The Silver Stain am-4 Read online

Mavros shrugged. ‘We couldn’t wait. I didn’t set the press dogs loose — one of the villagers must have. Look, Niko, this place has been screwing the western end of the island for decades. Someone had to do something and I couldn’t wait.’

  There were a few shots in the distance, but the crowd of disarmed male villagers in the square was growing by the minute. They were surrounded by armed police.

  Kriaras glowered at him. ‘And that person had to be you, eh?’

  ‘They had Niki. Would you have left your wife to these lunatics?’

  The look on the policeman’s face was inscrutable. Mavros reckoned he might have, but he kept that to himself.

  ‘What about Roufos? Did you get him?’

  Kriaras looked away. ‘Not yet. He seems to have bribed an engineer on the ship for his uniform.’

  ‘See what I mean about having to do things myself?’ Mavros said, shaking his head. ‘The kafeneion owner. Go easy on him. He gave me the lead to the Kondoyannis family. Don’t know why, probably in a feud with them. And Maria Kondos — I’m not sure if she’s a victim or if she’s involved in the dope trade. Make sure you take her into custody.’ Then he had another thought: David Waggoner.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, going over to one of the local women who had gathered to support their men folk and asking where the Englishman’s house was. He followed her directions to the west.

  ‘Do you want us to come with you?’ Haris called. He was with his wife, while Niki was talking animatedly to Cara Parks. Maria Kondos was standing alone a few metres away.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Mavros answered, hurrying down the lane. Suddenly he had a bad feeling about Waggoner. How would he be reacting to the events in the village he’d lived in and helped for decades?

  A narrow track led to a two-storey stone house a couple of hundred metres beyond the edge of the village. The blue shutters were open and the terrace was covered in floods of bougainvillea and oleander blossom.

  ‘Waggoner!’ Mavros shouted, as he approached. ‘Are you there?’

  There was no reply. He climbed the steps and looked to each side. There were a table and chairs on his right, a tray containing a small coffee cup and a half-drunk glass of water on the former.

  ‘Waggoner!’ He stepped through the bead curtain and into the cool house. The living area to the right had dull-coloured floors and was sparsely furnished with antique dark-wood pieces. Animal heads and regimental shields hung on the walls.

  ‘The hands go up, fucker.’

  He recognized the voice and turned to see the shaven-headed Petros Lagoudhakis, leader of the far-right Cretan Renaissance, shove David Waggoner into the room, a pistol pointing at Mavros.

  ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise,’ the Cretan said. ‘Two shitbags instead of one.’

  Mavros glanced at the Englishman. His face was pale and beaded with sweat and he looked diminished from the last time they’d met.

  ‘You realize the village is teeming with police?’ Mavros said.

  ‘Won’t take me long to finish you two.’

  ‘I suppose I’m in your sights because I made you dig your own grave the other night.’

  Lagoudhakis glared at him. ‘You don’t get over something like that easily. Besides, I heard what you did to Mr Roufos.’

  Mavros sighed. He was about to die because he hadn’t kept hold of the antiquities dealer. Phoning the Cretan from the ship would have been easy.

  ‘And him?’ he said, inclining his head towards Waggoner.

  ‘Him? He persecuted Herr Kersten for years, never mind all the Germans he killed in the war.’

  Mavros stared at him. ‘Rudolf Kersten told you to kill him?’

  ‘Who else? Herr Kersten supported my organization in many ways.’

  ‘Was Oskar Mesner involved?’

  ‘Leave him out of it.’

  Which meant ‘yes’, as far as Mavros was concerned.

  Lagoudhakis raised the pistol towards Waggoner. ‘And let’s not forget that the British blocked the union of Crete for years in the nineteenth century and screwed up Cyprus permanently. This piece of shit was responsible for the death of several Cypriot freedom fighters. So go to meet them, murderer.’

  Then Lagoudhakis went flying forward, smothered by a heavily-built figure with a bandage on his head. The weapon skittered across the floor as the neo-Nazi’s hand was smashed against the tiles.

  ‘Miki?’ Mavros said, his heart halfway towards his mouth. ‘What the-’

  The Cretan dragged the now cowering Lagoudhakis to his feet and then planted a heavy fist in his belly. He hit the floor again and started writhing.

  David Waggoner limped forwards and handed the pistol that he’d picked up to Mavros. He looked like he was already in another dimension.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Mavros asked.

  ‘Pancreatic cancer. I’ve got a few weeks if I’m lucky.’ The former SOE man grimaced. ‘Or less — the pain is terrible.’ He looked at Mavros curiously. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘I had a feeling you’d do something. . foolish.’

  ‘You were behind what’s happened to the village?’

  ‘Not on my own.’ Mavros glanced at Mikis. ‘What are you doing out of hospital?’

  The driver grinned. ‘Watching your back.’

  ‘Thanks, but aren’t you supposed to be resting?’

  ‘Nah. Anyway, some fuckers from Dopetown took my Colt, remember? I want it back.’

  Mavros smiled. ‘You might have a job talking the cops into handing it over.’

  ‘I have several friends in the police force.’

  ‘What a surprise.’ Mavros looked back at Waggoner. The old man was picking something up from his desk.

  ‘I was trying to protect you when I told. . told you to stay away.’

  ‘Guilty conscience?’ Mavros asked, not prepared to let him off the hook.

  ‘Something like that.’ Waggoner stepped closer. ‘Here, these are for you. There are photographs, a pen and some papers.’

  ‘You took them from my father?’

  ‘From Kanellos, yes.’ The Englishman hung his head. ‘We. . we beat him to find out if he was the traitor. He didn’t say a word. Then we found out who the real rat was and Kanellos was taken back to the city at night. His possessions remained with me by mistake.’

  ‘Why did you keep them?’

  Waggoner shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I thought he deserved that. He was. . he was a very brave man. I should never have written what I did about him.’

  Mavros looked at the photos. They showed a young Spyros, his moustache even thicker than it was later, surrounded by men in incomplete military uniforms, some wearing the Cretan mandili and vraka. Their boots were in tatters and their weapons a mixture of elderly rifles and plundered German machine-pistols. But most striking were the smiles on their faces — they looked as if they truly believed they could defeat this and any other oppressor. The writing instrument was an old fountain pen made of dark-blue celluloid. He didn’t risk unscrewing it in case it was fragile. As for the writing, it was pages of text in a code he knew he would never be able to read — messages from the father he had scarcely known in a language legible only to long dead communist cipher clerks. At least, he thought, blinking back tears, Spyros had left a pen and not a weapon.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to Waggoner. He couldn’t bring himself to shake the hand that had dealt pain to his father, but he gave him a restrained smile.

  Mavros and the Cretan dragged Lagoudhakis on to the terrace, the former calling Kriaras to have the neo-Nazi picked up.

  ‘Right, Miki, let’s get you back to the bosom of your family.’

  ‘Speaking of bosoms, I heard your girlfriend was here. That means the delectable Cara Parks is up for grabs.’

  ‘I guess so. But bear in mind she’s a champion at kickboxing, karate and various other martial arts.’

  Mikis grinned. ‘Some like them hot.’

  Back in the village square, Mav
ros handed over the recording device to Kriaras. Haris had got one of his men to make a copy of the disk on a laptop, so they were covered.

  ‘Every single name Dhrakakis spouted better be arrested, Niko,’ Mavros said, ‘or I’m giving the disk to the press.’

  ‘What country do you think you’re living in?’ the policeman said, in a long-suffering voice. ‘Strings will be pulled, money will move between accounts, people will disappear. But don’t worry — there’ll be a big enough scandal.’ He caught Mavros’s eye. ‘Be thankful you haven’t been arrested for taking the law into your hands.’

  Mavros laughed. ‘Hey, Hari,’ he called, ‘the commander wants to charge your men with damaging the Kornariates’ crops.’

  The Cretan waved a hand in the air and went on talking to his wife and son.

  ‘The Tsifakis family is well connected, Niko.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that,’ Kriaras snapped. ‘Want a lift back to Chania in the helicopter?’

  That may have a form of olive branch, but Mavros wasn’t interested. The less he was seen with the commander the better.

  ‘No, thanks. I’ve got some loose ends to tie up.’

  ‘Loose and legal, I hope.’

  Mavros gave him a crooked smile. ‘Thanks for helping out — not that you won’t be using this success to further your career.’

  That ended the conversation.

  Later, the village began to empty as the men who had been arrested were packed into police vehicles. Mavros had given a provisional statement to a cop from Chania, who was on good terms with Haris.

  ‘At last,’ Niki said, seizing his arm. ‘My saviour has time for me.’ She kissed him long and hard on the lips. ‘Thank you, Alex. I knew I could rely on you.’

  ‘How did they treat you?’

  ‘Fine, really. I had food and drink. I think they were nastier to Maria.’

  Mavros watched as Cara Parks cradled her assistant’s head in her arms outside the kafeneion. The actress saw his look and nodded slowly to him. The fact that Maria hadn’t asked for a doctor was encouraging. Two policemen were standing close by.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Mikis said, beckoning from the Land Rover.

  ‘Only if you aren’t driving,’ Mavros replied.

  ‘I’m driving,’ Haris said firmly. ‘In the back, Miki, and lie down.’

  Mavros and Niki got in the front with him. They jolted down the track and, as it turned to the west, Mavros caught a glimpse of smoke rising from the area of Waggoner’s house. The fire engines had already left, but he didn’t intend to call them back. Let him go the way he wanted.

  Niki sat up, startled. A medium-sized brown and black bird had flown up in front of the Land Rover and was flying at low altitude ahead of them, moving up and down as if it was surfing.

  ‘Hoopoe,’ said Haris. ‘They are beautiful.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Niki, smiling in pleasure.

  The Cretan slowed as the bird swerved and perched on a wall. It wiped its long beak against an upper wing and then opened the crest on its head, the tall feathers quivering in the breeze. Its beauty was in stark contrast to the barren slopes, as well as to the horrors brought to the island by men who had jumped into the air from ugly aircraft during the war — horrors whose effects could still be felt.

  Mavros felt the stain of violence that had come over him since he’d arrived in Crete finally begin to recede. His father’s face flashed before him and smiled in what he took to be encouragement. Mavros squeezed Niki’s thigh and huddled against her. Hoopoes were good and so was life.

  As they wound down the mountainside, Haris Tsifakis began to sing: ‘Oh Crete, your earth is silver and your rocks diamonds. .’

  EPILOGUE

  Several days later, Mavros and Niki were back in his mother’s flat on the flank of Lykavitoss in central Athens. They had made love often and slept deeply, but that morning he woke early and watched the pale light of dawn spread over the city’s concrete blocks from the balcony.

  The loose ends he’d had to tie up on the Great Island turned out to be few. Oskar Mesner had gone back to Germany and no one in the police seemed very interested in questioning him. Compared with the crimes of Dhrakakis and the others, his were insignificant and had been motivated by Tryfon Roufos — who was still at large — and Rudolf Kersten. It was the dead German who troubled Mavros most. He had seen Hildegard in the clinic, where she’d had surgery on her leg. She wouldn’t accept any apologies because of his failure to identify Renzo Capaldi as one of Roufos’s men. Nor would she talk about her husband, but Mavros got the impression that she’d learned the same awful truth that he had from Petros Lagoudhakis — that Kersten had secretly been faithful to his Nazi beliefs and that David Waggoner, while wrong to blackmail him, had been right about the depth of his hypocrisy.

  As for the former SOE man, he died before the fire brigade could return to the village, having barricaded himself in his house and ignited the petrol that he had sluiced around. Mavros was sure he had deliberately copied the method used by Haris’s men to destroy the cannabis plants. Unlike Kersten’s death, it was a symbolic suicide.

  Mikis had recovered from his head injury in every way, though he was still having checks at the clinic. He managed to charm his way into Cara Parks’ bed within twenty-four hours and sent Mavros a triumphant text message, containing several translations of ‘twin peaks’ into Greek. Cara sent him one too, rather less demonstrative. Before he and Niki had left Crete on the production’s Learjet, the actress had promised to meet them in Athens before she went back to the US. As it happened, that wouldn’t be for some time as, considering the money that had already been spent, a new production team had been put together, a new director brought on board and filming resumed with only a few days’ break. Maria Kondos had been questioned by police and released on bail. She was walking with a stick and telling everyone on the crew what they could and couldn’t do. He was sure she’d been feigning amnesia after her first visit to Kornaria, keeping her family’s business to herself, but there was no way of proving it. Luke Jannet and his sister were in prison in Athens, soon to be extradited to their home country.

  The front door opened as far as the chain allowed.

  ‘Hey, Alex,’ said the Fat Man in a stage whisper. ‘Let me in.’

  Mavros closed the bedroom door on the sleeping Niki and took off the chain.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he demanded, staring at the huge package his friend was carrying.

  ‘Double-layer galaktoboureko,’ Yiorgos replied. ‘I found a recipe of the old woman’s. Don’t know if I’ve cracked it, though.’

  In the kitchen, they carefully removed the paper covering.

  ‘Christ and the Holy Mother,’ Mavros said, ‘one bite of that will bring instant death.’

  ‘Right,’ the Fat Man said, laying out two plates. ‘We’d better make a suicide pact.’

  ‘What?’ Niki said from the door, rubbing her eyes and peering at the great mound of custard-filled filo pastry. ‘Count me in.’

  They ate, drank chilled water and moved on to Yiorgos’s superlative coffee. Mavros watched the pair of them, surprised that no sparks had started to fly.

  Then the Fat Man went too far. ‘So, Alex, that Cara Parks? Is she really as well endowed as she looks on the screen?’

  There was a brief pause and then Niki launched into a loud anti-male tirade.

  Mavros laughed and left them to it. On the balcony, he looked southwards towards the light-blue Aegean, wishing for a few moments that he was back on Crete. Then he came to his senses and re-entered the domestic combat zone.

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