Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Page 32

  The noise in Mavros’s head was repetitive and regular, like the clanging of a bell rung by an over-enthusiastic priest on a Sunday morning. He blinked and focused on the narrow line of light to his right, then made the mistake of moving. The pain shot through his body, causing him to keep completely still for a period of time that he couldn’t quantify. The pounding gradually reduced in volume and he realised that it was the beat of his heart. He moved his hand to the top of his cranium, feeling a familiar twinge in his side. There was a new matted patch in his hair, the blood still damp.

  As Mavros sat up slowly he recognised the cave with the natural windows, the dusty tarpaulin still in place over the explosives and the other military equipment. Then he remembered who he’d been with. Where was she, where was Eleni? He turned his head, swallowing bitter-tasting liquid as the pain knifed in again. No sign of her, nor of the exquisite Cycladic piece. He fingered his head gingerly. Eleni had been behind him, she’d shouted out a warning. The blows he’d taken outside the Astrapi must have affected his judgement. He must have driven himself into the rock. He looked round and examined the jagged surface above the hole he’d been bending into. He couldn’t see any mark on the stone, though the outer area was fractured by numerous small cracks and the cave floor dotted with fragments. He touched his scalp again, but felt only drying blood—no fragments of stone came away on his hand. Was it possible that Eleni had hit him? Surely not. And what would she have used? The priceless work of ancient art? He rejected the thought. The torch was gone—she must have headed back through the caves to get help. He stumbled over to the holes in the cave wall that were letting in the light.

  What he saw made him draw his arm across his eyes and blink even harder than he’d done when he came round.

  There was a motionless body on the hillside about ten metres away from him.

  ‘I think you will have to stay the night,’ Panos Theocharis said to his visitor. ‘The helicopter is grounded. The wind is very strong now and I don’t think it will drop for some time.’

  Tryfon Roufos shrugged. ‘I took a chance, given the weather forecast.’ He nodded at his host, a grim expression on his sallow face. ‘I hope it’s going to be worth it. You are serious about selling the two Cycladic pieces?’

  ‘Yes, Roufos, I’m serious all right.’ Theocharis leaned on his stick and looked out over the northern point of Trigono. ‘Unfortunately. That idiot son of mine has lost the family a fortune over the last two years in New York. Even the overpaid lawyers I employ have been unable to keep him under control. If the museum is to remain open, I must dispose of pieces that would otherwise have raised its profile immeasurably.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘I suppose there is an irony in that, but it’s not one that gives me any pleasure.’

  The antiquities dealer smiled, his mouth twisting and giving him the look of a hungry carnivore. ‘Ah, what it is to have children,’ he said, his tone light. ‘I have made sure that I avoid the creatures.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Theocharis said with a knowing glance.

  ‘I meant children of my own,’ Roufos said, meeting the old man’s eyes. ‘Other people’s I am happy to use in whatever ways please me.’

  Theocharis sat down, despair swamping him. That it should come to this. Aris out of control, the business floundering because of him, the museum’s funding threatened. Was this what he was reduced to? Hiding the first Cycladic figurines to be found on Trigono for decades from the authorities and selling them illegally? He had played hard in business, operated beyond the law whenever necessary, driven more scrupulous operators to bankruptcy, even to suicide, more times than he could remember. But the Theocharis Foundation had always been above board, he had never done anything to blacken its name. What would happen if the deals that Roufos was setting up ever became public knowledge? Arrests. Law suits. Ridicule. He wouldn’t last many more years, but he didn’t want to spend that time fighting a losing battle against imprisonment.

  He watched as the antiquities dealer moved to the window and took in the windswept central plain. Apparently the jackal already had a couple of clients lined up for the unique pieces. He felt his breath creak in his lungs as he leaned back in the sofa. Oh God, how was it going to end? There was too much to think about. Why did he have to be the one to fix everything? If only Aris had been more reliable, if only Dhimitra could restrain herself. What had they been doing? What happened to the seductive Rosa Ozal, the woman that the undercover investigator Mavros had been asking about? And the other one, the one who came asking about George Lawrence—what had happened to her? In the space of a few months Trigono had become a foreign land to him. Was this what it was like to go senile, to lose your wits? He would soon be crossing Lethe. He’d been preparing himself for that passage since he was a boy. The river of forgetfulness would claim him and wipe his memory clean. But when? And would the corrosive emotions that had been eating into him since he’d started reading Lawrence’s diary be washed away at the same time?

  ‘Pano? Pano?’ Roufos’s voice had risen in volume. ‘The phone,’ he said, pointing at the instrument on the table in front of the old man.

  Theocharis came back to himself and picked it up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me.’ Aris sounded very uneasy.

  ‘What’s happened?’ the old man demanded, instantly alert.

  ‘We can’t…we can’t find the archaeologist. We lost her and Mavros in the caves. There must be another way out.’

  Eyes on his guest, Theocharis covered his mouth with his hand. ‘Fool,’ he hissed. ‘Where are Mitsos and the other guards?’

  ‘On the hills. Don’t worry, Baba, we’ll find them soon.’

  ‘You’d better. Get back to the site. I’m giving you another hour. After that Lefteris will take charge.’

  ‘No, Ba—’

  Theocharis put the phone down and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. ‘A drink, Roufos,’ he said, indicating the well- stocked bar. ‘Please help yourself. I don’t want the servants listening to our conversation.’

  Roufos took the lid off a crystal decanter and sniffed. ‘When do I see the pieces?’ he asked.

  ‘Shortly,’ the old man replied. ‘The final preparations are being made as we speak.’

  It looked like he might have to do the presentation without Eleni. Maybe that would be just as well.

  ‘Fuck this phone!’ Aris threw the handset against the wall of Dhimitra’s bedroom and watched it shatter. ‘I can’t get hold of Mitsos. We have to find the bitch Eleni and Mavros. Lefteris is taking over in an hour.’

  ‘It’s the hills,’ his stepmother said, applying the final touch to her extended lips. ‘You can never get a good signal south of the estate. You’ll just have to hope that the watchmen track them down.’ She smoothed her skirt over her hips and glanced at him. ‘You have to go and take charge.’ She caught the lustful look in his eye. ‘Not again, you fool. You’ve got other things to worry about.’

  Aris nodded slowly. ‘You’re right. If Lefteris comes looking for me because of what happened with the Sotiria, I’m dead meat.’ He stared at her again, this time his eyes cold. ‘And if the lunatic tells my father, the dirt will land all over you too, be sure of that.’

  Dhimitra walked up to him, a smile on her crimson lips. ‘Ari,’ she said, her voice even more throaty than usual. She grabbed his crotch and met his agonised look. ‘Don’t ever threaten me. We’re in this together. Act like a grown-up and we’ll inherit a fortune.’ She squeezed harder. ‘Act like a spoiled child and your stepmother will be very unhappy.’

  She wiped her hand slowly down his chest and walked past him to the door.

  Aris shook his head and wondered how he was going to get out of this shit storm. He was a betting man and he’d always liked long odds, but he wasn’t attracted by this game at all. It was time to cut those odds. The best way to do that was to lower the number of people who could talk. He knew where to start. The information his father’s people in Athens had gathered on Ma
vros would get him off their backs for good, even though the old man had so far held off using it. He must be going soft.

  But he didn’t know where the dick and the dyke had got to. He had to find them fast.

  Straining forward, his heart pounding, Mavros took in the scene. The body was on its left side, facing away from him. The legs were drawn up and all he could see of the lower half was khaki shorts and a pair of thick-soled trainers. The torso was covered in a short-sleeved white shirt, but it was the head that drew his attention and set off stabs of pain in his own cranium. He was pretty sure it was a man from the dense brown hair on the outstretched arm, but the length and colour of the hair on the head were hard to make out. The skull had shattered into a mass of blood and other matter. He looked down, breathing hard, and tried to get a grip on his thoughts. He’d seen those shoes before, he knew he had, but he couldn’t place them. Christ. He sank to his knees and retched up a great gush of sour vomit, then spat out as much as he could of what remained in his mouth. He pulled away from the mess on the cave floor and felt his mind clear. Move, he heard himself say, move, Alex. There’s a chance the guy outside is still alive.

  Feeling his way blindly through the caves, Mavros touched rough walls before he located the obscured corner that led into the excavation tunnel. He slid through and headed towards the yellowish light from the corrugated roof outside, glancing into each grave chamber as he went. There was no sign of the archaeologist. He raised his head cautiously from the trench and looked around. Mitsos the guard was also nowhere to be seen. Mavros ran unsteadily across the bare ground. The wind was blowing hard, making the damaged parts of his head ache even more. The gusts were stronger than they had been earlier.

  ‘Mitso!’ he shouted, eager to get to the body and no longer concerned about concealing himself. ‘Come and let me out.’

  There was no reply, no heavy form appearing from the watchman’s tent. He yelled again, then took a deep breath and started to clamber over the fence. It was difficult as there was nothing to get a grip on and the points of his shoes kept slipping out of the spaces between the strands of wire, but eventually he managed to swing himself over the top. The barbed wire caught his T-shirt in several places without cutting into his skin. Turning to gauge where the cave system extended inside the hill, he estimated the position of the body he’d seen and headed up the slope. As he came into the open round a steep rock face, the wind blasted into him from the north and nearly knocked him over. Looking out to the sea between Trigono and Paros, he saw a maelstrom of white wave tops and a complete absence of boats. There wasn’t any doubt about it. The island and everyone on it were cut off from the outside world.

  Lungs bursting and throat gummed up, Mavros rounded another outcrop and stopped to orientate himself. He was close now. The angle of the ridge that he’d seen through the natural windows in the cave was almost identical, the great wall between Vigla and Profitis Ilias rising up to his left. Craning his head forward, he ran his eyes over the grey slabs of rock and the barren slopes. Although the other hillsides were dotted with clumps of gorse and hardy green bushes, the area near by was bare scree cut with mounds of dark red earth from the mine shafts. It was near one of those ore casts that the body lay, the white shirt catching his eye.

  Mavros ran down towards it. Slowing as he approached the body, he looked around for prints or other traces but saw nothing. He kneeled down by the damaged head and immediately realised that there was no chance the man had survived what he calculated was a fall of at least fifty metres from the saddle above. And then he remembered who he’d seen wearing the trainers with the knobbly tread. He stepped over the body and looked at the face, the upper teeth driven into the lower lip and the eyes rolled to display bloodshot white.

  It was Lance, the partner of the bad-tempered American anthropologist. Mavros felt for a pulse but couldn’t detect one. The wide patch of blood and soft matter on the stones and earth suggested that the unfortunate man had sustained his massive head injuries at this location.

  Mavros swung his satchel round and took out his mobile phone. The signal indicator was blank and he couldn’t pick anything up by lifting it higher or by moving around. He was completely blocked in by the hills. He ran through his options. Go for help or look for the woman. Where was Gretchen? From what he’d seen, she and Lance went everywhere together. Maybe she’d already left to find help, but he couldn’t let himself assume that. The first thing to do was to leave Lance where he was and find a spot in line with a phone mast so he could call the police. At least that way he wouldn’t be too far away if Gretchen appeared. He looked back at the dead man, unwilling to abandon him without some cover, but all he had were the clothes he was wearing.

  Then Mavros heard a rattle of stones, a miniature cascade down the slope, and gave a smile of relief. Back-up had arrived and it had transport. He shouted and waved, stopping only when he saw the look on the rider’s face.

  A demon from the pit couldn’t have glared at him with more malevolence.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MIKKEL had parked the Suzuki inside the gateway to a barren field on the outskirts of the village in mid-morning. He could see the Bar Astrapi from the position he took up at the uneven wall. Although he was aware that Rinus often didn’t appear until the early afternoon to clean up, he wasn’t taking any chances. Because of potential witnesses he didn’t want to risk taking on the Dutchman in his flat in the kastro, and he knew that Rinus kept the motorbike he was so proud of in the storeroom at the back of the bar. Sooner or later he’d go out for a ride on it—he did most days—and Mikkel would be on his tail.

  He had a long wait. By the time the wind started to blow hard, Mikkel had chewed his nails down to the quick. The back of his neck, which he usually took care to protect, was blistering in the sun and Rinus still hadn’t shown up. A few locals on their way back from the Kambos waved at Mikkel with curious expressions, but he knew that they didn’t really care what he was doing; he was foreign and there was no point in trying to account for the ways of his kind.

  The German spent the hours at the wall replaying his life with Barbara, trying to concentrate on the good times: the openings of new design ranges when she’d moved around the crowded display rooms back home with her head held higher than a queen’s; the days on Trigono long ago when she’d smiled at him and even let him touch her; her laughter in the bars before the combination of drugs and alcohol ruined her. She’d always been self-obsessed and overbearing—she said all creative people were—but when she was high she could turn into a wild beast. That was how it always went when Mikkel thought too much about his relationship with her: the bad times prevailed—the times when she swore at him and humiliated him in front of embarrassed guests, mocking him for being an accountant rather than an artist. For years he had managed to block out Barbara’s bad side, but he was struggling now.

  ‘Jesus, Barbara,’ he heard himself say over and over again, the wind scattering the words across the stony earth. ‘Jesus. Why did you let the little pimp destroy you? Why did you ever let him lay a finger on you?’

  Mikkel retched as he was overwhelmed by shame. Barbara had been screwing the Dutchman, and no doubt plenty of others who came on to her after he walked home from the bar nursing alcohol-induced headaches. He’d been suppressing the suspicions for years but now they had conquered him. Before he left the house he’d opened the freezer lid again and looked at the bruises on his wife’s ankles. Though the skin was now sparkling with ice crystals, the blue-black marks beneath were still clear. Was Rinus strong enough to hold Barbara’s larger frame under the water? Of course he was. She had probably passed out from the muck he supplied. The bastard. He deserved to die in a crumpled heap on the roadside and that was what would happen—as soon as he woke up from his drunken, doped-up coma.

  And finally the Dutchman did appear, walking at an unusually quick pace, his head turning from side to side. He looked nervous as hell. That made Mikkel even more sure of his guilt. Rinus
went into the Astrapi and came out again almost immediately, putting his back into wheeling the powerful BMW across the concrete terrace. Then, with another worried glance around, he put on his black helmet, dipped the visor and started the engine. He was off down the road to the Kambos before Mikkel could get back to the Suzuki, but that wasn’t a problem. The island was small and there weren’t many roads. Besides, he didn’t want the Dutchman to spot him until they were in a more deserted spot.

  Mikkel kept his speed down until Rinus crested the brow of the hill between the village and the central plain, then accelerated hard before gliding to a halt just below the summit. The cloud of dust that the BMW was raising made the Dutchman easy to track, the northerly wind blowing it to the dun-coloured massif beyond. Mikkel watched as his prey passed the ruined windmills and the church at Myli, cutting along the eastern wall of the Theocharis estate. Where was he going? There were nothing more than rough tracks in that area. The thought that Rinus might not just be going for a recreational ride struck him. Could he be meeting someone? He drove down the slope quickly in case the barman glanced back. As he passed the abandoned graveyard, Mikkel saw the dust cloud move up the flank of the hill towards the archaeological dig. He thought he could see someone up on the ridge. Perhaps Rinus was going to see Eleni—after all, they seemed to be close, they were always talking at the bar like conspirators. Shit. He didn’t want her to see what he was going to do to the Dutchman. Shit. He sped up even more, feeling the wheels of the four-by-four judder as the asphalt ran into the potholed track.

  And then Mikkel caught sight of a figure standing in the narrow space between the walls straight ahead of him. He gave a long blast of his horn, but there was no movement in response.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted, jamming his foot on the brake and screeching to a halt a few metres in front of the heavily built man. Pressing the electric window button, Mikkel stuck his head out. ‘Please,’ he said in Greek. ‘I want to get past.’ He looked up in surprise at the islander, recognising the impassive features. ‘Please, I—’