They had, after that initial meeting, met up for coffee now and then and after a few weeks they shared the odd drunken evening together. The odd couple would, when drunk, moan constantly about their neighbour an older English woman (footnote2), also English, or their landlord, an youngish entrepreneurial Greek (footnote3), or the house, which covered itself in a greeny black mould in the winter (footnote4). Gilbert and Beccy had thought little of any of this, dismissing it as typical Brit ex-pat moaning but with hindsight and a little less generosity of spirit the signs were there to read.

And so it had continued for more than a year. There were other signs Gilbert realised now – an incident with the cat (footnote5) and the snow incidents (footnote6) to name but three but an excess of generosity had blinded him he had now decided. He rationalised that because they themselves had been new to exile that they had over-empathised, had been overly open – had in fact been prefect prey and perfectly obvious prey for a pair of sociopaths. They had, in some ways, been “asking for it”.

And they had got it. In a fit of unprecedented bountifulness when the strange couple had been asked to leave their apartment Gilbert, well Beccy if truth be told, had convinced the Greek who owned the house next door and who was a long time friend (not the Greek who had introduced them, nor the Greek landlord) to sell them 2 floors of the empty house that he had originally built for his estranged wife and children. However, within a month of them moving in next door compassion fatigue had begun to set in for Gilbert and Beccy: the consistently selfish behaviour ; the constant monopolising of emotional bandwidth as Gilbert dubbed it (footnote7) eroded understanding (or maybe misunderstanding) and shrank the leeway that they were prepared to offer.

The concomitant, the consequence of this compassion fatigue was firstly to expose a deep and incredible selfishness and, amazingly, to redouble it, and, before very long. to expose a massive resentment building in response to the withdrawal of unconditional acceptance. A snide sniping began that Gilbert shrugged off but which hurt Beccy deeply. Soon they discovered that the strange couple had begun to badmouth them behind their backs: accusing them of all sorts of hostile behaviour.

And it was at that point that they began to revisit the history of the relationship. Gilbert’s criminal research informed his thinking and it took him only a short while to realise that they were dealing with sociopaths. Beccy took some convincing – like so many people she wanted to think well of everyone or at least not to think the worst but with seed planted she analysed every action and reported action in light of Gilbert’s suppositions. With sorrow, she eventually admitted that he was right, her faith in humanity badly dented. At that point the relationship began to crumble: Gilbert and Beccy became circumspect; the strange couple became hostile. A rift became inevitable and when they turned Beccy’s best Greek friends against her with malicious and false accusations it finally exploded.

Meanwhile, Gilbert continued his research and he regularly re-examined what he knew. These people had no photographs around their house and when asked about it they calmly announced that they had burnt all photographs of themselves when they left the UK. They had no contact with anyone from their past. They had no family – they said. Their only visitor from the UK was a woman who turned up now and then and who, Gilbert had said on first meeting her, behaved more like a social worker than a friend. “Social worker or probation officer?” he later wondered? Oh yes, and they had once been introduced to a woman prison officer.

From fragments of stories they had told when drunk (stories that did not quite jibe with the history they told when sober) – the odd place name, an approximate date, a person’s name or nationality, he started to piece a story together. The story shocked him as it came together. It was a story of numerous swift removals. A story of shady dealings and shadier alliances – some criminal, some merely suspicious. And then there was the sudden and final uprooting that had preceded their arrival here in Greece. That was when they seemed to have destroyed their pasts – burnt their boats. They had made it clear that they could not go back rather than that they would not. And this was the final piece of the puzzle for Gilbert. The sober history was invented, it had always chimed as rehearsed and crafted, it was too readily substantiated (footnote8), it was just too pat. It was, Gilbert came to believe, probably invented for them and that meant only one thing – witness protection.

And once he had this piece in place it was relatively easy for him to follow up. HIs contacts in the darker crannies of life told him where to look and his contacts in the IT industry opened databases for him. In the end it was a journalist friend of his from way back who pulled the whole thing together: who they were, where they were from, what they had done and who they had grassed up. It was simple: a pair of child murderers who had informed on an active real IRA cell in Liverpool to gain immunity and a new identity. Simple and sickening. His journalist friend sent grisly tabloid press cuttings about the murders. Gilbert had read them with genuine revulsion. There were also cuttings about the special forces raids that had broken up the IRA cell on the eve of a major bombing. Gilbert had nodded as he recalled the incident. The horrific tapestry was complete. Gilbert had known that there could be, would have been, no press coverage of the cloak of invisibility that then fell over the key witnesses – D notices were assiduously observed in those terrifying times. But Gilbert knew – knew for certain.

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Footnote1- she routinely described her husband as a musician (he had played guitar now and then for some third rate middle of the road pub bands in their previous life) and he often corrected her, laughing. He had always been a metalworker he would explain.
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Footnote2 – it later transpired that they had initially invited the woman to live in the apartment next door solely so that they could get their apartment (the Greek had wanted to rent both apartments to one tenant). Eventually they harried and bullied the woman for over a year until she moved out of the village and, eventually back to England (a broken and paranoid old lady). The strange wife had had her own key cut to the older woman’s house and had spied on her – opening her mail and reading her diary – and she had had no compunction in admitting it to them, no scruple at having invaded the poor woman’s privacy.
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Footnote3 – they accused him of cheating them over the central heating fuel bills, the electricity bills, the water bills, but none of it to his face. They rubbished his reputation to any fool who would listen: until word got back to him and they were asked most politely to leave. He terminated their tenancy – another source of complaint – and relet the apartment to Belgians but not before they had hounded out the older woman who to this day the landlord holds up as an exemplary tenant.
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Footnote4 – she ran the washing machine every day, she ran the tumble dryer every day, she dried washing over the radiators and yet he refused to open doors and windows. In fact she seldom left the confines f the house during the day save to spy on the woman next door. He showered three times when he came home from work. He showered before he went to work. On rest days he showered only twice.
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Footnote5 – one of their pet cats, they had 5 of the things, had died in the road, knocked down but not squashed, and so for a week (until Gilbert had retrieved the corpse and buried it) they had simply driven the other longer way out of the village, conscientiously avoiding the dead pet.
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Footnote6 – there were 2 snow incidents, not directly related but close in time one on the other. The first was on the day the snow started. The strange woman had phoned them from her car as the snow had started to settle. She was stuck on a rise leading to her village, wheels spinning, and her panicking. Gilbert had tried to instruct her over the phone on how to drive her way out of it and when that tactic had failed due to her intransigence about taking instruction he had arranged for someone, Greek friend, to go to her and tow her. The second incident occurred three days later: the snow had continued to fall – and settle; Gilbert and Beccy were isolated; a metre of snow blanketed their farm track (isolated and trapped but well supplied). and then had come the phone call. The strange woman rang, frantic – the phone lines came down under the wieght of snow a day or so later – the water supply to their apartment had failed (ironically, the pumping station was under water) and, she revealed, the supermarkets had run out of bottled water, could she come and get some water if they had some? They said of course she could, explaining their snow bound light the while, if she could get to them and it wasn’t until she had passed on the offer and hung up that Gilbert realised that she, or they, had driven past the end of their snow blocked track several times over the previous two days without once thinking of them (only thinking of herself/themselves).
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Footnote7 – they, or she at least, were, Gilbert at first said, as compassion fatigue set in, was constantly on transmit – she never asked about Gilbert and Beccy, she never seemed to listen to, much less apprehend or understand, anybody else’s issues. And he was no better. She couldn’t hear for talking, Gilbert said, – transmit only, no receive. And as her needs and discomfitures increased he amended his analogy – she was, he quipped, monopolising all available emotional bandwidth. She was, he decided a radio station – a 24/7 broadcast of misery (it seemed impossible to Gilbert, the amount of things that upset her or discommoded her) that jammed all competing stations.
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Footnote8 – her cover story, her official history, had her as a social worker burnt out by too many cases of child abuse, incest and paedophile rings and to “prove” her story true she had once produced a set of case notes and court hearing transcripts. Gilbert had been shocked at the time that a so-called professional would have a case folder in their possession but had let it pass.
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Gilbert was awake, There was a full moon outside although he couldn’t see it from where he was ,,, he would though, soon enough. There was an owl hunting outside – he had heard it in the few minutes he had been lying there. His prickly heat was driving him crazy and his bladder was full. He was trying to put off the inevitable. Beccy was fast asleep beside him – peacefully for once. She must be between hot flushes. The owl screeched again and his ears pricked. Behind the owl there was another noise … one he couldn’t place. One that didn’t belong. An engine? And close by, too.

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Gilbert was standing and pissing. The owl was perched on the power line just outside the bathroom window. He could see the tanks on the roof cast into shadow on the white walls of the house next door. He could see the owl in silhouette. There was a hunter in the valley too though what he was hunting was beyond Gilbert. Locals followed no obvious logic when it came to firearms. Suddenly Gilbert became aware that the engine noise had stopped. He craned his neck and strained his ears. He was looking through the bathroom window his piss over and he thought he saw something moving … not the owl … something else … and he thought he perceived a black form gliding down the track toward him.

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Rubbing his eyes and shaking his dick Gilbert did the classic double take … a hummer? … here? … what the fuck? Black? No lights – that was surely so! It stopped outside the house next door but though he stood there for another 5 minutes he saw nothing else. He stumbled back to bed not quite believing his own senses. Two minutes later he was asleep again. Three minutes later he was snoring. Beccy nudged him to turn over and he did.
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Gilbert stirred. It was hot and he was sweating. His hair was wet. HIs mouth was dry from snoring. He opened his eyes and stared through the mosquito net but could not see the clock. It was dark, very dark. He was stuck to the sheets. He strained his ears. Was there noise coming from next door? He turned to face the wall but noted three dull distant sounds for future reference.

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Pulling his gown around him and tucking the belt in tightly Gilbert opened the front shutters to quiet the dogs. Something glinted in his peripheral vision and he looked left. The owl was on the wing. Hunting, he thought – but no. The moon shone brightly down on what was unmistakably a Hummer reversing up the lane. The lights were off and the windows were tinted. He could discern nothing more and then it disappeared behind olive trees though he could hear still the heavy engine turning slowly and the distinctive whine of a reversing vehicle. A dust cloud marked its passing. The dogs now quietened, he closed the shutters and stumbled back under the mosquito net looking for more sleep.

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Back to the balcony …

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