The Silver Stain (10 page)

Kersten nodded wearily. ‘A preliminary inspection showed that thirty coins are missing – the majority of them Hellenistic, but some Roman, Byzantine, Arabic and Venetian.’

‘As soon as you can give me precise information and descriptions . . .’

‘First thing in the morning,’ the German said.

‘What is the value of these coins?’ Margaritis asked.

‘Some of them are very rare. I would estimate at least fifty thousand euros.’

‘All right, Inspector, that will have to suffice.’ Hildegard Kersten starting shooing the policemen out of the room. ‘My husband is not well. You will have your information tomorrow.’

Margaritis got up and walked slowly towards the door, his shoes scuffed and unpolished. ‘Family friend, my ass,’ he said to Mavros in a low voice, as he passed. ‘I know exactly who you are. Keep out of my hair.’

‘Delighted,’ Mavros said, eyeing the greasy strands that only partially covered the inspector’s cranium.

‘Mr Mavro – Alex – thank you for coming,’ Rudolf Kersten said, waving him to the table. He suddenly seemed much less tired. ‘I would like to hire you to get my coins back.’

‘That’s not the kind of work I do,’ Mavros said, sitting next to the old man. ‘Besides, I’m already working a case.’

‘Can’t you handle the matters side by side?’ Hildegard asked, sitting at the head of the table.

Mavros shrugged. ‘Possibly, but you must understand that I am contracted by the production company, so I’ve got to give the search for Maria Kondos priority.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ Kersten said, smiling loosely. ‘You see, we know who took the coins.’

‘You . . .’ Mavros broke off. ‘Did you tell the inspector?’

The elderly couple exchanged glances.

‘No,’ Kersten said. ‘We cannot do that. You see, the thief is our . . . is our grandson.’

Mavros sat back in his chair. He was used to dealing with family feuds, but till now they had always been between Greeks. Maybe the Kerstens were more naturalized than he’d realized.

‘His name is Oskar Mesner,’ Hildegard said. ‘He was always the black sheep of the family. Our daughter Franziska married a most unsuitable man, a tiler, if you please, a drunkard and a leech. Oskar has taken after him in all senses.’

‘And you suspect he’s in Crete?’

‘We know he’s in Crete,’ Rudolf Kersten said. ‘He’s in Chania with an unsavoury group of individuals.’ He scribbled an address on a piece of paper. ‘Will you go here and ask him for the coins, please? You may offer him ten thousand euros in recompense.’

Mavros looked at each of them. ‘Three questions. What proportion of your collection are the missing coins?’

‘Numerically, about five per cent. In terms of value, rather less. I should keep them in a safety deposit box, but I like to look at them on a daily basis.’

The rich man and his foibles, Mavros thought. ‘Why don’t you go and talk to Oskar yourselves?’

‘Because he hates his grandfather,’ Hildegard said. ‘He thinks he betrayed his country by coming to live here.’

Mavros intended to come back to that. ‘If you want to pay Oskar off, why did you involve the police?’

‘Ah, that was unfortunate,’ Kersten said. ‘One of our gardeners saw someone coming out of the rear window. He gave chase, but the individual ran to the gate and got away in a waiting car.’

‘Which will be on the gate’s CCTV.’

‘No doubt,’ the resort owner said. ‘But I won’t be giving that to the police.’

‘Ah. Tell me, what should I know about this Oskar? Is he, for instance, two metres tall and a hundred and thirty kilos of muscle?’

Hildegard got up from the table and returned with a photograph, showing a thin man in his late twenties, his blond hair cut short and tattoos on his puny forearms.

‘And the unsavoury group he hangs out with?’ Mavros asked.

‘Some of them came here once with Oskar,’ Kersten said. ‘Skinheads, layabouts. I gave them food and beer and they left quietly enough.’

‘You could go now,’ Hildegard said. ‘You can’t do anything to find the Kondos woman at this time of night.’

‘I could sleep so I’m in good shape to carry on the search for her tomorrow.’

Rudolf Kersten stood up stiffly. ‘Alex, if you do this small thing for us, I will pay you a thousand euros.’

Mavros looked at them and then nodded. He’d been made another offer he couldn’t refuse.

SEVEN

T
he Kerstens gave Mavros a money-belt filled from with cash from their safe. It made him look like he had a pot belly.

‘Are you sure you trust me with this?’

Rudolf looked at him unwaveringly. ‘I’m sure. I can’t send anyone from the hotel staff with you in case they recognize my grandson. We do have a standing on the island.’

Mavros nodded, wondering if now was a good time to ask about the wartime atrocities he’d heard about from Waggoner. He decided against it, not fully trusting the former SOE agent.

‘I’ll think of something,’ he said, wondering if he would.

‘Oskar often goes to that bar, the Black Eagle, behind the old harbour,’ Hildegard said.

Mavros had a feeling he’d been there with his brother-in-law. In any case, it was only a few minutes’ walk from Anna and Nondas’s flat. He wondered if Barba-Yannis would still be awake – it would be an opportunity to get the keys.

‘Anything else I should know?’ he asked.

The Kerstens exchanged a glance. ‘Well,’ Rudolf said, ‘Oskar got involved with a far-right group back in Germany after he left school. It’s possible some might be out here with him. He . . . he also has contacts with a group of extremist Greeks.’

Whence the skinheads, Mavros thought. Neo-Nazis and bonkers Greek hyper-patriots. Were they worth it for a thousand euros? Definitely not, though there was no harm in checking Oskar Mesner out. Maybe he’d be on his own in the corner of the bar nursing a small bottle of lager.

‘I have . . . I have weapons,’ Kersten said.

‘World War Two relics or something more modern?’ Mavros asked, unable to restrain himself.

‘I have nothing from the war,’ the old man said in a low voice.

‘No, thanks,’ Mavros said firmly. Like his father and brother, he was opposed to violence in all forms except verbal. It was said on the Left that both Spyros and Andonis would have risen even higher than they did in the resistance movements they were engaged in if they had sanctioned the use of armed revolution.

‘Here,’ Kersten said, giving him a folded piece of paper. ‘This note tells Oskar that this is the last money he will receive from me. Please give it to him after you get the coins back.’

‘One of us will be awake all night,’ Kersten said, with a soft smile. ‘We have great faith in you, young man.’

Mavros wished them goodnight, inordinately happy to be called ‘young’ when he was forty-one. Maybe it was the long hair.

Renzo Capaldi was hovering outside the private door, looking like a giant who was about to be thrown out of his castle for eating the furniture.

‘Mr Mavros, is there anything I can do?’

‘I don’t know. Dance
Swan Lake
?’

It was as he approached the main door that the thought struck him. He looked in his pocket and found the car-hire company card, then pressed out the number on his mobile.

‘Is Mikis around?’ he asked the woman who answered. ‘I’m with the film crew at the Heavenly Blue and I’d like him to pick me up?’

‘Now?’

‘Would that be a problem?’

‘Not unless he’s hitting the beers, which he better not be.’ The woman laughed. ‘I’m his mother.’

Mavros wondered if Mrs Tsifaki had biceps like her son’s.

‘No, it’s all right,’ she said after a pause. ‘He was watching the basketball. He’ll be with you in under ten minutes, Mr . . . ?’

‘Mavros.’

‘Black by name, not black by nature, I hope?’

‘Only occasionally.’

Mikis turned up in the same Jeep.

‘Where are we going?’ he said, after greeting his passenger.

‘Centre of Chania. Sorry to drag you away from the basketball.’

‘Nah, it’s rubbish. Opium of the people.’

Mavros turned to him. ‘That’s not exactly what I expected to hear from a guy who spends his time servicing Hollywood capitalists.’

Mikis laughed. ‘I’m not a member of the party or anything, but I like some of the things Marx said.’

‘Yeah, so do I,’ Mavros agreed. He’d never had any interest in joining the Communists or any other party, despite his father’s decades of underground service. He’d never been sure why, but it was probably because he didn’t like authoritarian structures. According to the Fat Man, it was because he didn’t care about his fellow men and women, something he tried to disprove in his work. It was an ideology of sorts.

‘I’ve got to pick up some keys and then deliver something,’ he said to Mikis. ‘You’re not rushing off anywhere?’ It had occurred to him that having the burly Cretan at his side might be useful if Oskar was with his friends.

‘Whatever you want. It’s the production company’s bill.’

Driving around the old town of Chania at night, even during the early part of the tourist season, was less than straightforward. Mikis dropped Mavros as near Barba-Yannis’s place as he could; they’d arranged to meet outside the Black Eagle twenty minutes later.

Mavros knocked on a neatly painted blue door, encouraged by the sound of a television inside. The door opened and a wizened old man with a spectacular moustache looked up at him. Even at night he was wearing the
vraka
, though he had taken off his high boots.

‘Is that you, young Alex?’ he asked, squinting.

Twice in one night, Mavros thought. Once more and I’ll turn back into a student. He shook the old man’s hand and asked him how he was.

‘Better than I ought to be. I was ninety last month, you know.’

Mavros passed on greetings from Nondas and Anna, then said he was in a hurry – he’d call back to see the caretaker at a more civilized time.

‘Civilized?’ the old man cackled. ‘This is the best time of the day. The TV’s full of girls in their underwear. Have you ever called one of those numbers?’

Swallowing laughter and taking the keys, Mavros headed down the narrow street to the flat. It was on the second and third floors of one of the Venetian houses that had escaped the German bombing before and during the Battle of Crete. Inside it was cool, the furniture covered in sheets. There were cockroach traps all over the place. He considered taking a knife from the kitchen or leaving the money there, but decided the presence of Mikis would be enough to keep things calm.

He locked up after himself and stowed the heavy keys in his jacket pocket. The Black Eagle was round a couple of corners and a hundred paces nearer the harbour. Although it was past midnight, music was playing from all directions and the yells of drunks rang out regularly. Mavros remembered what David Waggoner had said about the Cretan deal with the devil – it sounded like the demons were loose tonight, and it was still only May.

He saw Mikis in a doorway about ten metres from the tables outside the bar.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think you want to go in there,’ the Cretan said. ‘It’s full of shaven-headed shitheads, the kind who think Hitler was a god. There are Germans and Greeks. The latter call themselves the Cretan Renaissance.’ He laughed harshly. ‘They wouldn’t know a renaissance if it performed colonic irrigation on them.’

Mavros laughed, then went closer and glanced inside. The back of the bar was full of shouting yobs, one of whom was Oskar Mesner. The question was, how to lure him out on his own?

From
The Descent of Icarus
:

We got our toe in the door at Maleme and over the next couple of days the Auntie Jus landed mountain troops in large numbers. There were plenty of planes hit as they came in to land or took off at their excruciatingly slow speed, but our forces were mustering. Captain Blatter had several RAF men shot for refusing to assist in shifting damaged aircraft from the runway. I felt sick the whole time, going about my duties like a machine. Wachter kept away from me and I was sure he had told the other men about my failure to fire. Cowards were not countenanced in the ranks of paratroopers, so I was left alone.

Until it was time to advance. Surprisingly, the New Zealanders had not pressed us when our position at Maleme was critical – I later learned that the Allies’ communications were almost non-existent and their commanders had failed to realize how vulnerable we were. That’s what days of bombing and strafing will do to men in inadequate defensive positions. Units were sent forward to probe locations to the east, many of them making good progress despite dogged defence from the Maoris and Greek irregulars. Captain Blatter dispatched Lieutenant Horsmann’s company – including Peter Wachter and me – towards a village called Galatsi. The 109s were still shrieking over our heads, their machine guns shredding trees and anyone beneath them. I had been ordered to the front of the line by Blatter before we left. It was clear that he hoped I would stop at least one bullet. Horsmann gave me a sympathetic glance, but was powerless to contradict his superior.

It was a hot morning and we passed several German corpses. Their faces were blackened and flyblown, their bellies swollen to bursting point except for those who had been hit in the abdomen. Soon the word went round that our men had been mutilated. This caused anger and a burning desire for revenge amongst the others, but I was only saddened by the waste of young lives.

The outskirts of Galatsi – less a village than a hamlet – were deserted, the walls of the simple peasant houses wrecked by strafing and the roofs of most of them collapsed. There was the occasional burst of firing on the higher ground to the south, but little of it came our way – Blatter’s men were clearing out the enemy.

We assembled in the small square around an ancient tree, most of its leaves blown to the dusty ground. There was a gap in the aerial activity and I heard birds singing from the small gardens behind the shattered buildings. And then came a combination of sounds that, first, set our nerves on edge and, second, sent us scurrying for cover.

Two British light tanks came into view at the other end of the street and started firing at us. They accelerated, our return fire ringing off their armoured fronts and sides. But they were only the start of our travails. Behind them came the New Zealanders, bellowing war cries and carrying rifles with long bayonets. They were followed in turn by Greek troops, some of them armed with nothing more than pistols and knives. They were also shouting a battle cry, a single word repeated over and over again. Later I learned it was ‘
aera
’, meaning that the fighters should fall on the enemy like a great wind. And then came members of the local population, whose homes we had destroyed and were now taking refuge in.