Carver's Quest (55 page)

‘Do you recall that German braggart Schliemann we met once in Athens? In the summer of sixty-seven, I think it was.’ Fields seemed not to hear Adam’s questions. He made no
attempt to deny responsibility for Jinkinson’s death. He had set off on a digression of his own. ‘I came across him again the following year. I was riding with two of the servants in
the mountains south of Salonika when we saw a group of horsemen in the distance. At first, we feared they were brigands, but in the event it turned out to be Schliemann and a band of potential
cut-throats who had taken his money to guide him on a long and pointless tour of the region. I was obliged to join him in his encampment for dinner and to listen to his interminable rantings about
Troy and the Homeric epics. About the discoveries he is destined to make. Of how his name will for ever be in the annals of archaeology. The man is impossible – a noisy megalomaniac who
listens to no one but himself.’

‘Why should anyone else listen to him? The plain of Troy has long been a battleground for scholars as well as for heroes. Schliemann will not be the first to fall upon it nor the last. Why
should you concern yourself with him?’

‘Because I fear that he may be correct. That he will unearth the secrets of Priam’s city as he claims he will. It is so often the Schliemanns of this world who gain the
glory.’

Suddenly the professor sounded so weary, like an ageing Atlas longing to take the weight of the world from his shoulders. His posture slumped and the barrel of his revolver began to point closer
to the ground than to Adam’s chest. The young man wondered yet again if he could make the six-yard dash to Fields that he had earlier dismissed. Before he could steel himself to do it, the
professor seemed to gain a new energy. He jerked upright once more.

‘The golden treasure hoard of the Macedonian kings! Can you imagine what it would be to unearth it, Adam?’ Fields was excited now, and sweating profusely. ‘It would be the
archaeological sensation of the age! The discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson would pale into insignificance beside it. Even the discoveries Schliemann boasts he will make in Asia Minor. Would even
the ruins of Troy match Philip of Macedon’s gold?’

‘Layard and Rawlinson did not murder men in pursuit of their discoveries. Nor, I assume, will Schliemann.’

‘Do you think I wished lives to be sacrificed?’ Fields sounded indignant. ‘Of course I did not. But what choice did those fools leave me? That grasping devil Creech cared only
for the money he thought he would make from Philip’s gold. The history, the romance meant nothing to him. As for that sot of an investigator, he did not even realise what he had stumbled
across.’

Adam could not yet see clearly in his mind the connection between Fields and Jinkinson. ‘How did you know of the man’s existence?’ he asked.

‘He approached me. He must have come across my name during his dealings with Creech. Perhaps Creech even confided in him, although I doubt that.’

‘He came to visit you in Cambridge?’

‘He arrived one evening just before dinner.’ The professor laughed bitterly. ‘The good Lord alone knows what my servant made of him. The man was half-drunk. He babbled to me of
how we might work together to make our fortunes.’

‘Jinkinson was aware of the treasure?’

‘In some limited sense, I believe. He had succeeded in gathering little snippets of information from here and there. He knew of the Euphorion manuscript. He knew that it held the key to
something of immense value.’

‘But a London enquiry agent with a fondness for the bottle was unlikely to have the means to travel to Greece in search of the treasure, if you refused to help him. Why was it necessary to
kill him?’

‘He knew my name, Adam,’ Fields said, as if explaining some elementary proposition in logic to a singularly dense student. ‘He knew of the existence of the Euphorion manuscript
and of my interest in it. And he was in contact with that man Garland. I feared that he would tell him of the gold.’

‘His only interest in Garland was as a victim to be blackmailed. He had carried on with the extortion that Creech had begun.’

‘Is that so?’ The professor looked surprised. ‘Ah, well, no matter. He knew enough that he could not live.’

‘How did you trail him to that wretched tavern by the river?’

‘It was not so difficult a task. You also found him, did you not? I had made an earlier attempt to dispose of him which had failed. He took fright and ran to his hiding-hole. I spoke to
that ragged
hetaira
of his. What is her name?’

‘Ada.’

‘Ada was most forthcoming. I had taken it upon myself to offer money to the Polyphemus who guards the entrance to her place of work. Again, I have forgotten his name. If, indeed, I ever
knew it.’

‘Fadge, you must mean Fadge.’

‘Well, whatever the one-eyed Cyclops is called, he proved very effective in persuading Ada that she should tell me where her ageing inamarato was lodged.’

‘You did not allow Fadge to hurt the poor girl?’

‘A little,’ Fields acknowledged. ‘She was surprisingly loyal to Jinkinson. But she was eventally persuaded that he was not worth the breaking of her arm.’

‘You scoundrel!’ Adam could contain his outrage no longer. How could he have been so mistaken in his judgement of the professor? Here was a man he had admired for his knowledge and
his scholarship now revealed as little better than a common or garden brute.

‘It was unfortunately necessary to employ such methods. I had to find Jinkinson.’

‘So you went in search of him at the Cat and Salutation.’

‘By happy chance, I travelled to Wapping on the very night that you went there yourself. I arrived an hour earlier than you and was in time to see the man leave that dismal alehouse for
the first time. I followed him for some time but he walked along busy streets. I could not make use of the pistol in my pocket. Then he returned to the pub. I thought I had lost my opportunity. I
had not reckoned on your presence in the place driving him out into the night once more. And onto the darkest path by the river.’

Fields ceased speaking, as if expecting Adam to make some contribution to the conversation. The young man was silent, contemplating the terrible truth that he had been indirectly responsible for
the deaths of both Creech and Jinkinson. He had long realised that had Creech not sought him out, the man would have still been alive. Now it was clear that, in arriving at the Cat and Salutation
in search of Jinkinson, he had inadvertently impelled the private investigator towards his nemesis.

‘I thought that the figure in the shadows was familiar,’ he said, after a pause. ‘It was you.’

‘For a while, I thought that you had recognised me,’ Fields admitted. ‘I returned to Cambridge on an early morning train, half-convinced that the police would soon be calling
at the college to question me. When you wrote to me the following day, suggesting that you visit, I wondered whether it was part of a stratagem to unmask me. But, after your arrival in Cambridge,
it was clear that you knew nothing. That you had not recognised me.’

‘And so you decided to use me.’

‘Creech had thought to recruit you. Why should not I? I knew from our travels in sixty-seven that you would make a good companion on any expedition to Greece. So I pretended to know
nothing about Euphorion.’

Throughout the time he had been speaking, Fields had continued to keep the revolver trained on Adam’s heart. The gun was still pointing there as he finished. Adam let out a long sigh of
disillusion and disappointment.

‘But what of the deaths, Professor? How could you bring yourself to murder in pursuit of your goal?’

‘I have already explained,’ Fields said, almost complacently. ‘Creech and the sot were not worthy of the knowledge upon which they had stumbled.’

‘And what of yourself?’ Adam demanded. ‘Have your motives for action been so pure?’

‘I care for knowledge!’ Fields screamed, his face suddenly contorted with fury. ‘I care for scholarship! Why should my name not go down to posterity as one of the great
archaeologists of the age? The chance had been offered to me. Why should I not take it? Why should a blackmailer and a drunk stand in my way?’

The professor had stepped forwards in his agitation, the gun shaking in his hands. His face had reddened and blue veins in his temple stood out like rivers on a map. He made a heroic effort to
regain his self-control. His breathing came in short, sharp pants.

‘You have nothing to fear from me, Adam,’ he said eventually, his voice now eerily calm. ‘I have long had your interests at heart. Since you were a schoolboy in Shrewsbury, I
have seen you as, in some way, my successor. The son I have never had, perhaps. Is that too sentimental a thought? I would not harm you. Besides, I have not forgotten you saved my life that day in
Athens. Had it not been for you, I would have been a mangled carcass beneath the wheels of that runaway cart.’

‘An unfortunate accident.’ Despite the professor’s words, Adam had no confidence that he would not shoot him if necessary. Had he not said as much only minutes before? Fields
seemed so deranged by recent events and by his own demonic urge to gain the Macedonian gold that he could not be trusted.

‘I thought for a while it was no accident,’ the professor continued. ‘That some enemy in the city had attempted to kill me. Later, when my rooms at the Angleterre were rifled,
I was sure of it. But I have since understood that the person responsible for upending my belongings was Rallis. And Rallis, whatever his other faults, was not a man to take another’s life.
No, you are right. The cart crashing into the café was no more than chance.’

* * * * *

‘Which way should we travel, Devlin?’ Lewis Garland, turning in his saddle, called back to Quint. Adam’s manservant was perched behind Giorgios on the
latter’s bay horse as the party retraced the journey he had so recently made. The road before them divided. One fork of it continued to follow the bank of the small stream; the other headed
into the hills. Quint waved an arm to indicate that the horses should begin to climb. Garland led the way as the small group of riders turned off the main path and made its way uphill. For an hour
they climbed steadily if not steeply, the path rising ahead of them and the distant view of Mount Olympus permanently before them. The ground hereabouts was uncultivated and rough. On several
occasions, the horses came close to stumbling on the rocks and loose stones that were strewn across the path. At one point, they heard the sounds of what might have been a shot coming from the
countryside far ahead of them. They all turned to look at one another.

‘That was a gunshot, Lewis, was it not?’ Emily asked.

‘I cannot tell,’ Garland replied. ‘It is difficult to be certain in this terrain. Sounds carry for many miles. And they can be distorted in their journey.’

‘We must hasten on our way. Adam may be in danger.’

‘The shot – if it was a shot – could be from the gun of a villager out hunting, my dear. We should not risk the horses by riding at too great a speed amongst these
rocks.’

The MP had reined in his horse and dropped back to join Emily. Quint and Giorgios were immediately behind them. Bringing up the rear were half a dozen young men hired by Garland in Salonika, all
now looking as if they wished they were back in that city. In the vanguard, fifty yards beyond his master, was another of the Englishman’s servants. As he came to the top of a gentle rise in
the land, the man cried out. Garland and Emily spurred their horses forward to join him. The young woman gasped and raised her hand to her mouth as she saw what had attracted the servant’s
attention. On the path ahead was a body. Sprawled in the dirt was the huge form of Andros. He looked like one of the giants felled by Zeus in his battle with them.

‘Stay where you are, Emily,’ Garland ordered. He dismounted and approached the vast figure, its back reddened with blood. He knelt by its side and held his fingers to the side of
Andros’s neck.

‘He is dead,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘He has been shot in the back.’

‘The sound we heard?’

‘No, he has been dead for some time. We shall have to carry him with us. We must give him a decent burial when we can.’

Garland shouted instructions to his hired men, who reluctantly climbed down from their mounts.

‘Ain’t the only one we might have to bury,’ remarked Quint, who had slid down from behind Giorgios and was standing in the middle of the path, arms akimbo.

‘What the blazes do you mean, Devlin?’

Quint pointed to a small knoll of earth a hundred yards away. Beneath the inadequate shade of a stunted tree was another figure. It was clearly that of a man.

Garland began to walk rapidly towards it, followed at a more leisurely pace by Quint. As they did so, the figure suddenly raised itself on its arms.

‘He is still alive,’ Emily cried.

The two men broke into a trot. As they did so, the figure sank into the earth again and remained motionless.

‘It’s Rallis,’ Garland called, as he neared the crumpled shape. He squatted on his haunches by the side of the Greek lawyer. ‘He has been shot in the back as well, but he
is breathing.’

* * * * *

The rock was lying inches from Adam’s left foot. It was a tempting weapon if only he could reach down to pick it up. But how was he to do that with Fields’s revolver
trained upon him?

‘Now I have told you all I wish to tell you, Adam,’ the professor said. ‘And I must leave you. Garland, I think, is within a few miles of us. Unlike Prometheus, you will not
have to remain in your chains for long. Nor will an eagle devour your liver. Although it will be uncomfortable down there in the mud we have dug.’

Fields nodded in the direction of the trench. Still pointing the gun at his young protégé’s heart, he motioned towards his horse.

‘There is strong rope enough to bind you, I believe. It is looped around the pommel of the saddle on this beast behind me.’

‘I can see it,’ Adam acknowledged.

‘I think it would be best if you took it off yourself. Then drop it at your feet.’