Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Read online

  The last thing he saw was the fisherman Lefteris’s thick-fingered fist as it was swung at lightning speed into his face.

  Mavros looked up the steep fall of scree, shielding his eyes against the sun. ‘Rena?’ he shouted. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ He felt her eyes burning into him, her face set in what seemed to be a rictus of hatred. Only after a long time did her eyes move to the crumpled form on the ground beside him.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’ She got off the donkey and led it down the slope with encouraging noises.

  Mavros watched as the woman and the beast of burden negotiated the difficult surface of the hillside, stones tumbling down around him. He stepped forward to shield the body of the American, aware that it was an unnecessary action but doing so all the same. He tried to make out Rena’s face as she descended. Why had she been looking at him as if she had caught him molesting a child? Could she have had anything to do with Lance’s fall? He gauged the angles and wondered about it. No. She would have been on her way back from the fields she worked on the terraced slope farther along the ridge. She was probably just shocked by the scene, maybe thinking that he had something to do with it.

  ‘So,’ the widow said as she reached the bottom, turning to check that the donkey Melpo had cleared the last of the stones safely. ‘What happened here? Is this part of your investigation?’

  Mavros examined Rena’s face at close range, puzzled by the change in her. Although her expression was no longer full of loathing, there wasn’t any friendliness in the way she was regarding him. ‘No, of course not,’ he replied. ‘I saw the body from there.’ He pointed to the small holes in the rock through which he’d been looking from the cave.

  Rena’s eyes opened wide. ‘You were inside there?’ she asked, her tone expressing surprise. ‘You were in the caves?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mavros replied. ‘Do you know them?’

  The widow nodded slowly, her head inclining to the left. ‘I’ve seen the entrances to some over there, yes.’ She shivered. ‘But I don’t go inside. I can’t stand the dark and the dirty air, never mind the bats.’ She shook her head. ‘Theoldpeoplesay that miners used to live in there before the war. The Theocharis family treated them like slaves, let them rot.’ She glanced down at the American. ‘What do you think happened to him?’

  Mavros raised his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. It looks like he fell from the ridge.’ He stripped off his T-shirt and made to lay it over the dead man’s head.

  ‘Don’t,’ Rena said, touching his arm. ‘He doesn’t care any more and I’ve seen worse. The wind’s chill now. You’ll need your shirt.’

  Mavros pulled the T-shirt back on. She was right. Even though the small valley they were in was sheltered, his skin was already covered in goose pimples. ‘Did you see him or anyone else when you were working?’

  She shook her head, manoeuvring Melpo round so her head was facing the opposite direction. The donkey had been tugging away from the body. ‘The fields are out of sight from here and from where he’d have fallen.’ Her chin jutted forward as she turned her hands up and looked at the soil-encrusted skin. ‘Anyway, I’ve been busy.’

  Mavros stepped back and ran his eye around the higher ground on each side. ‘I can’t understand where his woman has got to. They’re always together and I saw them from the bottom of the track earlier on.’ He held up his phone and checked the signal again. ‘Nothing.’

  Rena was looking at the dead man dispassionately. ‘You must help me lift him on to Melpo,’ she said in a calm voice.

  Mavros shook his head. ‘The police will want him to be left where he is. The area must be—’

  ‘You’re not in the big city now,’ Rena interrupted. ‘If we leave him here, the crows will have his eyes before we reach the Kambos.’ She stared at him. ‘Do you want his woman to see that?’

  Mavros shrugged then nodded his acquiescence. The local policeman was unlikely to be an expert on crime scene procedures, and Lance had probably just slipped. If anyone asked, he could always say that the unfortunate American had still been alive when they moved him and that Rena was taking him to the village doctor.

  ‘We’ll approach Melpo from her hindquarters so she doesn’t panic,’ the widow said. ‘Wait. There’s an old blanket under the saddle. I’ll wrap it round the man’s head.’

  Between them they got Lance on to the donkey.

  Mavros stood back, wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘If you meet anyone with a phone, ask them to call the police.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Rena asked, her brow furrowed and her expression dark again.

  He shook his head. ‘I want to see if the American woman is anywhere near by.’

  She looked at him uncertainly then made a clicking sound and led the donkey towards the track. Lance’s arms and feet were hanging close to the rough ground, his swaddled head jerking up and down against the bottom of the wooden saddle. Then Melpo and her burden were round the wall of rock and Mavros was alone again. But Rena remained in his thoughts. What had she meant when she said she’d seen worse? Worse sights than a man with his head broken apart? And why had she been staring down at him with such belligerence?

  Not for the first time Mavros found himself wondering what secrets were concealed beneath the normally placid face that the widow displayed to the world.

  January 23rd, 1943

  Our secret place. Despite the disaster at Myli and the horrors that the hostages must be undergoing in the prison on the mainland, the last week has been wonderful. The island has been bathed in bright sunshine. This time is the ‘Alkyonidhes Meres’, the unexpectedly warm halcyon days when, in ancient myth, the kingfishers laid their eggs on nests floating on the sea’s placid surface. The air has been so limpid that you almost believe you could stretch out a hand to touch Santorini or Anydhros despite the great expanse of light blue, shining water.

  And Maro has been here to share these days with me. Agamemnon has been asking where she is and her brother has been looking at me with eyes burning with malice, but at her request I have denied all knowledge of her whereabouts. No one else knows the location of our cave, not even Rees or the madman Griffin, so she is safe with me. She is very skilful at melting into the landscape when we go out at night to take in the glories of the moon and the constellations. I have been able to push away the bitter memories of the events at Myli and get them into perspective through her love. Such unquestioning devotion has helped me to plan our next operation, an attack on the main Italian supply depot on Naxos. This will be much more difficult, the distances greater and the Italians now very much on the alert. The attitude of the Greeks, both islanders and Sacred Band, has not helped. It has taken days of pleading for them to agree to supply a boat, but they will not come with us. I don’t know what Agamemnon’s idea of warfare is. In my view sending his men to keep watch on the ridge is hardly going to weaken the enemy’s resolve. It seems that it is up to us to show them how to make life difficult for the Italians.

  So tomorrow night we will set off from Vathy in the fishing boat to be provided by Ajax, trusting in Rees’s seamanship and the navigation skills that I learned in the desert. The explosives will be carried down by locals and Sacred Band men. I plan to use half of our stock, leaving the rest in the store cave for future use. Base has advised that further supplies will arrive by kaïki in a week’s time, so I will be able to plan several more operations. Assuming, of course, that the Naxos show works out.

  Oh God, I have to stop myself turning into an unfeeling machine of destruction. The piercing beauty of the Greek landscape helps, as it has done throughout my sojourn on Trig, but the most valuable support has come from the lover I never expected to meet here or in any other place on earth. Maro is with me in the fight, but her presence also reminds me that there is more than war in this blood-drenched time. She understands the war and the need for sacrifice. If I allowed it, she would willingly come with us, but I have told her that she must stay in the cave. I cannot contemplate
harm coming to her. She understands the war and yet she also humanises me. She makes me realise that there are more important things than the struggle, things that will last beyond the fighting. She laughs when I tell her that I will marry her when it’s all over—that I will work in the British School in Athens and spend the summers on Trigono, that she will be with me all the time, that we will never be parted. If we can survive on Trigono in wartime, survive the Italians and the hostility of her family, we can survive anywhere. Ah, Maro.

  ‘Tzortz?’ she said to me last night after we had made love, her arm on my chest. ‘You will be careful on this voyage to Naxos, will you not? You will come back for me.’ Her voice has the timbre of a girl’s but the way she speaks, honest and proud, is that of a woman who has experienced much. ‘I am not afraid for myself, but I worry for you. The man with the empty eyes, he is dangerous.’

  ‘I know Griffin is dangerous,’ I replied with a smile. ‘That is why he is here.’ I have resisted great pressure from Agamemnon to have my man recalled to base because of the killings he carried out on Paros. If only his Sacred Band had proved so effective against the enemy.

  She looked at me seriously, her eyes glinting in the oil lamp’s flickering light. ‘And my brother is dangerous too. The enemy wears a uniform you can recognise, but the people on your own side are sometimes more to be feared.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘I will be careful.’ Then I laughed, confident as perhaps only a young man in love can be. ‘What are you saying, Maro? That the islanders will turn against me because of Griffin’s fearsome eyes, or because they suspect that you and I are lovers? The Italians are the ones who sent their relatives to rot in Chadhari, not the British.’

  She nodded but still her eyes were troubled.

  ‘Come to me, little Maro,’ I said, drawing her close. ‘No matter what happens, we will always be together. I promise you that.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, her eyes wide and suddenly damp ‘Athanati agapi,’ she whispered. Love that doesn’t die.

  I repeated the words, my lips meeting hers.

  Ah, Maro. Ah, Greece. What sacrifice would I not make for you?

  Mavros looked around the hillsides. He considered shouting out Gretchen’s name, but the blast of the wind above the enclosed space he was occupying showed how pointless that would be. The only thing to do was to climb up to the ridge and use the higher ground to locate her or anyone else who was in the vicinity. Eleni was also troubling him. She might be on her way back to the caves beyond the dig with help for him by now, but he had the feeling that something strange was going on. Where had the watchman Mitsos got to? It didn’t seem likely that Theocharis would have given him the afternoon off without sending a replacement.

  The least sheer of the slopes rising up from the sunken valley was to his right. The fact that Rena had brought Melpo down a steeper descent showed how experienced both woman and donkey were on the terrain. As Mavros traversed the scree near the cliff wall, he came to a narrow space almost completely concealed by a rock face, the formation similar to the blind door inside the excavated passage by the burial chambers. Peering into it, he saw a narrow zigzag channel leading into the hill. The stony floor was uneven, but when he bent down he could make out the ridged marks of shoes and boots on the sandy deposits on some areas of the rock. They looked recent. He moved into the passageway, feeling the rough walls tug at his shirt. As he approached the dark cave the half-sweet, half sharp smell of decay flooded his nostrils. He wondered if one of the simple goatherd’s animals had strayed into the subterranean labyrinth and permanently lost the light.

  Then he heard the faint scraping noise, something abrading the rock, that he had heard in the other cave before he’d been knocked out. The hairs rose on his neck as he went into the darkness, breath catching in his throat as the stench worsened. He wished he still had the torch that Eleni had taken. The murk was so impenetrable that when he closed his eyes his vision was no worse.

  The scream, long and shrill, from the slopes outside made him jump, the top of his head making contact with the uneven ceiling.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, raising his hand to the crack he’d received earlier. ‘What next?’ Turning on his heel, arms extended and hands on the stone walls, he made his way towards the faint line of light that was visible at the twisting entrance corridor.

  Back in the open air, he ran his eye around the ridge, seeing no sign of the person—a woman, he reckoned—who had shrieked in what sounded like pain or panic. He started the ascent of the scree chute, immediately losing his footing and falling on his hands. It took him several minutes to get to the top, his thighs tight and his lungs bursting. The instant he made it to the saddle, the wind buffeted him like a straw in a hurricane, forcing him to crouch down low as he surveyed the island’s southern cliffs. The sea was raging all around Trigono, the white foam that was bursting over the north- facing headlands giving them the appearance of the bows of ships slicing through the water at high speed. The great snake of the ridge between Vigla and Profitis Ilias was to his left, the dark green bushes and low trees that dotted its flanks straining in the blast like hounds pulling on the leash. But he could see no living creature apart from the gulls that were riding the wind currents. Even the nimble goats must have taken shelter on the lower ground or in one of the overgrown watercourses.

  Mavros moved a few metres southwards into the lee of the howling northerly and squatted down. Had he imagined the scream? Could it have been the wind caught in a distorted rock, or a large seabird screeching its disapproval of the change in the weather? He didn’t think so. It had to be Gretchen. But where was she?

  Standing up against the pounding gusts, he headed east. It wasn’t long before he was above the wired compound of the dig. He could see Eleni’s motorbike by the gate, but there were no other vehicles and no people visible. He decided to go down and use the machine to get to the village. He could spend days searching for the American woman on the slopes and in the ravines, let alone in the caves and the disused mine shafts. Rena should be at least halfway to the village by now. He could probably catch her up, though the prospect of riding the powerful bike hardly filled him with joy.

  He scrambled down the slope, the muscles in his calves complaining. The first thing that struck him was that Eleni would surely have taken her motorbike if she’d gone to get help for him. And the second, as he finally reached level ground and hobbled towards the machine, was that the rims of both wheels were pressing into the ground. The tyres were completely flat. He didn’t bother calculating the odds of that happening accidentally. Something was very wrong.

  Setting off down the track towards the place where he’d left his bicycle, Mavros thought he heard the wind’s blast increase in volume. Then he saw the roof of a large vehicle come over the brow ahead. Before he could move, it skidded to a halt in front of him, the doors opening and two bulky figures running towards him.

  Mitsos got to him first, the watchman’s heavy hands gripping his upper arms hard.

  Aris arrived, the flesh on his bare arms wobbling. ‘So, Alex,’ he said in Greek. ‘It’s time we had a talk.’ He jerked his head towards the Jeep. ‘Get him in the back, Mitso.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mavros asked over his shoulder as he was marched away.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mister Brilliant Detective,’ the big man said scornfully. ‘You’ll hear soon enough.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘And I think you’ll be interested, very interested indeed.’

  ‘Not if you’re doing the talking,’ Mavros muttered as Mitsos thrust him into the Jeep and sat beside him, hand still clutching his arm. ‘Where’s Eleni?’ he demanded. ‘Have you kidnapped her as well? What about Gretchen, the American woman? Have you seen her?’

  Aris started the engine and turned to him. ‘We’ve got everyone you want, my friend.’ He laughed again, his eyes narrowing. ‘And we’ve got news of your brother Andonis.’

  Mavros felt his stomach somersault as the Jeep swung round, but the nausea
that coursed through him wasn’t caused by Aris’s driving. Andonis? His brother’s face rose up before him, the eyes as bright blue as ever. What did Aris mean? Jesus Christ. Andonis. What did the museum benefactor’s son know about him? Was this finally the breakthrough he’d spent most of his life waiting for?

  He passed the rest of the short journey in another world, the innocent one he’d grown up in before his brother went into the dark. Could it really be that Andonis had got a message through from the underworld after all this time? Could it really be?

  Rinus was lying inside the roofless herdsman’s hut on the southern side of the ridge watching the seagulls soar on the violent updraughts and trying to make sense of what he’d seen. He asked himself what the fuck was going on. That stuff he’d kept back from the last shipment Lefteris brought in— shit, what had it done to him? He had felt jittery from the minute he took it, had felt the stone walls drawing around him as he walked to the Astrapi. It was only when he was on the BMW, racing down the road to the Kambos with the wind whistling past his helmet, that he began to get a grip. But after he’d stashed the bike in the usual place behind the bushes, things had gone even more crazy.

  First, as he followed the winding watercourse up to the ridge, sure that no one could see him in the heavy growth of evergreens and gorse, he’d caught sight of the two Americans who came to the bar. The woman Gretchen was a surly cow but Lance was okay, pretty straight but okay. They were up on the ridge to the west, staring down at something. He guessed it was Eleni’s dig but he couldn’t be sure from where he was. He lost them after a while as he ascended the dry line of stones created by the winter torrents. It changed direction all the time according to the contours of the hillside.