Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (30 page)

Mavros was thinking of the other woman in the photo upstairs, the one he’d seen in Eleni’s album as well. ‘Who was she?’ But the words were scarcely out of his mouth when the doorbell rang.

Rena got up, shrugging helplessly, and admitted the English couples who had rescued him.

Panos Theocharis was sitting in front of the widescreen television in his study on the first floor of the tower, fingering the handset. The images on the screen were scanning forward at speed, the bare flesh a blur of colours and movements. He pressed ‘Play’ and watched as the blur took solid shape. The woman was on her hands and knees, breasts hanging and quivering as she was penetrated from behind. Her hands and feet were bound so the man had his legs on either side of her narrow hips. As he climaxed, he turned to the camera and looked straight at it, his eyes fixed and his mouth half open. It was formed in a rictus that contained no hint of pleasure. Theocharis knew how he felt. He couldn’t even get hard any more, could do no more than watch other people having sex, but at least it was a distraction—a distraction from the diary that was locked in his desk. Although the book was out of sight, he couldn’t get the English lieutenant’s words out of his mind. Cloying and sentimental they may have been, even arrogant at times, but they were making him feel the shame he’d always managed to block out until now. First there had been guilt and fear, now there was shame.

The door opened and Dhimitra came in, her heels clicking on the varnished floor.

‘Mother of God, Pano,’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you watching that filth again?’

Theocharis swivelled his head slowly towards his wife. ‘Filth? You used to work in the industry, didn’t you?’ He gave a bitter smile.

‘Only when the singing didn’t pay enough,’ she replied, sitting at the far end of the leather sofa from him and picking up a fashion magazine.

‘And when your narcotics bill mounted up,’ Theocharis said, turning the video off.

Dhimitra held her eyes on the glossy photograph of a model in a short skirt. ‘Well, you saved me from that life, Pano.’

He turned to her. ‘Did I? I hope you haven’t managed to find someone on the island to supply you, Dhimitra. I’d be extremely disappointed.’

The edge to his voice made her sit up straight. She put down the magazine and faced him. ‘I’m not using, Pano.’ She stretched out her arms, forearms upwards, the sleeves of her red silk blouse riding up.

‘That proves nothing,’ her husband said, running his eyes up her torso.

‘You want me to strip?’ Dhimitra asked hoarsely.

He nodded slowly. ‘Why not? You have your own room and you never come to my bed nowadays. And not even I would carry out an inspection for track marks in front of the servants.’

She stood up, her lips set in a tight line. She stepped out of her Versace skirt and shrugged off her blouse, then unhooked her lacy black bra. She pulled down the matching knickers in a quick movement. ‘Satisfied?’

Theocharis had come closer, his thin shanks rubbing along the sofa, to examine her ankles, the backs of her knees and her thighs. ‘No,’ he said, his bony fingers resting on the lips of her sex. He leaned forward and took some time to finish with that area, then he moved on to her armpits and lifted her breasts to look at the skin beneath them.

Dhimitra’s breathing was shallow, her face taut.

‘That surgery I paid so much for in Switzerland enhanced your bosom very successfully, didn’t it?’ her husband said, sitting back. ‘Yes, it seems you’re clean.’

‘Fuck you, Pano,’ she said. ‘Even sticking your fingers inside me didn’t make your old cock stiff, did it?’ She started pulling on her clothes, jerking her head round as the door opened without warning.

‘Oh, excuse me,’ said Aris, a grin spreading across his heavy face. ‘It never occurred to me that sex still played a part in your relationship.’

‘Be quiet and come over here,’ the old man said. ‘You, stay,’ he said as his wife started to move away, her blouse still open. ‘The three of us need to talk.’

Aris pulled a chair in front of the sofa, the flesh of his thighs wobbling beneath his shorts. He was wearing the green shade on his head even though the sun was kept from the room by blinds. ‘Talk?’ he asked, suddenly less sure of himself. ‘What about?’

Theocharis waited until Dhimitra had sat down, his eyes directed out of the high French windows towards the white mass of the village in the distance. The surface of the sea in the straits beyond was cutting up, the waves whipped by a strengthening northerly wind. ‘What about?’ he repeated, glaring at his son and then his wife. ‘This man Alex, the one who calls himself Cochrane. I have made an interesting discovery about him.’ He pointed to his desk. ‘Fetch me that black file, Ari.’

His son clumped across the room and returned, handing over a document wallet. ‘He’s just a tourist, for Christ’s sake,’ Aris said under his breath.

‘I’m afraid he isn’t,’ Theocharis said, taking a photograph out and holding it up to them. ‘Do you recognise the couple he’s with? I know it’s an old photo, but the youth is plainly Alex.’

‘Christ and the Holy Mother,’ said Dhimitra. ‘That’s Mavros the communist, isn’t it?’

‘Very good,’ her husband replied. ‘And the woman is his wife, Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou. The name Cochrane meant something to me the moment he said it, but I couldn’t place it until yesterday.’

‘So what?’ Aris demanded, his brow furrowed. ‘So the guy’s father was a communist. Are we supposed to torture him like your friends the Colonels did with his kind during the dictatorship?’

Theocharis turned on him. ‘Shut up, you fool. This has nothing to do with politics.’ Then he ran a hand through his pointed white beard. ‘Though maybe that is a way of tackling it.’ He thought for a few moments then focused on his son again. ‘The point is that he is not just a tourist as he pretends. He speaks Greek and he holds dual Greek and British nationality.’

Dhimitra was staring at him. ‘Why the pretence?’ She moved closer to her husband. ‘How do you know about his background, Pano?’

‘I was suspicious of him from the beginning. Remember, he talked Eleni Trypani into showing him the dig. That made me sure he was a thief or a dealer. I invited him to the tower to gauge his reaction to the collection, but that was inconclusive.’ Theocharis gave his wife a scathing look. ‘Mainly because, despite the fact that I asked you to be welcoming, you were interested only in making a spectacle of yourself.’

Dhimitra stuck her chin forward. ‘You should have told me why you wanted my help.’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ the old man said, holding up a photocopied sheet. The printed script was blurred but legible.

‘Jesus,’ Aris said, straining forward. ‘He’s a private dick.’ His expression had darkened. ‘That’s all we need.’

‘How did you get this?’ Dhimitra asked. ‘It’s a Public Order document.’

‘One of my people here obtained this and his ID card last night. Mavros doesn’t know they disappeared for a time.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Aris said. ‘What’s he doing here?’

Theocharis stood up and took his stick from the end of the sofa. ‘Ostensibly, as you both know, he’s trying to locate Rosa Ozal.’ He looked at them in turn. ‘More disturbing as far as I’m concerned, his interest in the dig suggests that he may in reality be investigating illicit antiquities trading, either freelance or on behalf of one of the ministries. I’ve got my people in Athens checking in the relevant offices.’

Aris’s expression was less sombre now. ‘It sounds to me like it’s time this Alex Mavros received a dose of pain to keep him in his place.’ He got to his feet and stood by his father. ‘Want me to organise something?’

‘I have already organised a dose of pain, as you put it,’ Theocharis said, keeping his eyes off his son. ‘It didn’t run as smoothly as I hoped, but I don’t think Mavros will be asking any more questions for a day or two. Now it’s time we discovered what Eleni has told him. My tame archaeologist has been behaving rather erratically in recent weeks.’

‘Shall I bring her to the cellar tonight?’ Aris said, his tone avid.

His father shook his head. ‘No, we’ll handle it differently. We still need her, at least in the short term.’ He glanced at Dhimitra. ‘I presume you’ll want to be involved. I know how much you dislike Eleni.’

The former singer nodded, her fingers with their painted nails wrapped tightly around the old man’s fleshless arm.

Mavros finally managed to get rid of the English tourists by feigning a worse headache than he had. He was grateful to them, but their noisy bonhomie was not what he wanted right now, and the darkness meant they had seen nothing that would identify his attackers. They didn’t look particularly bothered that he wasn’t going to involve the police. His main concern was to talk to Rena again before she left for the fields. She had already put bread and olives and a flask of water into a wicker basket.

As his rescuers headed for the door, the woman Jane giving him a questioning look, he remembered what they had been saying about Rinus in the restaurant. Had Roy made good his threat to avenge his woman’s honour?

‘Did you ever get to the Astrapi last night?’ he called after them.

‘Nah, mate,’ Roy replied, running his hand over his shaved and scarred scalp. ‘But we’ll be there tonight. You make sure you join us. There’s going to be some fun.’ He laughed in a worrying way and then disappeared into the passage.

It looked like Rinus’s escape would only be temporary.

‘I must go,’ Rena said. ‘Melpo is waiting for me.’

‘Melpo?’ Mavros said, trying to place the name.

‘My donkey,’ the widow said with a smile. ‘Well, the donkey I use. You are losing your memory, Mr Investigator.’

Mavros got up from his chair. ‘Now I remember. You keep her out at the old man’s farm.’ He extended a hand towards her. ‘Wait, Rena, we must talk more.’

She stared at him doggedly and then put down her basket. ‘All right. But not for long.’ She came back to the table under the pergola and sat down.

‘This woman,’ Mavros said. ‘The other one you said left suddenly. Who was she?’

A cloud seemed to pass over Rena’s face. ‘Ach, Alex. I don’t want to talk about her. She…she was here and now she’s gone.’ She bowed her head.

Mavros remembered his mother saying something similar about his father and his brother, Andonis, but he suppressed the thought. ‘What was her name?’ he asked gently.

Rena kept silent and then raised her eyes to his. ‘Liz,’ she said. ‘Elizabeth.’ She pronounced the English version of the name carefully, then got up and went into the kitchen, returning with her accounts book. ‘Here you are,’ she said, opening it and pointing to an entry only a few lines above his own incomplete details. ‘This time you don’t have to pretend you can’t follow the Greek.’

Mavros gave a rueful smile then looked at the neat script. ‘Clifton, Elizabeth,’ he read. ‘Nationality British, date of birth 4/9/67, arrived September thirteenth, departed September twenty-third.’ He glanced up. ‘That’s under a week before I came to Trigono.’

Rena was nodding. ‘Yes. She had your room. She was…she was a very good woman. Very friendly.’

Mavros was thinking about the photos and the computer diskette he’d found. He’d assumed they were put up the chimney by Rosa Ozal because of the handwriting on the back of the photo showing the dig, but maybe this woman Liz was responsible for hiding the package. He looked back at the entry.

‘Paid a hundred and twenty thousand in advance.’ He looked at Rena. ‘When was she supposed to leave?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Rena said, blinking several times.

‘What happened?’

Rena raised a hand to her forehead then met his eyes. ‘I don’t know, Alex. I came back from the fields in the afternoon and…and she was gone. The door to her room, your room, was open and I went to greet her. As soon as I looked in I realised she had left. There was nothing belonging to her anywhere. Even the wastepaper bin in the bedroom was empty and it was often full of papers.’ The widow gave a sad smile. ‘She was always writing on a notepad or on her computer.’ She shook her head. ‘We had got quite close,’ she said softly. ‘I’d have expected a message.’

‘Did anyone else see her leave?’ Mavros asked. The similarity of this second unexpected departure to Rosa’s bothered him. The barman Rinus had supposedly witnessed the Turkish-American woman get on the ferry.

Rena raised her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask anyone.’ She looked down. ‘I didn’t want people to think…’ Her words trailed away.

‘That you had become over-friendly with her?’ he said gently.

She nodded. ‘I’d already been cursed when Liz and I were seen touching each other.’ She chewed her lip for a few moments. ‘That animal Lefteris.’ She stood up. ‘I must go to Melpo.’

Mavros got up too. ‘Are you walking out to the farm?’

‘Yes. I have no choice. Old Thodhoris won’t let me keep Melpo anywhere closer to the village.’

‘I’ll come with you to the junction.’ Mavros needed to check the place where he was attacked, but he also didn’t want to leave his conversation with Rena unfinished. Her mention of Lefteris and the way the blood rushed to her neck and face had caught his attention. He went into his room and picked up his bag.

On the street Rena drew her black scarf over her hair. ‘I think she was a journalist,’ she said, unprompted. ‘I mean Liz. She asked me a lot of questions about the island. She was very interested in what happened during the war.’ As they passed a pair of old women, she wished them a good day. They muttered a grudging response. ‘She had some old books about it, one of them filled with tiny handwriting.’

Mavros was thinking of the photo of George Lawrence and the war memorial, as well as the diskette with his initials on it. He’d also remembered the Paros historian’s book, the one that Panos Theocharis had apparently suppressed. Was the copy in Rena’s suitcase connected in some way to Liz Clifton?

‘Old crows,’ Rena was saying under her breath, looking back at the women. ‘They are relatives of Lefteris…’

They had reached the end of the village and the track that led to the Bar Astrapi was on their left. Mavros stopped and tossed a coin in his mind. He reckoned Rena would only leave the donkey waiting for one more question. Should he ask about Liz or Lefteris? He went for the latter, the fisherman’s muscular bulk looming up before him. The way he and his father had stared at him in the restaurant made them good candidates to be his assailants—old Manolis looked capable enough of violence despite having only one arm.