The Whispers of Nemesis (16 page)

The phone rang.

She ran to the study, and picked up the receiver.

‘
Oriste?
'

No one answered.

‘Speak!' insisted Frona. ‘Who is this? Speak!'

But no voice spoke, though there was breathing on the line, controlled and quiet.

Intently, Frona listened, as if she might tell from the breathing whether the caller was man, or woman.

‘Speak!' she demanded, again; but the caller replaced the receiver, and the line went dead.

 

Leda's sleep, that night, was restless, her dreams peopled with sinister figures who pursued, and then eluded her; she hurried through dense pine forests on indistinct paths, encountering time and again a tall, well-dressed man she felt she'd met, and yet could not recall, who followed her down a road she didn't know, and had no wish to travel.

The ringing phone woke her. Her room was bright with morning; the bedside clock showed after nine.

The phone rang on, and Frona – already walking to the village – was not there to answer.

The phone rang, and rang. Leda closed her eyes, determined to leave it; then the caller's persistence concerned her, and she sat up in her bed, ready to answer. As she threw off the blankets, the ringing stopped.

In slippers and robe, she went yawning to the kitchen, where she took a cup down from the shelf, and dropped a sprig of sage into the
kafebriko
to make tea. With the last match in the box, she lit the gas.

The phone rang again.

But in the study, hand over the receiver, she hesitated: the memory of her dreams made her afraid, that someone – something – malevolent was on the line, and in the cold, she shivered.

The misgiving passed, and she picked up the receiver.

‘
Embros?
'

No one spoke.

Leda listened. Beneath the apparent silence, were the small sounds of someone's breathing.

‘Who is this?' she asked. Still no one spoke, and, frowning, she lowered the receiver towards its cradle; but as she was about to cut the call, she heard a voice.

She put the receiver back to her ear.

‘
Oriste?
' she said.

‘Leda,' said the voice.

 

The outlying churches and chapels had been neglected during the snow; so, when the road was safely passable and held no danger of slipping to old, slow-healing bones, a widow with a pricking conscience (and the intention to ask for help with a misplaced bank book) set out to light the candles at St Fanourios.

The warmth of kinder winds was doing its work, and on the road, the snow was all but gone, except for the deepest of the plough-raised banks.

The widow intended first to light the lamp over the glass-fronted shrine of skulls, who greeted her with their macabre grins of welcome. She struck a match; and as its flame flared, a spitting piece of phosphorous flew up. To avoid it, she turned her face away, and as she did so, her eye was caught by an object in a melting snow-bank.

She thought, at first, she was mistaken. She dropped the match, and moved closer to investigate.

There was no doubt of what she had found.

She made no close examination of her discovery, but called, ashen-faced, on the saint whose service she must now neglect, and hurried, almost running, down the road, through the village to the
kafenion
, from where a priest and a policeman might be called.

The men, at first, smiled behind their hands in disbelief and refused to accept her story; but when her tears began, the patron went to the phone. He dialled the number for the police, as she told them again what she had seen: a limb, the lower part of a leg, and a man's foot with the shoe still on it, his trousers soaking wet with melting snow.

 

Midday, and the sunshine had brought the first bees from their hives. A grey police car drew up in the yard of the poet's house; the two officers who climbed out slammed the doors, and put on the berets they pulled from their shoulder-tabs. As they approached the house door, their blouson jackets swung open to show holstered handguns.

Under a bush, a watchful cat crouched.

By daylight, the old place's many flaws were plain; the drainpipe hanging loose from the wall, the untidiness of the overgrown garden, the dirtiness of the unwashed windows, all showed the owner's neglect. The policemen took up positions on either side of the doorway, matching each other's manly stances: feet apart, hands clasped over the groin.

‘What a dump,' said the younger man, a recent recruit, called for the first time to perform this duty. ‘How do they live in a hole like this?'

His colleague was a veteran of the cities; he'd worked the squalid brothels and the dope dens, cleared out the dross from filthy squats, uncovered bloated corpses on the wastelands.

‘If this is the worst you ever see, you'll die a happy man,' he said, and rapped on the front door. In the pine trees, a jay cackled. The policemen listened; across bare tiles, footsteps approached them.

Leda opened the door, and the policemen moved forward to stand shoulder to shoulder before her. Seeing a pretty face, the younger man started to smile at his good fortune, then recalled the reason for their visit and assumed a serious expression, though his body betrayed his true thoughts with a blush which spread from neck to cheeks.

‘
Kali mera sas
,' said the senior man, respectfully.

‘
Kali mera
,' replied Leda.

‘
Kyria
Kalaki?' he asked, though he knew full well she wasn't; he'd asked about the house's occupants in the village.

‘
Despina
Volakis,' said Leda. ‘
Kyria
Kalaki is my aunt.'

‘Is your aunt here?' asked the policeman.

‘She's gone visiting,' said Leda. ‘There's only me in the house.'

‘No one else here at all?'

Leda's expression grew puzzled.

‘Only Maria. Can I ask your business here?'

She looked from one policeman to the other; the younger man, in spite of himself, flashed her a smile.

‘Please, fetch this Maria,' said the senior man. ‘And perhaps we could come inside.'

Leda frowned.

‘What's this about?' she asked. ‘Has something happened to Frona?'

‘Fetch Maria, please,' said the policeman, and as if entitled he took a step across the threshold, so Leda, persuaded by his confidence, moved back to let them pass.

The senior man stood at the centre of the hallway, whilst his companion, smiling abashedly, took up a position behind him.

‘Is this about Maria?' asked Leda. ‘Has she done something wrong?'

‘No, no, she's done nothing,' said the policeman. ‘If you wouldn't mind . . .'

Leda left them. The two men looked around the hallway, taking in the ornaments and artefacts – the watercolours and sepia photographs hung in old frames, the chess set carved from olive wood on the dowry chest, the tusked boar's head glowering from the wall. They waited. Somewhere, above the sounds of domesticity – rattling saucepans, an oven door closing – a clock ticked.

Leda brought Maria from the kitchen, the old woman wiping her hands dry on her housecoat.

‘I don't have time for policemen,' she was saying. ‘I haven't time to chat to anyone, in the middle of cooking. Don't offer them coffee, whatever you do. If you offer them coffee, they'll never go.'

Her voice was loud. When she realised the policemen had heard her every word, she fell silent, but seemed indifferent to any offence she might have caused.

‘Is there somewhere we can sit?' asked the senior officer, of Leda.

‘We'll go in my father's study,' she said and led the way, pointing the men to the old horsehair sofa, herself standing with Maria before the fire.

‘Perhaps you'd like to sit yourself,' said the policeman, indicating the poet's chair at the table.

‘I'll stand,' said Leda. ‘So, what's this about?'

The younger man cleared his throat and leaned forward over his knees, as if he were about to speak; but it was the senior man who said, ‘It's about your father.'

The younger man looked at his feet, afraid to meet Leda's eyes.

‘I'm afraid I have bad news,' said the senior man.

‘Bad news?'

The policeman was a little rattled. In his long experience, families had usually, by this stage, got the message; an unexpected visit from the police was, in many cases, message enough, and for those who resisted the implications of their presence, the request to take a seat confirmed the worst. Never had it been necessary to say the words; women moved directly to weeping and wailing, whilst men jumped to the ‘how' and ‘when'. But here, it seemed, he must be more explicit.

‘A body has been found,' he said, cautiously. He paused, certain of the onslaught now: the screaming, the tears, the damning or the invocation of God.

‘Yes?'

The young man, too, was puzzled, and lifted his head; the business was turning out much easier than he had thought.

‘Well,' said the senior man, awkwardly. ‘The body is that of your father, Santos Volakis.'

To the policemen's shock, Leda laughed.

‘I doubt it,' she said. ‘My father is already dead, and has been these four years.'

The policemen stared at her; the younger man blushed at what he assumed was their error, and prepared to rise, and leave.

But the older man gave a patronising smile.

‘I'm sorry,
despina
,' he said, quietly, ‘but there really is no doubt. We've heard an account of your father's exhumation, and we know his bones were not found in the grave. And it's my sad duty to tell you that we've now found a body we're quite certain is his.'

Leda's composure was fading; the colour was gone from her face, and she reached for Maria's hand, her own hand trembling.

‘What makes you sure it's him?' she asked, in a voice no more than a whisper.

‘He was carrying his identity card,' said the policeman. ‘He had all his papers with him. The body we've found – there's no doubt of it – is that of Santos Volakis. And we're here to ask you, if you feel able, to identify his remains.'

‘He's been alive?' whispered Leda. Maria squeezed her hand. ‘All this time, he's been alive?'

The policeman gave a small shrug.

‘It would seem so,' he said. ‘Until recently, at least.'

‘How recently?'

‘I couldn't say, exactly.'

‘No.' Leda shook her head. ‘No, no, no! It isn't him! It can't be!'

She turned to Maria, who hugged her to her chest, as Leda muffled her sobbing on Maria's shoulder.

‘You may bring Maria with you, if you wish,' said the policeman, more kindly. ‘We'll drive you there, of course, but we must go now. There's to be a post-mortem, and the van to collect the – remains – has already been despatched. An identification is needed to complete the paperwork, so we shouldn't delay too long. And there's something else; I'm sorry to have to tell you, but your father sustained some injuries before he died. It won't be an easy thing to do, and you must prepare yourself. With the age of the corpse and the injuries, identifying your father won't be a pleasant task.'

Twelve

In the police station at Polineri, a grey-haired man leaned on the unattended reception desk, and watched as the policemen led the women across the car park. Leda wore the black overcoat she had worn for her father's funeral, fetched in haste by Maria from one of the old wardrobes; with the sleeves too short and the fit too tight, the coat regressed her to the adolescent she had been on that occasion. The reek of camphor was in the fabric but had not deterred the moths; tiny holes peppered the shoulders and lapels, with pinpricks of satin lining showing through. Leda walked, head bowed and meek, behind the tall policemen; Maria followed close behind, clutching the handbag she used only for church.

Around the foyer's light-fitting, flies buzzed.

Pouched skin around the grey-haired man's eyes gave him the world-weariness of a bloodhound. He didn't offer his hand but gave the women a brusque bow of his head.

‘Ladies, thank you for coming,' he said. ‘I'm Inspector Pagounis, currently in charge of this station. May I assume you are
Despina
Volakis?'

‘I am,' said Leda.

Maria stood apprehensively behind her, holding on to her handbag as if she might be robbed.

‘You can wait,' said the inspector to the uniformed men. ‘These ladies will need a lift home. Twenty minutes, and they'll be ready to go.'