The Jealousy Man and Other Stories Read online

‘What can you do?’

  I looked around. Picked up a grey stone from the ground and pressed it into his hands. ‘You squeeze that. Imagine that it’s drawing all the pain out of you.’

  * * *

  —

  The bolt cutters arrived and Julian was taken away.

  I called Helena and gave her the news that Julian had been found alive. As we were talking it struck me that never before had I, as a detective, broken the news to someone that a loved one had been found alive. But Helena’s reaction wasn’t dissimilar to what usually happened when I broke the news of a death: a few seconds silence while the brain probably searched for the reason for this misunderstanding, the reason why this couldn’t possibly be true. And then – not finding one – the tears as the reality of the situation dawned on them. Even those who in time turned out to be the jealous guilty party would start to cry, often more disconsolate than the shocked innocent. But Helena’s tears were different. They were tears of joy. A sunlit downpour. It stirred something within me, some vague memory, and I felt a lump in my throat. And as she sobbed her gratitude I had to cough in order to keep my voice steady.

  In the afternoon, when I arrived at the hospital in Pothia, Helena was by the bedside and holding the hand of a Julian who was already looking better. Helena seemed to assume it was my razor-sharp intelligence that was responsible for his being saved. I didn’t mention that it was probably my lack of imagination that meant he almost died.

  I asked for a few words alone with Julian, and Helena grabbed my hand and kissed it before she left us.

  Julian’s account of the sequence of events was pretty much what I had been expecting.

  On the way to hospital after the fight in the bar the quarrel with Franz flared up again. ‘I lied,’ said Julian. ‘I said I had talked to Helena and told her everything, and she forgave me and told me she loved me. That he should just give up and forget about her as soon as he could. Yes, it was a lie, but I thought I would call Helena afterwards, and the result would in any case turn out to be the same. But Franz screamed that it was a lie, pulled in at the side of the road, opened the glove compartment and took out the pistol he had bought in Pothia.’

  ‘Had you seen him like that before?’

  ‘I have seen him furious, and we have fought, but I have never seen him like that, never so…crazy.’ Julian’s eyes were bright. ‘But I don’t blame him. I had fallen in love with that girl because he had told me about her, shown me pictures, praised her and built her up to the skies. And I stole her. There’s no other way to put it. I betrayed them both, him and her. I would have done the same to him. No, I would have shot, I would have killed. Instead he forced me to drive to Chora and from there up to Palechora with a gun in my back. He had obviously had a look round when he was up here and found that cellar. And he chained me up there with the handcuffs he’d bought in Pothia.’

  ‘And then he left you to die?’

  ‘He said I could stay there until I rotted, then he left. Of course, I was terrified, but at that particular point in time I was more afraid for Helena than myself. Because he always came back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When we used to fight as kids he was always just that little bit stronger than me. Sometimes he would lock me up. In a room, or a cupboard. Once it was a chest. Said I would die there. But he always came back. He was so sorry, though of course he never showed it. And I was certain the same thing would happen this time too. Right up until about two or three days ago. I suddenly woke up and…’ He looked at me. ‘Well, I’m not the type that believes in spiritism, but from what me and Franz have experienced I’d be curious to find out what we know about telepathic communion between twins in a hundred years’ time. Whatever, I simply knew something had happened to Franz. And when the hours and days went by and he didn’t come back, I began to think I really was going to die there. You saved me, Mr Balli. I’ll be forever in your debt.’

  Julian extended a hand from under the duvet and took mine. I felt the stone I had given him pressed into my palm. ‘In case you too should ever feel pain,’ he said.

  In the hospital corridor on the way out Helena stopped me and asked if she might invite me to dinner at their restaurant. I thanked her but explained that I was taking the last evening flight out of Kos.

  It left me with a couple of hours left to kill before the ferry so I accompanied Christine to Julian’s room in Massouri to fetch his clothes.

  I stood in the street by the police car and watched the lovely sunset behind Telendos while Christine was inside the house. An elderly woman in a flowery dress carrying bags of shopping limped by and stopped.

  ‘I hear you found one of the twins,’ she said. ‘The nice one.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘I do the cleaning and make the beds every morning at nine.’ She nodded towards the house. ‘Most of them have gone off climbing by then, but sometimes I woke the two of them. One was always grumpy, the other one just smiled and laughed and said I could come back and do it tomorrow. Julian, that was the nice one’s name. I never found out what the other one was called.’

  ‘Franz.’

  ‘Franz.’ She savoured the name.

  ‘It’s German,’ I said.

  ‘Well, apart from that Julian I don’t like Germans. They screwed us during the war and they’re screwing us again now. Treat us like we’re bad tenants in their Europe who haven’t paid the rent in a while.’

  ‘Not a bad image,’ I said, thinking as much of my own native country as of Germany.

  ‘They act like they’ve changed,’ she scoffed. ‘A woman leader and all that stuff. But they’re Nazis and they always will be.’ She shook her head. ‘One morning I saw handcuffs on the bedside table. No idea what that Franz used them for, something fascist I expect. Is he dead?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Probably. Almost definitely.’

  ‘Almost?’ She looked at me, still a trace of that contempt for all Germans in her face. ‘Isn’t it the police’s job to know?’

  ‘Yes it is,’ I said. ‘And we know nothing.’

  She waddled away, and I heard laughter from the other side of the road.

  I turned and there, sitting on a veranda beneath a cypress tree, sat Victoria with her feet on the railings and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

  ‘You get screwed?’ she said with a laugh, puffing out smoke into the still dusk.

  ‘You understand Greek?’

  ‘No, but I understand body language.’ With a slow, languorous gesture she tapped ash from her cigarette. ‘Don’t you?’

  I thought of the night. I sobered up in the course of those hours. It was good. We were good to each other. A bit mean, but mostly good. ‘Yes I do, I do.’

  ‘See you later in the bar?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m flying to Athens tonight.’

  ‘Like a visit?’

  From the look on her face I realised the question had just popped out. And she understood – or misunderstood – my hesitation in replying.

  ‘Forget it.’ She laughed again, and drew hard on her cigarette. ‘You’re married with kids and a dog in Athens. You don’t want trouble and you won’t get any.’

  I realised she hadn’t asked anything about my life now, and that I had spoken about the only thing that mattered to me: the past.

  ‘I’m not all that afraid of trouble,’ I said. ‘But I’m old. Whereas you’ve got your whole life in front of you.’

  ‘Yep, I’m a better deal for you than you would have been for me.’

  ‘I would have ended up ahead,’ I said and smiled.

  ‘Adio again, Nikos.’

  ‘Adio again, Monique.’

  Not until I got into the car did I realise my slip of the tongue.

  * * *

  —

  It was gone midnight by the time I let myself in
to my flat.

  ‘I’m home,’ I called out into the dark, dropped my bag onto the floor, went to the kitchen section of the big, open-plan room with its glass walls and its views of Kolonaki, one of the more fashionable districts of central Athens.

  Took out the little box I had in my pocket, opened it and looked at the grey stone lying inside, like a jewel in a goldsmith’s box.

  I got a glass, opened the fridge, and the light fell across the parquet floor and reached across to the bookshelves and the heavy teak writing desk with the big Apple screen.

  Inherited money.

  I filled the glass with the freshly pressed juice my housekeeper makes, crossed to the computer and touched the keyboard. A big picture of three young people in front of a rock face in the Lake District appeared.

  I clicked on the icons and checked the websites of the largest newspapers. All of them had extensive covering of developments in the Kalymnos murder case. My name didn’t appear in any of them. Good.

  I kissed my index finger and placed it on the cheek of the girl between the two boys on the screen and said aloud that now I was off to bed.

  In the bedroom I put the box with the grey stone on the shelf above the bed, next to the other stone that lay there. The bed was so big and empty, the silk sheets looked so chilly that as I lay down I had the feeling I was about to swim out to sea.

  * * *

  —

  Two weeks later I received a phone call from George Kostopoulos.

  ‘A body’s been found in the sea not far from the beach where Franz disappeared,’ he said. ‘Or actually, on land – the body was speared on one of the rocks where the waves break. It’s exposed and people don’t go there much, but it looks as though someone has started climbing along a route fifty or sixty metres above the rocks and fallen. A climber called it in.’

  ‘I think I know where it is,’ I said. ‘Has the body been identified?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s so badly smashed up from lying there that I’m surprised the climber was even able to recognise it as human. My own first impression was that it was a dead dolphin. Skin, face, ears, sexual organs, all gone. But there’s a hole in the skull that can hardly be anything but a bullet-hole.’

  ‘It could still be a refugee from a boat.’

  ‘I know, we had a few washed up here last year, but I doubt it. I’ve sent a DNA sample from the body, so we’ll get the answer in a couple of days. I was just wondering…’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘If it matches the DNA profile from the saliva sample we took from Franz Schmid’s water glass, what do we say?’

  ‘We say we have made a positive identification.’

  ‘But remember, we got that DNA through a…in an unauthorised manner.’

  ‘Oh? As far as I remember we asked Franz Schmid and he gave it to us of his own free will.’

  It was silent at the other end.

  ‘Is that the way…’ he began.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s the way we do it in Athens.’

  * * *

  —

  The results arrived three days later.

  According to the report, the DNA from the human remains on the rocks matched that voluntarily given to detectives by Franz Schmid in Pothia. My name was not mentioned.

  I held the phone below the tablecloth as I read the news in order not to distract the woman who was in the process of telling me that she believed her husband’s overdose must have been because he’d got his heart pills and his other medication mixed up, maybe because he was so confused by the young trainee at work he was planning to leave his family for.

  I stifled a yawn and thought about that climbing route out there south of the beach. I had obtained a copy of the climbers’ guide to Kalymnos and discovered that the route was called Where Eagles Dare, grade 7b. Even in the picture it looked fantastic. If I was ever going to get in good enough shape to climb it, it would take training and I would need to lose a few kilos. And for me to have time for that people would either have to take a break from killing each other, or else I would have to take a break. A long one.

  Five Years Later

  I looked out of the plane window. The island beneath was unchanged. A yellow block of limestone dropped into the sea by Poseidon to make the earth tremble.

  But the skies were clouded over.

  The weather was less stable in spring, the taxi driver told me on my way into Emporio, I would do better to come in the autumn. I smiled as I looked at the oleander bushes in full bloom on the hillsides and breathed in the scent of thyme.

  Helena and Julian were standing on the steps of the restaurant with little Ferdinand as I emerged from the taxi. Julian smiled broadly while Helena embraced me as though she would never let go. We had exchanged emails regularly, by which I mean she told me how things were going, and I read her messages. Read the way I listened, and replied briefly, mostly follow-up questions, as was my habit when in conversation.

  It hadn’t been easy in the beginning, she wrote. Julian was more affected by what had happened than was initially apparent. After the euphoria of being rescued and being back with her had passed he became dark, closed-off and difficult, a different man from the one she had fallen in love with, it seemed to her. And he spoke so much of his brother. He excused Franz. It seemed important to Julian that she, and her parents too, should understand that Franz wasn’t evil, he had simply been very, very much in love.

  In fact it got so bad she was thinking about leaving him, until something happened that changed everything: she had become pregnant.

  And from that day on it was as though Julian had woken up and become again the Julian she could scarcely remember now from the single night they had spent together before he went missing. Happy, good, kind, warm, loving. Maybe he never became quite as full of life and crazy as she remembered from that night, but what of it? Don’t all women think their husbands were a little more exciting in the early days? And what more can one ask of a man than that he is faithful, loving, and works hard for the family? Even Helena’s father had to admit that she had got a husband who was a hard worker and reliable, someone he could safely hand the restaurant on to when that time came.

  According to Helena, Julian had cried like a child himself on Ferdinand’s arrival. Like his father the boy radiated love. ‘Like some kind of heater,’ she wrote. ‘And when the winter storms batter Kalymnos you couldn’t wish for anything better.’

  ‘So you think you’re ready for Where Eagles Dare,’ said a smiling Julian once I was installed in my room and we were seated at lunch in the restaurant. Grilled octopus. It was their speciality, and it really did taste fabulous. I noticed that Julian didn’t eat it and wondered if it might have something to do with the myth that octopuses feeds on corpses. Not a myth, of course. Every creature in the sea feeds on the drowned when the chance comes along.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But at least I’ve done a little climbing on the crags around Athens.’

  ‘Then we’ll start out early tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘It’s an extremely long route,’ I said. ‘Forty metres.’

  ‘No problem, I have an eighty-metre rope lying around somewhere.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  The ringtone on his phone played. He was about to take the call when he stopped and looked at me.

  ‘You look so pale, Nikos? Is everything OK?’

  ‘Of course,’ I lied, and managed to return his smile. My stomach was twisting, and I could feel the sweat breaking out all over my body. ‘Take the call.’

  He gave me a long, searching look. He perhaps thought it was the height of the route that had caused my reaction.

  He picked up the phone and finally the tune stopped playing.

  Whole Lotta Love.

  Same thing as usual. The song not only took me forty years back in time, to a tree in a yard in
Oxford, it actually made me feel physically ill.

  Julian must have realised it wasn’t the climbing. ‘Didn’t you like the music?’ he asked once his call was finished.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said, and laughed now that I had had time to compose myself. ‘But I thought you didn’t like Led Zeppelin. I seem to remember you had something a bit softer on your phone.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes, some Ed something. Ed Cheap. Ed Sheep…’

  ‘Ed Sheeran!’ cried Helena.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said and looked at Julian.

  ‘I love Sheeran,’ said Helena.

  ‘How about you, Julian?’

  Julian Schmid raised his glass of water. ‘It’s quite possible to like both Zeppelin and Sheeran.’

  He drank for a long time without taking his eyes off me.

  ‘I just thought of something,’ he said when finally he put his glass down again. ‘The weather forecast for tomorrow says there might be rain, it’s actually impossible to know whether the cloud fronts round here are going to hit the island or not. Even though the route is overhanging, the wind will drive in so much rain that the wall will get soaked, so why don’t we head out there now? You’re here for such a short time, this way we can be sure you’ll be able to have a crack at it before you have to leave.’

  ‘Yes, it would be a real bore for you to have come all this way just to see me and Ferdinand,’ said Helena.

  I smiled.

  We finished the meal and I went up to my room to get ready. As I packed my climbing gear, through the window I could see Julian playing with Ferdinand. The boy ran laughing around his father, and each time Julian grabbed hold of him and swung him round so that his little blue-and-white cap fell off the boy shrieked with joy. It was like a dance. Not a dance I had ever danced with my own father. Or had I? If so I had forgotten it.

  * * *

  —

  ‘Excited?’ asked Julian as we parked after our silent drive out to the spot where we had found Franz’s car.