The Green Lady Page 14

  ‘That’s very clever,’ Lykos said, ‘but, as I said, we don’t concern ourselves with that murky deity.’

  ‘Persephone is the ultimate symbol of female suffering,’ Angeliki added. ‘In the winter I cry for her every night.’

  Mavros nodded. The activists were pretty low on his list of suspects.

  Lord of the desolate regions and the darkness, great Hades, Aidoneus, grant us your favour in this most testing of times. The forces of ruination are all around, killing our fellow worshippers as well as destroying the land for short-lived profit. You, too, kidnapped a maiden, blameless Persephone, who is now and for every winter your dread queen. We know you will not turn your face from us. We have broken the laws of men, but we feel no shame because the justice of our purpose is manifest. The Maiden herself accepted your suit, despite her longing for the lovely light of day and the green domains of her mother. She consumed seeds of the pomegranate and was condemned to a dual life, part with you in the echoing halls of the dead and part as an essential life force on the surface of the earth.

  Great Plouton, richest of all gods, give us your leave to bring our plans to fruition. We know you will protect us, son of Cronos, brother of Zeus, because no other god can gainsay you in your realm. Receiver of All Shades, grant us more time on earth to achieve our ends, which we know are yours too. Then we will contentedly follow Hermes Psychopompos as he leads our souls to your dominion for eternity.

  Accept now the black blood of this animal and the dark vintage as a libation, great Hades. We are your servants and we will die before revealing the secrets you have entrusted us with.

  Hail, Aidoneus.

  Mavros drove in the dark along the coastal road and parked the Citroen by the trees, as he’d been instructed. He took the voice recorder from the bag he’d placed under the passenger seat and closed the door quietly. The lights of Paradheisos shone through the foliage. He walked up the incline, counting the streets. When he got to the fourth, he pushed through the bushes under the eucalyptus trees and looked around. There was no one to be seen. He moved swiftly across the road that led to the higher parts of the town – the yellow and pink houses of the more senior workers – and checked the street sign. He was at Themistokleous. He walked down the pavement under bitter orange trees and found number 15. The detached houses had been built in island style – flat roofs, corniced windows and pergolas over terraces. This one seemed to be well cared for, the bougainvillea tendrils pruned and the lower fronds of a five-metre palm tree cut right back. Apart from the light on the terrace, Mavros could see no sign of illumination inside. Had the girl taken fright and left?

  The doorbell had been taped over. He knocked quietly on the door, glancing over his shoulder to see if he was being observed. There were lights in the houses across the street, but no one was at the windows. Then he heard the sound of flip-flops on stone tiles.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a timid voice.

  ‘Alex Mavros, Ourania. Angeliki told you I was coming.’

  The door opened slightly and he saw a girl of medium height and build, her jet black hair tied back. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved blouse buttoned up to her neck, an outfit that must have been uncomfortable considering the ambient temperature. Her brown eyes were wide open and her hands trembled.

  Mavros gave her a tentative smile. ‘It’s better if people don’t see me,’ he said.

  Ourania came back to herself. ‘Yes. Come in.’

  He followed her into a sparsely decorated hall, the only furniture a small table with a mirror above it.

  ‘We should sit in the kitchen,’ the girl said. ‘The trees at the back of the yard mean it isn’t overlooked.’

  ‘Fine.’ He followed her to the rear of the house. There was a smell of food – stuffed tomatoes – but the feel of the place, tidy but characterless, was more that of a hotel than a home. He remembered that the workers were only temporary residents, the houses owned by the HMC.

  Ourania turned on an air-conditioning unit and sat down at the bare wooden table. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked, her eyes off him.

  ‘No, that’s all right.’ Mavros angled his head to catch her gaze. ‘I’m here to help,’ he said. ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  The girl looked away again. ‘Lykos said . . . said you want to ask me about . . . about him.’

  Mavros had intended approaching the reason for his visit more circumspectly, but he respected Ourania’s desire to get it over.

  ‘I’m going to record what you say. Is that all right?’

  She looked uncertain, but nodded.

  He took the recorder from his shirt pocket and turned it on. Then he opened his mobile phone and clicked to a photo of Rovertos Bekakos that he’d taken at the protest.

  ‘Is this the man who abused you?’ he asked gently.

  Ourania took one look and then lowered her head. ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to hold back sobs.

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  The girl got up and took a roll of kitchen paper from beside the sink. She used a piece to soak up her tears. ‘It’s Mr . . . Bekakos.’

  ‘Mr Rovertos Bekakos?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, almost whispering.

  ‘The lawyer who represents the HMC, where your father works?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ourania, I have to ask you to tell me exactly what happened. And, first of all, when?’

  The girl kept her head down and started to speak in a level voice, as if the only way she could describe her experience was to remove all emotional affect.

  ‘June – the first or second, I think. I went blank for some days afterwards. I was doing my homework in my room upstairs and there was a knock at the door. The bell broke months ago and the company electrician never came round to fix it. Dad eventually put tape over the button. I thought it might be my friend Yiota, so I ran down and opened the door.’ She paused.

  Mavros got up and poured her a glass of water from a bottle by the window. ‘Take your time,’ he said.

  After drinking, Ourania lowered her head again and recommenced her narrative. ‘He was there.’

  ‘Rovertos Bekakos?’ he clarified.

  ‘Yes. He smiled at me and asked if my parents were in. He said something about important company business. I told him Dad was on shift and Mum was in the shop. He smiled again and asked if he could wait. I said I would call Mum and he said there was no reason, he was quite happy to stay with a pretty girl like me . . .’ She broke off. ‘I don’t why I didn’t do something, but it was like I was under a spell. He asked me if he could see my bedroom, said something about helping me with my homework. I took him upstairs. It was when he closed the door behind him that I realised I was in trouble. He said, “Don’t be shy, young lady. I’m not going to hurt you”. But I could see the . . . the lump in his trousers. I’m not stupid. The boys at school are always messing about, but they never touch us. He did. He held me by the arm and unbuttoned my blouse. Then he put . . . put his hand inside my . . . my bra. He told me I was nearly a woman, not a girl any more. And women like to do things to men. Before I could react – I couldn’t move – he’d taken all my clothes off.’ She stopped and lowered her head to the table top. She started to weep.

  Mavros knew there was nothing he could say to comfort her and that touching her was impossible. He waited and then said, ‘Ourania, this is terrible. Rovertos Bekakos has committed a serious crime. We have to catch him before he does the same or worse to other girls.’

  After wiping her face, the girl started talking again. ‘He touched me . . . down there. Then he unzipped his trousers and took . . . it out.’ Suddenly she raised her head and stared at Mavros. ‘Men are pigs!’ she said. ‘Pigs!’ Then she started crying again.

  He sat there squirming, overwhelmed with disgust for his gender.

  Eventually Ourania took up her story, talking quickly. ‘He told me to kiss it. I couldn’t move. He grabbed me by the back of the head and . . . and put my lips on it.
Then he . . . he finished on me, all over my chest, my . . .’

  Mavros swallowed back the bitter liquid that had risen to his mouth.

  ‘He made me wipe it up and watched me have a shower. Then he told me to get dressed and he said, “If you tell anyone – anyone, you hear? – your father will lose his job, your mother will lose the shop and you will all have to leave Paradheisos”. He put his hands round my neck, but he didn’t press hard. He just laughed. He said, “And wherever you go, one of my associates,” – that’s what he called them, I didn’t understand at first – “one of my associates will find you and snuff out your life like a candle. Pft!”.’

  Ourania stopped talking abruptly. She was panting and Mavros pushed the glass of water towards her. She drank thirstily and glanced at him.

  ‘Was that . . . all right?’

  ‘You did very well,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll make him pay.’

  ‘But what about Dad’s job and the shop – Mum only has a lease on it?’

  Mavros put the recorder in his back pocket. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be very careful.’ He stood up, then remembered the long shot he had thought of earlier. He opened his phone again and found the photo he had taken of an image supplied by Angie Poulou.

  ‘Have you ever seen this girl?’ he asked. He didn’t have much hope, but it was worth a try.

  Ourania squinted at it. ‘Yes, I know her. I only met her once, though.’

  Mavros took a deep breath. ‘Where? When?’

  ‘At one of the Ecologists for a Better Viotia workshops. It must have been in April, after the Easter holidays. They’re usually on weekday evenings, but this one was on a Saturday – I remember because I missed basketball training. I think her name was Lia. She was nice. We sat next to each other and did a project about soil erosion.’

  ‘Can you remember anything else about her?’

  Ourania sat back, her brow furrowed. ‘No . . . wait, yes. She was wearing a gold chain with a pomegranate on it. I know, because I didn’t recognise it and I asked her what it was.’

  Persephone’s fatal fruit, Mavros thought. ‘Did you see who she came and left with?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the girl said, as if the answer was obvious. ‘She was with Angeliki and Lykos.’

  Mavros thanked her and praised her courage, then left the house. He didn’t know what to make of the missing girl being with the ecologists. Could that mean they had taken her a fortnight later, or talked her into absconding? Would confronting them with what he had learned put her in greater danger? He couldn’t be sure.

  It was only as he approached the road by the trees that he realised he was being followed – and by more than one person.

  The Varousi quarter of Trikkala had been quiet as the evening darkened, the local children drifting back to their homes. It had been a hot day even by the standards of Thessaly, one of the hottest areas of Greece in part because it was far from the coast and its cooling winds. The mountains had been blurred by a heat haze all day and people had stayed indoors as much as possible. There were the Olympics to watch.

  Malamo Christakou, eighty-nine but still spry, hadn’t even been able to sit in her Ottoman-style enclosed wooden balcony. The stench had been building as the days passed and now it was beyond bearing. She’d called the town council. The woman there said most workers were on holiday and, anyway, if there wasn’t rubbish on the street, she didn’t know what she could do. Eventually Malamo, who had outlived her husband and sons and had no grandchildren, called the police. They had shown little interest, but said they’d send an officer round if they could find one. To Malamo’s astonishment, a patrol car drove up the narrow street shortly after nine o’clock and stopped outside her house. She went downstairs as fast as she could and got the front door just after the bell was rung.

  ‘Good evening, Madam,’ said a fresh-faced young man in a pale blue short-sleeved shirt and dark blue trousers, putting on his peaked cap.

  ‘Good evening, my boy,’ Malamo said, unable to take her eyes off the huge pistol on his belt. ‘Can you smell it?’

  The officer raised his nose and inhaled. ‘Em, yes, that certainly is unpleasant.’

  ‘Look up there,’ the old woman said, pointing to the partially open window on the second floor. ‘I’m sure that’s where it’s coming from.’

  ‘Do you know the occupant?’

  ‘Not really. A lady from Athens, I think. She inherited it, but she’s hardly ever here. I certainly haven’t seen her recently.’ She signalled to the policeman and he lowered his head towards her mouth. ‘I heard she’s a university professor.’

  The young man received that information with less reverence than Malamo expected. She had only finished primary school and, to her, people who taught in universities were superhuman, especially if they were female.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a key, Madam.’

  ‘Me? Of course not, my child.’

  ‘All right. Stand back, please.’

  Malamo watched as the policeman went to the door and knocked. She had noticed the curious knocker and often wondered what it was – it looked like those weights that men raised to make their arms thicker, or perhaps a thunderbolt. Then she heard the sound of the handle turning.

  ‘The door was open, Madam,’ the young man said, as if that was significant.

  ‘I’ll have a quick look.’

  Malamo waited impatiently. It must have been only a minute later that the policeman came crashing downstairs and staggered into the street, his hands at his mouth. Soon afterwards vehicles with lights flashing arrived, and out of them came more people in police uniforms and others wearing white bootees like overgrown babies. The street filled with local residents consumed by curiosity.

  All that Malamo heard was that a woman dead for several days had been found, and that something bad had happened to her eyes. At least the window had been fully open. If she was lucky, the stench would have disappeared by morning.

  FOURTEEN

  Mavros made a run for it. The men came after him and caught him before he got to the bushes. He was floored by a heavy blow above his right kidney, then grabbed and hauled back to his feet.

  ‘The snooper.’ The big man Rovertos Bekakos had called Mr Kloutsis leaned in close. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Snooping,’ Mavros gasped. He took another blow, this time to his gut, from one of the pair holding him up. He knew that catching his breath wasn’t going to be easy in the immediate future.

  ‘I’ll bet,’ said Kloutsis. ‘What I want to know is, where?’

  In his agony, Mavros was relieved that the hard men seemed not to have seen him at Ourania’s house.

  ‘You want another pounding?’ Bekakos’s bodyguard demanded. ‘No problem. This time Beetroot here’ll be aiming at your balls.’

  ‘Aaagh!’

  Mavros’s left arm fell free. The guy who had been clutching him was prone on the road, hands at the back of his head. Blood was coming between the fingers. There was another scream and the second man, whose red face presumably had led to his nickname, was also writhing on the asphalt.

  Kloutsis took several steps backwards.

  ‘What’s the matter, you big fairy?’ came a familiar voice from behind Mavros. ‘Fancy the odds less now we’re going one on one?’

  Akis Exarchos stepped forward, holding a metre-long piece of wood that had been cut from an oar.

  ‘You!’ Kloutsis said. ‘I could have flattened you and that tractor with the bulldozer.’ He pulled out a combat knife and went into a defensive crouch. ‘Come and get me then.’

  Akis swung the oar back but, before he could complete the blow, the lights of a vehicle moving at high speed came down Themistokleous, temporarily blinding him. Mavros shaded his eyes with one hand and saw Kloutsis run off down the slope. Then the car was on them, screeching to a halt where the big man had been. His sidekicks had got to their feet and were stumbling away after him. Looking round, Mavros realised that Akis had slipped a
way into the bushes.

  The driver’s door opened and Deputy Commissioner Telemachos Xanthakos got out, service weapon in his hand. He watched the three men turn into one of the lower streets.

  ‘So, Alex Mavro,’ he said. ‘Friends of yours?’

  ‘Not exactly. Well, no.’

  ‘How about the other one? The man with the club?’

  ‘Never saw him before. I must have walked into a local feud of some sort.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The tall policeman ran an eye over him. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ll live.’ Mavros took the hand away from his back and stood up straight, suppressing a groan.

  Xanthakos smiled. ‘For a hotshot PI, you’re not much of a liar. Do you mind telling me what you’re doing in Paradheisos?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do. It’s a free country.’

  ‘True, but brawling in the street is frowned upon. How about I arrest you and put you in a cell until you feel more talkative?’

  Mavros was tempted to tell the cop to go and bugger himself, but there was a hard look in his eye. Not only that, he had the distinct feeling he was gay and he didn’t want to provoke him unnecessarily.

  ‘Brawling with who?’ he asked, opening his arms and wincing.

  ‘All right, come with me,’ the deputy commissioner said.

  ‘How come you’re on your own?’ Mavros asked, after he’d sat in the passenger seat. He was relieved to feel that the voice recorder was still in his trouser pocket. ‘And in plain clothes. Are you even on duty?’

  Xanthakos started the engine. ‘At the risk of sounding like a B-movie Nazi, I ask the questions.’ He turned down the slope and then on to the road Mavros’s assailants had taken. There was no sign of them. ‘Besides, a doctor should examine you. How many times were you hit?’

  Mavros sighed. ‘I don’t need a doctor. Let me out, will you? I’ve got a car.’

  ‘No chance. You’re coming to headquarters with me.’

  ‘What?’ Mavros said, horrified. ‘In Thiva?’