Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Read online

  Eleni was staring at him. ‘Mavros?’ she said in a sharp voice. ‘What’s he saying?’

  Mavros struggled to speak. ‘I—’

  ‘You’re not a foreigner, are you?’ the archaeologist interrupted in Greek. ‘You understand, don’t you? Christ. I knew there was something about you.’ She pushed him away angrily. ‘I don’t want to meet that bastard in here. He frightens me enough in the daylight.’ She darted into the last chamber and came back out with a torch. ‘Follow me.’ She glanced at him. ‘And keep your head down, you lying shit.’

  Mavros accepted the insult. He had some explaining to do, but maybe he’d be able to turn the revelation to his advantage. Rena had opened up to him when she discovered who he was. As he went after Eleni, he caught a glimpse of a pair of partially uncovered skeletons, and then the lights flickered and went out. In the second before Eleni’s torch came on, he collided with the wall at the end of the passage.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘To the right.’

  Biting his lip from the pain in his knee, Mavros realised that there was a narrow gap beyond a heap of recently fallen stone. Eleni had already scrambled over it, bending double to squeeze through a low aperture. He wasn’t sure if he would fit, but he pushed himself forward, feeling his hair pick up grit as it scraped the surface above. Then he found himself in an open space, the torchlight revealing what seemed to be a natural cave that was about ten metres long, the floor covered in a layer of small stony fragments. Mavros noticed that the surface was disturbed in the area nearest the entrance they’d used.

  Eleni was squatting by the wall, the hand that wasn’t holding the torch resting on something on the cave floor. ‘Keep quiet,’ she whispered. ‘If we’re lucky he won’t find the gap.’ The light was extinguished.

  Mavros sat down next to her in the darkness. After a while the distant sound of the generator could be heard again, but only the faintest glow came through into their hiding place. He was wondering why Eleni had run at the sound of Aris Theocharis’s voice, and he was trying to figure out how the big man had discovered his surname. Someone must have been through his pockets. Had Rena told Aris, or had someone else found his ID? Eleni’s words about his landlady came back to him. Rena a killer? He couldn’t believe it. But perhaps she had a link to the Theocharis family; most people in the village did.

  ‘Eleni?’ boomed a voice in the passage behind the rock wall. ‘Where the fuck are you? Alex? Alex Mavros? I want to talk to you.’ Aris was close now, the sound of his heavy feet loud. ‘Come here, Mitso,’ he shouted, then demanded if the watchman was sure that Eleni and her visitor had come down into the dig.

  The watchman’s reply wasn’t clear. The shouting continued for a while, then began to fade away.

  Eleni waited, keeping the torch off. ‘I wouldn’t like to be Mitsos right now,’ she said in a cautious whisper. ‘I discovered this area yesterday, but I kept it to myself.’

  ‘Is there another way out of the dig?’ Mavros asked.

  ‘Yes, there’s a gate at the far end where the rubble from the grave chambers is tipped. As far as anyone knows, I don’t have a key. They may suspect I do now.’

  ‘We haven’t left any footprints there, though,’ Mavros said. ‘Won’t they notice?’

  ‘That pair of apes?’ Eleni said in Greek. ‘They’re only interested in nipples and arses.’ Her tone was scathing, but there was still an undercurrent of fear in her voice. She switched on the torch and shone the light in his face. ‘So, Mr Mavro, now will you tell me what game you’ve been playing?’

  Mavros put a hand up to shield his eyes. ‘No game,’ he said, deciding that the only way to gain the archaeologist’s confidence was to be honest. ‘I’m an investigator.’

  ‘A what?’ she said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Christ and the Holy Mother. Theocharis will throw me off the cliffs if he thinks I’ve told you anything. Who are you working for? The Culture Ministry?’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ he said, stretching across and pushing the torch beam on to the stony floor. ‘I’m a private investigator. Rosa Ozal’s brother hired me to find out if she was on Trigono or if anything happened to her here. The family hasn’t seen her since she came to Greece in June.’

  Eleni was silent for a while. ‘So why are you asking about…about Liz?’ she asked, her head down. Then she looked up. ‘And why have you been pretending to be a Scottish tourist?’

  ‘My mother’s Scottish,’ he replied. ‘You’ve probably heard of my father—Spyros Mavros.’

  ‘Not the communist? My God, you’re Mavros’s son? He had died by the time I was in the KNE, but people still talked about him.’ She paused. ‘Didn’t you have a brother who was…who was lost during the dictatorship?’

  ‘Yes. Andonis.’ He blinked. ‘So you were in the youth party?’

  ‘Along with all of my friends,’ Eleni replied, her voice growing sombre. ‘Then we grew up and realised that things weren’t so simple.’

  ‘The innocence of youth.’ Mavros touched her knee. ‘I’m sorry about the deception. It seemed easier to play up my non- Greek side.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can do it,’ she replied angrily. ‘Don’t you feel dirty?’

  He shrugged, feeling the rock scratch him through his shirt. ‘It’s the curse of growing up with more than one language and culture. You’re always deceiving someone about who you are.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘The problem is, you’re never really sure who you are yourself. There’s a danger that you become the perpetual outsider.’

  Eleni snorted and then was quiet for a few moments. ‘I suppose that’s true. I’ve never really thought about it.’

  ‘So?’ he said. ‘Who was the other woman? And what about Rosa? Are you sure you’ve told me all you know about her?’

  Eleni stood up. He could see an object that he couldn’t fully make out under her arm. ‘Not now. Those bastards will be waiting for us outside. I want to see if this cave leads anywhere. Aris will look even more of a fool if we turn up outside the wire.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Mavros asked, trying to see what she was carrying.

  ‘I’ll show you when we get out,’ she said.

  ‘You’re making a lot of commitments, Eleni.’

  ‘So?’ she said, turning to him and flashing the light in his eyes. ‘Are you worried that I won’t stick to them?’

  He waved the beam away and watched as she shone it over the other end of the cave. The roof there was hung with stalactites, some of them broken off and lying on the floor.

  ‘I think there must have been a minor earthquake,’ Eleni said. ‘I didn’t feel anything until rocks came down at the end of the passage when I was working in the last chamber yesterday. I think there was some damage here too.’ The light played over a heap of stones by the wall. Behind them a large crack was visible, and another hole.

  ‘We’re in luck,’ Mavros said, leaning forward and breathing in what seemed like fresher air. ‘Let me go first.’ He pushed past her, his elbow hitting the obscure shape under her arm. It was hard and uneven, and he felt the nerves in his arm go dead. ‘Shit,’ he said in English.

  He had to get on his hands and knees to crawl through the gap. When he was halfway, he was struck by the thought that if the rocks had moved once recently they could easily do so again. Heart pounding, he pulled himself through. ‘Give me the torch,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the way.’ When she passed it through, he shone it on the hole. ‘You’d better give me whatever it is that you’re carrying too.’

  There was a brief silence. ‘All right. But be very careful with it, Alex. I’m serious. It’s priceless. Are you ready? I’m wrapping it in my shirt.’

  Mavros waited and then took the denim-covered object, the torch clenched in his armpit. It wasn’t as heavy as he’d expected and he could feel carved lines and recesses. He was thinking about the Cycladic figure he’d seen in Rena’s suitcase. Was this another one? Was it why Eleni was trying to elude Aris? He took a step back and waited for her to crawl through
.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Eleni said, standing up and brushing dust from her bare chest.

  ‘You mean your shirt?’ Before she could protest, Mavros unwound the garment and handed it to her. He was left holding a marble figurine, the torchlight making it glow pale, translucent blue, and he felt the breath stop in his throat. His fingers played involuntarily over the smooth stone, touching the sublime curves and lines. ‘My God,’ he said, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘This is amazing.’ The carving was more skilful than the piece under Rena’s bed. He’d never seen marble of that colour before.

  ‘I told you,’ the archaeologist said, taking it gently out of his hands. ‘It’s very precious. Only the fourth artefact from the Cycladic civilisation ever found on Trigono. And the last three are the only ones in this blue stone ever found anywhere in the Aegean.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Mavros repeated. He was wondering if Eleni knew anything about Rena’s figurine, which wasn’t blue. Now probably wasn’t the time to ask. He examined the female figure with its stylised breasts, the arms crossed beneath them. The elliptical face with only a triangular nose in the centre, no eyes or mouth, had an otherworldly air, managing to be both alien and quintessentially human in its geometry. The knees were pressed together and slightly bent. ‘Presumably you regard this as a depiction of a dead loved one. You said the skeletons in the same pose lend weight to that theory.’

  ‘Are you sure you aren’t from the ministry?’ Eleni demanded. Her expression lightened. ‘Sorry, I’m getting as paranoid as Theocharis.’ She ran her fingers down the front of the figurine. ‘Perhaps the sculptor was mourning a woman he loved,’ she said in a low voice. ‘The piece is imbued with emotion, isn’t it?’

  Mavros looked at the archaeologist. Her shirt was still unbuttoned. ‘Theocharis doesn’t have any Cycladic figures in the museum or his private collection,’ he mused.

  ‘Correct.’ Eleni moved forward to the end of this smaller cave. There was a hollowed alcove which led into another, from which daylight could be seen. She turned to him after they had made their way to the light and nodded as if she’d made a decision. ‘But he does have two in his possession.’

  Mavros glanced out of the gaps through which the sun was pouring, seeing that they were far too small for a human body to get through. He turned back to the archaeologist. ‘You mean he’s kept the first pieces you found?’

  She nodded, her eyes lowered. ‘Yes. He’s planning to sell them illicitly, which is why he was so worried by the possibility that you were a thief or a dealer.’ She kept her head down. ‘And I’ve been too much of a coward to say anything about it.’ She looked up at him. ‘I lied to you when I said the important finds had gone to the relevant authorities.’

  Mavros shrugged his shoulders to put her at ease. ‘That makes us even, then.’

  ‘But he’s not getting this one,’ Eleni said fiercely. ‘And neither is his sick fool of a son.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Mavros said. He turned to examine the rest of the cave. ‘How are we going to get out of here?’ he asked. ‘This looks like a dead end.’

  It was then that he noticed the edge of a tarpaulin sticking out from a heap of dusty rubble. He went over quickly and pulled it up, his jaw dropping as he made out several discoloured haversacks and a pile of green wooden boxes.

  Mikkel was sitting on the floor in the utility room, his back against the large chest freezer. He could hear the wind blowing hard across the terrace, making the bamboo on the pergolas rattle and dashing the water of the pool over the tiled edge. That brought him to his senses. The swimming pool. The lethal blue element. The place of death. It was time that he moved Barbara.

  Staggering as he stood up, having had no sleep overnight or during the day, he opened the lid and looked at the neatly ordered contents. He was the one who’d done that. Barbara had no interest in food or cooking. On the left he’d arranged the fish and seafood that he had bought from the fishermen on the quay when they returned from their expeditions. He knew they overcharged him despite the facts that he was a local resident and spoke some Greek, but he didn’t care. It was enough to take possession of the lustrous creatures, their scales glinting in the sun and their eyes still wet. He started pulling out the bags with the dates written in his hand, throwing them carelessly across the room. There were bream and mullet, octopus with the suckers frozen into the shape of inverted nipples, kalamaria, even a couple of lobsters that he’d had to withdraw extra money from the cash machine to pay for. Soon that side was empty and he started on the meat. Barbara preferred it—she couldn’t stand fish bones in her mouth. There were huge beef chops hacked by the untrained butcher from animals that had grazed in the fields near the house, crystallised sacks full of lamb ribs, local corn-fed chicken with their bright yellow skins. He sent the wire baskets crashing across the floor. The sarcophagus was ready.

  Going into the bedroom, Mikkel knelt by Barbara. He’d laid her on her side of the bed. He touched her arm and felt that it was even harder than it had been during the night. Rigor mortis was well advanced. He ran his eyes up and down the naked body, calculating if it would fit. It would be close. The only thing to do was try. He wanted his Barbara to be as perfect as possible, and if he left her much longer the smell of putrefaction would be unbearable. He wrapped a sheet around her, tying it at top and bottom, and heaved her on to the floor. Her head hit the stone floor with a crack and he felt his heart jump, then he shrugged. His poor darling was past having any more of the headaches that had dogged her for so long.

  Mikkel got her to the utility room easily enough, the shrouded corpse sliding smoothly over the floor, but the transfer to the freezer was difficult. He tried until his arms ached, but she was too heavy, the rigid limbs catching against the edges and foiling his efforts. And then he thought of the Dutchman. Rinus’s smirking features hovered in front of him like a mocking demon and he found new strength, tugged the body up and rolled it in with a loud crash. He had to force one leg down and, as he did, he noticed bruises that had somehow escaped him the evening before. There was a thick livid line round each ankle. He stood looking at the marks for a long time, painful thoughts running through his mind, then swallowed hard and went back to the bedroom to find the African bedcover. He laid it carefully over Barbara, obscuring all but her head. It was propped up against the inside of the freezer at an angle, the eyes already misty and the lower lip extended unevenly. My Barbara, he thought. What did he do to you?

  He closed the lid reverentially and went out to the main room, returning with an oak cutlery box that she had designed and placing it on top of the freezer. The symmetry pleased him, Barbara’s body weighed down, given a memorial, by something she herself had created. Then Mikkel went to the window, suddenly aware of the regular phutting sound of a fishing-boat engine. Parting the venetian blind he looked out through binoculars—Barbara kept a pair in every sea-facing room so she could study the views—and recognised Lefteris’s trata, the Sotiria. He couldn’t make out the fisherman’s broad form, but he assumed he was on board. How did he do it? His son had died on that boat only a few days ago and here he was fishing from it.

  Mikkel stepped back, suddenly feeling stronger than he had for years. He knew what he was going to do. Like the fisherman, he would stand up to death. And make Rinus pay for what he had done to Barbara.

  Gretchen the anthropologist peered through her top-of-therange Zeiss binoculars from the ridge between Vigla and Profitis Ilias, her eyes on the fence surrounding the excavations. She couldn’t understand what the two men were doing with the motorbike. They had each bent down by a wheel, before the bald one—Aris Theocharis, she reckoned—moved quickly to the Jeep and headed down the track in a cloud of dust that was quickly whipped away by the wind. She glanced over her shoulder, trying to see where Lance had got to. The fool, he hadn’t done what she asked. All she wanted was some moral support. It was bad enough trying to find a way into the dig without him wandering off. If she could only get a look
at the graves she was positive were being excavated, her curiosity would be satisfied. Maybe she’d even be able to work a grant application up along the lines of ‘Similarities and Differences between Native American and Prehistoric Aegean Burial Customs’.

  To the north she heard a clattering noise and strained to see round the flank of the hill. A helicopter was hovering over the Theocharis estate, slowly lowering itself towards a clear patch between the lines of trees. In the corner of her eye she saw the goatherd who was short of wits watching from high on the other slope.

  She swung the glasses around Vigla, along the irregular pattern of caves and holes left by the mine workings. Lance hadn’t said he was going over there, but you never knew with him. Sometimes he deliberately ignored her instructions. As she moved her eyes, she caught a glint at the edge of her vision and homed in on it. Another motorbike, this one larger and more powerful. She hadn’t seen it go up the track, but they’d been over on the Vathy side until recently. She’d had no luck there. This side was the one with the graves inside the wire fence.

  A braying noise was carried to her on a gust of wind, a strange sound that she realised came from a donkey that had been tethered on the slope round the side of Vigla where a few strips of land were still cultivated. That island woman who was fighting the barman yesterday worked up there. She remembered now. The motorbike belonged to Rinus.

  Then two things happened in quick succession. First Gretchen saw a pair of heads appear at some window-like apertures in the rock face, one male and one female. She recognised the archaeologist Eleni but couldn’t make out the man. A split second later, from the western side of Vigla, she heard a high-pitched scream. The cry was brief, almost immediately blown away on the gusting wind’s blast, but she had no trouble recognising the voice.