Every head turned and Lomax examined the faces quickly and then crossed to the bar. “I’m looking for Dimitri.”
The barman shrugged. “Why ask me? I’m not his keeper.”
He picked up a glass and started to dry it with a soiled cloth and Lomax turned slowly and crossed the room.
Dimitri’s bouzouki still leaned beside the chair where he had left it and Lomax picked it up and smashed it against the wall in a single violent gesture.
He turned to face the room and no one moved. “I asked for Dimitri,” he said calmly.
For a moment, they all sat there looking at him quietly, and then an old man with white hair and a moustache burned brown by tobacco said, “He is on the pier waiting to see you leave.”
Lomax turned and went back up the steps into the hot sunlight. He crossed the road on the run and moved along the wharf.
The steamer was almost ready to leave and he could see Papademos up on the bridge leaning out of an open window, shouting down orders to the sailors on the pier as they started to loosen the mooring ropes.
There were perhaps two dozen people standing about in small groups. Alexias leaned against a pillar, a cigar between his teeth, and little Nikoli with the scarred face stood with him.
It was Nikoli who saw Lomax first and he tugged at the big man’s sleeve and pointed and Alexias said something quickly and every head turned.
Half of them were young waterfront layabouts in brightly checked shirts, hair carefully curled over their collars. They were of a type to be found in every country in the world. Mean, vicious young animals who thrived on trouble.
One of them turned and made a remark and they all laughed and then Lomax saw Dimitri at the back of them. He was leaning against a windlass, a cigarette smouldering between his lips as he shaved a piece of wood with his gutting knife.
As Lomax approached, the crowd parted and he paused a couple of feet away from Dimitri. The bouzouki player was humming tunelessly to himself. He didn’t even bother to raise his head.
Alexias moved forward, Nikoli at his side. “This is the wrong time to seek trouble, Lomax. The boat leaves in five minutes.”
Lomax turned vdry slowly and looked at him contemptuously. “When I want to hear from you I’ll let you know. Once you were a man, but now…”
As he turned away, Dimitri reached to the cobbles for another piece of wood and Lomax kicked it out of his way.
Dunitri looked up slowly. His eyes were very pale, the pupils like pin-points. He still kept on humming to himself, but a muscle twitched spasmodically at one side of his jaw.
“With children and dogs you’re quite a man,” Lomax said clearly so that all could hear. “How about trying someone a little nearer your own size?”
One moment, the bouzouki player was lolling back against the windlass, the next he had moved forward, the knife cutting upwards like molten silver in the sunlight.
Lomax could have broken the arm with supreme ease. Instead, he pivoted and chopped down with the edge of his hand. Dimitri screamed, dropping the knife, and Lomax kicked it over the edge of the pier into the water.
He felt completely cool and without fear. It was as if that other, younger man had returned to take over. The one who had been trained to use such methods until they were a reflex action.
There was an ugly murmur from Dimitri’s friends, but he held up a hand and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was curiously remote and far away. “I’ll break his neck as easily as I did the dog’s.”
All work had ceased on the ship and everyone waited. As Lomax circled warily, he saw people hurrying along the waterfront and then an old jeep appeared from a side street and braked to a halt and Katina and Yanni got out.
A segull cried harshly and swooped down and Dimitri jumped in close, his right fist swinging in a tremendous punch.