best Homer could say about it was that it was “good for goats”.’ He leaned forward and his expression became more intense. ‘But don’t be misled. This island has a strange, hypnotic quality – a disengagement from reality. The air around you becomes slowly more intoxicating, more magical.’ His pop-eyes took on a slightly fanatical gleam as he spoke. ‘You will become dreamers, bewitched and subject to indiscretions outside the boundaries of your narrow domestic lives. On Katastrophos, anything is possible.’

Tim and Ellie, already bewitched, were feeding each other chunks of melon. They wore fresh but still identical T-shirts and shorts, this time with the addition of matching canvas bucket hats and walking-boots. They reminded Jack of the Flowerpot Men. Sidney, in his customary holiday gear, had a distant, yearning look that had less to do with the magical properties of Katastrophos than the eggs, bacon, sausage, kidney, tomato, baked beans, mushrooms and fried bread that he would now be enjoying had he gone to Majorca. He was also acutely aware of a naked foot under the table that had been creeping up and down his bare thigh for the last ten minutes. If it went up the leg of his shorts, he decided, he would have to leave the table a bit rapid. He looked across at Diana, mouth-watering in a Donatella Versace sundress and he didn’t need specs to see that she had nothing on underneath it. She winked at him.

‘I feel no magic.’ The young Greek woman who had signed the register simply as ‘Sky’, spoke for the first time since they arrived. She got up from her stony seat under the oleanders and came across to the table. ‘I feel the synergy of vengeance and retribution,’ she whispered, her eyes half-closed. ‘Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess and daughter of justice rules here.’