Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (8 page)

October 17th, 1942,
11 p.m.

I’m still reeling. I’ve been busy since twilight, scouting
around for a safer spot to stow the gear (I found some out-
of-
the-
way caves that might do the trick) and my feet are
aching from the rocky ground. But all I can think about is the
first real view that I had of Greece in the morning light. I
crawled up to the ridge before sunrise and waited there, my
heart pounding. At last the peaks of the mountains on the
eastern islands began to appear, nothing more than faint
lines hovering in the darkness. Then there was a sudden red
smudge and before I could fully take stock of what was happening,
the
sun’s
upper edge appeared over the highest peak
and a great burst of red shone out, so bright that I had to
shield my eyes. I felt them dampen, not just because of the
light’s
intensity, and turned to take in my island. Trigono lay
in front of me, the coastlines converging in an almost perfect
triangle to the patch of white that marked the main village,
Faros, at the northern point. In the space between, the slopes
of Vigla and Profitis Ilias ran down steeply to the flatter
expanse of Kambos with its strips of arable land, the dark
brown earth dotted with mills and houses. And beyond it all
was the sea, the brave blue Aegean dancing away towards
Paros and Andiparos, flecked with dusty islets and a few
hardy fishing boats. The gods themselves could not have constructed
a more glorious panorama. I lay on the rocky ground
for hours to absorb it all, only moving when I heard the
distant notes of a
goatherd’s
pipe and the clang of his
animals’ bells on the clear air. Now I must try to come back
to earth and concentrate on why I am here. Tomorrow night
I meet
Kapetan
M., code-name Ajax, who, according to the
departed liaison officer, can be an awkward customer. As
long as it’s the Italians’ lives he plans to make difficult I
don’t care how tough he is.

Ah, Greece, ah, Trigono. What a day this has been!

Mavros spent as much as he could of the flight with his eyes closed, clutching his worry beads. The nineteen-seater twin- prop Dornier was only half full, so he managed to keep some distance from a foursome of garrulous Scandinavians. They spent the trip gasping and squealing in delight as the aircraft steered south-east across the steadily brightening sea and the islands that had been scorched rust-brown in the long summer. Mavros hated all kinds of flying, but he was especially uncomfortable in propeller planes that flew low enough for the occupants to make out the deserted buildings on the islands’ terraced slopes and the dismembered remains of ships that had been wrecked on their indented coastlines. Crushed in the narrow seat, head bowed, he almost missed a first glimpse of his destination. But he’d opened his eyes as the pilots lined up their approach to the airport on Paros, the runway looking far too short given the speed they were doing, and Trigono reared up in the middle distance. The village in the north, only five kilometres from the end of Paros, was dwarfed by a mass of mountains to the south, the ridge between them bare and scarred by rockfalls that were visible even at this range.

‘Jesus,’ Mavros said, his voice drowned in the blast from the engines. ‘What am I doing here?’ He swallowed hard as the plane yawed alarmingly. The pilots, who had been gossiping about stewardesses they were chasing, stiffened and started to concentrate.

Then the wheels touched with a loud thud and the engine noise became even more aggressive as reverse thrust was applied. Mavros had his thighs clenched until the plane had swung into the turning circle in front of the terminal building and the engines were cut. Only then did he manage to get his breathing under control. Even though the ferries took much longer, he’d have to give serious consideration to returning by sea.

Walking unsteadily down the steps, he took in his surroundings. The airport building wasn’t much more than a medium- sized house, whitewashed in the Cycladic way but topped by incongruous aerials and discs. The airport certainly had better scenery than most. The low lines of Andiparos to the west were countered by Paros’s central massif containing the seams of marble that had made the island’s name over the centuries. And ahead of him lay Trigono, too insignificant to merit a landing strip of its own but as imposing a sight as any of the islands.

If you were into that kind of thing, Mavros thought. The open spaces and gusting southerly breeze were already getting to him. He’d rather have been in a sheltered city square, protected by the pollution cloud from the blinding rays that were making a joke of his expensive sunglasses.

It was as he went through the gate and into the car park that Mavros took the step that he’d been considering on the flight. It had worked on Zakynthos, so why not here?

‘Taxi? Taxi,
kyrie
?’ The driver, a middle-aged man with quick eyes and huge hands, had picked up Mavros’s body language and summed him up as a Greek.

‘Yes,’ he replied in English. He stuffed the worry beads into his pocket and let his limbs go loose, trying to dispel the aura of self-confidence that Greeks habitually exude. ‘Yes, taxi, please. I want the ferry for Trigono. All right?’

The taxi-driver grinned, scenting easy prey. ‘All right, my friend,’ he replied in heavily accented English. ‘I take you right away.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Boat go in one half hour.’ He wrested Mavros’s bag from him and put it in the boot of a large silver Mercedes. He turned to the other passengers. ‘Trigono! Who want Trigono?’

The tourists looked at him blankly, while the few Greeks who’d been on the plane raised their chins in the gesture that signified ‘no’. It looked like Mavros was on his own. That would give him a chance to bring his non-Greek side completely to the surface. He’d discovered when he was on Zakynthos that he could learn a lot more by feigning ignorance of the local language and culture. Overhearing and eavesdropping were useful investigative tools. There were two problems, though: you had to make sure you didn’t give the game away by suddenly being seen to understand Greek; and there was an underhand element to it that he wasn’t happy with. Too bad, he thought as he got into the car. This is business, not pleasure.

He was dropped off on the waterfront at Alyki. The taxi- driver, who hadn’t bothered to turn on the meter, tried to extract five thousand from him for the short trip but settled for two when he saw the sudden hard look on Mavros’s face.

The small port on the south-western corner of Paros was the ferry terminal for Trigono. According to the guidebook in English that Mavros bought from a kiosk, the large boats from Piraeus called at Trigono’s harbour of Faros twice a week in the high season and ignored the island for the rest of the year. He watched as a turquoise-and-white bus pulled up and disgorged passengers. There were a few tourists in skimpy shorts and baseball caps, but the majority were islanders. The men were in heavy trousers that made little concession to the heat, the women in knee-length skirts, a few wearing straw hats but most leaving their faces and scalps uncovered.

Mavros moved closer to the crowd of locals on the quay as a small ferry rounded the cape to the east. Their heads were bowed and they were speaking in low voices that he struggled to pick up while pretending to be engrossed in his book. None of them gave him a second glance. The talk was all about the young people who had drowned. It quickly became clear that most of the speakers were related to them and were on their way to console the families.

‘Nafsika and Yiangos, God forgive them, what were they doing on the boat on their own?’

‘Yiangos should have known better. Lefteris wouldn’t have let him out if he’d been here.’

‘Why was Lefteris in Syros anyway?’

‘He had to go to court, remember? That tourist he beat up. They’ll have postponed the trial after this, of course.’

‘But what happened, in the name of God? The wind wasn’t so strong. And Yiangos knew what he was doing, he—’

‘Yiangos knew nothing!’ exclaimed an old man with a thick moustache that was heavily stained by tobacco. ‘He was a kid. The sea’s always tricky around Eschati. He shouldn’t have been there, especially with no one to help him. What good would a girl have been?’

‘Come on, Maki,’ a plump woman put in. ‘Nafsika was a good girl.’

‘Yes, Nafsika was a good girl,’ admitted the old man, ‘but she didn’t know anything about boats.’

The group drew closer together and Mavros couldn’t make out much more. He watched as the ferry came in, its forward door lowering as it approached the concrete ramp. The young men on the mooring ropes looked like they’d been in a battle, their bodies slack and their heads down. Friends of the dead boy, he surmised. He waited till the small group of departing passengers left, a gypsy watermelon seller in a pick-up truck that looked like it was about to fall apart giving them an impatient blast of his horn. That attracted hostile glares.

‘Show some respect,’ muttered the deckhand at the ticket desk.

Mavros paid and climbed the steps to the upper deck. The ferry—the
Loxandra
according to a plaque under the funnel—was pulling away from the quay when a large green four-by-four vehicle came across the port area at speed, its horn blaring and headlights flashing.

‘Fuck it!’ the captain cursed from the wheelhouse. ‘It’s Aris. We’ll have to go back.’ He moved the throttle and headed towards the ramp, lowering the door again.

The top-of-the-range Jeep drove on board quickly, missing a motorbike by centimetres. The driver swung his door open and jumped down, his bald head bisected horizontally by a green sun visor. He walked across the garage deck with his chest out, keeping his eyes off everyone around him, a slack smile on his lips.

The captain swore again. ‘Don’t worry about my bike, you big buffoon,’ he said, glancing at Mavros as he put the engines into reverse and swung round towards the strait.

Mavros felt the wind stiffen as they moved away from Paros, tugging at his hair and making his T-shirt flap around his sides. The ferry began to roll as the swell took it, provoking cheerful complaints from the few tourists. The islanders had already taken refuge in the smoky cabin, a couple of the men joining the captain on the bridge.

‘Have you seen Lefteris?’ the wrinkled sailor was asked.

He nodded and leaned back from the wheel to spit into an empty plant pot. ‘Iason went to get him from Syros in his
kaïki
. They got back about five this morning.’

‘How’s he taking it?’

The skipper muttered something and gave Mavros another look; he’d moved closer to the wheelhouse door, his arms resting on the wooden rail and his eyes on the island ahead. The English guidebook was under his arm and this seemed to dispel the sailor’s suspicions.

‘You know Lefteris,’ he said. ‘He’s made of stone. Who can say what he’s thinking? But I’m sure he’s been badly hit by their loss, especially with Yiangos being an only child.’ He lit a cigarette, the acrid smoke gusting past Mavros. ‘I’ll tell you something interesting, boys.’

The others looked at him expectantly.

‘I heard the sailors from Paros who found the boat talking to the Port Police on the VHF.’ The captain inhaled again.

‘Come on, Louka, let’s have it.’

‘All right,’ the sailor replied, rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘They found a deep scrape on the
Sotiria
’s hull, along the waterline.’

‘So? She hit a rock. There’s plenty of them off Vathy.’

Kapetan Loukas was shaking his head. ‘No, no, my friends. The
trata
didn’t hit a rock. They were certain of that. She’d collided with something made of wood or metal. They could see blue paint in the abrasion.’ He dropped the cigarette butt into the pot. ‘And what colour is the
Sotiria
’s hull?’

His interlocutors looked at each other, their eyes widening.

‘White,’ one of them replied in a low voice. ‘I saw Yiangos and the girl leave port. He didn’t hit anything then, I’m sure of it. Christ, what happened down there?’

Mavros, his book now open at the pages showing a map of Trigono and the surrounding islets, screwed his eyes up in the dazzling sun. It looked like Rosa Ozal’s disappearance might not be the only mystery to be cleared up in this windswept quadrant of the Cyclades.

Panos Theocharis leaned against the wall of the terrace that ran all round his tower and looked towards Paros. Picking up the U-boat commander’s binoculars that he’d bought on the cheap in Hamburg after the war, he trained them on the distant white object in the straits. It was the ferry all right. He hoped to God that his son was on it. Aris had been on Paros overnight. God knows what chaos he’d caused in the bars. At least there hadn’t been any phone calls from the family’s tame policemen over there.

The old man glanced at the supine form stretched out on the recliner behind him, the woman’s large breasts glistening with tanning oil, and shook his head. What a sight Dhimitra was, her legs splayed and the three Alsatians she adored resting their chins on the edge of the mattress. It had been some time since he’d been able to gain any comfort from her.

Theocharis gripped his stick and moved out of the sun, his yachting shoes dragging on the tiled floor. He sat down at the table by the pool and ran his hand down the smooth flank of the foot-high sculpture by his wineglass. It wasn’t an original. He had very few Cycladic pieces in the museum and even fewer in his private collection. He’d commissioned this copy from a sculptor on Naxos so he could have physical contact with the island’s history whenever and wherever he wanted, not that he travelled much any more.
The Huntsman
, it was called. The figure of a Bronze Age warrior, baldric incised into his chest and hand gripping the broken haft of what the experts took to be a sword, was the first Cycladic piece to be unearthed on Trigono. Unfortunately the mining engineer employed by the family who came across it in the 1920s sold it illicitly to a German museum and, despite all Theocharis’s efforts, no other figures had been located on the island. Until recently. At last Eleni Trypani, the archaeologist he’d been subsidising for years, had found some stunning figurines, and her excavation reports were optimistic about locating more. He shook his head. He wasn’t sure that Eleni Trypani was trustworthy. She wasn’t submissive like others who worked for him, and she was becoming distinctly difficult to handle.