Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Page 8

  The tourists looked at him blankly, while the few Greeks who’d been on the plane raised their chins in the gesture that signified ‘no’. It looked like Mavros was on his own. That would give him a chance to bring his non-Greek side completely to the surface. He’d discovered when he was on Zakynthos that he could learn a lot more by feigning ignorance of the local language and culture. Overhearing and eavesdropping were useful investigative tools. There were two problems, though: you had to make sure you didn’t give the game away by suddenly being seen to understand Greek; and there was an underhand element to it that he wasn’t happy with. Too bad, he thought as he got into the car. This is business, not pleasure.

  He was dropped off on the waterfront at Alyki. The taxi- driver, who hadn’t bothered to turn on the meter, tried to extract five thousand from him for the short trip but settled for two when he saw the sudden hard look on Mavros’s face.

  The small port on the south-western corner of Paros was the ferry terminal for Trigono. According to the guidebook in English that Mavros bought from a kiosk, the large boats from Piraeus called at Trigono’s harbour of Faros twice a week in the high season and ignored the island for the rest of the year. He watched as a turquoise-and-white bus pulled up and disgorged passengers. There were a few tourists in skimpy shorts and baseball caps, but the majority were islanders. The men were in heavy trousers that made little concession to the heat, the women in knee-length skirts, a few wearing straw hats but most leaving their faces and scalps uncovered.

  Mavros moved closer to the crowd of locals on the quay as a small ferry rounded the cape to the east. Their heads were bowed and they were speaking in low voices that he struggled to pick up while pretending to be engrossed in his book. None of them gave him a second glance. The talk was all about the young people who had drowned. It quickly became clear that most of the speakers were related to them and were on their way to console the families.

  ‘Nafsika and Yiangos, God forgive them, what were they doing on the boat on their own?’

  ‘Yiangos should have known better. Lefteris wouldn’t have let him out if he’d been here.’

  ‘Why was Lefteris in Syros anyway?’

  ‘He had to go to court, remember? That tourist he beat up. They’ll have postponed the trial after this, of course.’

  ‘But what happened, in the name of God? The wind wasn’t so strong. And Yiangos knew what he was doing, he—’

  ‘Yiangos knew nothing!’ exclaimed an old man with a thick moustache that was heavily stained by tobacco. ‘He was a kid. The sea’s always tricky around Eschati. He shouldn’t have been there, especially with no one to help him. What good would a girl have been?’

  ‘Come on, Maki,’ a plump woman put in. ‘Nafsika was a good girl.’

  ‘Yes, Nafsika was a good girl,’ admitted the old man, ‘but she didn’t know anything about boats.’

  The group drew closer together and Mavros couldn’t make out much more. He watched as the ferry came in, its forward door lowering as it approached the concrete ramp. The young men on the mooring ropes looked like they’d been in a battle, their bodies slack and their heads down. Friends of the dead boy, he surmised. He waited till the small group of departing passengers left, a gypsy watermelon seller in a pick-up truck that looked like it was about to fall apart giving them an impatient blast of his horn. That attracted hostile glares.

  ‘Show some respect,’ muttered the deckhand at the ticket desk.

  Mavros paid and climbed the steps to the upper deck. The ferry—the Loxandra according to a plaque under the funnel—was pulling away from the quay when a large green four-by-four vehicle came across the port area at speed, its horn blaring and headlights flashing.

  ‘Fuck it!’ the captain cursed from the wheelhouse. ‘It’s Aris. We’ll have to go back.’ He moved the throttle and headed towards the ramp, lowering the door again.

  The top-of-the-range Jeep drove on board quickly, missing a motorbike by centimetres. The driver swung his door open and jumped down, his bald head bisected horizontally by a green sun visor. He walked across the garage deck with his chest out, keeping his eyes off everyone around him, a slack smile on his lips.

  The captain swore again. ‘Don’t worry about my bike, you big buffoon,’ he said, glancing at Mavros as he put the engines into reverse and swung round towards the strait.

  Mavros felt the wind stiffen as they moved away from Paros, tugging at his hair and making his T-shirt flap around his sides. The ferry began to roll as the swell took it, provoking cheerful complaints from the few tourists. The islanders had already taken refuge in the smoky cabin, a couple of the men joining the captain on the bridge.

  ‘Have you seen Lefteris?’ the wrinkled sailor was asked.

  He nodded and leaned back from the wheel to spit into an empty plant pot. ‘Iason went to get him from Syros in his kaïki. They got back about five this morning.’

  ‘How’s he taking it?’

  The skipper muttered something and gave Mavros another look; he’d moved closer to the wheelhouse door, his arms resting on the wooden rail and his eyes on the island ahead. The English guidebook was under his arm and this seemed to dispel the sailor’s suspicions.

  ‘You know Lefteris,’ he said. ‘He’s made of stone. Who can say what he’s thinking? But I’m sure he’s been badly hit by their loss, especially with Yiangos being an only child.’ He lit a cigarette, the acrid smoke gusting past Mavros. ‘I’ll tell you something interesting, boys.’

  The others looked at him expectantly.

  ‘I heard the sailors from Paros who found the boat talking to the Port Police on the VHF.’ The captain inhaled again.

  ‘Come on, Louka, let’s have it.’

  ‘All right,’ the sailor replied, rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘They found a deep scrape on the Sotiria’s hull, along the waterline.’

  ‘So? She hit a rock. There’s plenty of them off Vathy.’

  Kapetan Loukas was shaking his head. ‘No, no, my friends. The trata didn’t hit a rock. They were certain of that. She’d collided with something made of wood or metal. They could see blue paint in the abrasion.’ He dropped the cigarette butt into the pot. ‘And what colour is the Sotiria’s hull?’

  His interlocutors looked at each other, their eyes widening.

  ‘White,’ one of them replied in a low voice. ‘I saw Yiangos and the girl leave port. He didn’t hit anything then, I’m sure of it. Christ, what happened down there?’

  Mavros, his book now open at the pages showing a map of Trigono and the surrounding islets, screwed his eyes up in the dazzling sun. It looked like Rosa Ozal’s disappearance might not be the only mystery to be cleared up in this windswept quadrant of the Cyclades.

  Panos Theocharis leaned against the wall of the terrace that ran all round his tower and looked towards Paros. Picking up the U-boat commander’s binoculars that he’d bought on the cheap in Hamburg after the war, he trained them on the distant white object in the straits. It was the ferry all right. He hoped to God that his son was on it. Aris had been on Paros overnight. God knows what chaos he’d caused in the bars. At least there hadn’t been any phone calls from the family’s tame policemen over there.

  The old man glanced at the supine form stretched out on the recliner behind him, the woman’s large breasts glistening with tanning oil, and shook his head. What a sight Dhimitra was, her legs splayed and the three Alsatians she adored resting their chins on the edge of the mattress. It had been some time since he’d been able to gain any comfort from her.

  Theocharis gripped his stick and moved out of the sun, his yachting shoes dragging on the tiled floor. He sat down at the table by the pool and ran his hand down the smooth flank of the foot-high sculpture by his wineglass. It wasn’t an original. He had very few Cycladic pieces in the museum and even fewer in his private collection. He’d commissioned this copy from a sculptor on Naxos so he could have physical contact with the island’s history whenever and wherever he wanted, not tha
t he travelled much any more. The Huntsman, it was called. The figure of a Bronze Age warrior, baldric incised into his chest and hand gripping the broken haft of what the experts took to be a sword, was the first Cycladic piece to be unearthed on Trigono. Unfortunately the mining engineer employed by the family who came across it in the 1920s sold it illicitly to a German museum and, despite all Theocharis’s efforts, no other figures had been located on the island. Until recently. At last Eleni Trypani, the archaeologist he’d been subsidising for years, had found some stunning figurines, and her excavation reports were optimistic about locating more. He shook his head. He wasn’t sure that Eleni Trypani was trustworthy. She wasn’t submissive like others who worked for him, and she was becoming distinctly difficult to handle.

  The old man leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through the pure white strands of his shaped beard. He lowered his head, desperately trying to find other subjects to distract him. Now there had been the deaths of the two young people, the island would be sunk in sorrow for weeks. He asked himself if there would ever be an end to the young dying before their time, but he knew the answer well enough. There was no point in hiding from it. It was intrinsic to the place. Trigono was the final destination on the passage the island’s inhabitants worked to death, and many of them arrived prematurely. It had always been the nature of the place. He of all people knew that. He’d realised it since the time he spent on Trigono during the Second World War. The island was a sanctuary of death. The diary he’d started reading only emphasised that.

  The face he’d managed to forget for almost half a century appeared before him again, the face of Lieutenant George Lawrence. Theocharis had fooled himself into believing that the Englishman’s shade had long ago been confined to the underworld like that of Achilles, the great warrior whose name Lawrence had appropriated and whose soul, according to Homer, had been reduced to a status lower than that of the commonest serf. But now the pale ghost had risen, brought back to life by the young woman’s questions. That accursed woman. What irreparable damage had she done him?

  Panos Theocharis twitched his head, trying vainly to dispel the image of a fresh-faced, excitable young man in ill-fitting peasant clothes, and let out a long, low groan that made the trio of dogs prick up their ears.

  Would the things he had done in the war never leave him in peace?

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE ferry-boat Loxandra rounded a prong of low rock on the northern tip of the island. According to Mavros’s guidebook its name was Cape Fonias, The Murderer—it must have been the graveyard of many ships. The outcrop was topped by a large light on metal columns that had been built next to a crumbling pile of masonry. The straits between Paros and Trigono were said to be very unpredictable, and there had been a beacon on the cape for centuries. That was why the whitewashed village was called Faros, Lighthouse, rather than the standard Aegean name of Chora, chief village.

  Mavros watched as the compact capital swung into view, some fishing boats riding at anchor in the shallow bay and others moored at the gently curving quay. The buildings were reflecting the morning sun, making it difficult to take in their contours. They rose up a gentle slope, crowned by the blue dome of what he assumed was the main church, the flat rooftops a jumble of TV aerials, chimneys and washing lines festooned with clothes. The only other area that wasn’t brilliant white was a line of brown stonework beside the church. He presumed this was the wall of the Venetian kastro, the fortified centre that had been impregnable until a gang of pirates in the seventeenth century bribed a merchant to let them in—they had subsequently massacred the inhabitants, including the traitor. The guidebook made the most of the island’s violent history.

  ‘Room? Room?’ a boy offered eagerly as Mavros stepped off the boat.

  He shook his head. He’d been expecting a pack of hawkers to surround the ferry, but most of the downcast people on the quayside had congregated around the Greek passengers. A loud groaning broke out, interspersed by tearful kisses and embraces. The tourists wandered off, pursued by children who’d been delegated the job normally done by their elders. There was one woman dressed in black, probably in her mid- thirties, who was hanging back, her pleasant face directed shyly towards Mavros for a few seconds. He passed by her, needing a caffeine hit before he did anything else, and headed for the first of two cafés. He was hoping that the general mourning hadn’t closed them. There were no customers sitting outside.

  Inside O Glaros, The Seagull, the two tables farthest from the door were occupied. A doleful youth looked up from the bar and pointed to another table at the rear.

  ‘Coffee?’ Mavros asked in English, maintaining his foreign guise. ‘Greek coffee? Sketo?’ There was no way he was willingly going the full tourist route and drinking the foul instant ‘Nes’. Fortunately there were plenty of foreigners who liked to show off their knowledge of Greek culture by ordering the traditional version, so no eyebrows would be raised.

  He glanced around the place. It was decorated in what someone who’d never been beyond Athens imagined was South Sea Island style. There were plastic palm fronds and coconuts hanging from the ceiling and the walls were decorated with posters of perfect beaches that were beginning to peel at the edges. The table to the right behind him was taken by two couples displaying their nationality with a three-day-old copy of the Sun and numerous empty beer bottles. One of the men was wearing a faded Union Jack T-shirt.

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ the Englishman said, his arms glowing red even in the dim light of the café. ‘How long’s this going to go on? Not much bleeding fun sitting around in the dark, is it?’

  ‘Shut up, Norm,’ the younger of the women said, glaring at him. Her blonde hair was held back in a clip. ‘You heard what Thanasi said.’ Her voice dropped to a loud whisper. ‘Two of his cousins were drowned.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, Jane,’ the other woman said, applying mauve lipstick. Her ample breasts were unsupported beneath her top. ‘Thanasi’s doing us a favour. The bars are supposed to stay closed as a mark of respect until after the funerals.’

  ‘When’s that going to be then, Trace?’ the second man asked, lifting his head from a paperback copy of The Guns of Navarone and grabbing a bottle. His eyes were heavily ringed and his clippered head was criss-crossed by a network of scars. ‘I came here for the booze and the discos, not the local colour.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Roy,’ said the blonde woman.

  ‘What do you expect, Jane?’ Roy said with a grin. ‘I’m not smart like you. I dig ditches for a living.’

  ‘You do not!’ Trace said, looking to Norm for support. ‘Installing cables is a highly skilled job. You two have done very well for yourselves.’

  Mavros nodded to the waiter as he brought the coffee and a glass of water. Behind him to the left he could hear the other two occupants of the place carrying on a muttered conversation.

  ‘They’re frightening, those people,’ said the woman, her American accent cultured but her tone sharp. ‘No wonder Britain’s finished as a world power.’

  ‘Give them a break,’ the man said in long-suffering voice. ‘They’re on holiday.’ His fair hair was uncombed, the stubble on his face several days old.

  ‘They’re morons,’ said the woman, her face fleshless and pale. ‘You know, Lance, this has turned out beautifully. Trigono is the most unspoiled island we’ve been to and now there’s to be a double funeral. I couldn’t have asked for more.’

  ‘Yes, you have been lucky, haven’t you, Gretchen?’ the man said, the irony in his voice faint but unmistakable. ‘Think of the material you’ll get out of that.’ He leaned closer to her. ‘We’ll have to be careful about taking photographs, though. Maybe I should go up on the walls of the kastro and…’ He lowered his voice and the rest of his words were inaudible.

  Mavros finished his coffee and headed for the door after paying. Putting on his sunglasses, he took in the harbour scene. The boats were bobbing jauntily in front of the beacon, the imposing bulk of Pa
ros in the background. The scene was enough to raise the spirits even of a committed city-dweller. Then he saw a group of old men gathered in the shade of an awning. Their heads were down and their limbs loose. Mavros dismissed the faint feeling of guilt that eavesdropping always gave him and sauntered past them, one ear cocked.

  ‘Eh, Manoli?’ one was saying. ‘What was your grandson doing down at the end of the island?’

  The man who’d been addressed was silent. As he turned slowly towards his interlocutor, Mavros saw that he had lost an arm. The stump was protruding from his short-sleeved shirt. There were plenty like him on the islands, fishermen who’d resorted to dynamite in the famine years before and after the Second World War.

  ‘How would I know?’ he replied in a gruff voice. ‘Yiangos could handle the trata, you all know that. What happened to him? Maybe the gorgona took him.’ According to the folk tales, encountering the mermaid could be fatal. The old man fixed his companion with a rheumy eye. ‘Or maybe your granddaughter took his mind off the job.’

  Mavros walked past the old men towards the start of the main street, his ears ringing with the voices that had been cracked by years in the salt sea air or on the dusty fields. They were complaining, struggling against the bitter fate that had taken the young people from them, but they were not giving in to it. He was struck by their stoicism.

  He headed up the narrow road past a small supermarket’s wasp-infested fruit display. There were tourist shops on both sides but their doors were closed. Anyone who wanted to buy garish pots and miniature Cycladic houses was out of luck, the storekeepers presumably involved with the preparations for the funerals or showing their respect. Moving up the slope towards the centre of the village, Mavros took in the atmosphere. If he hadn’t known about the tragedy, he’d have found the island’s tiny capital a serene and restful place. The road was paved with irregular stones, the mortar between them picked out with asvesti, white lime. There were few people around, the houses with their blue wooden balconies and shutters as quiet as if they’d been deserted. There was a slightly high smell about the place, the aroma of hibiscus and other plants cut with sewage gas from the cesspits.