When the Devil's Idle (3 page)

St. John had
written the Book of Revelation on Patmos, a vision of misery and
doom if ever there was one, which just about described his
honeymoon and the ensuing years of his marriage.
Ach
, what a
fool he’d been.

A moment later
the boat slowed to a standstill, shuddering as it turned toward
Skala, the commercial port of Patmos. The wind gusted suddenly and
the crew fought to secure the ropes on the quay. As far as the eye
could see, the surface of the water was frothy, white in the
moonlight.

As soon as the
crew locked the gangplank into place, Patronas roused Tembelos and
the priest, and the three of them exited the boat.

“
Careful, Father.” Patronas placed his hand on the priest’s arm
to steady him as they walked down the metal gangplank.

The propellers
were still turning and the water beneath the ramp was a whirling
vortex, swirling and eddying at their feet.

Evangelos Demos
was waiting for them under a streetlight. He hadn’t changed much
since Patronas last saw him—a little grayer at the temples now,
stouter and more walrus-like. He’d grown a mustache, too, a big one
like Stalin’s.

What is he
thinking?
Patronas wondered.
No one in his right mind wants
to look like Stalin.
Perhaps Evangelos’ politics had taken an
ominous turn, Perhaps it was ‘Comrade Demos’ now.

“
I
appreciate your coming,” Evangelos told him, reaching for his bag.
“As a general rule, Patmos is very peaceful. A little shoplifting
or public drunkenness, but little else of note. I must say this
murder took us by surprise.”

“
Where’s the body?” Patronas asked.

“
Still
at the scene. In Chora.”

Patronas picked
up his pace as he followed Evangelos Demos through the streets of
Skala. The sun would be rising in less than three hours. They’d
have to hurry if they wanted to bring out the body before the
island awoke.

“
Let’s
get started,” he said.

A
ll was quiet in the port of Skala. A lone Pakistani,
hosing down the cement pavement in front of a shuttered
coffeehouse, watched them approach with studied nonchalance,
seemingly intent on his work.
Illegal
, Patronas judged,
taking in the man’s demeanor, his sweat-stained shirt, and cheap
plastic flip flops. He greeted him in Greek and the man answered in
kind, his tone friendly but careful.
“Hairetai, kyrie
astifilaka.”
Hello, Mr. Policeman.

Interesting,
Patronas thought. He knows the word for cop.

He was struck by
the man’s presence on Patmos, an island in the farthest reaches of
the Aegean and one of Christianity’s holiest places. No doubt there
were others like him here, all Muslim, all illegal, seeking work in
a country that was almost bankrupt. It had taken him, a Greek
policeman, nearly twenty-four hours to travel here, two lengthy
boat rides and a significant wait in Piraeus, so how had this man
come? Judging by his threadbare clothes, he had no money. So who’d
smuggled him here and why? Some right-wing politicians alleged the
recent influx of immigrants was a plot by Turkey to destabilize
Greece. The Turks had been burning down Greek forests for
years—every August, millions of trees went up—so why not this? Each
immigrant who washed ashore, just another stick on the
pyre.

He looked back at
the immigrant. The man had put the hose aside and was talking to a
young boy, dark-skinned like himself. The child waved at Patronas
and called out
‘Yeia sou.’
Hello.

Patronas called
back with more enthusiasm than he felt
. “Yeia sou, paidi
mou.”
Hello, my child. Sometimes he didn’t recognize his own
country.

Evangelos Demos
pointedly ignored the pair. “If the government doesn’t do
something, and do it quick, we’re going to be overrun by these
people, outnumbered in our own country.”

Not ‘Comrade’
Demos
, Patronas decided, one of those fascists in the political
party, the Golden Dawn, who had declared war on the immigrants and
were always beating them up.

“
Most
of them Pakistani?” Patronas asked.

“
They’re from all over—Albania, Africa—you name it, they’re
here.”

“
How
many?

“
Who
keeps track? This is a way station, a stop on the way to somewhere
else. People come, people go.”

On a side street,
the Pantelis Taverna was exactly as Patronas remembered it, as was
the ocher-colored façade of the Arion Bar with its large portico
and paneled interior. The blue cement fountain still stood at the
center of the cobbled square, dry now as it had been on his
honeymoon. But for the most part, Patmos wore a different face. The
stores that had once sold duty-free umbrellas and liquor were all
gone, replaced by upscale dress shops. A group of sleepy looking
tourists were standing at the taxi stand, waiting to be ferried to
their hotels, their suitcases piled up next to them.

Seeing the
cellphones the tourists were consulting, the iPads and God knows
what else, Patronas shook his head.

Once people had
only needed food and water when they went on vacation, a towel to
dry themselves after they swam. Now it was every kind of electronic
device, as if sand and sunlight weren’t enough, as if the sea
itself, mother to us all, held no glory.

The police
station was located on the top floor of a castle-like building
overlooking the harbor. Its tower with its sculpted frieze was one
of the abiding symbols of Patmos. The exterior of the building was
outlined in brightly lit bulbs, giving it a fairytale aspect, a
sense of playfulness at odds with its mission. Three police
motorcycles were parked in front. A small force, but larger than
Patronas had expected.

In spite of the
hour, a pretty young woman in a uniform was sitting behind the
front desk. Two Pakistani men were arguing with her in broken
Greek, gesturing with their hands in an effort to be
understood.

“
You
have to rent a room or leave the island,” she told them. “You can’t
just flop down on the beach like a pair of dogs and sleep.” She
made no effort to hide her contempt.

Patronas had been
surprised to see her—the force on Chios was resoundingly male—and
he listened to the exchange with a sinking heart. The young female
officer was nothing special. Just one more recruit for the Golden
Dawn. She wanted the immigrants gone from her country. Women, men,
it was all the same now in Greece.

Evangelos picked
up the Tyvek suits and booties he’d set aside for them and a box of
forensic supplies, an ancient fingerprinting kit and two spray cans
of the blood-detector, Luminol, the labels yellow with
age.

Idly, Patronas
wondered what kind of murder book Evangelos was keeping, if he was
using a quill pen to make his entries. Modern technology like so
much else, had simply passed him by.

Well-acquainted
with their colleague’s methods, Patronas and Tembelos had brought
their own gear from Chios, and seeing the rusting cans of Luminol,
Patronas was glad now they had.

The police car
was located in a back alley. An elderly Jeep Cherokee, it was a
veritable tank compared to the other cars on the road, the Suzukis
and tiny Fiats.

Patronas had
assumed Evangelos would speed up once they got underway, but he
continued on at the same steady pace, peering over the steering
wheel and taking each turn with great deliberation. Less than ten
kilometers an hour they were traveling. It was embarrassing. A
bicyclist could pass them.

Growing more and
more impatient, he drummed his fingers on the armrest. It wasn’t a
tank he was in, it was a boat, and Evangelos was rowing it. The
corpse would be decomposed by the time they got there.

As part of his
master plan, he’d insisted the priest sit in the front with
Evangelos, saying it would be more comfortable for him.

Excited by the
case, Papa Michalis was all wound up and ready to go. Let Evangelos
deal with him now. Death by talking.

As expected, Papa
Michalis started right in, discussing the victim’s German origins
and that country’s tortured political history. Then he moved on to
the strange and varied cuisine of that land, which according to him
was based largely on pig in all its unholy manifestations—head
cheese being a prime example.

“
A
terrine of jellied meat. It’s easy to make. First you remove the
whiskers from the jowls of the pig; then you split its skull and
remove the eyeballs. It’s probably a good idea to remove the wax
from the ears, too, before you get down to boiling
it ….”

Patronas rolled
his eyes. He’d sampled Papa Michalis’ cooking, a lengthy meal he
still regretted. From what he’d seen, pig jowls were right up his
alley.

Next the priest
spoke eloquently of Martin Luther and the problems he’d had with
his bowels and how they led to the Protestant Reformation—Germans
as a rule suffering greatly from constipation.

It was easy to
follow his train of thought. First a man eats and then a man …
or in Martin Luther’s case at least, a man tries to.

“
What
about World War II?” Patronas asked, deciding enough was enough.
“Was constipation the cause of that, too? Not enough prunes in
Berlin, you’re saying?”

The priest
laughed good-naturedly, going along with the joke. “No, the Nazis
had much more serious problems than that.”

“
Such
as?”

“
Well,
for one thing, they were all psychopaths.”

The size of the
car necessitated taking a roundabout route out of Skala—a bumpy,
unpaved road used by construction vehicles. They entered the main
road a few minutes later and slowly wound their way up the
mountain, passing the Patmian School, a Greek Orthodox seminary,
and the Cave of the Apocalypse, a World Heritage Site where St.
John had heard the trumpet of the Lord and written the Book of
Revelation. The air smelled of pine, a thin forest covering the
land above and below the cave.

A second World
Heritage Site, the Monastery of St. John the Theologian, dominated
the landscape. From the very top of the mountain, it resembled a
storybook castle, its crenellated towers and walls so vast, they
could be seen far out to sea.

The village of
Chora, where the German had been murdered, lay at the base of the
monastery.

Patronas was
surprised to see two flags flying in front of the city hall where
they parked the car, the yellow and black banner of the Orthodox
Church with its two-headed eagle and the blue and white flag of the
modern Greek state. The pairing was unusual and indicated that
areas of the village were under the direction of the Patriarch in
Constantinople. Not quite like Vatican City, but similar. Patronas
hoped the duality would not impede his investigation. Dealing with
the government in Athens was hard enough. Petitioning the holy
fathers in Constantinople for anything would be a
nightmare.

The wind was
fierce and it thrashed the leaves of the eucalyptus trees along the
road. A flock of black and white swallows,
xelidoni
, were
circling high overhead, their cries faint against the
wind.

Initially,
Patronas had wanted to stop for coffee, but he decided against it.
Victim’s been dead a while
, he told himself.
We’d best
keep moving
.

He and Tembelos
quickly unloaded their equipment and followed Evangelos Demos
through the village—Patronas lugging a forensic kit of his own
devising and Tembelos, the camera and plastic body bag. Evangelos
said he’d already done the preliminary work at the crime scene,
stringing up yellow police tape and hanging a tarp over the
victim

“
You
need anything else,” he told Patronas, “we can bring it from
Skala.”

A cloistered
labyrinth, Chora reminded Patronas of the medieval towns on his
native Chios. There was little visible evidence of the wealth its
inhabitants supposedly possessed, only an impenetrable maze of
stone walls and arched passageways. Here and there, he caught a
glimpse of a courtyard or old-fashioned television antenna, but for
the most part all was hidden. Unlike the other Greek villages he’d
seen, there was no laundry hanging from the balconies, no plastic
jugs under the eaves to collect rain water. All was quiet, the only
sound, the relentless drone of the wind. Maybe it was the hour, but
the village felt deserted.

Evangelos Demos
confided that since the rich Europeans had come and bought up most
of the houses, the actual Greek town had withered away. Seeing
their opportunity, most of the residents had sold out; the ones who
lingered now were isolated and alone, elderly people with no place
else to go. “You should see it in winter. It’s a ghost
town.”

The monastery was
omnipresent, its gray bulk like a man-made massif towering over the
houses of the village.

Although it was
still very early, a waiter was setting up tables in the square.
Music could be heard seeping from a nearby bar—something in English
with a driving metallic beat. Someone was already inside, a maid
perhaps, readying the place for the day’s onslaught of
tourists.