When the Devil's Idle (8 page)

“
What
was your relationship with the deceased?”

“
I
took care of him always.” She struggled to find the right words. “I
made sure he had the food he liked, the Schnitzel and
Mohnkuchen
mit Streusel
. Clean clothes to wear. Supervised the woman,
Maria, to make sure she did what he wanted, cooked the way he
liked. I taught her how to make the
Mohnkuchen
for
him.”

“
Excuse me,” Patronas said, “but what is
Mohnkuchen
?”

“
A
cake of poppy seeds. It is very good, a favorite of us
all.”

After a pause,
she continued. “Sometimes we two, we watch television together. He
was my family, too.”

There was little
warmth in her voice as she said this. Duty had called and she’d
answered.

“
Did
he ever express fear, the victim, or seem worried about
anything?”

“
No,
no. He got up every morning, ate his breakfast and went outside. He
loved the garden. He’d cut flowers and put them in a vase for me.
He liked to surprise me with roses.” Her voice caught.

“
Your
husband said he was often alone.”

“
Yes,
we didn’t take him to the beach with us. It was too difficult. His
knees, they pained him, the stairs up and down.”

Not quite the
same version, but close enough.

“
Gunther said you took him to Campos a few times?”

“
Yes,
but it didn’t please him. Too hot, he said.”

“
What
was his relationship with the children?”

Was it his
imagination or had she flinched? “Like my husband said, it was
good. The children, they loved him. Gunther’s mother is dead, my
parents also, so he was the only grandparent they had. Hannelore,
she learned a violin solo for him, Mahler, and he used to ask her
to play it. Many times he asked her.”

“
What
about your son?”

“
Walter, he is a little boy. All day long, computer games. Not
so much time for
Opa.
Sometimes they make Legos together,
little houses. In Germany, my son has a train and they play with
it.”

“
I
noticed your son has a bruise over his eye.”

“
Yes.
He said someone pushed him, but maybe he said this because he broke
his glasses and did not want us to know. Walter does this
sometimes. He does not lie, but he does not tell the truth
either.”

She fell silent,
lost in thought.

“
Was
the deceased there when it happened?” Patronas asked. Perhaps the
killer was lurking in the garden and the boy encountered
him.

“
No.
He was with me in the house. Walter was getting his bicycle. He
wanted to go for a ride. Maybe Maria was there. She spends much
time outside sweeping. Always sweeping is Maria, back and forth
with the broom. All the day, she does this.”

“
Tell
me about yesterday.”

“
We
went to Campos and came back. I didn’t have my watch, so I don’t
know what time. Seven-thirty, eight. A little dark, but not yet
night.
Grobpapa
was sitting out in the garden and I called
to him, ‘Do you want anything?’
‘Nein,
’ he said.
‘Nein.’
After this, I go inside.”

“
And
that was the last time you spoke to him?”

“
Yes.
The gardener found him later that night. He was yelling and hitting
the door and I opened it to see what he wanted. I screamed when I
saw
Grobpapa
and I couldn’t stop—screaming, screaming,
screaming. Gunther woke up the children.
Grobpapa
was still
alive then and Gunther thought we could save him. I gave the
gardener my phone and he called the police. But there was a mix-up
and by the time they got here, he was dead.”

“
Why
didn’t you or your husband call the police?”

“
We
were too upset. Also the gardener, his Greek, it is
better.”

She touched the
pane of glass with her fingers. “We have air conditioning. The
windows, they are sealed shut.”

Gerta Bechtel
looked back at him. “If an intruder came and
Grobpapa
called
for help, we would not have heard him.”

The daughter,
Hannelore, a sullen sixteen-year-old, was less forthcoming than her
mother, reluctantly volunteering that while Patmos was fine, she
would have preferred to spend the summer in Stuttgart with her
friends.

“
I
only have one friend here, Hilda. We go to the same school in
Germany, but we’re not friends there, only here. She’s a lot older
than I am, almost eighteen.” Hannelore grew slightly more animated
as she described her friend, saying Greek boys were always hanging
around her. They just wouldn’t leave her alone.

In the old days,
Greek men who pursued foreign women were called
kamaki,
the
instrument men use to spear fish—the fish dangling off their hook,
the female tourists they’d snagged. A song had even been written
about them. “
S’aresei i Ellada, Señorita
?”—“Do you like
Greece?” The key word in the lyrics changing from ‘Fräulein’ to
‘Mademoiselle,’ to ‘Miss.’ Such men were enterprising and
versatile, could speak a few words in nearly every European
language.

Envious, Patronas
had watched them work the beaches over the years, yearning for a
little taste of Sweden himself, a bikini-clad piece of England. In
those days, native girls had been reluctant, to say the least, more
trouble than they were worth. Perhaps now that he was divorced,
he’d give spear fishing a try. Find a lonely housewife like Shirley
Valentine and show her a good time.

“
Does
Hilda like the boys’ attention?” he asked the girl.

“
She
talks to them. She has a boyfriend in Germany, but she likes to
flirt.”
How unfair
, she was saying,
Hilda with many
boyfriends and me with none
.

Unlike her
mother, Hannelore Bechtel had a sturdy, somewhat masculine physique
and an androgynous way about her—feminine and coy one minute,
boyish and abrupt the next. Her arms were unusually well muscled,
her biceps well defined.

“
Do
you play sports?” Patronas asked, wondering if she spent a lot of
time roughhousing with boys—if that would explain her manner, what
he was seeing.

“
Oh,
yes, yeah. All the time. I cycle and I ski. All winter I am out.
But mostly I scull.” Holding her arms out in front of her, she
mimed rowing. “I like to be on the water and go fast. I am most
happy then.”

She’d made a
clumsy effort to pretty herself up, he noticed, painting her nails
a lurid orange and applying a chalky foundation and red lipstick so
dark it made her mouth look bruised. The makeup looked off to
Patronas, seemed to be at odds with her tomboy persona, but then
what did he know of adolescent girls?

He wondered why
her mother didn’t take her in hand, pass on a little of that
elegant fastidiousness.

Her shirt had a
shiny Hello Kitty cartoon printed on it, its childish innocence
clashing with the girl’s Kabuki-like face. A child masquerading as
a woman.

“
When
you’re at the beach, do you and Hilda go off alone?”

“
There’s no place to go. That’s the problem with Patmos.” She
gave him a long, assessing look. “Don’t you want to ask about my
grandfather? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“
Yes.
How did you get along with him?”

“
He
was my grandfather and I loved him.” End of story.

“
Did
he ever act afraid?”

“
Grobpapa
? No, not him. Nothing frightened
Grobpapa
.” She kept fussing with her hair. Like her
mother’s, it was bleached by the sun, but hers was greasy and dirty
looking.

“
Your
mother said you’d learned a piece on the violin for your
grandfather.”

She nodded. “The
violin solo from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. It took me a long time
to learn it. My mother made a CD of me playing. It was my Christmas
present to him.” Her voice was stiff.

“
You
must be very good violinist,” he said.

“
I
have a good teacher, and I practice.” Again, the same stilted
politeness.

“
How
about your brother? Does he play an instrument?”

“
Yes,
the violin, the same as I do. We sometimes play together. What’s
the word?”

“
Duets?”

“
Yes,
that’s right. We play duets.” Two of her nails were broken off and
she kept chewing on the remnants, trying to even them
out.

“
Did
your grandfather ever talk about the war?”

“
The
war?” She looked puzzled.

“
Yes,
about the time he was a soldier?”

She seemed
surprised by the question. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask my
parents.”

“
How
about you? Is there anything you’re afraid of?”

Something passed
over her face. “No, nothing. I am never afraid.”

Seven or eight
years old, the boy Walter couldn’t sit still. He kept jerking his
head this way and that and bobbing his knees up and down. He was
wearing glasses and had a Band-Aid over his left eye.

Very polite, he’d
shaken Patronas’ hand as soon as he’d entered the room. “I am
Walter Bechtel,” he’d said. “How do you do?”

Patronas, in
turn, had introduced himself. “I am Yiannis Patronas, Chief Officer
of the Chios Police Force.”

“
I am
very pleased to make your acquaintance, Chief Officer. I will
endeavor to answer all your questions truthfully.” He furrowed his
brow. “Excuse me, but you said you were from Chios. This isn’t
Chios. This is Patmos.”

“
I
know, son. I’m here about your grandfather.”

“
Grandfather,” he said in a robotic voice. “My grandfather’s
dead.”

His eyes kept
darting around, looking at everything but Patronas.

Kid has some kind
of handicap, Patronas thought, autism maybe.

“
I
know your grandfather’s dead,” he said gently. “Somebody hurt him
and I’m trying to find out who it was.”

The boy frowned.
“Hurt him? Why?”

“
I’m
trying to find that out, too.”

“
How
did they hurt him?” His voice went up a notch. “Was it like the
cat?”

“
What
cat?”

“
Bonzo. Someone killed it. It was a stray and Grandfather took
it in and fed it, made it his pet. He is the one who called it
Bonzo.” The boy continued to fidget, tired of sitting in the chair,
tired of the questions.

Patronas wrote
the name of the cat in his notebook and underlined it. “What
happened to it?”

“
Someone strangled it. Whoever did it pushed me down. That’s
how I hurt my eye. My glasses broke and I got a piece of glass
stuck here.” He pointed to his eyebrow.

“
Did
you see who pushed you?”

“
No. I
was looking at Bonzo, wondering what was wrong with him, and then
BOOM!” He clapped his hands together. “I was very upset about
Bonzo, but my mother told me not to be sad, that we would get
another cat when we got back to Germany.”

“
You
said Bonzo was your grandfather’s pet. Was he upset?”

“
Yes.
He was very angry and told my mother to fire Maria. I don’t know
why. My mother didn’t pay attention. She just told the gardener to
bury the cat outside and he did. She made us promise not to tell my
father. She said he wouldn’t like it.”

The boy got up
and skipped around for a moment before returning to his seat.
“Grandfather never wanted us to be here. He said it would only
bring us trouble, and it did. My mother cried when she found the
cat … cried and cried.”

Bechtel told
Patronas to keep the MP3 player, saying the family had two others.
Reluctantly, Patronas accepted, thinking he’d only use it until he
could find a replacement. Bechtel was only trying to help; he knew
that. Still, he resented the gift, well aware of the financial
disparity between the German and himself. Even an aid worker in
Africa was better off than a Greek policeman now.

The present
German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had been forcing the Greek
government to tighten its belt, and her actions had caused
widespread suffering throughout his homeland, especially among the
young, fifty-seven percent of whom were now unemployed. Patronas’
salary had been cut repeatedly. He was poorer now than he’d ever
been, and his father had been a
manavis
, a green
grocer.

Looking down at
the MP3 player in his hand, he sighed. “Fucking Merkel.”

Before he left
the estate, he searched the grounds a final time, accompanied by
Bechtel. There were a lot of garden tools lined up against the
wall, and he inspected each of them carefully, looking for evidence
of blood, but saw nothing. He’d have to get the luminol and try
again. He searched the outside walls, too, seeking a place where a
rock might have been dislodged, but it was a hopeless task. The
wall was high and went on forever. It would take an eternity to
check it all. He’d have to wait for the autopsy in Athens. Maybe
the coroner would be able to establish what had been
used.