The Feast of Artemis (Mysteries of/Greek Detective 7)

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘Yiayia! Yiayia! Watch me! Watch how fast I can go!’

  She turned to watch the boy as he rode full-speed along the side of the house, finding a smile for him as he came back and skidded to a halt near her feet. She stubbed out the cigarette, and rubbed his silky hair.

  ‘Ela, kamari mou,’ she said. ‘Put it away now. Time for lunch.’

  The boy wheeled his bicycle towards the barn. As he hauled open the door, a petite woman on a moped rode into the yard, and pulled up close to the front of the house. She cut the engine, pulled the moped back on its stand, and climbed off to untie the bindings holding a box to the rear luggage rack.

  ‘Marianna,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Yassou, Meni,’ said Marianna.

  ‘I heard your terrible news,’ said Meni. ‘But look at you, always glamorous, even in a crisis. And look at me . . .’ She glanced down at her trousers, sweater and boots. ‘Still. I brought you something to eat.’ She held out the box. ‘It’s just a chicken stew, and there’s rice pudding, too.’ She looked across to where Yianni was kicking stones as he crossed the yard. ‘Maybe he might eat that. And I put in a bottle of wine. But tell me, how is Dmitris?’

  Marianna took the box.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Her chin trembled as she held back tears. ‘Thank you very much. There isn’t much news. They keep him sedated. In a few days, we’ll know more.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Yesterday. I shall go again, this evening.’

  Meni touched her arm.

  ‘You must be strong,’ she said, ‘for all their sakes.’

  ‘I try,’ said Marianna.

  ‘Have the police said anything?’

  Marianna laughed, bitterly.

  ‘No proof, they say. Why not just arrest them all? They’re all as guilty as each other. The men are talking about taking matters into their own hands.’

  ‘That’s a dangerous game,’ said Meni. ‘If they get caught, the police will throw the book at them. In those situations, it’s always the wronged who suffer.’

  ‘Not always,’ said Marianna. ‘Sometimes, just sometimes, there’s justice in the world.’

  Seven

  Behind the wheel of Sakis’s truck, Donatos drove as he always used to – slowly enough to scrutinise his own land and his neighbours’, favouring the centre of the carriageway to give himself a margin for error. The window was down, his elbow resting on the sill, and the radio was retuned, away from the commercial music station Sakis favoured to an all-news broadcast, where a politician was stumbling over questions on government finances. Donatos’s walking canes rested against the passenger seat. His wheelchair was left behind, in the yard.

  His breathlessness had markedly worsened as he transferred himself from wheelchair to driving seat, and a small voice of rationality had almost persuaded him he was being foolish, but by the time he reached Dendra’s outskirts, his breathing had settled back to its usual, almost adequate level. The sun felt good on his forearm; he remembered a song his mother used to sing, and whistled a few broken snatches. Driving by a kafenion, he caught sight of an old drinking partner he hadn’t seen in years, and slowed down to pass the time of day, but complaining blasts from the traffic backed up behind forced him on. Arriving at a junction, he couldn’t remember if Bouloukas’s was to the left or to the right, so ignoring the green light, he stopped to consider. From behind, there were more blasts and beeps of annoyance. Donatos cursed other people’s impatience, and turned right.

  It was an error. He found himself on Dendra’s main thoroughfare, heading away from Bouloukas’s place. He pulled over to the kerb.

  To make a U-turn, he needed breaks in the traffic in both directions, but the two seemed never to coincide. As he looked back over his shoulder, a motorcyclist pulled up to the pavement directly opposite him, and like Donatos, sat with his motor running. Donatos glanced across at him. The motorcyclist was looking back into the traffic, his long legs stretched to hold up the tall-framed dirt-bike.

  Donatos felt the familiar, unwelcome tightening in his chest. Closing his eyes, he inhaled and exhaled as deeply as he could, and waited out the breathlessness. By the time he opened his eyes, the motorcyclist had been joined by two others, both on powerful machines, both wearing the American-style denim and leather the youngsters favoured. They were in discussion, shouting to each other over their engines. Then, they looked over at Donatos.

  Did he know them? Without his glasses, he couldn’t bring the young men’s faces into focus. He was coping with the breathlessness, but now his heart was doing strange things, racing, then stalling for a beat or two, then lurching back into an undependable rhythm. The sensations were well known to him, but certainty they would settle did nothing to make them less frightening and unpleasant. He wished his wife were there. He wished he’d asked Sakis to drive.

  The boulevard was briefly empty. Donatos wasn’t ready to move, but the motorcyclists made smooth turns, and headed across the carriageway to position themselves around him – one centimetres ahead of his bonnet, one touching his rear bumper, the third so close to the driver’s door, his handlebar scratched the paintwork. He looked through Donatos’s window, and smiled unkindly. Kapsis. The young man was a Kapsis.

  Donatos hastily wound up the window, and staring fixedly ahead, blasted his horn. The rider beside him tapped on the window. Out of the corner of his eye, Donatos looked across. The young man pointed down the road ahead of them, indicating that he should move forwards.

  Donatos didn’t comply; but the motorcyclist at the back revved his engine, and with smoke billowing from his spinning rear tyre, pressed up to the bumper to force him forward. Anxious about what Sakis would say if his truck were damaged, Donatos thought it better to submit, and so put the truck back into gear and moved off.

  They had him pinned; there was nowhere to go but where they led. They moved him to the centre of the carriageway, and into the U-turn he had planned on making; but at the point where he was broadside across the road, they stopped, laughing as they revved their engines.

  The lights at the end of the boulevard changed to green, and a stream of traffic headed towards them. The lead vehicle was a bus, and Donatos was in its path. The bus driver flashed his lights. In panic, Donatos hit the accelerator, but he raised the clutch too fast, and the truck stalled. The bus driver blasted his horn and began, at last, to brake. When one of the motorcyclists signalled to his allies to move, it was too late for Donatos. The motorbikes roared away, abandoning him in the bus’s path.

  When the fat man returned to the Hotel Byron, Lefteris was preparing the dining room for lunch. Four tables had been pushed together to make one large one; another was laid for two, and a third had a single place setting.

  The fat man put his head around the door.

  ‘Yassas,’ he said. ‘Do you know if your wife found time to press my suit?’

  Lefteris was positioning a knife and fork alongside a folded napkin, adjusting them to be perpendicular.

  ‘She’s hung it in your room,’ he said. ‘Will you be wanting lunch?’

  ‘Yes, I will. And I’m hoping you’ll help me out with an experiment.’ The fat man held up two bottles. ‘I have samples of both Papayiannis and Kapsis oil, and if you will, I’d like both your and your wife’s help in deciding which is best.’

  ‘Gladly. But if we’re doing that, you must sit with us.’ Lefteris glanced over at the table laid for one. ‘I’ll move you over here. Shall we say in half an hour?’

  The fat man’s suit, beautifully pressed, was hanging on the wardrobe door. Taking off his unseasonal linen, he slipped into the suit trousers; but when he tried to fasten them, they pinched around his waist, spoiling and stretching the front pleats and detracting from the skill of the tailoring. With reluctance, he removed them, replaced them on the hanger, and put the linen back on.

  In the dining room, a man and a woman were already seated at the table. Lefteris brought in a basket of wood-fire
baked bread, and urged the fat man to join them.

  ‘Let me introduce you,’ he said. ‘My wife’s aunt, Katya, and my father-in-law, Tomas.’

  The fat man inclined his head to them both.

  ‘Chairo poli,’ he said.

  With slight surprise at the fat man’s formality, Tomas returned the greeting in kind. Aunt Katya – elderly and bent-backed, severe-looking in widow’s black – beckoned him to the seat next to hers.

  ‘Come and sit by me, kalé,’ she said.

  The fat man placed his oil bottles under his chair. Aunt Katya clicked her false teeth, pushing them with her tongue from her gums to the back of her lips, then wriggling her jaw to settle them back into place. As she shuffled her own chair to give him more room, he caught a faint and unexpected perfume, which though stale through age, retained enough of its original sweetness to make it identifiable.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to appear forward, but is the scent you are wearing by any chance French?’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘It is. My husband – may his memory be eternal – was a marine biologist, who travelled all over the world. He spoiled me with gifts, when he came home.’

  A woman whose grey hair-roots didn’t match the brunette of its lengths bustled in from the kitchen, and placed a covered dish on the table.

  ‘She was a great beauty in her day, weren’t you, Aunt?’ she said. ‘My uncle was her devoted slave.’

  Aunt Katya touched the fat man’s arm, and leaned closer to him, as if to impart a confidence.

  ‘Do you know how long we were married?’ she asked, and the fat man shook his head. ‘Sixty-one years. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Have you met my wife?’ Lefteris asked. ‘Stavroula, this is Kyrie Diaktoros.’

  ‘You took good care of my suit,’ said the fat man, as he and Stavroula shook hands. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Stavroula, with a smile.

  As she left them, Lefteris drew the cork on a bottle of wine, and with a hand behind his back in the style of a professional waiter, looked questioningly at the fat man, who held out his glass. Lefteris filled it with dark red wine, and moved on to his father-in-law.

  Stavroula returned with a dish of vegetables, and a soup plate filled with creamy slops, which she placed in front of Aunt Katya. Lefteris poured wine for himself and held up the wine bottle, and with a wink at the fat man, asked, ‘Will you try a drop, Aunt?’

  Aunt Katya shook her head vehemently, and placed her hand over her glass, even though it was already filled with water.

  ‘You’ll have me drunk,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to disgrace myself by being drunk!’

  Stavroula lifted the covers off the dishes, revealing chicken in a walnut and coriander sauce, a salad of lentils dressed with red onions and yogurt, and a spinach pilaf. She beckoned for the fat man’s plate, and filled it with generous portions of all three.

  ‘Papa, pass your plate.’

  As she served her father, the fat man turned to Aunt Katya, who was taking her first spoonful of what he now saw to be semolina.

  ‘Forgive my asking,’ he said, politely, ‘but your niece has prepared all this wonderful food. Are you not tempted to try it?’

  ‘I’m always tempted,’ she said, ‘but my digestion’s not up to it. So I eat what I can eat, and imagine the taste on your plates.’

  The fat man took his first forkful of the food.

  ‘This chicken is excellent,’ he said to Stavroula.

  ‘It’s one of my mother’s recipes,’ said Stavroula. ‘The walnuts come from the tree you see out there.’

  ‘My compliments to you.’ He tasted the wine, finding it dry and almost spicy with oak. ‘But this wine – I have tasted something very similar, recently.’

  ‘It’s a local wine,’ said Lefteris, taking his seat. He passed the bottle to the fat man, who read the rather plain label, where there was little more than the name of the vineyard – Lachesis – the grape and the year. ‘And I suspect you’ve had plenty of it before, or of one of its near relatives, at the feast.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the fat man. ‘The lady vintner. This is one of hers.’

  ‘It is,’ said Lefteris.

  ‘Then I salute her too.’

  The fat man cleared his plate, and accepted Stavroula’s offer of more chicken and rice, but the amount she served him defeated him. He laid down his fork for the last time, and sat back in his chair. Aunt Katya was still spooning up delicate mouthfuls of semolina. Stavroula rose to clear the dishes, but the fat man stopped her, and produced the olive oil from under his chair.

  ‘Before we leave the table,’ he said, ‘I’m hoping you’ll all help me in an experiment. A tasting.’ He looked at Stavroula. ‘Do you think you might bring us some spoons, and more bread, and a couple of bowls to pour out some oil?’

  Stavroula soon returned with what he’d asked for. Lefteris poured the remains of the wine into the fat man’s empty glass; there was no more than a dribble.

  ‘Shall we open another bottle?’ asked Lefteris.

  ‘Yes, open a bottle,’ urged Tomas. ‘Life is short.’

  ‘I’d take another glass,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s very pleasant drinking. I’m thinking I ought to invest in a bottle or two myself.’

  Whilst Lefteris pulled the cork from a second bottle, the fat man poured measures of both oils into glass bowls, then picked up the bowls, and with his back to the company, passed them several times from hand to hand. Stavroula gave everyone a teaspoon, and a slice of bread.

  ‘I don’t know whether I should try the oil,’ said Aunt Katya, doubtfully. ‘Not with my digestion.’

  ‘A little bread and oil will do you no harm,’ said Stavroula. ‘In fact it will do you good.’

  The fat man replaced the bowls on the table.

  ‘Now only I know which oil is which,’ he said. ‘I bought both this morning, one from the Papayiannis factory, one from the Kapsis press. I want to ask you which you think is the better oil.’

  ‘It’ll be Kapsis,’ said Tomas, as Lefteris refilled his glass. ‘You can’t beat the traditional methods. The quality is bound to be better.’

  ‘That may not be true,’ said Lefteris, pouring more wine for the fat man. ‘I’ve read the new methods produce a better oil, as well as more of it.’

  ‘So which is which?’ asked Stavroula.

  ‘Let’s see if you can tell,’ smiled the fat man.

  He gave the first bowl to Lefteris, who took a spoonful and sucked the oil over his tongue.

  ‘It’s good,’ he said.

  The others followed, tasting by spoon or by dipping their bread.

  ‘That’s a great oil,’ said Tomas, following it with a slug of wine. ‘That’s the Kapsis oil.’

  ‘So try this one,’ said the fat man, and offered round the second bowl. They all tasted, and fell quiet.

  ‘That’s the Kapsis oil,’ said Aunt Katya. ‘At least, I think it is.’

  Lefteris wagged his finger at the fat man.

  ‘You’re playing tricks on us,’ he said. ‘Those are the same oil.’

  ‘No tricks,’ said the fat man, dipping bread into the second oil. ‘Both are essentially from the same trees, of course. But the methods of production could not be more different.’

  ‘But the oils are the same,’ said Stavroula.

  ‘Does anyone have a preference?’ asked the fat man.

  ‘The second is the Kapsis oil,’ said Aunt Katya.

  The fat man shook his head.

  ‘You’d be wrong,’ he said. ‘You tasted the Kapsis oil first. The fact is – and I am surprised myself – there seems to be no loss in quality through mechanical production. So we might say Papayiannis oil has the edge, since their yields are undoubtedly better. I am reluctant to suggest it, favouring as I tend to traditional, time-honoured methods, but maybe mechanical production is the way forward for Greece’s oil industry.’

  ‘Never,’ s
aid Tomas, draining his glass. ‘Oil is like wine, and has no place in a factory. Do you think this wine we’re drinking now could be made in a factory?’

  ‘I agree about the wine,’ said the fat man. ‘But with oil, we may just have proved here that modern methods are at least equal to the old ways. And once initial set-up costs are paid back, they’re a much better prospect for the farmer.’

  Stavroula rose again to clear the dishes.

  ‘Would you like dessert?’ she asked the fat man.

  ‘I really shouldn’t. I had ice cream this morning.’

  ‘Ice cream?’ asked Lefteris. ‘Where did you have ice cream?’

  ‘At a gelateria, in the square behind the bank.’

  Aunt Katya laid a concerned hand on his forearm.

  ‘You shouldn’t eat there,’ she said. ‘That place is dirty.’

  ‘Aunt, you shouldn’t say that,’ said Stavroula. ‘The gentleman may eat anywhere he chooses.’

  ‘But you and I wouldn’t eat there,’ objected Aunt Katya. ‘And if it’s dirty, he should know.’

  ‘Why do you say it’s dirty?’ asked the fat man. ‘It struck me as being a model of hygiene.’

  ‘Now, maybe,’ said Aunt Katya. ‘But not always. I don’t think you should eat there.’

  ‘He may eat where he pleases,’ said Tomas, rising from the table. ‘Stavroula, thank you for lunch, kori mou. I’m off for my siesta.’

  ‘Dessert?’ asked Stavroula, again. ‘There’s fruit – fresh plums, or apples – or there’s plum cake.’

  ‘She makes an excellent plum cake,’ said Lefteris. ‘The plums from our tree are sweet, and she adds a little cinnamon. A little honey drizzled over the top, and a spoon of yogurt on the side – can we tempt you?’

  But the fat man’s stomach was beginning to trouble him, as if he’d eaten too much chicken, or too many lentils.

  ‘Sadly, I must decline,’ he said. ‘Maybe later, at coffee time? In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll follow Tomas’s lead. I think a short siesta would help my digestion.’