The Dead Travel Fast Read Free Page B

went, Steve? I think you are beginning to guess, perhaps you are beginning to sweat a bit, I hope so.
    He went to Samos, where you are, where you went to escape. Soon you will see him. I don’t think you’ll want to laugh at me or anyone else ever again.
    The shadows are moving; they taunt me. I will finish this now. All my life I have written, I think these are the last words I shall ever write.
     
          Dr T. Thompson.
     
    Tim Thompson sealed the envelope and walked through the shadows to the door. Outside it was dark. He posted the letter in an alley leading from Place Massena to the sea. On the other side of the alley was a restaurant called El Vino. He knew there was little time. He was calm now, and hungry, so took a table outside under the street light and treated himself; the credit card bill was irrelevant. He ordered foie gras with apricot compote, the house speciality, steak in sauce and the most expensive Bordeaux on the list. The service was attentive.
    Then he walked back along the alley towards the steps leading up to Place Massena. In the shadows at the foot of the steps he made his appointment. He recognised the dark coat and hat, the pale bearded face, the red pustules. One disfigured hand held his shoulder, almost tenderly; he felt a line of freezing cold across his throat, he felt a warm sticky flow soaking his chest.
    Then he felt nothing.

Chapter 2:
Better to Let Him Die
    The light in the square dazzled, flashing back off the marble paving, too bright even under the large parasol advertising Samian ouzo shading his table. Steve stuffed the letter back in its envelope and concentrated on rinsing the fine coffee grains out of his mouth with the by now tepid water from the accompanying glass. He’d swallowed the sludgy grounds: an involuntary action of surprise at recognising the spidery handwriting. He swilled the water round his mouth, then spat it onto the paving where it instantly evaporated.
    It was before nine but he felt the beginning of the day’s sweat staining the creased cotton of the shirt under his armpits. He was surprised to get the letter, hadn’t thought Thompson knew where he was, and the postal service here was irregular at the best of times, which these were not. He didn’t want to read it here and besides, it was so long, more like an essay than a letter. But his real reason was that he feared its contents. He wanted no reminding of his Skendleby ordeal, he’d come here to escape.
    He had been taking his usual full Samiot breakfast of Greek coffee, water and a small glass of raki in the old triangular square in Karlovasi when Mandrocles, one of his students who earned some extra money as an assistant janitor, brought him the letter. He owed his temporary post at the University of The Aegean to a previous postgrad student with whom he’d had a brief affair during an excavation on Cyprus some years ago. Unusually after his liaisons, they’d stayed on good terms. Lucky, because herfather was well connected in the Greek higher education bureaucracy. In his desperation to get work away from Britain, Steve had tried all his contacts, and she’d produced a result.
    It helped that he had a solid reputation in Europe as a fine field archaeologist, if unreliable and careless as an administrator, or lover for that matter. There wasn’t much for him to do at the university, about which the most imposing thing was the name, but Steve was grateful to be there. He spoke reasonably fluent if ungrammatical Greek, even though everyone immediately switched to English when he was around. He liked the lifestyle; he had no personal responsibility and little in his work. In fact, he’d had to hustle to become involved with a survey of Neolithic and Pre-Neolithic activity on the island and with the new archaeological museum in Pythagoreio. This suited him; he could move around the island and work almost entirely without supervision. The bi-weekly change of the island’s tourist population