Stephanie (29 page)

Henry hesitated. There was something about James's voice that made him uneasy. Often since he was handed the suicide note he had wondered how
he
would have felt if he had killed somebody in revenge for what that person hadn't done. If
he
was in James's position would he still be pursuing the idea of finding Errol's master – ‘the Boss'? He felt not. He would be too badly shaken by the enormity of his mistake.

More coins went into the box. James said: ‘Are you still there?'

‘I am indeed. It seems to me, James, that if you are still intent on identifying the house, why not ask around here? Many people go to Corfu these days. Why not ask Peter Brune? It might save a long and tedious journey.'

‘I have a feeling I want to look for myself.'

‘Incidentally I saw Brune last Friday – before, of course, we knew what we know now. I asked him how he had met Colton, and he said at the house of a man called Mr Erasmus. Ever heard of him?'

‘No.'

‘Apparently Peter only met him once but judged him an unsavoury character. He's very rich and has a house on Corfu, somewhere in the south of the island. He might be worth looking up.'

‘I'll do that.'

‘But James, take heed of what I have to say. However one may judge or assess or regret what happened last Tuesday it's still likely that you are stirring up a dangerous group of people. Nothing of that has changed. Maybe over Errol and Smith they will be content to let sleeping dogs – dead dogs – lie. But if you still go on pressing and probing there'll be a reaction. Indeed, the more I think of it, the more important it is that I should come with you to Corfu.'

‘No. You have to stay out of this – for your own sake, for your career's sake, but mainly for Evelyn's sake. Stay away from me, lovey.'

There was a pause.

‘I'm on my last two coins,' James said.

‘All right, by God, if that's how you see it. So go to Corfu. Ask questions. Look at houses. But
don't
go any further. Otherwise I have a feeling you might not come back.'

‘Does it matter?' James said.

‘Yes, it matters all round.'

Mary Aldershot drove him to Heathrow on Saturday 2 June and he flew alone by Olympic Airways, arriving in Corfu, with an adjustment of time, at 16.50. He took a taxi and stayed at the Swiss-owned Corfu Palace Hotel overlooking the harbour and the sea. He had a word with the manager and made arrangements for a private car to pick him up the following morning. The driver, Pericles Anemoyannis, spoke good English, it was said, and would be available for the two days he proposed to stay on the island. Since it is a small island where so many people know other people's business and whereabouts, James asked the manager if he knew a Madame Errol Colton, first name Elena, though he did not remember her maiden name. The manager said he would ask around.

That night James slept badly, as usual. When he did finally fall into a troubled sleep it was to dream of his earlier days in a war almost forgotten except by a few veterans such as himself. That last year of the war he had been sent to Darwin, to train parachutists to be dropped behind the Japanese lines in North Borneo. The special group he was selected to train was a company of Chinese: Canadian Chinese from Vancouver – chosen presumably because their Asiatic faces would blend easily with the inhabitants in the districts where they were to be dropped. James had the help of a splendid Australian sergeant major called Blake, but the group had been very inefficiently trained in the technique of guerrilla warfare and all it involved, and James feared greatly for them if they fell into the hands of the dreaded Japanese Kempe-Tai.

Much was done in a short time before orders came through that they were to proceed to Morotai Island in the Moluccas, from which advanced position they were to be flown to Sandakan in North Borneo and dropped behind the Japanese lines to organise local resistance and sabotage communications. Morotai itself, which was just one degree north of the Equator, had been a Japanese military base until the previous year, when it had been captured by the Allies and turned into a strategic air base.

At these instructions there were mutterings among the Chinese Canadians, which came to a head with their adamant refusal to obey orders unless they were led into action by Major Locke and Sergeant Major Blake. Much telephoning resulted in permission being granted by the Colonel-in-Chief, a decision which did not please James, since his ankles were already troubling him a bit and he was losing his appetite for the sharper edge of war; but Blake, ever happy-go-lucky, was willing enough to go, so go they did, lying with their Chinese charges in the bomb bay of an elderly Dakota, all the way from Darwin to Morotai.

Not anxious to be short of Dutch courage for this suicide mission, James packed six bottles of gin in his case, but, in the unpressurised plane, flying over the mountains was too much for the corks, and when they landed his socks and shirt and other belongings were soaked in gin.

The following day Japan sued for peace; so instead of being dropped into unknown jungle they had a hugely noisy party at which they danced round the row of improvised lavatories (made out of palm roots) and set them on fire and got happily drunk.

There was laughter in James's mind when he woke. Young as he had been then, the end of the war was like opening the gates of a new and lovely world. The tensions and strains of the last years vanished overnight. As it turned out, the tensions and strains had left their mark on him – not only on his injured feet – but he was not to know that then. What he remembered most was the flight back – in the same Dakota and lying in the same discomfort (but nobody minded now) – and the immense feast that followed, in which they had had steak and chips and eggs and bacon and good Australian wine, and the world was preparing to live happily ever after.

But what was there to be happy about or to smile about lying in this clinical bedroom looking out over the bay in which lights were still winking though dawn was soaking up the night? He had brought Stephanie's suicide note with him. Of course he knew it was a fake – within a few hours he had decided it was a forgery.

This is the end. I can't go on. There's nothing for me now, now he has gone. I'm deeply, deeply sorry to deliberately bring all this trouble and grief to the people I love and trust …

His daughter would never split an infinitive. It didn't matter if she was crazed with grief and half-drunk. The way she had been taught a few simple English grammatical rules made it impossible. She might just as easily have written: ‘This is the hend. I can't go hon.'

Henry would understand if it were pointed out to him. Perhaps few others. Some would be derisive. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that
he
knew; and this conclusion – this certain knowledge – had saved him from even contemplating what Henry had feared he might contemplate. Stephanie's peculiar handwriting was easy to imitate. Anne Vincent's interference had spoiled a careful plan, which would have resulted in a simple verdict of suicide and no more reason to ask questions. By his testimony at the inquest, Errol Colton took the odium but escaped any suspicion of guilt.

James had not said anything about it to Henry. He had come to Corfu alone, and if the solution lay here Henry would know in good time.

The other note he carried was the typewritten one he had found in Errol's photographic folder:
The Boss says scrap numbers 22 and 49. At this time he wants no more links than need be. C.

Exhibits 22 and 49 were in his breast pocket. The front of a house, presumably in Corfu. James had thought of producing them to the manager last night, but overcaution had stopped him. He hoped to see and recognise for himself.

The sun was up now and its light reflected from the shimmering harbour. A motorboat scored a white scar on the polished surface. Too early to get up, but James rang down and ordered breakfast.

Pericles Anemoyannis turned up at ten, and it was soon clear that his English was not as good as the manager had promised. He was a heavily built dark-featured cheerful man who claimed to speak French better than English, but so guttural was his accent that James gave it up and relapsed into English.

Before they left the manager said, yes, he had found Elena Mavrogodatos, formerly Mrs Errol Colton. She had reverted to her maiden name and was living in Corfu Town. She worked nightly at a taverna called Tripas at Kinopiastes, a few miles south of the town.

‘Is it a good taverna?'

‘Not elegant, sair, but the best food in Corfu.'

‘Book me a table tonight, will you. And, Mr Grouas …'

‘Sair?'

‘Do you know of a man called Erasmus?'

An unidentifiable expression floated across the manager's face. ‘I know of him. I knew of him. He lived in the extreme south of the island, beyond Lefkimi.'

‘Lived?'

‘I have not heard of him recently. It is perhaps so that he still lives there. It was his custom, I know, to come only for the summer.'

‘Would you ask Anemoyannis if he knows where it is, and that I want him to drive me there.'

‘Sair, he speaks English, as I have said.'

‘Tell him in Greek, will you, so I can be sure he understands.'

The road south from Corfu Town, if one doesn't follow the coast, leads through the least developed, most primitive part of the island. The roads are equally undeveloped, giving a fair idea of what all the island was like before the intrusion of tourism. Pericles Anemoyannis took the inland road, and they bumped and jolted and twisted through tiny villages linked by orange groves and lemon groves and vineyards, with goats and stray dogs (all apparently of the same parentage) and chickens and donkeys disputing the right of way. But above all and omnipresent the olive trees, shouldering each other, bent and gnarled and of great age. Indeed, the further they progressed the more the olive tree took over, so that approaching Argirades one drove through groves of such antiquity that one could not imagine them having changed much since the days of the Angevins. Were these Roman soldiers, caught in the moment of agonising dissolution and turned in their contortions to wood and stone?

The age of a man was as nothing to trees such as this. Even less the life of a girl who died before she was twenty-two.

Beyond Lefkimi the countryside, which had lost its mountains some time ago, became flat and featureless with low-lying earth walls and a sense of desolation. Unerringly Pericles turned down a rough track, and after five bumpy minutes cheerfully drew up before double gates leading to a big low stone-built house overlooking the sea. As soon as he saw it James knew it was not the house he sought.

‘Mrs Colton?'

‘Yes? Georgios told me you wanted to see me.'

They were in the restaurant, a bare extension built on the side of a cottage; trestle tables, noise, clatter, mountains of appetising food banged down upon the tables, Greek white wine by the litre; it was quiet yet to what it would become.

‘My name is James Locke. I wonder if you have time for a word.'

‘Are you from England?'

‘Yes.'

‘What do you want? Is it about my husband?'

‘Yes. I wished to ask you –'

‘He is dead, murdered; are you from the British police?'

She was a hard-faced young woman with a tight mouth, but her eyes, though unfriendly, were not unfeeling.

‘No, I'm not. Just a private individual. Your husband was friendly with my daughter.'

‘He would be.'

‘She died some weeks ago.'

She wrapped and unwrapped a coloured serving napkin about her wrist. ‘ What I want to know is what will happen to
my
daughter!'

‘How did he come to have custody of her?'

‘He paid me. His lawyer paid me monthly. A hundred pounds a month. But that agreement was made years ago. Prices have gone up.'

‘Perhaps his second wife will come to some arrangement.'

‘I am his only wife! That woman living with him is not his wife! I want my daughter back!'

‘How did your husband come to be associated with the drug trade?'

She blinked. ‘ What? What do you ask me? I do not know anything about his later life.'

‘Do you know a Mr Erasmus?'

‘Down in the south. Yes, I know him.'

‘I went to see him this morning.'

‘You would not find him. He has been away for a long time.'

‘His factory goes on.'

‘What factory?'

‘His house down there is used as a factory for processing olives. What else does it process?'

‘I do not know. Why do you not ask them?'

‘I did. There were a half-dozen workmen about but they pretended not to understand English – or French or German.'

‘Why should they pretend? This is Greece. Greek is our language.'

‘Do you know nothing about the factory? In a small island like this it must be difficult to keep secrets.'

She looked around at a group of ten who had just arrived and were noisily seating themselves.

‘I must go. I cannot stand here idling.'

‘Give me your home address. I will call on you tomorrow.'

‘I wish to have nothing more to do with you.' She turned away.

‘One thing more,' he said, and fumbled to produce the now creased photographs. ‘ Do you know this house?'

She stared at it. ‘I do not recognise it. It is not Corfu.'

‘Why do you say that?'

She said: ‘Go home, old man.'

In the morning the taxi did not arrive. Anemoyannis, the manager said, had telephoned that he was unwell. They found another taxi outside the hotel, and the driver seemed to have a better grasp of English than Pericles. James showed him the photographs and he frowned and then grinned.