The Dead Travel Fast by Nick Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

behalf of my brother Antonis, and I think that as an archaeologist you will find much to interest you on our walk round. Very few on this island get to see what I will now show you. Come, we will start with what is most recent.”
    He followed her to the steps leading from the terrace and along a path sloping gently down through an area of lawn and flower-beds. Steve wondered how much of the island’s precious water was needed to transform this barren mountainside into the facsimile of an English garden. But there was a greater surprise waiting for him. They passed through a fringe of orange and lemon trees and onto an area landscaped flat with, at its centre, a cricketsquare on which a series of sprinklers were playing. Before he could express his surprise, Alekka gave way to a shout of laughter and clapped her hands.
    “It was almost worth all the effort and expense wasted on this silly toy of my father’s just to see the expression on your face. It reminds him of his time in England, it is one of the few in Greece and I think the best, even though we use it only twice a year. Next Sunday there will be a game and you will be here, I hope.”
    Steve, struggling to come to terms with his surroundings, asked her who played here.
    “There are some rich countrymen of yours who live here, because it would not be good for them to remain in their own land, and also some special people from other islands. It is easy for them to get here, look: over there is where they land their helicopters.”
    Steve looked and saw a landing area sufficient for a number to land and park up. She took his hand; he relished the cold firm grasp.
    “Now, we turn round and walk towards the sea and look at what is old here. This I think will be of more interest to you oh Kirios, archaeologist.”
    They walked out of the cricket field back through the lawn, passed across the rear of the house to stand on a small plateau overlooking the sea. Below them were the terraces he’d seen earlier, on the nearest some ancient stone foundations of buildings.
    “That, where you now look, Doctor Watkins, is all that is left of a very old village.”
    Aware of the island’s history, Steve asked her if the village had been deserted during the last evacuation two hundred years ago.
    “No, it was abandoned long before and for worse reasons. On this island these superstitious people believe that this village was cursed; they will not come here or even talk about it.”
    “But it doesn’t bother your family?”
    “No: in fact most of the good stone from that village you will find in the walls of our house. Now look further down to that flat space just above the sea. They say that somewhere under that scrub and bushes something very ancient is hidden, buried, and it is that which so frightened those villagers.”
    “And that doesn’t bother your family either, I suppose?”
    “No, of course not, why should it bother us? But no one goes there these days.”
    Steve gazed down to the sea gently shimmering under the sun and drank in the beauty of the place. He was close enough to Alekka to catch the scent of her perfume and hear her soft breathing. He was possessed by an urge to kiss her and say that, in some way, this place had always been waiting here for him. Instead he asked,
    “How long have your family lived here?”
    She smiled at the question but answered seriously.
    “For ever I think, our clan, our family I mean, is very old, older than anything else that you will find on this island.”
    While she was speaking Steve, like any good field archaeologist, was looking at the ground under his feet and scraping at it with his boots. He knelt down and picked up a couple of small sharp objects, which he spat on and then rubbed vigorously before showing her.
    “What is the significance of this, please?”
    “These are bits of obsidian: they’ve been worked to make tools, this one here is an offcut of some small tool like a knife and if you look around