1 The Assassins' Village

by Faith Mortimer

  A sudden wind blew in from across the valley; it skittered up the lane onto Tony’s balcony sending his loose papers flying and slamming his bedroom door.

  Tony knew he was right; Alicia was in the true sense weird, possessing a different way of looking at things and fixing them. Conventional people lived and acted out their lives within a normal structure. Alicia did what she wanted and it was often hard to ignore her.

  A pet hate of Tony’s, were the dozens of stray cats that congregated in Alicia’s malodorous courtyard and balconies. Tony was convinced she was a witch. They had had one or two lively rows when he truly thought she bordered on the insane. Alicia’s refusal to have the cats neutered, saying their numbers helped rid the village of snakes and vermin, drove Tony mad.

  Perhaps, he mused, it was something to do with her religious cult that was run almost entirely by women for women. After another bitter skirmish with her, he scanned the Internet hoping for some insight into her organisation but he came up with little information. One thing he did glean; once a member always a member. Originally, Tony thought he could draw her out with some hints with regard to writing a play around it but she had only hissed her denial to letting him into any secrets.

  But perhaps Tony’s biggest objection to her was her sexual one. Although Tony possessed his own desires towards women of a certain kind, he found Alicia very disconcerting when it came to matters of sex. To be asked directly, ‘Do you have a full sex life?’ followed with. ‘What do you enjoy doing most?’ He found it outrageous, and yet because in all other respects she was as quiet as a mouse it was also very strange.

  It must have been as a result from her living within the cult Tony concluded. A cult for women with one Patriarch residing over them - this much he knew. Some guru with an eye for the girls no doubt and who were meant to have his babies. Then they were sent off to beg in the streets for money. Money that was taken off them, and there they were. Trapped like rats on a sinking ship and so the circle continued. It happened, according to what Tony had read. So where did Alicia fit in with all this?

  ~~~

  As Alicia was stepping out on the rough stone track, she was going over and over in her head what Sonja had told her that morning. Recently, Alicia had not liked Leslie one little bit. There were a number of what she called ‘valid reasons’, and lately, he brought out in her a hitherto unknown violent anger that left her smouldering with a deep hatred.

  Sonja, his wife, was a friend of sorts. And one could be excused for thinking that she would be offering Sonja help and comfort today. But the reality was nothing like that. She, Alicia would not play the hypocrite and offer any more support than the little she had already given. She could not bring herself to tell her what a tragedy it all was. Alicia knew that if Leslie wasn’t around she wouldn’t miss him one little bit, and Sonja wouldn’t either. She or they would be better off without him.

  Alicia had known Leslie for many years. Their paths had met when Alicia had first arrived in Cyprus after her hurried exodus from the snow-capped Himalayas. Leslie had swiftly become a much-needed friend to the bewildered and lonely woman. At first Alicia had been quite reticent in discussing her private life, but after Leslie had wined, dined and bedded her she had opened her heart to him like a sunflower following the turn of the sun. Over the years, Leslie had practised his seduction techniques to perfection and it was far too late before Alicia realised this.

  Her own initial interest in the good looking, trim and outwardly charming painter had begun to change over the last year. She realised and saw him as he truly was. His icy-blue gaze would fall and cut you like a blade and his silver tongue likewise. She now recognised him for the shallow, nasty man he was underneath all that suave veneer. No, she would regret nothing in what she had planned.

  Chapter 7. Sunday midday

  I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which oér leaps itself, and falls on th’other.

  Macbeth. Act 1 Scene 7

  The hare crept from behind the thick prickly bush where it had been hiding. It stood on its hind legs tentatively. Its warm velvety nose twitched as it scented for traces of its enemy. It could smell nothing that threatened him. The air was heavy and still near the bottom of the river valley. The hare paused, still uncertain of hidden dangers. Earlier, it had heard the sinister noises that warned him peril lurked at hand. The fickle breeze carrying the telltale rank smell had alerted the long-legged herbivore. Now, there was neither sound nor scent. It sank down onto its haunches ready for flight, and then, with some timidity and hesitancy it gave one bound, and then another, towards a patch of bright sweet green vine shoots. It nibbled the new growth of the vegetation that had grown overnight by the stimulation of a recent shower of rain. It was sweet and succulent, especially delicious for a young buck hare. It relaxed a bit more; stretching its long neck towards a particularly tasty morsel.

  There was an explosion followed by a squeal. The hare lay outstretched on the path. A petal: a blossoming of bright arterial blood, a torn throat, eyes open but already glazing over, a body still soft and warm.

  Kristiakis lowered his shotgun from his shoulder grunting in satisfaction. He was convinced of a hit; a clean kill. For long he had carried a gun, well over forty years. He first learned to shoot as a youngster, before his teens, accompanying his father and fierce uncles on their long forays up into the wild deserted hills. Wrapped in thick jackets over black shirts and the skirt-like trousers or vraka they walked miles stalking their prey. Overnight, camping in the mean shepherd huts, Kristiakis had relished lying curled up around the blazing fire, drooping body and heavy-eyed with fatigue, as he listened to the heroic deeds and tales of their kinfolk. Years ago, his family had been founder members of the EOKA groups. These armed gangs of EOKA or to give them their full title; the National Organisation of Cypriot Combatants, had an old aim. They used terror to provoke the ruling British into acts of oppression, that they hoped would turn world opinion against the Colonial power forcing it to withdraw from the island. The later version of EOKA had a revised plan to rid the island of the ruling Archbishop Makarios. The leaders denounced Makarios for seeking a feasible settlement of independence rather than a full union or Eonosis with Greece. At any time, they could have instigated conflict to allow the Greek junta to ‘restore order’ and tighten its grip on the island.

  The young Kristiakis had been involved from a young age in sabotaging police stations and other installations, delivering literature into the isolated villages and assisting in killing British troops. Brainwashed by his elders, he learned to loathe the Colonial powers and later this hatred turned to include his Turkish Cypriot neighbours. For a long time after the separation of Cyprus into North and South territories, he remained bitter and twisted, hotly denying any help from relation or friends. He still vividly remembered past skirmishes with the police, the British Army and later between the private armies of the Greek Cypriots. These assassins had long memories. It had taken a lengthy time for him to begin to come to terms with life as it was now. He was one of the few who still bore a grudge against colonists despite Yanoulla’s soft touch with him.

  Making sure his gun was safe, Kristiakis picked up his belongings, a scuffed and old leather satchel-type bag and a water bottle. He swung into his familiar loose-limbed step down towards where his hare lie. It was not the season for hunting and he was taking a gamble that the aging Mukhtar or village mayor would not seek him out for punishment. He loathed authority, and although one spell in goal long ago had been enough, he still did not much care for rules and regulations.

  ~~~

  Above, on a small rocky outcrop camouflaged by spiny bushes, Antigone watched her brother searching for the dead hare. She had been sitting there for some time, alone but for her two tethered donkeys munching illegally on some neighbours’ grape vines. Oblivious to her donkeys’ bad behaviour she leant back against a flat yellow rock and blended into the landscape. Hidden from view, she became lost in he
r thoughts.

  Antigone was younger than her brother and led a strange and somewhat sad life. She lived alone in a tiny ill-built house on the edge of the village. Kristiakis had no idea whether she was happy or not. A single woman past her prime, she had missed the opportunity to get married and have children. Antigone was elusive and shy, and as she spoke no more than a few words to anyone, many ignorant people thought her simple. But, it was perhaps dangerous to think that. She did enjoy her own company, but nothing escaped the sharp eyes of this somewhat fey creature. Antigone knew and saw all that happened in Agios Mamas. Her thoughts shifted from her brother to another male that had played a part in her life. Mr Leslie.

  Of course she knew Mr Leslie. He had lived here in the village for at least eight years, together with his somewhat shrewish wife. She knew Sonja was shrewish because she often followed them unnoticed when they took their dogs out walking and she had heard raised voices coming from an open window of their house. She knew Sonja’s strident accent against the modulated tones of Mr Leslie’s. Antigone had listened to Sonja bemoaning about Leslie’s two grown up children and the amounts of alimony he paid to his first wife by monthly arrangement. Alimony. What a strange word that had no meaning to the Cypriot way of life. If a couples’ marriage ended in failure, the husband would simply move out of his wife’s house and go back home to live with his parents.

  Other snippets of family and village conversation came to her as she spied on them and others, angry snatches about other women, annoying neighbours, or unruly children up from Limassol for the weekend. No, Antigone knew almost everything that happened in the village. Mr Leslie. Her expression changed as she remembered.

  What most people did not know or recall, was that she had known him before. During the so-called bad times, when he was known as Captain Leslie of the British Army and she just a young girl, barely sixteen years of age. Then, Antigone had been raven-haired and startlingly pretty. Slim wrists and ankles, an impossible tiny waist and perfect smooth olive skin enhancing her tallish willowy figure.

  Back in those days she possessed a beguiling air of naivety. Interested in everything around her with a refreshing openness and a mind like quicksilver, Antigone was always asking questions and absorbing the answers. Any strangers in her village opened her eyes to the wonders of another world. Here was another land whose customs were foreign and alien to her narrow way of life. Intrigued, she watched and listened, her grasp of the English tongue growing rapidly as she learnt about this new world. It was perhaps no surprise that the most instructive of teachers was Mr Leslie himself.

  Conceivably, Antigone saw him as a fantasy figure, this tall, slim but muscular, good-looking Army officer who strode magnificently around the comparatively humble village of her birth. She shyly listened to him giving orders to his underlings in a cultured voice, and of a timbre so unlike anything she was used to; villagers being naturally loud and raucous in their everyday talk. Antigone was startled by his good looks; impressed by his smartly pressed uniform, leather boots that shone from soft polishing cloths and intrigued by his gleaming scarab gold ring brought all the way here from Egypt. To the impressionable Antigone he seemed like - almost a God. It was as if one of the old Greek legends found impressed in the ancient mosaics had come to life, and its hero had stepped out to fill her world with his presence. To Antigone he was suave and debonair, so dashing. She refused to listen to what her brother Kristiakis and their uncles said about the damned British. How the British refused to see things the Greek Cypriot way, and were only here because it suited them to carry on taking what they wanted, plundering the country and ignoring the wishes of the rightful owners. The British were no better nor different than any one of the other countless peoples who had conquered Cyprus to use for their own aims. She remembered the old stories about the rounding up of the men of the villages. How the houses and outbuildings were searched for guns, bombs and outlaws to the Colonial rule. The men had been imprisoned for refusing to hand over the ‘terrorists’ and the village school had been closed as a reprisal against seditious talk. How could they possibly compare Mr Leslie with those people? He was not like that.

  She met him in the most unusual places, along a deserted track leading to an unused vineyard, or a rocky outcrop at the far end of a wooded little coppice. Best of all, Antigone loved the old stone house at the bottom of the river valley where the water ran pure and sweet along the parched banks when the autumn rains came. On a shady little grassy knoll she would sit at his feet whilst he stood and read from little hard-backed books. His words were strange and Antigone had little hope of understanding the old English in the texts. But how the sound of his voice flowed over her, enveloping her, strong, clear, beautifully modulated, it entranced a young girl who believed he was on a pedestal alongside Adonis. Sometimes he would bring paper and sketch her against a backdrop of olive trees and the towering mountains behind, capturing the whole essence of Antigone and her beautiful country.

  If Kristiakis or her rough uncles had but known Antigone was meeting a man without a chaperone, a stranger and a foreigner, she would have been in trouble. And so, she would creep out, unseen, except for a goat or two and meet Mr Leslie as if by chance in a quiet secluded spot. The young Antigone was hopelessly and deeply in love…

  Chapter 8. Sunday morning

  Nor time nor place did then adhere.

  Macbeth. Act 1 Scene 7

  The contents of the mug stood cooling on the desk, the froth from the milk slowly dissolving to leave a flat, scummy white lid of a meniscus. Diana, seated at her study desk looked lost in thought. Earlier, the sunny room had seemed to beckon her. As she’d slipped into the comfortable, familiar chair she flipped open her notebook, taken up her pencil and within minutes the story had her completely absorbed. She wrote rapidly. She sat there for more than three hours, as sheet after sheet became covered with her open-handed writing. As the words came fast, Diana found she was almost having trouble keeping up with the pace. To her, writing was like launching a child out into the wide world. The child was conceived in passion, and brought to life with the most agonising birthing pains. After weeks and months of nursing to a tentative adolescence, it was then finally moulded into maturity.

  Notwithstanding the change in genre, Diana knew this book was going to be different. For a start, Diana felt that all the characters were around her in form and colour. She could reach out and almost touch and feel them. As her pencil scratched, they marched seemingly without effort across the paper. She had the beginnings of a plot formulated in her mind, but mostly she was working on a multitude of anecdotes that she’d gathered from the villagers hereabouts. Parts of stories, scraps of gossip, and hearsay all loosely knitted together that she would eventually unravel into one cohesive yarn (sic).

  Some days she wasn’t able to write much at all. She would find herself struggling to put the tales into the right places of her unfinished novel. Other days, the golden days, she could see the story stretching like a bright shining road leading the way towards its rightful end. Diana paused in her writing to take a glance at her wristwatch. With an exasperated sound she put down her pencil and noticed the coffee. Where had the time gone? It felt like only five minutes since she’d walked into the study to jot down a few ideas. It was nearly time to get ready to go out for Sunday lunch at the local taverna. She took a sip from the coffee mug. Yuk, it was stone cold and she’d gone off coffee in this hot weather anyway. Diana could only vaguely remember Steve bringing it into her. He would be mad at her, saying she’d become too dehydrated and end up sick for not drinking enough. Not that coffee was a good hydrator, but he was right concerning fluid intake. He was also concerned after she’d spectacularly passed out at the beach. Now, what had caused that? She was rarely ever ill, and could only put it down to too much sun, coupled with too much cider, and the shock of what Bernard had told them about Leslie.

  Leslie. How that man’s name kept cropping up. It was not difficult to assess the antipathy he cau
sed amongst their friends and neighbours. As for Diana, Leslie hadn’t given her any major cause for complaint just an annoyance on behalf of the others. There had been two minor irritations. Diana had found herself seated next to Leslie during a meeting to discuss the drama groups’ funds or, rather lack of them. Leslie was invited along, as he knew someone on the Arts Council, who might be persuaded to put in a good word for AMIS with an approach for some government funding. At first, Diana thought she’d imagined his thigh lightly pressed up against her as if by accident. As time went on, she shifted restlessly in her seat. Again she felt his leg, only this time with a little more applied pressure. With an amused chuckle to herself, she moved away on her seat as far as she could, and during the break switched to another chair. She was relieved when he had not attempted to follow her. The second time had been at a party. She remembered he had tried to kiss her. She put it down to him probably being a little drunk. Being cruel, she could say he was just a tad ridiculous, but surely just a harmless man old enough to be her father.

  An unexpected blare from her radio shocked her out of her daydream. One minute she had been sitting in relative silence, the next she almost jumped out of her chair as Dire Straits played their hit; Sultans of Swing.

  ‘What in the world?’ she said to herself as she gathered her wits and turned the volume down to something less harmful to her ears. How on earth had that happened? Was it a power surge? She’d mention it to Steve; he’d probably have some idea.

  Diana remembered something she’d thought about when she was lying wide-awake in bed. She had to write that into her story! The murder was brutal and she thought she could cover it up nicely with some great red-herrings. She turned the page of her notebook and jotted down the outlines, she knew just who she was going to bump off.