The Green Lady Page 15

  ‘You obviously don’t know much about glorious Viotia. The administrative capital is Livadheia now. It’s not much more than thirty kilometres away.’

  ‘Are you serious about this, Deputy Commissioner?’ Mavros said. They had joined the main road that led out of Paradheisos and were heading north.

  ‘Telemachos. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. I really do want to know what you’re doing here.’

  Mavros thought about that. Xanthakos seemed like that rare breed – a cop he could do business with, though he’d have to sound him out further. Given the HMC’s economic significance to the area, he would be naïve to imagine that the police weren’t close to the company.

  ‘All right,’ he said, deciding that part of the truth and certainly not the whole truth was the way to go. After all, Xanthakos had been cooperative on the blockade. ‘I’m after a guy who likes underage girls.’

  The policeman glanced at him as they drove up a narrow valley. ‘That sounds like a job for my service.’

  ‘Have you caught any paedophiles recently?’

  ‘I have, actually.’

  ‘In Paradheisos?’

  Xanthakos paused. ‘No, outside Thiva. So your man’s in Paradheisos?’

  ‘Em, yes.’ It was only a partial lie.

  ‘Are you going to tell me why you were on the blockade? And don’t say it’s because you support the ecologists.’

  Mavros thought of Lykos and Angeliki, and their as yet unclear involvement with Lia Poulou. He couldn’t help admiring their zeal, even if it was based on the worship of an ancient goddess – and her missing daughter.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  The policeman laughed. ‘What does that mean?’ Then he nudged Mavros with his elbow. ‘Here’s what I think. The pervert you’re after was on the blockade too. That means he’s either one of the ecologists, meaning Lykos, a.k.a. Periklis Roubanis, or Akis Exarchos – see, I know their names – or he’s one of the HMC people who were in the vicinity.’ He turned to Mavros. ‘Oh Christ, tell me it’s not Rovertos Bekakos.’

  ‘Who?’

  Xanthakos laughed. ‘OK, have it your way. You won’t be able to do much investigating from a cell.’

  ‘Oh really? What are you going to arrest me for?’

  ‘Take your pick. Blocking a public highway, brawling, resisting arrest . . .’

  ‘Uh-huh. How much does the HMC pay you every month?’

  The policeman stiffened. ‘Careful. I don’t have any ties to the company.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Mavros thought about what had happened in Paradheisos. If Xanthakos had been in Bekakos’s pocket, he would hardly have arrived to break up the fight. Unless he’d been watching and seen Akis Exarchos’s intervention. He wondered what the fisherman was doing there. Had Lykos sent him to ride shotgun?

  They drove through Dhistomo, passing the signs that pointed to the memorial for the victims of the Nazis.

  ‘My chief’s father was killed here,’ Xanthakos said. ‘His mother was pregnant with him and she was the only one of her family to survive.’

  Mavros thought back to his experiences in Crete the previous year. ‘Yes, the Germans did terrible things all right. But now it’s Greeks who ruin other Greeks’ lives.’

  ‘Thinking of anyone in particular?’

  ‘Plenty of people. Everyone knows who they are – the bent businessmen, the politicians who swallow their money and the EU’s, the tax-evading rich, the tax inspectors on the take. And they’re only the ones who show themselves in public. The worst exploiters keep their heads down and their money in Switzerland.’

  The deputy commissioner shook his head. ‘It’s not that bad. Your job’s turned you into a conspiracy theorist.’

  Mavros gave that some thought. Maybe the cop was right. Then again, he didn’t live in the big city. He felt his phone vibrate against his thigh; he’d turned it to that mode before going to Paradheisos. He took it out and answered.

  The Fat Man’s voice was breaking up, the signal obviously affected by the mountains between Viotia and Athens. ‘. . . Phis . . . professor . . . ancient . . . university . . .’ There was a pause. ‘. . . hear . . . Alex?’

  ‘No, I can’t. I’ll call you later.’ He cut the connection.

  ‘Not if I arrest you, you won’t.’

  ‘Are you still playing that game?’

  ‘Why else do you think I’m driving you to HQ?’

  Mavros didn’t answer. Long experience of dealing with the police had taught him that letting them think they’d cowed you was effective.

  ‘Look, Alex,’ Xanthakos said, ‘I’m not going to book you, but I am going to interview you. I have to.’ He sounded reluctant.

  Suddenly Mavros understood what was going on. The deputy commissioner had a Thessaloniki accent. His boss – the one who had been born in Viotia – was no doubt in cahoots with the HMC. Bekakos would have pulled his chain after recognising Mavros on the blockade and told him to find out what he was doing. Kloutsis and his sidekicks had similar instructions and the wires had got crossed.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, Telemache,’ he said. ‘I’m not a talker.’

  Xanthakos glanced at him. ‘You say that. I have unconventional methods. I know a particularly good taverna in Livadheia.’

  Mavros began to wonder exactly what sort of pick up was going on.

  Akis Exarchos had watched from the undergrowth as the private investigator was driven away by the cop he’d seen during the protest. He didn’t trust Mavros, but Lykos had called and asked him to keep an eye on the Athenian. It was just as well he had. The slob and his steroid-addicted friends would have done him serious damage. He felt good, having laid into them. They were only the rich men’s slaves, but it was a start, a small down payment on the revenge he was going to exact for Yiorgia. He considered following the lanky policeman, but it was obvious he was going to Livadheia, no doubt to question Mavros. He went back down the slope and found his Honda 50 where he’d left it – his night vision was excellent after years on the boat.

  Heading back to Kypseli, he intended to check in with Lykos and Angeliki before going home to sleep. But on the way into the village his keen eyes saw something out of place. Even during the holiday season, there were few visitors. Greeks knew about the HMC plant across the bay and the foreigners who hadn’t gone to the islands bypassed southern Viotia on their way to Delphi. Besides, not many tourists would drive the battered blue pickup that had been parked at the side of the church. The cargo space was empty, so it didn’t belong to an itinerant fruit seller or the like.

  Akis cut the engine and coasted to a halt twenty metres from the square. He could see the lights in the Ecologists for a Better Viotia office. Glancing around, he also made out a shadowy figure behind the tall eucalyptus near the harbour. He slipped into the narrow passageway between two houses, one of them abandoned and the other inhabited by an old lady who went to bed early. Taking care not to reveal himself, he watched the man – the gender wasn’t hard to establish because of his height and bulk. He was definitely watching the office and he was very still, suggesting someone who knew what he was doing. Who could he be? An undercover anti-terrorist officer? It wasn’t impossible, considering the protest had been on national TV. The authorities were twitchy because of the Games.

  Then the watcher moved and Akis saw something that made his spine tingle. He had done his military service on the border with Turkey in Thrace and he’d seen the sophisticated weaponry used by Special Forces. The short rifle that the man was raising to his shoulder was unusual, that much he knew. He called Lykos’s mobile number.

  ‘Hit the floor!’ he whispered urgently. ‘There’s a gunman taking aim at you.’ Then he did the only thing he could – came out of the alley and sprinted straight towards the shooter.

  The taverna was in a side street off the main square in Livadheia and it was obvious that Xanthakos was a regular. The obsequious owner came to their table and greeted ‘Mr Telemachos’, asking him how he was an
d recommending the lamb fricassee. The policeman nodded and also ordered half a litre of white wine. Mavros went for the lamb too, suddenly realising that he was starving. The bread took a major hit.

  ‘This is a pretty unusual place for an interrogation,’ he said, after he’d taken the edge off his hunger.

  ‘Interrogation, no – friendly conversation.’ Xanthakos smiled. ‘I told you I was unconventional.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘You won’t tell me your client’s name or who you’re looking for, and you won’t tell me who you suspect of being a paedophile. So why don’t you help me out with the burned man?’

  Mavros looked at the plate of lamb with wild herbs and lettuce that had arrived in front of him, his appetite wavering at the thought of the possible murderer.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen the ghost of a meal past.’

  Mavros took a mouthful. The food was good and rekindled his hunger. While he was eating, he thought about how to proceed. The deputy commissioner could be useful to him, especially if he wasn’t in thrall to the HMC. In order to gain his trust, he had to give him something. The Son was the easy option, not least because he was sure the torturer would be out for revenge and Mavros needed all the friends he could get.

  ‘The Chiotis family used a pair of enforcers called the Father and Son. The old man worked in the Security Police HQ in Bouboulinas Street during the dictatorship. I know several people he mutilated, though he told me he never touched my brother Andonis.’

  Xanthakos nodded. ‘I read the articles in the press.’

  Mavros nodded, eyes down. ‘You mentioned that Brigadier Kriaras has taken charge of the burned man case.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He was in charge of the Chiotis killings too.’ Mavros hesitated, then went on. ‘At the end of the investigation – I got involved with an undercover cop with his heart in the right place – we asked Kriaras for the Father’s name so we could bring him and the Son in. The brigadier didn’t exactly say he had access to it – after all, a lot of the Junta-period records were destroyed. Still, I got the strong feeling he either knew it or could obtain it. But he refused to pass it on. We gave the story to the press, although they were forced not to mention the Father and Son by name. Which is interesting in itself.’

  Xanthakos finished chewing, then set down his cutlery. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re suggesting that one of the most senior police officers in Greece, a man who’s on the Olympic Games security committee, is protecting the wanted son of a notorious torturer?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But that’s your implication. And it doesn’t end there. You think the police officer in question connived in the Son’s return to work.’

  Mavros drained his glass and signalled for more wine. ‘It’s got to be a strong possibility. The Chiotis family is no longer active and everyone who had contact with the Father and Son is dead. The Father himself may be beneath the earth. There was no evidence of fish hooks, was there? He used to hang people from the ceiling with them.’

  ‘Jesus. No, but something narrow and sharp was used on the burned man.’

  ‘These are not men to be messed with.’

  Xanthakos refilled their glasses. ‘Why would Brigadier K give the green light to a violent enforcer or enforcers during the Olympic Games? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Mavros took a long pull of the excellent local wine. ‘Maybe not to a bureaucrat like you.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Telemachos said, with a wide smile. ‘Conspiracy central.’

  ‘Look, you must know that senior cops in the cities have to do favours for the big beasts who approve their positions. Not just politicians, but the establishment groupings behind them.’

  ‘So you’re saying the brigadier’s helping a faceless one, no doubt some extremely wealthy individual.’

  ‘Or family, yes.’

  ‘And how would he or they be tied to the man who was set on fire?’

  Mavros gave a crooked smile. ‘You tell me.’

  The policeman pushed back his chair and stretched out his long legs. ‘Tell you what, exactly? We’ve nothing on the killer except that he drove a blue pickup.’

  ‘The victim’s still unidentified?’

  ‘Correct – and likely to remain that way.’ The deputy commissioner narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m going out on a limb here. I expect you to respect that, as well as respond in kind.’

  Mavros nodded.

  ‘There was one weird thing. The dead man had seven shrivelled pomegranate seeds in his stomach.’

  Persephone, Mavros thought immediately.

  ‘What?’ Telemachos said. ‘That means something to you?’

  Mavros remembered what Lambis Bitsos had told him about Kriaras’s visit to Delphi and the beheaded body there. ‘It does, but let me ask you something first. Have you heard anything on the grapevine about a murder in the stadium at Delphi?’

  The policeman stared at him. ‘How the—’

  ‘Were there any pomegranate seeds in that body? You know, don’t you?’

  Xanthakos nodded slowly. ‘If this gets out . . .’

  ‘It won’t.’

  ‘I’m a good friend of the Fokidha medical examiner. He told me there were five seeds in the severed head’s mouth.’

  ‘Five?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Think about it. Seven in your burned man and five in the Delphi victim. Where’s the—’

  ‘Body with six seeds.’ Telemachos’s eyes were wide.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But what’s the significance of the pomegranate seeds?’

  Mavros breathed a sigh of relief. A detour into mythology would mean he could keep Lia Poulou’s disappearance and Rovertos Bekakos’s child abuse to himself, at least for the time being.

  ‘Do you remember the story of Hades and how he abducted – and raped, according to some versions – Persephone, daughter of Demeter?’

  Telemachos Xanthakos, former classicist, was on familiar ground. As Mavros started to talk, he raised a hand for yet more wine.

  FIFTEEN

  Lambis Bitsos got a call from a stringer on a Trikkala newspaper not long after midnight. The guy, a boozer with skin yellower than mimosa blossom, had heard about the dead woman from a tame cop before the Ministry of Public Order imposed a media blackout. Bitsos had jumped straight into his car and driven north. The traffic was light overnight and he reached the Thessalian city before 4 a.m. He met the local journalist in a bar near the statue of Asklepios, god of medicine, whose earliest temple had reputedly been in the vicinity.

  The stringer, Yiannis Manos, short and pot-bellied, inclined his head towards the statue. ‘Didn’t do the victim much good, did he?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Bitsos said, signalling for drinks. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Whisky and lemon.’

  ‘Christ and the Holy Mother, no wonder you’re that colour. Ouzo for me,’ he said to the waiter. ‘Lethe, if you’ve got it.’ He gave Manos a warning look. ‘Not that I want you forgetting anything.’

  ‘Small chance of that. Do you know what they found?’

  ‘I’ve just driven over two hundred and fifty kilometres to hear that, fool.’

  Manos gulped at his drink. ‘Yes, of course. It’s all embargoed, of course, so you can’t use anything.’

  ‘I’ll handle that. Speak.’

  ‘I’ll need a thousand for this one.’

  Bitsos rolled his eyes, but he knew he was over a barrel – the piss-head was quite capable of going to the competition. ‘A thousand if it’s as juicy as you said.’

  ‘It’s juicy, all right.’ The stringer drank again. ‘How’s this for starters? Tongue removed and nailed to the wall above the bed? The victim, Amanda Velouchioti, professor of modern history at Athens University, aged sixty-two, divorced, no children, was lying on the said bed. She was naked, wrists and ankles tied to the bedstead.’ He drank again. ‘Get this. Her hair – s
ilver-grey, apparently – had been cut off and spread around her head. Like the glow around the saint’s face on an icon, according to my cop. Oh, and then there were her eyes.’

  Bitsos looked up from his notebook. Though he had seen it all in his career, there was something sickening about the way Manos was recounting the tale. ‘What about her eyes?’ he asked, his voice even.

  ‘They were on the pillow, one beside each ear.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘In her eye sockets, the bastard had put pomegranate seeds, three in each.’

  Bitsos gulped ouzo. Six seeds, he thought. Five in the head at Delphi. What was the betting that there were seven somewhere in the burned man on Kithairon?

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, looking at his notes. ‘You haven’t told me the cause of death.’

  ‘Do I look like a medical examiner?’

  ‘You look like shit. How did she die? And when?’

  ‘At least three days ago, was the estimate. The cops went round because an old neighbour complained about the stink.’

  ‘So she’d have been all swollen up.’

  ‘Yes, but it was clear enough what did for her?’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Manos emptied his glass. ‘There was an ancient dagger – possibly a replica – in her heart.’

  Lambis Bitsos sat back. The drive had been worth it, media blackout or not. Now, before he squeezed Manos completely dry, he needed something greasy and substantial to eat.

  ‘You can stay at my place,’ Telemachos Xanthakos said.

  Mavros looked at him as they walked down a quiet street. ‘Aren’t there any hotels here?’

  ‘Of course, but why waste your money? Then again, your client will pay.’

  Mavros was interested by the policeman – he was more like a normal human being than any cop he’d ever met, but he’d admitted to being on Mavros’s case, which made him, if not the enemy, at least not exactly a friend. Then there was the issue of his sexuality. Mavros had gay friends and had no problem with them. On the other hand, they knew he was hetero.