1 The Assassins' Village

by Faith Mortimer

  ‘Good God, it’s Leslie!’

  ‘Leslie?’ Diana moved up closer to Steve and tried to look over his shoulder. ‘Is he unconscious? Or is he… um?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s gloomy under all these scratchy branches and rubble, and hard to see. Stay just where you are for a moment.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s certainly broken his left leg, judging by the odd angle it’s bent at. Just a minute, I’ll have to move some more of these branches and rocks aside. It’s not easy; they’re damned prickly. Ouch! I can’t get to him easily.’

  ‘Can I help?’ she said.

  ‘No. Stay right there.’

  Heaving branches and rocks out of the way, Steve was eventually able to get close enough to bend down and squat at Leslie’s side. Gently he reached towards him; pushing aside Leslie’s shirt collar and red neckerchief to feel for a pulse. As he made contact with Leslie’s skin, Steve jerked his hand away as if he’d been stung.

  He yelped in disbelief and his whole body recoiled away from the recumbent Leslie. Straightening, he turned towards Diana. His face had turned completely white and he looked stunned with shock.

  ‘Don’t look! Stay away!’

  ‘Why? What’s the mat…?’ her voice died as she peered behind Steve taking in the scene before her. A tremor ran through her as she realised just what she was seeing. She turned her look of horror back to her husband, her mouth round. Bile rose in her throat and she fought to keep it down.

  ‘Steve!’ she gasped, fighting hard to stop the panic scream threatening to take hold of her.

  ‘Okay hon just breathe deeply. Don’t look again. It’s not very nice.’

  ‘But Steve!’

  ‘I know. Easy, easy,’ he drew her to him, circling her in the safety of his arms. They both shuddered. Diana buried her face in Steve’s shoulder. Steve nerved himself to take another look at Leslie. The side of Leslie’s head turned away from them was covered with blood. Leslie had obviously hit his head violently during his fall. His wounds were terrible. But unfortunately that wasn’t all.

  Eventually Diana’s shudders and breathing calmed down.

  ‘Poor man. How awful! Oh Steve it’s so terrible,’ she whispered, her face a pale blur beside him. ‘How could he have fallen and then this happen? Or was he pushed? And who could possibly have done…?’

  ‘I don’t know, but the road edges are soft in parts. I wonder how long he’s lain here. And oh God, when and who did this?’ Looking ghastly himself, he indicated the deep gash around Leslie’s neck. Taking his arm away from Diana he bent down towards Leslie. He hesitated as he reached once more towards him, as if he didn’t really want to touch the body.

  ‘He doesn’t feel cold but it’s been an extremely hot day. His body isn’t stiff. I think that means he hasn’t been dead for long.’

  Steve removed the battered and stained straw hat from Leslie’s face. Leslie’s head was slumped forward onto his chest. At first glance, Leslie appeared to be wearing a neckerchief a bright shade of red. But it wasn’t a neckerchief. It was Leslie’s blood congealed into a viscous red slick around his neck. Already it was attracting a hum of bluebottles. Steve waved his hands in front of Leslie’s face. The sight of the flies and what they meant was revolting.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone killed before, let alone someone with wounds like this. Who could have done it? And what knife did they use?’ Scared, Diana took a quick look around her as if she would suddenly light upon a bloodied dagger half buried in the dirt.

  Steve paused, swallowing hard before answering her. He looked like he was concentrating very hard on not throwing up. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of blood.’

  ‘Yes. Poor, poor man. We’d better do something. You know alert the authorities and Sonja. Oh! What about Sonja?’ Di whispered the question as she realised the enormity of the situation in front of them. Pushing her own distaste aside, she knelt down on the ground and took Leslie’s limp hand in hers.

  ‘It must have been terrible falling over the cliff and not being able to get up,’ she mumbled in tears as she looked at Leslie.

  Steve squatted back down beside her and followed her gaze. ‘He broke his leg and couldn’t move. But was he attacked before or after he’d fallen?’ Steve’s own breathing was now more normal.

  They looked at each other in horror. It wasn’t every day you found a badly mutilated person, and someone that you knew.

  Moreover, it wasn’t every day you found someone with their head almost detached from their body.

  To stop herself from either passing out or screaming with panic, Diana was struggling to act sensibly and with detachment. She stood up and turned to face Steve. ‘Okay. What are we going to do next then? Call the authorities and get an ambulance down here before it gets dark?’

  ‘I can telephone from here with my mobile. Let’s hope I can get a signal. I expect the police will want us to stay with the body. Doesn’t that sound horrible? ‘The body’. Not Leslie anymore.’

  He made a face that was full of remorse before turning away to make his phone calls. Diana had got over her initial shock after their gross discovery. She made herself stay with Leslie out of respect. She imagined how terrified the poor man must have felt just before he died. Nobody deserved to die in circumstances like that. With grim determination she studied the body and surroundings while Steve was talking on the telephone. When he had finished, she turned to him with a puzzled expression on her face.

  ‘Steve? What’s that in his mouth?’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  Steve leant forward to get a better look at what she was pointing at. Leslie’s eyes were open, but there was only a frozen glaze in them. Diana could have sworn there was terror and panic in that stare. His mouth was pulled back as if in a grimace or a scream.

  With a little shudder of revulsion she pulled a shred of material from the corner of Leslie’s mouth and held it up to the light. The scrap of cloth had once been white, possibly unbleached calico, now it was discoloured with faint streaks of ruddy-brown. ‘Oh, he must have bitten himself. This looks like blood. Is it a piece of a handkerchief do you think?’

  ‘Diana you’re not supposed to touch the body! Forensics and all that.’

  ‘What? Oh! You mean that I’ll ruin the crime scene. Do the local police here actually have the means to carry out a full forensic examination? I very much doubt it. Okay, okay, I’ll be very careful.’ She spread her hands out in front of her to show him she wasn’t anywhere near the body.

  ‘Yes I mean exactly that! I don’t think you should interfere with anything. You know what the local police can be like.’ He replied with exasperation in his voice.

  ‘The same the whole world over I should expect. Anyway, I’m not interfering,’ she denied hotly. ‘I was only doubly making sure he wasn’t breathing as you said earlier. Which of course he isn’t, and I found this piece of cloth in his mouth. Strange.’

  ‘Only! Honestly Di you’ll get us in trouble. But yes, I do agree with you. It is strange.’

  ‘Very strange. Take another look at his mouth and around it. It’s bruised isn’t it? Don’t you agree?’ she asked.

  ‘Mmm. Maybe.’ Steve paused, as if he was not sure of what she was getting at. His look was very disturbed. He squatted down again on his haunches beside Diana.

  ‘He has marks on his wrists too. They’re bluish and tinged with red, just like the bruising around his mouth,’ she whispered. ‘Oh Steve, I don’t like this. It’s creepy.’

  Di stood up. Her heart was hammering in her chest; she felt a weird feeling like an ice-cold hand creeping all over her body. Her face was devoid of colour. She looked around her, terrified. There was not a sound to be heard. No birdsong, or cicadas, or a whisper in the trees. It was all perfectly still.

  Steve straightened up and put a protective arm around her shoulders. ‘Creepy is not the word I would have used in the circumstances.’ She gave a little moan and Steve tightened his grip on her. ‘It’s all right, darling. It
’s just a dead body. He can’t hurt you. He can’t hurt anyone.’

  She swayed and moaned again.

  ‘Sssh. It’s okay,’ he murmured into her hair.

  ‘I-I know that. It’s just - well to be out and have an accident and nobody to help you is one thing. But to have some madman come along and do this. It's horrific, revolting. And why does he have those bruises? He must have been tied up, tortured even,’ she raised her face to his, a horrified expression in her eyes.

  ‘We can’t be sure. That’s not our job. But he was fairly old and the elderly bruise easily. Look, I don’t think it’s healthy to try and guess what happened. It’s bad enough us finding him in this state. It would be much more sensible to let the police do their job when they get here. They’ll surely know what happened,’ he rubbed the back of her neck to soothe her.

  ‘Okay. Okay. But what if the murderer is still hanging around?’ she took a deep breath in before answering her own question. ‘I’m probably letting my imagination run away with me as you said before; I expect he’s long gone. But what about Sonja?’

  Neither relished the thought of talking to Leslie’s wife about what they had found, but there again would the authorities use enough discretion and compassion?

  ~~~

  The evening light was fast receding when the police arrived in their four-wheel drives.

  Steve need not have worried about notifying Sonja as she accompanied them down to the accident scene. Sonja jumped out of the car and hurried over to where Leslie’s body lay.

  In the dim light, Steve and Diana couldn’t read her face. She gazed down for a long time at the body that had once been her husband. She looked across the short gap to where they both waited silently. Diana’s hand was held tightly in Steve’s warm one.

  Sonja’s face looked old and gaunt, far older than her fifty three years. She stared hard at them before saying in her slight Scottish accent. ‘What time did you find him? Was anyone else with you?’

  Steve answered giving the time as a little after four o’clock.

  Sonja nodded. ‘Typical. Wouldn’t die in his own bed would he? As usual, it always had to be something dramatic for him. Even up to the end,’ her voice sounded odd across the clearing, thin and gravely. ‘He’s lost his ring,’ she muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘His ring, it’s missing. The blue and gold lapis lazuli scarab. I bought it for him when we first got married. I got it from a goldsmith in Cairo. He’s not wearing it. He always wore it,’ her voice sounded as if she was annoyed; put out. She turned away with an exclamation. Without another word she walked towards the Cypriot policeman who was standing to one side talking into his mobile telephone. She spoke a few words to him, shrugged, shaking her head. It seemed only seconds before she left, moving stiffly up the hill in the descending darkness in the direction of her own home.

  Steve and Di looked at one another in shocked silence. Sonja was always a bit strange, but they had not been prepared for a reaction like this. No floods of tears or any other sign of grief. If it hadn’t been for her taut face and strained voice, they would have said she seemed not to care one way or the other.

  Chapter 10. Sunday evening

  It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st good-night.

  Macbeth. Act 2 Scene2

  A gust of wind rounded the hill, causing Diana to shiver in her thin shirt. A blue-black moonlit night enveloped the small group of people gathered in the vineyard. The first early stars appeared as silver specks in the vast canopy above, whilst bats silently flitted around their heads. It wasn’t truly cold, just a freshening of the wind. Steve noticed her shiver and guessed she was suffering from an attack of delayed shock and could do with a drink. So could he for that matter.

  He hugged her close and murmured into her ear. ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  She gave him a wan smile. ‘I’m Okay really. I’m just so tired. It’s everything that’s happened today and the police seem to be dragging on a bit. What are they doing apart from talking? I’ll be really glad when they finally say we can go. I suppose they’re taking so long because of how he died.’

  He nodded and was about to say that he’d try and find out what was keeping the police from letting them go home when he was forestalled by the man in charge.

  Inspector Andreas Christopopodoulou walked over and joined Steve and Diana. As he turned to address Steve it was obvious from his confident manner that he assumed he had covered everything.

  He wasted no time in coming to the point, surmising that someone had obviously attacked Leslie whilst he was out walking. The attacker had used a knife to cut his throat. Leslie had then either fallen down, or was pushed over the cliff into the disused vineyard below. The policeman was sure this settled everything as far as they were concerned; he thanked the two of them for their help and declared they were now free to go. He would speak to them again in the morning.

  Steve and Diana listened in silence as the pompous little man concluded his explanation with a quick brushing together of his hands in dismissal. Di stole a quick look at Steve who just knew what she was going to say next.

  ‘And what about the bruising to his mouth? And I’m sure you noticed his hands.’ She blurted out.

  The policeman gave her with a haughty glare. ‘Oh, I am not sure it is anything. He probably got knocked about as he fell. The bruising is minor, again the fall. And he is of course elderly. They bruise more easily. He actually has more scratches than bruises. The bushes you understand?’

  The inspector’s eyes flashed in irritation with this female’s meddling.

  ‘We have covered everything,’ he continued. ‘We have spent enough time here tonight. The rest will be left to forensics.’ He stole a look at his wristwatch.

  Steve knew that the Cyprus football team was playing in a European friendly tonight. It was a warm up game before the start of the football season. He cynically decided he knew just where the policeman’s real interest lay.

  ‘Yes, but his wrists look almost as if they were tied together. I know it’s your job and you probably know best but I,’ she paused and looked at Steve for support. ‘We were concerned about it all.’ Steve could almost feel the inspector’s annoyance mounting.

  The inspector’s eyes narrowed. Steve recognised the antagonism in the little policeman’s face. He was acting typical of someone who couldn’t stand interfering people; and from a woman at that. Steve pitied him really. Di could be like the old clichéd dog worrying a bone when she had something disturbing her. He knew she would not let go easily. Besides, he had his own sneaking suspicion that she was on to something.

  ‘Mrs Diana. I am sure you have the deceased’s interests at heart but let me assure you we really do know what we are doing here. We know best. Now, if you would like to leave your details with the sergeant - ah, we already have them – in case we need to contact you again tonight, and I really do doubt it, you are free to go. Go home and get your husband his dinner.’

  He gave her a tight little smile that seemed to convey self-satisfaction, patronization, chauvinism and dismissal all together. Di opened her mouth to protest. Steve guessed what was going through her mind. She would be thinking about the scrap of blood-stained rag that she’d found lodged in Leslie’s mouth. She’d not mentioned it so far.

  Steve had to intervene. Scared stiff that Di would mention the material and then they would be in a lot of trouble for contaminating the scene or whatever else they called it these days, he took her hand in his and gave it a surreptitious tug.

  ‘Darling, the inspector is right. I think we should leave and let the police finish off here. It’s probably a very good idea if we go home now. It is getting late, you’re tired and over-wrought and you haven’t been too well lately. Come on.’

  Di disentangled her arm and gave him such a look of grim determination that Steve’s heart felt like it plummeted down to his boots. Oh God give him strength! What will she do now?
<
br />   He withheld a sigh of relief as two other figures appeared from the darkness and approached the inspector from behind.

  ‘Inspector sinomi parakalo - excuse me please.’

  The diminutive policeman swung round with barely suppressed irritation. He recognised, Dr Helena Sergio, a forensic coroner from Nicosia. The other was the police sergeant, Yiannis Loukiades.

  The woman was in her mid-thirties, pretty and worst of all a female of some importance. The inspector couldn’t help expressing a rude sound of annoyance as she led him off to one side of the field. Sergeant Loukiades gave Steve and Diana a small regretful smile, as if he knew just how annoying and arrogant his boss could be. There was a rapid exchange between the inspector and the doctor that neither Steve nor Diana could hope to follow with their own feeble Greek. Eventually Dr Helena finished her diatribe.

  The inspector looked agitated and annoyed when the doctor left him and approached them. Steve guessed she was paying them a courtesy as they had found the body, and she explained a little of what she had found. Unlike the senior policeman she was utterly charming.

  She spoke excellent English with only a trace of an accent. It was plain she had lived in the British Isles, perhaps even studied there. Her friendly open face looked grave as she addressed them. Dr Helena, couldn’t tell them too much at this stage. She had her job to do later on back at the mortuary, when the body was deposited there. After a few moments she concluded her short explanation. ‘I am concerned about the bruises on the deceased mouth and wrists. It is too early yet. But with the other evidence, I am convinced they have something to do with his death.’ Steve and Di looked at each other.

  ‘I knew it!’ Di breathed, her face if anything going a little paler than before. ‘What if we’d been out walking earlier? We might well have witnessed something crucial, possibly the murder itself.’

  The inspector intervened; as if determined not to be outdone or ousted in the talk despite his earlier dismissal of their suspicions.

  ‘Of course everything we discuss here is confidential. We will not disclose he was murdered until everything has been covered and until we know who and why. Do you understand?’