Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (29 page)

And so the day of the operation dawned, the sun bright over
the eastern islands and the north wind no more than Force 3
as I looked out of the herdsman’s hut below the ridge. I had
left the hut in the Kambos when the other two arrived, thinking
it best to be out of the way of the islanders who worked the
land. The move meant that I saw less of Maro, but she seemed
to understand. She even came to the cave the night after Rees
and Griffin landed. I don’t think they saw her—she is always
very careful—or heard the cries we couldn’t silence. Ah,
Maro!

I made my final preparations independently of
Agamemnon, using Ajax only to find us a small fishing boat.
Rees was a fisherman before the war and he was quite
capable of getting us to a deserted cove on the south coast
of Paros. Ajax had the boat brought to the inlet of Vathy and
the three of us filed down the track in the afternoon, feeling
the eyes of the Sacred Band men on us from the scrub. Their
officer was waiting for us in the deserted village at the head
of the inlet, his expression grim and disapproving
.

‘
I ask you to reconsider your operation, Lieutenant,’ he
said, taking my arm and drawing me aside. His English is excellent,
the fruit, no doubt, of expensive tutors. ‘The dangers
to the local population must be obvious to you. In a week our
people will have completed their reconnaissance of Naxos
and Amorgos. I will gladly assist you in operations there
.’

‘
And what about the danger of reprisals to the populations
of those islands?’ I demanded. ‘Why are they any less important?
Because your family happens to own an estate on
Trigono?
’

That took the wind from his sails. He glared at me and then
marched away, his face set hard. I don’t think I’ll be having
any more trouble from that quarter
.

Rees and Griffin stored the equipment below deck and we
cast off. The
Ersi
was a battered old hulk, her timbers heavily
scraped and her hull in need of several coats of paint, but
her engine sounded healthy enough and Ajax had managed
to obtain a supply of diesel from the black market on Paros.
The light was fading over the western islands as we steered
between Mavronisi and Aspronisi at the opening of the inlet.
Eschati, the last island, floated like a piece of eggshell on
the darkening waters and we turned to the west, Rees
handling the boat with the light hand of a born seaman. I
felt my heart pound in my chest. What more could a man ask
from life than to sail through the most beautiful archipelago
in the world and wage war on an unjust enemy? The last of
the sun’s rays were turning the sheer cliffs of Trigono a
lambent red and I blinked the tears from my eyes before the
gruff Yorkshireman beside me noticed. I was in my element
at last. I felt then that not even the joy Maro brought me
could compare with this
.

I will not write about the operation in too much detail. I
have already taken a chance by consigning my thoughts to
print. Suffice to say that it was a resounding success. After
mooring the boat in a cut that was almost invisible from land
or sea, we marched through the night to the hillside above
the town and holed up in an overgrown watercourse during
the day. At nightfall we slipped silently down to the outskirts
and flitted like ghosts between the shuttered houses. There
seemed to be no one about and the only danger came from
dogs that growled when they heard unfamiliar footsteps and
from chickens squawking on their roosts. We located the
Italian depot without difficulty and the only tricky moment
came when a sentry walked within a foot of Rees’s crouching
body. But he disappeared round a corner soon enough
and we didn’t see him again. Griffin went after him to make
sure he kept walking away from us. The charges were laid,
the timer set for 4:00 a.m. By then we would be long gone
.

Soon afterwards we moved on to the electricity substation,
which lay to the north of the silent town. There were no
sentries on it and we had no alarms as the corporals repeated
their actions with the explosives. Then we were away into the
darkness, our legs straining as we scaled the flank of the
marble mountain, the gorse tugging at our trousers. We heard
the explosions when we were a mile or so from the boat. Time
passed in a flash and we were soon back on the gentle swell,
carving an arc round the long tail of Oura at the southeastern
point of Trig. The sun came up as we swung into Vathy
inlet and I shook hands with my men. We were home and dry
.

Tomorrow, January 6th, is Twelfth Night. In the Orthodox
Church it is the
Fota,
the blessing of the waters. Ajax has already
taken the trusty
Ersi
back to the village so she isn’t missed
during the festival. The young men dive into the sea to fetch the
cross thrown in by the priest and there is great rejoicing. We are
already celebrating, Griffin having cracked open a bottle of
whisky that he brought, against orders, from base. Maro will
not come tonight as the women will be preparing for the feast
day. I miss her already, but I have enough to console myself with
.

Agamemnon gave us the same stony glare when we
returned, the fool. We have achieved something, we have
struck a blow. What have he and his precious Sacred Band
done to rid Greece of the invader?
 

Mavros struggled to get himself into a sitting position, gasping as the pain in his ribs knifed in. He was still woozy, and the owl’s shrill call that he’d heard before he was attacked was running through his mind like a record that had stuck. The owl. In Greek popular belief, its cry was an evil omen, a harbinger of death. He blinked to dispel the thought. The bedside light in his room at Rena’s was on and he could make out his face in the mirror. It could have been worse. There was a large black swelling above his left eye and a bloody scrape along the line of his jaw on the other side. His head was pounding and he badly needed something to drink. Reaching out for the glass on the cabinet, he misjudged the distance and watched helplessly as it toppled on to the tiled floor.

The crash brought his landlady running.

‘Alex, what are you doing?’ she said, an expression of alarm on her face as she came in the door. ‘You must lie down. The doctor said that—’

‘I’m all right,’ Mavros said, raising an arm and wincing.

‘The doctor said that you might have a—’ The widow broke off and searched for the word. ‘A concussion?’

‘Very good,’ Mavros said with a weak smile. ‘Where did you learn that difficult piece of English vocabulary?’

‘From the dictionary,’ she said, not returning the smile. ‘I looked it up a few minutes ago.’ She frowned and pushed him gently back on to the bed. ‘You should be careful, Alex,’ she warned. ‘You must tell me if you are dizzy so I can call the doctor back.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s drunk, of course. He always is. But he knows his work.’

‘Where are the people who brought me here?’ he asked, swallowing hard as he felt the throb of pain in his head worsen. He wasn’t going to mention it to Rena. She’d probably tie him to the bed till the doctor returned. It was then that he realised he’d been undressed. Had she done that? He glanced over to the chair where his clothes had been draped and saw his satchel. Although it was buckled, he wondered if anyone had looked inside it.

‘The English?’ Rena twitched her nose. ‘I thought they were horrible people when I first saw them. They smelled of beer. But they helped you and they were very friendly. They went away when the doctor came.’

Mavros nodded slowly, the ache still there. ‘I wanted to thank them.’

‘They said some people attacked you, Alex.’ Rena’s eyes were wide. ‘Who could have done that? You must talk to the policeman tomorrow.’

He shook his head and immediately regretted the movement. ‘No, it was only some drunken idiots. I’ll find them myself.’

Rena drew the chair nearer and sat down. ‘Will you? Like you will find Rosa Ozal?’

Mavros caught the sharper tone in her voice. ‘Yes, I hope I’ll find Rosa,’ he said cautiously.

‘
Vre psefti
,’ she said, leaning over him. Liar. ‘Why are you pretending that you’re a foreigner?’ she continued in Greek. ‘Why have you been deceiving me and everyone else? What are you? An undercover cop?’ She used the derogatory term
batsos
.

Shit, Mavros thought, letting his limbs go slack. It looked like he would have to come clean with his landlady. Otherwise she might square up to him as she had to the Dutchman, and he was definitely in no condition to take another beating.

K
YRA
M
ARO
was sitting at the table in her front room, the first light of dawn filtering through the half-closed shutters. The birds were chattering in the morning sun, flitting between the chimneys of the
kastro
and the branches of the fig tree that spread over the water cistern. She could hear the yowls of the skinny cats as they looked up longingly at prey they rarely caught. Some of the old women in the neighbourhood put poison down for them, but Maro never did. She felt sympathy for the outcast creatures, even took them into her home on occasion.

But not this morning. She was taking a chance opening the shutters at all. If any of the villagers peeked in and saw what she had on the table, she’d be shunned even more. But she couldn’t help it. The oil lamp had been burning all night and she couldn’t stand the fumes any longer. And today was his day, today was Tasos’s day. For the rest of the year the poor boy was confined in the box and in the artificial light of her bedroom. He needed to feel the sun’s warmth once a year, he needed to be brought back to the living world.

Maro looked down at the pile of bones she’d carefully arranged on the table, the misshapen skull on top. Her eyes filled with tears and she extended a twisted hand, put the tips of her fingers on the discoloured surface of her son’s head. Tradition said that if the bones came up black or unclean at exhumation, the deceased was a sinner or a vampire. But no one else knew the condition of Tasos’s remains. She’d been forced to have him buried in the disused cemetery at Myli in the Kambos. Five years later the priest and all the village women had refused to attend the exhumation, her brother Manolis made sure of that. So Maro had dug her son up unattended, had sung the laments for him on her own. Afterwards, instead of consigning his box to the ossuary, she had taken it back to her house under a blanket on the donkey’s back. Tasos was always with her and he was even closer to her on this day, October 2nd, the day of his birth.

‘Ach, Taso,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You were blameless, you didn’t deserve your fate. It was my fault, it was the war that eats men and families then spits them out on the ground.’ She moved her fingers across the table and felt the small heap of dried pomegranate seeds.

‘Anastasios, I called you,’ she continued, her voice cracking, ‘even though the name wasn’t handed down in our family. Anastasios after the resurrection, because I knew you would not be with me for long. But I never celebrate your feast day at Easter—no, there is too much joy and hope at that time.’ She bent her head and let out a great sob. ‘And I know you will never come back, even in the twisted form that was your unfair fate. Today is your day, your birthday. The foreigners celebrate that more than we do, so Tzortz told me. He had his birthday during that terrible January.’ She was caught up in the throes of weeping, only swallowing her cries when she heard footsteps in the street. She hobbled over to the window and drew the shutters to as the black figure of one of her neighbours passed the house. There was no call, no offer of help. They were all waiting for her to die.

‘Ach, Taso,’ she said, touching the bones again. ‘You were twenty when you left me, your body that of a man but your mind a smiling child’s. The doctor said you would die before you were a year old, but you stayed much longer and I loved you even more for that.’ She picked up the skull and held it close to her withered breasts. ‘My son,’ she whispered, ‘come back to me.’ She looked over the pile of bones at the framed photograph, her eyes narrowing in the gloom. ‘And you, Tzortz, you must come back too. You said we were immortal and in one way you were right.’ She sobbed again. ‘But only for as long as I am here to remember you.’

And suddenly Maro was back on the flanks of Vigla, the evening wind tugging her jet-black hair and her young legs traversing the stony ground with ease. The sun had been swallowed by the western sea an hour earlier and her lover would be waiting for her in their secret cave. She had taken a great risk by slipping out of the house during the celebrations. At the festival of Epiphany one of her cousins had found the cross in the waters of the harbour and the family was rejoicing. Manolis and the other men had been drinking
tsikoudhia
all day, giving her the opportunity to leave unnoticed.

‘Stop,’ said a low male voice to her left. ‘Where are you going?’ The unmistakable sound of a revolver being cocked followed the words.

She waited as the man came out of the bushes with a faint rustle. In the dim light of the rising moon she made out the features of the landowner’s son.

‘Where are you going, girl?’ he repeated when she kept silent, his voice harsher.

‘I have a message for the English officer,’ she said, staring into his dark-ringed eyes.

‘Give it to me,’ Panos Theocharis said. ‘I will take it.’

She shook her head, her heart pounding. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust you.’ She knew such words, directed by a peasant girl to a rich family’s heir, would sting him. Before he could react she darted away behind an outcrop of rock, leading him in the opposite direction from her destination.

She soon lost the captain’s footfall, her knowledge of the terrain much better than his. After waiting for a long time, she moved on towards the cave, taking a roundabout route through the steep watercourses on the western slopes. But still she failed to approach the cave unnoticed.

The Englishman with the frightening eyes swung down in front of her from the top of a boulder, a knife between his teeth. He took it out and held it against her throat and she felt her knees give way, so intense was the way he was looking at her as he bore down.

Then she heard Tzortz’s voice, low but angry. Her attacker stepped back and disappeared into the night after they exchanged some words.

‘I’m sorry, my love,’ he said, drawing her close. ‘I told him to stay near the hut, but he does what he wants. Don’t worry, he won’t tell anyone you were here.’

Maro told him about her meeting with Theocharis as they moved towards the cave.

‘Never fear,’ he said. ‘We’ll think of a story. We’ll say you heard some news from Paros.’ He turned up the lamp and looked at her anxiously. ‘Have you heard anything?’

She stared at him, seeing how ravaged his expression was. She shook her head. ‘No, Tzortz. It’s the
Fota
. Everyone is celebrating.’

He shook his head. ‘Not the Italians. I’ve had a message on the wireless. The operators at base intercepted an enemy transmission.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘It seems that some of the enemy were killed during our operation.’

‘My God,’ she said. ‘What will they do?’

He raised his shoulders. ‘Arrest people on Paros? Search the neighbouring islands for us? Take hostages here? I don’t know, Maro.’

She went to him and put her arms around his thin frame, feeling him shake. He was a boy again, all his soldier’s zeal gone. ‘Maybe they won’t follow you to Trigono,’ she heard herself say, the words ringing hollow in her ears. ‘Maybe they’ll think the attackers came from far away and sailed back there afterwards.’

He nodded slowly, tightening his arms around her. ‘Do you know what day it is?’ he said shyly. ‘It’s my birthday. I’m twenty-five years old.’ He inclined his head towards the tins of food and the flask laid out on the blanket. ‘I was going to celebrate on my own, but now you’re here…’

Maro kissed him, pressed him down to the ground. They made love with more passion than she had ever experienced; she thought she was going to die when he came into her and the world broke into tiny pieces, smaller than the grains of sand that were washed by the restless waters around the island.

It was as if they both knew that their dream would soon be over. The years of stone had already started to harden around them.

It was awkward, it took some time, but Mavros managed to convince Rena that he wasn’t the great deceiver she had taken him for. The fact that it was after three in the morning and they were both yawning probably helped. He had some business cards secreted inside the cover of his mobile phone and one of them seemed to reassure her more than his protestations.

‘I am disappointed in you, Alex,’ she complained. ‘You pretended you were a tourist and you spoke only English to me.’

‘I
am
a tourist,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never been to Trigono before.’

Her expression was disapproving. ‘But you are not truly foreign.’

‘Okay, I’m half Scottish and I’m half Greek. So I told you half a lie.’

She dismissed his smile with a stern stare. It was only after she’d examined his card and asked about his interest in Rosa Ozal that the atmosphere lightened. Although his head was aching, he tried to keep the conversation going. He had the feeling that Rena was about to open up to him. But she noticed he was struggling and forced him to take a pill that the doctor had left. ‘We’ll talk about this again in the morning,’ she’d said, pulling the sheet over his upper torso. ‘Go to sleep now, liar.’ Her brief smile diluted the annoyance in her voice.

Mavros woke feeling slightly less pulverised. His body still gave howls of pain when he moved in certain ways, but his head was clear. He decided to leave the five-day stubble, the livid red patch on his jaw putting him off shaving. After a cold shower he pulled on his jeans, feeling the plastic cover of his ID card bend against his buttock. Rena had obviously noticed it when she was undressing him. In future he’d have to be more careful when he played the undercover game.

‘Good morning,’ Rena called in Greek as he walked into the courtyard. A concerned look appeared on her face. ‘Are you all right? Sit down. I will make you coffee.’

Mavros allowed her to pander to him, watching the birds fuss in the bougainvillaea, the purple flowers with their yellow inner parts soaking up the sun.

It was after she’d brought him a Greek coffee and a plate of home-made
koulouria
, ring-shaped biscuits, that he asked her how she’d felt about Rosa. The photographs he’d seen in the folder under her pillow showed they’d been close. It was time to be more direct with his landlady. The attack on him last night meant that he had to make rapid progress with the Ozal case as well as identify who had laid into him before another attempt was made.

Rena looked at him thoughtfully, one hand at her throat above the top button of her black blouse. ‘How I felt about her?’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘I know you have been in my bedroom,’ she said slowly. ‘You left the door open.’

Mavros felt his cheeks redden. ‘I had to—’

The widow raised a hand. ‘Don’t give me excuses. I want you to tell me one thing and then I will help you. Who are you working for?’

Mavros should have kept his client’s name confidential but he knew he had to prove that he was being straight with her. So he told her about Deniz Ozal, not mentioning the Turkish-American’s apparent lack of concern about Rosa’s disappearance. He hadn’t heard from his client since the call from Istanbul airport.

Rena shook her head. ‘Rosa mentioned her mother, but she never said anything about a brother.’

‘She went to Turkey after she was here,’ Mavros said. ‘She sent a postcard from there saying she had met a man.’

Rena’s eyes widened. ‘A man?’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘I wonder.’ She looked away, her gaze fixed on the wellhead. ‘Do you know how difficult it is for a widow on a small island like this, Mr Private Detective?’ she said in a low voice. ‘This isn’t Athens where you can do anything you like behind closed shutters and doors.’ She glanced back at him. ‘Here, they know what you’re doing—or they think they know what you’re doing, which can be worse—even if you put a hundred locks on your house.’

He nodded, concealing his surprise. He hadn’t expected her to open up so easily. Then again, maybe it was easier to do so to a stranger. He decided to press harder. ‘You’re still a young woman. You…how shall I put this? You have desires.’

Rena lowered her head. ‘Yes, Alex, I have desires. I have many desires. You see…you see, I discovered that I am attracted to men and to women. I never knew about liking women until I started renting rooms, after the worm died.’ This description of her husband made Mavros blink. Now he could see why there were no photos of him displayed in the house. But why did she keep the crumpled one under her pillow along with that of her parents?

‘Rosa,’ she continued, the words beginning to flow, ‘she showed me things I had never imagined. She made me laugh again, she made me cry from the beauty of it. No man ever made me do that.’

‘And then she left without saying goodbye?’

The widow nodded, eyes still down. ‘I don’t know why she did that. I went out to the fields one day and when I came back her things were gone. There was no note on the table, no message with the neighbour.’ She turned to the house on her right. ‘Not that the old gossip would have given me it. She thinks I’m a witch.’ She gave a contemptuous snort.

‘Did…’ Mavros hesitated, remembering the fury she’d displayed with Rinus. ‘Did Rosa like men as well?’

Rena’s tongue played across her lips. ‘She liked to go out in the evenings. I told you she went to the pervert Dutchman’s bar.’ She bowed her head again. ‘Yes, I think she may have liked men too.’

Mavros leaned across the table, swallowing a gasp as his ribs creaked painfully. ‘Does that explain why you were fighting with Rinus?’

‘Over Rosa?’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘Is that what you think?’ She gave a laugh and then choked on it. ‘No, I have other problems with the Dutchman.’

Mavros waited, but Rena didn’t elaborate. Did she know about the drug dealing? He didn’t want to mention what he’d discovered about that until he spoke to the barman again.

‘I miss her,’ she said. ‘We were only together for a few days but I miss her still.’ She shook her head. ‘And then it happened again a week ago.’

He turned an ear towards her, unsure that he’d heard correctly. ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

She looked straight at him. ‘It happened again. A woman who was staying here, a woman I…I became friendly with left without a word.’