The tall, smart-looking Greek woman had not, after all, disembarked at Skyros. Mike hadn’t seen her since the Kimi ferry had been berthed at Linaria, losing some passengers and embarking new ones, and he’d thought she might have landed. Now he saw her again, alone on a banquette seat in the corner of the ship’s bar-lounge. She was pale, maybe thirty-two, with classically beautiful features. And certainly no pick-up: she’d glanced up once when he’d been staring at her, caught him at it, held his gaze sternly for a couple of seconds and frowned slightly as she’d looked away. That was OK: he hadn’t been on the make, with other things on his mind he hadn’t even thought of it. But all the same, he was glad – for no particular reason – to find she was still on board.
‘I read you like a book, buddy!’
Thursfield – an American, who’d introduced himself earlier, soon after they’d embarked at Rafina. (Bus from Athens to that east coast – Rafina – and the first ferry had taken them to Stira on Evvia island. Then another bus, a longer haul, to a place called Paralia Kimis, where they’d boarded this one.) Thursfield added, ‘Not the kind of book you’d want to leave lying around, either.’ He slid on to the bench seat across the table from Mike, and asked him, ‘Skindiver, huh?’
Mike had bought scuba gear in Athens. Thursfield would have seen him taking bits of it out of the bag and checking it over, on the first stage of the ferry trip. He nodded to him: ‘Should be good, out here.’
‘Done a lot of it, have you?’
‘Some.’ The man still waited; Mike added, ‘Mostly on the West Coast.’
‘That’s where my home is.’
‘California?’
‘Right… But tell me – why pick on Nisos Aphros?’
This time he saw the frown. He covered with, ‘Apologies. I’m nosey, always have been. And you said before it’s your first visit to the Aegean. Occurs to me most newcomers would make for one of the better-publicised tourist islands.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘That crowd of Brits that makes most of the noise, they’re sail-school folk. Aphros is a base for that. Yachtsmen use it too, but otherwise the visitors are mostly mainland Greeks.’
‘Sounds like you know it well.’
‘No, I do not. But I have a special reason to go there, and I made it my business to check it out in advance.’ He leant across the table. ‘Heard of Sherri Miller?’
Most of the world had. Sherri Miller was a very successful and sought-after movie actress. Mike admitted, ‘Seem to have heard the name someplace.’
‘Well, she’ll be arriving in a couple of days and we have business to discuss. Movie business… How about a beer?’ Alone again, Mike glanced around the crowded saloon. It had become a habit – born maybe of paranoia – to check on faces, guess which might be a tail, which you’d seen before – on the other ferry, on the ’plane, in London even. Some servant of the Hennessey brothers – who, ten to one on, had been the instigators of his father’s murder. At least according to Jim Harrison…
‘Here we are, Mike. For better or for worse.’
The beer was a brand called ‘Fix’ and it wasn’t at all bad. Mike half-listened to Thursfield talking about movies and about Sherri Miller. It seemed he wasn’t her agent, exactly, but had himself in mind for the job. Mike didn’t pay very close attention. Show business was not one of his major interests, and in any case there were other things on his mind. Like the hope that his father’s killers would be thinking he was back in the States by now.
Unless he’d ballsed it up. Which was possible. He was Mike, not Tom, and pulling the wool over the eyes of professional hoods wasn’t exactly his line of expertise. The feeling that to those people he might be acting like some blundering child had caused him some sleepless nights in London. There’d been some plain, stark fright, too: because of the Fordyce thing…
After he’d left Lilly Gordon that day, he’d thought about Fordyce, the heavyweight cop who hadn’t known Tom Clinker was dead. About the flash of recognition, and the way he’d smothered it. Fordyce had never met Mike Clinker before, so it could only be Tom’s features he’d recognized: and where would he have seen him?
A vision of a man stooped, raining blows: and another – older, weaker, on his knees, enduring, suffering…
There was also that sudden, mutual antipathy. Even if you argued which came first, the chicken or the egg, there was something wrong. So he called Harrison, from the undertakers.
‘D’you have a guy named Fordyce, detective sergeant, working from your precinct?’
‘We don’t have precincts, even. Except on our TV screens. But no, never heard of any Fordyce, not in B Division.’
‘Big guy, maybe forty. Heavy face, flat cheekplanes.’
‘Sorry. No bell’s ringing.’
‘He blew in at Rosary Gardens. Waved a warrant card and wanted to know if I’d found anything. When he saw my face, he knew me.’
‘Did he…’ Harrison asked, ‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah. I disliked him, and he hated me, on sight. Also, Tolley – the caretaker, had seen him there before and accepted him as a cop, but I’d say he was nervous of him too.’
‘Well. Mr Tolley might be nervous… But I’ll see him, I’ll check it out… And listen – tomorrow morning, I’d like you to come along and we’ll see if we can put a name to this character. Might be a big help, in fact. Pick you up at the hotel nine o’clock, shall I?’
In the Chelsea police station they put him at a table with books of mug-shots of known criminals, and after about half an hour he had ‘Fordyce’ staring morosely up at him. The real name was Tulk: he had a record of armed robbery and other violent crime, and was known to have worked for the Hennessey brothers more than once.
Harrison nodded. ‘Bloody little doubt it’s a Hennessey job.’
‘Can you tell me about them?’
‘Better’n that, I’ll show you the little dears.’
They had a page to themselves, in another book. The family resemblance was close: they had the same thick hair growing low on their foreheads, the same expressionless, staring eyes and straight mouths. Harrison said, ‘This beauty’s Martin. He’s still inside – doing a stretch for GBH – Grievous Bodily Harm, that stands for – and to be precise it was the unusually brutal torture of a rival East End gangleader. A chum of his just vanished – I mean, no body, although it’s bloody certain Mart Hennessey did away with him.’ The pencil-tip moved: ‘Brother Luke we’ve never yet managed to put behind bars. Had him sewn up good and proper, we thought, year or two back, but they got at one witness and another had an accident, so-called. Luke’s a gentleman of leisure now, living it up in Andorra.’ He added, as Mike glanced up at him, ‘You can run a business by remote control, you know. Couriers, so on…’ He turned back to the one who’d called himself ‘Fordyce’. ‘We’ll pull this sod in, anyway. And hold him. Impersonating a police officer…’
Mike thought, with a warm Mediterranean sun burning down on him and Nisos Aphros only a few miles across the blue water – he’d left Thursfield down below, chatting-up some British girl – Maybe they’ve got him by now. Back there in the rain…
The inquest had turned up nothing new. And the funeral had been worse than he’d expected or thought possible. A young parson with acne and no recent haircut had conducted the crematorium ritual with production-line indifference: Mike, Lilly Gordon, Jim Harrison and a man from the undertakers had been the only mourners. If Tom Clinker had been there to see it, Mike would have apologised to him.
He took Lilly to supper that evening, his last in London. She’d enjoyed herself, talking all the time about Tom and her William, what good pals they’d been and what a darling old Tom had been to her when William ‘passed over’. Mike took her back to Rosary Gardens in a cab, and saying goodnight he kissed her flabby, powdered cheek.
Even in that restaurant he’d wondered which of the other diners might be watching him. Or someone outside – in a doorway or a parked car. Next morning, leaving the hotel, distinctive in a light-coloured raincoat and his father’s wide-brimmed dark-green hat, he’d expected to be followed. He’d let Harrison see his American airline ticket; and back at the hotel after taking Lilly home he’d also displayed it to the night clerk. His excuse for doing so was the inexperienced tourist’s enquiry about where was this Gatwick airport he had to fly from in the morning; he’d kept his thumb over the open-date space. He also gave the clerk his address in Toledo for any mail to be sent on.
He’d picked on Gatwick instead of Heathrow for the reason that at Heathrow there were three separate terminal buildings; for flights to the USA you went from Terminal 3, while Greece was served from Terminal 1. Switching from 3 to 1 in a hurry wouldn’t have been easy at all. Gatwick airport, however, had it all in one building. So he’d bought a ticket for Athens, and also had his American return ticket altered to a Gatwick departure with the date still open.
At Gatwick, with a hold-all slung over one shoulder and carrying his suitcase, he searched around for the US airline check-in. Actually, he spotted it right away, but there was time in hand and a short, fat guy in a hound’s tooth jacket also looking lost and never far behind him. Their pauses synchronised, and they seemed to be steering the same erratic courses: by the time he was on a second circuit, he was sure of it.
He slanted through the crowd, got himself into the middle of the check-in queue for the US flight, ignored some complaints from behind him, and when he reached the desk he stood right up close but actually to one side, letting the complainer go ahead. You wouldn’t have seen it, from any distance. He left as if he’d completed the formalities, and left the suitcase there too. It would cause some minor nuisance, he realised, since deserted baggage made people think of bombs, but the case wasn’t locked and it contained only clothes taken from Tom Clinker’s room.
The hound’s tooth jacket was behind him as he moved away through the crowd. He’d located the desk for the Athens flight, which was scheduled to take off forty-five minutes before the other one.
He was sweating. From nervousness, not heat. Aware of being a complete amateur trying to fool a professional. And that the fact he’d had the luck to spot one of them didn’t guarantee there weren’t others. That one might even be Harrison’s man, for Christ’s sake…
The bookstall was more crowded than any other part of the airport concourse. It would be the best place to do it, he decided. And he had to get away from hound’s tooth now – else he’d be late for the Greek check-in. He walked directly, but not hurrying, into that dense throng among the paperbacks.
Give him time to get in too. He had to get inside, because there are several exits and he’ll be scared of losing me…
‘But not too close, old buddy.’
He’d murmured it aloud. Judging that hound’s tooth would be in the thick of it by now. And rounding the end of one free-standing wall of brightly-coloured fiction, missing the centre alley and ducking into the third: glancing round, head down…
All clear.
He shucked off the raincoat and Tom Clinker’s hat. The people round him were too tight-packed and too preoccupied with the covers and titles to give a damn. Rolling the coat in a tight ball with the hat and stuffing them into the holdall… Then moving on, quickly now, round the end and out through a side exit. Hound’s tooth would be looking for an almost-white raincoat and a dark-green felt hat, distinctively wide-brimmed…
He checked in at the Athens desk. Hadn’t looked round: if it hadn’t worked, well, that would be it, he’d done his amateurish best… But he saw him again, en route from the check-in. Mike was bagless now, empty-handed and he hoped barely recognizable to anyone who’d had that other image in his sights: heading for the departure lounge, he saw hound’s tooth conferring agitatedly with a youngish man in a blazer, blue trousers and striped tie. Mike stopped, in the cover of the milling herd, and with a handkerchief at his nose. That pair separated, hurrying away to each side of the big central block of check-in booths. He saw them go, then continued on his way to the departure lounge for European flights.
This was a different world, and it matched up to all the glossy brochures. Nisos Aphros humped brownish-green on a bed of dark blue: the ferry, driving steadily towards the island’s southeast corner, ploughed a white furrow through sea only slightly ruffled by the wind’s warm breath. The island, as viewed from this direction, had two humps – a big one to the left and a gentler rise on the eastern side. A black outline, rectangular against the sky on the higher summit, could have been some old ruined castle.
It felt like some kind of pilgrimage, this arrival. Because whatever Tom Clinker had done with the rest of his life, this was where he’d left his heart as well as his ultimate ambitions. A treasure on the seabed, and the arms of a young Greek girl he’d known as Kate: you could visualise that long, scrawny body flaked out on a bunk in a prison cell while its mind roamed free, happy and hopeful – here…
‘Hah. Tracked you down, Mike.’ Turner Thursfield suggested, ‘Move up a little, allow this young lady to see the view?’
He’d brought one of the English girls up with him, and he had a 35mm camera ready for action. Telling her he wanted her half-profile in close-up and the island out beyond. Then he put the camera away and unfolded a map.
‘Harbour’s in this corner, see. See there?’
The southeast corner of the island. Mike had already taken note of the smear of white buildings above and around that corner, but the harbour-mouth hadn’t opened up to view yet. He leant across the girl to get a better look at the map: he saw that the ruin on that summit was marked Nosokomion Ayia Maria.
He pointed at it. ‘Some old castle, maybe. See it up there?’ The reverse side of the map carried tourist information. Thursfield checked through it, murmuring to himself as he read.
‘Hospital – for children… Formerly a monastery. Was used by the Germans at some stages during the war, but repaired and refurbished by—’ He named a religious Order that Mike hadn’t heard of – ‘a Catholic outfit, sounds like. Isn’t that surprising? I’d’ve thought they’d be Greek Orthodox around here.’
‘There.’ The British girl pointed. ‘Doesn’t it say there?’
A paragraph with a sketch of a church… ‘Right. It says – oh, the Venetians occupied this island – in the thirteenth century, replacing the Byzantines. Some guy called Marco Sanudo and his descendants ruled it for three hundred years. Be damned… And – here we are now – ‘the Catholic tradition has lingered, as in other islands such as Syros and Tinos, in friendly coexistence with the Greek Orthodox…’ Thursfield nodded. ‘There’s the answer, then.’
‘Hey.’ The girl hadn’t been paying much attention: now she was pointing. ‘Most likely our flotilla!’
Red sails: a cluster of six or seven identical sailboats rounding the island’s southwest corner. Mike asked her, ‘What do you do? Follow a leader?’
‘I think so. But I never did it before.’
‘As the actress said to the bishop.’ Thursfield laughed, banged Mike on the shoulder, and the girl laughed too. But Mike’s mind wasn’t on or with these people, he was studying Thursfield’s map and wondering where his father might have landed after the barge sank. If they’d come out of the harbour and steered southeast – which seemed likely, if his intention had been to get back to some base in Turkish waters – he’d have run into the E-boat somewhere out in that direction, but there was no way of knowing how far out. Tom Clinker hadn’t said anything – he thought – about how far they’d steamed. All he’d said was I got her round, kept going round, the end of the island…
Round this southern end, and up the west coast?
The ferry berth was just inside the harbour, on its northern shore. A concrete jetty… There was an older jetty on the other side and higher up, and he could see some yachts moored there; and right opposite, across the harbour from this ferry berth, was a stretch of beach, people swimming and sunbathing. The land over on that side was steep, with terraced houses climbing it, but on this side the slopes were gentler.
This jetty wouldn’t have existed in Tom Clinker’s day. But the stone quayside which lined the whole inner part of the harbour, from here right around the top end and all round to that other jetty, that almost surely would have.
A lot of boats – fishing boats, caïques, whatever. Mike didn’t know one boat from another. But row-boats, sail-boats, motorised craft – all shapes and sizes, at moorings and alongside the quay. In this outer part of the harbour there were also windsurfers, making the most of the light breeze.
Thursfield said, ‘See you around, Mike. Might have a drink this evening?’
He had a reservation at a taverna called ‘Bill’s’, and it was on the waterfront, the agency had told him. So it wouldn’t be difficult to locate, he guessed, but he was waiting for the crowd to thin out a bit before he started down. Aware of contradictory emotions in himself: on one level enjoying the novelty of the scene, the way any other tourist would, but on another he was conscious of the huge problems he was facing. A total stranger talking no Greek, knowing nothing about this island or its inhabitants – and hoping to probe back through forty years to a secret that had been kept hidden all that time! And another thought – it kept cropping up, pushing itself out through all the others – was that the Hennessey crowd could be out here ahead of him, or with him; could be there ashore, or could be here, on this deck…
Forget the Hennesseys, for Christ’s sake. Relax, assume you lost them…
He saw the English group fight their way ashore, burdened with luggage. On the quay they swarmed around two open-topped vehicles that had APHROS SAILS painted on them. The same words were on the T-shirt worn by a large young man who seemed to be in charge of them; and the same on the other driver – younger, Greek-looking, and limping as he tossed bags around. Now a black saloon was drawing up, right at the foot of the gangway: a uniformed policeman got out of it.
Reception committee? Briefed by Harrison? Who maybe had not been fooled so easily?
He was coming up the gangway – slim, dapper, carrying a swagger-stick and wearing an Errol Flynn moustache on his upper lip. The late David Niven, maybe, in the role of Greek cop… But the picture changed when he got to the ferry’s deck: he hadn’t come to tell Mike Clinker he wasn’t welcome, he’d come to met that elegantly-dressed Greek girl who’d been in the saloon. She was waiting for him. He saluted her, she smiled, murmured something: he stooped, kissed her hand. This was a Greek cop playing Niven, Mike decided, not the other way about; he was following her down the gangway now, carrying her smart black holdall.
He hefted his own two cases – the shoulder bag, and the case of scuba gear. That one was heavy. By the time he reached the jetty the police car was driving away, and the sail-school ones were about to move off too; but the lead car stopped and its driver leaned out, at the same time waving to the other to go on-
‘You looking for Bill the Ram’s, by any chance?’
‘Well – Bill’s.’ He’d stopped. ‘At least—’
‘Sling your gear aboard, man.’ The driver was in his twenties, and the cars were Renaults, roofless, not in their first youth. This one had most of the English baggage on it, but only three passengers. Mike swung his cases up, and climbed in beside the driver.
‘Much obliged. But I’m nothing to do with your sailing school.’
‘I know.’ He offered his hand: then chuckled. ‘Sorry. Don’t worry, the joke’s harmless. My name’s Jan Marais. Blame my foul manners on the fact I’m from the notorious republic.’
‘I’m Mike Clinker. What republic?’
‘South Africa, man… I’m the sailing master here.’ He had the Renault rattling along the quayside. ‘We’re based on Bill the Ram’s, we tie our boats up there and he feeds us when we’re ashore.’
‘Boats with red sails?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Watching a nearby windsurfer collapse. ‘That’s the Frog crowd… Holidaying on your own, are you?’
‘I got to be divorced recently.’ He’d decided on this cover story in advance. Knowing he’d be asked, and that the name Clinker might not be unknown here. You couldn’t help that, when it was on your passport… ‘I had some vacation due to me. I happened to be in London – I’m a journalist, by the way. Anyway – found myself in a travel agency, and there’s sort of a family connection with this island, way back – so here I am.’
‘She’s going to love it.’
‘What?’
‘Well.’ That grin again. ‘When your reservation came in – single American male, alone. A certain party at the taverna had a bet with me – with me and my colleague Kevin O’Shea, in fact – she said you’d be sixty, walk with two sticks and wear false teeth.’
‘Why would she care – whoever the hell she is?’
‘Wait till you see her.’ He laughed again. Slowing as he approached the corner, a wider area of the quay with steps up to a taverna terrace. This end of the harbour was virtually an enclosed basin, cut off from the outer half by the old jetty where the yachts lay. Here, small boats rode to moorings or clustered at steps, and four identical yachts lay with their bows to the wall and anchors out astern. There was a motor-launch too, in need of painting. Marais braked, then backed to the taverna steps alongside the other car. He muttered with a jerk of his dark head, ‘The gorilla bounding down towards us is none other than Bill the Ram.’
‘Gorilla’ wasn’t a bad description. Short, squat, pot-bellied, in another of those T-shirts. Fat, short arms were spread in welcome. ‘Very good, you nice people come to Bill’s taverna!’
Marais said, ‘He’s a director of the school. You’ll notice I’m unnaturally polite to him.’
‘Mister Cleenker! You are welcome!’
The taverna up behind the terrace looked scruffy, but attractive, and probably old enough to have been here in Tom Clinker’s time. First impressions were fleeting, however: it was all a rush, Marais and the other driver hauling baggage off the cars – Bill the Ram grabbing Mike’s: ‘Thees way, please, very nice…’ Inside, a woman of about Bill’s shape and weight smiled shyly: Mike smiled back at her and said, ‘Hi, I’m Mike Clinker.’ She brushed flies off her damp-looking face: Bill ignored her, stamping short-legged up the stairs.
The room was one floor up and in the front, facing south across the harbour. A fair-sized room with a double bed that creaked when Bill dumped the bags on it.
‘Nets for mosquito, hunh?’
Grey festoons, like cobwebs. But at least the flies hadn’t followed them upstairs.
‘Guess I was lucky you had a room free.’
‘One fellow cancel… You like drink? Firs’ drink on the house – OK?’
‘Thanks. But I’ll unpack first. If you don’t mind?’
He unzipped both bags, and Bill saw the scuba gear.
‘You diver?’
‘I do a little.’
‘For calamari, astokos?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Dive on wrecks, maybe?’
Eyes like pebbles. You couldn’t read shades of meaning in them. He nodded. ‘Maybe. If there are any of interest around here.’
Tie that to the name Clinker, for Christ’s sake. Then send the Hennessey brothers a postcard… Bill the Ram, at the window, pointed down at the shabby motor-launch. ‘My boat. Very nice, hunh? When you like, I take you – OK?’
‘Great…’
He stayed at the window. Below him on the terrace, several tables were already occupied. Ice-cream, Cokes, beers, wine-bottles… Jan Marais was on the quayside, organising his customers into the four boats. Mike guessed they’d live on board them. The glass-fibre hulls were fawn-coloured, coach-work white, furled sails pale blue. The boats with red sails were filtering into the harbour now – French, Marais had said, and there was a waterfront building two hundred yards away with a French flag as well as the Greek one flying over it. Out across the harbour the Kimi ferry was on its way, its stern at an angle to the concrete jetty as it backed off… Mike tried to visualise it all as his father might have seen it, forty years ago. The ferry berth wouldn’t have been there, and you had to eliminate various other things – yachts on the far side of the old jetty, for instance, and the umbrellas advertising Vermouth: imagine this reach of waterfront as run-down, shabby from wartime neglect, damage, poverty. There’d be a few fishermen around, maybe, but otherwise – well, just Tom Clinker, skeletally tall, the gleam of those slitted eyes reflecting blue…
He changed, and went down. The South African saw him coming; he called ‘Johnny! Two more beers!’
When it came, he introduced them. ‘Johnny Theodoropolos. Calls himself a waiter, but he’s best at handling small boats and chasing girls.’ Johnny had been the driver of the second Renault: he was about twenty, slim and broad-shouldered with a mane of black hair and a friendly grin, and what seemed to be a crippled leg. Bill the Ram had begun to yell for him… The sailing school, Marais explained, was run on a system of half the crews changing over each week, so that clients in their second week could support the greenhorns, to some extent. One lot had departed yesterday, leaving four boats empty, to be cleaned out and made ready for today’s new intake.
‘Did he have an accident?’
‘No. Born that way. Spent the first twelve years of his life in hospital.’ He pointed northward. ‘Up there on the hill.’
‘And where’s the German girl?’
‘Ah.’ A wolfish grin. ‘You’re in her room. Did I tell you that?’
‘I am what?’
‘Bill’s shifted her to an attic cupboard with a mattress in it. That’s what she says it is. She’s out with the boats today, helping Kevin.’
‘Kevin?’
‘Kevin O’Shea is our sea-going number two. But his job’s engines. He’s a darned good mechanic.’
‘And Bill the Ram owns it all?’
‘The hell he does. One director’s British, one Swiss. You need a Greek as well, though, and that’s the Ram… What’ll you be doing all day, Mike? Loafing on beaches?’
‘I guess…’ He raised one arm: ‘Johnny, two more, please!’
‘No!’ Bill the Ram was there, waving his fat hands. ‘Inside, please, for welcome to Bill’s taverna! Very nice!’
Marais muttered, ‘Better humour the sod. But it’s flaming hot in there.’ He added as they moved in. ‘Gets worse from the cooking, later.’
Mike didn’t recognize the bottle that was standing on a table with three tumblers. ‘What’s he giving us?’
‘Ouzo. The local fire-water.’
‘God help us.’
‘Starting this early – you’re right.’
An hour later, the party had expanded. There were some French, a young Dutchman, and British sail-school customers. One of the French girls, Solange, was attractive.
‘Where you live, Mike?’ She ticked off cities on three fingers. ‘New York? Washington? Los Angeles?’
‘It’s a bigger country than maybe they’ve told you.’
‘Civilise peoples live also in ozzer places?’
She was putting him on, of course. And his mind wasn’t in this place. It was all noise, heat and booze, and none of it concerned him or was anything but peripheral to his purpose here, the things he had to know. Like where to start looking or enquiring: and who else might be doing the same. The taverna was jumping, Johnny and two waitresses working flat out, heat from the kitchen, where the flies were based, like a furnace. Johnny Theodoropolos shot past: despite his handicap he was very quick and efficient. Bill the Ram shouted in Mike’s ear, ‘You have half-board reservation, Mister Cleenker – you eat dinner tonight, hunh?’
He didn’t think he’d be able to face that. Out on the terrace, maybe, but Marais had said it was too late to move outside, there’d be no table free now. He told the Ram, ‘I’ll let you know later, right?’ Then he got Solange back from the Dutchman and asked her, ‘How about we take a stroll? You could show me around this place?’
Bill the Ram bellowed, ‘Johnny! Bring retsina! Two bottle!’ Other British were crowding round the table. Solange was gazing at him, considering the proposal he’d just made: she hadn’t answered when he heard a shout of ‘Hey, Mike! Mike Clinker!’
Turner Thursfield – looking over people’s heads, using his cupped hands as a megaphone. Using one of them to beat off flies now, and looking around like a visitor in a zoo. Mike said to Solange, ‘Excuse me. May see you later.’ He got up, and pushed through to Thursfield: it really was a menagerie. Thursfield yelled, ‘This a madhouse or a cathouse?’ Mike followed him – out, and across the packed terrace, down to the quay. His fellow-American explained, ‘Came to suggest you might join me at my taverna for a bite. Stephanos’, it’s called. You’ll find it’s an improvement, to say the least.’
The fresh air was already an improvement. A cobbled roadway led up from the quay, winding between whitewashed walls and crossing other streets where tourists sauntered or sat at tables outside cafés. There was more to this village than you’d have guessed, from down on the waterfront. Also, as they went higher it became more peaceful: a sense of quiet, cooling air, elbow-room. After the rush and racket of the past hour or two, Mike felt as if he’d been running a race or in a fight: the respite now was very welcome.
Stephanos’ taverna was a contrast to the Ram’s joint, too. Clean, nothing like as crowded, consequently much less noisy. Not a fly in sight…
Thursfield pointed: ‘Out there is a terrace with a view over the rooftops to the water. All right with you?’
Double doors stood open. In this large room there were perhaps a couple of dozen people, at tables and a long bar. Thursfield diverted suddenly to a group of three people at one table: he looked back, beckoning to Mike to join him. There was a dark, slim man of about Mike’s own age, an equally dark-skinned girl in a loose white dress, and an older man. The young one smiled at Thursfield: ‘You’re soon back. I’m relieved we didn’t lose you to the attractions of Bill the Ram’s.’
The girl smiled. The third member of the party, sitting with his back to the room, had grey hair and was wearing a checked shirt with a cravat at the neck. Thursfield was saying, ‘This is mine host and now temporarily thine, Mike – Stephanos Angelis. Stephanos, I’d like you to meet my recent travelling companion, Mike Clinker.’
Angelis half-rose, reaching to shake hands. But the other man swung round – quickly, almost violently. It was all there, only more so – on a tanned, muscled face maybe sixty years old – recognition, and astonishment… Angelis murmuring, ‘A pleasure, Mr Clinker. I present you to Signora Longhi; and Commander Monsford…’
Monsford was staring up at him.
‘For God’s sake… You must be – Tom’s son?’