Aphrodite's Smile

by Stuart Harrison

‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you know it’s supposed to be on the wreck of a German ship called the Antounnetta. My dad claimed he’d found the statue, and if that’s true he must have found the wreck. Last week I caught somebody searching his boat, probably the same person who also searched the museum. I think he was looking for a journal my dad wrote.’

  ‘But what does any of this have to do with Alex?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but her grandmother was in love with a German soldier. He was on the Antounnetta when it left Ithaca. The man I spoke to the other night had a European accent. I thought at the time it was Dutch, but now I think it was German. He asked me if I knew somebody called Eric Schmidt. A German name. It could all be coincidence, but I don’t think it is. If he was the man on the cliff, then I think we have to find him. Something is going on here and I think the Antounnetta is the link.’

  Dimitri raised his glass, then looked at the whisky and set it down again untouched. ‘How do we find this man?’

  ‘We find out how he knew my father. That’s where you come in. I want to talk to a man called Spiro Petalas, but I might need an interpreter. Do you know him?’

  Dimitri nodded, his grief replaced with renewed hope. ‘Of course. Everybody knows Spiro.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If we go now we can find him before he gets too drunk.’

  We found Spiro Petalas in a taverna a short distance from the waterfront, away from the bars and restaurants catering to the tourist trade. He was sitting alone at a table in a corner, half an eye on the television screen behind the bar, and the other sullenly regarding an almost empty beer glass. He looked up, brief recognition flickering in his eyes when he saw Dimitri. He glanced curiously at me, then ground out the butt of his cigarette in a brimming ashtray.

  ‘Yassas, Spiro,’ Dimitri said cheerfully. He said something else and gestured towards the beer glass on the table, and when Spiro grunted a reply Dimitri called out to the barman.

  Three beers were delivered to the table. Spiro sucked at his greedily while engaging in a brief exchange with Dimitri.

  ‘I have told him who you are,’ Dimitri said. ‘Spiro and your father did not always see eye to eye.’

  I had already gathered as much from the surly look Spiro directed at me when my name was mentioned. ‘Ask him if he remembers the night my father collapsed. Apparently they had some kind of argument.’

  The question was relayed and Spiro responded grudgingly. ‘He says the police have already asked him about that. He doesn’t know anything about what happened to your father after he left the bar. He says he stayed there. We can ask anyone.’

  ‘I know that. Tell him that’s not why we’re here. Tell him we want to know what he and my dad were arguing about.’

  I was hoping that Spiro might recall some detail which Theonas had neglected to mention, or of which he hadn’t realised the significance. However, as Dimitri questioned Spiro, I began to doubt that he could be of much help. He answered reluctantly. His entire demeanour was that of a man hard done by the world, the kind who thinks everyone is against him. When his glass was empty he put it down with a heavy and pointed thud, and when it was filled he lit another cigarette and scowled, resenting having to pay for his drink by answering Dimitri’s questions.

  After ten minutes or so he’d added nothing to what I already knew and I was ready to leave. ‘Come on, I’ve had enough of this.’ I started to get up. Spiro glanced at me and his face twisted into a sneer. He muttered something under his breath. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wants to know if you are planning to make everybody rich like your father.’

  ‘What is he talking about?’

  Another exchange followed and then Dimitri said, ‘Apparently when your father was talking about the Panaghia he claimed that he would make Ithaca rich. Tourists from around the world would come to see what he had found.’

  ‘But I thought it was only a religious icon.’

  ‘It is,’ Dimitri said. ‘It is important only to the people of Ithaca.’ He turned to Spiro and questioned him again. ‘He says he told your father he was a fool.’ He shrugged apologetically, but I didn’t care what Spiro thought. Whatever else my father had been I knew he wasn’t a fool. I sat down again and asked Dimitri to get Spiro another drink.

  ‘Ask him what else my dad said.’

  Dimitri and Spiro went through another question and answer routine and, though I didn’t understand a word of it, I got the feeling that progress was being made. Spiro appeared to be warming to his subject, becoming noticeably more loquacious, though I didn’t know if it was a ploy to allow him to spend more of my money at the bar, or if the alcohol was loosening his tongue. Eventually, Dimitri interpreted what had been said.

  ‘Your father hinted that he had found something else besides the Panaghia.’

  ‘Does he know what?’

  ‘Your father would not say. Spiro didn’t mention it before because he thought your father had made it up. When Spiro challenged him to prove his claims your father left.’

  I sat back in my chair. Up until then my theories and suspicions had been no more than that, but now Spiro had given them substance.

  ‘There is something else,’ Dimitri said, interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Spiro is a fisherman, although not a very good one. I asked him if he had seen your father’s boat before the night they argued. I thought if your father really had found the wreck of the Antounnetta, Spiro might know where he had been looking.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said that he hadn’t seen the boat, but he did see your father at the marina one day with Gregory and another man.’

  ‘Gregory?’ For a moment I couldn’t place the name, and then I remembered. ‘You mean the man who worked for my father. I thought Irene told me he had left Ithaca?’

  ‘Yes. He went to live with his sister on Kalamos. But this was before then. According to Spiro, perhaps a week or two before your father went into hospital.’

  ‘What about the other man, who was he?’

  ‘He does not know. He had not seen him before. But it was not the man you spoke to. This man was old. He had white hair. Perhaps seventy or eighty.’

  ‘Can he remember anything else about him?’

  Spiro grunted a reply when Dimitri questioned him again. ‘He said he was like you. His skin was pale.’

  ‘Then he probably wasn’t Greek?’

  ‘No. He spoke with a foreign accent.’

  I felt a tingling of excitement. I knew where I had heard a description that fitted the one Spiro had just given. The clipping of the murdered tourist in my father’s drawer. Theonas had described him as being an old man, and the taxi driver had said he was foreign. I told Dimitri what I was thinking.

  ‘It should be easy enough to find out,’ he said. ‘The police will have a photograph.’

  He went to the bar to use the phone and when he returned he said that Theonas was sending a man to fetch us. Within ten minutes a uniformed police officer had arrived, and, though Spiro was disgruntled at being asked to go with us, I gave him twenty euros and asked Dimitri to tell him there was another twenty in it for him afterwards. When he heard that, Spiro pocketed the money and drained his glass.

  Theonas was waiting for us when we arrived at the police station. He was out of uniform and didn’t look too pleased about having his free time disturbed. He gave me a cold look and glared at Spiro as if to warn him that he had better not be wasting his time, and then he led us into his office.

  Wordlessly he opened a folder which contained some glossy photographs and pushed them across the desk. Spiro glanced at them quickly.

  ‘Ne,’ he said with a shrug which, despite how it sounded in Greek, I knew meant yes.

  Theonas frowned and then curtly issued some instruction. Spiro grudgingly took another, closer look. When he again confirmed it was the man he’d seen with my father, Theonas questioned him at length though I gathered from Spiro’s shrugs and monosyllab
ic replies that he wasn’t being of much help.

  ‘It is the same man,’ Dimitri told me when Theonas was finished. ‘But he could not tell us anything else about him.’

  I took a long look at the photograph of the corpse. His face looked sunken, and his thin white hair was badly cut. Otherwise he was simply an old man of skinny build.

  ‘How was he dressed?’ I asked.

  Theonas regarded me for a measured beat and then glanced down at a sheet of paper. ‘His clothes were quite new. A short-sleeve shirt and trousers. The kind of clothes that can be bought at almost any shop on the islands.’

  ‘Not expensive then?’

  ‘No.’

  I looked again at the body. Though it may have been a natural effect of his age and metabolism, the man didn’t appear to be well fed. Theonas must have guessed what I was thinking. ‘Do you know anything about him at all?’

  ‘From his hands the examiner determined that he had been used to manual work when he was younger.’

  ‘So it’s likely that he wasn’t affluent?’

  ‘That is the conclusion that I reached.’ Theonas didn’t look pleased that I had uncovered something that he had missed. ‘It would seem that your father knew this man,’ he announced, to which I made no comment. ‘Do you have any idea who he was?’

  ‘None.’

  He looked from me to Dimitri and back again thoughtfully. He was clearly puzzled to find us together. ‘How is it that you came to be speaking to Spiro?’

  ‘Spiro told us that the night he and my father argued my father claimed that he’d found something which would make Ithaca prosperous. I think whatever he was talking about was on the Antounnetta. Perhaps it still is. The man Alex was seen with in Exoghi knew my father. The same man asked me about somebody called Eric Schmidt.’

  ‘Assuming this person exists, you think it was the same man that you spoke to, Mr French.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Theonas stared at me.

  I gestured to the folder on the desk. ‘If I were you I’d check with Interpol and find out if somebody called Eric Schmidt who answers to this description has gone missing.’

  Ignoring my suggestion he said, ‘You think that Alex knows this man?’

  ‘Not necessarily. The car I saw was in a hurry and the boy said the man and Alex were arguing. From the cliff you can see the road which runs by the bay. Maybe he saw the Jeep.’

  ‘And wished to leave before you arrived? You are suggesting that Alex did not go with him of her own free will?’

  ‘It seems likely.’

  ‘But have you considered the possibility that it was Alex who wished to leave when she saw your Jeep?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You had argued with her the night before had you not? In fact she had witnessed the two of you become involved in a physical fight. It is perhaps understandable that she did not wish to see you.’

  I had to admit it was possible. ‘But if that’s true, why hasn’t anybody seen her since? I assume her things are still at the place where she has been staying?’

  Theonas inclined his head, reluctantly acknowledging the point.

  ‘And why didn’t she go back for her scooter?’ I added. ‘It doesn’t make sense. She must know about the search. The whole island knows.’

  We had reached an impasse. ‘Naturally, I will investigate this matter further,’ Theonas said with a note of finality. ‘In the meantime, if you discover anything more please be so good as to inform me.’ He closed the folder on his desk and opened his office door.

  The interview was over, it seemed.

  As Dimitri drove me back to the house I found myself wondering about him. His face was thrown into angular shadows by the dim glow from the instruments in the old Peugeot he drove, accentuating the darkness of his hair and eyes. In an objective way I could see why Alex had fallen for him. He had the dark, good looks and brooding sensitivity that women found so appealing. He glanced at me and caught me studying him.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  I looked ahead through the windscreen to the lights on the road. ‘Nothing. I was thinking that’s all.’ After a moment I said, ‘Alex told me you met in London?’

  I could feel him looking at me.

  ‘Yes. At the Zannas’s restaurant.’

  ‘You knew her family before you went there?’

  ‘Not really. But my mother is a friend of Kostas’s daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Did you know who Alex was when you met her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The family didn’t mind you seeing her?’

  ‘Why are you asking all these questions?’

  ‘I’m curious.’

  ‘Kostas didn’t like it. But I didn’t care what Julia Zannas had done.’

  ‘You knew though.’

  ‘Only a very little. Not the details. It was a long time ago. I didn’t see that it had anything to do with Alex.’ He was silent for a while and then he said, ‘We knew each other for nearly a year, you know. When I came back to Ithaca to start my business we agreed that she would join me in the summer.’

  ‘But you changed your mind?’

  ‘You make it sound as if I do not really care about her! You are wrong!’

  ‘So why did you change your mind?’

  ‘Why do you think it is any of your business?’ he demanded angrily, but then almost immediately he began explaining, as if he had to justify himself. ‘Before she came, I was not so sure if we were doing the right thing any more. When Alex arrived, I told her that I thought it was too soon for us to take such a big decision. I said that I thought she should stay for a little while and then go back to England. After the season ended I would go to see her. I only wanted for us not to rush things.’

  Something about Dimitri’s explanation didn’t gel. ‘So when you saw her again after she got back from Kioni you changed your mind again, is that it? You wanted her to stay after all?’

  ‘You think that I only said that because she told me about you, but you are wrong!’

  ‘Is that why she went to your house that night, to tell you about me?’

  ‘You would like to think so, wouldn’t you? But that is not why she came. I love Alex. She knows that. You have only known her for a few days, but she and I have been together for much longer than that. You cannot just forget about the feelings you have for somebody you love.’

  ‘So you’re telling me she went to your house because she loves you.’

  ‘We talked. She did not leave until the morning. When you saw her.’

  I knew what he was doing. He wanted me to think she had slept with him that night. It was the conclusion I had jumped to when I had met her. ‘It’s funny,’ I said. ‘When I saw the two of you on your terrace the other night, I got the impression you were trying to persuade her to stay. I can’t help wondering why she was leaving if she’s in love with you.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  A few minutes later Dimitri slowed as he made the turn off the road towards the house. We bumped up the track in silence and when he pulled over he left the engine running, the headlights piercing the olive grove. I got out and closed the door. I heard the car turn around, but as I climbed the steps to the terrace I didn’t look back.

  Theonas had already spoken to Irene so she knew everything that had happened. I wasn’t surprised. I thought he wanted to get his version in before I told her what I thought of him. She was subdued. She told me Theonas had reopened the investigation into my father’s death.

  ‘I have been sitting here thinking about him,’ she said. She was looking at a picture of her with my dad that had been taken years ago. They were on the Swallow. They looked happy together. ‘I cannot believe he was doing anything wrong.’

  I didn’t know what to tell her. She went to bed shortly afterwards. ‘You should go to bed too, Robert,’ she said. ‘You look exhausted.’

  I felt it too, but on the way to my room I went to my dad’s study and sat
down at the desk. I opened the drawer where I’d found the news clippings and the Dracoulis book and took out the iron cross. As I turned it over between my fingers I wondered where it had come from. The Antounnetta perhaps? It was rusty, but it seemed to me that after sixty years beneath the sea there would be nothing left of it. I put it down and picked up the news clipping which described the opening of the Dracoulis exhibit. In the picture my dad had been caught chatting with another man, both of them holding champagne glasses. Behind them was a third man, and as I looked at him my senses quickened. I peered closer. The image was a little grainy and faded, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was the same man whose picture I’d seen earlier. Only then he’d been dead.

  TWENTY

  In the morning I left a message for Dimitri to say that I was going to the museum in Argostoli on Kephalonia and that I would see him when I returned. Irene called the director, a man who had known my father quite well, and asked if he would see me, a request he was more than happy to agree to.

  I caught the early ferry from Piso Aetos. Most of the passengers were locals commuting to jobs on Kephalonia, apart from a middle-aged couple who were obviously tourists. The man nodded politely at me as I boarded. As Ithaca receded he smiled uncertainly then came over and asked if I spoke English. When he realised we were fellow countrymen his smile broadened and he asked if I would mind taking a picture of him and his wife.

  They stood by the rail and I focused on them through the viewfinder, with Ithaca’s dramatic landscape in the background. I imagined them showing their friends their holiday snaps when they returned home. The blue sea and sky and Ithaca’s rocky coast in the background, the hills surprisingly green. It was beguilingly peaceful and idyllic, conjuring images of tranquil coves, azure bays and pretty villages. All of it accurate enough, and yet in the Odyssey, when Odysseus returned from his adventures to find that suitors had taken residence in his palace seeking the hand of his wife, Penelope, he had killed them all. The entire history of the island was steeped in bloody violence. Through the centuries, pirates had plagued the coast and the Turks, Venetians, French, and British had all claimed the territory as their own long before the Germans had arrived during the Second World War. Though perhaps the legacy of the German departure had still not played out.