The Greek Key

'We did.' Tweed stood up. 'Which makes a good point at which to end our first interview.'

'Our first interview?'

That's what I said,' Tweed replied and walked out.

They waited in the Mercedes loaned by Newman, waited in the car park. Tweed sat behind the wheel, Paula stirred restlessly beside him. There was no one else about and they were hedged in by cars on either side.

'What do you think of him?' Paula asked. 'And why did you insult him with that half-smart intellectual crack? Not your normal style.'

'To rattle him. I think it worked. You don't know everything. He got that far and stopped what he had been going on to say. Something funny about that new estate of bungalows near where Kearns lives. And Pete Nield, who often hits the nail on the head, remarked that estate was the only thing he'd seen on Exmoor worth a cool million. Something like that.'

'Where is Pete? He followed us down here from Park Crescent as you suggested, then dropped out of sight.'

'He's parked in the Cortina up the road. Again as I suggested. I want to see if Seton-Charles takes the bait.'

'Don't understand.' She gave a rueful smile. 'Par for the course – working with you. I still don't see why there should be something funny about the bungalow estate.'

'There may not be – but Seton-Charles is an experienced lecturer, used to fielding the sort of questions I threw at him. He answered fairly tersely, then went out of his way to explain a lot about the estate. I don't think he liked my asking where he lived. Now, who have we here?'

'Professor Seton-Charles – and in one devil of a hurry.'

In the distance the Professor was wending his way among the army of parked vehicles. He carried a briefcase and his hair was flurried in a breeze. For a man in his sixties he moved with great agility.

'Maybe it has worked,' Tweed commented. 'Pressure. Everyone remembers the last thing you say. I mentioned this was the first interview, suggesting I'd be back. One odd thing about our conversation. He only made a brief comment on my reference to two more recent murders. The absence of something so often goes unnoticed.'

'Well I didn't notice it, but I was taking notes. Are you going all mysterious on me again?'

The absence of any later comment by the Professor. You'd expect almost anyone to come back to that – to ask again what I'd been talking about. Whose murders? He didn't

'He's getting into a Volvo station wagon. Do we follow?'

'No, too obvious…'

'He's a professor. His mind will probably be miles away while he's driving.'

'Scion-Charles,' Tweed told her, 'has a mind like a steel trap. He may have nothing to do with what we're looking for, but he has to be checked out. And carefully…'

Tweed waited until the Volvo was moving towards the exit, then turned on his ignition. He drove out of the slot slowly, turned into the main aisle as Seton-Charles shot at speed for the exit. 'Speedy Gonzalez,' Paula commented. Tweed arrived at the exit seconds after the Volvo had swung left. Perching with the nose of the Mercedes at the exit, he flashed his lights. Seconds later Nield drove past the exit, following the Volvo in Tweed's Cortina.

'There, it worked,' Tweed said with some satisfaction.

'You arranged with Pete to park outside?'

'Yes. I foresaw I might get lucky, pressure Seton-Charles into leaving. Pete will see where he heads for, who he meets, and report back to me.' He checked his watch. Three o'clock – we can make Park Crescent by early evening. We'll be driving into London when the commuters are pouring out.'

'Pressure all round,' Paula remarked as they left the car park. 'Butler and Nield showing themselves to the ex-commando trio. After Nield has tracked Seton-Charles. You think we're getting somewhere?'

Time will tell. I'm waiting for someone to crack. Here – or in Greece.'

Monica looked up as they entered Tweed's office. 'Nield called ten minutes ago…' The phone started ringing. 'Maybe that's him.' A brief exchange, she nodded towards Tweed's phone.

'Just got in, Pete,' Tweed said. 'Any news?'

'Subject drives straight back to Exmoor, makes a call from a public box near Simonsbath. Which is strange.'

'Why?'

'He has a phone in his bungalow. They have overhead wires out here. A three-minute call – and he checks his watch.'

'And then?'

'Drives back to the estate and into his garage. He has one of those electronic devices so you can open it from inside the car. Something else odd I noticed. Perched on the roof of his bungalow is one of the most complex aerial systems I've ever seen – plus a satellite dish. A whole mess of technical gear Change of subject. Gossip in the pubs reports a dog ferreting on Exmoor came home with Partridge's wallet in its mouth. A hundred pounds, all in tenners, intact. Banknote numbers in sequence. That's it.'

'You've done well. Get back to Butler in Dunster. Start a campaign of harassing all three men. Put on the pressure – but from a distance. And watch your backs.'

'Will do. 'Bye, Chief-Tweed put down the receiver, jumped up from his desk and began pacing the office as he rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

Things are moving. It worked, Paula. Seton-Charles called someone from a public booth. Reporting my interrogation of him, I'm sure. We're on the right track.'

'At last,' said Monica.

'And I want you to call Inspector Farthing of Dunster police,' he told her. 'Partridge's wallet has been found. I'd like a list of everything inside that wallet. Someone may just have made the fatal mistake I've been waiting for.'

At the summit of the mountain where he used his transceiver Florakis-Savinkov completed sending the latest coded message to England. The pace was hotting up.. Earlier he had been instructed to receive the signals from Athens weekly. Now it was twice a week. The radio traffic was increasing.

He was about to sign off when he was amazed to receive an order given in clear English. He blinked as he recorded the message. From now on call sign changed to Colonel Winter.

25

Newman was in shirt-sleeves as he drove along the coast road which twisted and turned and was empty of other traffic. It was twilight time, the most torrid period of the day as the earth gave up its heat and the atmosphere was cloying and humid, Nick sat beside him with a worried frown; beyond him the Mediterranean was indigo, a smooth sheet of water stretching away towards the hulk of a huge rock rearing up out of the water.

In the distance a toy-like temple perched at the summit of a cliff was silhouetted against a purple sky: the pencil-thin columns of the Temple of Poseidon where Harry Masterson had died. In the rear of the car Christina pulled at the tops of her slacks thrust inside climbing boots. She was perspiring all over. It had been one hell of a hot day and her nerves were twanging at what they planned to do.

'Tell me when to stop,' Newman called over his shoulder. 'We must be near now.'

'Round the next two bends. That structure we're passing is on the land of a farmer called Florakis. He sold it to a developer.'

Newman glanced at the ruin-like structure on the landward side. In the half-light it looked like an abandoned building site, as though the developer had run out of money.

'What is that place?' he asked.

'The beginning of a new hotel complex,' Nick replied. They are spoiling the whole coast with new tourist developments.'

The structure had a weird skeletal look. Two storeys high, it consisted of a steel framework for several buildings and he could see right through it to the hillside beyond, like staring through the bones of a Martian-type skeleton eroded by time.

'I still don't like the idea of you going with Christina into Devil's Valley,' Nick said for the second time. 'Petros has armed shepherds patrolling the area night and day. They all carry rifles. Tourists, amateur mountaineers who have gone in there never came out. They had 'accidents'. They fell over precipices. God knows what. I must warn you…'