MORNING SERIAL

BUT it was not just about Clare, who, with this offer on the table, I could once again view without cloud. If I acted afraid of her, it was a fear of being thought of badly by her that instilled that fear. It was the sadness of losing respect.

At Prostakov’s estate I had entered a wonderland. Nothing was quite as it seemed and every minor instruction had at its base a riddle. I still did not know who Prostakov was, or what his real relationship with Francis had been. That place he lived at was an isolated dream, and not an ideal, but an unsteady realm where truth seemed to bend in and out of focus.

I cut Viktor short and asked him to drop me at the bar in Parilimni where I had made myself comfortable after the funeral. At least where my drinking was concerned, I was a creature of quickly formed habit.

The barmaid, Veronika, was not there, but a young man tended bar in her place. There had been something circling me that she had said the day before and I hadn’t even noticed it was there. She had said something about Russians and their girls, or that they always brought their girls with them, or something along those lines. And now the thought of the people by Prostakov’s pool would not let go, and somewhere the two unshakeable notions met and created a whole new angle of suspicion.

“Do you know anything about Illarion Prostakov?” I said to the barman. He was not as friendly as Veronika, and he just shrugged at me. “A Russian,” I said, as if the name I’d just given sounded anything else. “Is your boss here?”

This seemed to worry the man, as if I was angling to make a complaint, and he began to plead that he knew a few Russians but not always by name and that they tended to keep to themselves, to their own bars and clubs and this place was one hundred per cent Cypriot. He said it proudly, but also kind of spat it at me, as if my suggestion that it had been otherwise – which I hadn’t made – was a great affront.

> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com