The Lost Labyrinth (23 page)

The doorbell sounded at that moment. Olympia, no doubt. He’d known she’d turn up eventually. Whores like her couldn’t help themselves. He went to let her in, but found instead a teenager with lank brown hair sitting astride a moped. ‘Michael Nergadze?’ he asked, holding up a brown paper bag. ‘I’ve got a delivery.’

‘Who from?’

‘A man.’ The kid gestured vaguely over his shoulder. ‘He didn’t give his name. Just this bag and twenty euros.’

‘I’m Nergadze,’ Mikhail told him.

‘If you say so,’ said the kid.

The bag was stapled closed. Mikhail ripped it open and pulled out a pay-as-you-go mobile. ‘You can go now,’ he told the delivery boy.

‘What about a tip?’

‘I said you can go.’ He waited until he was out of sight before turning on the mobile. It searched for and found a signal, then beeped to alert him to a message. It turned out to be a telephone number. He called it. ‘You don’t know me,’ said a man, answering almost instantly. ‘I was in that Volvo earlier.’

The fear in his voice was gratifying to Mikhail. ‘You followed me,’ he said.

‘It was the woman. I didn’t know what she was up to, I swear I didn’t. She said you were her husband.’

‘Who is she?’

‘All she said was Nadya. She found me through my website, yesterday. She asked me to tail you guys from the airport when you arrived, so I did. It’s what I do. Divorces, I mean. Not this kind of shit. And then this morning I collected her from the airport. But that’s all.’

‘Describe her to me.’

‘I can’t. I swear I can’t. She wore a scarf and glasses the whole time. All I know is she’s maybe forty, short, thin, pale skin. And she has a slight limp when she walks.’

‘Which side?’

A pause. ‘Her right, I think. But you know how it is with limps. Both legs go funny. But the thing is, I know which hotel she’s staying at.’

‘And?’

‘You won’t come after me?’ pleaded the man. ‘Promise you won’t come after me.’

‘We won’t come after you,’ said Mikhail. ‘Not if your information is good.’

‘She’s at the Acropolis View. It’s in Plaka.’ Then he added vengefully: ‘Stupid bitch thought she could switch on me.’

‘What about the man you picked up?’

‘I dropped him off outside Sepolia. I think she arranged to meet him again, but I can’t swear to it, they were talking French.’

‘Thanks,’ said Mikhail. ‘Now keep your mouth shut and get out of town.’

‘I’m on my way.’

‘If I should ever see or hear of you again…’

‘You won’t. I swear you won’t.’

Mikhail ended the call then stood there brooding. He was curious about this woman in her own right, and she also seemed his best way of finding Knox. She’d seen the black Mercedes earlier, however, and his Ferrari was hardly the most discreet of vehicles. He went back inside, beckoned to Zaal. ‘Get me a van,’ he told him. ‘Nothing flashy; just make sure it’s roomy and private in the back.’

‘Yes, boss,’ said Zaal.

A woman called Nadya who walked with a slight limp and who’d flown all the way from Georgia to track him down. He felt, for a moment,
a mild but pleasurable buzz. Life was getting interesting.

Antonius was hanging from a short noose tied to the base of the banisters above, his feet dangling just an inch or two from the bottom step, as though he could reach it if he just stretched out his toes. But of course he’d be doing no such thing ever again. Knox had seen death before, but nothing quite this ugly. He was an old man, and thin. Rigor mortis was already making grotesque contortions of his limbs and rucking up the sleeves of his blue jacket. There was a bulge in his grey trousers from a post-mortem erection, and his feet were so badly swollen that the laces on one of his scuffed black shoes had actually popped, while the other merely bulged like a joint of sirloin wrapped in string. A folded sheet of note-paper lay on the second bottom step. Knox lifted the flap carefully with his fingernail, just enough to read the scrawled message upon it. A simple and direct expression of regret, exactly what you’d expect. But with Petitier so recently dead, and a clear connection to Mikhail Nergadze, not entirely convincing.

Knox’s heart sank, partly in sympathy for Antonius, but also—less commendably—because
of the fix he now found himself in. He couldn’t just leave the poor old sod hanging there, but he dared not cut him down either, in case this proved to be a crime scene. And if he notified his new friends in the Athens police, they’d doubtless use his presence here to throw more muck at him. He needed an intermediary.

The noises started up again next door, making it impossible to think. He left the way he’d come in, through the gate and a little way down the street, then called Charissa on his mobile and filled her in on his day so far, on Nergadze and Nadya and now Antonius. ‘Good grief!’ she muttered when he’d finished. ‘Things certainly happen around you, don’t they?’

‘I think I’m beginning to see it,’ he told her. ‘Your brother-in-law emailed photographs of the seals to a lot of people, including Antonius. He must have deciphered them himself and realised the implication. He’s been struggling for money. I mean
really
struggling. So he tried to find people who’d pay for the information. Unfortunately, he went to a family called the Nergadzes.’

‘This man you met earlier?’

‘He’s one of them, yes.’

‘And you think they murdered him?’

‘There has to be a chance.’

‘Good Christ!’ muttered Charissa.

‘Will you call the police for me?’ he asked. ‘I
don’t fancy having to explain another death to them. And you’d better let Nico know too. Antonius was his friend.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ she promised. ‘And look after yourself.’

‘You know it,’ he assured her.

The escarpment wall was so steep that Gaille felt queasy even where the path was relatively wide and the footing secure. But it wasn’t all like that. Several sections were so treacherous with shale that she had to get down onto her backside and slide across. They came across a goat lying down on its haunches. It seemed to be sleeping, except for the trickle of blood from its mouth, the flies settling on it that scattered in a cloud as they approached. It did little for her confidence that even goats could fall and kill themselves on these cliffs. She looked squeamishly away as she stepped over it. But even that was nothing like as bad as when they came across a shrub growing sideways out of a crevice in the cliff-face, blocking most of the path. Iain simply grabbed it and swung himself around, as if oblivious to the toe-curling drop yawning beneath him. ‘Piece of piss,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I can’t,’ she said.

‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘If it will take me with my pack on, it’ll take you for sure.’

‘There has to be another path,’ she said. ‘Petitier can’t have brought a mule down this.’

‘Well, this is the path we’re on.’ He reached out for her. ‘Here. I won’t let you fall, I promise.’

She hesitated a moment more, then reached out and took his hand. His skin was dry and rough, but his grip was strong and reassuring. She took hold of the shrub with her other hand and swung herself around to the other side.

His eyes twinkled as he let her go. ‘See,’ he said.

‘I just don’t like heights. That’s all.’

‘I know.’ He looked at the path ahead. ‘But we’d better push on. This is taking longer than I thought.’

‘I’m doing my best.’

‘I know you are.’ He turned and marched on down. The going thankfully grew easier. The sun nuzzled the western hills as they reached the foot of the escarpment; daylight subsided into dusk. They passed through a thin fringe of walnut trees out into the fertile heart of the plateau, fields separated by tumbledown stone walls, mottled by moss and lichen: vines, barley, tomatoes, groves of orange and lemon trees with their lush green leaves and young fruit glittering like exquisite jewels. Her legs were almost done, however, so it
was an immense relief when, through the gathering darkness, she glimpsed the house ahead.

The dog came out of nowhere. It must have been asleep until they were almost upon it. But then it sprang to its feet and charged, a huge black-and-tawny German shepherd hurtling across the broken ground, its eyes fixed upon her. Iain didn’t hesitate, he simply turned and fled, leaving Gaille to face it all by herself. She gave a piercing shriek of terror and threw up her arms to protect her throat and face as it bunched its muscles and leapt at her with open slavering jaws.

Night had fallen in Athens. The beautiful people had come out onto the streets. Pretty girls chattered into fashionably thin mobiles, while young men in leather jackets sat astride their fat motorbikes and roared their engines in approval, like bull moose in the rutting season.

Knox grabbed a chicken gyros at a fast-food restaurant and ate it standing up at one of their tables, hot juices trickling down his chin and forearm. What now? He dared not visit Augustin, lest the Nergadzes or the police be waiting; but he needed to let Claire know what had been going on, and find out the latest about his French friend too. He called the hospital, was put through to intensive care. ‘He’s still asleep,’ Claire told him, when she came to the phone.
‘But that’s as expected. They’ve put him into a coma to stop the brain swelling. It’s helped, I think. And his scans aren’t as bad as they might have been. No fragments in his brain tissue, which is the main thing, so no immediate need for surgery.’

‘That’s terrific,’ said Knox.

‘He’s not better yet,’ she warned, trying to tamp down her own hopes, as well as his.

‘Maybe not. But it’s where getting better begins.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Listen, Claire,’ he said. ‘There’s some stuff you need to know.’ He told her about Gaille flying to Crete, about his talk, about Antonius, Nadya and the Nergadzes. He warned her to be vigilant, and not to leave the hospital unless she had to.

She seemed a little stunned when he was finished, as though she hadn’t realised the world was still spinning outside the ICU. ‘Daniel,’ she said. ‘I said some things last night…’

‘Forget it.’

‘I was upset. I didn’t really mean anything.’

‘I know that.’

‘You won’t tell Augustin, will you? When he recovers, I mean?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Only he’d never forgive me.’

‘Are you kidding me, Claire? He’d forgive you anything. Besides, you were right. I should have
been quicker. It was just such a blur, you know? I couldn’t believe it was happening.’

‘I know.’

He felt better once he’d finished the call. Energised. But to what purpose? He needed to sit down and think things through, make assessments and plans. His hotel was out. Nergadze knew he was staying there. He’d seen a 24-hour Internet café earlier, lit up like an amusement arcade, war noises pouring out, computer-gamers saving their electronic worlds. He walked back to it, took a booth in the shadows from which he could keep an eye on the door, then brought up a browser and began researching the Nergadzes. The more he learned, the more dismayed he grew. Their power, their obscene wealth, their flagrant flouting of the law. Pictures of them outside their castle and their Tbilisi mansion, boarding their private jet, arriving by helicopter upon their super-yacht.

But while Ilya and several other Nergadze men were very public figures, Nadya was right about how elusive Mikhail was. It was for a lack of better ideas that he decided to play around with alternate spellings. To his surprise, when he tried ‘Michael Nergadse’, he got a major pay-off, hundreds of links to Florida newspapers and blogs reporting on a recent tragedy.

Arrest in missing schoolgirl case

A 29-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the disappearance of Fort Lauderdale schoolgirl Connie Ford. The 13-year-old, who hasn’t been heard from for over six weeks, was last seen waiting for a bus in Oakland Park.

The arrested man, Michael Nergadse, is a native of the Republic of Georgia. He has been studying for an MBA at Florida State University for better than two years, though fellow students claim not to have seen him for weeks. Nergadse is also being linked with a separate incident earlier on that same day, when he is believed to have tried to persuade a different schoolgirl into his car, but drove off when a passing DHL courier noticed her distress and stopped to ask if she needed help.

Missing schoolgirl case: suspect released

Michael Nergadse, the man arrested last month in connection with the disappearance of 13-year-old Fort Lauderdale native Connie Ford, has been released from Broward County Jail without charge. Frustrated officials cited lack of evidence sufficient to secure a conviction—a situation not expected to change unless missing victim Connie Ford is found.

Nergadse’s lawyer has promised to vigorously fight any attempt to revoke his visa or have him deported, but confirms his client intends to leave the country voluntarily. ‘I have a fourteen-year-old daughter myself,’ said one assistant district attorney, when asked what he thought of Nergadse. ‘I won’t be letting her out of my sight until this monster’s out of the country.’

Psychologist suicide

Criminal psychologist Suzanne Mansfield was found hanged in her Fort Lauderdale apartment Sunday. She was thirty-one years old. Police sources say that there are no suspicious circumstances, and they are not seeking anyone else in connection with her death.

Mansfield had apparently been in low spirits since the failed search for missing teen Connie Ford, and the collapse of the case against Michael Nergadse, the police’s onetime prime suspect. ‘She was sick at the thought of him walking free,’ former colleague Mitch Baird told this reporter. ‘She was convinced he’d strike again. She blamed herself for not getting him to confess, but we’re criminal psychologists, not miracle workers.’

Not everyone believes Mansfield killed herself, however. ‘She wasn’t the kind,’ insisted one neighbor. ‘It was contrary to her faith, to everything she believed. And I saw her earlier that same afternoon. She was cheerful, not depressed. She’d just seen those gorgeous flame azaleas over on Jackson, and was really excited to plant some herself. Does that sound like someone planning to kill themselves?’