1 The Assassins' Village (24 page)

Act 3

Chapter 34.  Present day.

Which of you have done this?

Macbeth. Act 3 Scene 4

If the village was in turmoil before, then this latest news about Kristiakis’ suicide had them all reeling. Everyone was asking the same questions
. One murder, and now a second death in the village. Had Kristiakis been the one who’d killed Leslie after all? Had he felt so guilty that he killed himself out of remorse?
The village tongues wagged and the local coffee shops did a roaring trade. Their owners rubbed their hands in glee as they helped matters by adding ‘fuel to the fire’.

~~~

If this was so, then it gave the police inspector in charge of the case a problem. With a blinding headache making him decidedly bad-tempered, he mused over his new dilemma. He would now have to prove the case without a prime suspect. Or, he simply took Kristiakis’ suicide as a statement and concluded that ‘justice’ had been done. So far, there was no evidence of a suicide note, but all the locals were pointing the finger at him. (Almost everyone had a nephew who was in the police force and there was a lot of loose talk.)

The police had a long record covering Kristiakis from the years of his youthful EOKA connections to the present day. He had always been a hothead. During the last few days the inspector had made good progress with their enquiries. Firstly, he discovered from Bernard, ‘Kristiakis threatened Leslie over some incident that occurred years ago.’

This perhaps explained some of his animosity towards non-nationals. More recently, ‘Kristiakis had discharged his hunting rifle uncomfortably near Leslie and I when we were out walking,’ Sonja had said.

She’d been quite emphatic that it had been Kristiakis, but when asked she had no idea why he had done it. All the clues added up and they culminated in Kristiakis’ arrest earlier.

The police couldn’t
prove
Kristiakis had tied Leslie up; they could only assume it. Cypriot forensics was still a pretty basic science, but as everything was pointing towards his guilt, it all fitted quite neatly.

The inspector listened as the villagers got heated about it all in the coffee shops. As usual they were the experts; they knew all the answers.

The inspector went over his notes, wishing they would all be quiet. His head was throbbing and he wandered away from the row going on around him. Now he could think.

Kristiakis was out hunting and witnessed the row between Leslie and Alicia. As a hunter he would have carried a sharp hunting knife and quite probably string or twine to truss up any fowl or hare he shot. As soon as Alicia had left, Kristiakis made his move towards the immobile Leslie. Leslie had been alive up to that point according to Alicia, and of course the policeman didn’t forget Tony’s testament.

Alicia vehemently denied tying Leslie up. The inspector had it all written down in her statement.

She’d argued with him. ‘I’d hardly have gone after Leslie with evil intentions, would I? Besides, where would I have got whatever it was that he was tied up with?’ She reluctantly agreed however, when the inspector questioned her that she had left him in pain.

‘I hoped someone else would come along to help him.’ She said.

The police inspector retorted. ‘Leaving an injured man is itself a crime! And even if you did not deliver the fatal blow, you are the instigator in this whole sorry affair.’

Seething, he wanted to make sure he could charge her with something.

~~~

It would’ve been so easy for Kristiakis to look down at Leslie and gloat over his injuries. The inspector privately thought it hardly mattered if he had tied Leslie up or not. He was now dead himself, and judging by the heavy whiff of alcoholic fumes lingering on him, he had been insanely drunk when stepping off the stool in the barn of the old house.

Privately and unprofessionally, the inspector decided that with the two of them dead it was good riddance to a lot of trouble.

He concluded they were a strange lot that lived in the mountains. Kristiakis’ sister certainly was an odd one; he couldn’t work out if she was half-witted or not.

She’d eventually told him. ‘I found him hanging from the rafter. He was dead. I tried to get him down. I cut the rope.’

The inspector found it almost impossible to get the full story out of her. She wouldn’t meet his eye, speaking in either monosyllables or short disjointed sentences.

As far as he could ascertain, Antigone stumbled on Kristiakis late that evening and he was dead when she entered the bakery. She acted vaguely, and the policeman hadn’t known if she really understood all that had happened.

When asked. ‘I do not know any more,’ she said.

The inspector noted the dried blood on her hands and skirt from her brother’s neck wound. She’d certainly been in contact with the body and judging from her slight build there was no way she could have got him down without cutting the rope. Except it wasn’t rope really, but some sort of tough twine. He was pretty certain it was similar to the type farmers used for tying up their hay bales.

His thoughts returned to Kristiakis’ sister’s reactions.  She was most certainly in shock. She would have felt awful on finding her brother and then having to fetch a sharp knife to cut through the line. He shook his head at the thought, praying nothing like this would ever happen to him. Poor woman, she was going to be in a state when it finally sunk in and she realised just what had happened.

There was no doubt; it all seemed perfectly logical when you thought it through. Kristiakis had been Leslie’s killer. He’d have to write up a good report, but he could see no opposition to his summing up.

He supposed he would have to let the British woman know she was no longer a prime suspect. But she was guilty in one respect. Leaving Leslie injured. Cypriot law followed British law, and the inspector knew the statement of murder off by heart: ‘
The unlawful killing of a human being by another human being with malice forethought…either expressed or implied.’
In her case, at the very least, she had been reckless. It would be up to the prosecution to prove
Mens Rae
– a guilty state of mind.

Giving a small smile of smug contentment, Detective Inspector Andreas Christopopodoulou had solved another case – and practically all by himself. He could almost taste and smell the promotion.

Chapter 35.  Diana

The air-drawn dagger.

Macbeth. Act 3 Scene 4

Diana was feeling listless and depressed. Sadly, she knew this reflected in the progress of her novel. After re-reading a couple of the latest chapters the story was just too improbable. Did people really think and act as she’d written, or was it all too far-fetched?

Steve was very down to earth about it all. As he entered her work den she’d thrown down her pencil in frustration and sat cradling her head in her hands. At first he’d not said a word. It was only when she moaned that she was ‘giving up for the day before even starting’, that he voiced his opinion.

‘Darling, we all have off days. If you just sat and wrote without the occasional hiccup, surely you wouldn’t get those flashes of inspiration. Taking breaks, be it minutes or days, must refresh your imagination. Surely this brings another slant to the story? It doesn’t
have
to be all written down and finished in five minutes, does it? Usually, you have stacks of patience. What’s the rush?’ Standing behind her chair, Steve rubbed the back of her neck affectionately. Her body looked tense and stiff.

‘I suppose so. You are right, I guess.’

She gave another groan, stretching her arms above her head, before turning to face him.

‘I usually am!’ he grinned smugly. ‘Besides, what’s for lunch I’m starving?’

‘Ha! So you’re really just trying to come up with a good enough reason for me to down my pen and put on my little wifey pinny, ha?’ Standing up, she stretched again and grimaced at her stiffness. She had sat still for so long.

Steve laughed good-naturedly. ‘The image of you being
just a housewife
isn’t convincing. You get bored after spending a couple of hours house-cleaning. But there again, wearing
just
an apron does have its own certain appeal.’

He caught her as she made a half-hearted attempt to slap him and nuzzled his face against her neck. ‘You smell nice. How about we go and -?’

‘Don’t push it,’ she giggled as his arms tightened around her. ‘But, you are right. There is no rush to get the story finished except,’ she paused and looked up at him. ‘Every so often I feel that there is a finite timeline in the story itself. Oh, I can’t explain it very well. But I feel that there is a point by which it must all be put down on paper. Almost as if time is running out. It’s weird. Sometimes there is something, a force perhaps, that is guiding my hand, telling me what to write. Then at other times there’s nothing.  I get just a blank feeling.’ Her pretty face looked flushed and tired. A small frown wrinkled her brow as she tried to explain how she felt.

As he listened, a worried look crossed Steve’s face. ‘You often become lost and tied up in whatever you’re working on.  But I agree, this time, you seem to be more involved in your story than ever. And you’ve not been feeling too well either.’

To hide his concern he made a suggestion. ‘How about we go out somewhere to eat? Save us making something for lunch. And I think a change of scenery away from the village and its entire trauma will do us good.

Di thought for a moment and shook her head.

‘No thanks. Eating here is just fine. Besides we have masses of salad that must be eaten before it spoils in this heat.’

He gave a groan. ‘Please, not more salad! What I would give for a burger and thick greasy chips like the good old days. It’s all very well trying to live healthily, but just because you’ve decided that you’re getting chubby from sitting down then I have to suffer from eating lashings of the green stuff. It’s not fair!

‘Remember when you worked in London? Those long boozy lunches in the eighties and early nineties. And all those rich pasta dishes, curries and meat pies to help soak up the alcohol. I know they seemed like fantastically good times, but things have changed. Toiling in the City took a demanding toll on you and your colleagues. Come on, admit it. You’d would sooner live here, working part-time when you felt like it, than wasting hours sitting on the train commuting up to town.’

They visited the UK three or four times a year, and considered they’d the best of both worlds. The cost of living in Cyprus was cheaper overall, they’d many more friends than when they lived in England, masses of things to do and the time to do it in. Best of all, the weather was a trillion times better.

Of course it wasn’t a bed of roses all the time and sometimes they could have wrung a few of the locals’ necks for them. But, as they reminded themselves, this was Cyprus, the near East, and things happened differently. The Cypriots were not European; their demeanour and outlook on life was entirely different.

He gave a small sigh as if to say. ‘You’re right. Salad for lunch it is, and I’ll be grateful for it.’

~~~

‘I thought I’d pop down and see Alicia later on,’ Di said finishing the last of her avocado and yoghurt. ‘Mmm, that salmon was delicious. Would you like some more salad?’

‘No thanks. I’m nearly full. Why are you going to see her?’

He was curious. They usually only saw Alicia during rehearsals, the rest of the time she kept mostly to herself and her huge menagerie of malodorous cats. She remained something of an enigma to most people, only socialising with Yanoulla and Sonja. Tony kept on about her strange religious sect, but as it didn’t affect them, Steve ignored him. Alicia was entitled to live her private life as she wished.

‘Well, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re supposed to have a rehearsal later on in the week. Karl rang me earlier wondering if it was still on. He’s a bit loath to contact Alicia direct as he thought she’d be in a bit of a state after being taken in for questioning. Anyone would be, but you know how she is.’

Steve did. But at the same time, for some inexplicable reason he didn’t
know
her. He could well imagine her being very upset over what had happened. And yet, at other times she had this inner calmness, a detachment and lack of involvement with people that made her appear completely unfazed by anything. She was a mystery and on occasion made Steve feel uncomfortable. Others would have called it ‘spooky’. He’d rather Di didn’t go and see her at all. Someone would soon be round to tell them what was happening drama-wise. But, he had a sneaky suspicion Di had another motive. He suspected she was only going so she could be downright nosey.

‘Go if you must, but don’t get involved. Karl’s lucky, not living in the village. At least he’s been spared all this. And I don’t blame him for not contacting Alicia.’

Diana gave him a hard look. He sounded and looked irritable. ‘What?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Well,’ after a short pause. ‘We don’t really know her, do we? You must admit she is a bit strange.’ Steve helped himself to a morsel of salmon.

‘Yes. But I’m sure she’s harmless. She is completely without guile. Isn’t she? I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.’

‘We don’t
know
her!’ he emphasised. He then took a softer tone. ‘Look, the police questioned her. Just what was her involvement? Leslie supposedly had an accident after their row, but Alicia didn’t raise the alarm to get help. She bloody well left him, and later on someone else finished him off with a butcher’s knife.
So she said
. Whatever she’s done, it’s not very nice is it? At the very least she left an elderly, injured man out in the blistering sun and did absolutely nothing. Surely that is a crime itself, before you even consider the actual knifing.’

‘But Kristiakis did that –’

‘We don’t
know
for sure, and as
he’s
now dead, it will probably take a lot longer to prove just who did kill Leslie. The whole thing’s queer apart from being bloody gruesome if you ask me. I know what you’re like. You just rush in without any thought. I don’t want you getting involved. Not until it’s all sorted out. Do you understand?’ Steve’s voice reached a new level and he looked serious.

‘Yes, and of course I won’t, silly. I only want to check about the rehearsal. I did promise Karl that I’d ask. He doesn’t get on too well with Alicia at the best of times, and right now he’s feeling a bit awkward and confused. For all we know the play may be postponed indefinitely. By talking to Alicia I can at least let Karl and everyone else know just what is happening.’

Steve gave her a disbelieving look, shaking his head. She’d do exactly what she wanted whatever he said. Right at this moment he’d feel much happier with his wife safe by his side than have her wandering around with a murderer possibly still at large. He continued thinking out aloud.

‘There is something that is still bugging me about Leslie’s death. I know it’s horrible to dwell on it, but I can’t get it out of my mind. I lie awake last night thinking about it. When we found him with his throat cut, we assumed that it was with a knife and by the hand of a man. You know, men being that much stronger etcetera.’

‘Yes, go on.’ Steve had her complete attention.

‘Well, the person must have been incredibly strong to have practically taken his head off with a knife and the knife must have been razor sharp and probably very large. So far, we don’t know if the police have even found the murder weapon.’

‘No we don’t. What’s your point Steve?’

‘I suppose, I still find it hard to believe that someone had so much hate in them to mutilate Leslie quite so much.’ Steve looked confused and sounded upset.

Di stood and went over to him. She put her arms around his waist and leant down, her head resting on his shoulder.

‘You are such a kind man. I know you’re finding all this difficult to come to terms with, me too.’

~~~

Di stared at the contents of the room she had entered. She’d never been inside Alicia’s house before today, and hadn’t a clue what she might find. Consequently, she was hardly prepared for the haphazard scene before her.

Multicoloured rugs and throws, silken woven tapestries and cushions of all colours and sizes were spread about the room. Dark wooden tables and squat chests of drawers were littered with brass bells and candlesticks, incense burning joss sticks and fat white candles. Along one wall, a huge dresser was almost covered with hanging bunches of dried herbs, and a whole row of small labelled jars that on closer inspection were found to contain herbal remedies, medicines, balms and ointments. Around the walls, there hung a cornucopia of artefacts. Leather belts, tasselled whips and brass plate, all jostling for space. There was an almost overwhelming smell of incense and pungency from a thick salve that Alicia was in the process of bottling. Diana looked on, amazed and speechless.

Inexplicably, Alicia seemed to be expecting her, and watched in silence while she took in all the colour and objects that were thrown together in a delightful chaotic fashion. Most items Di recognised from visiting local Indian furniture shops. But, there were some things that were decidedly bizarre.

Alicia took time explaining the more unusual pieces that you possibly wouldn’t find in the town shops. Carved teak bowls, sandalwood boxes with secret compartments, painted shrines and a very ugly candle stand. In one alcove a recycled teak panel had been made into coat hooks that were hung with anything but coats. Diana looked at a
kharal
, a wooden bowl that had been used for carrying opium water, wooden printing blocks, lacquered ornaments, terracotta wall adornments and
dokra -
brass scrap. That Alicia had travelled and lived in India for some time was apparent.

‘This is all amazing. I had no idea. Wow! Some of these things are fabulous,’ Di exclaimed. ‘
What
is that?’ She pointed to a strange looking piece of equipment that was half-hidden behind a life size figure of a gruesome looking, four-armed woman. The object had a wooden handle about eight inches long and with two inches in diameter. The wood looked like mahogany. Its surface was octagonal and there were many deep grooves cut into it for an easier grip. A braided rope was attached to each end.

Alicia’s eyes followed in the direction where Diana was pointing. ‘That is Kali, the Hindu Mother Goddess. She is the full picture of Universal Power. She represents Mother, the Benign and Mother, the Terrible. She creates and nourishes; she kills and destroys. She is good and bad but in reality she is neither. God is neither good nor bad but both. God is beyond the pair of opposites which constitute this relative existence,’ she said in a quiet voice, her eyes slightly closed as if she was softly chanting a mantra. It was mildly hypnotic and soporific.

‘Oh.’ For a moment Diana was nonplussed. She gave her head a little shake to dispel her sudden lassitude. She certainly hadn’t expected Alicia to go off into a semi-trance. What a strange woman she thought.

‘That’s very interesting, but what I really meant was, that wooden handled thing behind the statue.’

There was a slight hesitation before Alicia answered her. ‘That? Oh it’s a Punjab Lasso.’

‘Punjab Lasso? I think I’ve heard of it but I don’t know where from or why. It looks slightly sinister, almost like a whip. What’s it used for?’

‘Oh, they’re not used any more. Now, what do you think about this?’ Passing a lacquered rolling pin over to her, Alicia asked. ‘Don’t you think it’s pretty?’