Nemesis of the Dead, page 2
Behind him, his English valet was packing his clothes for the trip to Katastrophos. Whatever was the man doing packing silk shirts and his white tuxedo? He wouldn’t be needing anything of that nature. This was a working trip and a vital one in terms of the success of his ongoing research. Shorts, anoraks and plenty of surgical gloves, that was what was required. He sighed. No doubt his beautiful wife Diana had a hand in this. She rarely accompanied him on his trips to the island, finding it interminably boring. Having agreed to go with him this time, it seemed she proposed to liven things up, at least in the evenings, and was doubtless packing low-cut evening gowns at that very moment. Well, he had no problem with that. She was a party animal and no doubt she would soon find someone to party with. She usually did. Men flocked around Diana like scavenging flies around an Amorphophallus, although in fairness, she didn’t stink of rotting flesh like a carrion flower. Just the opposite, given the enormous sums she spent on perfume. He left his valet to finish packing. What harm would it do if he had to dress up a bit and spend some time with his wife? As long as he achieved his objective, nothing else mattered.
Corrie Dawes had been packing since seven in the morning. She peered into her wardrobe and chewed her lip. What kind of clothes do you take to a Greek island so small it isn’t even in the tourist guide? She took out her one posh frock – then put it back again. She and Jack were hardly likely to go clubbing. What did it matter what she wore, anyway? It would be enough just to have her husband to herself for two whole weeks without the blasted phone ringing and Jack grabbing his coat and shooting off to another crime scene. She wondered if she should have bought a new suitcase. She was still using the one she had taken on honeymoon with her first husband, twenty years ago. It was a bit the worse for wear now but still perfectly serviceable – like its owner. Would she ever forget that ghastly ill-fated honeymoon? She had spent the whole turbulent two weeks in a bathroom in Provence. It was her first and only encounter with escargots. Confined to the primitive facilities of a rustic gîte, she learned that snails moved very much faster after you’d eaten them than they did when they were alive. It wasn’t a good start to the marriage and a year later, Tom left her for a robust Scandinavian fitness instructor with her own sauna and a digestion like an incinerator.
Like many abandoned wives with bottle, Corrie dealt with the blow to her self-esteem by committing herself totally to work. Her catering business, Coriander’s Cuisine, became her top priority. She worked seven days a week and if the customer required it, late into the night as well. Her aim was to build up a stable of clientele who would support a gastronomically excellent but financially sound catering business. By the time she considered herself a success, she was more or less resigned to staying single.
But life can always be relied upon to chuck in something unexpected. Corrie had been serving drinks and savouries at the cocktail party of a wealthy and influential turf accountant when the then Detective Sergeant Jack Dawes and his squad had burst in like something out of The Sweeney and nicked everyone. By the time Corrie had persuaded him she wasn’t part of the bookie’s money-laundering racket, just an innocent creator of canapés and an impaler of things on sticks, they were on first-name terms and she was cooking him intimate gourmet dinners.
Afterwards, Corrie claimed that without her masterly intuition and tireless assistance throughout the investigation, DS Dawes would never have cracked the case and rounded up several of the nastier members of the underworld. She was equally convinced that it was thanks to her that he had been promoted to DI and transferred to the murder squad. At the time, he had been churlishly ungrateful, declaring that she mostly got in the way and even put herself at risk. She was lucky, he said, that her interference with dangerous criminals hadn’t landed her at the bottom of the Thames wearing a concrete apron.
Then, to Corrie’s complete and utter amazement, he proposed. It was for her own protection, he said. She wasn’t safe out on her own and as a copper, he couldn’t take responsibility for releasing her on her own cognizance. Either she married him or he would nick her for interfering with a policeman in the course of his duty.
The wedding, whilst eye-catching, would never have graced the pages of a celebrity magazine. Jack in uniform, six-foot-three and balding, with a big nose, jug-ears and an off-centre grin, his features having undergone considerable repositioning during his rugby-playing days. Corrie in ivory silk, five-feet-nothing, perilously short-sighted and on the wrong side of a size sixteen. Not Romeo and Juliet in any orthodox sense, but a loving, symbiotic partnership nevertheless.
DI Dawes had never been a confirmed bachelor. Indeed, he had been a very reluctant one. Work had always sabotaged budding relationships, and girlfriends would get fed up with him not turning up for dates or, worse, rushing off just at the climax of something crucial. Eventually they left him for blokes in less demanding jobs. In Corrie, he had found a kindred, feisty spirit where work and partnership lived mostly in peaceful co-existence – as long as he could curb her compulsion to interfere.
This second time around, Corrie had looked forward to a perfect spring honeymoon in Paris – with no snails. But the honeymoon gremlin struck again and they had scarcely popped a champagne cork when Jack was called back to duty to head a murder enquiry, all leave cancelled. It had developed into a long and gruelling investigation with Jack more than usually affected by the circumstances. During the worst of it, he and Corrie had promised each other a relaxed, romantic honeymoon as soon as the case was over. The destination was negotiable, they would pick somewhere at the last minute. But wherever they chose, it must be as far away from crime and cooking as possible.
‘It says here …’ said Jack, wandering into the bedroom waving a computer print-out, ‘… that Katastrophos is a tiny Greek island, like a pebble dropped in the sparkling Ionian Sea.’
Later, Corrie reckoned that her masterly intuition should have kicked in then. What sort of a name is Katastrophos if not full of portent and omen?
‘Sounds perfect.’ She held her swimsuit against her, a miracle of cantilever engineering with a clever skirted bit designed to conceal fat thighs. She grimaced at herself in the mirror. ‘Tell me more about Katastrophos. It’s hard to picture it without glossy brochures.’
‘There isn’t much to tell.’ Jack lay back on the bed and swung his feet up. ‘It’s the smallest of the Ionian Islands, which run down the western coast of mainland Greece. It’s also one of the few islands not shown on any tourist map. Only eight kilometres long and three kilometres wide. Must be a kind of sausage-shape, I guess. It’s called Katastrophos because of a catastrophic earthquake a couple of centuries ago that destroyed most of its Venetian buildings and a lot of the inhabitants.’
‘I see. It’s a seismic sausage. Doesn’t it say anything nice?’
‘’Course. Listen to this blurb. “Katastrophos has an intimate charm that has escaped the blight of tourism. Apart from a very small annual influx of tourists …” – that’ll be you and me –“… there is little to disturb the soporific atmosphere. If you crave peace and quiet or need to retreat from the stress of modern-day living, Katastrophos is the ideal ‘get away from it all’ holiday destination”.’
‘Wonderful. Just what we need.’
‘And what about this bit? “According to Greek legend, Katastrophos was created by Poseidon who struck the Ionian Sea with his trident to create a secret island paradise to share with his wife Amphitrite.” What better place for a honeymoon than a secret island paradise?’
Corrie climbed on the bed, hauled up her glasses dangling on a chain around her neck and began reading over his shoulder.
‘I don’t like the sound of that.’ She pointed. ‘It says Antony and Cleopatra are reputed to have had a dinner party at Katastrophos on the eve of the Battle of Actium.’
‘So what?’ Jack grinned. ‘Are you cross you weren’t around to tender for the catering?’
Corrie gave him a withering look. ‘You know what happened at Actium?’
‘No. Should I?’
‘The combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by Octavian. It completely destroyed their plans for the future. It was a turning point in the history of Egypt and Rome.’
Jack stared at her. ‘You know, I worry about you sometimes. What sort of sad person remembers stuff like that? You need a holiday, Corrie. Two weeks in a luxury hotel overlooking a stunning horseshoe bay, flanked by silver-green olive groves and majestic rows of cypress. Nothing to do but swim and sunbathe. And plenty of wine and Greek food that you haven’t had to cook yourself.’
‘OK. You’ve convinced me. How do we get there?’
Jack produced his meticulously planned itinerary.
‘Flight from Gatwick to Kalamata Airport on the Peloponnese peninsula. Coach transfer from the airport to the ferry port south of Methóni. Then ferry across the Ionian Sea to Katastrophos. It’s the only route. The island’s too small for its own airport. There’s just the one main resort, Agia Sofia – St Sophia. I reckon if we get the eight o’clock flight from Gatwick, we should reach Hotel Stasinopoulos in time to freshen up, have a glass of wine and enjoy a romantic dinner outdoors, under the vine-covered pergola, watching the sun set over Katastrophos Bay.’
Corrie stopped folding clothes and imagined herself there already.
‘Heavenly. You know, you’re right, Jack. We both need a holiday. Especially you. That last murder case really got under your skin. I could tell.’
Jack shrugged. The young man had undoubtedly been guilty, had admitted his guilt, but the custodial sentence was unexpectedly severe, mainly because drugs were involved. The look of utter devastation on his parents’ faces as he had been taken down was something Jack found hard to forget.
‘And I’m still sad about Lavinia,’ said Corrie. ‘It isn’t just that I miss her as a friend, it’s the effect it’s having on the business. Lots of those wealthy people at the funeral had become good customers, thanks to Lavinia’s recommendation. Then she goes and dies of a mysterious stomach complaint at a luncheon party catered by Coriander’s Cuisine.’
‘That wasn’t your fault.’
‘I know, but it doesn’t look good, does it? One minute she’s chomping down my confit of duck Béarnaise. Next thing, she’s writhing in agony with stomach cramps and drops dead before the ambulance arrives.’
‘Nobody blamed you.’ Jack put an arm around her. ‘It was made perfectly clear at the inquest. The post mortem didn’t find any evidence of food poisoning – or any other kind of poisoning, come to that. She was an elderly lady and she died of heart failure brought on by some sort of stomach virus. If there’d been any doubt, the coroner would have given an open verdict instead of natural causes.’
‘What makes me feel really awful is the money she left me in her will, bless her. She wanted me to use it to buy a posh new van with Coriander’s Cuisine painted on the side. She must have noticed my old one was knackered from the clouds of blue smoke outside her window when I turned up with the party food. She was such a kind, generous person.’
Jack looked thoughtful. ‘According to the newspapers, she left the bulk of a very considerable fortune to charity.’
‘Mm. There were just one or two small legacies to people like me who worked for her and some others who raised funds for her charities.’
‘What about relatives?’
Corrie shook her head. ‘She’d been a widow for years and I don’t think she had any children. At least, if she did, she never talked about them. Sad, really. I think she might have mentioned a sister once, or was it a brother? I can’t remember. Anyway, they couldn’t have been very close because I didn’t see any relatives at the funeral.’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Neither did I.’
CHAPTER TWO
Corrie was not a morning person. She barely spoke before nine and never until she had absorbed a great deal of caffeine. It was now 6.30 on Saturday morning and she and Jack were in a queue for the long-stay car park at Gatwick. It was moving reasonably quickly but ground to a halt when the old buffer at the head of the queue reached the ticket machine. He sat for some time gazing out of his car window at it. Then his wife passed him his glasses and he peered even closer.
‘It’s a ticket machine,’ snapped Corrie. ‘Press the button and take the ticket, you dithering old pillock.’
Jack grinned. ‘He can’t hear you, grumpy-knickers.’
‘I know, but it makes me feel better. If he took off that silly panama hat he could stick his head out of the window and see what he’s doing.’
Corrie hated flying but she had no intention of admitting it to Jack. She had psyched herself up for this trip and, fighting back the rising nausea, she marched bravely into the terminal building only to find that the flight from Gatwick to Kalamata Airport had been delayed by two and a half hours. By the time they boarded, Corrie had been in the Knicker Shop eight times, bought five pots of high-factor anti-wrinkle cream, eaten at least ten chocolate bars and read all the diet magazines. Now, at last, they were on the plane and settled in their seats. Jack leaned back and stretched his long legs into the aisle.
‘Belt up, sweetheart.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Fasten your seatbelt. The cabin crew will be round to check in a minute. Once we’re in the air I’ll order some drinks. How do you fancy champagne?’
Corrie swallowed hard. Only the whitening of her knuckles on the armrests betrayed the terror of the inner woman as she contemplated flying at 35,000 feet with nothing more substantial than clouds between her and the ground. Or the sea. She had never understood why they didn’t give you a parachute.
‘Champagne at half past ten in the morning? Isn’t that a bit flash?’
‘This is our honeymoon. My first and your last. Sod the expense.’
After the second glass Corrie felt much better.
The August temperatures were in the mid-nineties as the tourist-packed Boeing nudged the melting tarmac of Kalamata Airport. Drowsy taxi drivers woke reluctantly from their afternoon naps and braced themselves for the onslaught of eager holidaymakers. In the tavernas, cooks slammed quick-frozen moussaká into microwaves and whipped the clingfilm off the Greek salad. Local wine that had wintered in Esso cans was deftly decanted into summer carafes and at the flick of a switch, bouzoúki twanged from loud speakers suspended in the olive trees. Greece was ready to work its ageless charm on another batch of foreign touristas.
Corrie paused at the top of the aircraft steps as the heat from the simmering concrete blasted her in the face. After the air-conditioned cabin, it felt stifling and airless, like walking into a furnace. She wished now that she had dressed for Greece instead of Gatwick but she was glad to get off the plane despite the heat. She peeled off a couple of sweaters and resolved not to start dreading the return flight until it was absolutely imminent.
Half an hour later, Jack had wrestled their luggage off the carousel and, sweaty and uncomfortable, they were outside the building, shielding their eyes from the phosphorescent sunlight. Immediately in front of them was a fleet of shiny new air-conditioned coaches, parked in a neat herringbone along the kerb. Beside each coach, a smart, uniformed courier hovered with a clipboard and a fixed smile.
‘Which one’s ours?’ Corrie asked.
‘I think it must be that one.’ Jack pointed to a battered old bus painted in drab camouflage colours that looked as though it had once seen service as an army transport vehicle. It was parked right at the end, almost out of sight behind the swanky coaches, like a poor relative at a posh wedding. There was no courier but the driver, a swarthy man in a greasy cap with a formidable collection of St Christophers around his neck, was holding up a square of cardboard with ‘Ferry Methóni’ scribbled on it in black felt tip.
‘It can’t be.’ As they came closer, Corrie could see bald tyres and quite a lot of rust. ‘It doesn’t look roadworthy to me.’
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ said Jack, subconsciously totting up the number of regulations the vehicle violated. ‘It isn’t far to the ferry port and the roads are good by Greek standards. It should only take a couple of hours and then we’ll be on the ferry drifting lazily across the Ionian Sea to Katastrophos and two weeks of idleness and luxury.’ He wondered if it were possible to carry the luggage and cross his fingers at the same time.
‘You want ferry – Methóni?’ The driver’s cigarette, stuck firmly to his bottom lip, bobbed up and down as he spoke.
‘That’s right.’ Jack rummaged in his travel bag for the documents but the driver had already picked up the suitcases and was hurling them into the almost empty luggage compartment in the side of the bus. The rusty floor juddered ominously beneath the weight and Corrie had a worrying vision of her clothes strewn all along the road to the ferry port. The thought of a pair of her big knickers adorning one of the roadside shrines was not a reverent one.
‘Everybody here. We go now.’ The driver motioned them aboard and climbed into his creaky driver’s seat where rosary beads and pictures of saints dangled from the rear-view mirror. Sadly, the saints had not seen fit to bless the bus with air-conditioning so the inside was unbearably hot.
There were only four other people on board which surprised Jack. His information had led him to expect more. He glanced around, attempting to match his fellow-travellers to the hastily compiled briefing in his pocket. A couple in their fifties, obviously English, had already claimed the front seat behind the driver. The woman, pleasant-looking in a floral frock and comfortable wide-fitting sandals, nodded and smiled as Jack and Corrie passed. Her husband, clearly miffed about the standard of transport, leaned forward and began berating the driver, who ignored him.
