Blood & Gold Read online

  Anna gabbled on harshly. ‘You know what these people are like, the circles they move in… People get hurt. If you’ve got any sense you’ll stay out of it, and tell the police to stay out too.’

  George listened, thinking about what she was saying. ‘It’s odd,’ he said, ‘that you wanted your sister to go into that world you’re describing. Did you ever think about that?’

  She slammed down the phone.

  30 The Crop

  With both investigations now in other people’s hands, George decided to spend a few days on Andros. His wife had asked him to come over and help with the olive harvest. ‘We’ll all be together,’ she said.

  He asked what she meant.

  ‘Nick’s coming,’ she replied. ‘He found a cheap flight from Newcastle.’

  George threw a few things into a bag – book, shaving kit, a change of clothes – and rang the garage to get the Alfa ready.

  By evening he was on the island, rooting about in a shed for the harvest equipment: nets for spreading under the trees, little rakes for combing the olives off the branches, a ladder, a pruning saw, sacks for collecting the fruit. Zoe was in a peaceful mood and cooked one of her favourite recipes: rabbit with green olives. George asked how things were going, although he did not need to. Her body language was clear. She was all energy.

  Early the next morning, they drove out to the olive grove on a hillside overlooking the sea. They spread nets under the first of their trees and started work. In the absence of traffic George noticed a host of unexpected sounds: birds whistling and chirping in the branches, waves breaking on the shore far below, the buzz of machinery on a distant slope. With the abrasive touch of the twigs in his left hand, the pulling with his right, the stretching up and the bending down, the silvery green of the leaves at every angle, the colours of the olives darkening from green to red, blue to purple and black, he was soon enveloped in a small but self-sufficient space. They picked and spoke little, each absorbed in the satisfaction of the task, the berries clattering down around their shoulders like heavy drops of rain.

  They continued stripping the tree until the branches were bare and the ground carpeted in fruit. Lifting the corners of each net they rolled the olives into a heap, then sat and sorted them from the leaves and twigs that had come down with them. This was a restful half hour, chatting and feeling good in the sun.

  They poured the olives into sacks till they were full and almost too heavy to carry.

  Nick arrived at noon. They spent an hour having coffee and hearing his news, then started work again, laying out the nets under the next tree. George felt himself reconnecting with his body, his family, their little piece of land and all the generations that had lived on it. He forgot about the city.

  That evening he soaked away the day’s labours in a bath and thought with pleasure of the good things in his life; a pleasure that seemed to grow without effort from the sensory impressions of the day, the fatigue in his muscles, and the luxurious dissolution of all contradictions and pain in the steaming water.

  At the same time he could not quite keep out this happy thought’s ugly companion: all the things that were wrong and unsettled, the tangle of menace, brutality and greed that awaited him in Athens. Things were moving forward at last, but to what end? If all his efforts were leading him back into that horrible arena where he was required to fight against the unseen potentates, people protected by money and influence, people who had no need of others, no belief in anything but their own advancement, he felt sick at heart. Why was he doing this? For justice? Money? Job satisfaction? There was precious little of any of that.

  They had dinner that night in a local taverna, where Nick commented on the poor quality of the meat and wine. Zoe said she had not noticed, but she did not recall the food in England being anything to boast of. Nick agreed. ‘Besides, it costs twice as much to eat out there.’

  Zoe pressed him, as if the subject was preying on her. ‘You don’t prefer it there do you?’

  Nick said, ‘No,’ decisively but his voice left doubt in the air.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s cold,’ he said, ‘it’s grey, everyone’s stressed. It’s not too bad if you have money, but the poor really lead wretched lives, drowning in debt… And I miss your cooking.’

  Zoe took his hand and squeezed it. ‘My boy! I miss having you here to eat it. But I would understand if you preferred England. We’re going deeper and deeper into depression over here. The future is worse than the past, and each step forward is like a step back, a step down. No matter how cold you are in Newcastle, how much you miss your family, you have hope, there’s a future.’

  Nick nodded sadly. ‘It seems so odd to me.’

  ‘What exactly?’ asked George.

  ‘How can everything just degrade?’

  ‘Very easily,’ said Zoe. ‘All you need is leaders who don’t care.’

  And at once George thought of Mario again, his attempts to raise his island out of the morass of neglect, the way he was punished for his efforts.

  The next two days passed quickly. On Monday at lunchtime they finished picking. In the afternoon they loaded the car and drove to the olive press. The atmosphere was hot and pungent, noisy with machines, misty with the vapour of crushed olives. The sacks of fruit were weighed and emptied into a hopper, washed, sieved, chopped into pulp, pressed and centrifuged. Glasses of tsipouro were gulped, yields and acidity discussed. At last the oil, a bright grass-green fluid, poured from a spout into a steel barrel. They dipped their fingers in. It was warm and tasted of the summer.

  They carried their oil home in big square seventeen-litre cans and had a last harvest supper in front of the fire, feeling happy and hopeful. The next morning the party broke up. George and Nick took the ferry to the mainland and drove on to the airport. With tears in his eyes and a knot of foreboding in his heart he kissed his son goodbye and turned towards the centre of town.

  Part Three

  The Package

  31 Hospital Papers

  When George switched on his computer he found an email from Haris inviting him to download a file of documents from an online transfer site. A covering note said, ‘We’ve made progress. Take a look at this.’

  George watched the file download over several minutes. It was enormous, fifteen gigabytes. He had time to make a cup of coffee and drink it before the download was complete. When he clicked it open, it revealed a single folder with the name ‘ASK’. This contained eight more folders with geographical names, including Athens and Edessa. He tried ‘Edessa’ and found six hundred and fifty documents. ‘Athens’ had more than a thousand.

  He sampled a few, finding letters from ministries and municipalities, photographs, architect’s plans, emails from university professors, banks, educational charities and European funding bodies. Buried among them lay a typical cross-section of Mario’s interests: environmental, economic, social, scientific. There was no summary, no guide. Just vast quantities of words and images. How could Mario stay on top of all this? How could anyone?

  He phoned Haris.

  ‘What’s this you’ve sent me?’ asked George.

  ‘It could be what we’re looking for,’ said Haris.

  ‘How?’

  ‘It comes from Mario’s laptop, and it explains what he was up to.’

  ‘Looks like everything under the sun. I can’t get a handle on it.’

  ‘It all centres on a special project.’

  ‘ASK?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What’s ASK?’

  ‘A medical school.’

  ‘Where? Edessa?’

  Haris grunted. ‘And a few other places!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said George.

  ‘Filiotis and a man called Skouras were in discussion for years about it.’

  ‘Skouras? At the Red Cross in Athens?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I’ve met him. He shut up like a clam when I mentioned Mario.’r />
  ‘He’s probably scared.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. What else do you know about this project?’

  Haris said, ‘The idea was to set up a new teaching hospital and medical school in Greece with the help of London University. Top class, fully funded, open to anyone, not just the sons and daughters of the rich.’

  ‘Sounds dangerous. I can see the enemies massing already. What happened?’

  ‘They tried various locations: Athens, Ioannina, Edessa, Corfu, Crete, Kos. For some reason it failed everywhere.’

  ‘What was the problem?’

  ‘We don’t know. But it doesn’t seem to have been a question of money.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘They had plenty.’

  ‘Money does everything in Greece,’ said George.

  ‘You would think so.’

  ‘What’s the connection with Mario’s death?’

  ‘There may be none at all, but I noticed he was starting to get somewhere in Astypalea. He was raising money to buy an old factory.’

  ‘Who the hell would want to build a medical school in Astypalea? It’s a lump of dusty rock fourteen hours by ferry from Athens. And who would bother to stop you? There’d be no need. Climate and geography would kill the project stone dead within a couple of years.’

  ‘He was Mayor here. There’s an airport, a reasonable town…’

  ‘And a population of less than fifteen hundred. It doesn’t make sense. Either to build a hospital or to get killed over it. This isn’t what we’re after.’

  ‘Why don’t you read the file?’

  ‘Why don’t I not read it?’ said George.

  ‘Up to you, but Andreas thinks this is gold. I’m reading it again. More carefully.’

  ‘Where’s Andreas?’

  ‘Asleep.’

  ‘The layabout! It’s not even lunch time.’

  ‘He’s exhausted. He was up half the night reading that stuff, after six hours non-stop with Eleni.’

  ‘Non-stop what?’

  ‘Fighting.’

  George was pained but not surprised. ‘What were they fighting about?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t pay much attention, but it seemed to be houses and bank accounts.’

  ‘Anything you could possibly relate to his death?’

  ‘No.’ Haris checked himself. ‘Unless…’

  ‘Go on,’ said George.

  ‘I did wonder if he might have killed himself.’

  ‘On a bicycle? Unlikely.’

  ‘Not as a direct suicide, more like the kind of recklessness that sets in when you don’t care any more if you live or die.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I’m not sure I should say.’

  ‘Go ahead!’

  ‘Is Eleni a close friend of yours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you think of her?’

  ‘I find her difficult.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Imagine living with her!’

  George tried for a few moments. It was not pleasant.

  ‘You mean she drove him to it?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘If she did,’ said George, ‘our job is done.’

  ‘But was he the type to kill himself?’ said Haris. ‘From what I understand he was a highly energetic man. Fully committed.’

  ‘That can have its dark side.’

  ‘Was he up and down a lot?’

  ‘Didn’t seem to be. Though you can’t always tell.’

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Haris. ‘Debt. Have you thought of that? It can be a killer.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’

  ‘The whole country’s drowning in post-dated cheques.’

  ‘I asked Eleni if Mario had any problems of that kind.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She said it was none of my business.’

  ‘Which means he probably did.’

  George took a deep breath. ‘In normal circumstances I would agree,’ he said. ‘But we can’t make assumptions. We need evidence.’

  ‘I need to go through his emails,’ said Haris. ‘And a few thousand other files.’

  George thought about this. ‘Can you put it all on a hard drive?’

  ‘I’ve done that.’

  ‘So you could come back to Athens?’

  ‘I could. But I thought I would give it another day, go and look at the factory…’

  ‘What does Andreas say?’

  ‘I told you, he’s asleep.’

  ‘Ask him when he wakes up.’

  ‘OK. I’ll let you know.’

  *

  George opened his laptop and clicked on ‘Astypalea’. Another vast and thickly populated file. He arranged the documents in order of date, plunged in at the beginning and was soon deep in his friend’s affairs. Despite the doubts he had expressed to Haris, he found himself impressed by the project, surprised by the energy and goodwill it had attracted. Retired professors ready to work for nothing, Greek financiers in New York and London, bankers and shipping people who wanted to help, Brussels bureaucrats with funds to spend, secretive private donors… The very improbability of launching a new medical faculty on a remote island seemed to catch people’s imagination. If it worked, it would transform the place. The Aegean, Mario had once said, should become ‘a living museum, a buzzing market-place of culture and creative exchange’. It was a bold impulse. Hundreds of people could benefit, thousands more could be inspired, but George knew too well how these things tend to go in Greece. The more beautiful the dream, the more brutal the awakening.

  The ancient Greeks had a terrifying story of the Titan Prometheus, who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to mankind, against the wishes of the gods. As a punishment Zeus had him chained for eternity to a rock, where an eagle visited him daily to eat his liver, which grew back again every night. It was a disgusting and demoralising tale, but it played out a pattern that was all too easy to recognise in daily life.

  Weary of his black thoughts, George stood up from his desk and stretched. His neck and shoulders were stiff from sitting too long. He rolled his head around, loosened his joints, walked into the corridor, the kitchen, the bedroom, back into his study. He stared out of the window, his eyes on the garden of the church opposite, his mind floating elsewhere. Drawing comparisons with ancient myths is all very well, he told himself, but it didn’t get him any further with this case. What had Mario done to deserve a death sentence? Building a hospital might spoil a rival developer’s plans, but a medical school? Who could possibly object to that? Yet somebody had objected. Repeatedly. Then fatally.

  Or was his death unconnected with the medical school?

  He turned away from the window, thinking he must speak to Dr Skouras again. Or, if Skouras was still reluctant, one of the English partners in the scheme. One of them must know what had been going on. Perhaps they would not be so afraid to talk.

  As he moved towards his desk, something made him stop. Something unusual in the scene outside had caught his eye. He returned to the window, looked back at the church garden, down into the street. Among the cars parked on the far side was a black Mercedes with tinted windows. That was the jarring detail: in this ordinary Athens street, the preferred vehicle of the politician, the tycoon, the gangster.

  George picked up his keys and went downstairs. It was still early, the Café Agamemnon was empty, Dimitri sitting inside, watching television.

  ‘Do me a favour, Dimitri. Keep an eye on the black Mercedes on the far side of the street. I’m going for a short walk. Let me know if anyone gets out of that car and follows me.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dimitri, who was used to these odd requests. ‘Which way are you heading?’

  ‘Up the hill. Against the traffic. They’ll have to follow me on foot.’

  Dimitri nodded and switched off the TV. ‘I’m ready.’

  George walked briskly, not looking back. It w
as a cool day, with a touch of winter in the air. He buttoned his jacket and turned up the collar. At Evantheia’s flower shop on the corner he paused to examine the display. Despite six years of declining business and a depressive husband, she kept the shop going, always with a cheerful smile, riding the crisis, offering affordable flowers: chrysanthemums, sunflowers, hyacinths, little potted violets and azaleas. The days of lilies and gardenias, of extravagant bouquets, had long gone. George wondered how much longer her shop would survive, selling even this modest luxury in grim times. He waved to her but did not go in.

  Turning left into Smyrna Street, he called in at the fruit and vegetable shop and bought a kilo of oranges and a piece of broccoli for lunch. He turned left again down Filis, then Epirou, and back into Aristotle Street, where he found Dimitri at the Agamemnon wiping the tables and arranging the chairs outside.

  George walked into the café and sat down. Dimitri followed him in.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘A short fellow in a leather jacket got out of the car. Fortyish. Bald. Tough guy. I expect he’ll come by in a moment.’

  ‘Anyone else in the car?’

  ‘Yes, but I couldn’t see a face.’

  ‘Just one?’

  ‘Not sure. They usually go in twos, don’t they…? There he is now!’

  George saw the man walk past without a glance into the café. Very cool. He was wearing an earpiece for a mobile phone. Only that and his lithe gait, perhaps also the slightly bulging leather blouson, marked him out from an ordinary passer-by.

  ‘Watch my back,’ said George. ‘I’ll try and talk to him.’

  He went out into the street again, crossed to the Mercedes and knocked on the driver’s window. There was no response. He knocked again.

  A voice behind him said, ‘What do you want?’

  George turned and saw the short man standing in front of him. He had a hard, serious face and calm blue eyes.

  ‘Why are you following me?’ asked George.

  ‘I’m not following you,’ said the man calmly.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake.’

  ‘I’ve got your number plate and a photo of you.’