Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Read online

  Then, when he was making the final approach to the ridge, he’d caught a glimpse of the mad widow Rena up on the heights to his right. She was crouching over, also peering at something below her. She may have been taking protection from the bastard wind, but it looked more like she was taking care no one saw her, like she was up to nothing that was good. The witch. Thank Christ his ex-wife Kate hadn’t been as demented as her. Otherwise he might have ended up in a wooden box like the one the villagers said Rena put her husband in.

  Just before he took cover behind the walls of the ruined hut, he saw Eleni on the track below. God, the stupid woman was running, heavy legs pounding and loose tits all over the place. She didn’t make it, though. Aris caught up with her easily and dragged her into the Jeep. Shit, what had she been doing to upset the Theocharis family?

  Crazy people, they were all crazy. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? He stretched out on the flat rock and tried to get his head together. This was his routine; it had been for a long time now. Ever since his tart of a wife had taken the girls and left him. Bit of gear, hammer down the road on the bike, chill out in the hut and then… and then the other. It was a weird way to live, but it was his own. He’d made it, without help from anyone else. Later on he’d go back and sort the bar out, get ready for the drinkers. Not that there would be many of those from now until April. Winter was on its way, the season for planning next year’s operations. Yeah. Next year. Hey, hold on, guy. This year’s operations were still going on. This year’s operations had to be sorted out after what had happened to Yiangos. Things were getting a bit hot for comfort. That fucker Alex, he had to be fixed soon. Before he left the island and shot his mouth off.

  Then he felt himself begin to sink. It sometimes happened this way. The rush from the gear and the climb up the watercourse made him close his eyes and sink into the other world, leaving the muck to fly away and hit someone else. He let himself be surrounded by the bodies from the videos he watched—hard faces, dirty and cursing, but soft bodies, wet and willing. Yes, climb all over them, open their cracks and stick it to them wherever he wanted. Bitches, he’d show them, he’d show them all. Sinking into the dark…

  But everything was different when he came round. It had never been like this before. The seagulls hovering and banking, yes, the sun westering into its crimson fall, but on his own—he was usually alone in the old hut. Alone or with the only one who trusted him. What were these other people doing here?

  Rinus sat up with a jerk. Fuck. Who were they, the types on each side of him? They were naked, their faces battered and bloody, their arms tied behind their backs and their ankles roped. Eyes closed, lips smashed, were they breathing? He leaned over and touched the man’s neck. Yes, a faint pulse. And in the woman’s. Fucking shit, who were they? Did he have anything to do with what had happened to them? Jesus, had he blacked out and gone psycho?

  He ran an eye over the woman’s body. Flaccid breasts, dark hair in her groin and on her legs. He was having difficulty identifying the face because of the bruises and blood. Christ, yes, he thought. It was the American he’d seen up here earlier. Gretchen. So was the guy her partner? Yes, partner, not husband—she’d been very sharp about that the first night in the bar. Was this Lance? He looked more closely, taking in the small, limp dick and the puny chest and arms. No, Lance was tall and fit, and besides, his hair wasn’t blond. Fuck, it was Mikkel, Barbara’s Mikkel. How did he and Gretchen get here? Who tied them up? Could he have done it himself, stoned and out of control?

  Rinus got to his feet, his mind reeling. He had to get organised, had to sort this mess out. But how? And then, as the wind made his eyes flood with salt tears and the heaving surface of the surrounding sea darkened, he understood what he had to do. There was no viable option.

  He had to tell someone.

  Rena reached the outskirts of the village without seeing anyone on the road, the other workers from the fields and the building sites having already returned. It was as she passed the Bar Astrapi that she was spotted by a group of little boys playing football. She heard their alarmed cries as they realised what was over the donkey’s back, so she quickened her pace. Her legs were aching from the long walk and she could hear Melpo’s rapid breathing. The poor beast had been expecting to turn into her field in the Kambos, but she had kept going without complaint. Fortunately old Thodhoris hadn’t been there.

  By the time Rena came out of the narrow track and into the paved street that led to her house and the square beyond, there was a crowd of screaming children behind her. Mothers dashed from their houses at the sound and joined the procession, voices raised as they asked about the body on the donkey. Who is it? Is it one of ours? A sharp-tongued old she- devil who had a particular dislike of Rena wondered out loud if she’d killed another man.

  The hubbub roused the men of Trigono from their seats in the kafeneion. They formed a wall, blocking the road ahead and craning their heads towards her. Rena hurried on, hoping they would let her pass so that she could take the dead American to the police station near the school. But nobody showed any sign of moving and she was forced to stop. The voices all around her were gradually silenced, until the only sounds were those made by the wind as it rustled the leaves of the mulberry tree and whipped the electricity wires that hung between the houses.

  Then the line of men parted and Manolis stepped out, the empty sleeve of his shirt pinned up beneath the black armband he was wearing for his grandson Yiangos.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded, nodding at the body. ‘Why are you bringing such a thing into the village to frighten the women and children?’ The old fisherman’s eyes, hard as a millstone, were fixed on Rena.

  She glanced around the crowd. ‘I don’t see too many frightened people here,’ she replied. ‘Besides, as soon as you let me through, the object will be removed.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Manolis asked. ‘One of ours?’

  ‘No, it’s not one of ours,’ Rena said sharply. ‘Not one of yours,’ she emphasised. ‘Not anyone from this island.’ Her eyes flashed as she surveyed the villagers again. ‘Though if you were good Christians you would care about every human being, not just Trigoniotes.’ She stepped close to the line of men, tugging Melpo’s rope. ‘It is a foreigner, a tourist. I think he fell from the ridge near Vigla.’ She looked up to the grey- blue sky. ‘In the name of God, let us pass.’

  There was a murmur from the crowd and Manolis stepped back. A gap appeared ahead of her and she ushered Melpo through, the people moving away to avoid the swaying arms and legs of the dead man and the bloodstained blanket round his head as the donkey shied.

  Rena felt hundreds of eyes on her. They lanced into her body, making her skin tingle as if the threads of a huge jellyfish had wrapped themselves around her. Heading for the police station, she knew that the islanders would make her pay for this outrage. As well as for all the others they were convinced she had perpetrated.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IT SEEMED to Kyra Maro that there was a lot of noise outside—women and children, the clamour of their voices, the village dogs yelping. She raised herself out of her chair with difficulty and went to the window. The shutters were hooked a few centimetres open to allow the air in. People were going past quickly, avid expressions on their faces.

  Maro wondered what was happening. Had they found someone else to torment? Where was Rena? She hadn’t been in yet today.

  ‘Ach, Rena,’ she mouthed. ‘Is it you they’re picking on? Ever since your worthless husband died—the animal who clawed at you and struck you every time he was drunk—Trigono has been suspicious of you. You’re not a native, you came from another island. They will never accept you as one of their own.’

  The old woman staggered back to her chair, her mind already filling with images from the past. She knew what it was like to be the target of the islanders’ anger, of their poisonous disapproval. But for her it had been different. Her trouble started with her own family, with her brother Manolis in particular. He
had always treated her like a slave, even when she was a child. It was the way of things in those days. The girls were used as servants until they were old enough to marry. Then, if their husbands and mothers-in-law had a mind, they were treated no better after they became wives. And the elder brothers of girls often resented them, because they had to wait until their sisters were provided with a dowry—which usually meant they had to build each female a house—before they themselves could marry.

  So she had actually done Manolis a favour by running to Tzortz. Her lover would not have required a dowry, he would have taken care of everything so the family need not have felt shame every time Maro went outdoors. She gave a bitter laugh, feeling a stab of pain in her throat. As if her brother would ever have seen it that way. Her virtue was her family’s virtue. By giving it away unmarried, and to a foreigner, she became unclean for Manolis, a common prostitute who had dishonoured the name of Gryparis. She’d known he would react that way, that was why she had slipped out of the family house and gone to Tzortz. But at that time she had no idea how things would end. Ach, Tzortz, you were too trusting. You should have listened to me.

  And suddenly Maro was back in the cave on Vigla, in what her lover called their secret place. It was the night he and his men were going to Naxos to destroy the Italians’ weapons and supplies. She had begged him to let her come with them. She could move through the undergrowth as quietly as any of them, she could carry heavy loads. But he had refused to allow it, told her that it was too dangerous, that he needed her to watch over the radio and the equipment. She accepted his words—what else could she do?—and she embraced him before he set out to join the other two British soldiers on the ridge. From there they would make their way down to the boat that was waiting in the inlet at Vathy. He was excited, his eyes restless and his hands trembling. She had never been able to understand it, this great love he had for her country and the way it inspired him to fight and take risks.

  ‘I will return to you, Maro,’ he said, kissing her on the lips then pushing her gently back. ‘Be sure you are waiting.’

  She had nodded, willing the tears not to flood her eyes so that his enthusiasm for the attack would not be affected. Then she bent her head and kissed his hand, the hand that had been on her breast only an hour before. ‘Safe return, my love,’ she whispered.

  Tzortz left the cave, his shoulders bent under the weight of his pack. Maro gave him a few minutes then, contrary to his instructions, padded lightly though the twisting passage and into the light of the clouded half-moon. Glancing all around, she made sure she was on her own, then moved noiselessly through the patches of scrub and up the steep slope to the saddle.

  There was nobody on the northern side of the wall separating the goat pastures. She kept to it, head down, and went towards the point where the British would start their descent on the southern side. And then the half-moon sailed out of the clouds that had been obscuring it, casting a silvery light on the hills and the ridge. Raising her eyes above the uneven wall, Maro saw a sight that froze the blood in her veins.

  Tzortz and his men found their way barred by a group of Sacred Band men and islanders. Among them she saw her brothers Manolis and Thodhoris, their faces set in unnatural smiles. Close by she could see Captain Theocharis, his hand in his pocket. Then, before she could do anything, before she could shout a warning, Manolis stepped forward, his arms wide as if to embrace Tzortz. It appeared that he was wishing her lover luck on the mission, but she knew that look on her brother’s face, she knew that it concealed violent intentions. Tzortz had already opened his own arms and accepted the embrace, as had the other two British, the friendlier one letting a Sacred Band member approach him and the dangerous one receiving her brother Thodhoris more reluctantly. The Greeks’ knives glinted in the moonlight as they slid out of their coat sleeves and were plunged into the saboteurs’ backs.

  ‘Get off to the lower world, whore’s son,’ Manolis shouted triumphantly.

  Maro was paralysed, could move no part of herself for seconds, watched helplessly as the men toppled backwards. Thodhoris and the Sacred Band member were bending over the two English soldiers, drawing their knives across the stricken men’s throats. Panos Theocharis stood close at hand, following their actions with a look of grim satisfaction. Then scudding clouds passed in front of the moon and she blinked to get her night vision back. She could hear groans, shouts in Greek, and then the rattle of stones from the wall.

  Suddenly her limbs were released from the icy grip that had held them and she dashed forward, hand pulling the grenade she had taken from the stores in the cave out of her pocket. A figure reeled away from the wall on the northern side, upper body bent low. She thought it was her lover. He was followed by two more, and she recognised the voice of Manolis directing the chase. Without giving a second thought to what she was doing, she pulled the pin from the grenade.

  ‘Here, Manoli,’ she called, watching as he stopped about ten metres in front of her. ‘This is for you.’ She tossed the grenade between him and the men with him.

  Then she ran after Tzortz, not looking back when she heard the muffled explosion. Perhaps her lover hadn’t been wounded so badly—he was moving quickly, heading for their cave. She caught up with him and put her arm round his back. It was only when they reached their place and she lit the lamp that she realised there was blood all over both of them. Her lover sprawled on the blanket they had lain on earlier that evening, begging for morphine.

  Then the walls had begun to shake. At first she’d thought her brother and his companions were throwing grenades at them, then she recognised the deep rumble of an earthquake. Gradually the movement and noise faded, the cave full of dust that almost obscured the lamp she had lit. And then, as her lover sank into a drugged doze, Maro saw the life-sized carved bodies laid out on the stony floor in a previously concealed space that had opened up in the cave wall. She remembered shapes that her primary school teacher had drawn on the blackboard, the shapes of ancient statues that had been found on the neighbouring islands. She rubbed her hand across the dusty stone and realised that the marble glistening in the lamplight was blue, not white. The pair of what must have been lovers had their arms wrapped around each other, their blank faces looking upwards. Lovers lying together for eternity, she thought, glancing at the now unconscious Tzortz.

  Maro gave a start and came back to herself, back to the room in the kastro. Ach, Tzortz, she thought. That was the end of the good times for us. You were in a wretched state, there was great loss of blood. It was a miracle that the earthquake didn’t bury us. I managed to clear a way to the cave entrance. There were more tremors later and I’m sure our secret place was lost after we left it for the last time, lost and destroyed along with the stone lovers who had watched over it for thousands of years. I kept you alive, gave you water and drugs from the emergency pack until the British kaïki came. The Trigoniotes and Theocharis’s men, the murderers who attacked you and the other British, were looking for us but they didn’t find the cave. I’ll never know how I got you down to the landing point on the west coast. You’d managed to speak on the radio and tell your base to change the rendezvous from Vathy inlet. I half carried, half dragged you down the rocky slopes, stopping all the time to make sure we weren’t seen. It seemed to take hours, but I did it. I got you on to the boat, kissed you—you were delirious. Again I wished you ‘Safe return, my love’. And you said you would come back, you promised we would meet again. Then the boat backed away, engine thrashing the blue-black water into a frenzy of foam.

  Maro tried to control her breathing, tried to stop the rush of her thoughts, but it was useless.

  For years I didn’t see you again, Tzortz. I thought you must have died. I was sure you would have come for me if you’d been able. Yes, I thought you’d died…until finally you did return and everything turned to dust and a lifetime of bitter tears.

  The old woman slumped forward, the strength ebbing from her limbs, suddenly unsure after all the years about w
hat she had done. Had it been worth blowing her brother Manolis’s arm off and blinding her cousin in one eye for a lover who never returned? And what about Tasos, Tzortz’s son? Manolis had beaten her remorselessly when she finally came down from the hills with her swollen belly. Beaten her so that Tasos was deformed and sentenced to a short, empty life. And the village had treated her like a pariah ever since. She should have left, gone to the big city, but she was afraid that Tzortz might return to the island. There was no one she could trust to tell him where she’d gone. And so, homeless, she had worked her fields and paid an extortionate rent for a hovel to a grasping islander. Could she justify what she had done? Now everything seemed like a cruel game, one she had played with all her heart when she was young, but had lost. So much for immortality, the love that doesn’t die. It was a tale for children, a spell, a myth fashioned out of air by a deceitful god. Ach, Tzortz.

  Then Maro thought of Panos Theocharis. He had known what Manolis and his men were going to do, he had gone along with it. Perhaps he’d even arranged it. Tzortz survived but the other two Englishmen were slaughtered like goats, their bodies chained to heavy stones and dropped overboard from a trata beyond the islets on the southern coast—she had watched from the hills above. Theocharis and her brothers were murderers—they deserved to be punished even though her lover didn’t report them on the radio or afterwards. If he had done, they would surely have had to pay after the war.

  ‘Ach, Tzortz,’ she moaned. ‘Why did you fail me? Why did you return, only to abandon me again in the cruellest way?’

  Maro felt her eyes flicker. She found that she could no longer summon up the images of her loved ones. She tried in vain to call them to her. Tasos had gone, Tzortz had gone and she was alone, longing for the abyss.