Byron's Shadow Read online

  ‘It’s Lisa,’ came the listless response. ‘Hello Max.’ The inert figure hardly moved.

  Max went back to the Land Cruiser and turned off ‘Year of the Cat’.

  ‘Is something bringing Lisa down?’

  ‘Ennui,’ came a voice from the tent.

  He frowned at Flint. ‘So it’s weird words day today is it?’

  Flint spoke quietly, ‘She’s just pigged off, to use her expression. You can’t blame her, I’ve dragged her across half of Greece and given her a police record.’

  The American grimaced, ‘So I guess I’m now an accessory after the fact.’

  He found his mallet and bag of pegs, ‘You’d better tell me your plan, Paul, sorry, Jeff. Hey I’ll never get this right.’

  ‘Oh, we’re Alan and Susan now; we made up new names when we booked on here. Call me Jeff to remind me who I really am.’

  ‘Okay Jeff, help me with this tent.’

  Working as a pair, they began to assemble the state-of-the-art pup tent.

  ‘So, Jeffrey, old buddy, you keep telling me that you have a hunch about this, or clues about that, but from here-on-in, how does your game plan read?’

  Flint stopped pegging out the blue and orange tent and seemed to struggle with his thoughts.

  ‘What I wanted to do was drive up to our site at Palaeokastro with your team, put a dirty great trench through an olive grove, and find whatever someone doesn’t want us to find.’

  ‘The body, right?’

  ‘Possibly. But that plan’s no good anymore.’

  ‘We can still do it, I’ve got a spade in the back, and a couple of picks.’

  ‘No, Max, we’re talking an area a good eighty metres square. I’m sure the bones were brought up by rabbits. The pen came from the edge of a water gulley a couple of yards away, and that could still be the biggest red herring ever spawned. All the material could have been re-deposited from somewhere else, so we need to find the primary deposit. If there is a grave up there, I want to know exactly where it is before we give ourselves up to the cops. That demands a whole set of sondages wherever the trees allow it, and probably one decent trench when we find what we’re looking for.’

  Max looked thoughtful. ‘Did your resistivity survey give you any leads?’

  Flint shook his head. ‘I’ve been through the data and there’s nothing to get excited about; I’m not a great believer in technology.’

  ‘Your boss must have thought there was something up there. I brought all your papers; why not let me have a look, see if an old colonial can find your grave. If not, I brought my GPR.’

  Flint saw that most of the Land Cruiser was taken up by the radar sledge and a computer. He may be a New Archaeologist, but could he trust an electronic toy to keep them all out of jail?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  After the heat of the day had died, Angelos climbed the back streets of Nauplion where he had heard of a modest taverna. Angelos wore a dull blue blazer and chose to sit in the dark corner behind the door, facing the bar. He ordered a light salad and what the place could offer by way of wine. As he picked at the feta, Angelos wished for a good bottle of French white, Chablis perhaps.

  Angelos watched Andreas busy around his regulars. Only slowly did the taverna keeper notice this attention. He began to glance in the direction of Angelos, betraying increasing nervousness. Andreas was unsettled, even afraid, which was the intent. One taverna-keeper had already frustrated Angelos. Flat-faced, foolish Mikos had stonewalled with the blank cunning of the peasant. It was not important; Angelos could return to Palaeokastro again.

  Mosquitoes whined around the fly-killing light whilst local men came to sip at ouzo and play dominoes or jacks. Andreas glanced his way again. Angelos deliberately pushed a chair forward with his toe. The feet scraped on the floor, the open seat became an invitation.

  Andreas wiped his hands on a grey-white towel as he came over slowly. Angelos poured a glass of Nemea wine and urged his host to sit.

  ‘Tell me about Lisa, the English hotelier. Has she been back here?’

  The answer was obvious from the manner in which the taverna keeper’s eyes widened. Angelos broadened his smile and poured a second glass of wine. Andreas tried to shrug away his probing, but lacked the resistance of Mikos. Within twenty minutes, the wine bottle was almost empty, and Andreas’ wife was running the bar.

  ‘Sit,’ Angelos said, as Andreas tried to stand, ‘talk with me.’

  Refusal was impossible, he knew it and Andreas knew it. More anecdotes regarding Lisa and her barely-remembered boyfriend tumbled from his lips. The one concerning a man named Costas and a golden pen seemed to be fresh in Andreas’ mind.

  ‘Costas who? Did you tell Lisa his full name?’

  Andreas shook his head, ‘It was so long ago, and Costas...’

  That question had been satisfied and Angelos pressed on. ‘Can you remember what was special about this pen?’

  ‘It had a name on it — Byron — that was it. We thought this was a wonderful joke, Lord Byron, here. But it was not Lord Byron, it was someone else who lost the pen, the pen was not so old, the young Englishman said.’

  Angelos reached into his blazer pocket and drew out an envelope. From it tumbled a bundle of newspaper small ads. He showed them to Andreas.

  ‘Byron F. Nichols, yes, that was the name on the pen!’

  ‘There is another name in the advert.’

  ‘Boukaris, yes.’ Andreas looked less happy than he had a moment before.

  Angelos watched him for a few moments before selecting a few bank notes to cast by the empty bottle. He stood up, walking to the telephone beside the bar. ‘You should lay in some French wine,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be back.’

  He dialled a number and found Vassilis Boukaris. ‘Doctor Flint is in Nauplion,’ was all he said, then replaced the receiver.

  In the hour before dawn, Max drove Flint and Lisa through the silent streets of Palaeokastro, and beyond to the Roman town. Pulling off the road into the olive grove, he hoped to conceal the Land Cruiser from view.

  Flint dismounted amongst the olive trees and drew in a sweet breath of morning air. Only distant cock-crows disturbed the windless calm. Everything pointed to that location, the hunch that guided him through the puzzle said ‘end here’. To refresh his own mind, and explain the situation to the other two, he marched down through the grove and onto the site proper.

  ‘Whilst we worked down there, no one bothered us,’ he pointed towards the skeleton of the mill in the bottom of the valley. ‘Embury excavated for three seasons without any trouble. Then he sent me up here…’

  At that moment, archaeology seemed a distant, irrelevant occupation. An uphill walk brought them back towards the road, which maintained its course by both terracing and embankment. Flint noticed something for the first time. To the north of the new road lay the faint remains of the old, half buried in hillwash and overgrown with brambles and mimosa. It swung higher up slope in a wider curve, departing perhaps twenty metres from the straighter line chosen by American military engineers. The old road terminated at the gully: perhaps a feeble wooden bridge had once stood there. Just visible was the point at which it re-started on the far side, before it was overtaken by undergrowth.

  Only a minute’s walk along the road took them from one side of the olive grove to the other. Here, the natural ground surface fell away gently before it broke into the edge of the watercourse. It was some twenty yards across. Flint remembered the orange dusty margins as a ragged tangle of desiccated weeds and cracked earth clods. Now they had been sealed by a concrete lip which effectively entombed whatever had lain beneath Flint’s sondage.

  The road was carried over the gully on an embankment, with a large concrete pipe at its base seeming redundant in this dry season.

  ‘This is the new road on my map,’ Lisa stated.

  ‘Built in 1949,’ Flint added.

  ‘By Americans,’ Max completed the pronouncement.

  L
eaving the road, they dropped down onto the apron surrounding the half-built taverna. Flint kicked at the concrete at the point where his sondage had dug into the edge of the watercourse and encountered his spread of modern rubbish.

  ‘We don’t know the agency of deposition,’ he said, ‘it may have come up from rabbit holes, or, the material could have washed down from anywhere upslope of here and been re-deposited.’

  ‘Your grave could have been washed clean away,’ Max observed.

  ‘Oh God, Max, don’t,’ Lisa said. ‘Let him be right, or his ego will never recover.’

  ‘Let me be right, or I go to jail,’ Flint countered.

  Lisa glared at him, ‘We all go to jail.’

  ‘Hey guys,’ Max held up his hands as if to separate the pair. ‘No fights. Help me out with my gear and I’ll see what I can find, but if olive trees used to grow here, the root pattern is going to throw a lot of garbage into the read-outs.’

  Flint knew all about the sacred olive trees, well over a hundred years old and planted in orderly fashion. He recalled no obvious gaps to betray where the planters had avoided underground obstructions. Embury had told him to look for trees which were stunted to indicate they were fighting ancient stonework for space or those so luxuriant to suggest their roots had found deep graves in which to feast. Of course, he had found neither.

  Max was left in the shade of the unfinished taverna, with his radar sledge, a plasticised site plan and the book of survey data compiled a decade before. Lisa and Flint took the Land Cruiser a mile further up the valley to the village of Anatoliko, parking beside the statue of Stylanos Boukaris. It gave the date of his death as 16th February 1947.

  ‘Two days after Byron Nichols left Sofia in Athens,’ Flint said, ‘He was coming here, to tell Stylanos about the death of his son.’

  The schoolteacher-guerilla gazed grimly over their heads, his round brow furrowed by concern, his moustache flowing in the mountain wind, his arm pointing back down the valley towards Palaeokastro.

  Across a few yards of worn tarmac was the paved precinct of the church, too large for such a small village, with its whitewashed bell tower standing separate from the dark doorway. Lisa was first inside, Flint came next, eyes immediately drawn upwards by the blues and old gold of the ceiling frescoes. Six orthodox saints frowned downwards at his shorts. Mrs Esfratiou noticed the shorts too, and looked displeased.

  Lisa quickly drew the woman outside and they stood in the sun, opposite the statue. Flint loitered as they began to talk fast and fluently, hands in his pockets, eyes half-closed against the glare of white walls.

  ‘She was a girl when Stylanos died,’ Lisa said. ‘That was his house, that was her mother’s house next door.’

  These were the last houses in the village, low roofs jumbled together as the pair clutched each other and the hillside. Lisa continued to speak Greek, nod, point, question, smile and concur.

  ‘She was the last person to see Stylanos alive. It was a winter’s night, four men rode up on donkeys from the high road. Two were village men called Socrates and Elias and one was some bloke from Nauplion who rented out mules. The other was a British officer.’

  ‘Byron Nichols?’

  ‘She doesn’t know — he’d never been here before.’

  More rapid exchanges in Greek.

  ‘That night, Stylanos came out and greeted the four men. He had called out to her, telling her to run to her mother. Stylanos wanted two chickens slaughtered as his British friend was here.

  ‘Not Vassilis?’

  ‘Vassilis had returned a day earlier. He had been boasting of escaping from the fascists.’

  Another twist to the tale.

  Lisa continued to ask questions. ‘When the girl brought round the chickens, it was dark and she heard men riding away. The house was empty. Later that night, there was shooting in the hills, so no one went outside the village. Vassilis came back two days later, with a pistol in his hand, saying that they had run into a communist ambush and been scattered in the dark. His father and the other four men were all never seen again.’

  ‘Bodies?’

  ‘Never found.’

  Flint gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘When I spoke to Sofia, I asked her about Nichols’ grave, and she corrected me. She said ‘memorial’. I missed the point, but I understand now. It’s time for a consultation with the Good Doctor.’

  Doctor Christos Dracopoulos was taking coffee on his veranda, reading the newspaper and not at all pleased when his wife brought the two visitors out to see him.

  ‘I should call the police right away,’ he said, eyes flashing angrily from one to the other.

  ‘Emma Woodfine admitted that you drove her home after the dinner,’ Flint stated, straight to the point.

  ‘Okay, so if I did, it was a long time ago, who cares? What do you want?’

  ‘We want to know why you lied to us,’ Flint chose himself a chair and sloughed into it. ‘Sebastian Embury was a good friend of yours. When he was threatened, you would be the first person to whom he would turn.’

  Dracopoulos shook his head.

  ‘And so you were. After all, it was your job as site guardian to ensure the survey went smoothly. So, you telephoned the Ministry of Culture to check his permission to excavate was still valid.’

  He was clearly both shaken and angry. ‘So, I did that.’

  ‘But when we came here, you denied knowing anything about what Embury had found and you denied that he was in any trouble.’

  Dracopoulos was thinking. He had an opaque face, one Flint could not trust. Wheels could be seen clicking and whirring as the next lines were fabricated. The Doctor turned to Lisa, who was leaning against one of the veranda pillars.

  ‘It is time I helped you. Sebastian was my friend.’ Everyone wanted to claim Embury was his friend. He had been an obnoxious boor; wouldn’t anyone admit to hating him?

  ‘Super,’ Flint said, keeping his own suspicions hidden.

  ‘Ask me whatever you want.’

  Now the game had changed, Flint would have to sift his facts very delicately. Dracopoulos had reached for one of the cigars which would surely kill him.

  ‘Did you fight beside Stylanos Boukaris?’ Flint asked. ‘He used to live four houses away, after all.’

  A quiver of recognition passed across the face of the Doctor. ‘I’m not that old, I was born nineteen thirty-seven; the family Boukaris moved to Nauplion after Stylanos was killed, I was only a little child.’

  ‘Whose side was Stylanos on?’

  ‘Stylanos was neutral — when the Germans were here, he was nationalist, he fought the Nazis and the communists. When the Civil War began, he would not choose sides. He was a great man.’

  ‘But his men, his followers. They can’t all have been neutral? I’ve read about this war; every family in Greece had someone executed or maimed or abducted. I can’t imagine that Stylanos sat here playing the liberal and that all his men sat here too, swapping bits of philosophy about the ethics of neutrality whilst their families were being butchered? He was active in the Civil War, and so was his son Vassilis. We know they worked with the British, and we know they struck deals with the fascists.’

  Dracopoulos gave a shrug. ‘This is ancient history. Why are you so interested in the past?’

  ‘The past holds the key to the present — it’s an old cliché.’

  They asked about the night Stylanos died, but Dracopoulos’ information had no doubt been obtained via the widow Esfratiou. ‘You should talk to Vassilis, if you need to know more,’ the doctor said, cigar in mouth. ‘I can arrange it.’

  Lisa suddenly rejoined the conversation. ‘Today?’

  ‘Yes, today, I think. He wants to meet you. Both of you.’

  ‘Somewhere public,’ Flint said.

  ‘Andreas’ taverna,’ Lisa added. ‘Do you know it?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘Two o’clock?’ Flint chipped in the time.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘No
tricks?’

  ‘On my honour.’

  ‘Fine, but before we go, tell me about the olive grove at Palaeokastro and why Embury thought it was so important.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Flint got to his feet. ‘What was that half-finished building supposed to be?’

  ‘A taverna — why?’

  ‘Didn’t you object to the project? In England, there would be a stink if someone started building a transport caff on a scheduled monument.’

  ‘The development was stopped — there was a mistake over permission.’

  Flint’s ideas began to coalesce around one point on the map, and at one point in history. ‘And who built it?’

  ‘Korifi...’

  Of course. Mikos had given him that information a month ago when the name Korifi meant nothing.

  ‘When? The year Embury died?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘We can check.’

  ‘Late that year.’

  ‘Did they dig foundations, or is it constructed on a raft?’

  ‘Just concrete. They could build more quickly that way; it would not disturb the site.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Flint and Lisa drove back downhill.

  ‘Paleface speak with forked tongue,’ Flint said. ‘That notwithstanding, we know everything now.’

  ‘We do?’

  Max was sitting beside his sledge, looking at Flint’s own plans of the site. Flint explained to him, and to Lisa, how he had shaded the site plan to show areas of different resistance; this showed the size and position of features concealed under the surface.

  ‘I used heavy shading for pits, ditches and other loose ground. Light shading for ordinary ground and hard-edged blanks where we find walls and rocks.’

  Max and Flint sat side-by-side on the concrete, legs dangling over the lip of the gully. Lisa hovered by their shoulders for a few minutes then drifted away to find shade in the olive grove.

  ‘It’s real messy up here,’ Max ran a pencil across the site plan just below the road embankment. ‘This your the first transept right?’