A Breeze Across The Aegean Read online

  The mother looked towards her husband briefly. “We really have no idea why Alessandra might disappear. We do know that she was happy on Rhodes and in her job. There was nothing to indicate that this might happen. As you can imagine, we have thought of little else. Alessandra was so good at staying in touch with us. That’s why we first became concerned.

  “There was a boyfriend that we did not like the sound of.” She again looked to her husband for confirmation. “We had some knowledge of the boyfriend’s father from when we lived on Rhodes, but we had never met the son. From what Alessandra told us he had seemed quite domineering. I doubt this is relevant, though, as the relationship finished quite a few months ago. Certainly well before we last heard from Alessandra.

  “We also had slight concerns about some of the friends that Alessandra seemed to have made more recently on Rhodes. But it was only a feeling we had. Alessandra has always been such a sensible person. We haven’t seen her in more than a year and so any concerns we had were based more on how she sounded over the phone rather than what she was actually saying. Can you understand that?

  “I guess it’s a mother thing” she continued. “It was more in her tone of voice; her usual sparkle and enthusiasm for things around her seemed to have gone. The last few times we spoke, I remember thinking she was being slightly secretive and distant. As if she was preoccupied by something. It was not like her. She’s usually so warm and trusting with us.

  “Please excuse me,” she said, reaching into her bag for a tissue. Nicholas asked if he could get her a glass of water, which she waved away. Her husband continued to sit quietly, looking into the distance.

  Mrs Bianchi eventually recovered enough to continue: “Alessandra had alluded to concerns about her safety. She didn’t say much. I remember one phone call quite late at night, some months ago. She said that she might need to come back to the UK. She asked if she could stay with us.

  “But the next time we spoke, everything was fine. She told me how much she was enjoying her work as a volunteer at the dog sanctuary at the weekends. She sounded in her element and was back to her old self again. We have told the police all about this. They told us that the Rhodes police hadn’t been able to contact the ex-boyfriend. It’s believed he left the island some time before she went missing.”

  Mrs Bianchi said she was upset that the police had asked whether Alessandra was taking or had taken drugs and if any of her friends were involved in drugs. “We are very, very, sure that Alessandra did not take drugs. Nor would she have become involved in anything to do with them. We are very clear on this.” She glanced towards her husband for support.

  Nicholas intervened: “I completely believe you.”

  “But we cannot speak for her friends. We had suspicions that the ex-boyfriend may have taken drugs or been involved somehow with them. He did not seem that stable.”

  Mrs Bianchi turned to her husband: “There was also that call one evening. A man with a foreign accent – I’m not sure what it was – he wanted to speak to you. I gave the phone to you and you spoke to him for a couple of minutes. You said he had got the wrong person. It was another Bianchi that they were looking for.” Her husband did not respond.

  It felt a bit awkward and Nicholas thought it was time to go. The Bianchis thanked Nicholas. “It was good of you to do this, but there’s nothing else you can do,” said Mrs Bianchi. “We must be left on our own to deal with this, Mr Adams, so, now, please can I ask that you leave us alone.”

  They did agree to contact him if there was any positive news. More reluctantly, they also said he could phone them for updates on Alessandra, every so often.

  Christmas dragged into the New Year. Nicholas found the holiday period weighed more heavily with the inactivity it invited. He continued to think about Alessandra. He thought over his meeting with the police and the subsequent, rather stilted, meeting with her parents. He felt disquiet. The police did not give him any encouragement that anything would change. Alessandra’s parents had come across as passive victims of her disappearance and he had little confidence that they would be able to do anything to help find her. He had heard nothing from them. He wondered whether there had been any ill feeling between Alessandra and her father.

  The limbo was punctuated by a visit to his parents, who lived in the village of Chawton, a picturesque village nestling in the folds of the Hampshire fields, near Alton, best known for being the home of Jane Austen. The home is now a museum and it is where she wrote most of her novels, sitting at the small round walnut table in the parlour, looking out on the road and to the world outside.

  When they retired, his parents had moved from Southampton and now lived in a low-ceilinged honey-coloured cottage with a long narrow garden that escaped down to a stream at its end. During the visit, Nicholas enjoyed a rare moment of intimacy with his formal and often distant father. His father had sensed over lunch that something was troubling his son.

  “How are things at work?” he asked Nicholas.

  Nicholas found himself admitting that his job had lost its allure. “Somehow the challenge has disappeared, along with my enthusiasm. I really feel the time has come for a change. You know, ever since Lynda, I have felt that there is no purpose to my life. It feels as if I am just drifting … as if I were in a river and caught in the current. Sometimes, I feel as though I am hurtling along past everyone and then suddenly I am caught up in an eddy or go off up a side channel.” He smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed.

  “How can we help?” asked his father.

  “Thanks Dad.” Nicholas was grateful for this unusually caring response. “This is something that I need to do for myself. I just feel that I have lost control over the direction of my life.

  “So, do you know what you are going to do?”

  “I think so, but I can’t explain it right now. All I can tell you is that I’m going to take a sabbatical from work and I’ll be away for a while. I can’t even fully explain my motivation, but I hope it will become clearer to myself. When it does, I will let you and Mum know. I will keep in touch, I promise you.”

  Back home, Nicholas phoned Alessandra’s parents. Mrs Bianchi sounded ever more resigned. No, they had not heard from Alessandra, but although the police on Rhodes had drawn a blank, they had agreed to continue with a search on Halki.

  Nicholas told her what he meant to do. There was a silence.

  “We still hope we’ll hear from her soon and we thank you for taking an interest, but we don’t think you should get any more involved.”

  Nicholas was shocked, especially after what she had said about the police and Halki.

  “I respect your viewpoint,” he said, with more conviction than he felt. ”I hope that you’re right and do hear from her soon. With or without your blessing, however, one way or another I’m already involved and know what I need to do. I will stay in touch.”

  Nicholas put down the phone. It was hard to reconcile the strange attitude of her parents with Alessandra’s kindness – and vitality. He had to look for her. She had loved life. But was he doing this for Alessandra or for himself? After spending so long with his life being determined by the dead, it was time the living were given their time. Perhaps, he thought, I can make a difference. He felt better able to trust his instincts. It was worth a go.

  The next day, he found himself in his marketing director’s office, requesting a six-month sabbatical from work. Nicholas wondered whether perhaps they were as indifferent about his absence as he was presently about his job, but it was agreed readily.

  So, at the end of the first week in February, Nicholas boarded a flight to Rhodes.

  Chapter Five

  Rhodes Town

  Rain swept through the dark streets, leaving glistening grey cobbles. The cold northerly wind battered the old buildings, clawing at shutters and tree branches left exposed. Most of the restaurants in the Knights’ Quarter were closed for the winter, chairs stacked and secured under awnings. Waiters huddled in the entrances of the few that were open, smoking, as they scanned passers-by for trade.

  Nicholas turned down Il Forno-Platonos Street towards his favourite Italian restaurant. He had arrived three days ago and booked a month’s stay in a comfortable white-shuttered hotel on Oktovriou Street. On his first day he had visited the police station in Mandraki Harbour, where he had met Captain Petrakis, the man in charge of the investigation into Alessandra’s disappearance. Nicholas explained his involvement and told Petrakis he had met Alessandra’s parents and told them of his intention to come to Rhodes to help find her.

  Petrakis, short, balding and in his fifties, spoke excellent English. He told Nicholas that he had spent some time in England, studying at Aston University, in Birmingham. He was polite and apologetic, but said there had been no developments. “We went to her apartment, but we didn’t find anything there that could help us.” Petrakis’s manner was brisk and efficient. “We also spoke to her landlord and found she had signed a new one-year lease last July. So, it looks probable that she will return and will be sorry that she hasn’t let her friends know she was planning to be away.”

  “Have you followed up on Halki? In my statement to the UK police I mentioned that she visited a friend on Halki. That was in mid-October and was the last I heard from her.”

  Petrakis was again apologetic. “I am afraid we don’t have a police presence on Halki. I did send one of my men over when we received your report but we found nothing. There were no reports of anyone missing. Unfortunately the island closes down in winter. Not much is open and there are few ferries. Many locals come over to Rhodes during these months.” He shrugged. “There was little more that we could do.”

 
Nicholas wondered how seriously the Rhodes police were taking the case. No one seemed to doubt that Alessandra would return, but also no one questioned whether it was in character for her to suddenly take off. Petrakis had said there had been no trace of her mobile phone and, in his view, there was nothing further they could do.

  “I expect that Miss Bianchi’s case will, unfortunately, be downgraded to a missing person status. I am sorry,” he shrugged again.

  Nicholas had seen posters of missing people at Rhodes airport. Alessandra was just one more, according to the police. A foreign woman who had decided to take off without telling her family and would no doubt turn up eventually.

  Now, crossing the quiet taxi rank, he passed the tourist office, its door locked. His destination was the museum. In the gloom of the narrow cobbled street leading up to the museum, the massive, dark stone entrance was forbidding. Discarded wrappers and cigarette ends eddied in the wind around the large, open wooden door. Nicholas passed the marble statue of Aphrodite Bathing and the wall-mounted mosaics to reach the offices marked “Private Museum Staff”. Knocking on one at random, he heard a man’s voice ask him to enter in Greek. “Yasas,” Nicholas replied “Milate Anglika?” he offered, hopefully, in his guidebook Greek.

  “How may I help you,” asked the man seated at a large wooden desk, in flawless English. Nicholas explained why he was there. The man seemed surprised, but recovered quickly. “And you are a friend of Alessandra? A very good friend clearly. Well, you better sit. My name is Michael Kamides and I am head of research here at the museum. I was Alessandra’s manager.” He looked the part: glasses and a jacket with leather patches at the elbows. Nicholas almost expected to see a pipe nestling in an ashtray. He was quite a big man, almost the same height as Nicholas. Kamides said he had recruited her for the research job. She also worked as an archivist across the island.

  “Alessandra immediately impressed me with her enthusiasm and passion for our history. We obviously have a rich history here on Rhodes and indeed across the whole of the Dodecanese. She speaks fairly good Greek and was also very thorough in her approach. She had researched the job and came well prepared. She fitted in really well from the start and is … was a popular employee.

  “After we received a text from Alessandra saying she was unwell and would be off work, I asked one of her colleagues to go by her apartment to check that she was all right.” That was more than three months ago and there had been no further word from Alessandra, he added.

  “When the police became involved they obtained a key from the caretaker of the apartments. We believe that they found no sign that she had been there for some time. We thought perhaps she had just decided to go back to the UK. I understand from the police that her passport was missing.”

  Kamides, on second glance, was younger than he first appeared, but there was something Nicholas was uneasy about.

  Alessandra’s boss said he believed she had simply returned to England. He was disappointed that she did not tell him that she was leaving or indeed let him know that she might have had any problems that would lead her to do so. As he talked he made sure that the edges of document piles on his desk were all carefully aligned. He then paused, wondering where to move his stapler, eventually settling on placing it on a holiday brochure in his metal out-tray.

  “We are a bit like a family here at the museum and we would have done everything we could to help” he resumed.

  There was something not right here. Nicholas liked to think that his boss and his colleagues would have done more to check that he was all right if he had not been to work for some time.

  Nicholas told Kamides there was no evidence that Alessandra was back in the UK. Even her family had not heard from her since the autumn.

  “Can you remember how she seemed or what she was working on in the period before she disappeared?” he asked.

  Kamides hesitated. “She seemed her normal self, though a bit distracted. She had been doing work at our Ancient Kamiros site, about 25 kilometres from here, for the early part of the year, documenting some of the recent significant finds. She seemed excited about it.”

  “What about visits to Halki? Did she go there?”

  “Yes, Alessandra did visit most of our surrounding islands over the past few years. I remember that she asked me how to find the old maps of the islands, including Halki, in the library.” Nicholas was surprised. He thought that Alessandra had said that the visit was her first to the island. Perhaps he had misheard her?

  “When the real summer heat started she returned to her work in the office here. It gets much too hot in July and August for fieldwork.”

  “Do you know if she had any friends here – or a boyfriend?” Kamides looked away. He picked up his fountain pen, a Mont Blanc, and tapped his teeth in thought. Nicholas wondered if he was nervous.

  Turning back to Nicholas, Kamides said: “I feel rather uncomfortable talking about the personal lives of our employees.” He paused. “But, yes, there was a guy who came into the museum to meet her a couple of times. I think he was her boyfriend.” His voice had become more measured.

  “What was he like?” Nicholas asked.

  “Well, it is difficult as I was only introduced to him the once by Alessandra. Although he said that he was an academic, with a background in the history of Middle Eastern trade, he came across as one of those rich, arrogant types. I’m afraid I didn’t really like him.

  “I do remember, on one occasion, there was an argument. I heard shouting. I had to ask the boyfriend to leave. Alessandra was very upset.”

  Kamides thought the boyfriend had been jealous of her friendship with some of her work colleagues. “He was not Greek – perhaps German, perhaps Eastern European? From what I saw they did not seem well suited.” Kamides thought they had split up some time ago. Outside of work colleagues, she had friends she would spend time with at weekends.

  “She mentioned a friend she was visiting on Halki. Do you happen to know who that might have been?” Nicholas asked.

  “I am sure I do not know. She may have known someone there but I can’t recall her mentioning anyone to me.”

  “Did Alessandra have a car?” Nicholas asked as an afterthought. “When I got back from Halki I did look for a car left behind in the port but did not see one.”

  “I don’t believe that she did.

  “When she was working out of the museum at our sites across the island she tended to travel with colleagues who lived in Rhodes town”.

  Nicholas got up to leave. “Thank you for your time. You have been helpful. Please let me know if anything further comes to mind.” Taking his phone number, Kamides said he would. Nicholas paused before he reached the door. “Is there anyone else I should speak to, someone who might know who her friends were or what she did in her spare time?”

  “She was very friendly with Eleni Papadakis, another of my researchers. Unfortunately, she is not here today as her daughter is not well. Why don’t you try tomorrow, or I could just give her your number.”

  Nicholas said he might call into the museum tomorrow in case she was back at work. He left wondering about Kamides. He’d had the feeling that there was something he was not being told. Mulling it over, he headed for the fourteenth-century Palace of the Grand Master around the corner. There was nothing more to be done today, so he thought he’d take a look.

  The Palace had been originally built by the Knights Hospitaller, but the interior was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, after an explosion caused significant damage. With Alessandra in his thoughts, and reminded of her passion for her work at the museum, he sought out the Ancient Rhodes exhibition. The exhibits celebrated the 2,400 years since the founding of the old city. The exhibition detailed the archaeological research conducted in the city over this period. One exhibit caught his eye. It revealed that Rhodes’ strategic geographical position in the sea route between the Levant, Cyprus and the Aegean had led to its development as a naval power and the economy flourished. Evidence had also been gathered from ninth-century BC graves at Kamiros, suggesting a long and significant trade history with Cyprus and Phoenicia.