The Whispers of Nemesis (30 page)

Hassan was silent.

‘When Santos left Vrisi four years ago – when he set out on his needless journey to Nafplio – how did he travel?'

Hassan shrugged, and touched the brake to take a bend.

‘I drove him. I drove him to the station, same as I drove you. What of it?'

‘You must have found that hard, sitting there next to him, knowing as you did about him and your wife.'

Hassan laughed; but even in the dark, the fat man could see he wasn't smiling.

‘Not hard at all,' he said. ‘I let him think I was the fool he took me for. I played along, as if I'd no idea at all of what he'd done. I let him think it, until we reached a stretch by Profitis Ilias, where there's the devil of a drop into a chasm. And I pulled up right at the chasm's edge, with the headlights shining into nothing, and I told him I'd drive both of us over, if I thought he might ever go near my wife again. And he cried and snivelled like a baby, and begged me not to do it; and I gave my word, on condition he never came back again to Vrisi.'

‘And he gave his word?'

‘Easily. I didn't believe him, of course; when you've a man's balls in a vice, he'll promise anything. But evidently he took me seriously. He's never been seen in Vrisi since then.'

‘Not alive, at least. And what was your plan, Hassan, if he did come back?'

‘I was going to shoot him. I kept my shotgun loaded for the purpose. Or I might have cut his throat, or brought him back up here and pushed him over that edge.'

‘Then you would have gone to prison.'

‘Obviously,' said Hassan. ‘But he took away my honour, and my marriage. There was no way I could have lived in Vrisi, with that dog, that scum, tucked away up there in his house, thinking he'd got away with it. I was ready for him, whenever he came back. But if you're thinking that I killed him, friend, you'd be wrong. I didn't need to kill him because someone beat me to it. And I don't know who that was, but in my eyes, that someone did me a favour, and spared me jail.'

‘Yet you agreed to help me in tracking that person down.'

‘Agreeing to a thing and doing a thing, are not the same. You might have found me less willing to help, in other circumstances. But to tip you off that Leda was gone – no harm in that. No daughter kills a father. So I made enquiries on your behalf. It didn't cost you much; I brought you change, in there.' He pointed to the glove box. ‘The clerk in the ferry ticket office was happy enough to talk to anyone prepared to listen. She bought a ticket to the end of the line. But the crewman on the boat she sailed on, he wanted cash – ten thousand, to watch where she went after they docked.'

They reached the crest of a hill, and began to descend the mountain foothills. The night was clear, and the view from the road – of the coastal flatlands, and the splendid, vast sea – was lit by a grey half-moon. To the south glowed the lights of the city; in a few miles, the road would widen and be lit with streetlights.

‘How will I find this crewman?' asked the fat man.

‘The ferry is the
Poseidon
,' said Hassan, ‘and it makes its journey daily. Nufris, they call the crewman, and he's always on the boat; dark-skinned and out of Kos, or somewhere south. You'll know him easily enough; he wears a red bandanna. He's not a bad-looking man, with it on his head, and in his job he probably has a bit of luck with the women. But I saw him once without the bandanna, and he's near enough completely bald, so no doubt the ladies get a shock when they find out what he looks like underneath.'

‘I'll find him,' said the fat man. ‘You've done a good job in putting strings on her, and I shall catch up with her, before long. A delay in my arrival – wherever she has gone – may anyway be beneficial. It will do no harm to let her settle in and let down her guard. I shall travel as fast as I can, and if that's not fast, then I can use the time for thinking.'

When they reached the port, Hassan parked the taxi on the harbour-front. The fat man bent down to unzip the holdall at his feet.

‘Now, your fare for this journey,' he said. ‘I can pay you in cash, of course, and I'll be leaving what's in the glove-box as a tip; but I wish to offer you an alternative payment.'

Reaching into his bag, he drew out a porcelain swan wrapped in bridal netting. The swan sat easily on the palm of his hand; its hollow back was filled with mauve-coloured fondants, shaped into sugar-dipped flowers.

‘A gift for you, to give to your wife,' he said. ‘I think you should consider reconciliation. The swan is a symbol of life-long fidelity, which you and she can enjoy together, if you can find it in yourselves to make a fresh start. The sweets are made by a relative of mine, who refuses to divulge the recipe, though she swears by their ability to smooth the creases in cases where a couple are foundering, as you are. Take my advice, Hassan, and don't be the servant of your pride. Your wife made a grave mistake, but I don't think she loved the poet. You quizzed me, to know if she went to his burial, and I tell you, she wasn't there. Take heart from that; she carries no candle for him, but might still have a spark for you. If the approach is never made, you'll never know. So, which will it be, my friend – the money, or the swan?'

‘Your swan is very pretty,' said the taxi driver, ‘but I put my faith in cash. From Vrisi to the port, six thousand drachma.'

The fat man placed the porcelain swan on the dashboard, and smiled as he reached for his wallet.

‘You are a stubborn man, my friend,' he said. ‘Happily, I am feeling generous. Take both.'

 

The fat man took a room at a small pension close to the port, and dined in a waterfront taverna. He chose whitebait caught only hours previously, dredged in flour and fried crisp, served salted, with lemon on the side, and a plate of okra, stewed to melting with garlic and tomatoes. To drink, he ordered a bottle of Kefalonian wine, a blend of Robola and Tsaoussi grapes; and finding its chilled fruit and honey flavours very much to his taste, he sat on amongst the other diners after he had eaten, and drank the lion's share of the bottle.

The wine brought on a pleasant drowsiness; and, though his bedroom was cold from the sea, and roaring motorbikes passed close under his window, he fell asleep with no difficulty at all.

 

When the first daylight came to Vrisi, Maria went downstairs to put her mother on the commode. But Roula couldn't be woken; and Maria shattered the morning's stillness with the first wails of her grief.

 

The fat man frittered away the morning at the harbour-side, where seagulls cried over the returning fishing boats, and the outbound and inbound ferries kept the port lively. From a travel office, he bought a ticket to the end of
Poseidon
's route, then passed the time in writing postcards bought from a
periptero
, in breakfasting on croissants and sticky pastries, and sipping coffee amongst the travellers and sailors.

As the time of his departure grew close, the fat man walked the line of moored boats and yachts, of cargo ships and forlorn cruisers abandoned for the winter, to the dock where the
Poseidon
was preparing for her journey, and made his way up the ramp amongst the other embarking passengers. Merchants shouted instructions to the indifferent crew on where to offload their cargoes; nervous women lingered on the quay, anxious to spend as little time as possible afloat.

The fat man held out his ticket for inspection by a crewman blowing bubbles from a piece of tired, pink gum, who ripped the piece of paper almost in half.

‘Thank you,' said the fat man, politely. ‘I'm looking for one of your colleagues, a man they call Nufris.'

The crewman was dealing with the next passenger, snatching a ticket from the hand of a young man with a shorn head and a soldier's pack.

‘Up,' he said, jerking his head back to signal the direction, as if the fat man couldn't distinguish it for himself.

Carrying his holdall, the fat man followed an iron staircase to the upper deck, where rows of orange-painted benches faced the stern and a view of the port, and lifeboats hung suspended from pulleys rendered non-functional by multiple coats of paint. A second crewman leaned on the deck rail, a red bandanna on his head, the last inch of a burning cigarette in his mouth as he watched the comings and goings on the quayside. The stubble on his chin grew grey in the heavy folds of his face, and one of his canines was missing; the stitching of his quilted jacket was going into threads, and the dirt and stains on its fabric were obvious, in spite of its dark-blue colour.

The fat man's tennis shoes were silent on the deck, and when he spoke – ‘
Yassas
' – the crewman turned, startled.

‘For God's sake!' he said. ‘You frightened me half to death!'

‘Forgive me,' said the fat man. ‘It was unintentional. Do they call you Nufris?'

The crewman looked at him with suspicion.

‘Who's asking?'

‘I believe a friend of mine asked a favour of you, yesterday. It concerned a young lady passenger.'

The crewman smiled an ugly smile. Flicking the stub of his cigarette over the side so it flew in an arc into the water below, he leaned back on the deck rail.

‘I remember,' he said. He looked expectantly at the fat man's pocket, then down at his own extended hand, which he seemed surprised to find empty.

‘Did my friend not pay you for your trouble?' asked the fat man.

‘He gave me something,' said the crewman. ‘But small sums pay for small favours. I took my work seriously, friend. I stuck with your young lady when she left this boat. All the way to the end of the line she went, and then I made it my business to stick by her a while.' With a broken-nailed and oily finger, he pointed to the outer corner of his eye. ‘I made observations, you know, on your behalf. I did more than you might have expected, and if you wanted, I could tell you what she did when she left our boat.' He raised his eyebrows, and gave a devilish smile.

The fat man hesitated; then he took two banknotes from the folds of his wallet.

‘I shall give you one of these,' he said, ‘and if your knowledge warrants it, you shall have the other, too. What did she do?'

‘She took another boat,' said the crewman, slipping the note into his pocket. ‘She asked around until she found the one she wanted, and she boarded another ferry.'

‘What ferry?' asked the fat man. ‘Do you know where it was going?'

‘Oh yes, I know where it was going. I'm tight with the lads who work the other lines. Like brothers to me, they are, and I know their routes as well as I know my own. Soon as I saw which boat she was on, I knew where she was going. Only one destination, that boat. Only goes one place.' He folded his arms over his chest, waiting.

The fat man held out the second banknote.

‘Tell me, then,' he said. ‘Where has she gone?'

The crewman pocketed the note in no hurry, and turned to spit into the water below. On the quayside, a truck laden with boxes of cabbages was backing up to the ramp. The crewman watched frowning for a moment, and called down to his colleagues below.

‘Take the cash from him first, Harris! He owes us already for three trips. And stack 'em at the back, and stack 'em high! We've no room to spare down there today.'

He left the railing, and moved past the fat man as if about to leave him standing there, without delivering the debt of information he still owed.

But as he crossed the deck to the staircase, he looked back over his shoulder.

‘Seftos,' he called out, as he descended the stairs. ‘Your lady-friend took a boat to the island of Seftos.'

Twenty-one

As the ferry drew into Seftos's port, the fat man's view through the
salone
window was of the island's unremarkable landscape, of its commonplace architecture and its uninteresting geography, and of the medlar orchards behind the town, rose-tinted and flourishing on the low-rising slopes.

He let the other passengers disembark, keeping his seat until most of the small cargo was unloaded, waiting until the last crates and boxes were carried away, before picking up his holdall and making his way off the boat.

In the swell, the ramp between ferry and quayside shifted under his feet. The crew were already heading home. Two had mounted a moped inadequate to carry them both, the pillion passenger clutching with one arm the waist of the teenage driver. In the pillion rider's other hand was a bag of purple-shelled oysters, which he held, like the goddess Themis with her scales, at arm's length, to avoid the oysters' watery juices dripping on to his trousers. The driver started the engine and moved the moped incompetently forward in jerks and stops, his passenger laughing and calling him
malaka
; but the young driver then picked up speed, and his nervous passenger called to him to slow down, his feet dangling over the road in preparation for a fall. Amused, the fat man watched them go, until the moped and its passengers disappeared down the backstreets, its underpowered engine echoing off the house walls.