‘Me?’
‘Precisely. I’m sure you know Pat Tobin – every crook around here does. Do you happen to know where he’s buggered off to?’
Father Adonis, however, was still catching up.
‘You think I’m a dodgy priest?’
‘Exceptionally, and one of the few people on this bloody island who seems to know what’s going on. So help me now – and put me in your debt.’ He gave that a minute’s silence for solemn thought, like Armistice Day, before he responded.
‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Very.’
‘I have some beer.’ He reached down alongside, to a new-looking galvanized iron bucket that had six bottles of Keo in it sitting in iced water. I’d been wondering when he was going to mention that. My tongue was hanging out. He opened a bottle for each of us. I said, ‘Thank you,’ but ungraciously added, ‘I didn’t think Orthodox priests drank alcohol.’
‘Why not, Mr Bassett? We’re not Muslims. You British have very odd notions about foreigners, you know.’
‘I’m sorry, and I’m Charlie, if that’s all right with you.’
‘Perfectly.’ He shut his eyes, and sat in apparent peace for a minute. Then he said, ‘I love the sun on my face and my arms. I couldn’t live anywhere else.’
‘Surely, no one could make you.’
He shrugged.
‘My superiors could send me wherever they pleased, even to your benighted country. But the Turkish Cypriots could have us all out long before then.’
‘Surely not? There’s five times as many of you, as there are of them – the maths is against it.’
‘I think you’ll find you should have said math – but even so mainland Turkey is poised to invade the moment we and you Brits turn our backs. Life for an Orthodox priest won’t be easy here then.’
‘But you didn’t join up for an easy life, did you?’
He actually smiled before he replied.
‘No. I became a priest because my mother wanted it.’
‘I joined the RAF despite my mother’s wishes. She was sure that I would be killed over Germany. As it turned out she died in an accident before I even got there. Her and my sister both. Why am I telling you this?’
‘Because I am a priest. It is in our nature to be listeners. Go on, if you wish. Do you miss them, your mother and sister?’
‘Of course I do. Time doesn’t help.’
‘Why would you think it should? If you love someone time is meaningless.’
The most surprising people teach you the things about life you should have worked out for yourself.
He gave me another bottle of beer. I thanked him. We drank in silence for a while, and then I asked, ‘I’m sorry to return to the reason for this meeting, but—’
He interrupted before I got any further: ‘He had a small Fiat car liberated from the Italians after the war, filled up with enough food and water to last two men a week . . .’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Up into the Troodos. You Brits can’t seem to stay away.’
‘Why? What for?’ Never ask another question until you get an answer to the first one, Charlie: one of my interrogation trainers taught me that.
‘To find your lost army pilot, of course. No one else is going to.’
‘Why would he do that, if everyone else has given up on the man?’
‘Because they were cousins, brought up in the same street. They went to school together, like Tony and I. Didn’t you know that?’
‘No.’ Neither did any other bugger, I suspected. ‘But thank you for telling me, anyway. Do you know even roughly where he went?’
‘Up around Kampos, that’s a big village a long way south or south-west of Lefka – very bad country. The man had been seen there, or if not him, some other wandering soldier. I told Pat that myself.’ I think that was the first time he admitted directly that he knew Tobin.
‘How far am I behind him?’
‘Three days. He may not welcome pursuit – you know that?’
‘That’s a chance I’ll have to take . . . And thank you again for telling me.’
‘It’s a favour I’m doing for Tony. It’s the way things work out here.’
‘It’s the way things work anywhere, believe me.’
‘Shall we have the last beer? The air will get colder shortly – the tide is about to turn.’
Metaphor, I suppose. It took another fifteen years, the way things ran out in Cyprus. Adonis was right about the Turkish invasion . . . and the tide still hasn’t turned.
Eventually we stood, and folded the deckchairs like two old pensioners on Margate beach. Adonis picked up his bucket as well, which now contained six upturned empty bottles. I asked him, ‘What do the police want you for?’
‘How well do you know your history, Charlie?’
‘Try me.’
‘Henry the Second and Thomas à Becket.’
‘The turbulent priest?’
‘That’s me, of course.’ He smiled, and looked younger.
‘Surely you don’t think we’d murder you for it?’
‘Why not? You have form for it, after all. Isn’t that the phrase your policemen use?’
The slang had sounded incongruous, coming from him.
As we shook hands and parted, I said, ‘If I can help at all . . . ?’ It was probably a rash offer to make.
‘I’ll remember, Charlie,’ and that was it. I’m sure that he had minders around us during the meeting, but they were very good. I didn’t get a sniff of them.
Four hours later I stood under a tepid shower at the hotel David Yassine had called Tony’s just to confuse everyone. I washed off a hundred and fifty miles of road dust, and changed into clean duds. Then I went downstairs to phone Collins. It was half past seven in the evening and he was still at his desk.
‘Mr Watson asked me to find out where Corporal Tobin has scuttled off to,’ I told him.
‘I thought it could be something like that. Did you find him?’
‘He’s gone up into the Troodos to find that pilot. On his own.’
‘Then he’s off his
