Byron's Shadow Page 8

  The first light of dawn awoke him, with the miserable realisation that after no breakfast, he had no lunch to look forward to. As the sea rinsed the toes of the Argolid, Jeffrey Flint knew thirst he had never known before. So far, he had remained free, but the crucial element of his only plan relied on one friend knowing him better than did the Greek police.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A metallic blue Opel bounced to a halt beside the ruined Chapel and Lisa emerged, throwing furtive glances in all directions. Flint rushed at her, delivering a hug and a whoop of delight. He took her hand and pulled her within the ruin.

  ‘My God, you look a mess. But then, you always did.’

  After just one night in the chapel, Jeffrey Flint carried the look of a Biblical hermit.

  ‘Hotel Flint is short on facilities. Hot and cold running lizards, but no shower.’

  She studied him with a mix of curiosity and admiration.

  ‘I hoped you’d guess where I was.’

  ‘You’re pretty lucky I remembered that twaddle about this being your sanctuary.’

  ‘Lisa...’ He took a step closer, but she side-stepped the motion.

  ‘Jeff, the police know that we’ve been seeing each other. They know we went snooping round the Dracopoulos place, so they came round first thing this morning, demanding I tell them where you were.’

  ‘And?’

  She deepened her voice and adopted the hand-on-hips stance of a macho policeman. ‘“Lisa Canelopoulos, where were you last night?”...“being groped by one of your randy sergeants, Sir”...“Oh thank you”...They were gone in five minutes.’

  Flint let his mouth hang open.

  ‘He’s called Spyro, he’s married and he’s eight years younger than I am. It’s a relationship made in heaven.’

  ‘Great.’

  Lisa narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re the last person I’d expect to discover Victorian morality.’

  ‘It’s just old-fashioned jealousy.’

  ‘You’ll get over it. For that matter, so will Spyro, one day. I don’t think he’ll like being my alibi.’

  A liquid gurgling interrupted her and Flint grasped his stomach. Lisa went to collect a bag of groceries from the car and deposited it amongst the broken tiles. The hermit thanked her as he grabbed the offerings.

  ‘I must look like Patrick Troughton in Jason and the Argonauts,’ he said, ‘but no Harpies!’

  Flint pushed a piece of bread into his mouth, then realised it was too large. It was no way to impress a lady. She watched him eat, her face stern and wary.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re playing at, my boy.’

  Oh no, she was onto the ‘my boy’ tack again. Once he’d chewed the salty chunk of bread into submission, he managed to reply. ‘There’s something deeply spooky happening. I came to Greece with the idea I might clear up a few nagging questions, but basically I wanted to see you and have a good time.’

  ‘See me? You’re bullshitting again.’

  ‘No bullshit. I have these fond romantic memories of moonlit tavernas and sun-drenched beaches. Greece seemed quite appealing on a rainy London afternoon.’

  ‘I thought that time was your business. Times change, people change.’

  ‘Are you familiar with the concept of the Reality Bubble?’

  She shook her head. ‘My education must be lacking.’

  ‘It’s as if Paleaokastro has hung in a time warp since I left; the investigation froze whilst I was away. The moment I came back, the spell broke and things started stirring.’

  The bemused look on Lisa’s face was appealing; it took years off her, reminding Flint of how he had once been entranced. Lisa took her time to respond to his fanciful analogy.

  ‘Spyro told me a witness has come forward, a waiter from Hotel Daedelus who remembers seeing you on the night of the murder. He described you perfectly: glasses, beard, t-shirt, everything. It was you.’

  ‘That’s ludicrous, after all these years? I’m being framed Lisa, you must know I’m innocent!’

  ‘Running away doesn’t make you look innocent, quite the opposite. How are you planning to get out of Greece?’

  ‘I’m not, there’s no point. If I escape to England, and their evidence is genuine they’ll have me extradited. If their evidence is phony, I may as well stay here.’

  ‘If they catch you, you’ll be archaeology before you’re free. Half the police in the Argolid are after you, you don’t stand a chance hiding here.’

  Flint was unbowed. ‘The police won’t expect me to have got so far so quickly. They will hunt around the village until the bike is reported missing. Then they’ll realise their mistake and start checking the train stations, ferry ports and truck drivers. I’ll stay here, keep out of the sun until the hunt dies down, then I’ll find out who killed Sebastian Embury.’

  This statement left her incredulous. Lisa looked at him, long and hard, then simply said, ‘How?’

  ‘I may need a little charity to keep me going,’ he admitted.

  ‘Mine, presumably. Be realistic Jeff, if a whole police force can’t get the right killer in seven years, how can you hope to succeed?’

  ‘Intellectual arrogance. The police suffer a big disadvantage: they have me as the one and only suspect: case closed, no need to search for anyone else.’

  A roller-coaster of logic had been triggered and Lisa had one chance to block its momentum. ‘Look, we all know you’re brilliant. If this was some academic problem and you were in your college library, I’m sure you could solve it. But this is the real world, and you don’t live in the real world, you never have. You need clues…’

  He drew a battered green notepad from his carrier bag. ‘We’ve found clues, I have a theory.’

  ‘I’ve heard your theory, it was a crime passionelle...’

  ‘No, no. New theory.’ He waved a hand to rub out past thoughts. ‘Theory of the day is that Embury was into something dodgy and I’ll bet that Emma and the good Doctor D. were into it too. Embury was lured to that place and told to come alone; hence, I had to stay in the car. Naturally, he would tell me nothing about it. So, he meets his mysterious contact, gets beaten up and dies. Perhaps his death was deliberate, perhaps incidental, but I end up in the frame. By the time the police realised they couldn’t make the charges stick, the trail was cold.’

  He took a long swig of mineral water. ‘I figure on hunting out a motive first; if I can discover whydunnit, I can then postulate whodunnit.’ He paused, trying to read her mind. ‘Don’t feel obliged to help me. I’ll understand, I mean, I’m in it up to my ears. The person who discovers the body is always a suspect, so the cops were only doing their job in arresting me first time around, but this time it seems to be personal. There’s an officer whose name is unpronounceable — I call him Scarface. He gave me a heavy hint that I should pack my bags and run. Next day, a witness with perfect twenty-twenty night vision suddenly remembers he saw me do the killing seven years ago. Not the usual vague five foot ten man in his mid-twenties, but me, right down to my birthmarks. I smell a rat, a great big rat. In fact, in the words of the guru, it’s rats all the way down. Someone doesn’t want me digging up the past.’

  ‘You’re paranoid, dear boy.’

  ‘I’m not a boy, and I’m not paranoid. I need help; I’ve no money, no transport, nothing.’

  Lisa sucked in her cheeks.

  ‘We’re talking justice, Lisa. Justice for me and justice for the killers of an old man.’

  ‘Who you hated.’

  ‘Not enough to enjoy seeing him die.’

  ‘Alright, cut the preaching, I am helping you, I’m here. I went through all the conscience searching last night after Spyro told me what happened. Now you have to move; tourists come up here all the time, they show me the photographs, they all think this is their private sanctuary too.’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘I need to be somewhere where there are lots of other people, so I can move about. Che Guevara wrote that a fish needs a sea in which to swim
. Preferably one full of other fishes.’

  ‘I can find somewhere in Tolon to hide you.’ She tugged at the end of his beard. ‘But first, Che Guevara, this beard needs to come off: I put a razor somewhere in that bag, it’s the one I use for my armpits, I hope you won’t mind?’

  Flint fondled the beard, ‘No.’

  ‘I also brought you some hair dye, I’m sure tawny is your colour.’

  He was amazed at the depth her planning had already reached.

  ‘On Thursdays, my grocks go to a fisherman’s beach barbecue with cheap red wine and bouzouki music.’ She stuck a thumb towards the crescent beach. ‘That beach will do for a change: their rep is just a kid, she’ll believe any lie I tell her. Wait here for a day and I’ll bribe the boatman to move the barbie down here. Once the grockles are all pissed, you just slip down and join them. You can do the Zorba dance, can’t you?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The blade slipped across his throat and a speck of blood dripped onto his t-shirt. Forgotten territory glistened white in the falling light of day. Flint wriggled his features in the mirror to familiarise himself with the weak chin and pale cheeks.

  His hair fell next, all those long straggling trails he had cultivated so well tumbled onto the pine needles. Snipping, hacking, mutilating; visions of a police photo board featuring a Jesus lookalike spurred the scissors in their work. He cropped back the mop to no more than one inch all round, paused and looked at the shapeless shambles in the mirror. Professional hairdressers had won his undying admiration and envy. With a series of grunted curses, he worked around his head once more, trying to even out the rougher patches, producing a spiky punk effect. He checked the mirror and winced. He would forget the dye.

  *

  A motor launch spewed tourists onto the beach below. Tiny figures fanned out like badly organised marines and claimed their spots on the sand. From cover amongst mimosa bushes, Flint watched the barbecue being set up and the fun gradually organised. He waited for an hour, then, with dry mouth, sauntered into the party unnoticed. He took his rough red wine and plate of overgrilled fish, and tried to relax in the company of fellow Britons.

  ‘Hello, you’re new?’

  Flint took fright, then cursed the polite games the English play. A couple of red-faced fish-eaters were trying to kick-start conversation. Patricia and Patrick from Dudley introduced themselves as the ‘Two Pats’, then launched into beach-party small talk. Flint forced a smile and began to lie. He stole the name and background of a former schoolmate, then proceeded to invent a life story as he talked. Recycled truth was more convincing than sheer lies. Dull anecdotes were repeated in a carefully flat, non-intellectual, accent. Both Pats nodded, whinged a little about the food, the heat and the shower in their hotel. It was a long, inordinately hot afternoon.

  The launch motored sedately back along the coast to Nauplion, from where the tourists were redistributed to their various hotels by road. His new hideaway was within a rambling compound of pastel chalets on the high ground behind Tolon. He loitered until Lisa arrived.

  ‘I escaped.’

  ‘Your hair looks awful.’

  ‘Thanks. I look like a British National Party candidate.’

  ‘But, the important thing is, you look nothing like an archaeologist.’

  At the farthest end of the complex, a pink box stood unloved, overlooking a field of rank weeds. Beyond this, a farm had been partly demolished and an apartment block partly constructed in its stead.

  Lisa quickly unlocked the chalet. ‘The owner fancies his chances — I can wind him round my little finger.’

  She apologised for the state of the plumbing and then made him sit down whilst she tried to tidy up his hair. ‘I like you better without the beard, you look more like a real person, less nineteen-sixties.’

  Lisa breezed off after asking his size so she could hunt out some clothing, reciting a list of instructions to stay quiet and keep the lights turned off. Flint listened, nodded and allowed himself to be dominated. Once alone, he enjoyed an erratic shower, then took his choice of beds and collapsed into it.

  *

  ‘Hide in plain sight’ was the immediate strategy. Jeffrey Flint lounged on the beach, narrow and well-populated, and mingled discreetly with the tourists when necessary. Red-rimmed glasses had been his only fashion statement and had to be left in the chalet. Without them, he could read and recognise faces within ten feet. Beyond that, the world became pleasantly blurred. The glasses featured prominently in the ‘wanted’ posters, so Flint was condemned to blunder around in semi-blindness in the hope that nothing evil saw him before he saw it.

  Fuzzy green islands lying just offshore were perfect travel brochure stuff and he supposed the white shape was a church. The water-skier could be heard but not seen and the rippling sea breeze carried the taint of toasting flesh, lightly basted with sun-tan oil.

  His eyes were down, reading a dog-eared copy of Who Pays the Ferryman, found in the camp library, when a crunch of shingle and an accented voice startled him.

  ‘Monsieur!’

  He rolled, to see two dark smudges turn into uniformed policemen silhouetted against the sun.

  ‘Sir? Are you English?’

  His pulse rate shot up to a hundred and fifty. He shook his head, lacking the moisture to speak.

  ‘Have you seen this man?’

  Someone did not believe his denial. ‘Nein, Deutsche,’ he stammered. Goddammit, blue eyed and blonde, he could be a fresh SS recruit!

  Concentration was needed to stop his hands shaking as he took the picture offered by the policeman. Grief, how ghastly passport photographs were: did anyone look like that?

  The men in blue towered over him as he sat up, trying not to meet their eyes.

  ‘Nein,’ he repeated, praying they did not demand a passport.

  One of the policemen knew a spattering of German and pressed the question. Flint frowned and looked again, trying to seem sincere, but planning four sentences of flawless, fast, colloquial German. Outclassed, bluff called, the policeman nodded and showed disinterest, accepting the photograph back. The pair moved onto the next couple; corpulent, roasting and also German.

  Flint was left trembling and nauseous. He should have seen them coming, it had been so close! So close, yet he had survived! The trembling turned to the thrill of success, even power. The police would finish scouring the resort that day and turn their attention elsewhere, leaving him the freedom to move.

  *

  Back in the semi-dark of the chalet, Lisa lay on a bed and read aloud a Greek newspaper account of his escape; he had been seen in Corfu and Athens and a port called Killini. She then moved on to a Daily Mirror, but Flint grabbed it first.

  ‘You’re quite famous,’ Lisa said.

  He saw the name at the head of the article: Vikki Corbett. Flint spread the paper across his own bed and flicked through the text. Never had he read a Corbett masterpiece which tried so hard to be fair.

  ‘Ring her,’ he said, reaching for a biro.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Friend and confidante.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Not that confidante,’ Flint added. ‘Ring her to say I’m safe, but don’t give her your name and don’t tell her what I’m up to.’

  Lisa frowned.

  ‘Vikki would sell out her grandma for a good story. Don’t tell her anything you wouldn’t want pasting across page one.’

  ‘What nice friends you have. Do you know anyone at the Express?’

  He took the Express from her and turned to page four, immediately groaning with annoyance. ‘This is fantasy. Look at this, “communist activist”, what a load of bollocks.’

  ‘Reporters don’t just make things up, Jeff.’

  ‘Yes they do, all the time.’

  He was known to Special Branch (but isn’t everyone in CND?). He wrote radical articles (in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, for goodness sake?). He had been arrested for arson (with a good barrister he could win
a few grand for that whopper).

  ‘Do you have a police record in Britain?’ Lisa asked.

  Flint allowed himself to betray irritation, ‘I got arrested on an anti-racist demo when I was a student. The police started chasing a group of us, this girl tripped and fell, I tripped over her and we both got nicked because we were the easiest to catch. I got fined ten quid, I think.’

  ‘Is that all? You’re not a real radical revolutionary, I’m disappointed,’ Lisa had a broad smile. ‘All that Chairman Mao and Che Guevara...’

  ‘You’re teasing, Lisa,’ Flint growled.

  ‘Am I?’ She took the paper from him again. ‘Sorry. Don’t you like women who tease?’

  ‘No, and you don’t seem to like academics.’

  Her eyes fell on the paper, ‘I do sometimes. I did actually spend two and a half years reading English at Exeter University you know. I’m not just a dumb blonde.’

  ‘You’re not a true blonde and I never said you were dumb.’

  ‘I’m mixed up in all this — that makes me dumb.’ Lisa glanced at her large, numberless watch and guessed at the hour. ‘I must go, before you trick me into that life story nonsense. Is there anything else you want?’

  ‘Paper, pens, index cards, paperclips, sellotape, a universal diary, a map of Nauplion and one of Greece generally...I wrote a list.’

  *

  Idle hours were spent pacing around the tiny chalet, stopping on impulse and scribbling down notes. As the weekend crawled by, Flint began to compile a chart of dates, times, events, persons and places, lists of motives, lists of possible alternative actions. Sheets of paper sellotaped together held criss-crossing lines of logical connections and boxes of free-floating facts.