The Moonspinners (25 page)

‘Yes.'

‘He pulled an automatic out of his pocket, and hid it down behind one of them.'

‘An automatic? You mean a pistol?'

‘Well, I think they're the same. This, anyway.'

His hand reached under the sheepskin cloak, to produce a deadly looking gun. He paused, weighing it on his hand, and grinning at me with the expression of a small boy caught with some forbidden firework.

‘Colin!'

‘I suppose it's Alex's. Pity he didn't get time to use it first. Heavy, isn't it?' He held it out obligingly.

‘I wouldn't touch it if you paid me! Is it loaded?'

‘No, I took them out, but I brought them along. See?'

‘You seem to know how to handle the thing,' I said, reassured.

‘Not really, but we mess around with rifles in the Cadets, and one can guess. Not much use against a rifle, of course, but it makes you feel sort of better to have it, doesn't it?'

‘For heaven's sake!' I stared at this capable child with – it must be confessed – a touch of exasperation. The rescue was going all wrong. Colin, it now seemed, was escorting me to Mark. No doubt Lambis would be detailed to see me home . . .

‘As a matter of fact,' said Colin frankly, ‘I'm terrified of it.' He put it away. ‘I say, haven't we climbed far enough? It's getting pretty open here.'

We were approaching the head of the gorge. Some way farther up I could see where the stream sprang out of the welter of rocks and trees under the upper ridge. I thought I recognized the old, arthritic olive-tree where Lambis had hidden the food.

‘Yes, this is where we leave cover. For a start, you can let me show myself first again, in case anyone's about.'

‘Okay. But d'you mind if we have a rest first – just for a minute? Here's a decent place to sit.'

He clambered a little way up the south side of the gully, where there was some flattish ground, and lay down in the sun, while I sat beside him.

‘Finish your story,' I said.

‘Where was I? Oh, Josef hiding the gun. Well, he picked up his rifle and came on upstairs. While I was trying to eat, he just sat there, with the rifle across his knees, watching me. It put me off my food.'

‘I can imagine.'

‘I'd been trying to think up some Greek, but I don't really know any.' He grinned. ‘You just about heard my full repertoire when you woke me up.'

‘You did wonders. If I hadn't known, I'd just have thought you were dim, and a bit sulky. Where'd you get the fancy dress? Sofia?'

‘Yes. Anyway, in the end I managed to think up a bit of classical Greek, and tried that. I remembered the word for “brother” –
“adelphós”
– and tried that on him. Apparently it's still the same word. I'd never have thought,' said Colin ingenuously, ‘that Thucydides and all that jazz would ever have come in useful.'

‘It worked, then?'

His mouth thinned, no longer young-looking. ‘I'll say it did. He said, “
Nekrós
”, and even if it hadn't been obvious what that means, he drew his hand across his throat, like this, as if he was cutting it. Then he grinned, the stinking little sod. I'm sorry.'

‘What? Oh – it's all right.'

‘Mark always goes down my throat with his boots on if I swear.'

‘
Mark
does? Why?'

‘Oh, well—' He rolled over, staring down the gully – ‘I mean, naturally one swears at school, but at home, in front of the girls, it's different.'

‘If Charlotte's at RADA,' I said dryly, ‘I'd have thought she'd have caught up with you by now.'

He laughed. ‘Oh, well, I told you he was a bit of a square. But he's all right, old Mark, as brothers go.' He returned briskly to his narrative. ‘After that, Josef just shut me up when I tried to speak. It was after he'd gone that I realized he'd let me see him. He'd sat there in full view, with daylight coming through the shutters. The only reason for that I could think of was that they were going to kill me anyway. I tried pretty hard to get away, that day, but I only hurt my wrists. But it wasn't Josef, that evening, after all, it was Sofia. She came very late – nearly morning, it must have been – and she untied me. I didn't realize at first that she'd done it – I couldn't move. She rubbed my legs, and put oil on my wrists, and bandaged them, then she gave me some soup. She'd brought it all the way in a jug, and it was only just warm, but it was awfully good. And some wine. I ate a bit, wondering how soon my legs would work, and if I could get away from her, then I realized she was signing me to go with her. Mind you, I was scared to, at first. I thought this might be – well, the pay-off. But there wasn't any future in staying where I was, so I followed her downstairs. She went first, and I managed to sneak the pistol from behind the tin, then went down after her. It was pretty dark, just breaking dawn. It was then I saw I'd been in a windmill. The other mills were all standing quiet, like ghosts. It was beastly cold. Oh, I forgot, she'd brought this sheepskin thing, and the stick, and I was jolly glad of them both, I may tell you; I was as shaky as a jelly for the first few minutes. She took me quite a long way, I had no idea where, through some trees and past a little cairn affair—'

‘The shrine. There's a Madonna in it.'

‘Oh, is there? It was too dark to see that. We went quite a way, and then it was light enough to see, more or less, and we'd got to that wide track, so she stopped. She pointed the way to me, and said something I couldn't make out. Perhaps she was telling me it was the track to the church, where they'd first found us; she'd think I'd know the way from there. Anyway, she sort of pushed me on my way and then hurried back. The sun came up with a bang, and it was light, and you know the rest.'

‘So I missed her, after all. If only I'd pulled myself together, and stayed on watch! Well, then, I suppose you just decided it was safer to lie up in the gully and hide during daylight?'

‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I was too tired and stiff to get far, so I thought I'd hole up out of sight and rest for a bit. I had the gun, after all; it made me feel a lot safer.' He laughed. ‘I certainly never meant to go “out” like that! It must have been hours!'

‘You were dead to the wide. Are you all right now? Shall we go on?'

‘Sure. Man, oh man,
get
those birds! What are they?'

The shadows had moved across the uneven ground below us, swinging smoothly in wide, easy circles. I looked up.

‘Oh, Colin, they
are
lammergeiers! Bearded vultures! I thought I saw one yesterday! Aren't they rather gorgeous?'

I could find time, today, to be moved and excited by this rare, huge bird, as I had been moved by the beauty of the speckled snake. I had seen the lammergeier before, at Delphi, and again yesterday, but never so close, never so low, never the two of them together.

As I stood up, they swung higher.

‘It's the biggest bird of prey in the “old world”,' I said. ‘I believe the wing span's nearly ten feet. And they're rather handsome, too, not like the other vultures, because they haven't got that beastly bare neck, and – Colin? Is anything the matter? Aren't you well?'

He had made no move to rise when I did, and he wasn't watching the birds. He was staring, fixed, at something near the foot of the gully.

I looked. At first, I saw nothing. Then I wondered why I hadn't seen it straight away.

Near a little clump of bushes, not very far from where we sat, someone had recently been digging. The earth lay now in a shallow, barrow-shaped heap, and someone had thrown stones and dry thorns over it to obliterate the marks of recent work. But it had been a hasty job, done perhaps without the right tools, and, at the end nearest to us, the crumbling stuff had already fallen in a bit, exposing an earthy shape that could have been a foot.

The shadows of the vultures crawled across it; and again, across it.

Before I could speak, Colin was on his feet, and slithering down the slope.

‘Colin!' I was stumbling after him. ‘Colin, don't go over there! Come back,
please
!'

He took no notice. I doubt if he heard me. He was standing over the grave. It was a foot, no doubt of that. I grabbed him by the arm.

‘Colin, please come away, it's beastly, and there's no point in poking around here. It'll be that man they killed, that poor Greek, Alexandros . . . I suppose they had to bring him across here, where there was enough soil—'

‘He was buried in the field by the mill.'

‘What?' I said it blankly, my hand falling from his arm.

‘He was buried in the field by the mill.' Colin had turned to stare at me, with that stranger's face. You'd have thought he'd never seen me before. ‘I heard them digging. All the first night, I heard them digging. And then again yesterday, someone was there, tidying up. I heard him.'

‘Yes. Stratos. I saw him.' I looked at him stupidly. ‘Well, who can it be? It's so – so recent . . . you'd think—'

‘You were lying to me, weren't you?'

‘I? Lying to you? What do you mean?' Then the look in his face shocked me into understanding. I said sharply: ‘It's not
Mark
, don't be so silly! I wasn't lying, it was only a fleshwound, and he was better –
better
, do you hear? And last night, even if the wound
was
bleeding again, it – couldn't have been as bad as
that
!' I found I had hold of his arm again, and was shaking it. He stood like stone. I dropped the arm, and said, more quietly: ‘He'd be all right. Lambis wouldn't be far off, and he'd look after him. It
was
healing cleanly, Colin, I'll swear it was.'

‘Well, then, who's this?'

‘How do I know? It
must
be the man they killed.'

‘I tell you, he was buried in the field. I heard them.'

‘All right, you heard them. That still doesn't make it Mark. Why should it?'

‘Josef shot him. That was why Josef didn't get back for me last night, when I'll swear he meant to. He was up here, burying Mark. Or else Stratos . . . What time was Stratos at that shed with you last night?'

‘One o'clock, twenty past, I hardly know.'

‘Stratos went back to kill him later. He knew it hadn't just been the cat. He only wanted to put you off and get you back to the hotel, so's he could—'

‘Mark might have had something to say about that!' I was still trying to sound no more than reasonable. ‘Give him a little credit!'

‘He was hurt. And if he'd been raking round the village for hours, he'd be flaked out, you know he would. If it comes to that, the blood mayn't have been from his shoulder at all. Perhaps that was where Stratos—'

‘Colin! Shut up and don't be silly!' I could hear the nerves shrilling through my voice like wires. I swallowed, and managed to add, more or less evenly: ‘Stratos didn't leave the hotel again before I went back to the shed and found Mark gone. Do you think I wasn't watching? Give me some credit, too! And they'd hardly have killed him in the village and carried him up here to bury him . . . Anyway, what about Lambis? Where's he in all this?'

‘Perhaps they killed him, too. Or he got away.'

‘He wouldn't run away.'

‘Why not? If Mark was dead, and he thought I was, too, why should he stay? If he'd any sense at all, he'd go . . . with the caique.'

His stony insistence was carrying through to me. I found I was shaking. I said, more angrily than I had meant to: ‘This is all bilge! You haven't a thing to go on! It isn't Mark, I tell you it isn't! It . . . this could be anyone. Why, it mightn't even
be
anyone. Just because a bit of soil looks like a – Colin, what are you doing?'

‘I have to know. Surely you see that? I've got to know.' And with a stiff, abrupt little movement, that somehow had whole chapters of horror in it, he reached out a foot, and dislodged a little of that dry dirt.

A small cascade of it trickled down with a whispering sound. It was the foot that was exposed, and the ankle, in a sock that had been grey. There was no shoe. A bit of the trouser-leg was showing. Dark grey flannel. There was a triangular tear in it that I remembered well.

There was a moment's complete stillness, then Colin made a sound, a small, animal noise, and flung himself to his knees at the other end of the mound, where the head should be. Before I had quite realized what he was about, he was tearing at the bushes and stones with his hands, flinging them aside, careless of cuts and scratches, digging like a dog into the pile of dirt. I don't know what I was doing: I believe I tried to pull him back, but neither words nor frantic hands made any impression at all. I might as well not have been there. The dust rose in a smoking cloud, and Colin coughed and scrabbled, and then, as he dug lower, the dust was caked . . .

He was lying on his face. Under the dirt now was the outline of his shoulders. Colin scooped a drift of stony earth away, and there was the head . . . Hiding it, half buried, was a branch of withered scrub. I stooped to pull this aside, but gently, as if it could have scratched the dead flesh. Its leaves crumpled in my hands, with the smell of dried verbena. And then, sticking up in obscene tufts from the red dust, I saw the dark hair, with the dirt horribly matted over a sticky blackness . . .

I'm not clear about what happened next. I must have flinched violently back, because the branch I was grasping came dragging out from the piled earth, dislodging as it did so a fresh heap of stuff which came avalanching down from above over the half exposed head and shoulders. My own cry, and Colin's exclamation as his wrists and hands were buried deep in the falling debris, were followed, sharply, by another sound that split the still air with its own kind of terror. A shot.