Pilgrims and monks came and went continually, also. This little town on the northern Greek coast was the embarkation point for the twenty monasteries of the peninsula called the Holy Mount Athos, a short ferry ride across a strip of Aegean Sea.
It was also the closest harbour to another monastery on a small island twenty kilometres south of here.
The launch backed up to the bustling quay, just long enough for its one passenger to jump ashore, before heading back out to sea.
Lara Gherardi, her long black hair bunched up inside a baseball cap, and dressed in a baggy anorak, jeans and trainers, her travelling essentials in a small rucksack on her back, walked swiftly past a row of moored fishing smacks, then up the steep, metalled road, past several busy restaurants and cafes, into the main street of the town.
The sea was calmer over towards the mainland than the skipper had expected and they had arrived here a quarter of an hour early. She went into a crowded bar and ordered a water, then drank it out on the pavement, staring distastefully at a shop display of Holy Mount Athos souvenirs. The taxi pulled up.
Lara dumped her rucksack on the back seat, then climbed in beside it. Moments later the taxi was heading out of town, towards Thessaloniki airport, two and a half hours’ drive away. It was seven o’clock.
She caught an eleven o’clock flight to Athens, then slept, fitfully, on a bench in the airport departure lounge.
At eight o’clock in the morning, seven o’clock UK time, she boarded a flight to London Heathrow.
104
Naomi’s Diary
I’m just lying wide awake here on the fourth floor of the Thistle Hotel. Listening to the rumble of traffic down in the street below, and the sound of the sea just beyond the promenade wall. I can’t sleep a wink. Just waiting, waiting, waiting for the phone to ring. Got up twice already to check my mobile is switched on and that the hotel phone isn’t off the hook.
I keep hearing a phone that keeps ringing in another room. I’ve phoned down to the front desk, just to make sure the night staff know which room we’re in.
Several times today I’ve wanted to die. I felt like this when Halley was losing his fight. I just wanted to slip my moorings and drift off into death with him.
I just keep thinking about where L and P might be, what’s happened to them. I know I’ve been finding them difficult, but that’s all gone from my head now. I love them to death. I know in some ways they may be strong, but they are still infants, tiny, little people. What we’ve done, John and I, very stupidly, is to make them too smart for their own good (or Dettore did, or whatever). They’ve been made smart enough to communicate with the adult world, but not to understand its dangers. That’s how this has come about.
That image, that video footage of the children trotting into the arms of these strangers, that is what really gets to me. After three years of doing all we could for Luke and Phoebe, they’ve run off willingly with strangers. That’s the worst thing of all.
That they may have been groomed by paedophiles over the internet, is one of the police lines of enquiry, although they haven’t found any evidence of that on their computer, so far. They think it’s possible that the dead man was part of a rival paedophile group and they had a falling out.
Great.
My children are in the hands of some paedophile monsters who shot a man in the back of the head. And no one has any clue where they are.
105
At some point during the sleepless night they had made love. Maybe screwed would have been a better description, John thought, because that’s what it was. A coupling borne out of some primal need. They hadn’t even kissed, Naomi had just drawn him into her, and they had worked away until they had both come, then returned to their respective sides of the hotel room bed.
At seven o’clock he pulled on his tracksuit and trainers, slipped out of the room and down to the lobby of the hotel. Then, as he walked through the revolving doors and out into the dry, grey morning, a battery of flashlights strobed at him, and he immediately went back inside, in panic.
There was an entire army of reporters and news vehicles out there.
He ran across the foyer, following signs marked first to the ballroom, then to the conference centre, and moments later found himself in a large, empty, conference hall.
He made his way to the back of it and out of the rear exit, walked up a wheelchair ramp and came to double doors with a metal bar. He pushed them and to his relief found himself in a deserted side street.
He ran through the bitterly cold air, up a long hill, heading away from the reporters and the sea towards the town centre, and after a few minutes emerged into a wide, deserted shopping street. A police car went by, then a taxi, then a bus with just a couple of passengers. He ran along, past shop windows filled with mannequins, hi-fi, furniture, lights, computers, past a bank that had been converted into a bar, then halted at stop lights and looked at his watch.
Luke and Phoebe were in the hands of strangers. What was happening to them? Were they still alive? He closed his eyes, wishing he could do something more than just answer damned questions, wishing he had woken and looked out of the window and seen those bastards taking his children and torn them to pieces with his bare hands.
As he ran across the road, he saw a teenage boy on a bicycle pedalling away from a newsagent, and stopped as he reached the shop, then went inside.
It was a small, narrow space, lined on one side with magazines, several of them soft porn, and on the other with both British and international newspapers. The proprietor, a surly-looking man, watched him from behind the counter.
Every British paper had the story on its front page. Several international ones did, too. There was even a photograph of himself and Naomi beneath the splash of one newspaper printed in a language he didn’t recognize.
DESIGNER BABIES ABDUCTED! TWINS KIDNAPPED! DOUBLE KIDNAP TRAGEDY FOR DESIGNER BABY COUPLE.
He picked out one paper at random and opened it. His and Naomi’s photographs stared out at him. Taken in front of their house. The image was a little soft – it must have been taken with a long lens by one of the photographers in the fields yesterday morning.
He started reading the article.
Swedish scientist Dr John Klaesson and his wife, Naomi, are distraught after the kidnapping of their twins, Luke and Phoebe, early yesterday morning.
In an emotional appeal on television last night ‘Hey.’
John looked up, startled, to realize the proprietor was addressing him.
‘Either buy it, mate, or clear off.’
John held up the page showing his photograph for the man to see. ‘They’re my children,’ he said lamely.
‘What’s that?’ The man wasn’t even looking at him, he was rummaging below the counter for something.
‘These twins, in the headlines, these are my children.’
He looked up at him and shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Either buy it or clear off.’
John put the paper back on the rack and patted his pockets. He had no money on him, not a bean.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, distraught. ‘I’ll come back.’
The man wasn’t interested; he wasn’t even looking at him any more.
John slunk out of the shop and ran, half-heartedly, back towards the hotel and in through the door he had exited and left open.
Naomi was in the shower when he came into the room. ‘Renate Harrison rang to see how we were. She’s going to be waiting outside the rear entrance just before nine,’ she said.
‘Has she any news?’
‘She said there have been some developments overnight, we’ll get details at the police station.’
‘But they haven’t found them?’
‘No.’
Naomi switched off the shower and stepped out. John passed her a towel. She looked so vulnerable, he thought, with her hair plastered to her head, and water running off her body. He wrapped the towel around her and stood silently, for some moments, hugging her.