The Lost Labyrinth

SIXTEEN
I

Gaille poured herself a fresh cup of coffee in the Taverna kitchen, then took a little wander. The walls were covered incongruously with framed photographs of marmalade and tabby cats. A bookshelf in the dining room was filled with easy-reading material, old magazines and PG Wodehouse novels and thrillers with swollen yellow pages and bodice-rippers with their lurid covers half falling off. She picked out an old Marie Claire and took it outside, along with her coffee and a pack of biscuits, then up onto the roof terrace, where she moved a chair into the dappled shade of a tall conifer. Snatches of Iain's phone calls reached her on the breeze, his tone by turns cajoling, humorous and stern, but tiredness quickly caught up with her, and she fell into a light doze, only to be startled awake when Iain appeared suddenly on the roof. 'There you are!' he said, as though he'd spent hours searching for her.

'I'm sorry,' she said. The sun had risen above the trees, forcing her to shade her eyes with her hand as she squinted up at him. 'Not much sleep last night.'

'I'm only teasing,' he smiled. 'I saw you coming up here. I would have let you sleep, but I've made a bit of progress, and I thought you'd want to know.'

'Fantastic!'

'I'll start with the bad news. No trace of your man Petitier with the local government agencies. Mind you, it would have been a miracle if there had been, the way they are.' He grabbed a biscuit and began munching it, spraying crumbs as he talked. 'But you said he was an archaeologist, so I had an inspiration. I ran his name through our own database here, and guess what? Turns out he was one of our regulars.'

'How do you mean?'

'I mean he used to come here sometimes to do research. I even met him once or twice myself, as it turns out, though I only knew him as Roly. The thing is, we went through a security phase a few years back when we issued all our guest researchers with a picture ID; so I've got a photo of him, if that's a help?'

'That's brilliant!'

'Thought you'd be pleased,' he grinned. 'I'm running off a copy now.' He gestured vaguely towards his office, inviting her to go with him. Her legs were strangely uncoordinated on the steps, as if chiding her for waking them too soon; but it felt gloriously cool inside after the direct sunlight, with the ceiling fan on its lowest setting, breathing down upon her like a kindly angel. The printer was in the corner, the page still chunking out. 'Damned thing takes forever,' he said, going over to it. 'Never any budget for new technology: not when we can spend it on old books instead.'

It was just the kind of office Gaille loved, high shelves against every wall, packed tight with academic texts on Minoan Crete and the Mycenaeans, others on Ancient Egypt and Classical Greece, the Hittites and the Babylonians, more stacked on the desk. A letter marked a page in a bound compendium of Journals of Egyptian Archaeology. Curiosity got to her: she turned to it. Addressed to Iain from a small but respected London publisher, confirming the schedule for his forthcoming book. 'Hey!' she said. 'Congratulations!'

He glanced over from the printer, flushed a little when he saw her looking at the letter. 'That's private,' he said, coming over to take it from her, then folding it up and putting it away in his top drawer.

'I'm sorry,' said Gaille, rather taken aback. 'I didn't realise.'

He sighed and found a smile. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'I didn't mean to be curt. It's just, I've just been getting a bit of grief from the guys.'

'What on earth for? You're getting your book published. You should be really proud.'

'Didn't you see the title?'

'No. Why?'

He pulled a self-deprecating face. 'My book's about how we need to revise our understanding of the Eastern Med during the bronze age, using all the information we're gleaning from our excavations here in Crete, as well as in Santorini and the other islands. I originally submitted it as The Pelasgian and Minoan Aegean: A New Paradigm.'

'Catchy,' said Gaille.

'Exactly. Not a sniff of interest. I kept rewriting it and rewriting it, thinking the problem must be with ideas or my prose. But then one night I had a brainwave. I changed the title to The Atlantis Connection and got an offer within a week.' They laughed together at the ways of the world, and the moment of tension was forgotten.

The printer finished chunking out; they went over to it together. It gave Gaille a bit of a jolt to see Petitier: he'd been an abstract concept until now. His photograph did little to warm her to him, his indignation at being forced to pose for the camera evident, impatience and superiority written in the sour line of his upper lip, visible even through his tangled, tawny-grey beard. 'You don't have an address for him, I suppose?'

'We do require one for our records, as it happens,' Iain told her, 'but he only put down some hotel in Heraklion. I called them, just in case, but the woman didn't know of him, or of anyone answering his description. Maybe she was covering, but I don't think so. I've never seen him in Heraklion myself, and I certainly would have done had he been living there for the past ten years. But don't worry. I haven't told you the best bit yet.'

'The best bit?'

His eyes twinkled. 'It was just, I was struck by a thought. I mean, if he's been doing research here, then maybe he's been to other sites too, right? So I started calling around, and guess what?'

'You've had a result?'

He nodded vigorously. 'There's this Belgian dig a little east of here. One of the girls there knows Petitier quite well. The thing is, her brother came over to visit a couple of years back, and she took him on a tour of the island. And who should she see on her travels but Roland Petitier, selling several kilos of walnuts to a local shop and promising to bring more on his next visit.'

'Home turf!' exulted Gaille. 'Where was this?'

'A town called Anapoli. It's in the hills above Hora Sfakion on the south coast.'

'And how can I get there?'

His grin grew broad. 'By getting back into my car and enjoying the drive,' he told her.