Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (33 page)

‘I think there must have been a minor earthquake,’ Eleni said. ‘I didn’t feel anything until rocks came down at the end of the passage when I was working in the last chamber yesterday. I think there was some damage here too.’ The light played over a heap of stones by the wall. Behind them a large crack was visible, and another hole.

‘We’re in luck,’ Mavros said, leaning forward and breathing in what seemed like fresher air. ‘Let me go first.’ He pushed past her, his elbow hitting the obscure shape under her arm. It was hard and uneven, and he felt the nerves in his arm go dead. ‘Shit,’ he said in English.

He had to get on his hands and knees to crawl through the gap. When he was halfway, he was struck by the thought that if the rocks had moved once recently they could easily do so again. Heart pounding, he pulled himself through. ‘Give me the torch,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the way.’ When she passed it through, he shone it on the hole. ‘You’d better give me whatever it is that you’re carrying too.’

There was a brief silence. ‘All right. But be very careful with it, Alex. I’m serious. It’s priceless. Are you ready? I’m wrapping it in my shirt.’

Mavros waited and then took the denim-covered object, the torch clenched in his armpit. It wasn’t as heavy as he’d expected and he could feel carved lines and recesses. He was thinking about the Cycladic figure he’d seen in Rena’s suitcase. Was this another one? Was it why Eleni was trying to elude Aris? He took a step back and waited for her to crawl through.

‘Give it to me,’ Eleni said, standing up and brushing dust from her bare chest.

‘You mean your shirt?’ Before she could protest, Mavros unwound the garment and handed it to her. He was left holding a marble figurine, the torchlight making it glow pale, translucent blue, and he felt the breath stop in his throat. His fingers played involuntarily over the smooth stone, touching the sublime curves and lines. ‘My God,’ he said, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘This is amazing.’ The carving was more skilful than the piece under Rena’s bed. He’d never seen marble of that colour before.

‘I told you,’ the archaeologist said, taking it gently out of his hands. ‘It’s very precious. Only the fourth artefact from the Cycladic civilisation ever found on Trigono. And the last three are the only ones in this blue stone ever found anywhere in the Aegean.’

‘Amazing,’ Mavros repeated. He was wondering if Eleni knew anything about Rena’s figurine, which wasn’t blue. Now probably wasn’t the time to ask. He examined the female figure with its stylised breasts, the arms crossed beneath them. The elliptical face with only a triangular nose in the centre, no eyes or mouth, had an otherworldly air, managing to be both alien and quintessentially human in its geometry. The knees were pressed together and slightly bent. ‘Presumably you regard this as a depiction of a dead loved one. You said the skeletons in the same pose lend weight to that theory.’

‘Are you sure you aren’t from the ministry?’ Eleni demanded. Her expression lightened. ‘Sorry, I’m getting as paranoid as Theocharis.’ She ran her fingers down the front of the figurine. ‘Perhaps the sculptor was mourning a woman he loved,’ she said in a low voice. ‘The piece is imbued with emotion, isn’t it?’

Mavros looked at the archaeologist. Her shirt was still unbuttoned. ‘Theocharis doesn’t have any Cycladic figures in the museum or his private collection,’ he mused.

‘Correct.’ Eleni moved forward to the end of this smaller cave. There was a hollowed alcove which led into another, from which daylight could be seen. She turned to him after they had made their way to the light and nodded as if she’d made a decision. ‘But he does have two in his possession.’

Mavros glanced out of the gaps through which the sun was pouring, seeing that they were far too small for a human body to get through. He turned back to the archaeologist. ‘You mean he’s kept the first pieces you found?’

She nodded, her eyes lowered. ‘Yes. He’s planning to sell them illicitly, which is why he was so worried by the possibility that you were a thief or a dealer.’ She kept her head down. ‘And I’ve been too much of a coward to say anything about it.’ She looked up at him. ‘I lied to you when I said the important finds had gone to the relevant authorities.’

Mavros shrugged his shoulders to put her at ease. ‘That makes us even, then.’

‘But he’s not getting this one,’ Eleni said fiercely. ‘And neither is his sick fool of a son.’

‘I can understand that,’ Mavros said. He turned to examine the rest of the cave. ‘How are we going to get out of here?’ he asked. ‘This looks like a dead end.’

It was then that he noticed the edge of a tarpaulin sticking out from a heap of dusty rubble. He went over quickly and pulled it up, his jaw dropping as he made out several discoloured haversacks and a pile of green wooden boxes.

Mikkel was sitting on the floor in the utility room, his back against the large chest freezer. He could hear the wind blowing hard across the terrace, making the bamboo on the pergolas rattle and dashing the water of the pool over the tiled edge. That brought him to his senses. The swimming pool. The lethal blue element. The place of death. It was time that he moved Barbara.

Staggering as he stood up, having had no sleep overnight or during the day, he opened the lid and looked at the neatly ordered contents. He was the one who’d done that. Barbara had no interest in food or cooking. On the left he’d arranged the fish and seafood that he had bought from the fishermen on the quay when they returned from their expeditions. He knew they overcharged him despite the facts that he was a local resident and spoke some Greek, but he didn’t care. It was enough to take possession of the lustrous creatures, their scales glinting in the sun and their eyes still wet. He started pulling out the bags with the dates written in his hand, throwing them carelessly across the room. There were bream and mullet, octopus with the suckers frozen into the shape of inverted nipples,
kalamaria
, even a couple of lobsters that he’d had to withdraw extra money from the cash machine to pay for. Soon that side was empty and he started on the meat. Barbara preferred it—she couldn’t stand fish bones in her mouth. There were huge beef chops hacked by the untrained butcher from animals that had grazed in the fields near the house, crystallised sacks full of lamb ribs, local corn-fed chicken with their bright yellow skins. He sent the wire baskets crashing across the floor. The sarcophagus was ready.

Going into the bedroom, Mikkel knelt by Barbara. He’d laid her on her side of the bed. He touched her arm and felt that it was even harder than it had been during the night. Rigor mortis was well advanced. He ran his eyes up and down the naked body, calculating if it would fit. It would be close. The only thing to do was try. He wanted his Barbara to be as perfect as possible, and if he left her much longer the smell of putrefaction would be unbearable. He wrapped a sheet around her, tying it at top and bottom, and heaved her on to the floor. Her head hit the stone floor with a crack and he felt his heart jump, then he shrugged. His poor darling was past having any more of the headaches that had dogged her for so long.

Mikkel got her to the utility room easily enough, the shrouded corpse sliding smoothly over the floor, but the transfer to the freezer was difficult. He tried until his arms ached, but she was too heavy, the rigid limbs catching against the edges and foiling his efforts. And then he thought of the Dutchman. Rinus’s smirking features hovered in front of him like a mocking demon and he found new strength, tugged the body up and rolled it in with a loud crash. He had to force one leg down and, as he did, he noticed bruises that had somehow escaped him the evening before. There was a thick livid line round each ankle. He stood looking at the marks for a long time, painful thoughts running through his mind, then swallowed hard and went back to the bedroom to find the African bedcover. He laid it carefully over Barbara, obscuring all but her head. It was propped up against the inside of the freezer at an angle, the eyes already misty and the lower lip extended unevenly. My Barbara, he thought. What did he do to you?

He closed the lid reverentially and went out to the main room, returning with an oak cutlery box that she had designed and placing it on top of the freezer. The symmetry pleased him, Barbara’s body weighed down, given a memorial, by something she herself had created. Then Mikkel went to the window, suddenly aware of the regular phutting sound of a fishing-boat engine. Parting the venetian blind he looked out through binoculars—Barbara kept a pair in every sea-facing room so she could study the views—and recognised Lefteris’s
trata
, the
Sotiria
. He couldn’t make out the fisherman’s broad form, but he assumed he was on board. How did he do it? His son had died on that boat only a few days ago and here he was fishing from it.

Mikkel stepped back, suddenly feeling stronger than he had for years. He knew what he was going to do. Like the fisherman, he would stand up to death. And make Rinus pay for what he had done to Barbara.

Gretchen the anthropologist peered through her top-of-therange Zeiss binoculars from the ridge between Vigla and Profitis Ilias, her eyes on the fence surrounding the excavations. She couldn’t understand what the two men were doing with the motorbike. They had each bent down by a wheel, before the bald one—Aris Theocharis, she reckoned—moved quickly to the Jeep and headed down the track in a cloud of dust that was quickly whipped away by the wind. She glanced over her shoulder, trying to see where Lance had got to. The fool, he hadn’t done what she asked. All she wanted was some moral support. It was bad enough trying to find a way into the dig without him wandering off. If she could only get a look at the graves she was positive were being excavated, her curiosity would be satisfied. Maybe she’d even be able to work a grant application up along the lines of ‘Similarities and Differences between Native American and Prehistoric Aegean Burial Customs’.

To the north she heard a clattering noise and strained to see round the flank of the hill. A helicopter was hovering over the Theocharis estate, slowly lowering itself towards a clear patch between the lines of trees. In the corner of her eye she saw the goatherd who was short of wits watching from high on the other slope.

She swung the glasses around Vigla, along the irregular pattern of caves and holes left by the mine workings. Lance hadn’t said he was going over there, but you never knew with him. Sometimes he deliberately ignored her instructions. As she moved her eyes, she caught a glint at the edge of her vision and homed in on it. Another motorbike, this one larger and more powerful. She hadn’t seen it go up the track, but they’d been over on the Vathy side until recently. She’d had no luck there. This side was the one with the graves inside the wire fence.

A braying noise was carried to her on a gust of wind, a strange sound that she realised came from a donkey that had been tethered on the slope round the side of Vigla where a few strips of land were still cultivated. That island woman who was fighting the barman yesterday worked up there. She remembered now. The motorbike belonged to Rinus.

Then two things happened in quick succession. First Gretchen saw a pair of heads appear at some window-like apertures in the rock face, one male and one female. She recognised the archaeologist Eleni but couldn’t make out the man. A split second later, from the western side of Vigla, she heard a high-pitched scream. The cry was brief, almost immediately blown away on the gusting wind’s blast, but she had no trouble recognising the voice.

I
NSIDE
the cave Eleni knelt down by the tarpaulin and shone the torch on the boxes and bags. ‘What is this stuff?’ she asked.

‘Army supplies,’ Mavros said. ‘They look old.’ The face of the British lieutenant in the photograph he’d found in the chimney flashed up before him. Could this be another link to Rosa and Liz, the women who’d stayed in the room in Rena’s house before him? ‘There was some undercover activity on Trigono during the war.’

The archaeologist shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask Theocharis. He was here. I heard him talking about it once to Aris.’ She put her hand on one of the boxes.

‘I wouldn’t touch that,’ Mavros said, carefully lowering the lid he’d raised. ‘From what I can tell, there are explosives in there.’

‘What?’ Eleni gasped, pulling her hand away. ‘Let’s get out of this place.’

Mavros was on his knees at the rock face beyond the tarpaulin. ‘There’s been some movement of the wall here, but I don’t think we can get through.’ He glanced round at her, the sunlight from the narrow gaps in the far wall momentarily blinding him. ‘If you want to leave, we’ll need to go back.’

Eleni squatted down under the natural windows. ‘Do we have to?’ she said reluctantly. ‘I really don’t want to see Aris. All he’ll do is shout at me for letting you on the site.’ She shook her head. ‘Not that it’s any of the bastard’s business. He comes here for a month every year and throws his weight around, then flies off back to his whores in New York.’

‘All right, all right,’ Mavros said, giving her a tentative smile. ‘We’ll wait. Those explosives have probably been here for half a century. If we leave them alone, why should they blow up now?’

Eleni didn’t look convinced but she nodded, clutching the Cycladic figurine closer to her chest.

Mavros moved over and sat down beside her. ‘So what are you going to do with it?’ he asked, inclining his head towards the sculpted blue marble.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, running a hand through her hair. ‘I made the mistake of handing the first two to Theocharis. He told me he would pass them to the ephor of antiquities, but he didn’t.’

‘You could give it to me for safe-keeping,’ Mavros said, patting his satchel. ‘It would be out of sight in here.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Eleni replied, drawing back from him. ‘I’m not sure you are who you say you are, you liar.’

Mavros realised he still had some persuading to do.

As soon as she had put her son’s bones away, Kyra Maro felt a wave of exhaustion dash over her that was more than physical weakness; it was a terrible emptiness of spirit. She toppled on to her bed and managed to pull a blanket across her legs. Suddenly they were freezing. The shrivelled muscles and wrinkled skin seemed to be starting to detach themselves. She lay there, heart racing, and wondered what was happening. Was this the end at last? She opened her eyes and saw the photograph of her lover looking out from the recess in the wall with the hesitant smile she remembered so well.

‘Ach, Tzortz!’ she said in a faint voice. ‘Are you waiting for me in the dark country beneath the surface of the earth?’

And in a flash she was young again, the wind on her shoulders as she scaled the steep northern slope of Vigla, keeping away from the tracks to avoid prying eyes. Her family had been openly hostile since the Italians went to Myli and captured seven of their fellow islanders. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected the landowner Theocharis of saying something about her and Tzortz. She had been kept out of everything to do with the supply of provisions to the British and Greek groups and told to stay in the village. But it had been a week since she’d seen her lover and she wasn’t going to wait any longer. She had climbed out of the window of the room she shared with her sisters when they were asleep and slipped through the empty streets like a ghost. It must have been after two when she approached the cave. She had stopped frequently to check that she wasn’t drawing attention to herself, and her legs were aching from the walk. Her absence, and that of the goat leg she’d taken from the kitchen, would be discovered at first light. This time she would not escape Manolis’s wrath.

The moon was bright as she came round the western flank of the hill, casting her shadow long over the scrub and rocks. This forced her to slow her pace. She could see the great sweep of the ridge leading to Profitis Ilias and she knew that a Sacred Band sentry would be on it. And where was the Englishman with the murderer’s eyes? He would be watching somewhere near. Breathing deeply to calm herself, she looked out over the silver-grey water, ripples cutting across it under the moonlight like the lines on the back of a giant lizard. Even though she’d grown up on the island and seen its beauties a thousand times, they could still make her stare in amazement, a failing that her family regarded as evidence of her flightiness. For them Trigono’s stony earth and the man-consuming sea around it were proof of life’s bitterness, not of its bounty. Maro steeled herself and made the last zigzag approach to the cave. She arrived there without being stopped.

The interior of their secret place—the second cave beyond the almost invisible gap at the edge of the rock face—was pitch-black, the moon’s brightness reaching only as far as the outer area. For a moment she thought he wasn’t there, even though the marker stone was in place. Then she heard a swift movement and a hand slipped over her mouth.

‘Maro?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Is it you? What are you doing here?’ Then he kissed her and everything became sweet again.

After they had lain together for a long and beautiful time in the heavy air of the underground chamber, Tzortz lit the lamp and looked into her eyes.

‘Ah, Maro,’ he said, his voice full of pain. ‘I didn’t think I would see you again in our own place. I…I have been thinking of other things.’

‘You forgot me?’ she said, pushing an elbow into his bare abdomen and laughing. She wasn’t concerned by his serious expression; she was sure their love was more important to him than anything. ‘How could you?’

He smiled at her, sadness in his eyes. ‘What news from the village?’ he asked. ‘Ajax…I mean your brother never speaks to me now and Theocharis thinks that my men and I should be sent away. Has anything been heard about the hostages?’

‘Only that they are in the prison outside Athens,’ she said. ‘Chaïdhari is a very bad place.’

Tzortz nodded, his expression distracted. ‘It…it was my fault, Maro,’ he said. ‘They found a book of mine in the—’

‘I know they did,’ she said, drawing him close and feeling his shoulders shake. ‘But you mustn’t blame yourself, my love. This is war and the people know that. Most of them still want to help in any way they can.’

‘But the seven that were taken may be tortured, they may be shot,’ he said, his eyes flickering. ‘I could have their blood on my conscience for the rest of my life.’

Maro shook her head, soothed him, told him the Trigoniotes would willingly sacrifice themselves for their country’s salvation. Eventually she persuaded him. He grew less agitated and kissed her again with the passion she had grown used to. Poor Tzortz. He must have been tormented for years by those wasted lives. What did it do to him, the knowledge that three of the men were executed after refusing to name resistance members; that two of the others died from typhus and malnutrition; and that one more was sent to Dachau and never heard of again? And Styliani, the sole woman to be taken? What might he have felt about brave Styliani? She had returned to Trigono after the war a shadow of herself, never speaking of what had happened to her before her untimely death in the late forties.

‘You know we’re going to carry out more sabotage, Maro,’ her lover said after they’d joined their bodies again, unable to resist the urging of desire. ‘There may be more reprisals, worse reprisals.’ His voice was strong again. ‘But the struggle must go on.’

And she had nodded eagerly in her innocence, saying, ‘I will stay with you and help you, my love. I cannot go back to my family now.’

Tzortz had looked at her sternly, as if her words had been unwelcome, then he gave her a sweet, sad smile.

But life is not as simple as war. Maro had learned that lesson in the long years that followed. Life is a valley of woe. It begins in pain and ends in eternal darkness. She wanted to believe that there was companionship in the underworld, that she would see her loved ones again—the one she’d given herself to so joyfully and the one she’d carried inside her body.

Maro closed her eyes, shutting out the images of Tzortz and Tasos. If only she had faith that there would be a meeting beyond the grave. If only…

Eleni was glaring at him, the torchlight in the cave turning her face sallow. ‘How do I know who you’re really working for? This brother of Rosa could just be a front. You could be collecting information for one of the big dealers.’

Mavros shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘Eleni, did anyone leave the bar after me last night? You stayed, didn’t you?’

She extended a hand to his chin and turned his injured jaw to the light. ‘That’s very nasty, Alex. Are you sure the doctor said you could be on your feet?’

‘Answer the question,’ he said, watching as her eyes widened at the roughness of his tone.

She pursed her lips and then nodded. ‘Yes, I stayed for another hour or so. And no. No one left for quite a long time after you.’ She ran a hand through her curls. ‘I think Aris and Dhimitra were the first to go, but that must have been at least half an hour afterwards.’

‘Did anyone make a phone call?’

Eleni’s brow creased as she thought about that. ‘No, not that I saw. There was music playing, people shouting above it. I can’t be sure.’

‘How about Rinus?’ Mavros persisted.

Her eyes flashed in irritation then her face slackened. ‘Yes,’ she said, raising her hand. ‘I remember now. He made a call on his mobile phone, but it was at least ten minutes after you went. And I heard who he was talking to—’

‘Who was it?’ Mavros demanded.

‘Or rather, who he left a message for,’ Eleni continued. ‘It was Barbara—you know, German Barbara? Obviously her mobile had been off for some time. Rinus was annoyed. He told her to call him as soon as possible.’ She shrugged. ‘He seemed worried.’

Mavros slumped against the wall, things no clearer to him than they had been. He suddenly felt exhausted, mention of Rinus bringing back what had happened to him on the narrow track from the bar. He was about to ask Eleni if she knew anything about the Dutchman’s drug dealing when he heard sounds from behind the tarpaulin-shrouded boxes.

‘What was that?’ he asked, stepping across the cave.

‘What was what?’ Eleni asked, one eyebrow raised.

He listened, his ear to the rough surface of the rock. ‘I don’t know. I thought I heard scratching and then what sounded like a moan.’ He leaned closer. ‘Yes, there it is again.’ He looked over his shoulder to find Eleni close behind him. ‘Can you hear it?’ he asked, moving back to let her get to the wall.

After a few moments she shook her head. ‘No, I can’t hear anything.’

Mavros listened again, this time picking up only a faint scratching. Then there was nothing.

Eleni was studying him thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You took some heavy blows to the head, didn’t you? Maybe you’re—’

‘Hearing things?’ He gave her a testy look. ‘No, I’m not. I think there’s someone behind there.’

Eleni stood with the figurine in her arms then looked at her watch. ‘Let’s head back to the dig. Aris will have gone by now. He’s more impatient than a teenage boy in a brothel.’

Mavros turned away slowly. ‘All right, you lead the way.’

She gave a twitch of her head. ‘No. I want to concentrate on the piece. You take the torch and go first.’

He nodded and headed back to the low hole. Bending down, he held the light on the stones piled up in the breach. It was then that he heard Eleni’s voice rise in alarm.

‘Alex, watch your—’

But Mavros had already slipped away, the wind screaming past his outstretched arms and into his eyes, blurring his vision and making him blink in the abyss of darkness. He thought he heard the word ‘head’ the moment before he hit rock bottom.

‘What is your name?’

A long silence.

‘My name…my name is…oh God, what is my name? Say it! I need to hear my name. I need to know who I am.’

The woman panted for breath, the dank air passing over her broken lips. Now she could hardly speak out loud any more, hardly had the strength to moan. She thought she had heard a man’s voice, muffled and distant, and she’d been trying to scrape at the rock around the ring-bolt that had been driven into it. But soon her nails were split again, the grit and splinters jammed into the cuticles, and she’d had to stop.

‘Please,’ she begged, ‘let me drop into a sleep that I never wake up from…before they come again…the pair of psychos who stand behind the camera…recording my rotting body…making a film for sick bastards to drool over…’ The rasp of her breath in the gravel pit of her throat seemed louder than the words. ‘Oh God, let me fall into oblivion…let the waters of Lethe wash me away.’

To her amazement she felt a painful gurgle of laughter well up. She wondered what she was saying. This made her laugh again, though there was very little noise. Just an unlikely lightening of her spirits. Why? What was so funny about Lethe, river of forgetfulness, river of the ancient underworld? Perhaps it was the incongruity of what she’d learned in classical studies coming back to her in this underground pit when she couldn’t even remember her name. Or, more likely, it was her subconscious self showing her that water was the only important thing now—a bottle, a bucket, a river in spate, it didn’t matter. Laugh out loud at this thought, she told herself. There isn’t a drop for you to drink. What consolation is that, to think about water when you have nothing to drink? She swallowed a stabbing laugh. Not funny, not funny at all. But still her spirits were flying. Maybe the drugs she was sure she’d been slipped were still having some effect, even though she’d had nothing to eat or drink for what seemed like days. What was so funny about dying of thirst?