The Lost Swimmer (15 page)

He watched me with the stillness of a cat waiting for its prey to move.

‘Are you trying to accuse me of something?' I asked forcefully.

‘No,' he replied. ‘But if you have done something wrong, then you would know this in your heart. It is not for me to judge; that I will leave to others. However, I cannot help you carry out something that might be unlawful.'

‘I'm the signatory and I want to see how those accounts were set up.'

‘Professor, I cannot help.' He stood abruptly and almost shooed me to the door, like a man herding geese.

My heart was racing and my legs were moving as if I were walking in quicksand.

‘Did you get the paperwork I requested?' I turned and looked him in the eye.
That I paid you for handsomely
, I felt like saying but didn't.

‘That is not something I can discuss.'

‘Why?' I asked.

‘Regulations,' he shot back.

‘Then I'll be making a complaint higher up.' I prayed this might make him re-think his strategy.

‘Do so,' he replied, too calmly.

‘And I wonder what they'll think about your taking a bribe,' I said in Greek.

He laughed loudly. ‘I have no idea what you're talking about. Good day, Professor.'

He shook my hand roughly and pushed me out into the main area of the bank, where the assistant was watching with alarm.

‘She knows her way out,' he spat. ‘Come, I need you.'

Casting an apologetic glance my way, the assistant disappeared into the smoky den and the manager shut the door with a bang.

I walked through the bank avoiding the gaze of the tellers, who had picked up the tension. Between the main doors I had a sudden wave of panic as I waited for the second one to open. Perhaps they might not let me out, trap me there like an insect behind glass until the police arrived to arrest me for fraud.

After what seemed an eternity the green light above the door lit up and I was free to stumble out onto the street. For a moment I was caught up amid a Japanese tourist group thronging the footpath and as I was swept along I had the uneasy sense that I was being watched. Was it the person who had come after me asking about the accounts? Were they police?

I turned but could only see Japanese tourists on either side, hemming me in. By the time I managed to extricate myself the narrow street was empty.

The entire way back to the hotel I couldn't shake the sensation that someone was following. But no matter where I looked, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The walkway was frequented by Orthodox priests in ornate purple and golden robes. I felt I'd slipped back centuries, but certainly none of these learned men walking purposefully could be my stalker.

I breathed more freely as I reached the expansive marble foyer of the hotel and took the lift, but then I considered that something sinister might already be waiting in the hotel room. I had given the bank manager the details of where I was staying.

I slotted the keycard in the lock, trying to decide what I might do if police were inside.

‘What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost,' Stephen greeted me warmly, wearing only a white towelling robe with the crest of the hotel emblazoned on it.

I glanced back over my shoulder into the long passage and saw the fire-exit door swinging shut behind an unseen person. I wanted to run in pursuit but Stephen was already reaching his arms around me, drawing me into the warmth and attention of his body.

I accepted Stephen's amorous advances but couldn't stop worrying. Was I under investigation in Athens? It was the only plausible explanation for what had happened at the bank today. Would the university have enlisted the help of the Greek police? It seemed far-fetched for the sort of money I'd seen in the accounts. Was it worse? How deep did the fraud go?

I'd never faked arousal before with Stephen, in twenty-five years of marriage, but now I found myself being drawn deeper, inextricably, into a tissue of lies.

M
y ring's fake gemstones sparkled merrily as they caught the light beaming through the windows of the clean, modern plane to Crete. Stephen was wearing loose shorts and a T-shirt, thoroughly in holiday mode. After yesterday, his toned leg touching mine didn't go unnoticed. He was incredibly sexy, virile and generous.

Why couldn't I tell him my problem? Now we were physically close again, the mistrust I'd felt at home was fading. I started to plan how I'd break the news of the alleged serious misconduct charge, suddenly eager for his help.

The deep blue Aegean stretched seductively around a spattering of fabled islands that glided beneath us. I was in my own Odyssey. Who had been at the bank?

‘Already?' Stephen's face clouded with surprise as the seatbelt sign lit up and the announcement to prepare for arrival rang through the cabin. ‘We've only just taken off.' He quickly folded his newspaper and stowed it away. I was preoccupied with what lay ahead – I was about to meet up with friends, and needed to ask a favour of one in particular.

•  •  •

Our hotel in Heraklion was a small boutique overlooking the port and old fortress, whose pale stone edifice dominated the view with its cannon parapets and vast bulk built centuries ago by the Venetians to protect the city. Katina, a slim, charismatic girl in her early twenties, dark eyes radiant beneath fair hair, led us to our room.

‘You're new here?' I asked.

‘Mmm. I came back to Crete about three months ago. No work in Athens anymore. I'm a trained school teacher and now I must do this.' She sighed and gazed at Stephen.

‘These things are cyclical,' he said. ‘I'm sure one day you'll get to teach. What subjects do you take?'

‘Maths and science.'

‘Come to Australia, there's always a shortage in those areas,' said Stephen and Katina visibly melted under his charm. She unlocked a door and we entered a small, cramped room, not like my usual one. I walked to the French doors and opened up the view for Stephen, but the blast of traffic noise was so fierce I had to quickly shut them again. Katina noticed our disappointment.

‘Perhaps I show you another room?' she said brightly to Stephen and led us through passageways that smelled deliciously of sea air. We made our way to the uppermost tip of the hotel and Katina swung open a door. On entering, it was like we were in the prow of a ship, looking out across the fortress and harbour and beyond to the deep blue Sea of Crete. A breakwater snaked out from the fortress, disappearing in a vanishing line. On the tiny balcony we could see for miles and the only sound was the hushed murmur of the wind.

I turned, delighted, and Stephen was already grinning at Katina.

‘I'll leave you to freshen up,' she said flirtatiously to him, ignoring my presence entirely.

‘This is great. Thanks.' He passed her a fistful of euros, which she acknowledged with a demure dip of her head, brown eyes flashing up and gazing directly into his.

I was glad when the door shut behind her.

Stephen chuckled. ‘Youth.'

I wanted to call her something else but refrained. ‘Hungry?' I asked. ‘There's a delicious taverna just down the road.'

Half an hour later the saganaki prawns sizzled on our plates, covered with cheese and tomato.

‘Wash it down with this.' I poured yellow gold into Stephen's glass. ‘From Santorini. You'll never taste another wine like it. Nectar of the gods.'

We drank and ate as if we hadn't seen food for years and at the end of the meal we could barely move.

‘I need a sleep,' announced Stephen, yawning lazily and looking out upon the brightly coloured boats anchored in the harbour.

I glanced at my watch. ‘Better go.' Pecking Stephen's cheek I left him with the remnants of the wine.

I caught the bus, crowded with eager tourists, to the palace of Knossos. As the motley cafe and souvenir shops came into view, Burton Bennett, sea-blue eyes wide with anticipation, blond hair neatly cut, was waiting in the shade of a tree. His twisted legs in his wheelchair sent a pang of sadness whipping through me. Burton had always been the most athletic of us at university, the keenest and strongest member of the digs we visited as students, and true to form he hadn't let the accident diminish his passion; he was the only one of our crowd who still spent his time on location year round. An eminent scholar, he had not wasted his enormous talent like so many. He published and excavated with a force that left the rest of us far back, muddling around in the world of academia and domesticity.

I had often wondered if I'd stayed that day on the island of Lefnakos and been trapped with Burton in the collapse whether I would have had his capacity to survive, to keep alight the dream of discovery when my career had just robbed me of my mobility. I doubted I'd have been as brave.

‘My dear, it's really you!' he exclaimed as he wheeled towards me. We kissed and hugged, and then he hugged some more.

‘You'll crick my neck,' I laughed, managing to extricate myself.

‘Sorry. We don't get a lot of good-looking girls around here.'

‘I doubt that,' I snorted, wanting to send him straight down to our hotel to distract Katina.

Burton's electric wheelchair zoomed in the opposite direction to the way I turned.

‘There's a new dig behind the palace,' he called. ‘Come and see.'

My body sprang alive as the pegged-out pit came into view, a roped-off area full of dirt rich with possibilities from millennia ago. ‘What have you found?' I asked like a kid in a lolly shop.

‘Only a bit of old gold,' Burton replied mischievously. ‘A cup and a ring.' I followed him excitedly into a tent, where photographs of the finds were neatly arranged on a table. Hammered into the side of the gold cup was a leaping bull, its muscles straining as it tore through a veil of netting, breaking free.

‘Minoan,' I whispered. ‘Much more intricate than the Vapheio Cups.'

‘And the Vapheios were found on the mainland,' said Burton. ‘Not here on Crete.'

I found it hard to speak. ‘Where are . . . have they gone to Athens?'

Burton wheeled next to me. ‘I knew you were coming, didn't I?' He leaned so close I could feel his warm breath on my neck. ‘Later,' he said happily.

I picked up a photo of the ring, my hands trembling with anticipation. It was a signet ring, used to imprint a mark of its owner into wax. It depicted in even finer detail two leaping bulls with ladies in flowing robes dancing around them in perhaps a fertility ritual.

‘Can we go back to your place for tea?' I said, more as an order than a question.

‘In due course. But I want you to clamber through the palace first because a dear friend awaits.'

I had to walk fast to keep up, my head spinning from the beauty and richness of the site's finds.

‘The chair's new,' Burton said. ‘I buzz around in it ten times faster than I used to. Which is necessary. We've had massive scale-backs here in the past few months. The Brits have sent two-thirds of their lot home, and the Yanks are almost invisible they've been cut so badly. Sometimes I fear I'll be the only one left standing. Well, so to speak.' He grinned.

‘Things are bad at Coastal too.'

‘How's that Dean of yours? Priscilla?'

‘That's one of the things I want to talk to you about.'

The sun was bleaching the landscape in clear white light laced with tones of honey. It was piercingly hot and wonderfully familiar.

‘The sun has teeth,' Burton quipped in Greek.

‘I enjoy being eaten,' I replied in Greek. ‘It's so good being back.' I reverted to English. ‘I miss Crete, I wish all this wasn't halfway across the planet.' I breathed in deeply. ‘I love that chalky smell, and the silence that seems to seep out of the rocks. And I can't believe what you've found.' I tapped Burton's strong arm.

‘My team can't either. We're very lucky,' said Burton as we went through the upper floor of the palace that archaeologist Arthur Evans had excavated in 1900. He'd named it ‘Minoan' after the mythical King Minos, imagining that beneath was the labyrinth home of the Minotaur, half-man, half-beast, a hungry devourer of virgins.

We moved through a small stone room in which a reproduction of a famous fresco, a leaping bull with a man jumping over its back, was not dissimilar to the ring I'd just seen. Tourists crowded around but the original had been taken long ago to Athens for safekeeping. I peered through to the mural, looking at it afresh today.

‘Similar but different,' I noted. ‘The bulls on the ring have much more detail.'

‘Earlier?'

‘Definitely.'

Burton grinned, basking in his find, and whirred down a ramp.

‘Do you think Stephen could have an affair with Priscilla?' I asked.

Burton snapped to a stop. ‘Has he?'

‘I don't know. You haven't heard any gossip?'

‘No. Troy and Richard know Priscilla well. They've not said anything. And I Skype them regularly.'

‘Could you ask them next time? Don't say it comes from me, I've spoken to virtually no one about this.'

‘I'll try tonight before dinner if you like?'

I paused.

‘Are you sure you want me to ask them?' said Burton, concerned.

‘I'm impossible, aren't I? I promised myself I'd get away from everything on this trip but as soon as I see you it comes out. Perhaps I don't want to know. Well, not now.'

‘Why didn't you ask me before? When you were home.'

‘I didn't want to upset you. I know how you worry.'

Burton took my hand and I noticed how baby soft his skin still was, unlike mine, which was showing its age.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘I would have been beside myself thinking of that hairy bastard hurting you. You know I've never trusted Stephen.'

‘Why is that?'

Burton studied me like something he'd just found in a dig. ‘You've never asked me that in all these years. You've only ever defended him.'