Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Page 6

  At first the villagers thought it was kids chasing each other through the narrow streets. Then the noise moved closer to the square and the words became clearer. The words and the names.

  ‘Nafsika! Nafsika!’ The final syllable was a long scream of agony.

  ‘Yiango! My son, my sweet son, oh Yiango…’

  There was a cascade of feet on the paving stones, questioning voices in between the screeches.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Another desolate wail. ‘My girl, my beautiful girl, what happened to you? What happened to you?’ The woman’s words trailed away in a bitter groan. ‘What evil fate…’

  ‘It’s Nafsika, Christos’s and Marigoula’s daughter…’

  ‘Nafsika? What’s happened to her?’

  Another scream. ‘Drowned! The sea has taken them from us…’

  ‘Taken them? Nafsika and Yiangos? Oh my God! How?’

  Ear to the door of her house in the wall of the Venetian castle, old Maro listened, trying to make sense of what was going on. Nafsika? Yiangos? Drowned? No, it couldn’t be. Not Nafsika and Yiangos. She was related to both of them, not closely to Nafsika but Yiangos was her great-nephew, her brother Manolis’s grandson. My God, how could You do this to us? Her hands were trembling, her eyes filled with salty tears. Haven’t we suffered enough?

  She felt pressure on the door and stepped unsteadily back.

  ‘Are you there, Kyra Maro? It’s me, Rena.’ The woman, in her late thirties and wearing black blouse, skirt and knee- length stockings, bustled in and took the old woman’s arm. ‘Come, sit down and I’ll tell you what’s happened.’

  Maro allowed herself to be led to the table, her eyes blurred. In the bright glow of the gaslight she could make out that Rena’s expression was kindly but excited. Death always roused passions on Trigono.

  ‘Is it true?’ Maro asked. ‘Is Yiangos really—?’ She broke off and tried to visualise the boy, tried to remember his face. Since her eyes began to darken a few years back, she hadn’t been able to see people unless they were as close to her as Rena was now. It had been a long time since any of her family had been that close. The dead boy had never even been in her house. She recalled a handsome face, a cheeky grin and a sturdy frame that had seemed to grow in great spurts. But then she’d only seen him occasionally; across the square at Easter, or down at the harbour for the Epiphany celebration when he and the other village boys would dive into the freezing January waters to retrieve the cross.

  ‘Kyra Maro? Are you hearing me?’ Rena’s hand was on hers. She always addressed the older woman respectfully as Mrs Maro. ‘Don’t cry.’ Then the younger woman let out a sob herself. ‘Oh, why shouldn’t you cry? Everyone on Trigono is crying tonight.’ Outside, the screams were louder than ever as all the island women joined in the grieving.

  Maro pulled her hand away and tried to cover her ears. That sound, the sound of desperate keening, was killing her. She’d done it herself when loved ones died and she couldn’t bear to hear it again. Until her eyes betrayed her, she’d gone to her fields on the slopes above the Kambos whenever there was a death in the village. Stayed out there with her donkey tethered to the ridge wall till the funeral had taken place and the miroloyia, the ritual lamentations, were over.

  ‘What…what happened?’ she said, staggering to her feet and moving towards the door.

  Rena was quickly by her side. ‘Oh no, Kyra Maro, don’t go outside. They won’t…they won’t like it. Yiangos’s mother Popi is in a terrible state, what with her husband, Lefteris, in Syros…the other women are rallying round her and Nafsika’s mother, but it’s not…it’s not a good time to go out, Kyra Maro…’

  She felt herself being taken back to the table, Rena’s arm around her back. ‘Thank you, my girl,’ she said, the words making her eyes flood again. My girl, my daughter. Maro had no daughter, no one to look after her in her decrepitude as was the custom. Her own family hated her, refused to have anything to do with her. Only Rena cared for her, came in every day to check that she had enough to eat and to refill her drinking-water bottle at the public tap; did her laundry, even swept the floor of her tiny two-roomed home in the metre- thick walls of the old fortress. Rena, who’d come from Serifos to marry a local builder and been left a widow, childless and barely tolerated in the village because she had refused to move out of the house her husband’s family wanted back after his death. She’d defied them, insisted on what was legally hers, and people hated her, said terrible things about her. But she was a good woman, she still wore the black of mourning and refused to return to her own island. She said she’d put down roots on Trigono and enjoyed renting her spare rooms out to tourists in the summer.

  ‘They were in the nets, Kyra Maro,’ Rena said haltingly. ‘It seems that Yiangos had taken his father’s trata to check the equipment or maybe to do some illegal fishing, and Nafsika went with him. Oh God, who knows what they were doing?’ She leaned closer. ‘They were both naked, clinging together. And the boat was drifting towards the rocks off Vathy inlet. Some fishermen from Paros came round the western end of the island and managed to get a rope on the trata before it was smashed to pieces on the rocks.’

  Maro looked up and blinked, her vision more blurred than usual. ‘They were naked?’ she repeated.

  ‘Naked and caught in the nets,’ Rena said, nodding. ‘They were being dragged through the water.’

  ‘Drowned,’ Maro said softly. ‘My God, drowned. Not more victims of the sea. What happened? The wind isn’t so strong, is it?’

  Rena shook her head. ‘Not very. And Yiangos knew how to handle a boat. Kyra Maro?’ She watched as the old woman’s head dropped forward till it was almost touching the embroidered tablecloth. ‘Are you all right, Kyra Maro?’ She lowered her own head and tried to see Maro’s face. The eyes were half open and there was a faint groaning coming from her mouth. Maro often sank into a reverie. She could remain in such a state for hours.

  ‘Ach, old age,’ Rena said quietly. ‘Yes, Kyra Maro, you go off into your own world. It can only be better than the one the rest of us have to live in.’ She got up and moved towards the door, cocking an ear. The wails were less strident now; the women would have moved to the houses of the bereaved. She was going to join them. Even an outsider like her could be of some use at a time like this.

  A few minutes after the door closed behind her old Maro raised her head slowly and looked around. She ran her arm across her eyes, the sleeve of her ragged cardigan soaking up the tears. Then she walked carefully to the door and locked it. Now she was truly alone. No one could reach her except the ones she wanted.

  Going into the small, musty bedroom with its single iron bedstead, she slid her hand into the pocket of her old lace apron and took out a box of matches. She lit two candles in the hollow in the wall that was used for icons in other homes. Her holy place contained a single framed black-and- white photograph. It was of a young man in military uniform, cap on his head and leather strap running diagonally across his chest. He was looking into the lens with a restrained smile.

  Maro stared at the photograph from close range then stepped back. ‘My love,’ she said. ‘My sweet love. Come back to me now.’

  She bent down and pulled a tin box out from under her bed. ‘Come back to me,’ she repeated as she opened the battered lid and lovingly lifted out a misshapen, blackened skull.

  Mavros walked up the slope from Monastiraki, trying to ignore the blast of bouzoukia and the cheers of tourist groups as they took their turn at performing Zorba’s dance in the rip- off joints. That was the problem with living so close to the Acropolis. He glanced up at the great crag, the columns of the temples red in the floodlights of the son et lumière. Obviously the narrator was describing one of the great battles, Marathon or Salamis.

  He lifted his eyes and took in the velvet of the night sky, the pinpricks of stars glinting through the pollution cloud. A breeze had got up so at least he’d be able to sleep easier. He inh
aled deeply as he reached the corner of Pikilis. Even though he was only a couple of hundred metres from the snarls of traffic on the central boulevards, the air was already sweeter. The scents of bougainvillaea and hibiscus floated up from the ancient marketplace, mixing with the underlying aroma of pine needles dampened by the early autumn dew. Mavros felt his spirits lift. For all the clamour and the press of sweaty bodies, the city retained an irresistible hold on him. Then he saw the graffiti some moronic kid had sprayed on the wall— ‘Athens, I fuck the whole of you’.

  He turned the key in the wooden door of number 18 and hit the stairwell light. Nothing. He swore under his breath. He’d replaced the bulb only last week. There was no light under his ground-floor neighbour’s door so Mavros had to feel his way up to the first floor. It was a pity he didn’t smoke; matches or a lighter would have been useful. Then, as he reached out for his door, he realised that his feet were catching in something sticky.

  He cursed again, kneeling down in the darkness and tentatively putting a finger to the marble surface. The smell was familiar, a faint odour of thyme. He wondered what the cleaner had been playing at.

  He managed to get the key in, the metal scraping the paint of the door, and fumbled for the switch. No light here either. He could see the glow of the streetlamp through the shutters that he’d left closed in the morning, so there hadn’t been a sudden power cut. His own fuses must have blown. He stepped inside then remembered his feet, bending over to pull off his espadrilles. The fuse box was in the kitchen. Moving in that direction, he blundered into something hard.

  ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, clutching his right shin.

  It was then that he heard stifled laughter from the armchair in the corner of the main room. A match flared and was applied to the thick candle on the coffee table.

  ‘Niki!’ he groaned. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He moved the heavily laden magazine rack aside.

  ‘Didn’t you like my offering outside?’ Another throaty laugh. ‘I thought it was perfect. Sweet honey for my sweet man.’ The irony in the voice was lacerating.

  Mavros swallowed hard and went into the kitchen to reengage the switch of the main circuit. The lights came on in the sitting room and he focused on the form curled up in his black leather chair. Andhroniki Glezou’s long legs, bare under a loose orange skirt, were drawn up beneath her, her arms crossed under the shapely breasts that her tight T-shirt emphasised. Her pale face with its delicate features and small straight nose was composed, but her dark eyes were as restless as ever beneath the crown of tousled, highlighted hair.

  ‘Well,’ Niki said, her tone softening. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me, Alex?’ She caught his eye. ‘Why didn’t you call me? I left you a message.’

  ‘Did you? I never got it,’ Mavros lied. He’d turned his phone off when he was at his mother’s and hadn’t felt like returning the message after he left there. The truth was that Niki had begun to get him down. ‘I’ve been busy and…’ He let the words trail away, knowing that, whatever he said, he was in her sights.

  ‘Sweet man,’ she said lightly, smiling at him. ‘Of course you’ve been busy.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Busy offering your arse to people who are rich enough to pay for it.’

  ‘Niki, I—’ He broke off when he realised that she was still talking.

  ‘Haven’t you realised, Alex?’ she said, unravelling her legs and standing up, right arm raised and left foot forward like an Amazon about to cast a spear. ‘You’re a whore, nothing more. All you care about is that your clients hand over the cash.’

  He shrugged, knowing that any comment would only make the onslaught worse.

  ‘Because you only work for rich people, don’t you?’ Niki continued. ‘You only work for thieving businessmen and foreigners who’ve more money than Croesus.’ She held her position, the arm still up. ‘Well, you do, don’t you? How many poor people have you ever helped? Have you ever taken on a case for free, out of the goodness of your heart?’

  Mavros was leaning against the door jamb, his eyes lowered. He’d worked without a fee on more than one occasion, but Niki wouldn’t believe that. She was a social worker and she spent her days with immigrants from the former Soviet Union who’d come to the home country with nothing to their name except their Greek blood-line. After six months with her, he had realised that she resented every evening she had to spend on her own. She was an orphan and had rejected her foster parents, though not until after they’d paid for her to go to university in London.

  ‘Leave it, Niki,’ he said, turning away and taking a bucket and sponge out of the cupboard. His upstairs neighbour was a ballet dancer and he knew she was performing these evenings. If she came back and dragged her precious feet through the honey Niki had smeared on the landing, he’d be in even deeper trouble.

  ‘No, I won’t leave it!’ she shouted, her voice breaking. ‘You’re a freak, Alex, with your two-tone eye and that brother you’re forever hero-worshipping. Why can’t you pay attention to someone who’s alive for a change?’

  Mavros froze.

  She came over to him quickly and clutched his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Alex, I’m sorry,’ she said, tears welling up. ‘Let me clean up, I was only…I was only trying to make a point.’ She pulled the sponge from his hand and went out into the stairwell. Mavros took a deep breath then filled the bucket and followed her. ‘Bit of a sticky situation,’ he said in English as he squatted down on the marble. He knew there was no point in arguing with Niki. She would only become more hysterical and, besides, she was right—he was a freak. The worst thing was that, most of the time, it suited him.

  Niki let out a sobbing laugh and brushed the hair back from her face with a forearm. ‘Oh, Alex,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do?’

  He smiled at her, then left her kneeling on the floor as he went to screw the stair light back in. He didn’t have any thoughts about what they were going to do as a couple. Although he found Niki sexually exciting—she was a wild woman between the sheets or anywhere else—he struggled to handle her mood swings. He knew what was going to happen tonight. As she was hopeless in the kitchen he’d cook something for her and they’d go to bed, but they’d got to the stage where that wasn’t enough. Niki wanted him to share the large flat in the coastal suburb of Palaio Faliron that she’d been left by her long-suffering foster parents. The one thing he was sure about was that he was staying in Pikilis.

  As Mavros balanced himself on the ladder he was gripped by panic. If she shook the legs now, he’d go head first down the stairs. He lowered his eyes and was confronted by Niki’s raised backside. Shaking his head at the injustice he’d done her, he climbed slowly down. It was time he sorted himself out.

  Then he remembered Deniz Ozal and his missing sister. An island in the Aegean. Trigono came at him out of the shimmering blue with a whispered promise of sanctuary.

  In that second he made the decision.

  The old man in the tower on Trigono ran a trembling hand through his sculpted white beard. It was time. He’d been sitting in front of the tattered leather-bound volume for hours, but he hadn’t been able to open it. Yes, it was time to lay the ghost once and for all. But he still couldn’t bring himself to touch the book, as if it were infected with some deadly virus.

  Running his eyes around the sumptuously decorated room with its circular walls in an attempt to distract himself, he rested them on the framed poster by the door. Larger versions of it were all over Athens, advertising the museum’s latest exhibition. The lekythos with its exquisite lines, the painted figure of Charon on his boat, the icons of death that had haunted him for as long as he could remember and had inspired him to establish the museum—now they seemed to be mocking him. ‘What do you know about death?’ they were asking. ‘What do you really know?’

  Panos Theocharis forced himself to look at the book that was in front of him on the antique mahogany desk. What he knew about death, what he had experienced, was largely contained in this compact volume. But not in his words. Thes
e were the words of the man he’d tried to destroy. How bitter would the story they told be to him? Did he have any right to read another man’s private confessions?

  He turned his head towards the high window and took in the lights of the village that lay beyond the expanse of cultivated fields. He’d been told about the deaths, the drowned boy and girl, but even that news had failed to distract him from the diary. No, he couldn’t put it off any more. He had to do it now.

  Taking a deep breath that rattled in his lungs, Theocharis put his fingers on the soft, dark leather and opened the book. The man he had forgotten for decades flew out like an avenger from the lines of faded blue ink and seized him by the throat.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘YEAH? Who is it?’ Deniz Ozal was breathless.

  ‘This is Mavros.’

  ‘What the fuck happened to you, bud?’ He grunted. ‘Get off me, you—’

  ‘Is this a bad time?’

  ‘You were meant to call me at ten, weren’t you?’ Ozal had raised his voice. ‘I said get off me. Jesus.’

  Mavros was on his balcony with the mobile. Niki had stayed and he’d waited until she was asleep before phoning. He didn’t want her to hear that he was about to leave the city. ‘I can call again in the morning if you’ve got company.’

  There was a rustle followed by a high-pitched giggle. ‘Nah,’ Ozal said. ‘It’s just a hooker who’s bitten off more than she can chew, if you get my meaning.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Anyway, how d’you know I didn’t give the job to the competition?’

  Mavros raised his eyes to the night sky. ‘Because there isn’t any competition worth the name, Deniz.’

  ‘Is that right?’ There was a heavy slap. ‘I told you to wait, goddammit. So, d’you want the job or not, Alex?’

  ‘If you promise to stop hitting the woman. The Intercontinental’s pretty strict on visitors in guest rooms at this time of night.’