The Bull of Mithros

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘Many men here own guns! You’re mad! If I were going to kill him, why wouldn’t I just shoot him?’

  ‘Because the bullet might be traced to your gun. Because if you’d shot him where he stood, people would have come running and he’d have been found much sooner, before you’d had time to drift away and blend back in with the crowd. Because a clean and quick death was not what you wanted for him. And I do wonder whether his death was your intention at all. Still, whether it was or not, that is how it ended up. So, that’s what I’m going to tell the police: that you are responsible for Manolis’s shocking death, and that it was you who was seen up in the hills, leaving or rejoining the party and thinking your absence had never been noticed. You are quite right, of course – there are many men on this island who own guns. But they lack something that you have. You have a motive for murder.’

  ‘What motive?’

  ‘Clearly, revenge for your father’s death.’

  Milto hung his head; then he looked up, and met the fat man’s eyes.

  ‘I believe you mean well,’ he said, ‘but you have me very wrong, if you think I’m capable of any of it. I told you the truth. I’ve never fired that rifle in there. I’ve never even taken it down off the wall.’ He sighed a sigh from his very depths, and closed his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, for my conscience’s sake. God knows I haven’t slept these last two nights. I was involved in that man’s death, but not knowingly. I was stupid, and was duped into it. I will tell you, even though I’ll be made to suffer for it. That much I know.’

  ‘If you are honest with me, I shall ensure you won’t suffer for it,’ said the fat man. ‘Here, sit down a while.’ He took a seat on a chopping block indented with the marks of an axe.

  Milto removed several empty feed-sacks from an orange-crate, and sat down too.

  ‘Where shall we start?’ he asked.

  ‘My preference is always for the beginning,’ said the fat man. ‘Which I think, in this case, may be some years ago. I think all this began with your father. What do you remember of him?’

  ‘Enough,’ said Milto. ‘I was nine when he died. Like all boys at that age, I worshipped the ground he walked on. I saw him die, and that was hard. It haunts me still. And they told me what a hero he’d been, how he’d died trying to stop those bad men from getting away. So at first I put him on a hero’s pedestal. But I didn’t suffer under that illusion very long. The truth of what he’d been doing that night was spelled out to me by the kids I hung around with. They heard what they heard at home; no one bothered to go quiet when they walked in the room, which is how it was at our house. They told me what he’d done, and I put that together with our situation, which wasn’t good. My mother was a widow with me to care for, and we had it hard. My father was no hero. I’ve looked and looked, and I can’t find much good in him at all. But he was my father, and so I love and respect his memory.

  ‘I’m not a man who believes in God. No just God would have let a young boy see what I saw that day, my own father taken down to the depths. But I believe we have a soul. My mother used to pay for Masses for him, and have his soul prayed for by the priests. I don’t believe that did him any good, but it comforted her. My belief has always been, that his wickedness has trapped him here below, that he’s a poor and lonely soul, trapped in that water where he drowned. I’ve told no one else this. You may think it foolish, but when I can, I go there to Kolona where he died, and I play for him. I play my violin, in the hopes that somehow he can hear me, and take some comfort himself in knowing he’s loved and missed, in spite of what he was. And I’ve taken his ending as a warning in my own life. He died a violent death because of his bad intentions. So I try to make sure everything I do harms no one and nothing, neither man nor beast. That’s my penance for him; and some part of me – there’s no logic in it, so don’t look for any – believes that if I try to be a good man, in every way, maybe I can redeem him. Free him. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make up for the bad he did, by being a better man myself.’

  ‘There’s a word for your beliefs,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s a mindset at the heart of the Hindu’s religion. They call it “karma”.’

  ‘Karma? I call it living the best life I can. Giving offence to no one, working hard, bringing pleasure if I can, through my music. Taking care of creatures less able to look after themselves. We’ve a responsibility to them. If we’re superior beings, we should act so, but it’s my view animals are superior to us in every way. I’ve been a vegetarian for many years. The people here don’t understand that. They think animals are here to serve our purposes, and nothing else – that we can use them and throw away their bones, and they mean nothing. I don’t see it that way.’

  ‘I understand your view,’ said the fat man, ‘and now I see you had no illusions about your father. But I think the rest of Mithros thinks you’re still under the spell of a myth they created especially for you.’

  ‘Some of them worked hard to create that myth. They did it to protect me; I know that. They thought it was for my good. Their motives were good, and so I let them think that I believe.’

  ‘So what happened on the name day at Kolona?’

  ‘I was approached by someone, before that day, to do a task.’

  ‘What task?’

  ‘My job was to lure the man calling himself Manolis to the well.’

  ‘And you agreed to do it?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I was given a good reason. What I took to be a valid reason.’

  ‘And did that reason have anything to do with avenging your father’s death?’

  ‘It had nothing to do with it at all. I never wanted to avenge my father’s death. I wanted to make reparation for him, and for the wrong he did. All my life has been about that.’

  ‘But even so, you lured him there to meet the man who killed him. There’s blood on your hands then anyway, isn’t there?’

  Vehemently, Milto shook his head.

  ‘There was nothing I could do! He had his gun! If I tell you who it was, you’d understand.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  And Milto told.

  In its first hour of opening, the museum had no visitors. Professor Philipas sat at his desk, working with a wet toothbrush at the clay-clogged surface of a misshapen coin. From time to time, he stopped scrubbing, and peered at the coin’s face, where a figure brandishing a hammer and a horn was beginning to appear.

  ‘Philipas.’

  She was smiling in the doorway; the hem of her dress was wet, her hair was untidy and uncombed.

  The professor looked up from his cleaning.

  ‘Olympia.’

  He left his chair, and went to her. The kiss he gave her was uncertain; when he tried to prolong it, she pushed him away.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I only have a minute. I can’t leave her too long.’

  He grasped her hand.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Stay a while.’

  She pulled her hand free.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I only came to ask your opinion. She gave me something, and I think I should give it back.’ She opened a jewellery box of burgundy leather. The brooch inside was crafted in gold, an oval of small pearls surrounding one much larger. ‘It looks old to me. What do you think?’

  He took the brooch from her, and held it up to the light.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘I think they’re natural pearls. If so, it’d be worth something. I could get it valued for you, if you like.’

  ‘If it’s valuable, it should stay with the family.’

  ‘And where is the family now? It was a gift to you. Take it.’

  ‘I’ll keep it for now,’ she said. ‘But if they ask for it, I’ll give it back.’

  He touched her hair.

  ‘Can I phone you later?’

  ‘You shouldn’t. And it’s difficult. She gets so restless, and she needs to know I’m there. She doesn’t have much time left.’

  ‘Please. I won’t
keep you long, I promise.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But just for a few minutes, no longer.’

  Sixteen

  A solitary boy kicked a part-deflated football against the wall of the telephone company offices. When he saw the fat man watching, he bent to pick up his ball and walk away.

  ‘Just a minute, son,’ called out the fat man. The boy looked at him. ‘How would you like to earn yourself some money?’

  The boy shrugged, and approached, and the fat man gave him his instructions.

  Whilst the boy was gone, the fat man lit a cigarette, and smoked it with enjoyment in the shade of an overhanging balcony. In the harbour centre, a boat had broken down and was slowly drifting to the south side, whilst on land, interested but ill-informed parties gathered to offer comment and advice. A fisherman jumped into a dinghy and rowed out to offer a tow-rope, whilst others jeered at him, decrying his ability to haul the boat with only the strength of his arms.

  The fat man was still enjoying the show when the boy tugged at his sleeve.

  ‘I found them,’ he said. ‘They’re on their way.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the fat man. ‘You’ve done a good job.’

  He gave the boy a thousand-drachma note.

  In the coastguard’s office, Spiros Tavoularis was inspecting the trap he’d set up the previous day: a plastic bottle sliced in two below its sloping shoulders, and the cut-off top inverted in the bottle’s body. The bait was a piece of tinned mackerel, and in the heat the fish was singing its siren call. Having crawled in, and now unable to find the small opening to escape, five wasps and two vicious red and yellow hornets buzzed furiously in the bottle, attacking both each other and the stinking mackerel, which between them they had almost consumed as their final meal.

  ‘I suppose what you do now is to fill the bottle with water, and drown your prisoners.’

  Startled, Spiros turned to the doorway, where the fat man stood with his hold-all between his feet.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Spiros, annoyed. ‘You frightened me half to death.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the fat man. ‘I move very quietly in these shoes. Did you not hear me on the stairs?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Spiros. Smoothing his hair, he crossed to his desk, and sat down behind it. ‘What can I do for you?’

  The fat man picked up his hold-all, and walked over to the chair in front of the coastguard officer.

  ‘May I sit down?’ Without waiting for a response, he did so. ‘I saw you – was it yesterday, or the day before? – taking your family out in your speedboat. She’s a beautiful craft, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she is. What is it that you want?’

  ‘What speed do you get out of her? Forty-five, fifty knots?’

  ‘I suppose she’d do that,’ said Spiros, ‘if I pushed her.’

  ‘She’s an expensive toy, for a coastguard officer,’ said the fat man. He glanced down at his shoes, and, frowning at the dustiness of their condition, unzipped his hold-all. ‘I suppose there might be those here in Mithros,’ he went on, taking out a bottle of shoe-whitener, ‘who would question where you’d get the money to pay for her.’ As Spiros watched, bemused, the fat man shook the bottle, removed the cap, and dabbed whitener first on one shoe, then the other, until, satisfied his footwear was at its best, he recapped the bottle, tucked it into his bag, zipped it up and leaned back in his chair. ‘As you’ll have noticed, I’m very particular about my shoes. My winged sandals, as I call them, in honour of my namesake. I know you’ll be sympathetic. You of all people understand the problems of wearing white. Has anyone ever made insinuations?’

  ‘What insinuations?’

  ‘About where the money came from. For your boat. In your position, I suppose you have to be careful.’

  ‘I hope you aren’t suggesting bribery?’ asked Spiros. ‘What is it that you want here, exactly?’

  ‘Just take me, for the moment, as a member of the public asking the kind of questions others might easily ask. And I’ve made no suggestion about bribery. Though others might say that, with regular boat-traffic coming in from Turkey, it would be easy for someone in your position to turn a blind eye to irregular imports. Smuggled imports. Tobacco, as an example.’

  ‘That’s an outrageous suggestion!’ objected Spiros. ‘It’s common knowledge, I’m sure, that Vasso – Kyrie Eliadis – lent me the money for the boat. He and I are friends. And the boat is second-hand. It didn’t cost as much as you might think.’

  ‘He’s a generous man, isn’t he?’ said the fat man. ‘Even so, on your salary, with a growing family, it can’t be easy. We’re all tempted by life’s luxuries, and sometimes we will use any means to get them when we should really just do without. Was I right about drowning those insects, by the way? I have seen such traps before. They are ingenious, but cruel. Not unlike the trap Manolis walked into, two days ago. The trap was baited, and the victim walked into it. Once in it, he could find no way out. Is that how it was, Spiros?’

  Spiros frowned.

  ‘You’ve got me at a disadvantage,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Really?’ The fat man gave him a smile, but without warmth. ‘Then let me tell you I have just come from a conversation with Milto. Ah, I see I have set you wondering now. So as a kindness, let me put you out of your misery quickly – though a quick route out of misery was not a kindness granted to poor Manolis.’

  Overhead, a ceiling-fan squeaked once in every revolution, but turned too slowly to generate any coolness in the air.

  ‘Which Manolis do you mean?’ asked Spiros. ‘As you can imagine, I know any number of men who carry the name.’

  ‘I mean the dead Manolis, lying in your friend the butcher’s fridge,’ said the fat man. ‘Don’t play games with me, Spiros. The matter is too serious for games. The moment I said I had spoken to Milto, you must have known the truth was out. Or did you think he would be too afraid to speak? No. Milto is a man of conscience, and he has told me all he knows. In return, I have promised him my protection. You may not think that counts for much; but by the time you and I are done, you’ll realise that even to consider approaching someone under my protection with intent to harm or intimidate them would be very foolish indeed.’

  Spiros leaned forward, elbows on the desk. Despite the heat, the creases in his white uniform shirt were still immaculate.

  ‘Kyrie – forgive me, I don’t remember your name.’

  ‘Diaktoros. Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens.’

  ‘Kyrie Diaktoros, I’m not clear why you’re here.’

  ‘The nature of my business,’ said the fat man, ‘is justice for the man calling himself Manolis Chiotis.’

  ‘That’s a police matter, surely – a matter for myself, and for my colleagues in the regular police force.’

  Once again, the fat man smiled without warmth.

  ‘In an ideal world, one would expect so,’ he said. ‘But history seems to be repeating itself. In the way little interest was taken in Socrates Rokos’s death and the robbery at Vassilis Eliadis’s house some years ago, I see the same lack of activity here. Do I see you making calls to other islands, or out in your launch searching for the boat Manolis came in on? Do I see you moving heaven and earth to find his relatives so he can be taken home? No. I see you sitting here, behind a desk with a silent phone. And if I walk around the harbour to the police station, I know before I see it that the situation will be the same there. I can’t say the dogs have been called off, because the dogs were never roused in the first place. Now, why should that be?’

  ‘I assure you, all available resources are being put into his case.’

  ‘You are right,’ said the fat man. ‘I am the available resources, as far as the Authorities are concerned, and here I am. Be assured, I am giving this matter all of my attention, and shall continue to do so until I am satisfied that justice will, inevitably, be done. Let us start that process by talking about what Milto had to say. Milto was
intended to be a player in this game, but – fortunately for him – Milto lives by a very strong moral code. When the moment came for him to be tested, he didn’t abandon that code. Unlike you, Spiros.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Two days ago, when we were talking at the festival of St Nikodemos, Milto went missing. He was missing for a while – long enough to neglect the care of Allegro, which was, for him, most out of character. In fact, I saw Milto with my own eyes, without realising it was him. I saw him from a distance as he was talking to poor Manolis, in front of the guardhouse at Kolona. Milto ducked to hide his face from me, but it was he; he has told me so. What was he doing there? He was persuading Manolis to go with him to the well. Why was he doing that? Because someone had asked him to lure Manolis there. And why on earth would he agree to such an apparently bizarre request? Because it came from an official source. It came from you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You told Milto that Manolis was a wanted drug-runner. You told him there would be an ambush set up at the well, a sting operation where you and your colleagues would swoop, and arrest him.’

  ‘But that’s absurd! We would never use civilians in that way!’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t. But for Milto and his well-developed sense of right and wrong, it seemed an ideal opportunity to help out with law and order. He went along with it, and talked a good story. He told Manolis he knew where to find your mythical bull, and persuaded him it was hidden at the well. He promised Manolis money upfront, if he’d help him retrieve it. And Manolis, being desperate for money, and no doubt intrigued by the story as well as having his judgement impaired by drink, set off with him without much demur. And when they got there, what did they find? Not a coastguard sting, but you. You, with your gun.’

  Spiros shifted in his seat.