Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (25 page)

But at least they gave him something to think about, something to take his mind off the feelings he had begun to experience from reading the idiot British soldier’s diary. Guilt? Fear? Those emotions had finally taken hold of him after so many years of self-control. Could it really be that he was fated to live with the same doubts and agonies that had racked George Lawrence?

Panos Theocharis looked out over the dusty earth towards the glinting blue of the Aegean. The colours were vivid now, but when the sun sank in the west Trigono would again become what it always had been—a well-worn threshold to the eternal dark.

Mavros carried on up to the excavation plateau, the sun doing more now than just tingling on his neck. He’d left his bag where he’d dumped the bike, and it was a long way down just to get the suntan lotion. He had his ID and wallet in his pocket, so the only potentially compromising thing that any inquisitive passer-by would find was his Greek mobile phone. He decided to take a chance and leave it where it was. There wasn’t much of a signal out in the hills.

According to the lumpen Mitsos, Eleni wasn’t at the dig. It was impossible to tell if she was beneath the sheeting at the tunnel entrance, but there was no sign of her motorbike. Mavros walked away and continued climbing. This was an opportunity to have a look at the southern massif which, according to the map that he’d left in his bag, was criss-crossed only by goat tracks.

After an ascent that left him blowing hard, he reached the saddle joining two peaks, the ridge between them with its stone wall twisting away precipitously on either side. Apart from the chapel on Profitis Ilias and a ramshackle herdsman’s hut, the hills were desolate, their upper slopes devoid of vegetation and scored by rockfalls and seasonal watercourses. There was no sign of Rena. The land she was working must be beyond the cliffs. The stone flanks of Vigla were pierced by holes, some of them surrounded by mounds of reddish earth that marked abandoned mine shafts. There were also natural caves, the entrances overhung by stalactites of varying lengths. A feeling of melancholy settled over Mavros, a crushing hopelessness brought about by the unforgiving landscape that thousands of years of human civilisation had done little to temper.

Then he looked farther away and felt a burst of exhilaration as the sea filled his eyes. It was pale blue in the coastal reaches, but swiftly deepening in colour as it stretched away to the neighbouring islands. The capes at the corners of Trigono pointed to the south-east and the south-west, the long snout to his left like an extended finger. Through the strait between Ios and Sikinos, Santorini was visible, its cliffs circling the burning heart of the underwater volcano. Closer at hand, he could see a narrow track leading down to a huddle of houses at the end of a long inlet, the grey, unwhitewashed walls showing that no one had lived there for years. This was Vathy, Mavros remembered from the guidebook, and the islets at the end of the inlet were Mavronisi and Aspronisi. Floating serenely on the calm water farther out was the smudge of the last island, Eschati. It was down there that the fishing boat with the drowned young lovers in its nets had been found.

Having taken in the panorama, Mavros turned back towards the caves and man-made holes. He wanted to go and investigate them—they were drawing him to them like a boy caught by a spell in an enchanted landscape. Then he felt the back of his neck with the palm of his hand and realised that he had to do something about the sun quickly. Stepping over the hard ground, he skirted the eastern flank of Vigla and headed back down the path. A seagull hovered above him as he went, its cry a blend of aggression and a weird, mewing sadness. He scanned the dig from above but still could see no sign of Eleni. Back at the mountain bike, he opened his bag and slapped lotion over his neck. As far as he could tell, nothing had been tampered with. The satchel was where he’d left it, buckle in place, and all his possessions were there.

The road back to the village was deserted, people with any sense keeping out of the still-vicious sun of early autumn. Looking back at the hills, he still couldn’t see the donkey Melpo or Rena. He wondered why she was sweating in the sun to provide for the beast. Surely she could buy fodder. If she were to spend more time at the port, she might be able to rent her other rooms out to the few tourists that arrived on the ferry each day.

As he was freewheeling down the slope towards the village, he saw a figure go into the Bar Astrapi, and applied his brakes. This was a good opportunity to talk to Rinus— he’d recognised the barman’s black T-shirt and jeans through the haze. Keeping out of sight of the windows, he propped the bike up against the wall. He stood by the door and placed his ear against the join in the woodwork. It was immediately apparent that the Dutchman was not alone.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ The voice was that of the furniture designer, Barbara Hoeg. ‘I’ve been waiting in your flat for hours. I came in on the bus. Mikkel will have been looking everywhere for me.’

‘Nice to see you too, Barb,’ Rinus replied. ‘I thought I told you only to use the key I gave you in emergencies.’

‘This is a fucking emergency.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, all right, you can take that smile off your face. I’ve run out of stuff.’

‘Barb, Barb, this isn’t what I want to hear.’ The barman’s tone was almost playful. ‘Have a drink instead.’

There was the sound of a heavy slap.

‘Don’t fuck with me, little man. I need more now.’

‘Screw you, Barb.’ Rinus sounded like a child who had been unjustly scolded. ‘Where do you get off on hitting me? Not even my ex-wife did that.’ A bottle rattled against a glass. ‘Anyway,’ he said in a loud whisper, ‘do you really think I’ve got any gear now? After what happened to Yiangos?’

There was another silence, this one longer. It was broken by a long intake of breath.

‘Oh my God,’ Barbara moaned, her domineering tone gone. ‘Haven’t you got anything left?’

‘You’ve had every last grain,’ Rinus said. Mavros was sure he was grinning. ‘Don’t worry, I’m working on it. The next delivery’s due in a week.’

‘In a week—oh Christ, Rinus, you’ve got to help me. What else have you got?’

The Dutchman laughed briefly. ‘A bit of grass, a few Es—’

‘Shit!’ the woman screamed. ‘That’s all shit!’

Mavros slipped away round the corner of the wall when he heard rapid footsteps approaching the door. Barbara ran out unsteadily and down the cleared space towards the track. If she saw the mountain bike, it didn’t seem to make any impression on her. Mavros moved back to the entrance.

‘Hello, Rinus,’ he said, striding towards the bar. ‘I’ve been wanting to have a talk.’

The diminutive figure on the other side of the counter swallowed the rest of his large measure of whisky and tried to disguise his alarm. ‘Alex,’ he mumbled. ‘I suppose I owe you a drink for getting that mad cow off me in the Kambos.’

‘Never mind Rena,’ Mavros said, leaning forward and grabbing the Dutchman’s arm. He didn’t often resort to physical coercion, but there were times when it was a necessary part of the job. ‘It’s time you opened up to me. Or would you prefer me to call in that policeman friend of yours? What was his name? Stamatis, wasn’t it? I don’t think that gleaming motorbike of yours will be enough to keep him off your back if I tell him you’re peddling dope.’ He smiled maliciously. ‘Better still, I could tell his superiors in Paros.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Rinus gabbled. ‘I’m not a—’ His eyes screwed up in pain. ‘Ow! Let go, for Christ’s sake. Let go!’

Mavros reduced the pressure on his wrist, but kept hold of it. Ever since a school-friend had overdosed on heroin, he’d had an aversion to pushers like the Dutchman. He didn’t care about adults like Barbara Hoeg using, but mention of the dead boy Yiangos suggested that Rinus had involved the local kids. Mavros had no hesitation in giving him a hard time. Now he had the means to squeeze information out of the barman.

‘Let’s hear it then, Rinus,’ he said, moving the whisky bottle out of range. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a panic-stricken dealer had tried to crown him in a bar. ‘First, everything you know about Rosa Ozal. Then everything about your no doubt highly profitable sideline.’ He gave his captive a slack grin. ‘And, last but not least, what was behind your pathetic attempt to fight my landlady?’

The barman raised his eyes to Mavros’s and gave him a weary look. ‘Who are you, man? Eleni was right. You’re no fucking tourist.’

The grin disappeared from Mavros’s face. ‘That reminds me. I want to know all about Eleni and Aris as well. And everyone else who comes to this dump.’ He leaned closer and breathed over the Dutchman. ‘Who am I? I’m your worst nightmare, you little shit.’

M
AVROS
was sitting on the small hill near the village, looking down over the cemetery. The line of pink and white oleanders snaking through the barren ground and the square enclosure of whitewashed walls were set against the blue backdrop of the sea, the cypresses pointing to the cloud- flecked sky like the sappy fingers of a giant trapped underground. The wind was stronger now and the neighbouring coastlines, Andiparos with its gentle slopes and the marble mountains of Paros, were rimmed with foam.

Rinus had insisted on leaving the bar, as if talking about his activities there would bring bad luck on the place. He answered Mavros’s questions willingly enough, but that only made him sure that the Dutchman was a skilled liar. While he admitted shifting small amounts of grass and hash, he denied any involvement with hard drugs. Mavros reminded him of Barbara Hoeg’s desperate demands, but Rinus just laughed and said that she always spun out of control when she missed an appointment with her analyst in Hamburg—apparently she should have gone in the middle of September. The fact that the German woman was having therapy didn’t surprise Mavros. She’d struck him as unstable even before he’d overheard her last conversation with the barman.

‘Where do you get the stuff?’ Mavros asked, placing himself in the barman’s line of vision.

Rinus shrugged. ‘I’ve got contacts here and there.’ He opened his eyes wide. ‘Who the fuck are you, man? Why are you so interested? If you were some kind of cop, you’d have nailed me or sent the narco squad in by now.’

‘Never mind who I am.’ Mavros grabbed his scrawny wrist again. ‘Do the local people know what you’re peddling in the Astrapi, you bastard? Would you like me to tell them?’

The barman’s bravado vanished and his thin frame drooped. ‘Christ, it’s only a sideline,’ he whined. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to make any money here? The islanders screw you for rent and never spend any money in the bar themselves. They—’

‘Spare me the hard-luck story,’ Mavros interrupted. ‘You could always sell your motorbike. That would keep you in beer and cigarettes for a few years.’ He caught the Dutchman’s eye. ‘Was the dead boy Yiangos moving the gear on his father’s boat?’

Rinus’s eyes narrowed. ‘Shit, Alex, the guy’s in the ground down there,’ he said, inclining his head towards the graveyard. ‘What fucking difference does it make now?’

Mavros stepped up close to him again. ‘Are you sure it was an accident?’ He was thinking about the damage to Aris Theocharis’s boat. The big man was a regular in the Bar Astrapi. Maybe he was involved with the Dutchman’s dealing. Anna’s article had said that he had criminal friends in the States. Then again he only came to the island for a month every year.

Rinus licked his cracked lips. ‘What do you mean? Yiangos and Nafsika got dragged over by the net. The idiot was probably showing off to her.’

Mavros raised his shoulders. ‘That isn’t what I heard.’ He studied the barman’s face. ‘I heard that another boat collided with the
Sotiria
. Is that why you missed your delivery?’ He put his mouth close to the other man’s ear. ‘Maybe you’ve got yourself tied up in a murder case.’

For a few moments it looked like the pressure was going to tell. Rinus’s eyes twitched and his breathing quickened. Then he clenched his arms to his fleshless sides and reasserted control.

‘Go to hell, Alex,’ he said. ‘I’m not buying that. Lefteris would have caught his son’s killer and torn his head off by now.’ He looked at the dusty ground. ‘It must have been an accident.’

Mavros saw he was losing momentum, so he tried another angle. He wanted to hold off asking about Rosa Ozal and what Rena had said about Rinus hitting her until he’d reduced the Dutchman’s defences. ‘You’ve got a lot of friends on the island, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘Aris Theocharis must be a useful guy to know. And his stepmother, Dhimitra.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Quite a woman, isn’t she? Not to mention the archaeologist Eleni. She’s another link to the Theocharis family.’

The Dutchman was looking at him nervously, trying to work out what he was building up to. ‘Yeah, we’re all friends here. Not that old man Theocharis ever comes into the Astrapi.’

‘No, I don’t suppose he does. Panos Theocharis more or less runs Trigono, doesn’t he? Not on the surface, of course, but he’s got his fingers on most of the strings.’

‘Yeah, he has,’ Rinus agreed.

‘So does
he
know that you sell dope, soft or otherwise?’ Mavros asked.

The barman’s eyes flew open in alarm. He quickly tried to disguise it. ‘No, I don’t think so. Aris—’

‘Never mind Aris for now,’ Mavros said. ‘Tell me about Rosa Ozal and I’ll consider letting old Theocharis remain in a state of ignorance.’

‘Rosa?’ The barman looked alarmed, though only for a few seconds. ‘What’s Rosa got to do with anything?’ he demanded, seemingly surprised by the change of tack.

‘That’s what I want you to tell me,’ Mavros said, glancing over his shoulder as he heard voices. He watched as the American couple he’d seen out on Vigla earlier came up the slope towards them. ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath.

‘Hello, Gretchen,’ Rinus called. ‘Hello, Lance.’ He gave Mavros a mocking glance. ‘Just in time. Alex here was about to start strangling me.’

‘What?’ Gretchen’s face was red beneath her sunhat, her eyes wide open and displaying bloodshot whites. ‘What are you saying, Rinus?’ She suddenly seemed interested in what was going on.

‘It’s a joke, dear,’ Lance said drily. ‘At least I hope it is. What are you guys doing up here? Taking in the view?’

‘Something like that,’ Mavros said, shaking his head dispiritedly.

‘And unfortunately I’ve got to go,’ the Dutchman said. ‘Catch you later, Alex,’ he added with a relieved smile. ‘Don’t jump to any hasty conclusions.’ He waved to the Americans and set off down the hill in a miniature dust storm.

‘What was that all about?’ Gretchen asked. ‘You two looked as if you were about to start brawling.’ She squatted down and rummaged in her small rucksack, coming up with a half-full bottle of water.

Mavros took in legs covered in black hairs and watched as she emptied the bottle without offering it to anyone else. ‘Speaking of fighting,’ he said, ‘what were you two doing earlier on? I saw you watching Rinus and my landlady Rena almost come to blows. Why did you do nothing to separate them?’

Lance looked down. ‘Well, you see,’ he said in an embarrassed voice, ‘Gretchen…Gretchen here’s an anthropologist and she—’

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Lance,’ the woman interrupted. ‘There’s no need to stutter like a teenager.’ She stood up and faced Mavros. ‘We were taking a walk in the hills down there. It so happens that one of my research interests is in anger management. I was interested to see how two people of different gender and background handled themselves.’

‘Really?’ Mavros looked at her sceptically. ‘I don’t suppose you know why they were fighting?’

Gretchen returned his gaze then shook her head. ‘No. That doesn’t concern me.’ She turned away and started drawing the lines of the cemetery walls in a small sketchbook.

Mavros glanced at Lance, who raised his shoulders.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, going over to stand beside his partner.

‘Are graveyards one of your research interests as well?’ Mavros asked.

Gretchen looked over at him. ‘As a matter of fact they are. Anger and death studies are my two fields of expertise. I am the author of the definitive study of certain Native American funerary practices.’ She shook her head at Lance. ‘If this oversensitive soul hadn’t forced me to keep my distance, the recent funerals here would have provided me with excellent material for comparison.’

Mavros walked past them, his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t aware that death studies were an academic subject. ‘Maybe you should ask one more of the locals to die so there’s another funeral for you to study.’

He heard a scandalised snort from the woman as he went down towards the track. Ahead of him, seagulls were hovering on the thermals above a white-hulled
trata
, their mournful yelps carrying on the breeze towards the southern massif of Trigono.

In the darkness Kyra Maro found herself high on the hillside above Paliopyrgos, her back straight, the skin on her face unwrinkled and her legs strong again. The southerly wind was being funnelled up the watercourse that had eaten into the ridge between Vigla and Profitis Ilias, its damp breath carrying a hint of the distant African desert. Her eighteen-year- old heart was fluttering like a caged bird in her chest, her breath coming quickly despite the fact that her lungs were accustomed to the steep ascent. All because of him: her lover, the man who had appeared on the island like one of the ancient gods she’d learned about from the island’s schoolmaster before he went off to die fighting the Italians in the snows of the Albanian front. Yes, that was what Tzortz was to her, an Olympian god, fleet of foot and sharp of eye. But tender, oh so tender, more gentle with her than any man from the island could ever be. And he was waiting for her in their secret cave.

She stopped by the rocky outcrop and listened, her ear to the night sky. There was no sound apart from the sighing of the waves as they ran into the sea caves far below. The stars were bright tonight, burning their shapes into the sky’s dark ceiling while the moon’s curved sliver sank away in the west. Maro knew that a watcher from the Sacred Band had been posted on the saddle between the hills, but she was sure she had flitted past without him noticing. Her aunt had died of the consumption a week ago so she was wearing black, her face obscured by the loose folds of a scarf. Outside the cave entrance she stopped and ran her hand over the rock to find the loose stone in its position. Tzortz had told her always to check that. If there was danger he would knock it away. Her fingers touched the smooth surface of the large jet pebble and felt it move soundlessly against the rougher sandstone. Her heart soared free like a lark in the spring.

‘My love,’ came the soft voice with the educated foreign accent as she ducked her head and entered the low outer cave. ‘Come to me.’

He was there, beyond the solid wall that even in daylight looked impenetrable but which concealed a narrow passage leading into a chamber larger than the room Maro shared with her three sisters. She slid round the jagged corner and moved into the circle of light cast by the oil lamp. In heavy peasant clothes, her man was kneeling on a blanket facing her with his arms open wide. His face had been darkened by the sun, but he still didn’t look like an islander. His skin wasn’t rough enough, his eyes unburdened by the demands of work on the boats or in the stony fields. That made him seem even more of a god to her.

They nestled together, his arms tight around her, not muscular like her brother Manolis’s, the hands not calloused by a lifetime hauling nets like her father’s, but safer and more caring. The protection this wiry foreigner could offer was worth more to her than that of her family. The men stood as a bulwark between her and the world because that was what the custom required, not because they loved her.

‘Ah, Maro,’ Tzortz said, his mouth close to her ear. The way he spoke her name always made the hairs on her neck and arms rise, the sound full of a longing that was all the more powerful because they’d been able to satisfy it every night since her brother’s accident.

They made love on the blanket, the light turned lower so that their naked limbs and secret places kept some of their mystery. Their movements were slow and deliberate; they bit each other’s lips gently as they concentrated on reaching the point where they fell together into the deep river of passion. Then they swam for what seemed like hours in a world beyond time, only coming back to the surface when the delirium began to wear off.

‘Ach, Tzortz,’ she said, her hand on him damp and softening. ‘How is it that you love me? I am nobody, a girl who knows nothing. I will live on Trigono and die on Trigono, but you? You will sail far away when the war is finished. You will go back to your own people and forget me.’ Her eyes filled with tears but, even before he spoke, she knew there was no need for them.

‘I will never leave you, Maro,’ he whispered, the words dripping from his lips like honey. ‘You know that. I will stay on Trigono after the war and we will raise a flock of little Maros and Tzortzes.’ He stroked her chin as she laughed. ‘I promise you,’ he said, looking at her with blue eyes that burned as bright as any star in the pastures of heaven. ‘I will never leave Trigono.’

They stayed close together and the drug of their love gradually wore off.

‘But Tzortz,’ she said. ‘We must be careful. My brother suspects us, I’m sure of that. And that Theocharis, you must not trust him. His father owned the mines here, you know that.’ She bowed her head. ‘He worked the men terribly. Many died in the shafts and caves around here. The families of the local ones were paid only enough to keep them quiet and the ones who came from distant places were left to rot where they fell unless their friends scraped a hole for them.’ She looked back into her lover’s eyes. ‘Beware of Panos Theocharis. And of Manolis Gryparis. They are not your friends.’

He nodded slowly at her then smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Maro. I know what I’m doing. Nothing can come between us.’ He drew her tightly to him. ‘Our love has made us immortal.’

It was then that Kyra Maro came back to herself and blinked, the narrow confines of her bedroom gathering around her like a cell. She sat up with difficulty and wiped the rheum and the tears from her eyes. Immortal, she thought. Tzortz was wrong about that. He’d been wrong about many things. She looked under the bed at the box containing Tasos’s remains. No one was immortal. The creaking in her own bones would soon cease for ever. And her lover? He had come back as he promised, but she had gained no relief—only a terrible agony that had never left her. There was no immortality, whatever the idiot priests said.

She got off the bed and walked unsteadily into the front room. There was a loaf of bread and a piece of hard goat’s cheese on the table. Rena must have been in when she was asleep. At least she hadn’t come when Maro was speaking to Tasos.