Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Read online

  THRILLING ACCLAIM FOR

  CRYING BLUE MURDER

  “A sensual portrait of modern Greece, as well as a

  great page-turner…a rich and intelligent

  story, with fascinating characters.”

  Scotland on Sunday

  “The very best crime novels are those in which

  location, character and story combine in a

  single, powerful whole… Paul Johnston stakes

  his persuasive claim for a place in that pantheon.”

  John Connolly

  “…gripping pace…a perfect holiday companion”

  The Times

  “A perfect setting for a tense thriller…this is an

  intelligent and satisfying book, part

  contemporary thriller, part the dark sister of

  Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.”

  Scotsman

  “Clear your diary, take your phone off the hook and

  ignore the doorbell… Once again, Johnston

  provides evidence of his talent for spinning an

  involving colourful yarn, while his love of the

  setting, his many colourful characters and the

  Greek culture is infectious.”

  List

  “A high-class thriller. Johnston’s plotting and

  characterisation are adept. A novel to be enjoyed

  by anyone who loves thrilling prose and

  action-packed storylines.”

  Good Book Guide

  “Has a fine sense of place, a brooding atmosphere of

  menace and a cast of exceedingly sinister characters.”

  Birmingham Sunday Mercury

  Paul Johnston was born in Edinburgh, and educated there and at Oxford. He is the author of ten crime novels, the first of which, Body Politic, won the British Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Novel. He also won the Sherlock Award for Best Detective Novel for The Last Red Death. He now spends much of his time in Greece. He is married to a Greek and has recently become a father for the third time.

  For more information about Paul, visit

  www.paul-johnston.co.uk

  Available from Paul Johnston

  Alex Mavros novels

  CRYING BLUE MURDER

  THE LAST RED DEATH

  THE GOLDEN SILENCE

  Matt Wells novels

  THE DEATH LIST

  THE SOUL COLLECTOR

  CRYING BLUE MURDER

  PAUL JOHNSTON

  www.mirabooks.co.uk

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to MIRA UK for

  republishing this novel.

  Guy Hallowes, an old Greek hand,

  leads a brilliant team.

  My agent Broo Doherty of Wade & Doherty

  has handled business and other matters with

  her habitual skill.

  FOREWORD

  The first thing to point out is that Crying Blue Murder was originally published in 2002 under the title A Deeper Shade of Blue. if you bought the latter, please give this one to a friend rather than demanding a refund. I decided not to update the action, so don’t be surprised by the presence of the drachma instead of the euro.

  The novel was the first in what is so far a trilogy featuring the half-Scots, half-Greek private investigator Alex Mavros. It stemmed largely from the six years I spent living on the small Aegean island of Antiparos. I’ve said in the past that I set the action on the non-existent island of Trigono because I was worried about irritating the natives of Antiparos by what is, it has to be said, hardly a complimentary take on life in the Cyclades. But the truth is, inventing an island freed up my imagination and allowed me to take certain often diabolical liberties. Which is not to say that the novel doesn’t reflect local life as regards violence. In 2008, a man on the nearby island of Santorini cut his wife’s head off and paraded it down the street. I would never dare to write anything as gross as that (though it’s a challenge…).

  On the other hand, one of the inspirations for the book was a war memorial to Antiparos’s resistance heroes, which included a misspelled but recognisable British name. I was immediately fascinated and started researching. Suffice to say that the real life story, involving a soldier from the Pay Corps who wanted to be a spy, is substantially less romantic than the version I came up with. This is a love story, admittedly a pretty tragic one, as well as a crime novel.

  Writing about holiday destinations such as the Greek islands has its challenges. How do you avoid clichés? I decided to subvert the common conception of beautiful islands dotted with white houses by stressing the darkness that lies beneath. Much of the darkness is located in that key Greek institution, the family. It’s a fact that the overwhelming majority of violent crime in Greece takes place within the family. In that respect, Crying Blue Murder is realistic. As, I hope, are the descriptions of the land- and seascapes that have inspired and continue to inspire poets and artists; as well as seekers of sun, sand and sex.

  Readers should be aware of the following points of language:

  1) Greek masculine names in –os, –is, and –as lose the final –s when individuals are addressed: ‘Panos, lefteris and Nondas are raising their glasses’, but ‘raise your glasses, Pano, lefteri and Nonda.’

  2) Feminine surnames differ from their masculine counterparts: Alex Mavros, but Anna Mavrou; Panos Theocharis, but Dhimitra Theochari.

  3) The letters ‘dh’ are pronounced ‘th’ as in English ‘these’.

  Paul Johnston, January 2009

  For Silje, eventually.

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Dedication

  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

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  OUTSIDE, the half-moon, tilted on its back, was rising low over the eastern islands, casting a shimmering path on the grey-blue sea. A light breeze was blowing over the ridge, and on it came the creak of cicadas and the clang of goat bells from the upper slopes. The drag of water over the fractured feet of the cliffs below was a regular pattern, as soft and insistent as a lullaby.

  Inside, the woman choked back a scream and drew fetid air into her lungs. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, but the darkness was still there when she opened them again. She pulled hard against her bonds. The ropes on her wrists and ankles bit into the raw skin, making her gasp, but she persisted with the movements, trying to understand what was happening. Her mind was spongy, unfocused, and there was a dull buzzing in the background. Was she drunk? She jerked back and forward again, tears spurting as pain shot up her arms and legs. For a moment she thought she was going to be sick, but nothing came. Her throat was too dry and her stomach was empty.

  Then she heard the voices. They were low and hard to distinguish, coming from some point in the outer darkness. She swallowed hard and tried to control her breathing. The voices seemed to be familiar. Th
ere were two of them, one lower than the other, but her wandering mind couldn’t locate the faces that went with the sounds. All she could tell was that the speakers were having a fevered discussion. Something told her that calling out to them wasn’t advisable. She raised her bound wrists to her face and touched the broken surface of one cheekbone. Had she already made a noise? Had they hit her? She felt her stomach turn over.

  The voices in the darkness were less tense now, the argument apparently over. The woman moved her back against the wall—it was much rougher than the wall of a house—and realised with a spasm of shock that she was naked. There was gritty sand on the skin of her backside and she drew her tied wrists up over uncovered breasts. She started panting as the nature of her predicament overtook her like a tidal wave. And then a light came on.

  It was bright, blinding and directed at her face. She tried to look away as it moved closer and felt another frisson of horror as she saw a loose assembly of bones in the far corner, plumes of skin and tattered tendons trailing away from it across the floor. Then the light was up close and a heavy hand took hold of her chin, forcing it up.

  It was the laugh that broke her spirit, an explosion of inhumanity that the softer intonation of her other captor’s voice did nothing to dilute. Without resisting she allowed herself to be pushed forward, rough hands on her breasts and between her legs, until she was crouching on all fours, her eyes clouded by tears. The light was withdrawn and she caught a glimpse of a tripod, heard the hum of a video camera. Then she was caught by a driving agony. She had already sunk into the lowest depths of fear and desolation. The knowledge that a recording was being made of what she was enduring meant little to her.

  It ended in a series of grunts. The woman was knocked against the wall and a heavy hand rained blows on her head and shoulders, as if she had failed the man who had assaulted her. The camera’s sibilant noise stopped and she opened her eyes. She saw boots, shoes, the tripod, but she kept her gaze away from the decaying body on her left.

  And then, in the seconds before the light went out, a bottle thudded against her bare thigh, followed by a hunk of what smelled like bread in the sand by her face. The low voices faded and the woman stayed motionless. She understood that the screw had been tightened. She was not to be set free, she was not even to be slaughtered like a captive animal. She was to be kept in this stinking hole, she was to stay alive so that the bastards could continue violating and filming her whenever they wanted.

  She tried to hold her breath until she passed out, tried to resist the temptation to open the bottle, but she soon gave in. She drank brackish, inert water and swallowed coarse bread. How long had she been here? When had she last eaten? She had no sense of time, no clear idea of where she was. A cellar? A deserted hut? A cave? In the distance she heard the sound of a vehicle start up and move off.

  The enclosed space around her was sable, black as the most starless of nights, and she became aware of the flutter of scaly wings over her head. She wondered if they were bats, but whatever they were, the creatures didn’t frighten her. They were nothing compared with the realisation that had crept over her.

  She had no idea who she was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WALKING down Vrysakiou at the eastern boundary of the ancient marketplace, Alex Mavros spotted the shoplifter immediately. It was a little after ten and the sun was high in the sky, burning through the pollution cloud and suffocating central Athens. Tourists, thinner on the ground than they had been a few weeks ago during the high season, were picking their way in baseball caps and shorts through the shattered pediments and statues of the agora, their sights set on the Acropolis which was wreathed in scaffolding to the south.

  As he watched the young man in the stained denim jacket and crumpled cream trousers, Mavros wondered why none of the shopkeepers had noticed the intruder. It was obvious that he didn’t have much to spend, but he was running his hands through the oversize worry beads and picking up green metal replicas of ancient statues as if he were a genuine tourist. Then Mavros saw a group of men on the road and realised that the souvenir sellers were engaged in animated conversation, their attention slack in late September after months of good business. He could have identified the shoplifter to them—the guy had just slipped a reproduction of a figurine in poor-quality marble into the inside pocket of his jacket—but he decided to start the day with a test of his professional skills.

  The young man, his thin face and dirty hair suggesting he was one of the large Albanian underclass that scraped a living in the city, moved quickly away down Adhrianou towards the Temple of Hephaistos, his eyes averted from the shopmen, who were now shouting at each other. Mavros went after him, keeping about ten metres between them. It was easy enough to find cover by weaving between the foreign visitors, some of them carrying heavy backpacks. After a few minutes, he realised that the shoplifter knew what he was doing. The young man ignored every shop, kiosk and stall until he was well away from the one he had hit, only showing interest again after he had turned right towards Ifaistou, the Flea Market’s main thoroughfare. On it there were clothes shops and jewellers as well as stores selling tourist junk. He headed for a place festooned with watches and raised his eyes to the goods.

  Mavros approached him slowly from the rear. This time the shopkeeper was alert, his gaze levelled immediately on the badly dressed individual in his doorway. Mavros thought about it. Either he could wait to see how desperate the guy was—how much he needed something to trade for food or drugs—or he could intervene before things got nasty; shop owners had been known to beat the hell out of thieves, especially if they were Albanian. The young man raised his hand towards a fake silver watch that probably wasn’t worth more than a few thousand drachmas and Mavros decided to act.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ he said in a low voice, standing close behind the shoplifter. ‘You understand Greek?’

  Dropping his hand, the man turned to Mavros. His eyes took in the sunglasses, the shoulder-length black hair and the unshaven face, then were lowered to the white T-shirt and faded blue jeans. The alarm that had initially tightened the sallow skin on his cheeks was replaced by a look of incomprehension. ‘Who are you?’ he asked in heavily accented Greek. Although undercover police patrols operated in the Monastiraki area, they didn’t make a habit of smiling at their prey.

  Mavros beckoned him away from the shop to a neighbouring doorway. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a batsos.’ He used the colloquial term of opprobrium for the forces of law and order that equated them with physical punishment.

  ‘Fuck off then,’ said the Albanian, making to walk away.

  Mavros caught his arm and looked into his open jacket. ‘I think you’d better give me that,’ he said, nodding at the blank, angled head of the stone figure that protruded from the shoplifter’s pocket.

  ‘So you can keep it for yourself?’ the young man asked bitterly, displaying uneven stained teeth.

  ‘No,’ Mavros replied. ‘So I can give it back to its owner.’ He opened his eyes wide, hand extended. ‘Please?’

  The Albanian looked surprised by the politeness of the appeal. After a few moments’ thought, eyes flicking up and down the crowded street, he decided against further resistance.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mavros said, taking the replica. ‘Here,’ he added as the shoplifter turned away. ‘Get yourself something to eat.’ He gave the young man a five-thousand note.

  The Albanian stood speechless, his lips apart. Then his mouth formed into an incredulous smile. ‘Are you a madman?’ he asked, tapping his head.

  Mavros laughed. ‘Maybe. Go to the good, friend.’ He was pretty sure that the shoplifter wouldn’t take the words literally.

  Back at the shop where he’d first seen the Albanian, Mavros waved the owner over from the heated debate about the latest foreign coach of the Olympiakos football team.

  ‘Good morning, Alex,’ the bald souvenir seller said, his eyes falling on the off-white stone sculpture. ‘What are you doing with that?’ He loo
ked towards the shop. ‘Is it one of mine?’

  Mavros nodded as he handed the figure to him. ‘You should be ashamed of selling rubbish like this, Kosta. The original Cycladic pieces take people’s breath away. This just makes me want to throw up on your shoes.’

  The tourist shark raised his shoulders, unconcerned by the quality of his wares. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Did you let another thief go? Mother of God, Alex, why didn’t you hand him over? How are we supposed to make a—’

  ‘Bye, Kosta,’ Mavros said with a wave, heading off down the street again. The sharks made so much money from the tourists that they all had German cars and holiday homes with swimming pools on the coast of Attiki. What good would another Albanian in the cells do them or anyone else?

  Mavros turned up an alleyway off Adhrianou towards a door wreathed with honeysuckle. Although the plant was well watered, the entrance to the small kafeneion was distinctly unwelcoming. The green paint had been in need of a new coat for years and the sign—Tou Chondrou, The Fat Man’s Place—was hanging at an angle from the lintel. It was all part of the plan, as was the narrow passage beyond the door filled with cardboard boxes and empty bottles. The owner didn’t want tourists cluttering up his café. He didn’t really want anyone cluttering up the place—a year in prison during the dictatorship hadn’t done much for his sociability—but he made a few exceptions.