Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Page 7

  Ozal grunted. ‘You think I didn’t square it with the desk? Hey,’ he said, his tone hardening, ‘you threatening me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mavros replied. ‘I always threaten potential employers.’

  The irony silenced Deniz Ozal for a few moments, then he laughed again. ‘Funny guy. But can you use that mouth of yours to find my sister?’

  Mavros took the plunge. ‘I’ll give it a go. My rate’s a hundred thousand Greek a day plus expenses. In this case, as there’s travel involved, minimum five days, up front. Okay?’

  ‘Jeez, that’s pretty fuckin’ steep, my friend.’

  ‘Take it or leave it, Deniz.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Okay, done. You got a mobile phone?’

  ‘No, I prefer to use carrier pigeons.’ Mavros gave the number.

  ‘I’ll be travelling so I’ll call you when it suits me. Since I can’t rely on you to call me when I want you to. And give me your bank details. I’ll transfer half a million tomorrow, okay?’

  Mavros passed on the information, letting the jibe go unanswered. ‘Let me talk to your guest.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  There was rustle of sheets.

  ‘Yes? What can I do for you?’ The voice was young, female and brash, the English smooth. She probably thought he wanted to arrange a rendezvous.

  ‘The name’s Alex Mavros,’ he replied in Greek. ‘I’m the only one in the phone book. If he hurts you, call me.’

  There was silence for a while. ‘All right.’ The girl sounded less sure of herself. ‘Thanks.’

  The connection was cut.

  Mavros got on to Olympic Airways and booked a seat on the morning flight to Paros, the nearest island to Trigono with an airport. Then he went back to bed, lowering himself carefully on to the mattress to prevent the bed frame creaking. Niki stirred, her arm moving against his thigh. Apparently comforted by making physical contact, she sank back into her usual deep sleep. Before he went the same way, Mavros wondered about what he was doing—not just the Ozal job, but the fact that he wasn’t going to tell Niki where he was headed. He knew it was wrong, knew that he should have had the nerve to face her and say that he didn’t want to see her any more, but he shrank from the inevitable confrontation. It wasn’t a question of gutlessness, he told himself. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he didn’t know how to avoid it. Being in a relationship was hell, he thought as his eyes closed. And then you started another one.

  Before the first tinges of dawn had crept down the street from the ruins of the Roman marketplace to his windows, Mavros got up and, keeping one eye on Niki’s lightly breathing form, put some clothes in a leather satchel. He reckoned his usual outfit of T-shirt, jeans and espadrilles, supplemented by a pair of shorts that could double as swimming trunks and a pair of trainers, would do for the Cyclades. Not that he had much recent experience of the islands. He rarely took holidays and his last trip off the mainland had been to find an Austrian woman on Zakynthos a couple of years back; her local husband had decided that she would benefit from an enforced stay in a hut in the hills. Mavros also had a major dislike of travelling with anything other than hand luggage. Deniz Ozal could pay for anything else he needed on Trigono.

  Padding noiselessly into the kitchen, he wrote a note for Niki:

  Urgent job—probably away for a week. I’ll be in touch.

  A.

  He knew she’d immediately notice the lack of ‘with love’ or the like, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. He propped the piece of paper against the coffee jar—Niki couldn’t function in the mornings without a substantial caffeine shot—and let himself out of the flat. As he went down the stairs he felt a weight come off his shoulders and shook his head. That was his problem. He was cold-blooded enough to walk away, but not callous enough to avoid the remorse.

  He found a taxi in Monastiraki Square and asked for the airport. At least the driver wasn’t a talkative one. That turned out to be a mixed blessing. The swarthy, unshaven type must have seen Bullitt recently. He raced up the central avenues, cutting through the sparse traffic flow with rapid movements of his head and hands.

  Mavros spent the journey with his lips pressed together, his legs braced and one hand clamped on the door rest, but he didn’t risk putting on his seat belt. That insult to the driver’s abilities could have been fatal. By the time they arrived at the gleaming new terminal beyond the ring of the city’s mountains, his white T-shirt was sodden.

  After he’d collected his ticket and checked in—the Olympic staff as supercilious as usual—he glanced at his watch. Ten to six. His mother would be up already. She was the opposite of Niki, a sleeper so light that even earplugs were no use to her, and she usually started work editing typescripts or writing letters to aspiring authors before the nightclubs had emptied. He highlighted her entry in the phone’s directory.

  ‘Morning, Mother.’

  ‘Alex, good morning,’ she said, her voice conveying alarm. ‘So early. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied hastily. ‘Just to say that I’ll be away for a few days. I’m at the airport.’

  ‘Oh. Are you taking my advice and having a holiday?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Work.’

  Dorothy let out an impatient sigh. ‘Really, Alex, you need a rest. Where is it you’re going?’

  ‘Trigono.’

  ‘In the Cyclades? How lovely. Those islands are wonderful, so full of history. Remember what Byron said about—’

  ‘Sorry, Mother, I’ve got to go,’ Mavros interrupted. A blast of philhellenic zeal was not what he needed right now. ‘Oh, and Mother? If Niki calls, don’t tell her where I am.’

  ‘Whyever not? I don’t know how that girl puts up with—’

  ‘Talk to you soon. Bye.’ Mavros flinched as guilt buried its teeth in him again. The screens were showing his departure gate, so he called his sister as he walked towards the security checkpoint. She was another early riser, because of kids and the pressure of work rather than any particular love of the morning sun.

  ‘Trigono?’ Anna said. ‘I suppose it makes a change from lurking behind cars in the suburbs. Did you see the island was on the news last night?’

  ‘No.’ Mavros got his intelligence from the midday papers rather than the overdressed TV newsreaders. ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘There was a terrible tragedy.’ She broke off. ‘Hurry up, Evridhiki! Have you got your ballet bag? Sorry, Alex. Yes, a tragedy. A local couple, teenagers, were drowned.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Mavros said under his breath, wondering how his investigation would be affected by an outpouring of grief on the small island.

  ‘You know who lives there?’ Anna continued smoothly. She often gave her brother information before he asked for it. ‘Panos Theocharis, the mining tycoon.’

  The oil flask from the hoarding with the image of Charon on his boat flashed up in front of Mavros. ‘The guy with the museum?’

  ‘Mmm. Laki, if you don’t drink that milk you’re not playing basketball after school, do you hear? Yes, the Museum of Funerary Art. He’s sunk billions into it and—’

  ‘Got to go, Anna,’ Mavros said, looking at his watch. ‘Say hello to the kids.’

  He broke the connection and put his bag through the X-ray machine. A double drowning and the founder of a museum that celebrated death on the same island. This case looked like it was going to be full of laughs.

  Then he looked out of the tinted glass and saw the small aircraft on the tarmac outside. Holy shit. So far he’d managed to suppress his fear of flying, but not any more.

  October 11th, 1942, Beirut

  I’ve decided to take the risk. The keeping of diaries is, of course, strictly against regulations but this is too good an opportunity to miss. I will have plenty of time to myself in the coming months and will take every precaution to hide these writings in places where even the most scrupulous Italian intelligence officer will never th
ink to look. Besides, as numerous masters and tutors have pointed out, my handwriting is minuscule enough to put even the most avid of readers off. No, this is the great adventure of my life and I must record it. I spoke to Larry Durrell before I left Cairo and he told me how much he envied me. Not as much as I envy him. He showed me some of the stuff he’s written about Corfu. God, what wouldn’t I give to have lived in that paradise before the war?

  But now I am to have my own Greek island to experience and describe. There will be a book in it, maybe a series of books. George Lawrence’s Trigono Days, a masterly evocation of wartime life on a Greek island. Farmers, Fishermen and Fables, the finest description of island society this reviewer has ever come across. Come on, man, control yourself. The books have yet to be written. The important thing is that I will have my own material and experiences to work on.

  Tomorrow we set sail in a battered but apparently seaworthy kaïki. I won’t put down her name in case she runs into difficulties later. The point is that in a few days I’ll be in the Aegean! My God, I’ve been waiting so long to see the shores where Western civilisation began. It’s as if my whole life has been a preparation for this moment; the years learning Greek at prep school and Big College, the courses of literature and archaeology at Cambridge. Even the modern Greek I picked up from my fellow student Aristotelis T. now seems part of some hitherto unfathomable design. And what used to be the frustration of never visiting Greece in the long vacations because of poor Pater’s straitened circumstances is now something I’m grateful for. Because the wait has made my appetite for the land and sea of the Greeks even keener. They are about to become my closest companions. At last!

  October 15th, 1942

  The navy boys who run the flotilla are wonderful seamen, but this voyage has turned into a test of everyone’s endurance. The wind has been from the north since we set out, strong enough to prevent writing until we finally took shelter in this cove on the island of A. Even now it’s blasting over the hills, making the boat rock and pull against the mooring ropes. The crew erected spreader poles and hung camouflage sheets over them so, in theory, we blend into the cliff side and are invisible to any passing peasant. Apparently the nearest garrison is fifteen miles away. Having been unable to keep anything except water down for over two days, I’m now looking forward to the corned beef and hard biscuits that are being broken out. There’s rum as well, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust my stomach with that. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. I wanted to get out and have a look at the surrounding countryside, but the skipper wouldn’t allow it. So frustration mounts again! It looks like Trig will be the first Greek soil, or rock, that I touch after all. I’d better check my radio and my weapons before the light goes. If the wind drops we’ll be on our way again tonight. I’m almost there.

  October 16th, 1942, Trig

  We have arrived! We were lucky with the wind and the skipper brought us into the long, narrow inlet on the south coast of the island an hour before dawn. Then we spent the day under the shrouds again. The longing I felt to jump into the clear blue water and strike out for land was almost overwhelming. I managed to restrain myself and wait till nightfall. I even managed to get some sleep, my face crushed up against the timbers of the hull. The old kaïki did a fine job. I only hope she gets the boys back in one piece. As soon as it was dark, the Greek liaison chap, a sour-faced veteran of the Albanian campaign and the German invasion who worked in the mines here before the war, headed off to check that the hills were clear and to let the local resistance leader know I’ve arrived. When we got the signal from the ridge, the crew and I lugged my gear up. I didn’t have time to rejoice over finally touching sacred soil. We were too busy scrambling up the steep slope from Vathy. I managed much better than the Jack Tars, the training I was put through in the desert standing me in good stead. Fortunately my map-reading skills survived the voyage as well. I located the herdsman’s hut below the ridge between Profitis Ilias and Vigla without difficulty and we dumped everything there. My first job will be to find a more secure hiding place for it. Then, under a brilliantly starlit night, with the Milky Way curving across the velvety dome like a royal road, I said my farewells to the sailors. They’ll lay up at the mooring till nightfall, waiting for the liaison chap then set off again, so I’ll be alone until the others arrive in the near future. Now all I have to do is glory in the evocative code- name I talked the brass hats into assigning me—Achilles, greatest of Greek warriors before the walls of Troy—and wait for the dawn.

  October 17th, 1942, 11 p.m.

  I’m still reeling. I’ve been busy since twilight, scouting around for a safer spot to stow the gear (I found some out- of-the-way caves that might do the trick) and my feet are aching from the rocky ground. But all I can think about is the first real view that I had of Greece in the morning light. I crawled up to the ridge before sunrise and waited there, my heart pounding. At last the peaks of the mountains on the eastern islands began to appear, nothing more than faint lines hovering in the darkness. Then there was a sudden red smudge and before I could fully take stock of what was happening, the sun’s upper edge appeared over the highest peak and a great burst of red shone out, so bright that I had to shield my eyes. I felt them dampen, not just because of the light’s intensity, and turned to take in my island. Trigono lay in front of me, the coastlines converging in an almost perfect triangle to the patch of white that marked the main village, Faros, at the northern point. In the space between, the slopes of Vigla and Profitis Ilias ran down steeply to the flatter expanse of Kambos with its strips of arable land, the dark brown earth dotted with mills and houses. And beyond it all was the sea, the brave blue Aegean dancing away towards Paros and Andiparos, flecked with dusty islets and a few hardy fishing boats. The gods themselves could not have constructed a more glorious panorama. I lay on the rocky ground for hours to absorb it all, only moving when I heard the distant notes of a goatherd’s pipe and the clang of his animals’ bells on the clear air. Now I must try to come back to earth and concentrate on why I am here. Tomorrow night I meet Kapetan M., code-name Ajax, who, according to the departed liaison officer, can be an awkward customer. As long as it’s the Italians’ lives he plans to make difficult I don’t care how tough he is.

  Ah, Greece, ah, Trigono. What a day this has been!

  Mavros spent as much as he could of the flight with his eyes closed, clutching his worry beads. The nineteen-seater twin- prop Dornier was only half full, so he managed to keep some distance from a foursome of garrulous Scandinavians. They spent the trip gasping and squealing in delight as the aircraft steered south-east across the steadily brightening sea and the islands that had been scorched rust-brown in the long summer. Mavros hated all kinds of flying, but he was especially uncomfortable in propeller planes that flew low enough for the occupants to make out the deserted buildings on the islands’ terraced slopes and the dismembered remains of ships that had been wrecked on their indented coastlines. Crushed in the narrow seat, head bowed, he almost missed a first glimpse of his destination. But he’d opened his eyes as the pilots lined up their approach to the airport on Paros, the runway looking far too short given the speed they were doing, and Trigono reared up in the middle distance. The village in the north, only five kilometres from the end of Paros, was dwarfed by a mass of mountains to the south, the ridge between them bare and scarred by rockfalls that were visible even at this range.

  ‘Jesus,’ Mavros said, his voice drowned in the blast from the engines. ‘What am I doing here?’ He swallowed hard as the plane yawed alarmingly. The pilots, who had been gossiping about stewardesses they were chasing, stiffened and started to concentrate.

  Then the wheels touched with a loud thud and the engine noise became even more aggressive as reverse thrust was applied. Mavros had his thighs clenched until the plane had swung into the turning circle in front of the terminal building and the engines were cut. Only then did he manage to get his breathing under control. Even though the ferries took much
longer, he’d have to give serious consideration to returning by sea.

  Walking unsteadily down the steps, he took in his surroundings. The airport building wasn’t much more than a medium- sized house, whitewashed in the Cycladic way but topped by incongruous aerials and discs. The airport certainly had better scenery than most. The low lines of Andiparos to the west were countered by Paros’s central massif containing the seams of marble that had made the island’s name over the centuries. And ahead of him lay Trigono, too insignificant to merit a landing strip of its own but as imposing a sight as any of the islands.

  If you were into that kind of thing, Mavros thought. The open spaces and gusting southerly breeze were already getting to him. He’d rather have been in a sheltered city square, protected by the pollution cloud from the blinding rays that were making a joke of his expensive sunglasses.

  It was as he went through the gate and into the car park that Mavros took the step that he’d been considering on the flight. It had worked on Zakynthos, so why not here?

  ‘Taxi? Taxi, kyrie?’ The driver, a middle-aged man with quick eyes and huge hands, had picked up Mavros’s body language and summed him up as a Greek.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied in English. He stuffed the worry beads into his pocket and let his limbs go loose, trying to dispel the aura of self-confidence that Greeks habitually exude. ‘Yes, taxi, please. I want the ferry for Trigono. All right?’

  The taxi-driver grinned, scenting easy prey. ‘All right, my friend,’ he replied in heavily accented English. ‘I take you right away.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Boat go in one half hour.’ He wrested Mavros’s bag from him and put it in the boot of a large silver Mercedes. He turned to the other passengers. ‘Trigono! Who want Trigono?’