‘But you’re hungry, I’ll bet?’
‘I’m always hungry.’
‘Go to the kitchen and get yourself something. Tell them I sent you. Then come back here.’
He came back with a bowl of cornflakes, swimming in milk and liberally buried in Golden Syrup, a sausage sandwich and a glass of orange – all precariously balanced on a tray.
‘The English lady said I needed fattening up,’ he told me. Jessie.
‘You and I both, chum. Did you bring me a message from the Lion?’
He looked mystified.
‘No. I brought you a letter from Father Adonis.’
‘Let me see it. I’ll read while you eat.’
The priest had agreed to meet me mid-afternoon, and gave me directions to a ruined church on the Karpas peninsula. That was more than seventy miles distant.
‘Would the priest have had a problem coming to Famagusta?’ I asked the boy.
‘More than you will have getting to Agios Filion.’
‘I thought you didn’t read the letters you carry?’
‘I don’t, sir . . . but I wrote this one with him. I check his English writing sometimes, my English is better.’
‘You go to school at TES, I take it?’
His face split with delight.
‘How did you know that?’
‘I didn’t. I guessed.’
The only thing that worried me was that I’d asked Warboys for a safe meeting, and the letter said nothing about safety. The kid studied my face.
‘You’re worried for your personal security?’ That was a bit of a mouthful for a kid of that age, but he had been spot-on in his assessment. I reckoned he’d be a psychologist practising in Athens before he was twenty-five.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Do not be, sir. When the father gives his word he keeps it.’
‘Why can’t he come here?’
‘Because he is wanted by the police.’
‘What for?’
‘You will ask him that yourself.’
‘Yes, I will. Am I supposed to give you money?’
‘The father said I should ask for five shillings English, but I hoped for more. My little sister needs new shoes.’ I gave him two crumpled ten-bob notes for which he thanked me gravely; he carefully smoothed them out before pocketing them. ‘Thank you, mister.’
‘My pleasure. Make sure you buy your sister’s shoes one size too big, so she will grow into them.’
‘You have a family?’
‘Two sons. One is about your age.’
‘Tell them Demetrius sends them a greeting – when next you see them.’ Unless he was an ace little liar, at least he thought I would live long enough to see them again then.
‘I shall.’
I don’t want you to think I’m a complete dummy. I phoned Collins to check out the security situation. He said, ‘There’s a hell of a hoo-ha going on over the UN killing, so it could be OK for a few days. EOKA will probably keep its head down, and wait to see what happens next – they overstepped the mark, and they ruddy well know it. Why? Thinking of going sightseeing?’
‘Yes. I was going to take a drive along the Karpas peninsula – take in a few old churches. What do you think?’
‘It’s your funeral, squire, but as long as you take your side arm and are prepared to use it, you should be OK. There hasn’t been a problem up there for months – not that that means anything, of course.’ It’s been my experience that policemen frequently change from being comedians into manic depressives with nothing in between to warn you.
‘Thanks. I’ll bear everything you’ve said in mind.’
‘Do that, and check in this evening, just in case.’ The poor sod actually sighed as he put the phone down.
I bought two jerrycans of petrol from David, and topped up the Humber’s great tank from one of them. The other one went in the boot. I had bloody nigh eighty miles to cover, and precious little time to do it.
This time there was no table groaning with food waiting for me at the end of the rainbow. Just a ruined church in honey-coloured stone. It was overgrown by native climbing plants, and looked like one of those follies the nobs once planted at the ends of their gardens. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood would have loved it. I didn’t, because I was hungry and thirsty, and it had too many nooks and crannies to hide anyone who bore me ill will.
Father Adonis sat in a deckchair in a square of daylight in the ruined nave. There was another alongside him. Light was pouring into the place through great open gashes in its walls and roof. It actually didn’t look that safe a building to me. We shared the place with several lazy goats, which dined from the shrubs and scrub threatening to engulf the structure. He had put out the chairs to catch the rays through most of a missing gable end. He was dressed differently. Still as a priest, but not a black-skirted fusilier. He looked less like a giant bat in a top hat than the last time we had met. I flopped alongside him and asked, ‘Is that your walking-out gear? Priest in mufti?’
‘No, Mr Bassett. Not today. Today I am just an ordinary Catholic. You do not arrest Catholics. Why did you need to see me? If you wished to withdraw your offer, you are too late. It has already been accepted.’
‘No. I’m happy about that. I wanted to ask you about something else. One of my army colleagues has taken a few days’ leave, and gone away without telling anyone where he went. That is worrying. The police are asking questions about him, and that is even more worrying. When I made my own enquiries yesterday one person told me that perhaps I should pray, and another that I should go to church more often. I thought I
