The Silver Stain Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Titles by Paul Johnston

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  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

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  A Selection of Titles by Paul Johnston

  The Alex Mavros Series

  DEEPER SHADE OF BLUE

  (also known as CRYING BLUE MURDER)

  THE LAST RED DEATH

  THE GOLDEN SILENCE

  THE SILVER STAIN *

  The Quint Dalrymple Series

  BODY POLITIC

  THE BONE YARD

  THE 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 SILVER STAIN

  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.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Paul Johnston.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Johnston, Paul, 1957–

  The silver stain. – (Alex Mavros novels)

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

  2. Private investigators – Greece – Fiction. 3. Suspense

  fiction.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9´2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-211-5 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-018-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-523-7 (trade paper)

  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

  John Connolly

  in friendship and gratitude

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Mavros has been confined to a wooden box (file) for the last seven years. I didn’t want to him to age so much and, accordingly, the action of this novel takes place in 2003, the year after his last outing, The Golden Silence. Anyone wanting depictions of life during the Greek economic crisis that started to bite hard in 2010 should look elsewhere – or wait for future volumes in the series. On the other hand, the roots of the catastrophe were already deep in 2003 and the 2004 Olympic Games fertilized them copiously.

  Greek is a much less difficult language than many think, but readers should note the following:

  1) Masculine names ending in –is, –os, and –as lose the final –s in the vocative case – ‘Mikis, Yiorgos and Nondas are drinking your health’; but, ‘Drink the readers’ health, Miki, Yiorgo and Nonda!’

  2) Feminine surnames end differently from masculine ones: Alex Mavros, but Anna Mavrou; Haris Tsifakis, but Eleni Tsifaki.

  3) The consonant transliterated as ‘dh’ (e.g. Andhroniki, Fedhra, Dhrakakis) is pronounced ‘th’ as in English ‘these’.

  4) Chania is pronounced ‘Chanyah’ with the stress on the final syllable; likewise, Kornaria is pronounced ‘Kornaryah’.

  School’s out.

  ONE

  Mavros was sitting on the large, plant-festooned balcony of his mother’s flat with the orange juice he had just squeezed. Normally a late-riser – the boon of being self-employed – he had woken before dawn, for no apparent reason, and been unable to get back to sleep. The early sun had appeared over Mount Imittos and was casting tentative rays over the grey-white apartment blocks of the Athenian sprawl. To the south, the Aegean still retained the last of its dawn darkness, stretching away towards the islands and the Peloponnesian peaks. A northerly wind ensured that the air was relatively clear, and the sound of traffic and drivers quick on their horns was already ascending the slopes of Lykavittos. The view, taking in the Acropolis and its scaffolding-clad temples, was glorious, but Mavros was struggling to come to terms with it.

  Bare arms slipped round his shoulders. ‘Still missing the old flat, Alex?’ Andhroniki Glezou’s soft cheek rubbed against his stubble and then her lips sought his. Their tongues briefly touched. ‘Oh no.’ Niki said firmly. ‘I was just saying good morning. I’ve got an eight o’clock meeting.’

  Mavros smiled. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I was just saying good morning too.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what’s that?’ Niki pointed to his groin.

  ‘Don’t take it personally, my love. Morning glory answers to no woman.’

  Niki slapped him on the arm. ‘Charming. You haven’t answered my question.’

  Mavros looked back over the city. The flat on Pikilis, just north of the Acropolis, had become too expensive for him to continue renting at the end of 2002. That coincided with his mother suffering a stroke that had made her frail, so she had left the large flat in Kolonaki, the most exclusive area in central Athens, and moved in with Mavros’s sister in Anna in the northern suburbs.

  ‘If only you charged reasonable fees,’ Niki said, ‘instead of waiving them half the time.’

  Mavros frowned. ‘Now you’re running my business too, are you?’ He knew as soon as he said the words that he was in trouble. Although he and Niki were closer than they had ever been, her extravagant temper was never caged for long.

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ she said, glaring. With her dark eyes and tousled hair, she had the look of the mythical Gorgon that dealt stony death, though no part of Mavros’s body was hard any more. ‘You don’t let me run anything, never mind your business, Alex. And what kind of a business is it, exactly, tracing missing people?’

  ‘I seem to remember finding a girl you managed to mislay,’ he muttered.

  The reference to the daughter of a Russian-Greek immigrant family that Niki had looked after as a social worker shut her up, but not for long. ‘You didn’t even charge the Tratsous the going rate.’

  ‘They aren’t exactly the Onassises.’

  ‘No, but you . . . oh, what’s the point, Alex? You don’t even tell me about mo
st of your jobs.’

  Mavros shook his head. Niki’s ability to overlook the dangers his work entailed and the damaging secrets he uncovered never failed to irritate him. ‘You nearly got shot in the Tratsou case. You were in hospital with a police guard, remember?’

  ‘And you nearly got killed several times on that case,’ she riposted. She was leaning over him, her long legs visible to the residents of the block across the street and her shapely breasts fully in evidence to him down the neck of her T-shirt.

  He laughed, never the sensible option. To his surprise, and after a pause long enough to move his hands down to protect his crotch, Niki laughed back.

  ‘Why do we do this?’ she murmured, cheek against his again. ‘I love you.’

  ‘And I love you,’ he replied. ‘We just have—’

  ‘Different ways of showing it.’ She kissed him on the lips. ‘I know. I’m going for a shower.’ She raised a finger. ‘And no following. Wait till tonight.’

  ‘So stern,’ he said, as she turned away. ‘And so desirable.’

  Niki swung her hips seductively as she disappeared inside.

  She was right, Mavros thought, looking back out across the city. Although his mother’s flat was large and well-appointed, he still hankered after the rundown single-bedroom place in Plaka, the rock wall of the Acropolis louring over it like a stone tsunami. He had been there for five years, but he always knew that his days were numbered. With the Olympic Games little more than a year away, owners had been taking advantage of grants to upgrade their properties and, of course, raise the rents.

  He went inside. That wasn’t the only reason he had come to Kleomenous, despite his dislike for the gilded but acid-tongued neighbours. His mother Dorothy, the Scottish side of his dual heritage, was still running a successful publishing business, and owned the flat, meaning he didn’t have to pay a single Euro of rent. Not that he felt at home. He insisted on sleeping in the larger of the two guest rooms, feeling that taking over the master bedroom would make his residence permanent. That irritated Niki, despite the fact that the guest room was larger than both his old bedroom in Pikilis and the bedroom in her flat in the southern suburb of Palaio Faliro. And it was true that the exclusive address had impressed the kind of clients that he would have preferred not to work for, except he needed their money. But there was still another, more important reason.

  ‘Ta-dah,’ Niki said, taking a twirl in a short, well-cut skirt.

  Mavros looked down at his groin. ‘No, sorry, nothing doing.’

  She came at him with her bag, a large, file-filled object that he had been hit with before. He sidestepped her and grabbed her arms.

  ‘Tonight,’ she said, keeping her freshly painted lips out of range. ‘Tonight I’ll show you a really—’

  The sound of a key turning in the front door made Niki’s eyes widen and her smile depart quicker than a bribe slipped to a tax inspector.

  ‘Your obese friend,’ she groaned. ‘I thought I’d seen the last of him when you moved here.’

  Not for the first time, Mavros regretted having given Yiorgos Pandazopoulos a full set of keys. Then again, if he’d done what he’d often urged his mother to do and put the chain on, Niki’s tantalizing farewell wouldn’t have been so rapidly terminated.

  ‘Morning, Alex,’ Yiorgos said, taking in Niki’s presence. ‘Morning, Andhroniki.’ This was a recent tactic, calling her by her full Christian name. Designed to wind her up, it was highly effective.

  ‘Morning, Fat Man,’ Niki responded, even though Mavros had frequently told her that the nickname was for his use alone. ‘Have a busy day, the pair of you.’ She strode towards the door, her head high.

  The Fat Man waited till it closed behind her. ‘What got up her—’

  Mavros gave him a full-on glare.

  ‘Nose?’ Yiorgos completed.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Mavros said, wondering if Niki would now follow through on her interrupted promise.

  From The Descent of Icarus, an unpublished memoir by Rudolf Kersten:

  May 20th 1941 has lived with me all the days of my life since.

  We were drenched in sweat, having been fully kitted up since 2 a.m. – padded parachutist helmets, flying service blouses, jump smocks over combat trousers, knee pads, machine-pistols, grenades, Lugers, bayonets and gravity knives, as well as the bulky RZ16 parachutes. I wasn’t the only one who slipped a hand inside my smock to finger the jump badge with its silvered wreath of acorn and oak leaves beneath the gilt diving eagle that was the Fallschirmjägers’ talisman. I also repeated under my breath the commandments written for us by the Führer – ‘You are the elite of the Wehrmacht, for you combat shall be fulfillment . . . be nimble as a greyhound, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel . . .’

  The Ju52s’ three engines started at six and we heaved ourselves on board, each of the twelve with the end of his slip cord between his teeth, like giant pirates pulling captured ships – so empowered did we feel. The canisters containing our rifles, machine guns and ammunition made the interior of the affectionately nicknamed Auntie Ju with her corrugated metal skin even more cramped. Thick red dust rose from the untreated runways and there were delays between flights, but eventually the pilot gunned the engines and we moved sluggishly away. I was seated opposite one of the windows in the fuselage, but Peter Wachter’s tall frame blocked it effectively until we were airborne and the juddering made him shake. I saw the first rays of the sun come over the mountains to the east of Athens. I may have imagined it, but I thought I caught a glimpse of the Acropolis as we climbed over the island of Salamis. It seemed like a good omen, ancient Greek civilization and its triumph of arms soon to be emulated by the spearpoint of the modern world’s greatest fighting force.

  Broken-nosed Max Zielinski next to me started to sing the parachutists’ song and soon we were all bellowing it out: ‘Red shines the sun, be prepared, it may not shine for us tomorrow . . .’ None of us believed that, of course – young men going into battle are as naïve as the most closeted virgin. Besides, we had reason to be optimistic. The enemy forces in Crete were inadequate and had been subject to intense bombardment and strafing by our Luftwaffe comrades for many days, and the RAF had been swept from the skies. The Cretan people were said to be avidly awaiting our arrival to liberate them from the dissolute imperialism of the British. And, though we would have wished to be first on the island, glider troops had been sent ahead to secure the airfield at Maleme. No matter – there would be plenty of Churchill’s rabble left for us.

  Squeezed between Max and thick-lipped Bernie Necker, and thankfully cooler at last, I saw images cascade before my eyes: my mother, filed with pride despite her damp eyes on the day I gained my jump badge, wishing that my father had survived his Western Front wound a little longer to see me in my dark-blue uniform; my old Classics teacher, Herr Feldmann, who encouraged my love of the ancient world and gave me a sad smile when I visited him after I had joined the service; slim Martha Nussbaum, kissing me for the last time before we boarded the train for the Balkans. They were all part of another less brilliant world now. I had become one with the myths that had made me strong, taken me through the Hitler Youth, driven me to undertake the hardest training in Germany’s armed forces. I had become a modern-day Icarus, one whose flight would not be interrupted by melting wax, one who would never die.

  I saw the sea beyond Peter’s shoulder, the water changing from grey to pale blue. There were Auntie Jus all around and, craning forward, I saw the fine lines of Messerschmitt 109s, our fighter protection, higher in the cloudless sky. If there had been any Royal Navy ships in the area, they would have been bombed to the depths, titans defenceless beneath German firepower.

  Lieutenant Bruno Schmidt, handsome as a film star, caught my eye and nodded slowly. He knew my tendency to lose concentration and had spoken to me about it before the successful drop at the Corinth Canal. I smiled and nodded back. I knew what I had to do and had shown that by saving our beloved section commander
before the bridge was blown up by the British – a futile action as our engineers soon replaced it.

  The engines changed pitch as the plane made a sharp left turn. Now I could see the great wall of the White Mountains, still crowned with shining snow. It was an incredible sight, but I soon forgot it as the Auntie Ju’s fuselage was pitted with holes, some of them only a few centimetres above the window. Wachter ducked his head, then I felt Zielinski’s helmet knock against mine. There was blood on his jump smock where rounds had gone right through his body.

  The klaxon sounded. We hooked our jump chords to the line above us and the dispatcher pulled open the door. Lieutenant Schmidt moved forwards and shouted a few inaudible words of encouragement, before throwing himself into the air. As I moved towards the door, I saw the black blasts of anti-aircraft fire and felt the plane judder. The man before me leapt out and it was my turn to grip the vertical rails, before jumping out in the crucifix position we had practised so often. We were low, I -estimated under a hundred metres from the ground, when my parachute opened with a jerk like a kick from an elephant. Then my descent slowed and I was able to take in the scene.

  To my right, an Auntie Ju was diving earthwards, smoke billowing from the fuselage. No men emerged from the door. Another aircraft’s unit was jumping, but one of its number’s parachute had snared on the tailplane. 109s were swooping over the anti-aircraft positions, machine guns rattling, but the defensive fire remained heavy. Looking around, I saw several parachutists slumped forward and motionless. Others were firing their MP40s and pistols. I struggled to bring my own weapon to bear, but the ground was approaching fast and I had to get my body into position for the forward roll on landing.

  The dried up bed of the Tavronitis River, our target area, was to my right. I watched our men cutting themselves free of their chutes and racing for the weapon canisters. Many of them dropped lifeless before they made it.

  And then I saw them, the Cretans who were supposed to be welcoming us as honoured guests. They were on my side of the river and they had already done for several of my comrades. There were old men with pitchforks and axes, women with heavy frying pans, and a priest who had made a spear from a long knife tied to a broom handle.