The Green Lady Read online

  Mavros heard the shot and wondered what had happened in the house. Then there was a noise closer behind. He turned to see Yiorgos following, his hands high and his belly pulled into an unusual shape.

  ‘Go back, you fool.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘He’ll kill you.’

  ‘Then my death will be forever on your conscience.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ Mavros groaned. ‘This really can’t get any worse.’

  ‘Look, it’s our killer,’ Yiorgos said.

  Mavros watched as a well-built figure came down from a tree and walked towards them, rifle slung over his left shoulder. The blonde-haired Son was pointing a pistol at them.

  ‘Peel away,’ Mavros said. ‘We’re still far enough away to make it tricky for him.’

  ‘And I’m a tiny target.’

  Laughing was unavoidable, but quickly curtailed.

  The Son stopped about fifteen metres from them and raised his empty hand.

  ‘Death does have its funny side,’ he said. ‘Though it strikes me I should be the one cackling.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ Mavros asked, staring at the bandages on his head and ear. ‘The van Gogh look doesn’t become you.’

  The Son frowned. ‘Van who?’ He looked at Yiorgos. ‘You, I take it, are the Fat Man.’

  ‘The man’s a genius.’

  ‘A.k.a. Yiorgos Pandazopoulos, born 1943, member of the Communist Party, longstanding operator of a café on Adhrianou Street, organiser of illicit card games, mother Phedhra deceased 2003—’

  ‘All right,’ Mavros said, ‘you’ve made your point. No doubt you have even more on me. But you’re wasting time. The cops will be on their way.’

  ‘You and I will be well on our way before they get here, Alex Mavro. You, Fat Man, bring us a car. And don’t try anything smart. I’ll be holding this –’ he brandished the pistol – ‘to this busybody’s head.’

  ‘Do what he says, Yiorgo. Please.’

  His friend turned reluctantly away.

  ‘And take that pistol from above your arse, Fat Man,’ the Son called. ‘Put it down slowly on the asphalt. That’s right. Now, fuck off.’ He walked up to Mavros and felt behind him. ‘What are you, unidentical twins?’ He put the pistol into the pocket of his utility jacket. ‘Who was that man giving cover in the doorway?’

  ‘Akis Exarchos. A fisherman from Kypseli.’

  ‘I thought I recognised him. He was the lunatic who ran into me when I was trying to take out the ecologists.’

  Mavros heard the Fat Man’s Peugeot start up. ‘Didn’t you bring your tranquilliser gun this time?’ A thought was stirring, but it wouldn’t come to the surface of his mind.

  ‘No,’ the Son said, grinning slackly. ‘But I’ve got my fish hooks.’

  Mavros swallowed bile as he remembered the Father and Son’s favourite torture method. ‘Whoever’s employing you has obviously had enough of Poulos and his gang of Hades-worshipping child abusers and set you loose on them.’

  ‘Something like that, I imagine.’

  ‘But aren’t you meant to be finding Lia Poulou?’

  The Son glanced at him, then pressed the muzzle of his Glock against Mavros’s head as the Fat Man drove up.

  ‘Out!’ the Son ordered. ‘And be grateful I didn’t turn that gut of yours into a sieve.’

  ‘Fu—’

  ‘Go, Yiorgo,’ Mavros interrupted. ‘I’ll be all right.’ The Son nudged him into the driver’s seat and sat next to him.

  ‘I don’t know where you got that idea, Alex Mavro. You aren’t coming back from this trip.’

  ‘Listen to me. There’s a man in the house who knows where Lia Poulou is. Wouldn’t you like to find her? For me it’s a question of professional pride.’ Mavros had almost finished turning the car. ‘For you, no doubt there’s money involved.’

  The blonde man thought about that. ‘All right. Who is this man?’

  ‘Paschos Poulos, of course.’

  The Son stared at him as if he were simple. ‘Her own father? He put down the cash for me to . . .’ He broke off.

  Mavros returned his gaze thoughtfully. ‘Yes, he paid for you to find her, but I don’t think he intends for her to live.’ He pulled up in front of the chain and stopped the engine. ‘How do you want to do this? I can phone the policeman inside and get him to send Poulos out.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Mavros did so, explaining the situation.

  ‘Forget Poulos,’ Xanthakos said. ‘He committed suicide.’

  Mavros remembered the shot. ‘How did he get a gun?’

  ‘It turns out his wife was armed. He took it from her.’

  Mavros remembered the fury in his client’s eyes and wondered if that was the true story.

  ‘What’s happened?’ the Son demanded.

  Mavros told him, then the thought that had been tormenting him finally surfaced. ‘Wait, someone else knows where Lia is.’ Faces flashed before him – the turncoat Angeliki; the black-clad cadres sent by Tatiana Roubani, Lykos’s Communist MP aunt; and the young ecologist himself, who had supposedly taken Ourania to a safe place.

  ‘Telemache?’ he said, ‘Send Lykos out. Tell him his only chance of escape is if he comes with us.’

  The Son put the Glock back against Mavros’s head. ‘What is this?’

  ‘We’ve all been played for fools. Lykos, the ecologist, kidnapped Lia Poulou, probably with the backing of his aunt. I’m sure you can think of a way to make him talk.’

  They watched as the young man walked slowly from the house, knife in hand.

  ‘Drop it!’ the Son shouted, then stiffened as Angie Poulou appeared at the door. She ran to catch up with Lykos, only stopping when the Son fired a shot that ricocheted from the drive in front of her. ‘Stay there, bitch. This time I really will kill you.’

  Mavros raised a hand to discourage his client and she took a step back.

  ‘You drive,’ the Son said to Lykos, getting into the back seat. ‘That way I can shoot either or both of you before you do anything stupid.’

  Moving to the passenger seat, Mavros looked at the young man. He seemed to be in control of himself, but the rapid blinking was a giveaway.

  ‘Where to?’ Lykos asked.

  Mavros laughed. ‘Good try. Go to the end of the road – I wonder where your friendly cadres have disappeared to? – and turn right. We’re going to where you have Lia Poulou stashed.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Which is also where you took Ourania yesterday, isn’t it?’ Mavros opted for hard ball. ‘Have you been fucking them?’

  ‘No!’ Lykos exclaimed, glaring at him.

  ‘Eyes on the road,’ the Son ordered. ‘No, you haven’t been fucking them but, yes, you’ve stashed them?’

  Lykos took a deep breath. ‘All right, I’ll take you there.’

  The Son stroked the back of the young man’s neck with his pistol. ‘A wise decision.’

  ‘Was it you or your aunt who set this whole thing up?’ Mavros asked.

  ‘My aunt.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it was approved by the Communist Party leadership.’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably not. She was so angry about the amount of Olympic Games contracts Poulos A.E. obtained and the huge profits the bastard was making. I was already fighting the company over the pollution and the deaths down here.’ Lykos turned right and headed for the shore. ‘Taking his daughter seemed the best way of getting to him, but he managed to get a media blackout applied. That actually suited us. He paid plenty for us to keep quiet. We’ve enough to campaign for years now.’

  Mavros was watching him closely. ‘How did you get Lia to sound so natural on the phone after you’d snatched her?’

  Lykos laughed lightly. ‘We didn’t snatch her. She came willingly. Her idiot father thought she came to Paradheisos with him because she was interested in the company town. We inducted her into the cult of Demeter and Persephone, as well as educating her in e
cological matters. She’s a smart girl – she’d done a lot of research on both issues.’ He glanced at Mavros. ‘Good, eh? The bastard’s own daughter was working against him. Then again, I don’t blame her. He’s the one who was sexually abusing her.’

  A police car roared past them, lights flashing and siren wailing.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ Mavros asked, thinking of his client again. What had happened between her and Poulos at the last?

  ‘A place called Chrysso, a few kilometres below Delphi.’

  ‘Are they being well looked after?’

  The young man swallowed hard. ‘Em, you have to understand. Our worship of Demeter is based on a cult that predates the pantheon of the Olympian gods. For fertility to return to the land, substitutes for Persephone must be offered up.’

  ‘What?’ Mavros said, his flesh creeping.

  ‘They should still be breathing,’ Lykos said, turning on to the coast road towards Kypseli. ‘They’re beneath the surface of the earth, but the ritual requires they stay alive as long as possible for the most beneficial effect.’

  ‘They’d better still be breathing,’ Mavros said, ‘or I’ll put a hole in your windpipe.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Don’t tell me you worship the ancient gods too.’

  The Son smiled emptily. ‘I don’t worship anything. If you’re referring to the pomegranate seeds I put in my victims, I was told to do that. I even have some in my bag for you.’

  Mavros was again forced to face up to the proximity of his own death. He’d been lucky the Son had taken the bait over Lia Poulou. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t finish with Mavros when she was found. He wasn’t the kind of man who would forget being beaten two years earlier.

  ‘Where’s the Father?’ he asked, searching for a weak point.

  The Son looked out the window as they passed through Kypseli. ‘He’s happy enough. Doesn’t get out much.’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Mavros saw the killer’s gaze harden and knew he was on target. ‘Old age, illness, accident, suicide or murder?’

  The muzzle of the Glock was jammed into the back of Mavros’s head.

  ‘You’ve got a big mouth, dick,’ the Son said. ‘What do you think of this? The old man kept a file on your brother.’

  Mavros felt a wave of nausea break over him. The long-lost face flashed before him as it used to, lips creased in a soft smile. The Father told him he hadn’t tortured Andonis. But even if he hadn’t been lying, he might have heard from fellow torturers who knew his brother’s fate.

  ‘I thought that would shut you up,’ the Son said, with a callous laugh. ‘After we find the girl, I’ll consider telling you what the Father knew. You won’t be able to do anything with the information in the seconds before I kill you.’

  Mavros swallowed hard. ‘Tell me now,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  The Son sat silent, pistol in hand, as Lykos took the turn for Itea and headed away from the fume-covered bay. The first grey of dawn was eating into the darkness behind them. Mavros was determined to make the most of his last hour on the surface of the earth, but he had no idea how.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Brigadier Nikos Kriaras stepped out of the helicopter that had landed on the concrete circle outside the hospital in Dhistomo. A portly officer in dress uniform stepped forward to meet him, introducing himself as the commissioner of the Viotia police. Within seconds, they were in an unmarked car, heading for Paradheisos.

  ‘Your deputy would appear to have an inflated opinion of himself,’ Kriaras said, as they entered the defile between the mountains.

  ‘Telemachos Xanthakos is a capable officer,’ the chief said neutrally.

  ‘He has presided over a botched operation that resulted in several deaths. Is it true that he kept you in the dark about it?’

  ‘He kept everyone in the dark – the first the Paradheisos team knew was when neighbours reported gunfire.’

  Kriaras looked ahead to the pale blue sea and the dark clouds from the HMC plant. ‘He was insolent when I called him. As far as I could understand, Paschos Poulos, Rovertos Bekakos and Tryfon Roufos have all been killed—’

  ‘The first by his own hand.’

  ‘Apparently. And a local fisherman was shot too.’ The brigadier turned to the commissioner. ‘Not that he’s of any importance. But you’ll understand the press will be down here in droves if they discover that such a leading businessman, not to mention a member of the Olympic Games security committee, has died. I will require absolute obedience from you and all your officers. No one must talk, not even to their families.’

  The commissioner raised his shoulders. ‘Paradheisos is a small town. I don’t see how you can stop the residents gossiping.’

  ‘I don’t see how they will know the identities of the dead.’

  ‘Maybe they won’t. But Telemachos . . . Deputy Commissioner Xanthakos told me that several other people were involved and most have already left the scene.’

  Nikos Kriaras was shaking his head. ‘Very lax. You’ll be lucky to escape with your pension intact.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re in charge, aren’t you? Anyway, that’s for later. Now I need to know the whereabouts of the private investigator Alex Mavros.’

  ‘The last I heard, he had been abducted by a sniper known as the Son.’

  Kriaras gave him an icy stare. ‘Your deputy didn’t tell me that. Do you have officers in pursuit?’

  ‘No. Xanthakos thought that would endanger the captives even more.’

  ‘Captives, plural?’

  ‘Yes. One of the Ecologists for a Better Viotia was also taken – calls himself Lykos.’

  The car turned into the first street and went to the pink house at the far end.

  Kriaras got out, ignoring the policemen at the gate. Then a woman in creased linen clothes turned towards him and he felt his jaw drop. Angela Poulou’s mouth was that of a demon with filed teeth and the look she gave him almost liquefied the contents of his bowels.

  The sun was still behind the mountains when Lykos drove up the road from Itea to Delphi, but there was plenty of daylight. The valley was a huge forest of olive trees and the great shoulder of Parnassos stood up in front of them, the dots of white on its lower flank marking the modern town of Delphi. Chrysso, their destination, was a few kilometres nearer.

  Mavros turned to the Son. ‘The man you decapitated in the ancient stadium up there – were you given that modus operandi or did you pick it yourself?’

  ‘I always choose the method of dispatch.’

  ‘You cut the man’s head off?’ Lykos said, sitting bolt upright.

  ‘Yes,’ the Son said, with a smile. ‘He was another Hades worshipper – had a mini-statue in his house.’

  ‘Vangelis Gilas, a phylax.’

  Mavros had been following the exchange. There was something off about the set of Lykos’s lips.

  ‘That name’s familiar,’ the Son said. ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘He was in the cult that my partner Angeliki turned out to be involved in, along with Poulos and Bekakos.’

  Mavros narrowed his eyes. ‘Your cult worships Demeter and Persephone, yes?’

  Lykos glanced at him. ‘The pre-Olympian religion had no Hades figure. The Mycenaeans worshipped goddesses and priestesses controlled the rituals.’

  ‘Really? So who’s your priestess?’

  Lykos didn’t answer, his eyes on the ascending road.

  The Son put the muzzle of his Glock against the back of the young man’s head. ‘We need to know that, kid. You might be leading us into the jaws of a very big trap.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t say. My tongue will be torn out.’

  The Son laughed. ‘What do you think a bullet at point blank range will do to it?’

  ‘I . . . my aunt.’

  ‘Tatiana Roubani?’ Mavros said, amazed. ‘So she was killing two birds with one stone – pressurising Poulos and finding a sacrificial victim.’

  ‘He may have been misled,’
the Son said, ‘but the Father always told me the Communists were godless.’

  ‘My aunt . . . she has her own way.’

  Mavros looked round at the Son. ‘Maybe you should give me a weapon. Who knows how many crazy cultists might be waiting for us?’

  ‘I don’t think so. As I’ve already proved, I can cope very well with poor odds.’

  ‘The people in Paradheisos didn’t even know you were there,’ Lykos scoffed. ‘See how you like it when . . .’ He broke off as the Son replaced the pistol with a combat knife, its point drawing a line of blood beneath the ecologist’s hair.

  ‘You’ll give me plenty of cover, won’t you?’

  Shortly afterwards Lykos drove into Chrysso, then immediately turned left up a dirt track with only a few houses on it. A minute later, he pulled up by a ruined farm building.

  ‘They’re . . . they’re in the outhouse,’ he said, trying to lean away from the knife.

  ‘Let’s move before the natives start gathering,’ said the Son, putting the Glock in his belt and shouldering the sniper’s rifle. He removed the knife-point from Lykos’s neck long enough for them both to get out, and then grabbed the young man around the upper chest, the blade against his throat.

  Mavros followed them past shattered stone walls and collapsed roof beams. In what would have been the livestock shed, there was a long heap of earth, with the edges of a corrugated iron sheet beneath it. On the earth, at regular intervals, were three small terracotta figures of women with their arms raised. Two shovels stood against the wall.

  ‘Dig,’ the Son ordered, stepping back. ‘Both of you.’ He took out his pistol.

  Mavros and Lykos did as they were told, the young man removing the figurines carefully, bowing his head to each one. The earth wasn’t compacted, so it didn’t take long to clear. They took opposite ends of the metal and lifted it up.

  ‘What do you see, Alex Mavro?’ the Son said.

  ‘Two girls in white robes with a small marble statue between their heads.’ Mavros jumped down and struggled to loose the ropes on the victims’ wrists and ankles. Strips of cloth had been tied tightly around their mouths. Their eyes were closed, their faces pale and their skin cold. At first he thought they were dead, then Ourania’s eyelids flickered and opened.