When the Devil's Idle (30 page)

“
Keep
it in sight at all times,” Patronas stressed. “It’s a matter of
life and death.”

After seeing the
boat off, he headed back to the station, where he released Maria
Georgiou on her own recognizance. He ordered her to return to her
room in Skala and stay there, a kind of informal house arrest that
he prayed would mollify Stathis, should he learn of it. She’d cried
and kissed his hands, thanked him again and again.

Evangelos Demos
said he would keep an eye on her or assign one of his men in his
place, if he were unavailable. The Bechtels were also confined to
their house and would not be leaving Patmos tomorrow as planned.
The victim’s body was not going to be released from the morgue in
Athens, Stathis had informed them, or flown back to Stuttgart
anytime soon. Everything was on hold, pending the outcome of the
investigation, including their departure. If they tried to leave
Greece, he’d have them arrested. His boss had made good on his
word. Gunther Bechtel had been irate, but Stathis stood his
ground.

With nothing to
do, Patronas, Tembelos, and Papa Michalis drove to Lampi, a beach
on the northernmost part of the island. Nearly deserted, it
extended a long way and was framed by an ancient lava flow, the
movement of the molten rock still visible on the hillside above.
The beach itself was covered with pebbles. Of volcanic origin, they
were vividly colored—filigreed in places with quartz and agate—and
glistened like gemstones along the water’s edge.

The owner of the
taverna reported that Lampi had once been famous for the pebbles.
Unfortunately the tourists had taken away so many that the local
government,
Demos Patmou,
had been forced to post a sign
forbidding their collection.

“
You
should have seen it before,” he said.

The epitaph of
modern Greece, Patronas thought sadly. There it was in that one
sentence: ‘You should have seen it before.’

They ate at the
restaurant, sitting at a table next to the sea. Called Lampi
Taverna, the interior was decorated with sea shells and fishing
nets, ancient amphorae the owner said he’d found when he was
snorkeling. There was a strong swell along the shore, the waves
tumbling the rocks over and over, grinding them against each other.
It was a soothing sound, the water rushing forward, only to pull
back again a few minutes later.

After inspecting
the fish on display, Patronas selected three
lavraki—
sea
bass—and asked the owner to grill them and serve them with
ladolemono,
a sauce of olive oil and lemon. In addition, he
ordered fried
gavros—
anchovies—and a half kilo of the tiny
pink shrimp from the island of Symi. He also invested in a kilo of
wine. If the priest was still hungry after the meal, he could, as
the farmers said, ‘go shear himself.’

“
When
do you think we’ll hear from the coroner?” Tembelos asked when
Patronas returned to the table.

“
Tomorrow, maybe. Cat was small. It shouldn’t take too long to
cut it up.”

“
Which
one do you think killed the old man? The boy or the
girl?”

“
The
girl. Boy was too young for that level of violence. Whoever did it
damned near broke the old man’s skull in two.”

“
Spontaneous, you think?
Grobpapa
said something and the
kid went crazy?”

“
Maybe, maybe not. The cat indicates premeditation. My guess is
that she was practicing, getting ready to take on the old
man.”

After lunch, they
drove back to Chora. Papa Michalis had requested the trip, saying
he wanted to visit a local shrine, Panagia Diasozoy
.
The
church was said to possess a miraculous icon of the Virgin that
answered penitents’ requests, and he wanted to pray
there.

The sun was low
in the sky by the time the three of them had climbed up to the
chapel, a terraced hillside at the center of the village. The
courtyard in front was paved with red and white tiles and enclosed
by a decorative wrought-iron fence. A row of palm trees towered
over the church, which was very old—a dark frescoed space that
smelled of incense and candles, the icons on the walls so blackened
with smoke as to be barely visible. The face of the Virgin had
cracked over time, and the whole of it was overlaid with silver and
draped with offerings—bracelets and necklaces, even an
old-fashioned wristwatch hanging from a gold chain. Patronas
wandered around outside while Tembelos and the priest wrote their
requests on the slips of paper provided. He couldn’t think what to
ask for, what his prayer should be. An end to his loneliness,
maybe, or a woman. Neither seemed worth the Virgin’s
time.

Restless, he
walked back to the parking lot to wait. Dusk was settling over the
island, and he sat down on a bench and watched the lights come on.
The wind continued to howl and there were birds everywhere,
plummeting downward on shafts of air like aerialists in a circus
only to rise up again a few minutes later.

Far out to sea he
caught sight of a small triangular island. He wondered if it was
inhabited or empty—if he and the island were the same, both of them
passing their nights in solitude, alone in the water. The bus from
Skala was making its way up the mountain toward Chora, sounding its
horn as it disappeared around a curve, only to reappear again a few
minutes later, its headlights playing across the darkening
hillside.

Patronas heard
Tembelos and Papa Michalis coming toward him, their voices loud in
the stillness. Getting to his feet, he dusted himself off and
unlocked the doors of the Jeep. He wasn’t looking forward to
spending another night at the hotel with them. Papa Michalis
inevitably left his dentures in a glass of water by the sink, food
particles swirling around beside them, and prayed for hours on end
before getting into bed, reciting what sounded like most of the
Bible. Worse was Giorgos Tembelos, who snorted and squealed in his
sleep like a pig being castrated. Truth was, he was tired of their
company. Tired of being driven around by Giorgos or Evangelos,
tired of always feeling crowded.

He went swimming
later that night after the other two turned in. The moon was full
and he followed the path of light it cast as if on a road,
splashing toward it through the spangled water, pretending to catch
the light and pour it over himself. They said if a girl was born
under a full moon, she would always be beautiful. Although it had
been a long time since his birth, perhaps the moon could still work
its wonders. Turn him into Adonis.

Laughing, he
continued to pour water over himself. He’d read about
phosphorescence and how it set the sea on fire. The Aegean was like
that tonight, alive with light.

He hummed a song
from his youth as he swam back to shore. A beautiful song about a
woman setting her hair free and letting the wind take it. It always
made him think of mermaids, that song, the way their hair floated
on the waves in the storybooks, swirled around in the eddying
water—a vision of loveliness just out of reach. Something he’d
always assumed was imaginary, but might not be … like
love.

Antigone Balis
was sitting outside in the dark when he returned to the hotel after
his swim, and they drank a glass of ouzo together. Wrapped in a
towel, he’d initially wanted to go upstairs and change, but she’d
waved him off.

“
Iremise,”
she said, laying a hand on his wet leg.
Relax.

She lit a candle
and they sat there talking while he dried himself off. She said she
knew an isolated beach where they could go swimming together, just
the two of them,
au naturel
.
Gymnos—
naked—in case he
missed the point.

“
Any
time you’d like, Chief Officer,” she said in a husky voice, raising
a fleshy arm and smoothing her hair back. It was a practiced move
and made her breasts more prominent.

Patronas watched
her in the candlelight. A reflex, that hair thing was. Like one of
those female baboons with the scarlet asses, who bend over every
time they see a male.

She was sort of a
sexual wind-up toy, Antigone Balis, far too old for the role she’d
assigned herself—that of a siren, a temptress. Sitting there in the
moonlight in her low-cut dress, she was in desperate need of—what
was the word?—a makeover.

She was his for
the asking, he’d come to understand, loneliness driving her, same
as him. But he was old enough to know gifts from a woman like that
were never freely given. Inevitably, there was a price tag. If he
was lucky it would only be a tearful phone call. Worse would be her
turning up in Chios with a suitcase. Neither of which he
wanted.

Better to be like
the birds he’d seen in Chora, soaring out across the sky at
twilight, unencumbered, save for their need for food and
rest.

“
I’ll
let you know about the swimming,” he said.

T
he coroner called early the next morning. Patronas was
eating his breakfast when his cellphone rang.

“
You
find anything?” he asked

“
I
must say, you surprise me, Patronas,” the coroner said. “Shipping
me a cat and asking me to dissect it. Haven’t done that since I was
in medical school. Those specimens were in far better
condition—latex in their veins, smelling pleasantly of formaldehyde
instead of decomposing flesh. Still, your boss, Stathis, was very
persuasive when I called police headquarters to inquire. He
insisted I do an autopsy on it as soon as possible.”

The coroner
continued to talk, as always unwilling to be rushed. “As you well
know, I have limited resources these days—I didn’t see how a dead
cat could possibly be relevant to a homicide—but I did as Stathis
instructed.”

He shifted some
papers. “The cat was in a state of advanced and pronounced decay,
and I had to work around a lifetime’s worth of maggots—at least a a
hundred per square centimeter by my estimate—but the results were
revealing.”

Patronas pushed
his plate away. The coroner always spoke at length and in great
detail about things other people found disgusting. Maggots, for
example, at seven o’clock in the morning.

“
I
found a human fingernail lodged in its throat and I extracted it.
No need to ask, I already submitted it for DNA analysis. As the
nail was painted, I doubt it was left there by a vandal, who as a
general rule are adolescent males, local adolescent males—Greeks,
in other words. I know that was the theory at one point, that a
local youth had killed the cat because the family was German, but
you will have to revise that now. No, I suspect the person who left
the nail was a female—probably well under forty, given the
color—and she was the one who strangled it.”

“
What
color was it?” Patronas asked, the phone pressed to his ear.
“Orange? Was it orange?”

“
You
must be clairvoyant. Yes, as a matter fact it was.” The coroner
made a derisive noise. “A bright metallic orange.”

Patronas ended
the call and sat there thinking.

“
Well,
now,” he said.

“
You
sure about this, Yiannis?” Tembelos asked as he parked the
car.

Patronas nodded.
He and Tembelos were riding in the front seat of the Jeep, Papa
Michalis and Evangelos Demos sitting in the back. The four of them
had driven to Chora almost immediately after receiving the call
from the coroner.

It being early
morning, the streets of the village were deserted, a handful of
dead leaves scuttling across the pavement. Hopefully no one would
see them lead her away in handcuffs. A small mercy,
that.

Patronas had
called Stathis as soon as the coroner’s call had come in to tell
him what he was planning to do and line up the necessary paperwork
to make an arrest.

“
She’s
only sixteen years old,” Stathis had said. “What possible motive
could she have?”

“
He
sexually abused her.”

“
So he
came to Patmos and brought his perversion with him?”

“
Something like that.”

An old fashioned
Greek, the priest had been fighting a losing battle since the trip
to Epirus to understand the facts of the case—how a human being
could do such things to children.

“
She
was innocent, poor child,” he kept saying.

“
I
don’t know, Father,” Patronas said. “She beat his brains in and
carved a swastika on his forehead.”

“
Nonetheless, she was the victim. You need to remember that
when you question her.”

Patronas was
sorry now he’d come to Patmos, sorry he’d ever gotten involved. The
whole case had been an exercise in futility. No matter what the
girl confessed to, no matter what evidence was presented, no judge
in Greece would convict her, not after they learned her tragic
history. In all likelihood, she would get off. It had all been for
nothing. Evil had indeed existed and an adolescent girl had dealt
with it. Case closed.

“
What
about her father?” the priest asked.