Secret Souls (22 page)

She was, as a body, a delicious fuck and so he gagged her with
one of her chiffon scarves long enough to tell her that if she gave him one more sexual instruction he would tie her up and leave her there. When he removed the scarf she spluttered and coughed but never said another word to him until it was goodbye at half-past eleven the next morning.

Larry spent most of the remainder of the day asleep in the room he had rented in Christina’s house. Walking down to the port in the late-afternoon he was amused at the thought of how he had flourished sexually since his arrival in Livakia: a sexual adventure with Elefherakis and Astrid, the bliss of a sensual day with Chadwick, and who would have expected Rachel to turn out to be such a firecracker between the sheets? But it was more than just the hot sex flourishing in Livakia that suited him. He liked the privacy and freedom that existed, the discretion that governed everyone’s actions. It was somehow respectful of their community, their own self-esteem, this paradise they had landed in, and not least the mythical gods of Greece. No one liked to offend the gods and neither did he.

As the heat of the day ate into his bones, and he sat in the near deserted port where only a few fishermen were repairing nets, Katzakis the grocer was having a bottle of wine and reading the paper and there was not another foreigner about, Larry worked out how to close his investigation. Fortunately Alexandra, one of the cooks at the Kavouria, was still there and agreed to cook him some fresh fish caught only minutes before from the sea, reheat the rabbit
stiffado,
and allow him to fill his plate from several cooking pots simmering on the stove.

After his meal, he remained seated at the table set at the edge of the quay, reviewing the lives of the people involved in his investigation and considered how and if his findings would affect them. That was not his problem, and he was amazed to think that he had almost made it his dilemma. He was relieved that the professional in Larry Snell had won through.

That was not to say that the Hannibal Chase case had not changed his life, for it was doing just that. The love affair between Hannibal and Chadwick was a story that had opened his eyes to his own love relationships, his own sexual desires, his own ability
to live in the moment. But more particularly it was Chadwick Chase, the glorious enigmatic Chadwick, whom he had, over the months of investigation, become infatuated with, and on finally meeting, fallen in love with. She was the real catalyst that was changing his life. She had shown him, that unlike her, he
thought
about living more than
living
without thought. He pondered as to when it was he had lost the courage that Chadwick had, to live life to the fullest and for the moment.

She had been right about him: he was a pleasure seeker like her, like her friends, only he had never understood that he was. He had come in search of her and found more than just Chadwick. Like the men whom she allowed to love her, Hannibal and Manoussos, and those many others who had crossed her path and wanted to love her, he had crashed out his unfulfilled life on the rocks as he swam to her siren’s song. Larry had at last cracked the riddle of Chadwick Chase: with her it was live
or
die in every sense of those words. She gave everything, she made men give everything. Her courage in living in the knowledge of that truth was admirable, so had Hannibal’s been, and now so would his.

His first thought about Manoussos and what he was going to do about Chadwick was when Larry was halfway up the stairs to the police chief’s office. Manoussos and Chadwick had a great deal to lose but he somehow had no fear for them. Each of them would do what they had to and get on with their life. He greeted the young officer left in charge and explained that he was there to use the fax and the telephone, demanded privacy, and got it. The young man was following instructions Manoussos had left to give Larry Snell every co-operation.

He was three hours typing out faxes, having conversations with his partner and Andrew Coggs, Junior and Senior, the Chase children and Bill Ogden. It was dark when he left the office and strolled into a port alive with lamplight and people, the smell of roasting meat and rosemary. The Kavouria was crowded with diners. Larry caught a glimpse of Chadwick sitting at a table with a dozen or so people. He went into Katzakis’s shop and bought a bottle of whisky and went back to his room. He was drunk and asleep before midnight.

In the morning he woke early and, miraculously, without the slightest trace of a hangover. He felt marvellous and hummed a tune while he bathed and dressed, forgoing his cricket whites for his pinstripe double-breasted suit which he wore with the jacket unbuttoned, a clean white shirt open at the collar. But old habits die hard. He folded his tie neatly and placed it in his jacket pocket. His first stop was Rachel’s room. She was, of course, fast asleep and tried to send him away. He would not be put off.

Larry sat on the end of her bed, lit a cigarette and watched her as she filled a coffee pot and placed it on an electric ring. He was quite riveted as she transformed herself at the dressing table into the pretty and amusing thing he had dallied with and one day hoped to dally with again.

Their eyes met in the mirror and it caused her to swivel round and face him. ‘You’re not falling in love with me, I hope?’ she asked with a tone of pity for him in her voice.

‘Why so worried? Because if I did it might interfere with your ambitions to be a great poet?’

‘Precisely!’

‘Ah, now that’s what I want to talk to you about.’

‘Poetry or love?’

‘A little of both. The other night you were terrific, a very sexy lady, and I hope we can do that again some time, maybe even often – if it happens, it happens – and no, I’m not in love with you. I’ve come to say goodbye. I’ll be leaving here in the next few days, and I wanted it to be a private goodbye since so much of life in Livakia is public.’

‘I’m sorry you’re leaving, Larry. Surprised. I thought you slipped into the life of Livakia so well that you would have been one of the people who might settle here. About the other night … more of that would have been nice for me too, but you do understand about the poetry? I will win out on that score.’

‘I have every hope that you will, Rachel. You were right about me and Livakia, I will settle here. It will take some time to accomplish that but before I leave I intend to ask Manoussos and Max to look out for a property for me. I mean to tell them that as
long as you are respectful of it, and, if you should wish to, you may live in it until my return. I do understand about your burning desire to write, enough to want to give you two years to study at either Oxford or the Sorbonne, any place in fact that you can get on an excellent writing course. I’ll be your patron, pay all your expenses, school fees, living expenses, and before you ask, you are under no obligation to me – and I mean that – not in any way.’

Rachel was overcome by this unexpected turn of events in her life. She paled and then after several seconds, when she was able to compose herself, in a voice cracking with more emotion than she had shown during their hours of lust together, she asked, ‘Why are you doing this, Larry?’

‘Because I can,’ was the only answer he would give her.

After he had left a neatly typed out list of addresses and telephone numbers as to where he could be reached and a cheque for several hundred pounds, they parted on Rachel’s words, ‘They say you never lose the friends you make in Greece.’ He found that to be a charming thank you, especially so because he hadn’t been looking for one, nor expected the self-absorbed Rachel to issue one.

In the port there was an air of excitement, men talking in groups, some with a newspaper in their hand. Everyone seemed to be full of smiles and walking that little bit taller, the Cretan stride a good deal longer, heads held higher with ever more pride and arrogance. Larry approached a table where Max was having his breakfast with Katzakis the grocer, the baker, and Elefherakis. ‘What’s all the excitement?’

‘Manoussos has pulled it off, busted an international art-smuggling ring. Arrested them with the goods just before they were out of Greek territorial waters. It’s in all the Greek papers,’ Max told him.

Elefherakis continued translating from Greek into English. Larry took a seat, called for the waiter and ordered his breakfast. He listened. It seemed to the experienced Larry to have been a seriously big and dangerous game Manoussos had been playing and he had won out by not only catching his thieves but breaking the smuggling ring right to the top, with named ring leaders in
London, Paris and New York. He marvelled at Manoussos Stavrolakis, how he had stalked his prey for months and months from Crete. The trap he had set had been brilliant. How Larry would have liked to have him at Martin & Snell!

‘Chadwick, has she heard the news?’

‘No one has seen her this morning. I can’t believe Manoussos hasn’t called her and told her. Will you give her a call and tell her, Larry? I have to rush off on an errand to Chania, a surprise for D’Arcy.’

‘I’ll do better than that. Tell me how to get to her house and I’ll go and tell her and take a newspaper.’

‘Great idea.’

Max gave explicit instructions after which Larry asked if he could walk with him round the cliffs to the bay where Max kept his plane. It was during that walk that he asked Max to find him a property to buy in Livakia. They discussed it at length and Larry appreciated Max’s enthusiasm over his decision to settle in Livakia. The men shook hands and a new kind of excitement, the reality of his decision, caused Larry a new kind of happiness with himself.

Half an hour later he was knocking at the gate of Edgar Marion and Bill Withers’s house where Chadwick was living. He was still breathless from the steep climb and leaning against the white-washed wall surrounding the house when she opened the gate. He wondered as he looked at her standing there, the sun behind her, showing the outline of her body through the cream-coloured silk sarong wrapped around her, if his heart would always race at the sight of her. He thought it would until the end of his days.

‘You’re a surprise!’ she told him with a welcoming smile.

‘And very out of breath.’

‘Come in,’ she laughed, and the sound of bells in her laughter made him adore her even more than he already did, though it did nothing to deter his resolve.

‘I’ve come with the newspapers, they’re about Manoussos. Have you heard?’

‘He called me at about two in the morning – isn’t it thrilling? I
should be seeing him in time for a late lunch. He was of course short on the details but clearly thrilled at the success of the operation. It’s strange that you should have made the climb to tell me about the capture of those men because Manoussos suggested I see you this morning, spend some time with you before we met. That we get a boat to take us to Sfakia where he will meet us for a celebration feast. You will come?’

Chadwick had her arm through Larry’s. They walked up the terraces to a table and chairs where she sat him down. ‘You will?’ she repeated as she took the paper from his hands and sat opposite him and began reading.

It was several minutes before she realised he had not answered her. She put the paper down and gazed into his eyes. He imagined she had realised that something was not quite right. ‘Yes, of course I will. Could I have a drink of something cool and not alcoholic?’ he asked.

He could see the relief come into her eyes, the glimmer of a smile cross her lips. She stood up. ‘How very stupid of me, of course.’

When she returned it was with a glass jug of iced pomegranate juice, sweetened with honey. It looked incredibly cool and refreshing with sprigs of bright green mint sprouting from the jug. She poured him a glass and placed a plate of slim vanilla wafers in front of him.

Chadwick caught him off guard when she didn’t pick up the paper again and asked nothing of what he had heard in the village about the arrest of the smugglers, but instead remarked, ‘You have your business suit on. You arrived in that suit and a Burberry slung casually over one shoulder.’

It sounded very nearly like an accusation, at the very least showed that she understood that something was amiss. All he could manage was, ‘Yes.’

Chadwick rose from her chair and walked to a retaining wall at the end of the terrace. She sat on its ledge and looked out across the water. It was several minutes before he carried his drink over to the wall and sat down facing her. She had her face tilted up to the sun, her eyes closed. The sarong had opened and one long,
tanned leg and a good deal of succulent thigh was exposed. He caressed her knee and she opened her eyes.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me something?’ he pressed.

‘What shall I ask you? Larry, why aren’t you wearing your cricket whites?’

‘Is that all you want to know about me?’ he asked, irritated with himself and not even knowing why that was.

‘I sense that if I do there will be things I don’t particularly want to hear.’

She gently removed his glass from his hand and drank from it. She handed it back to him and he placed it on the wall, stood up, and taking her hand, drew her from the wall to stand in front of him. He ran his fingers through her hair, caressed her naked shoulders and then kissed her full on the lips before he walked with her through the garden to sit with her on a bench under a large spreading fig tree.

‘I am the co-owner of a private detective firm called Martin & Snell. We almost never take on domestic cases, we’re big and very discreet. Chambers, Lodge, Dewy & Coggs hired us on behalf of their clients Diana Chase Ogden and Warren Chase to investigate you, the life you led with your husband Hannibal and the circumstances of his death, the life you are leading now. I know it all, Chadwick.’

Larry did not know what he had expected but it had been some reaction. There was none. ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Nothing?’

‘What do you want me to say, Larry? That I expected this, yes, expected the children were not ready to give up? That I’m shocked it’s you snooping into my private life? Well, I’m not. You had a job to do, you’ve done it. You say you know it all. I don’t know how true that is or is not, and does it matter anyway? Whatever you know it will not change my life, only Warren’s and Diana’s, and only then if they allow it to.’