The Green Lady Read online

  ‘In high summer?’

  ‘It’s cold up in the mountains at night, even now. The body’s male, though – he was clear about that.’

  Mavros was relieved, thinking of the already grieving mother. But he was also at an impasse, despite only being on the case for a day.

  ‘You know what I think,’ Yiorgos said. ‘We need to check out the family. After all, most crimes start at home.’ He was an avid watcher of the sensationalist true crime documentaries that had begun to flood Greek TV channels late at night. ‘Paschos Poulos is capable of anything.’

  ‘Really?’ Mavros said acidly. ‘What do you base that assertion on, Fat Man? Apart from the fact that he’s an exploiter of the working man.’

  ‘And woman. The Party fought the good fight to get a group of female tomato canners reinstated after the management of one of that bastard’s companies sacked them without warning.’

  ‘Bravo,’ Mavros said, without enthusiasm. ‘If you’re going to spend your time treating Poulos as a class enemy, we won’t get anywhere. Besides, you’re not even on speaking terms with the Party any more.’ The comrades had taken a dim view of the illicit card games Yiorgos ran in his café; they’d also demanded a cut.

  ‘All right,’ the Fat Man said reluctantly. ‘More coffee, my lord?’

  ‘Piss off. Have you got any other thoughts?’

  ‘Actually, I have,’ his friend said, with a smirk. ‘But you’ll have to cut me some slack for the rest of the day.’

  Mavros shrugged. ‘Just don’t say anything that might get back to Poulos or the cops.’

  ‘You know I don’t move in those circles, Alex.’

  That was true. Since Yiorgos had given up the café, he’d only moved in one circle – Mavros’s.

  Telemachos Xanthakos had been told by a senior Public Order Ministry official to report to a Brigadier Nikos Kriaras, head of the Athens organised crime division and a member of the Olympics security committee. The deputy commissioner had rung him when he’d got back to Livadheia from Kithairon the day before. Kriaras was brusque and overbearing, but seemed to know his job.

  ‘You understand that the country’s image cannot be soiled by crimes such as this one?’ he said.

  Xanthakos had agreed and was told that Athens would handle the media, as well as the prosecutor. He saw the news before he left his spartan flat that morning and had been surprised to see the spokesman say that it was probably an accidental death. The first thing he did when he got into police HQ was call the medical examiner, Priftakis.

  ‘I told them the same as I told you, but they changed it. I’ll be doing the post-mortem this morning, if you want to find out what really happened.’

  The deputy commissioner considered ringing the chief, but knew it would be a waste of time. The old man’s strings were being pulled by Athens the same as everyone else’s. He called the crime scene team leader and asked if anything else had come to light.

  ‘Blue paint on the Judas tree. I’m looking for a match, but it’ll probably be a pickup – the tracks on the leaves and ground are heavy duty. You know how many vehicles of that sort there are, especially in an agricultural area like this one?’

  ‘No finger or footprints anywhere?’

  ‘Not a thing. The fire would have destroyed all prints and trace evidence close to the body, and there was nothing in the vicinity of the building. Your man – or woman, I suppose – was careful.’

  ‘You think there was only one killer?’

  There was a pause. ‘Yes, on balance I do, though I wouldn’t stake my pension on it. Two or more individuals would have been that much more likely to leave traces.’

  Xanthakos rang off and went down the hall to the detective squad. Inspector Christos Tsitas was the only one in, head down over a report. He and the deputy commissioner respected each other, but weren’t friends. Tsitas was a thick-set forty-five-year-old, whose interests were football and hunting.

  ‘Have we found any witnesses? You heard the vehicle was blue?’

  The inspector nodded. ‘I passed it on to the men on the ground. You saw yourself. There aren’t many houses at the bottom of the road and the killer probably came and went in the hours of darkness.’

  Another one assuming there was only one murderer, Xanthakos thought. ‘Don’t you think it would have been hard work for one person to get the victim in there and wire him to the chair.’

  ‘Not if he was holding a gun on him. Sure, it would have been harder to carry him in if he was unconscious or already restrained.’ Tsitas gave a loose smile. ‘Maybe the killer’s taking time off from the weightlifting down in Athens.’

  ‘Very droll,’ the deputy commissioner said. ‘I’m going to the morgue, if anyone needs me.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’

  ‘No, we’re short-staffed enough as it is.’

  ‘Hope the smell of roast pork’s died down. Take it like a man, sir.’

  Xanthakos turned on his heel. He was sure Christos Tsitas had sensed his sexuality, but he wasn’t going to let innuendo get to him. Fortunately, he had a strong stomach.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Frangiskos Priftakis said through his mask when Xanthakos entered the autopsy room in full scrubs. They never had trousers long enough for him and his lower calves were bare. ‘Did you bring the carving knife?’

  ‘That would be medical humour, would it?’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ The examiner got down to work, dictating into the microphone that hung above the stainless steel table.

  The deputy commissioner let him drone on, walking round the table and stopping to examine parts of the body. The wires had been removed from the wrists and ankles, the fire having made the flesh shrink around them. The remains were locked in the seated position. The flesh on the back of the thighs looked rawer than the rest of the upper body.

  ‘Unavoidable tearing,’ the ME said. ‘We had to remove the chair. His back sustained similar damage.’

  ‘Did the fire kill him?’

  ‘I can’t be sure until I’ve tested the blood and tissue for carbon monoxide levels. But, however it pans out, this is a murder case. You notice how the burning is much less beneath knees. As I said yesterday, the petrol was poured over the victim’s head and upper body. What was left of the roof – bamboo, rubble and wooden rafters – caved in and landed on the body. A piece of stone covered his penis, which is why it didn’t shrink like the surrounding flesh. Anyway, what you’ve got to ask yourself—’

  ‘Is why the killer took the risk of burning the body when the wire bonds show that the victim was completely helpless?’

  Priftakis nodded. ‘Very good. Have you worked a lot of murders?’

  ‘I don’t keep a score. Most of them are domestics or revenge attacks. I’ve never had one like this.’

  ‘Me neither. My guess would be that it’s organized crime. With the Games on in the capital, they’ve got to go further away to do their dirty business.’

  ‘It’s possible. I don’t see any tattoos.’

  ‘Not on the lower part of the body, no. There’s too much blistering and skin loss on the upper areas to be sure. Besides, not all gang members are tattoed, are they?’

  Xanthakos shrugged. He didn’t have that kind of experience, but no doubt Brigadier Kriaras did.

  ‘I suppose a description of his face is out of the question,’ he said, looking at the ravaged features. The lips, nose and cheeks were largely destroyed and the teeth were visible. The eyes had clouded over, reminding him of the Easter goats he’d seen as a boy. His father and uncles had taken bets to see who got to eat the roasted organs.

  The ME laughed curtly. ‘Well, his teeth are in decent shape, as you can see. Apart from that, who knows? The hair on his calves is black, so there’s a good chance that his head was that colour. Then again, he could have been graying.’

  ‘I was going to ask you about age.’

  ‘Again, the calves and feet are the only guide at this stage. There are quite advanced varicose
veins, which points to middle age or later, though there are other factors to be taken into account. Examination of the brain and other organs will give me more of an idea how old he was.’

  Xanthakos let him get on his with his work, watching dispassionately as the Y-cut was made in the abdomen and, later, the cranial cavity opened.

  ‘There are small wounds here,’ the examiner said, pointing to cuts in the blackened flesh on the chest. ‘I think he’s been tortured by something pointed – maybe a probe of some sort. Gangland?’

  ‘It’s within the parameters.’

  After the pluck had been removed and the component organs separated and weighed, Priftakis took the stomach from the bowl held by his assistant to another table.

  ‘Let’s see if there’s anything recognisable in here.’ He used a scalpel to lay open the wall and put his gloved fingers into the shrivelled sac.

  ‘What are those?’

  The ME emptied the slimy residue from the stomach and laid out the small fibrous objects he’d found in a row on the stainless steel surface.

  ‘Seven of them,’ he said.

  ‘But what are they?’ the deputy commissioner asked, squinting at the shrunken remnants. ‘Seeds?’

  ‘More than that,’ Priftakis said, pointing. ‘They’re arils, the covers of seeds. And if you ask me—’

  ‘Which I’m doing.’

  The ME laughed. ‘Patience, my friend. The liquid has more or less gone, but the seeds will still be inside. In my opinion, these would normally be red.’ He pointed his finger at Xanthakos. ‘And you can eat them.’

  ‘Pomegranate seeds?’

  ‘Very good. Now you’ve got another question to answer. They were in the stomach rather than the intestines. That means they were swallowed up to three to four hours before death.’ Priftakis lowered his mask. ‘So there must be at least a chance that your killer made the victim swallow them. Why?’

  The deputy commissioner thought about that. ‘Pomegranates haven’t been in season for months.’

  ‘Maybe the murderer kept the seeds in the deep freeze.’

  ‘How weird is that?’

  Back in his office, Telemachos Xanthakos decided to wait for the ME’s full report, as well as an update from Inspector Tsitas, before calling Athens. This case was getting stranger by the hour.

  SIX

  Mavros had never felt so confined by a case. He had plenty of information, but none of it was germane to Lia Poulou’s disappearance. The Fat Man was still out pursuing his own angle, so he went down to the kitchen and made himself a salad. When his friend was around salads were permitted, but only alongside large pieces of grilled or roast meat, even in summer. He considered eating in front of the Olympics, but couldn’t face it – commentators creaming their slacks every time a Greek competitor appeared, advertisements all the time, and a host of sports he couldn’t give a shit about.

  He sat at the small table in the kitchen and tried to clear his mind. A fourteen-year-old girl, willowy and with a pretty face. According to her mother, Lia didn’t have a boyfriend. Was that likely? The culture at the international school was probably more progressive than at state schools. Boys and girls would mix in class and during other activities, and the usual would happen. Then again, there were no boys on the trip to Mount Kithairon. Could Lia have been seeing someone and run off? If so, he couldn’t be at her school because Angie would have heard about another disappearance. She could hardly have met someone outside of school hours. The schedules her mother had sent were pretty full, plus she was ferried around by a driver who was also trained as a bodyguard. Paschos Poulos took security seriously. Which made him wonder. How could his client be sure her driver cum muscleman hadn’t reported her solitary walk up Philopappos, or even followed her? Maybe she had some kind of arrangement with the guy.

  The situation was made worse by the fact that it was August and Lia’s classmates were on holiday. Maybe some of them had stayed around for the Games rather than hightailing off to their family houses on the islands or abroad. In any case, he couldn’t talk to them. Lia’s computer would have been useful, but it had been handed over to the police and never returned. It was likely they hadn’t found anything useful, given her continuing absence. Or was there something more to all this?

  He shook his head. Anything could happen in Greece, as recently proved by the sprinters who had won medals at the Sidney Olympics. Required to attend drug testing, they had apparently crashed their motorbike and needed hospital treatment; then they had withdrawn from the competition. The whole thing smelled like a rotting rat.

  Back in his room, Mavros booted up his laptop and started to go through the lists of names Angie had given him. Was it really credible that the woman in charge of the group of girls back in May would have accepted what Lia said in her phone call – that her father had picked her up – without checking with one of the parents? Answer: no – even though Angie had said that Maria Bekakou and her husband were family friends. He put the woman’s name into a search engine and found not her but her husband, Rovertos. He was a lawyer – according to his pretty basic website, a one-man operation with expertise in business law. His photograph showed a handsome face with graying hair swept back. Rovertos Bekakos. The name rang distant bells. He went back to the list of references produced by the search engine. Most were entries in the gossip columns of the less respectable papers, though all that the lawyer and his wife seemed guilty of was attending the most exclusive soirées and dinner parties. Then he found an article from a year back in one of the low-circulation satirical magazines, Theophrastus. It was entitled ‘Snake in Paradise’:

  What exactly has Rovertos Bekakos been doing in Paradheisos? The exceedingly well connected – not to mention exceedingly rich – lawyer has been seen several times recently in the not-so-new town in Viotia. Surely he can’t have been sampling the delights of the Corinthian Gulf. The nearby aluminium works render the beaches less than attractive. Perhaps he and his lovely wife Maria, who usually accompanies him, are extending a hand of friendship to the workers in the village following the Hellenic Mining Corporation’s decision to replace two hundred men on high wages with unskilled school-leavers, leaving the former without homes or full pensions. Or maybe the couple has suddenly become aware of the environmentalists who have started campaigning in the area. As one of Mr Paschos Poulos’s chief advisers, there is much for Mr Bekakos to get his teeth into in that strange part of the country – the rural bliss ruptured by strip mines and huge machines, the deep blue gulf ruined by pollution. Readers will remember that Mr Poulos stated, when he took over HMC ten years ago, that the company would do more than national and international pollution standards require, as well as honour all existing labour contracts. So who are Adam and Eve in this story? And who is the snake in Paradheisos?

  Mavros had initially been deceived by the headline. Paradheisos meant ‘paradise’, but was also the name of the small town that had been built in the Sixties to house workers at the bauxite processing plant three kilometers away. As the photograph accompanying the article showed, the box-shaped houses were white in the sector nearest the beach, yellow in the central area and pink at the rear. He found the town’s website and was informed that ordinary workers were allocated homes in the white part, middle management in the yellow and senior management in the pink. He wondered if the architect had read the works of Orwell and Huxley. Social engineering was unusual in a country full of individualists.

  But where did this get him? If Maria Bekakou was married to one of Poulos’s closest advisors, what connection could she possibly have to Lia’s disappearance? There was only one way to find out.

  Akis Exarchos was sitting at the bedroom window, the wooden slats of the shutters filtering the afternoon light. The burning sun was on his heavily tanned knees and calves. He should have kept out of the rays – the doctor had told him so after several cancerous growths were removed from his neck – but it didn’t matter any more. Cancer had taken his wife Yiorgia a m
onth ago, eating away her womb. They had no children, even though they’d been trying for ten years. Akis, aged thirty-three, felt like an old man. He looked out across the sparkling bay, the usual cloud from the works drifting over the headland. To his left, five kilometres away, the striped blocks of buildings in Paradheisos climbed up the slope, the road that led out of the valley coiling away up the defile beyond. People there worked at the aluminium works, even though they had to leave after their contracts ended. Here in Kypseli, there was nothing. More experienced fishermen than him couldn’t make a living. They had to go so far out into the gulf to make a worthwhile catch that there was no time to drive to the inland towns to sell the fish. Nobody in Kypseli would risk eating the fruit of the sea nearby, considering the muck that was dumped in the water during bauxite processing. The huge ships that came to pick up the finished aluminium had been known to leave slicks of fuel oil too.

  That was why he had got involved with the ecologists. At first he and the other locals thought the newcomers from Athens were troublemakers, but people were coming round to their way of thinking. Even the beehives that had given the village its name no longer provided much honey. Bees were more intelligent than humans.When they started dying, they left. Yiorgia no longer had that option.

  Of course, the mining corporation’s representatives had been round, offering money to anyone with a legitimate grievance. A woman with a fake smile had come to Akis’s house a week ago. She was very sorry about his wife’s death, while stressing there was no link between her cancer and the company’s activities. But, in a gesture of good will, HMC was prepared to make a one-time offer of ten thousand euros, as long as he promised never to involve himself in what she called ‘misguided conservationist actions’. He wasn’t even sure what that meant, but he recognised blood money as quickly as he did the varieties of ever-shrinking fish in his nets. He told her to leave, shouting only when she expressed surprise.

  The long-haired, bearded young man and his sandal-wearing woman were right. Kypseli and Paradheisos were a toxic Eden and he wasn’t going to take it anymore.