The White Sea Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Previous Titles by Paul Johnston

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Previous Titles by Paul Johnston

  The Alex Mavros Series

  A DEEPER SHADE OF BLUE (also known as CRYING BLUE MURDER)

  THE LAST RED DEATH

  THE GOLDEN SILENCE

  THE SILVER STAIN *

  THE GREEN LADY *

  THE BLACK LIFE *

  The Quint Dalrymple Series available from Severn Select eBooks

  BODY POLITIC**

  THE BONE YARD**

  WATER OF DEATH**

  THE BLOOD TREE**

  THE HOUSE OF DUST**

  The Matt Wells Series

  THE DEATH LIST

  THE SOUL COLLECTOR

  MAPS OF HELL

  THE NAMELESS DEAD

  *available from Severn House

  THE WHITE SEA

  An Alex Mavros Mystery

  Paul Johnston

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Paul Johnston.

  The right of Paul Johnston to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Johnston, Paul, 1957– author.

  The white sea.

  1. Mavros, Alex (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Kidnapping–Fiction. 3. Private investigators–

  Greece–Fiction. 4. Suspense fiction.

  I. Title

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-067-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-555-0 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To Rob Wilson

  in memory of Jane, who loved Greece

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Aspects of Modern Greek

  1) Masculine names ending in -os, -as, and -is lose the final -s in the vocative case: ‘Mavros, Kostas and Babis are laughing’; but ‘Laugh, Mavro, Kosta and Babi!’ Some names (e.g. Stephanos) retain the older form -e (Stephane) in the vocative.

  2) The consonant transliterated as ‘dh’ (e.g. Alexandhras, Haralambidhis) is pronounced ‘th’ as in English ‘these’.

  3) Feminine surnames differ from their male equivalents – Kostas Gatsos, but Evi Gatsou; Vangelis Myronis, but Eirini Myroni.

  PROLOGUE

  The night of the raid was calm. The sea was running almost silently and the sweet scent from the night flower blossom rose up to the star-spattered darkness.

  September in Lesvos was usually warm and welcoming, although many of the island’s tourists had left. In 2010 the mornings had a bite to them and the atmosphere wasn’t pleasant. More than meteorological conditions were in play. Greece’s economy was in free fall and, because of a rapid increase in sovereign debt, the government had been forced to get out the begging bowl. Funds were provided under an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and the other member countries of the Euro zone, but the cost was high. Salaries and pensions in the oversized public sector were slashed, jobs in the private sector fell away like leaves, and a package of new taxes was applied. Autumn was coming early for anyone who hadn’t moved funds abroad.

  Kostas Gatsos had no worries on that front. Less than five per cent of his wealth was in Greece. He might have been eighty-three, but his mind was sharper than the business end of a swordfish. He laid his manicured fingers on the smooth marble that topped the wall and stretched the arthritic joints. As he looked across the wide terrace of his villa outside Molyvos on the island’s northwest point, he thought of the many triumphs in his life. Over the darkening straight lay the Turkish coast. His parents had come from a Greek village to the east of Constantinople – none of his employees, Greek or otherwise, was allowed to refer to the city by its modern name – and had been driven out in the exchange of populations that followed the over-ambitious Greek campaign in Asia Minor in the early 1920s. He’d been born in a basement in Mytilene, the capital of Lesvos, only a few months after his parents had managed to get out of a pestilential refugee camp. Although he grew up in a shack in a new suburb of Athens and spent his working life all over the world – New York, London, Geneva – he still regarded the island as home. His second wife, Tatiana, long divorced and dead from liver failure, once asked him why, given his miserable early life there.

  ‘Because being looked down on by the locals was better than being bayoneted by the Turks,’ he said, glaring at her and then smiling crookedly. ‘Besides, I’m worth more than the whole island hundreds of times over. I like playing king.’

  Gatsos emptied the glass of fifty-year-old malt whisky and lit a cigarette. Both had been banned by his doctors, but they could go fuck themselves. He knew his body better than anyone else. He was captain of it as well as his soul – he had come across Henley’s poem ‘Invictus’ when he was buying his first ships in the 50s. People were surprised by his interest in Victorian poetry, but he liked its often overblown emotional display. It inspired him; for twenty years he had been admiral of one of the largest fleets globally: tankers, bulk carriers, refrigerated ships, bulk and gas carriers, and more recently container ships. He hadn’t been convinced of the capacity for growth in the latter market, but he invested in time. His six high-capacity vessels had maintained impressive charter rates ever since they went into service.

  He was the last of the great Greek pirates, as less successful shipowners called them: Onassis, Niarchos, Latsis – he had outlived and ultimately outearned them all. He had also outmanouevred and outthought th
em more often than they had him. One of the most important lessons he’d learned was that you had to move on quickly from every defeat, taking all you could from it. It had been a great life, bringing him wealth that even his accountants struggled to count, not least because he had different bean-counters covering his multifarious operations across the world. That wealth had brought him two of the most beautiful and desirable women as wives, as well as dozens of short-term lovers, though they cost him plenty; an art collection that even the Russian oligarchs envied (and that was only the works he had bought legally); eleven residences across the world; and the private numbers of every important global player, from kings and queens to presidents to industrialists to Hollywood moguls – he had backed several successful if mindless films. Konstandinos Gatsos did not believe in cultivating the masses’ capacity for thought.

  He went into the dining room, where his son Pavlos was waiting, nervous and serious-faced as ever. Gatsos had been disappointed by both of his children – the male slow-witted and the female wanton – but he had hopes for a couple of the grandchildren, Loukas and Evi: they were in the Piraeus office and rising fast.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

  Pavlos looked down. ‘The French finance minister. She’s sent our government a list of Greek account holders at one of the Geneva banks.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We …’

  ‘We’re on it? Who gives a fuck? Do you seriously imagine the idiots in Athens will come after us?’

  ‘No,’ came a voice from the terrace. ‘That’s why we’re doing that.’

  Kostas turned, his pure white hair catching the light. ‘Who the hell are you? Pavlo, press the button.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said the man in black combat uniform, raising a silenced pistol. His features were concealed by a balaclava. ‘I wouldn’t do that either, Mr Kosta.’

  The old man stopped. He’d been on his way to remonstrate with the intruder. As he got closer he saw there were two more of them, carrying machine-pistols. He looked round. Pavlos was standing like a tailor’s dummy, his lower jaw slack. A fourth figure had appeared at the door that led to the interior of the building.

  ‘Do something, you fool!’ Kostas shouted. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Unconscious or, in the other case, bleeding from his femoral artery,’ said the man with the pistol. ‘A large bald man with a scar on his head.’

  ‘Boris,’ Pavlos said, his voice faint.

  ‘He displayed excessive zeal. Now, Mr Kosta, you’re coming with us.’ He grabbed the old man by his right arm.

  ‘What about my son?’

  His captor glanced at Pavlos. ‘Goodbye,’ he said, then shot him through the left eye.

  ONE

  Mavros didn’t notice that October had begun until his mother wished him ‘Good month’ on the late afternoon of the first. He returned the greeting without looking away from the computer screen.

  ‘Haven’t you done enough for today?’ Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou asked, her voice tremulous. She was eighty-five now and although she still took an interest in Persephone and Hecate Publications, the company she had founded and owned outright, she had gradually allowed herself to slip into the background.

  ‘It’s the crisis, Mother,’ her son said, graying hair on his shoulders. ‘If we don’t turn the backlist into e-books soon, our cash flow will dwindle even more.’

  Dorothy sat down and looked at the photographs of her lost men. Spyros, her husband, a lawyer and high-ranking Communist Party official, had died in 1967, not long before the dictatorship of the colonels began; and Andonis, her oldest child and elder son, who had disappeared while the Junta was still in power, no doubt because he had been a leader of the student resistance. They lived on in her and her other children, but that had never been enough.

  ‘I thought we had let them go,’ Mavros said, having swung round silently on the leather office chair. The lines on his face made him look older than forty-eight and his bloodshot eyes suggested he was drinking more than was advisable.

  ‘Of course we have, dear. But you of all people know how hard that is.’ Dorothy was referring to her son’s long-term lover Niki, who had died under mysterious circumstances five years earlier. He hadn’t fully recovered from the loss.

  Mavros nodded but didn’t meet her gaze.

  ‘Alex, it’s been wonderful having you run the business these recent years,’ she started.

  ‘But?’

  Now it was Dorothy who turned her head away. ‘It isn’t good for you. There’s only one thing you really want to do.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Mavros got up and opened the sliding glass door. Scents from the flowers on the terrace came in, along with the Athenian traffic noise and regular horn blasts. ‘After Niki … after that, I had no more interest in finding people who’d gone missing. It was because of me that she … that whatever happened to her—’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Dorothy interrupted. ‘You can’t blame yourself. Or rather, you can’t keep blaming yourself. Who knows what was going on in the poor woman’s mind? She was never exactly renowned for stable behaviour.’

  Mavros turned quickly, his fists clenching. It looked as if he was going to shout at his mother, but he got himself under control. To her surprise, he started to laugh softly.

  ‘No, she wasn’t, was she?’ He sat down next to Dorothy and allowed her to take his hand.

  ‘We all leave this life,’ she said. ‘Some too soon, like Spyros and especially Andonis, and some not soon enough. Like me.’

  He looked into her eyes, their brown cloudier than it used to be. ‘Come on, Mother, you’re fine.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m living from day to day and you know it. That’s why you spend every night here.’ She nudged him. ‘Well, nearly every night.’

  It was true. He had agreed with his sister Anna that he would live in Dorothy’s large central flat to keep an eye on her. It made sense, given that he was effectively running the company. But he did need the occasional week-day night off, which Dorothy declined to report to Anna on the grounds that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. The weekends were different: she spent them at her daughter’s house in an outer suburb.

  ‘Go and see Yiorgos,’ Dorothy said, smiling sweetly. ‘I’m not taking no for an answer.’

  ‘But the crisis is killing us. People don’t have money to spend on books any more.’

  ‘A problem which won’t be noticeably worse by tomorrow morning. Go on, get out of here.’

  Mavros kissed her powdered cheek and got up. ‘All right. The Fat Man could do with being roused from his sofa.’

  ‘I don’t know why you still call him that, dear.’

  Mavros shrugged. ‘The habit of a lifetime. Besides, the Thin Man hardly cuts it.’ Then it struck him that, like his mother, his friend Yiorgos might not be around for much longer. That sent him off without a skip in his stride.

  The Fat Man’s house had been burned down during the case that culminated in Niki’s death. He had a long struggle before the insurance company paid up, eventually buying a top-floor flat in an apartment block a hundred metres higher up the hill from his old place. It was new, well equipped and too large for his purposes, not least because all his possessions, personal and family, had gone up in smoke. Then, a year ago, he’d had a heart attack and been told that, if he didn’t change his diet and take daily exercise, he wouldn’t be long for this world.

  As Mavros walked round the Lykavittos ring road his phone rang. He scowled when he saw the caller ID and let it go to messaging, not that he intended to retrieve it. He turned down to Neapolis. The area was adjacent to Exarcheia, the hang-out of students and anarchists, and it had gradually become less safe. Not that Mavros cared. Since Niki died, he hadn’t cared much about anything. In the past he’d have run up the five sets of stairs, but now he took the lift. His belly had expanded and he took less exercise than the Fat Man.

  He hammered on the door and heard flip flo
ps approaching.

  ‘There is a bell, you know,’ Yiorgos said. ‘I thought the riot police had arrived.’

  ‘Rubbish. You wouldn’t have opened the door to them.’ Mavros examined the thick steel panels and crossbars. ‘And they wouldn’t have managed to get in. What have you got to hide?’

  The Fat Man tapped his nose. ‘Secret party archives.’ He’d been a Communist since he was a kid, though he’d let his membership lapse some years back. The comrades wanted a cut of the illegal card games he used to run in his café.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Mavros looked at him. ‘Is that the beginnings of a gut I can see under that filthy shirt?’

  ‘Might be,’ Yiorgos said, turning towards the large saloni that contained little more than an armchair, a sofa and a TV. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘What’s it to me? Do you think I want to carry a corner of your coffin?’

  ‘Don’t worry, that’s all arranged. I’m getting cremated in Bulgaria. Special deal for comrades.’

  ‘Ex-comrades. For God’s sake, Yiorgo, you’re only sixty-seven. You’ve got plenty of time left – if you stay off the … what’s that?’

  The Fat Man was surreptitiously trying to slide a pizza box under the sofa with one foot. ‘A friend brought it over last night. I only ate one slice.’

  ‘You haven’t got any friends apart from me.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Name one.’

  ‘Angelos.’

  ‘He’s in a nursing home.’

  ‘Piss off, smartarse.’ Yiorgos patted his slack abdomen. ‘I’ve got to fill this up. I walk around like a becalmed ship under full sail.’