The Dark Side of the Island

Lomax tried to struggle, but it was no use, and Pavlo pushed the bouzouki player out of the way. ‘No, Dimitri, he is mine. Lift up his head so that I can look at him properly.’

Dimitri grabbed Lomax by the hair, pulling him upright and Pavlo looked into his face and nodded. ‘The years have treated you kindly, Captain Lomax. You look well – very well.’

The little man with the scarred face and eye-patch had come from behind the bar and stood beside Pavlo and looked down at Lomax. Suddenly, he leaned forward and spat on him.

Lomax felt the cold slime on his face and anger boiled inside him. ‘For God’s sake, Alexias. What’s all this about?’

‘It’s really quite simple,’ Pavlo said. ‘It’s about my crippled leg and Nikoli’s face here. If you prefer it, there’s always Dimitri’s father and twenty-three other men and women who died in the concentration camp at Fonchi.’

And then it all began to make some kind of crazy sense. ‘You think I was responsible for that?’ Lomax said incredulously.

‘You were judged and condemned a long time ago,’ Pavlo told him. ‘It only remains for the sentence to be carried out.’

He looked at the bouzouki player, his face like stone. ‘Give me your gutting knife, Dimitri.’

Dimitri took a large clasp-knife from his hip pocket and passed it across. Pavlo pressed a button at one end and a six-inch blade, honed like a razor, sprang into view.

Lomax kicked out wildly, panic rising inside him. He made a last desperate effort and managed to tear one arm free. He swung round, dashing his fist into the nearest face, but in a moment, he was pinioned again.

The hand that held the knife trembled a little, but there was cold purpose in Pavlo’s eyes. He took one pace forward, the knife coming up, and a voice said from the doorway, ‘Drop it, Alexias!’

Everyone turned and Lomax felt the grasp on his arms slacken. Standing just inside the door was a police sergeant in shabby sun-bleached khaki uniform, and Yanni peered under his arm.

‘Stay out of this, Kytros,’ Pavlo said.

‘I believe I told you to drop the knife,’ Kytros replied calmly. ‘I would not like to have to ask you again.’

‘But you don’t understand,’ Pavlo told him. ‘This is the Englishman who was here during the war. The one who betrayed us to the Germans.’

‘So you would murder him now and in cold blood?’ Kytros said.

Little Nikoli made an impassioned gesture with both hands. ‘It is not murder – it is justice.’

‘We obviously have different points of view.’ Kytros looked straight at Lomax. ‘Mr Lomax, please come with me.’

Lomax took a step forward and Dimitri grabbed his arm. ‘No, he stays here!’ he said harshly.

Kytros unbuttoned the flap of his holster and took out his automatic. When he spoke there was iron in his voice. ‘Mr Lomax is leaving with me now. I would be obliged, Alexias, if you would not make it necessary for me to shoot one of your friends.’

Pavlo’s face was contorted in anger and he half turned and drove the blade of the knife into the wooden table in a single violent gesture.

‘All right, Kytros. Have it your way, but make sure he’s on the boat when it leaves at four o’clock. If he isn’t, I can’t be responsible for what might happen.’

Lomax stumbled past the sergeant and climbed the steps into the bright sunlight. For a moment, reaction set in and he leaned against the wall, his chest heaving as he struggled for breath.

Kytros put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right? Did they harm you?’

Lomax shook his head. ‘I’m getting a little too old to be playing that kind of game, that’s all.’

‘Aren’t we all, Mr Lomax?’ Kytros said. ‘My office is just around the corner. I’d be pleased if you would accompany me there.’

As they walked along, Yanni tugged at Lomax’s hand anxiously. ‘I got the sergeant for you, Mr Lomax. Did I do right?’

Lomax smiled. ‘You saved my life, son. That’s all.’

Yanni frowned. ‘They say you’re a bad man, Mr Lomax.’

‘What do you think?’ Lomax said.

The boy smiled suddenly. ‘You don’t look like a bad man to me.’

‘Then we’re still friends?’

‘Sure we are.’

They paused outside the police station and Lomax patted him on the head. ‘I’m going to be busy for a while, Yanni. You go back to the hotel and wait for me.’

Yanni turned reluctantly and Lomax added, ‘It’s all right. Sergeant Kytros isn’t going to put me in prison.’

The boy whistled to his dog and ran away along the waterfront and Lomax followed Kytros up the stone steps.

The sergeant led the way into an office furnished with a desk, several wooden chairs and a startlingly new green filing cabinet.

‘The boy seems to have taken quite a fancy to you.’ He took off his cap and sat behind the desk. ‘It’s a pity you won’t be around longer. He could do with an improving influence.’

Lomax pulled a chair forward and sat down. ‘So I’m definitely leaving, am I?’

Kytros spread his hands. ‘Mr Lomax, be sensible. That could have been a nasty business back there at The Little Ship and I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again. Alexias Pavlo is an important man on Kyros.’

‘Does that make him God?’

Kytros shook his head. ‘He doesn’t need to be God to arrange for someone to slip a knife under your ribs one dark night.’

‘The Alexias Pavlo I knew seventeen years ago did his own killing,’ Lomax said.

Kytros ignored the remark. ‘Could I see your papers?’

Lomax produced them from an inside pocket and the sergeant examined them quickly. ‘What is the purpose of your visit to the island?’

Lomax shrugged. ‘I was here during the war. I thought I’d like to see the place again.’

‘But why Kyros, Mr Lomax? The war must have taken you to many places.’

‘It happened to be the first port of call on the way from Athens,’ Lomax said. ‘It was as simple as that. I also intended to look up old friends in Crete and Rhodes. If I still have any, that is. After my reception here, I’m beginning to wonder.’

‘I see.’ Kytros passed the papers back. ‘These seem to be perfectly in order.’

‘What happens now?’ Lomax asked.

‘I should have thought that was obvious. You must leave on the boat at four o’clock.’

‘Is that an order?’

Kytros sighed. ‘Mr Lomax, I notice that your visa has been franked by the minister himself. This means you have important friends in Athens.’

‘That’s one thing you can count on,’ Lomax told him grimly.

‘You place me in an impossible position,’ Kytros said. ‘If I force you to leave I will find myself in trouble in Athens. On the other hand, if you stay, someone will most surely try to kill you and I will again be to blame.’

‘But I must get to the bottom of this thing.’ Lomax said. ‘Surely you can see that? For a start, you can tell me why these people think I betrayed them to the Germans.’

‘Anything I know, I’ve heard at secondhand,’ Kytros said. ‘I’m from the mainland myself. I’ve only been here two years.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

Kytros examined his wrist-watch. ‘You have exactly an hour and a quarter until the boat leaves. I would suggest that you go to the Church of St Katherine and speak with Father John. He was here at the time in question.’

Lomax looked at him in astonishment. ‘Do you mean Father John Mikali? But I met him when I was here during the war and he was at least seventy then.’

‘A very wonderful old man.’

Lomax got to his feet and moved to the door. ‘Thanks for the advice. I’ll see you later.’

‘On the pier at four o’clock,’ Kytros told him. ‘And remember, Mr Lomax. Time is your enemy.’

He pulled a sheaf of papers forward and reached for a pen and Lomax went outside and walked back along the waterfront.

Chapter 3

Two Candles for St Katherine

The lights in the little church were very dim and down by the altar the candles flickered and St Katherine seemed to float out of the darkness bathed in a soft white light.

The smell of incense was overpowering and for a moment he felt a little giddy. It was a long time since he had been in a church and he stretched out a hand and touched the cold roughness of a pillar in the darkness to bring himself back to reality and moved down the aisle.

Father John Mikali knelt in prayer by the altar. His pure, almost childlike face was raised to heaven and in the candlelight the beard gleamed like silver against his dark robes.

Lomax sat on one of the wooden benches and waited and after a while the old priest crossed himself and got to his feet. When he turned and saw Lomax he showed no visible emotion.

Lomax got to his feet slowly. ‘A long time, Father.’

‘I was told you were here,’ Father John said.

Lomax shrugged. ‘News travels fast in a small town.’

The old priest nodded. ‘Especially bad news.’

‘You too?’ Lomax said bitterly. ‘Now I know I’m in trouble.’

‘It is not for me to judge you,’ Father John said, ‘but it was foolish of you to return. Once the grass has grown over a grave it is not good to disturb it.’

‘All I want are the answers to a few questions,’ Lomax said. ‘If you of all people won’t help me, who will?’

Father John sat down on one of the benches. ‘First, let me ask you a question. Why have you returned to Kyros after all this time?’

Lomax shrugged. ‘An impulse, I suppose.’

But there was more to it than that – much more. He squeezed his hands together and frowned, trying to get it straight in his own mind.

After a while he said slowly, ‘I think I came here looking for something.’

‘It would interest me to know what,’ the old man said.

Lomax shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure. Myself, perhaps. The man I lost back there in the past so many years ago.’

‘And you thought to find him here on Kyros?’

‘But this was where he existed, Father. Don’t you see that? During the past two or three years a strange thing’s been happening to me. The events that other man was involved in here in these islands so many years ago seem more real to me than those things which have happened since. More important in every way. Does that make any kind of sense?’

The old priest sighed. ‘Captain Lomax, for these people that man has been dead for seventeen years. It would have been better if you had not resurrected him.’

‘All right, Father,’ Lomax said. ‘Let’s get down to hard facts. The last view I had of Kyros was from the deck of the E-boat which was taking me to Crete after the Germans had captured me. What happened after I left?’

‘Everyone who helped you was arrested,’ Father John said. ‘Including their immediate relatives. Some were shot in the main square as an example, the rest were sent to a concentration camp in Greece. Few survived the ill-treatment.’

‘And the people think I was responsible? That I betrayed them?’

‘You were the logical person and the fact that the Germans failed to execute you seemed to prove it. After all, they usually shot any British officer they caught who’d been working in the mountains with the Resistance.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Lomax said.

‘You were badly wounded, perhaps even a little delirious. How can you be sure? In such a state, a man does strange things.’

‘Not a chance,’ Lomax said stubbornly. ‘I didn’t talk, Father. Believe me.’

The old man sighed. ‘It’s painful to have to tell you this, but I can see that I must. Colonel Steiner made no secret of the fact that he had persuaded you to give him the information he needed in exchange for your life.’

Lomax felt as if a cold wind had passed over his face. ‘But that isn’t true,’ he said. ‘It can’t be. I didn’t tell Steiner a damn thing.’

‘Then who did, Captain Lomax? There was no one else. They were very thorough, you know. They even included me.’

Lomax looked at him incredulously. ‘They arrested you?’

Father John smiled gently. ‘Oh, yes. I too sampled the delights of their concentration camp at Fonchi.’

Lomax buried his face in his hands. ‘This thing’s beginning to seem like a waking nightmare. Did you know that Alexias Pavlo actually tried to kill me a little while back?’

Pain flashed across the old man’s face. ‘So it has started already? And violence breeds violence. This was what I was afraid of.’

Lomax got up and paced nervously across the aisle. For a moment he stood there staring into space, a slight frown on his face, and then he turned quickly.

‘If I’d really been guilty of this terrible thing do you think I’d have dared show my face here again, even after seventeen years? I know these islands and their people. I spent four years in the mountains with them. They believe in an eye for an eye and they’ve the longest memories in the world.’

‘A good point,’ Father John said, ‘but it could be argued that the situation here has taken you by surprise. That you were not aware of what took place as a consequence of your action.’

Lomax stood looking at him feeling curiously helpless and then weariness flooded through him in a great wave.

He slumped down, his shoulders bowed in defeat. ‘For God’s sake, what’s the use?’

The old priest stood up. ‘Believe me, my son, I harbour no resentment against you, but I fear the evil that your presence here may produce. I think it would be better for all of us if you left on the steamer that brought you here. You still have time.’

Lomax nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

Father John murmured a blessing. ‘I must go now. My presence in the streets may help to prevent any expression of violence when you leave.’

He moved away along the aisle and Lomax stayed there on the bench, his head in his hands. He was past caring, his mind numb, gripped by a force he seemed unable to cope with. All the strength was draining out of him and he leaned forward and rested his head against a pillar.

Someone ran in through the entrance of the church and paused and then steps sounded on the stone flags of the aisle.

It was the perfume he first became aware of, strange and somehow alien in that place, like lilac fresh after rain, and it tingled in his nostrils bringing his head up sharply.

A young girl was standing there in the half-darkness, a scarf covering her head peasant-fashion. She was breathing heavily as if she had run a long way and she stood there staring down at him and no word was spoken.

His mouth went dry and something that was almost fear moved inside him because this thing was not possible.

‘Katina!’ he said hoarsely. ‘Little Katina Pavlo.’

She moved closer, a hand reaching out to touch his cheek and her face became that of a beautiful, mature woman in her middle thirties. In the candlelight it seemed to glow, to become alive.

‘The Germans told us you were dead,’ she said. ‘That the boat in which they sent you to Crete was sunk.’

He nodded. ‘It was, but I was picked up.’

She sat down beside him, so close that he could feel the warmth of her thigh through her linen dress. ‘I was in one of the shops buying supplies when I heard you had come in on the steamer from Athens. I couldn’t believe it. I ran all the way.’

Her forehead was damp with perspiration and he took out his handkerchief and dried it gently. ‘It’s not good to run in this hot sun.’

She smiled faintly. ‘Seventeen years and still you treat me like a child.’

‘A moment ago I thought you still were. You made the heart move inside me, but it was only a trick of the candlelight.’

‘Have I changed so little, then?’

‘Only to grow more beautiful.’

Her nostrils flared and something glowed in the dark eyes. ‘I think you were always the most gallant man I ever knew.’

For a moment time seemed to have no meaning, the present and the past merging into one. In some strange way it was as if they had sat here in the candlelight of the little church before, as if everything that happened was a circle turning endlessly upon itself.

He took her hand gently and said, ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Sergeant Kytros told me.’ She hesitated. ‘I heard what happened at The Little Ship. You must forgive my uncle. Sometimes I think he is no longer in his right mind. He has lived with great pain for so many years.’

‘And he blames it all on me?’

She nodded gravely. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Along with everyone else around here, including Father John. Why should you be any different?’

‘Because I know you sacrificed yourself for these people,’ she said calmly.

He laughed and the sound of it was harsh and ugly. ‘You try telling that one to Alexias and his pals and see how far it gets you.’

‘I did,’ she said. ‘A long time ago, but only one person would believe me.’

He frowned. ‘Who was that?’

‘Oliver Van Horn.’

‘They told me in Athens that he’d stayed on here after the war. I’d hoped to visit him. Does he still live in the villa out on the point?’

‘I keep house for him.’

His eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘You never married?’

She shook her head. ‘Never.’

‘He must be in his sixties now,’ Lomax said slowly.

The right-hand corner of her mouth twitched slightly and there was amusement in her eyes. ‘We have no arrangement, if that is what’s worrying you.’

‘None of my business,’ he said, but he smiled for the first time and she smiled back. ‘How do the locals treat him these days? After all, he’s English enough in all conscience.’

‘Not to the islanders. He suffered as much as anyone. He was taken with the rest of us.’

Lomax frowned, a thought suddenly occurring to him for the first time. ‘And you, Katina? What happened to you?’

She shrugged. ‘They took me away with the others.’

‘To the concentration camp at Fonchi?’

She shook her head. ‘No, to another one, but they were all the same.’ She leaned forward and touched his face. ‘You look older. Too much older. I think you have been very unhappy.’

He shrugged. ‘Seventeen years is a long time.’

‘Are you married?’

He hesitated briefly and then plunged straight in and it was surprising how easy it was now, almost as if he was talking about some distant relative or a casual friend who wasn’t really important.

‘I had a wife and a little girl. They were both killed in an automobile accident in Pasadena five years ago.’

Her sigh echoed away into the darkness. ‘I knew there was something, but I wasn’t sure. It still shows in the eyes.’ She took his hands and held them firmly. ‘Tell me now. Why have you come back to this place?’

‘When Father John asked me, I told him I was looking for my other self,’ he said. ‘The one who existed here in these islands so many years ago, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘There is a deeper reason,’ she said. ‘Am I not right?’

‘Who knows?’ he shrugged. ‘Van Horn once told me that life was action and passion. If that’s true, there’s been precious little of either in mine for quite some time. Perhaps I thought I could recapture something.’

‘And what are you going to do now? Leave on the boat?’

‘That’s what they all seem to want me to do. Alexias told Kytros he wouldn’t be responsible for what might happen if I stayed.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘You would seem to have twenty minutes in which to make up your mind.’

‘What would you like to see me do?’

She shrugged. ‘It isn’t my decision to make. It can only be your own.’

She started to get to her feet and he held her hand and frowned, because he knew that for some strange reason this was the pivot on which the whole thing would turn.

‘Do you want me to stay?’

‘It would take courage,’ she said. ‘Very great courage.’

He smiled suddenly. ‘But I gave you my courage a long time ago, remember?’

She nodded, her face serious. ‘I remember.’

For a little while they sat there staring at each other and then she gently released his hand and stood up. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

He watched her go down to the altar and drop to one knee, then she stood up, selected two candles and placed them under the statue of St Katherine. It was only as she lit them with a taper that he realised who they were for and a lump came into his throat that threatened to choke him.

He got to his feet and walked blindly through the half-darkness to the door.

Chapter 4

The Bronze Achilles

Outside in the square it was very hot and he stayed in the shade of the porch and smoked a cigarette as he waited for her.

Once, Anna appeared in the door of the hotel with a bucket and cloth as if intending to wipe down the outside tables, but at the sight of him, she drew back hurriedly.

It was quiet and deserted, the shadows long and black as the afternoon waned, and nothing stirred. He stood there, the cigarette burning between his fingers as he stared moodily out into the square and in some strange way it was as if he was waiting for something to happen.

There was a slight movement behind and he turned. Katina looked gravely up at him.

He smiled gently. ‘It was a long time ago.’

Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes and he slipped an arm about her shoulders and held her close. They stayed there in the cool shadow of the porch for a little while and then she sighed and pushed him away.

‘We must go. If you intend to catch that boat, you’re running out of time.’

He followed her out on to the steps, his mind in a turmoil. At that moment, Yanni staggered into the square from the street that led down to the waterfront.

His clothes were torn and covered in dust and his face was streaked with tears as he sobbed uncontrollably. In his arms, he held the little black dog.

Katina was already running to meet him and by the time Lomax arrived, she was on her knees in front of the boy. ‘What is it, Yanni? What’s happened?’

He held out the dog in his arms. Its head lolled to one side, the neck obviously broken, and there was froth on its mouth.

‘It was Dimitri,’ he said. ‘Dimitri killed him.’

‘But why?’ Katina demanded.

‘Because I helped Mr Lomax,’ Yauni sobbed. ‘Because I helped Mr Lomax.’

The rage that erupted inside Lomax was a searing flame that seemed to fuse with his whole being. He started forward and Katina said, ‘Hugh!’

When he turned, her face was very white, the eyes so dark a man could never fathom them.

‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘He’s already served two years in prison for manslaughter. When he’s been smoking hashish, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

He turned and walked quickly across the square and when he entered the street, he started to run. By the time he merged on the waterfront he was soaked in sweat and people turned to stare curiously at him.

This time he could hear no music coming from The Little Ship and he went straight down the steps without pausing and came to a halt just inside the door.

There were perhaps a dozen people sitting drinking and none of them had been there on his earlier visit. The man behind the bar was one of those who had held him across the table for Alexias. He was in the act of pouring wine into a glass and his mouth went slack in amazement.

Every head turned and Lomax examined the faces quickly and then crossed to the bar. ‘I’m looking for Dimitri.’

The barman shrugged. ‘Why ask me? I’m not his keeper.’

He picked up a glass and started to dry it with a soiled cloth and Lomax turned slowly and crossed the room. Dimitri’s bouzouki still leaned beside the chair where he had left it and Lomax picked it up and smashed it against the wall in a single violent gesture.

He turned to face the room and no one moved. ‘I asked for Dimitri,’ he said calmly.

For a moment, they all sat there looking at him quietly, and then an old man with white hair and a moustache burned brown by tobacco said, ‘He is on the pier waiting to see you leave.’