Secret Souls (18 page)

Larry Snell had no trouble finding the police station. He had found a man sitting in a coffee shop contemplating a backgammon board and drinking an ouzo He asked the man if he might sit down and ordered a scotch for himself and one for the man at the table. The man was about fifty years old, and spoke English as if he came from Brooklyn New York.

‘Greek-American?’ inquired Larry.

‘God forbid. Cretan from Livakia. I spent six years in New York, frying fish for my brother-in-law so I could come home and catch fish. Every Greek leaves his island so he can return to it. Andonis Lefrakakis. Can you play?’ And he shoved out a rough and friendly hand for Larry to shake.

Larry lost both games and Andonis Lefrakakis bought the drinks and gave Larry directions to the police station and another set of directions to his sister’s house. She did on occasion rent her front bedroom if she liked the person and they came recommended. Andonis had made the call from the coffee shop and the room was reserved. They had agreed on a price and had shaken hands on it. Larry told Andonis to tell his sister he would turn up but didn’t know when because he was due back at Elefherakis Kaliadakis’s house. A clucking sound of approval and a wink from Adonis, some flattering words and, ‘I understand.’

On leaving the coffee house Larry realised that he had dropped two of the best names in town. All doors would easily be opened to him now. The end of a line of donkeys being managed by their keepers clip-clopped on the cobblestones past him; hunters, some walking, some riding, were singing as they vanished up a narrow street into the dark.

Larry found the long narrow staircase to the police station easily, climbed the stairs two at a time and entered the police station. Dimitrios was there and another policeman. Larry put out a hand. ‘I’m a friend of Colin Templeton’s. I think you had a fax from him that I was coming?’

Dimitrios sprang to his feet. ‘Oh, yes.’ He offered a handshake and kept pumping Larry’s hand. Finally Larry managed to remove his hand from the deputy’s. He looked around the room before he sat down and took a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. He offered one to Dimitrios and the other policeman in the room while introductions were being made.

‘You want the chief, it’s he who is expecting you. He’ll be back shortly. Coffee, a drink?’ offered Dimitrios.

‘A coffee, thanks.’

While Dimitrios rang through to the coffee house Larry took stock of the room. He had seen and had had the co-operation of hundreds of provincial police precincts such as this one all over the world. Yet instinctively he thought he had better suss out the village and Manoussos Stavrolakis before he revealed too much of why he was in Livakia. That had not been Larry’s intention before he had laid eyes on Chadwick Chase. Jesus, she’s a dangerous woman. A few minutes with her and already I’m trying to protect her, was his reaction to that particular instinct, laughing at himself for having fallen for a suspect. By all he had heard from Colin, who had done everything to recruit Stavrolakis away from the Cretan police force and into Interpol, the district chief of police was a man who might not agree with the handling of the Chase affair.

He liked the deputy who asked a great many questions and revealed very little about Livakia and the people living there. Larry gathered from the few words he said about his police chief that he admired and respected him. His assessment: Dimitrios was a good policeman, would climb the law-enforcement ladder.

More than an hour later the officers and Larry heard footsteps on the stairs. ‘Ah, that’s my chief,’ announced Dimitrios.

Two men entered the room and the deputy all but stood to attention when he made the introductions. ‘Chief, this is Mr Snell, the friend of Colin Templeton. Mr Snell, meet Chief Manoussos Stavrolakis and Mr Max de Bonn.’

Though Larry had no preconceived idea what the police chief would be like he was nevertheless surprised at his good looks, the very smart cut of his tweed jacket, the very English cords and
Turnbull & Asser shirt. That dark hair and very macho moustache, the open face … he liked the bigness of the man, not only physically but his spirit, and the clever eyes. He took to him and his friend Max immediately, recognising them as men who liked men and were the devil with women.

‘When did you arrive?’ asked Manoussos.

‘Several hours ago on a fishing boat on its way to Sfakia. My first trip to Crete, and when Colin heard I was coming he insisted I make a visit here to Livakia.’

‘The spring – you couldn’t have picked a better time. Do you play poker?’ asked Max who was always looking for fresh blood for his Thursday night poker game.

‘And bridge, chess and backgammon. I win at chess, sometimes at backgammon, but never against the Greeks, the Lebanese or Turks. They’re too fast for me. Almost always at the poker table.’ The two men looked at each other and then at Larry. Wry smiles broke out and they were all three friends.

‘You’re welcome to stay with me, if you like?’ offered Manoussos.

‘Thanks, but I think I’m already fixed up.’

The look that passed between Manoussos and Larry, the manner in which he said it, led Manoussos to understand that his invitation had not been a good idea. It also confirmed to him what he had instinctively thought when he had received the fax from Colin. This man was one of them, in the world of law enforcement. A member of Interpol? Something akin to it? And in Livakia on business?

‘Where are you staying?’ asked Max. A question Manoussos might have asked except for that look of Larry’s that intimated, ‘When we talk, it has to be in private.’

‘I’m not sure, I think I might have a scene going.’

Max, always the lover of intrigue and gossip, most especially if it was sexual, asked admiringly, ‘Who, what, where?’

‘I stepped off the boat with Astrid Hammunson and she took me to Elefherakis Kaliadakis’s house.’

‘Astrid’s back! Well, you might be right about a scene, Larry. You really landed on your feet there. She’s a happy, sexy lady,
who likes her men and no complications. Staying with Elefherakis is always fun. He’s a brilliant host,’ offered Max.

‘I’ve reserved the front room of Andonis Lefrakakis’s sister’s house.’

‘How did you manage that?’ asked an amused Manoussos.

‘It wasn’t difficult, everyone likes an easy mark. I lost two games of backgammon to him,’ answered Larry.

Larry Snell was proving to be a very interesting man. He had been in Livakia for two or three hours at the most and he had Astrid in tow, Elefherakis offering him a bed, and had managed to ingratiate himself to Andonis enough for Christina, Andonis’s spinster sister, to give up her front room for him. All that and Manoussos was certain Larry had given nothing away about himself or why he was in Livakia.

Manoussos turned to his deputy and told him, ‘Time to close up shop, Dimitrios, see you in the morning.’ Then turning to Larry and Max, he said bluntly, ‘Max, you’ll be quite bored. I’m going to show Larry round the port. See you later.’

Max took the hint that he was not wanted and left the two men in the street. ‘Maybe we’ll see you later, Larry. If not, tomorrow night’s Thursday night, poker at my house. See you then.’ The two men shook hands and Max walked in one direction, they in the other.

‘I’m starving,’ Larry told Manoussos.

‘Come to dinner with me and my lady.’

‘I don’t think I can wait.’

Just in front of the Kavouria the rotisserie was turning slowly round and round with skewers one above the other of lamb and small game birds, sheep’s heads chin to chin, teeth glittering a strange pink from the light of the red hot coals,
cocoretsi
of all sorts of offal, wrapped in a sheep’s intestine so that they resembled enormous sausages. The smell of rosemary and roasting flesh, the aroma of spitting fat as it dripped on the hot coals and sent puffs of steam swirling up into the night air, confirmed to Larry that he most certainly could not wait. Manoussos ordered slices of
cocoretsi
from the man brushing the meats with olive oil and the two men entered the restaurant.

Frances Pendenis was sitting at a table alone reading
Time
magazine. Tom and Jane Plum at another table; she looked bored, the famous painter looked content. Several Cretans greeted Manoussos: standing up, shaking his hand and offering him and his friend a chair. Manoussos made brief introductions and the two men sat down at a secluded table. A bottle of house wine and two chunky glasses were plunked down, and a plastic basket of bread. Not quite white thin paper napkins and cutlery dull and bent with age and wear were casually slung on the paper cloth. Larry broke into the bread just as a platter of the
cocoretsi
was placed in the middle of the table. Manoussos handed Larry a fork and a knife. He himself picked up a fork and the two men began eating off the platter since no dinner plates had as yet been produced.

‘I like your Livakia,’ offered Larry.

‘You’ll like it even better when I show you around. I’ll be leaving tomorrow or the next day on a two-day tour of some of the mountain villages. I’ll be taking my lady. Come along. You’ll see marvellous things. Or are you not here to see marvellous things?’

Larry drank from his glass. ‘I take it Colin was very discreet? So must I be, to a point. What I tell you I would like to be kept between ourselves. I’m the Snell from Snell & Martin – we’re a very discreet detective agency. I run the London office, very rarely do fieldwork, but a case came across my desk that I found different, a small domestic investigation that fascinated me. Self-indulgently, I decided this was one I wanted to investigate myself.

‘I’ve been four months gathering information on a couple. My firm’s been hired by the family and their lawyers to investigate some very serious allegations. These are people whose lives are lived in a very different society from that of a Cretan coastal village. Big names in the conservative American corporate and philanthropic world. But I think it’s here that I will find the real truth, the answers they seek.’

‘That couple is here, in Livakia?’

‘Only one of them is.’

‘What are the allegations?’

‘Murder for money.’

‘Any proof?’

‘That’s what we’re supposed to find. So far there is no proof that a court of law could convict on. Not that it would ever come to court: these are people who would never permit the scandal of a murder in the family. That’s why they didn’t go to the police. But they don’t want a murderer in their midst either. If evidence is found that the woman in question is guilty, the family would punish her in their own way and keep her as a skeleton in the closet.’

‘Her? And here in Livakia? Listen, Larry, I want this kept very quiet. The last thing Livakia, or Crete for that matter, needs is another murderess in their midst. Not six months ago, a young Cretan girl landed here in Livakia and was befriended by the foreign community. She was trouble, a sad case, a bad influence, but managed somehow to get a life together here and to some degree improve herself because she was influenced by an American writer who lives here, Mark Obermamn. She was an illiterate girl but wily, had a passion for Mark and listened avidly to everything he said and did. She was strongly influenced by him and developed an obsession to please him. This pathetic fifteen-year-old murdered in a crime of passion one of the expatriates living here, Arnold Topper. It tore the town apart, really traumatised the people living here to have a murderer in their midst. It divided the foreigners from the Cretans. All sorts of unpleasantness erupted. Arnold’s body was found but it remained for some time a mystery why and by whom he was killed. I trapped the girl and got a confession out of her. And, believe me, the town is only just forgetting about it.’

‘This is an odd coincidence. There are similarities between your case and mine. This is still only theory but I believe that the woman I’m after was involved in a crime of passion, killed, if she did, because she was under the influence of a man and a love that dominated both their lives. She was only the instrument of his will.’

‘I have always believed that Melina was the instrument of
Mark’s will. That he was the real murderer only she conducted the act.’

More platters of food had been brought to the table but Larry only managed a few forkfuls because he got carried away with telling Manoussos the life story of the woman he was there in Livakia to investigate. Whereas the two men had forgotten the food they had not forgotten the wine and Manoussos kept topping up their glasses.

‘When I took this case on, I will admit that I was attracted to the woman, the tremendous beauty and charisma she had to have had to have charmed and won her elderly husband and the hearts and minds of even the very people who are out to destroy her. Four months ago when I took this case on I was led to believe that the husband had been the victim. I no longer believe that. I believe that they were each other’s victims. We’re talking here about a most extraordinary love story, Manoussos, lived by a remarkable couple, the likes of which I think you and I would happily have laid down our lives for. If the woman killed him, she did it for love not for money, I would wager my life on that.’

‘Love, a mercy killing? Larry, it’s still murder to take another man’s life, no matter how you qualify it.’

‘And thus spake the law.’

‘You’re sure she’s here in Livakia?’

‘Oh, I’m sure. I walked into Elefherakis’s house and there she was.’

‘Chadwick!’ Manoussos said in a whisper of disbelief.

He had not the slightest idea from what he had heard about the woman in question that it was Chadwick until the very moment Larry had said, ‘And there she was.’ There was something in Larry Snell’s voice – an intonation? a quickening of his breathing? a look that came into his eyes, admiration, attraction, male lust – when he said those words. It was as if Larry had been waiting to find a woman such as Chadwick all his life. Manoussos recognised his own reactions whenever Chadwick appeared before him.

‘You know her! Well, that’s not surprising in a community as small as this.’

‘She cannot be the same woman you’re looking for.’