 |
|||
|
|
Chapter 4 : Moussaka and Chips
“You are cordially invited,” the card slipped under Freddie’s door had said. “To a celebratory dinner tonight at the Mermaid Café. Eight o’clock to whenever! Hope you can join us. Bethany and the Diggers.”
Appropriate venue, Freddie thought, given that he’d dubbed Bethany ‘the mermaid’ when he’d first seen her. He was happy to join them. It was obvious that they had found something and that meant they’d be staying for a while yet, which wasn’t at all convenient. He needed to decide what he was going to do about it.
The Mermaid Café was run by Stephanos, one of Alexander’s brothers. It backed directly on to the beach, a wooden building that stood up in spite of the years of neglect that had been heaped upon it. Stephanos didn’t go in for menu’s much, especially before the tourists started to arrive. In any case it was easy enough to tell what was on offer tonight. A large swordfish was draped across a table immediately inside the front door. It looked as if it had thrown itself out of the water only minutes before. As far as Stephanos was concerned it was inconceivable that you would want anything else but, if you should, a quick tour of the kitchen would reveal the available options.
Bethany and the others were already there. They had already started when Freddie arrived. Danni was leaning over the bar, chatting to Stephanos in a way that seemed calculated to arouse his passions on one hand while at the same time fending him off effectively. Freddie could see Stephanos was finding it irritating. The archaeologists had grabbed a table inside It was still too cool in the evenings to eat on the beach. The television over the bar was showing the inevitable football match. It depressed Freddie. He could remember when scratchy rock and roll records were the entertainment here. He thought back to the skinny Canadian singer with the strange voice that had picked out songs on the guitar she carried everywhere. Was it really more than thirty years ago? He remembered the fights that had started with Carey when some of the lads had tried to drown her out. And he remembered being puzzled, when the album came out, that she had set it in Crete. Freddie had never been keen on Matala but he guessed that it must have seemed more “credible”; the hippy colony had its reputation even then.
No music now, he gloomed, just football. Somehow the antics of Panathinaikos, Olympiakos and the rest didn’t match up.
Two grizzled old men were sitting on the far side of the restaurant, slapping down counters in a game of backgammon. They were almost always there. Freddie guessed that they were related to Stephanos and Alexander in some way but he didn’t really know how. There was one other, the guy that drove the truck from the quarry. He sat watching the game.
They were all smoking. The smell of the tobacco drifted across the room. Stacey looked shocked. Freddie didn’t mind. Since he’d given up cigarettes, down-streaming others was the only tobacco fix he got and now that it had been banned in most public places it was getting harder and harder to indulge his second-hand pleasure.
Bethany’s smile was welcoming. Danni, who had already put away a couple of large ouzos if Freddie was any judge, was even more encouraging. “Mr Clegg,” she called, as she abandoned Stephanos in favour of Freddie, “come and sit with me.”
Freddie felt his mood lift and, never one to pass up an invitation of that kind, obliged. “You all seem very happy,” he said.
“And it’s all down to me!” Danni exclaimed, throwing her arms around Freddie.
Freddie did nothing to discourage her but looked across at Bethany. “Well, not quite all,” she said. “But the radar survey was a clincher.”
Alexander’s sister, Andrea, emerged from the kitchen and came to take their order. She seemed to move from the bar to the restaurant or to Stephanos’s car hire office or to wherever she was needed. Tonight she was the waitress in the Mermaid Café.
Bethany went for the swordfish. Stacey wondered if there was some sort of vegetarian option before, in the face of complete non-comprehension from Andrea, opting for moussaka. The other girls asked for steak. That was a bad idea in Freddie’s view. They must know there was no sign of a cow anywhere nearby, or even on the island come to that. At best it would be fresh from the freezer. At worst it would just be from the freezer. Freddie couldn’t think of anything he’d rather have than the swordfish.
A jug of wine appeared from somewhere and Danni helped Freddie to a glass. He held it aloft. “Well,” he said, “whatever it is that you have to celebrate, congratulations!”
“It’s not clear what we have got, but we have got something,” said Bethany.
“A mysterious enclosure,” interjected Danni with Ouzo fuelled enthusiasm. “A mysterious Mycenaean enclosure. And I found it. I did.”
Bethany looked on with slight disapproval as Danni took another triumphal slug of Ouzo. “Danni’s radar survey gave us a much better picture of the site. The enclosure is well defined, certainly. The centre of it doesn’t look to have been disturbed so it’s not likely to be a grave circle or anything like that but there’s a lot of disturbance outside the perimeter of the enclosure.”
“But its definnn – definitittievly – definitely, Mice, Meece, Mycenaean!” Danni evidently considered it very much her discovery.
Norah nodded putting a small plastic box on the table. She took off the lid and peeled back the packing. Inside was a half-dozen fragments of pottery. Freddie peered at them without seeing anything significant. “We found these as we were clearing the site. Just lying in the topsoil. It’s Mycenaean all right. I’ve seen similar shards from Cyprus and the field walking surveys in the Nemea Valley. Probably about 1400BC at a guess.”
Bethany nodded in agreement.
The girls were all obviously excited by the discoveries. Freddie just felt that it would mean that they were going to stay even longer. He could manage things for the end of the next week, probably, although it was inconvenient. But if it looked like they were still going to be around after the end of the month then he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
He managed to avoid much of the drink that Danni in particular was pressing on him. The meal was fine; the swordfish vindicated as the best choice of the evening. The Mermaid Café always managed simple food well. Expecting anything else was being overly optimistic. After a final complementary brandy from Stephanos he got to his feet and made his farewells. Danni looked disappointed that he was going so soon.
Freddie made his way back to his villa. All was in darkness except for the floodlights in the swimming pool. He stood for a while on the edge of the headland staring out to sea. A few lights blinked from fishing boats. Out near the horizon the twinkling lights of an enormous cruise ship slid steadily by. At least the cruise ships hadn’t started coming to Agoras, thought Freddie. That really would be the last straw.
Then it was time for the last job of the night. He turned off the lights in the pool and headed down to the villa’s basement. Behind a metal cupboard there was a concealed door. He went through it, closing and locking it behind him. He carried on down a flight of stone cut steps.
“Bloody archaeologists,” Clegg thought. “They’d probably think this was a tomb or something.”
At the foot of the stairs Clegg unlocked another door. Within, a dim amber light revealed a circular room. Clegg locked the second door and turned on the lights. At once a series of grunts and groans went up on all sides.
Clegg looked around with a smile of self-satisfaction. Eight steel barred cells surrounded the central chamber. Seven of the cells each held a naked, helpless, gagged woman. The eighth was empty. He opened each in turn, checking that the woman inside was securely chained and that her gag was firmly locked in place before chaining her down to the steel framed cot that each had at the back of their cell. It was one of the best shipments that he had been able to put together for a while, he thought, surveying the group for a last time before putting the light out again.
With the one due in next week he had the basis for a good auction. Certainly the pictures suggested she’d fetch a good price, assuming they hadn’t bruised her too much by the time she got here. Freddie normally liked them to be on site for a couple of weeks before the auction to make sure they were in the best of condition. Still this one had only just become available. He’d be able to ship her in provided the archaeologists weren’t working twenty four hours a day, but the auction was another matter. He couldn’t see his customers wanting to turn up with a swarm of archaeologists sweating away in the valley beside the villa. Still there was no way that Bethany and her friends were going to stop that going on. Something would have to be done.
It was a nuisance that he was here on his own. Harry was off organising the last of the shipments, Elly was back in London keeping an eye on the business end of things. He’d told the usual heavies to take a couple of weeks off. Once the girls had been successfully installed they weren’t normally needed. He could get them back, he supposed, if needed but it might be fun just to sort things out with the resources he had to hand.
For the girl on Crete the truck ride had finished at a harbour side house in Sithia. She was down on the floor again, tied as securely as ever. There was a new guard keeping her company. She’d heard the others turn her over to him just after she’d been brought in from the truck. They took no interest in whether or not she heard what they were planning for her. She knew now that she was being shipped out north east. That she was being sold. That they thought he’d fetch a good price. That the way things were going with the markets these days she’d be more likely to fetch up in the Far East than Central America. Everything they said seemed to open a new window of horror but they took no notice of her groaned whimpers of fear. She was learning one of the most important lessons already – how to be quiet. At least the new guard had taken off her blindfold. He was still masked of course but she had already given up the idea that she might be able to escape. The guard took off her gag once she’d promised to keep quiet. He had given her some water; she’d been grateful. Then he’d forced her to suck him off. She’d begged him not to but of course he hadn’t cared. Why should he? Then he put the gag back. leaving her choking on his cum and the knotted cloth.
There had been plenty of activity in the valley over the previous few days. Freddie decided that it was time to find out a bit more about what was going on and found his way down from the road and onto the site. Bethany was sitting to one side of the valley, puzzling over a plan of the site. Clegg waved a greeting. She beckoned him across.
“Good morning,” he called.
“Hi,” said Bethany. “Checking up on us?”
“Just interested to see if you’ve found your temple or tombs or whatever it is.”
“Well, we don’t think it’s either of those. Do you want to come and see what we have so far?”
“Sure,” said Freddie, following Bethany as she led the way towards two trenches at the far end of the valley.
They reached the first. In it, Judy and Stacey were hard at work. Even with Clegg’s limited understanding of archaeology he could see they had found a fairly substantial wall. It curved across the trench. Judy was working away at part of it, flicking soil away from the stones with a brush. Stacey was busy scraping her trowel across the bottom of the trench.
“That’s the enclosure wall,” said Bethany. “From the curve we now know it was about eight metres across. And Stacey is down onto the original surface. It looks as if it was flagged with stones.”
“There’s no sign that there’s anything below this floor surface,” Stacey said. I’ve followed the edge of the wall and its straight down onto the natural.”
“I’ve been getting more Late Helladic pottery from here,” Judy said. “The context is good. This wall is definitely Mycenaean. Probably 1400BC give or take.”
“So, you’re happy. Problem solved?” Freddie enquired optimistically.
Bethany laughed. “Nothing like. We still don’t know what it was for. It’s certainly not a theatre; they aren’t known before about 550BC at the very earliest. This is almost a thousand years older. And there are a whole series of features on the radar beyond the wall. We’re going to take this trench back to see what they are. It looks like there are some sort of rooms or chambers arranged around the enclosure. Come and see how Danni has been getting on.”
Across in what Freddie assumed was the centre of the enclosure was another trench. Down at the same level that Stacey had been working at, Danni was easing a piece of dirt from a block of stone with the pointed end of a trowel. On the far side, Norah had exposed the base of a narrow column which had broken off about six inches above the ground. Behind her a circular piece of stone showed where the rest of the column disappeared into the wall of the trench.
Danni wearing a bikini top, a pair of very short shorts, sandals and a baseball cap, grinned up at Freddie from the trench. She was fully aware that from where he was standing he had an excellent view of her cleavage. The evenness of the tan that she managed to acquire suggested that she paid as much attention to where she was in relation to the sun overhead as she did to the archaeology beneath her feet. Norah had less room at her end of the trench. Her tee-shirt was streaked with sweat and dust and her hair was full of dust as well. She didn’t seem worried.
“This is some sort of plinth,” Bethany explained. The pillar was right in the centre of the back of the enclosure according to my calculations. It was definitely a semi-circle. There’s the trace of the back wall behind this plinth. So there would have been the pillar here with a semi circular wall out there.”
It does look a bit like some Greek theatres, doesn’t it?” said Freddie. “But on a much smaller scale.”
“Yes. There’s no skene or anything like it. There’s no evidence of seating where the theatron would be. This plinth is on a low platform and bit like a modern stage but Greek theatres didn’t have that. And this pillar was in the middle. It’s all very odd. Still it’s early days yet.”
I was afraid you would say that, thought Freddie. He looked at his watch. There were things that needed doing back at the villa. Freddie said his goodbyes and headed back.
It was always the same with an auction, Freddie thought. Actually acquiring the girls was the least of the problem. The clients were always so fussy about the accommodation arrangements and security was an issue of course. The worst part though was making sure that there were enough buyers to get the prices going. And tastes kept changing all the time as well. Once upon a time it had been enough to make sure that the merchandise was blonde, long legged and big chested. These days though it was almost impossible to predict what was going to sell. Freddie’s business concentrated on quality rather than quantity, though, and he was confident that his latest lots would attract both bidders and bids.
As he climbed the hill towards the villa, he remembered that he still had to review the end of year forecasts and next years budget plans as well. He found himself gripped by a heavy, depressing sensation. He was sure that this wasn’t what he had wanted when he started out. He’d started out enjoying what he did, but what did he do now? Now it was all administration and monitoring and man management. It wasn’t at all what he’d had in mind thirty years ago.
As for the girl on Crete; she was on the last leg of her journey. Now she was in the cabin of a small yacht. She still had ropes around her wrists and ankles. All that had changed was the gag and the blindfold. They’d replaced the knotted cloth that filled her mouth with a wad of foam and strip after strip of adhesive tape plastered over the lower half of her face. Before they took her on board they swapped her blindfold for a hood. It made no real difference to the girl. For her it was just another terrifying step.
The boat with the girl from Crete came in just after sunset. As the guys in Iraklion had said she was worth waiting for, Freddie felt. At least with only her on board, there wasn’t any problem with getting her unloaded while the archaeologists were around. They had finished up at the site once the light started to go, so the boat coming in just after dusk had been OK.
Freddie had been looking forward to this one arriving. She made up the set. There were six of them now. An afro-carribean girl, one Japanese, an Australian, two from Pakistan and now this very English looking girl; pale skinned, brown haired, and with the sort of figure that should appeal to the traditionalists among his customers.
Freddie always found the girls’ reactions to their arrival in the cellar amusing. Their horrific realisation of their situation gave him a thrill. This one was no different. Freddie had let her captors bring her in from the boat with her head still covered by a hood. He’d watched her tentative footsteps on the cold stone floor of the corridor from the dock as they had pushed her forwards. He’d smiled as she started at the clang of the steel door between the dock and the cellar itself. He listened as she tried to control the panic in her breathing beneath the hood. She wasn’t doing very well, as they hurried her forward the short snullfles and whimpers beneath the hood told of her increasing terror.
Then they took her hood off. The cellar was lit dimly so it didn’t take her long to get used to being able to see again. And what she saw did nothing to comfort her. There were the two masked men that had been her constant companions from the last few days. And there was another man; older, staring at her with an appraising glance, and, most worrying of all, without a mask.
Freddie studied the way that her body betrayed how her captors had treated her. Good work with the ropes he thought, not elaborate, just effective. And whatever they had used to stuff her mouth was working too. It didn’t matter down here of course, there was no one to hear her, or at least no one that could do anything to help her, but Freddie was always pleased when adequate precautions were taken. She was whimpering a little behind the strips of tape strapped across her face. It gave her an appealing charm. The poor girl’s clothes were cut and torn, of course, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be needing them. Freddie studied her body. They’d chosen well from the perspective of her physical conformation.
The girl looked around again and realised that not only was she in the centre of a room surrounded by steel barred cells, each of them except one was occupied by a naked and ball- gagged woman. Her muffled squeals increased. Freddie smiled again, delighted by her response. He nodded towards the empty cell and the girl’s captors hustled her inside. The door clanged shut behind her. Clegg shook the hands of the two men and followed them back out to their boat. They were gone less than fifteen minutes after arriving. They would be back in Sithia before morning. Their commission would be paid within the week. Freddie liked to keep the commercial side of things straight. It avoided problems.
Clegg didn’t bother with the girl immediately. She would keep, helpless, silenced and alone in her cell. Besides, he had other things to do. From the terrace of his villa Freddie watched the boat slip back out to sea. He looked across to the valley where the archaeologists were working. They were definitely a thorn in his side. They were showing no sign of finishing their digging. Quite the contrary; there had been a lot more coming and going in the valley. They’d got themselves a small hut down there now, a rickety wooden building that had arrived on the back of a truck.
The next morning, Freddie went down to the site, just to keep an eye on what was going on.
Bethany greeted him cheerily. “Hullo!”
“How’s it going?” Freddie said.
“Slowly, but that’s how we work. This isn’t something we can rush at. Look, I’ll show you.” Bethany led the way to a trench where Stacey was working. The trench was only about six inches deep, little more than a scrape in the floor of the valley. Stacey was gently brushing at a piece of pottery that was protruding from the floor of the trench, cleaning soil away from one side of it, slowly exposing the curvature of the pot as it dived away beneath the surface.
Bethany crouched down beside the trench and Freddie joined her. Stacey kept on with her painstaking work. “You see,” Bethany began, “when we find something the real problem is that we don’t know what we’re dealing with. Take this for example. It could just be a broken piece of pot. It might go no further down into the ground than another half inch or so. On the other hand it might be an entire pot.”
“And then we don’t know what’s in it,” Stacey chipped in. “Pots like this can contain food remains which can tell us a lot about diet and economies. So we’ve got to be careful when we lift it that we don’t lose any of the evidence.”
“It’s a time consuming process,” Bethany said. “But it has to be if we are to make any sense of what we find.”
“Well it all looks like hard work,” said Freddie. “Not a glamorous job by any stretch of the imagination.”
“No,” said Bethany, smiling and pushing back a strand of hair from her face. As she did so she left a streak of dirt where the dust from her hand mixed with the sweat on her forehead. “Any archaeologist that thinks Indiana Jones or Lara Croft is a good model is in for a disappointment.”
As Freddie and Bethany chatted, Danni wandered across carrying a wooden orange box loaded with potsherds. She was wearing the same tight shorts as she’d had on the day before but this time she had teamed them with a bright yellow halter necked top. Freddie noticed these things.
“There’s enough crockery on this site to start a china shop,” she said with a smile.
“Better watch out for Minoan bulls, then,” Freddie responded.
“You do know a bit about this then,” said Bethany, amused. She reached out and picked a couple of pieces of pot from the tray. “Nothing very interesting here, though. This is all first century BC at the earliest, I’d say. It’s nothing that you wouldn’t expect around here.” Norah waved to Bethany from her trench on the other side of the site. “Excuse me,” said Bethany to Freddie and headed off to see what it was that she wanted.
“So nothing very exciting,” Freddie said to Danni, enjoying the site of her tanned body.
“Not in the finds so far,” she said.
Judy joined them. “No, but this is a fun project to be involved with. I mean it’s great that we get to make a video of what we’re doing as well as doing the digging,” she said.
“Well I guess it makes a change.” Freddie was conscious that Danni was scowling at the other girl evidently irritated that she had cut in on their conversation. He didn’t mind.
“Take last night. Bethany wanted some shots at sunset so we came back here after we’d finished digging and took some shots out across the bay. It was great, the light on the water, an old fishing boat or yacht or something sliding across the bay.”
As she chattered on about the filming Freddie realised that they had been shooting their video as the girl from Crete had been brought in. It might not be a problem, he thought, but then, on the other hand, it might. Freddie let her finish. Danni, he noticed, was hoping that she would go but to her disappointment he made the decision to leave himself.
“Well,” he said, “I hope the filming goes as well as the digging. I‘ve got to go. Have a good day.”
Freddie headed off. He wanted to think. It really wasn’t good news that they had filmed the boat that the girl from Crete had arrived in. It wasn’t as though they would have seen anything, he supposed. But even so, he’d have to think what to do about their video.
© Freddie Clegg 2008
No posting or reproduction without permission
All characters fictitious.
Download PDF copies of other stories by Freddie Clegg at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
|
|
|