Hammond Innes: Levkas man

"What are you doing here? How did you get in? I saw the light. ." And then: "You had your keys, of course." And she added, the whole timbre of her voice changed, "There's nothing for you here, no money-nothing that would interest you." The nervousness was gone, cold anger in its place: "And if it's his Journal you're after, you won't find it. There's nothing for you here-nothing at all. They shouldn't have sent you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I stepped past her and thrust open the study door. "Come in here where we can talk." I wanted to see who she was, what she looked like.

"No. I'll go now." The nervousness was back in her voice. "I'd no idea it was you. I thought. ." But by then I had her by the arm and had pushed her through into the light. She was younger than I had expected, a plain-looking girl with large eyes and wet, straw-coloured hair cut like a boy's. She wore a plastic mac that dripped water.

"Now then," I said, closing the study door. "Let's start with your name."

She hesitated, then said, "Sonia Winters."

"English?"

"Half-English."

"How did you recognize me?"

"The photograph in his bedroom. Another in your old room."

"You don't look like a housekeeper."

She shook her head.

"Then why have you got the keys to the house?"

She didn't say anything, but just stood there, staring at me with hostile eyes, her breath coming quickly as though she had been running.

I was certain she wasn't a relative. I don't think he had any relatives-either he had alienated them or else they were all dead. And then I remembered the pile of opened letters on the desk. "You were acting as his secretary, is that it?"

"I did some typing for him. I live just across the canal. And then when he became ill I looked after him."

"When was that?"

"About three months ago."

"And you lived here?"

"For a week or two. It was pleurisy. He had to have someone to look after him."

"And where is he now?"

She hesitated. "Somewhere in Macedonia. I'm not sure where. He wouldn't think of writing to me. But my brother's with him and I had a card from Hans recently, posted at Skopje, which is in the south of Yugoslavia." She stared at me. "Why are you here? What have you come back for after all these years?"

"I need some money and a roof over my head."

"Well, there's no money here," she snapped. "The house is mortgaged, even the furniture, everything's sold that could be sold."

"You mean he's pawned the house to go looking for bones in Macedonia?"

That seemed to get her on the raw. "You don't understand him, do you?" she blazed. "You never did. He's one of the world's most brilliant palaeontologists and it means nothing to you. No wonder he spoke of you with contempt. You owed him everything-education, your upbringing, a roof over your head, even the food you ate, everything. And what did you do? Got yourself expelled, mixed with the riff-raff on the docks, stole, lied, beat people up, landed in jail …"

"You seem to know quite a lot about me."

"Yes, I do-and everything I've heard about you sickens

me. You left him like a thief in the night, and now you come back-"

"It wasn't all my fault," I said quietly. "He's a very strange man and he expected too much."

"You took everything-gave nothing. Of all the heartless, selfish people. . you didn't even answer his letters."

"I came to see him two years ago. But he was away. He always seemed to be away."

She sighed. "You could still have answered his letters. He was lonely. Didn't you realize that? No, I suppose not. You wouldn't understand what it's like to be alone in the world. But you could have written. That was the least you could have done." She gave a little shiver and drew her dripping mac tight to her body. "I'll go now. I can't stop you staying here, but I warn you, if I find anything missing, I'll call the police."

She was halfway through the doorway when I stopped her. "Have you any Dutch money on you?"

She turned, her eyes wide. And then after a moment she felt in the pocket of her slacks and produced a 20-guilder note from a purse. She seemed surprised when I offered her two pound notes in exchange. "No," she said quickly. "No, it's all right. I expect you need it." She looked at me speculatively for a moment, and then she was gone. I listened to her footsteps on the stairs, the sound of the front door closing, and from the window I watched as she crossed the bridge by the house barges and walked quickly down the other side of the canal, head bent against the rain and the lash of the wind. The house she entered was almost directly opposite.

It was unfortunate. She'd probably talk and I wondered what her father did. It would take time for them to trace me to Amsterdam, but it was dangerous and I'd need to move that bit faster. I switched out the light, put my raincoat on and went quickly down the stairs, cursing myself again for having involved myself in somebody else's troubles. I could still see the look on the man's face, the heavy jowls, the small eyes wide with sudden fear-bastards like that shouldn't be allowed to do their dirty political work in a free country.

I could have shipped out in a tanker that night. Stolk tipped me off in the Prins Hendrik by the Oosterdok. But it was bound for Libya, a quick turn-round and back to Amsterdam again. And anyway I was tired of ship routine. I had a feeling that this was a sort of crossroads in my life, that what I had done must lead me on to some new road. The sea was all I knew, but the sea is wide-Australia or South America, I thought. I wanted a new world, a new life. I was twenty-seven.

Dusk was falling, the night sky darkening over the Amstel river, when I finally found my way to Wilhelm Borg's shop on Amsteldijk. I hadn't seen him since the days when I'd been mixed up with his gang of dockside toughs. Quite a few Dutchmen had crossed my path in the five years that I had been at sea and Borg was reputed to handle anything from fake antiques to a lorry-load of Scotch. He had put on weight since I had seen him last. He looked prosperous now and the old oak furniture and brasswork in his shop were certainly not fakes.

He took me through into an office at the back, gave me a drink and listened while I talked. His round face was as innocent-looking as ever, but his eyes were colder. "You want a change, eh-something different. Why come to me?" He spoke Dutch with a Friesland accent. His family, I remembered, had been barge people from Delfzijl.

"Why does any man come to you?" I left it at that, not telling him I was on the run, but I think he guessed it.

I was talking to him for about half an hour before he said, "There are some things I want out of Turkey, collectors' pieces. You could be just the man."

"Smuggling?" I asked.

He smiled. "For you it would be just a pleasant little holiday. The sort of break I think perhaps you are needing. You charter a boat-out of Malta, I think-for a cruise in the Aegean. You go to Crete and Rhodes, behaving all the time like a tourist-eating in the tavernas, visiting the ruins of Knossos, the fortress of the Knights of St. John. And then you go north to Kos, possibly to Samos. Both these islands are very close to Turkey. It's not organized yet, but you will almost certainly be making delivery to my clients somewhere off the Tunisian coast." He lumbered to his feet. "Think about it, eh?"

It was something, the escape door opening. Dangerous probably, but I didn't care. The Eastern Mediterranean, full of islands-you could lose yourself there, change jobs, change a name. "How much?" I asked.

He laughed and patted my shoulder. "You make up your mind, then we talk business."

I got him to change one of the two fivers I had with me, and that was that. It wouldn't get me to Australia or South America, but it was something to fall back on if things went wrong. I went to the Bali and stuffed myself full of Indonesian food.