Secret Souls (21 page)

‘I hear everything you’re telling me, I understand it and still I have a problem believing that Chadwick, the Chadwick I wanted to make my wife, is no more than a fantasy produced for my benefit to fuck and love. Betrayal, deceit – for me! Why did she never deliver those same blows to Hannibal? What happened to love and lust, trust and loyalty for me? Those are burning questions.

‘A fool in love, that’s me, and that’s why I closed my eyes and my ears. Right from the beginning I sensed danger, inconsistencies between her behaviour and how she portrayed herself. I realised she was a woman who kept her secrets. I had neither the need nor the desire to pry them from her. I did in fact respect her, love her, even more for those secrets, that life she lived for herself alone, that made her so enigmatic. Even now, if only she hadn’t lied to me, I would have no reason or desire to demand an explanation. But unfortunately she
has
lied and betrayed my love and trust. There is little I can do but confront her with it. That’s the situation you’re in if you want to complete your investigation, and I’m in if I want the woman I love.’

‘Why don’t you just leave it alone, Manoussos? That is an option, you know.’

‘No more for me than it is for you. Only in my case love, Cretan pride, sexual passion, demand to be assuaged.’

It was Larry who saw Chadwick approaching the table first. She was wearing a pair of wide navy blue linen trousers that moved seductively with every step she took; a white linen shirt that tied at her waist and had full, drop-shouldered sleeves buttoning tight to her wrists; a deep purple suede waistcoat. He was somehow mesmerised by the way her white sneakers kept popping out from under the trouser legs and would vanish again behind the blue linen, the sway of her hips. There was a fiery intimacy about her and yet a cool seductive beauty that made him want to lick his lips.

He only said what he did to Manoussos because he could not help himself. ‘Men have jumped off cliffs for far less than the loss of love for a woman like Chadwick, who is as I speak approaching us. You’re right, she is dangerous, but I would walk through fire to have what Hannibal had with her, what you do now, lies, deceit and all. Whatever you do, my newfound friend, think about it again before you do it.’

Manoussos turned in his chair. There seemed an extra special bloom about Chadwick’s beauty this morning. It wrapped itself around him and almost broke his heart in two. He had thought she was his, they were each other’s life for eternity. He loved her, he was possessed by her, he would give her another chance to make it right for them, to curtail the lies that they had built a life together on. If they were standing now on no more than a rickety foundation that was already toppling them over, then what hope was there for their survival in the future unless she made things right? He rose from his chair and walked the short distance separating them to place an arm round her shoulders and escort her back to the table.

Manoussos watched Larry and Chadwick from the window of his office for several minutes after he arrived there. He had ordered breakfast for her and, after suggesting she show Larry around the village and take him for a walk to the church in the cliffs and have a picnic there, had left them. He had wanted to confront her right then and there about the false persona she had created for herself but he had been frankly disarmed from doing so by her mere appearance. His love for her, memory of their sexual idyll the night before, had knocked him once more off kilter.

Mercifully he was called away from the window by an urgent phone call and then his day took off: there were signs that the art smugglers were on the move. He was momentarily relieved from the torture of loving her.

Two hours later, he and Dimitrios were climbing up through the village to the cave where he kept his World War II American jeep, and a message had been left in the hands of a boy who was to find Chadwick and deliver it to her. It told her where he was and
that she should not expect him back that night. In fact he did not return until three days after he had left Livakia. And when he did it was in triumph. The operation had worked and he had snagged his smugglers.

Chapter 11

‘Islands have a special kind of magic. I’ve been to many, in all parts of the world, but none has ever had the magic for me that the Greek islands do, and most particularly Patmos and Crete, especially on a hot day in early-spring, with a goddess by my side.’

Larry and Chadwick had been to the church and after that had found the remnants of an old goat track and followed it further up the cliff until they came to a natural formation that was, if not level, than graded enough to allow them to sit down and have their picnic. When he said those words they were sitting close together, catching their breath from the steep climb and shielding their eyes with hands placed like visors to their foreheads, gazing out across the sea. The blue of the sky was a blaze of white sunlight, the sea another kind of blue. Between them a nothingness that was ethereal and broken only by the jagged coastline of buff-coloured cliffs that lay upon the water like a ribbon fluttered down from the sky by some god who had felt generous and declared as he dropped it, ‘Here’s something for you mere mortals, a bit of paradise to live and love by.’

Larry began to laugh. Chadwick reached out and touched him and asked, ‘Tell me, tell me.’

He raised her hand from his thigh and kissed it before he told her what he thought the gods had said and how Crete came into being.

‘Larry Snell, you are a romantic, a pleasure seeker like we foreigners in Livakia, only I do believe you didn’t know that until just now,’ she teased.

As they spoke they stopped looking at the sea to gaze at each
other and he was undone by his desire to take her in his arms. Reticent, he instead removed the cricket sweater he had tied around his waist and pulled his white shirt out from under the belt of his cricket whites, all the clothes he had brought with him other than the suit and Burberry he had arrived in from London. He undid the buttons on his cuffs and was rolling up his sleeves, and still they remained gazing into each other’s eyes. He was hot from the heat of the sun, and exertion from the climb, but that was nothing to the heat that came with the fever of lust he had contracted for Chadwick.

Chadwick recognised his desire for her, how overpowering it was. She liked him for that, and because he was holding back from making an embarrassing move on her. She liked his fever for her. She had right from the first found him sexually attractive, and now in this deserted and most glorious and private place she wanted to show him how much she appreciated his body and acknowledged the chemistry going on between them. She leaned forward and removed her sneakers then shrugged out of her trousers, removed her waistcoat and lastly her shirt and lay down on her side, facing the now naked and reclining Larry Snell.

She was glorious in her nakedness, like every odalisque that Ingres ever painted. She was Goya’s Naked Maja, she was Hannibal’s Chadwick, Manoussos’s love, she was her own best creation that dazzled such men as they. Larry was burning with desire for her. It was sexual but it was much more than sexual and therein lay the danger.

She reached out and took his hand in hers, raised it to her lips and kissed it. ‘I like your body, Larry, I like your sexiness, and I like your being in a fever for me.’

She edged closer to him and he placed a hand on the curve of her breast and ran it down over the contours of her body. She kissed his nipples and sucked on them; she ran her tongue over his skin and caressed him. He was erect and for Chadwick that was an added thing of beauty to be caressed, like the inside of his thighs his legs, his feet. She kissed him now for the first time on his lips and licked them, but her kisses were filled with affection and admiration rather than passion and lust. She wrapped her arms
around him and gently rolled him over on to his stomach and caressed him everywhere with lips and tongue and hands. No woman had ever seduced him as Chadwick was doing, no woman had ever been as adventurous with his body as she was.

There had been many women in Larry Snell’s life: love affairs, one night stands, hookers from the most expensive down to the cheapest street walker, a divorced wife and at present a mistress, but none had ever made him feel as Chadwick Chase did – as if flayed, every nerve end exposed for her to enjoy. His heart raced. He wanted her to do whatever she wanted with him; to please her was to live at the top of life in thrilling excitement. Her wish was his every command.

She whispered in his ear, ‘It’s here and now for us, a moment of pure pleasure. My heart tells me this is all we are and will ever be and it’s the best we can do.’

Larry knew she was right. He turned over and very gently laid her down on her back and made love to her, as she had him, with caresses and kisses. She came and came again, unashamed at the extent of the pleasure she derived from his adoration of her. Theirs was a celebration of unrequited lust and love. What might have been if they had been two different people in a different place at a different time in their lives? She had seduced him forever by what they had never had together. He could live with that and in gratitude for what she did deign to give him.

Naked, they lay side by side, holding hands, their faces up to the sun, bathing in the heat and the light for some time before Chadwick, after squeezing his hand and placing a quick kiss upon his cheek, began to dress. Larry watched her and understood for the first time what Chadwick’s real power was over men. The obvious sensuality, beauty and grace which she possessed in abundance were invitations to men to meditate on themselves and their desires. A man alert for any sign of those things who found them in Chadwick was offered every joy and awakened at all moments to a news that is always arriving out of the silence of the soul. That was what Chadwick had in plenty: a deep silence of the soul that most human beings seek and never find.

Chadwick had sensed Larry had been seeking that which he
had had no idea he was looking for until he was seduced by her into facing himself. Chadwick was master of her own bliss, a chemist of her own joy. She had all sorts of remedies at hand to elevate herself. She knew how to cheer herself, illuminate and inspire every breath she took, every movement she made. She was, and always would be, a spiritual practitioner: a person who lived in the presence of her own true self. Somehow she had found the springs and sources of profound inspiration and was able to use them continually while living truth passionately and that was what Hannibal recognised in her from that very first moment she spoke to him, what he had been seeking all his life. Having found it in her, he could never let her go. She existed apart from, not subject to, limitations. No wonder she was every man’s dream. Discovering those things about Chadwick was a revelation for Larry.

They had their picnic there on the cliffs and talked about her life in Livakia, the people who had become her friends. Her sense of humour, like everything else about Chadwick Chase, was infectious and Larry found himself able to amuse her with his insights into the people he had met since his arrival. He skirted around talking about Manoussos and her love affair with him. She volunteered nothing. It was just as well because for the moment he was experiencing her and the magical place she had brought him to to the fullest, and wanted not to have to share it with even the thought of a man she loved more than him. Finally she rose from the stony ground and he followed.

They stood next to each other and gazed for several minutes in silence across the sea. Off in the distance they saw a speck of white, a sailing boat they assumed. ‘I should warn you, the descent is more dangerous than the climb.’

He was certain Chadwick did not know that she had delivered a double entendre, but she had. She was speaking about making their way down the goat track to the church clinging to the cliffside and from there down the narrow footpath to the village. He understood what she meant
and
that he had to climb down from the few hours she had allowed him to love her.

‘One kiss, a kiss to die by,’ was what he asked for as he took her
in his arms. Briefly she lost her composure. A shadow of sorts seemed to cross her face – fright? – as if someone had walked over her grave, and then it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. It was at that moment that Larry had the answer to the question haunting Diana and Warren, that burning question that had brought him to Livakia, that was destroying Manoussos’s love for Chadwick. She did have something to do with Hannibal’s death, he was certain of that now. He was neither shocked nor disappointed, merely accepting of what he believed. ‘One kiss, a kiss to die by.’ Had he imagined that momentary reaction of hers to his words? Had those been the very last words that Hannibal had said to Chadwick? Larry kissed her.

It was a long and sensuous kiss like no other he had ever had from any woman. It was an amorous kiss, as erotic as hell, but was at the same time the most pure of kisses, filled with affection and something as enigmatic as Chadwick herself. It was true; with one kiss from a woman such as Chadwick, death might come easier.

Larry stroked her hair, and she smiled at him and took his hand. ‘A few hours like these we have just passed here on the cliffs under a Greek sun, above a Greek sea, on a magical spring day … they’re an experience to remember. I never take for granted such happenings,’ she told him, and he understood they would never be together like this again.

Several hours later it was once again the long table at the Kavouria where Mark was presiding and Astrid was trying to rekindle a long-dead romance with Elefherakis, Rachel was flirting with Larry, and Max and D’Arcy, sitting on either side of Chadwick, were laughing about the many celebrities who had come, and gone from Livakia, at first being swept up by the place – the lifestyle, the people, sexual liaisons – and then running away. Terrified! The simple life of facing oneself alone with the sun and the sea, a night sky of white moon and winking stars, nature above the mayhem of another kind of life. Heady stuff, things that dreams are made of, and for some, too high a price to pay, the giving up of fame and applause.

Larry did not miss Chadwick’s remark: ‘I think the tragedy of
my life would be if I had to move on from Manoussos and Livakia’

‘Are you so completely happy here, Chadwick?’ Larry heard himself asking.

‘Oh, yes.’ There was no hesitation in her voice.

‘Well, Manoussos will be glad to hear that, and so am I,’ said D’Arcy.

Chadwick had found her place, her man, and tragedy was about to strike. Had Larry Snell not passed the day with her, had what had passed between them never happened on the cliffside, he might have been able to live with his infatuation with Chadwick, put in his report, and walk away from Livakia, leaving her to sort out her relationship with Manoussos. But the worst possible thing that can happen to a detective had happened to him: he cared about the subject of his investigation, he wanted to help and protect her. He wanted her never to have the tragedy of losing her place in the sun, the love that she now lived for. He would have to warn her of the vulnerable position she had put herself in
vis à vis
the family,
vis à vis
Manoussos.

Larry had earned his reputation for fieldwork. He had been in Livakia for forty-eight hours and had the measure of the place and the people, the lifestyle. He was more aware than ever that if he were to approach Chadwick in the hope of helping her, he had to be more than discreet, as she would have to be, to avoid suspicion of her real problems becoming public knowledge.

When he saw Max, D’Arcy and Chadwick rise from the table to leave, he went to her and asked, ‘May I call on you in the morning?’

‘That would be very nice but I’m flying off for the day with D’Arcy and Max. We’ll be back by dark. See you here at dinner time.’

Larry watched Chadwick walk away. Rachel went to him and told him, ‘I’ll write a poem about her one day. She’s the kind of woman that inspires all sorts of things in people. You want to make love to her.’

Larry turned to face Rachel. She smiled at him and continued, ‘I can understand that, there’s not a man in Livakia that doesn’t
want to have sex with Chadwick, and more than a few women if they were honest with themselves. I know I would, but I won’t, wouldn’t even think of making a pass at her. I’m not
very
clever,
chéri,
but smart enough to know that Chadwick’s erotic life is only practised with whom she chooses, when she wants. She calls the shots only she is clever enough to make men believe they do, that it’s they who are seducing her. In that we are the same, Chadwick and I, except of course I never let love govern my sex life the way she does and you don’t.’

Larry laughed and a smile crossed Rachel’s lips. He had a penchant for frivolous pretty French girls, and ones with a sense of humour were rare. She distracted him from all thoughts of his work and dangerous infatuation with Chadwick. ‘Are you making a pass at me, Rachel?’

‘
Bien entendu,
are you not flattered?’

‘Let’s go then,’ he told her, taking her arm.

He hated her room, the prissiness of it. She kept it neat and clean except for her dressing table which was like the cosmetics counter at Harrod’s. Evidence of her vanity was everywhere: chiffon and silk scarves draped over chairs and lampshades, silk flowers attached to combs, wigs, dresses and swimsuits; tiny things, hung on wire hangers over curtain rails and from architraves. The carpet was strewn with shoes standing neatly together in pairs. The made-up bed had her nightdress, a diaphanous confection with satin ribbons, lying neatly across it. There was a decided absence of books and pencils and pens, the desk that one would have expected from any aspiring poetess.

Rachel had a sexual hunger that she covered very well with sexual teasing; an elaborate charade of unwillingness to submit to sex was the game she liked to play. It amused Larry but only to a point. She had the big breasts and tiny waist he liked, and all those creams and oils she enriched her skin with gave her a soft and smooth lustre he enjoyed, as he did her rounded and full bottom, so he played her game. Sex with Rachel was like following traffic signals: it’s a green light, it’s a red light, take a left, turn right, shift gears into high speed.