Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (27 page)

It wasn’t much but, since no one wanted to discuss Rosa Ozal, he couldn’t see how else to call up her shadowy presence.

M
IKKEL
parked the Suzuki on the concrete area outside the house and went back to close the gate. Before the heavy panels swung to, the sky to the west filled his eyes. The sun had dropped beyond the southern ridge of Andiparos into a bath of crimson. He looked at his watch. Nearly eight. He’d been in the village and on the road for over three hours trying to find Barbara, without success. He had woken after his siesta to find her side of the bed empty. Walking through the cool rooms of the house, he’d realised by the absence of cigarette smoke that she wasn’t inside. There had been no sign of her by the pool either. He was immediately concerned because she’d been even more on edge than usual for the last couple of days, but when he called her mobile it rang in the study. Not for the first time she’d omitted to take it with her, despite his repeated requests. She didn’t like to be tied down, which was exactly why he’d given her the thing.

Now he was at the end of his tether. Where the hell had she got to? No one in the village had seen her and she never went anywhere without the car. He had wondered if she was with the shitbag Dutchman she’d been spending so much time with recently, but he’d seen him on the hill above the village with the tourist Alex. Why was it that Barbara had taken against him so much? Then the American couple, the sharp-tongued woman and her quiet man, had joined them and Rinus had left. He claimed he hadn’t seen Barbara all day when Mikkel asked him outside the bar.

Opening the antique door that Barbara had bought at great expense from a dealer in Athens—he’d assured her it came from an
archontiko
, a traditional gentleman’s house, on Pelion, but Mikkel had his doubts—he felt a wave of relief dash over him. The unmistakable smell of her beloved Camels hung in the air. Mikkel walked in quickly, the bottle of seven-star Metaxas brandy that he’d bought her in one hand. She must have wandered off to an out-of-the-way beach and fallen asleep. He shook his head as he skirted the pine- and-steel chairs in the main room and cursed himself for a fool. There he’d been imagining the worst—Barbara having one of her unstable episodes and running in front of a car, Barbara drinking herself into a stupor and falling off a cliff—and here she was back home. She’d be fine again soon, he was sure of that. After her next session with the analyst in Hamburg.

The French windows leading to the terrace were open, the bamboo blinds behind them rattling gently in the breeze that had started to get up in the late afternoon. Mikkel called his wife’s name but got no reply. He was about to check her study when he saw her on her front in the swimming pool. As usual she was naked with her arms extended, her all-over tan visible through the limpid water and her long legs leading to the shapely backside that still made him hard. He went outside, his eye automatically following the line from pool to retaining wall to darkening blue sea and the tawny flanks of the islands beyond. Then his eyes jerked back to the swimming pool as he realised that his wife was well beneath the surface, her hair spread out around her head like an inflated halo.

‘Barbara!’ Mikkel cried, the name sounding hollow in his ears as if there were already an insurmountable barrier between him and the person who bore it. ‘Jesus, Barbara!’

Without thinking, he dropped the bottle of brandy into the flower-bed beside the pool and launched himself into the water. He flailed through it until his hands touched her upper torso. Manoeuvring the waterlogged body was difficult and he was panting, treading water frantically, by the time he got it to the side. He needed several attempts to haul his wife up the ladder and lay her on the wet tiles. He rolled her on to her side and tried to empty her lungs, but it wasn’t long before he gave up. There was no pulse and her eyes, though they were as cloudy-blue as ever and shining from their immersion in the water, had no more life in them than the pebbles on the beach.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Mikkel said under his breath. ‘Jesus Christ, you crazy woman, what have you done?’ He stood up and went over to the table at the head of the pool. There were three Camel butts in the ashtray, an empty wineglass on its side. He sniffed it and picked up the smell of the sharp Peloponneisan white wine Barbara favoured. He was sure there wouldn’t be much left in the bottle in the fridge ‘Shit!’ he said, glancing back at the body. ‘You stupid, stupid bitch.’ The words turned into a wail of misery. ‘You got yourself drunk and then passed out in the pool. I told you a thousand times to be careful about that.’

He ran into the living room and snatched up the multicoloured cover Barbara had outsourced to a factory in Rwanda; the designs went well with hers and it made her feel good to support a developing country. Mikkel swallowed a bitter laugh. As she’d pointed out to him, the covers were also dirt cheap. He spread it out over a dry part of the terrace and gently dragged Barbara across. Then, before he wrapped her in the cover, he bent his head over her arms. His heart missed a beat. No, it couldn’t be. There were track marks on the skin of her upper arm. Christ, how had he failed to spot them? The cunning bitch—she’d taken to wearing long-sleeved blouses and he’d thought it was because the worst of the heat had passed. She’d sworn to him that she was off the stuff. That was why they’d moved out here, why they spent so much time on Trigono. She could score in ten seconds back home, but here there was no easy supply. Jesus. How could he have been so blind? That was what the bastard Rinus was up to, that was why Barbara hung around him like a blowfly over a carcass. And that must have been where she was all day.

Mikkel remained squatting by his wife until his legs were attacked by cramp. He rolled on to his side, then moved closer to Barbara. God, how had he missed what she’d been doing? Never mind the long sleeves—her moods and her distance should have alerted him. And the way she warned him off with her eyes if he looked in her direction when she was in the pool. Stupid bastard. He’d spent the last few weeks pretending that things weren’t happening—that Barbara’s addiction hadn’t reclaimed her, that Rinus Smit wasn’t a poisonous dwarf who treated women like so much meat, that Aris Theocharis wasn’t a lunatic who was capable of anything. Oh God. He could have saved Barbara, he could have taken her away from this terrible island. Trigono consumed the people who lived there like a beast turning on its offspring.

But now…now he could look after her as much as he liked. He drew close to her and pulled her slack arm over his shoulders. Looking into her vacant eyes, he began to speak to her in a low, loving voice.

‘Don’t worry, my darling, I’m here. From now on it’s just the two of us. The others don’t matter any more. The muck you depended on has no more power over you, it can’t hurt you now. We’re going to stay here together, you and me. I won’t let anyone else lay a finger on you. No, never again…never…’

Mikkel continued talking as the shroud of darkness fell over Trigono, his voice lilting like a priest’s and his hand clenched around his wife’s lifeless fingers.

Mavros stood on the end of the pier as the darkness took over. There was a line of lights leading back to the harbour front, but he stood outside the glow cast by the one nearest to him. Though he didn’t think there was anyone close, he wanted to be sure no one saw him making the call or overheard what he was going to say.

‘Hello, Mother.’

‘Alex! How lovely to hear your voice. Where are you?’

‘Still on the island. How are you?’

He let her describe the ups and downs she’d experienced in the last few days, her main concern being the incompetence of the man who’d come to repair her washing-machine.

‘But you don’t want to hear about that, Alex,’ Dorothy said. ‘Is everything all right down there? Those poor young people.’

‘Yes, the atmosphere’s pretty angst-ridden,’ Mavros confirmed. ‘Listen, this is a bit of a long shot, but have you ever heard of a man called George Lawrence? He was a—’

‘Soldier-poet in Egypt during the war,’ his mother said. ‘Yes, he was a friend of Durrell, moved in the same circle.’

‘Amazing,’ Mavros said under his breath. Dorothy had the most encyclopaedic memory he’d ever encountered. His own wasn’t bad, but he hadn’t inherited the full, twenty-four-volume Cochrane edition.

‘I’m just checking something,’ she said, papers rustling in the background. ‘Ah, yes, here it is. I made some notes about him a few years ago for an essay I contributed to the
TLS
.’ There was a pause. ‘Why are you interested in an obscure bard, young man? Not that I’m complaining. Your life could do with more poetry in it. All those fearful cases you—’

‘It seems he was on Trigono during the war,’ Mavros said, cutting off her standard diatribe about his profession. ‘Have you got anything about that?’ He watched as a fishing boat chugged past the end of the pier, a cigarette blossoming red as the man at the helm inhaled.

‘Really? He was a Cambridge classicist, but I haven’t got anything about him being on Trigono. In fact, I have nothing about what happened to him in wartime after Cairo.’

Mavros let out a groan.

‘Hold on, dear,’ Dorothy said with a laugh. ‘I do know the names of the two collections he published in the UK in the late forties. Let me see. There was
Cycladic Twilight
in 1948 and then
Nights in the Archipelago
in 1949. After that he disappeared.’

Mavros pricked up his ears. ‘Pardon?’

‘He disappeared. You know well enough what that means. I remember that it was a bit of a mystery at the time. He just upped and left his flat in Bloomsbury—no note, no nothing. He was never seen again. Rather romantic, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe.’ Mavros was chewing his lip. ‘It’s certainly interesting. Are the poems any good?’

‘Some of them are quite moving,’ Dorothy said, again shuffling pages. ‘A lot about love and the Greek landscape. But they’re very dark. He seemed to have become disillusioned, no doubt during the war. Many of that generation did.’

‘Any references to Trigono?’

Dorothy laughed again. ‘I don’t remember, dear. I don’t have the books, only some poems I copied myself in the British Council library. They were published by an independent poetry press with small print runs. They’re probably worth quite a lot now, so if you come across any on your island…’

‘I’ll keep my eyes open, Mother,’ Mavros said. ‘Let me know if you find any direct references to Trigono in the poems you have.’ He signed off, telling her that he’d be back in a few days.

Walking towards a restaurant he’d noticed on the main street, Mavros told himself to forget George Lawrence. Even if Rosa Ozal did have some interest in the guy as the material from the chimney suggested, and even if he had disappeared—could he have returned to Trigono after the war?—time was running out. He’d have to find a more direct route to the heart of the case, and soon.

The restaurant down a lane near the school was one of the few that were still open at this late stage in the season. Mavros was glad to discover that the food, though basic, was fresh and well prepared—grilled squid,
patates
and a salad—and the local white wine was surprisingly subtle.

One of the other tables had been taken by a group of local men, among them one-armed Manolis and his son, Lefteris. Their conversation was loud and boisterous, mainly concerning the inadequacies of the government and its fishing policy. Mavros eavesdropped casually, fixing his gaze on the grease- stained wall above the grill. At one point he felt eyes on him and looked down to find father and son watching him intensely. He returned their stare briefly, their hostility burning him like acid. Wondering what he’d done to antagonise them—being seen with Aris Theocharis on his boat?—he turned towards the table in the corner by the window. The two English couples he’d seen before were working their way through heaps of
souvlaki
and chips, beer bottles crowding out the plates.

‘Don’t worry, Trace,’ said one of the shaven-headed men. ‘I’ll sort the tosser out.’

The woman with the large chest shook her head. ‘Oh, forget it, Roy. He’s not the first barman who’s tried it on.’

‘Is that right?’ said her man, brow furrowed. ‘Dutch bastard.’

‘Be quiet, Roy,’ said the other woman, her face red from the sun. ‘Don’t be such a racist.’ She put her hand on Trace’s arm. ‘Doesn’t matter where blokes come from, they’re all after the same thing.’ She cocked an eye at their partners.

Mavros glanced away after Trace raised her eyes and met his for a few seconds. That was long enough for her sombre look to make him feel guilty. The way he was treating Niki wasn’t exactly a master-class in caring masculinity.

‘Yeah, well,’ Trace said, drinking from her bottle. ‘That little tosser thinks he’s something really special.’

Roy leaned forward. ‘What did he say, then? It must have been bad. You don’t normally get this bothered. Tell me and I’ll have his balls.’

‘Yeah, bloody right,’ Norm put in avidly.

Trace shook her head. ‘Oh, leave off,’ she said, glaring at her companions. ‘He…he just scared me a bit. He’s weird. Let’s go somewhere else tonight.’

‘No chance,’ said Roy, a wicked grin spreading across his face. ‘I want a word with that Rinus.’

Mavros laid some banknotes down and stood up. It was clear that Rinus had tried it on once too often. It would be interesting to see what happened to him tonight. But more interesting was what the episode said about the barman’s way with women. Trace was safe enough, given the muscular back-up she had, but what happened to unaccompanied women who spurned the Dutchman? What had happened between him and Rosa Ozal?

On his way out Mavros nodded at the English table and received cheerful waves from the two men. The women gave him sceptical looks. Whatever Rinus had said to Trace seemed to have made them suspicious of men. He had a feeling that Roy and Norm wouldn’t be enjoying the rest of their holiday much.

Mavros passed the last of the village’s dim streetlights and moved up the narrow track, the usual rustles and shuffles coming from behind the high stone walls. The sounds were from animals this time. It was too early for illicit human couplings. The stars were spread out across the dome of the night in all their glory, the constellation of Orion the Hunter hanging low in the eastern quadrant. Mavros had always felt an affinity with the mythological figure, with his dogs around him and the great sword hanging from his angled belt. But this time he hadn’t succeeded in tracking down Rosa Ozal, the object of his hunt. Suddenly the image of his brother Andonis flashed before him, the piercing blue eyes and the smiling face seemingly sympathetic despite the long-standing failure to find him. All these years and still Mavros felt the loss, all these years and he hadn’t been able to uncover the slightest trace of Andonis. Instead of slackening, the pain of that failure was becoming harder to live with as he got older. It seemed that time didn’t heal all wounds.