1 The Assassins' Village

by Faith Mortimer

  Diana was perched on a settee in the living room, trying to steady her nerves by slowly sipping from a glass of water. She was also desperately trying not to cry because of his outburst. Steve rarely lost his temper.

  ‘Look,’ his voice softened. ‘I don’t want you getting worked up. You’re just too near it all for my liking. Please Di. Stand back. Let the police do their job. It’s what they’re meant to do for God’s sake.’

  Diana took a deep gulp before replying in a contrite voice.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know you’re right. I think I over reacted in there. I kept thinking about Alicia’s strange past and the stories we’ve heard, and then seeing some very odd things in her house, especially the Punjab Lasso. Who and why would anyone have one?’

  ‘People collect odd things. Look at the huge number of Nazi and Hitler collections throughout the world. Castle dungeons full of old torture instruments amassed for visitor viewing. I once knew a bloke who collected crossbows. Now, there’s a terrible and lethal weapon.’

  She rubbed her eyes dry with her hands. ‘Anyway, you’re missing the point. She could be lying. The only thing I don’t understand is the lack of blood on her clothes.’

  Steve frowned. ‘Would you like to tell me what you are on about, because now, I am totally lost?’

  Struggling into a more comfortable position, Di handed him the empty glass which he placed on a side table. She felt a lot better already, now she was home safely. Her colour had returned to normal and she’d stopped shaking.

  ‘Okay. Okay let’s think this through. Let’s just say in the first scenario Alicia left him hurt but alive. The police confirmed he was murdered by the cutting of his carotid artery. We immediately think of a very big and sharp knife. If, Alicia had done it then she’d have been covered in blood. From the murder mystery books I’ve read, people who have their throats cut invariably spurt everywhere, very messy. She was wearing the same clothes that evening that she had worn all day. She’s never one for dressing up. Always wears the same things. Sonja and Tony both agreed she was wearing what she’d had on that morning.’

  Looking confused Steve asked, ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Because I ask around, you know it’s amazing just what people here know about everyone else. Take Pete and Ann or Bernard and Jenny. They’re prime examples.’

  ‘I don’t know when you’ve found the time,’ he grumbled. ‘Besides, when did they see her?’

  ‘When Sonja came back that evening. From the time Leslie had been discovered. Alicia was hovering near their house. Apparently, it seemed that she wanted to double check that Leslie had been found and was under care. Too bad for her. He’d already been killed. Tony said he just happened to be passing,’ she gave a sniff of disbelief. ‘He’s a creep if you ask me.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to live here?’

  ‘Don’t you agree there’s something odd about this village? I’ve never felt it before. But ever since Sunday, I’ve felt this brooding atmosphere,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper, giving a small shiver. ‘I can’t explain it. Also, after speaking to the others they’ve all got a story to tell. I couldn’t ignore it all and not ask questions, could I? It felt like it was my personal task to find out as much as I could.’

  ‘I don’t see why, and no, I don’t think there is an atmosphere in this village. It’s got something to do with your over-vivid imagination. Most people here are extremely nice. We’ve some very good friends and the majority of the locals are delightful. You said so yourself only the other day, how friendly and kind they can be,’ he looked and sounded extremely exasperated with her. At the moment she was in danger of becoming a troublesome meddler.

  ‘I know. They are nice. Perhaps it has something to do with what I’m writing. You know spooky feelings and everything. And as for my asking questions, well it does feel right.’

  ‘So you’ve already said.’

  At the sound of disbelief coupled with annoyance in his voice Di felt she had to explain what she meant.

  ‘Please listen. So many people had motives or thought they had just reason to kill him. At the very least they wanted him to suffer in some way. A lot of it seems to be connected with Leslie’s black book of memoirs.’

  Steve opened his mouth to speak, uttered one word. ‘What?’

  Di imperiously held up a hand, flashing him a look of warning. Continuing, she ticked off the points on her fingers.

  ‘First we have Alicia. Old time, or even long time affair between the two of them. She’s as mad as a snake, obsessed by sex we’re told, but Leslie spurned her in the end. She’s apparently involved with some weird secret sect that she refuses to talk about. She even half-poisoned Leslie once when she was supposed to be curing him.

  Second, there’s his wife Sonja. Perhaps she’d had enough of his infidelities, his arrogance and cruelty to her. Maybe she wants stability, you know, the house and enough money for her security. Perhaps, she thinks she’ll only have all that if Leslie’s out of the way and doesn’t give everything to his children in England. Third there’s Tony.’

  Puzzled, Steve had to interrupt. ‘Tony? What’s his reason?’

  ‘Tony apparently likes porn, you know young girls. And, he got caught with an underage Polish pole-dancer last year. Leslie found out and did a quiet spot of blackmail on him. Ann got me thinking about him after something she said at the cast party the other week.’

  ‘Phew! What a couple of dirty little bastards.’ Steve looked quite shocked at this latest revelation about his neighbours Leslie and Tony. ‘Okay. So you’ve talked to people, but that doesn’t explain how or why they knew all this.’

  ‘I’m coming to that shortly.’ Fully restored to her normal resilient self she shot him another irritated look.

  ‘Fourth we have Bernard. We know that he lost a lot of money, thousands of pounds in some dodgy investment deal that Leslie had orchestrated. We also know that on one occasion he nearly ran Leslie over in the dark. He told us that himself.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ he ran a hand through his hair in frustration as she ignored him.

  ‘Fifth, please don’t keep interrupting or I’ll lose my train of thought. Fifth we have Tilly. Tilly had an affair with him in a weak moment, but broke it off. The worst part of that is that Leslie began pestering her, refusing to believe it was all over between them. And yet, it was only a short-lived affair. Bernard and Jen almost let this slip out the other day, you remember, when we were down at the beach with them. I’m sorry, but I confess I wheedled the whole story out of Jen and Ann later. Anyway, apparently Tilly went to the police and they questioned and cautioned Leslie. That’s what the police meant when they said that they’d already seen him that day.’

  Steve gave a slow nod as she continued.

  ‘Tilly has an alibi, as do most of these people. We don’t know about anyone else except for the sixth suspect, Kristiakis.’

  ‘Okay. Now it’s my turn. Going back, you said that Alicia was hovering outside Sonja’s house after she had returned from identifying Leslie. How come she was there and why? You said she wanted to check that Leslie was okay. But what if she really wanted to check that he’d been found dead? She could have been finding out what the police really thought about it all. You said that her clothing was clean, no blood was on her. But, what if she’d already changed? Or even more likely, supposing she has identical sets of clothing? She dresses the same practically every day.’

  ‘Oh! Yes of course. Good point. We’ll have to think about that.’

  Steve raised his eyebrows slightly at the ‘we’. ‘Somehow I know there’s no way you’re going to let me get away with doing nothing. So much for minding our own business and letting the police do it all.’

  ‘Going back to Kristiakis,’ Di continued.

  ‘He’s just hanged himself.’

  ‘Convenient? It makes him look guilty, throws the blame on him and perhaps hides the real murderer. Whatever the truth, he had a powerful reason for hating Les
lie as we’ve been told loads of times.’

  ‘But so what? Why now? Why wait all these years?’

  ‘Chance thing, maybe? Kristiakis certainly remembers Leslie from his wayward youth when he loathed the British with a vengeance. Leslie was a rotten bully by all accounts; he ill-treated the villagers and held them all in contempt. A lot have died since then of course. By the way, if you can believe her, Jen reckons that Leslie had a mild flirtation with Kristiakis’ younger sister. Leslie being foreign and not welcome, Kristiakis would have hated him for that.’

  ‘What? You don’t mean Antigone?’

  Di nodded.

  ‘But she’s such a half-wit and nothing to look at,’ he argued.

  ‘No, she’s not actually. She’s just shy, especially with men and foreigners. She can speak and understand quite a lot of English surprisingly enough. You just have to break through her reserve. What’s more, underneath all that smelly clothing and ingrained dirt she has nice bone structure and lovely eyes.’

  ‘When have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Well I’ve always nodded and said hello whenever we’ve met. Sometime during the last play she started talking more to me. Not just a simple good morning. It’s strange now come to think of it, but often when I walk around the village I seem to bump into her. Perhaps I never noticed her until we started talking.’

  ‘Weird.’ Steve looked puzzled despite Di’s explanation.

  ‘Yes and more weird, is why and how I happen to know more than anyone else in this village!’ Diana was looking very pleased with herself.

  Steve looked at her, an amused expression appearing on his face. He seemed to have forgotten he was furious with her earlier on. His eyes widened with interest. If Diana hadn’t had his full attention before, she certainly had it now.

  ‘Antigone gave me Leslie’s little black book of memoirs!’ Diana said without keeping a smug look off her face

  ‘Oh!’ At first Steve didn’t know what to say and then all of a sudden a dozen questions sprang to mind. ‘I wondered what you meant earlier. Okay. What book? When did she give it to you? Where on earth did she get it from, and why did she single you out from everyone else?’

  Di gave a laugh. ‘Hang on. First, it was only yesterday. And as far as I can understand her English, she found it when she was taking her donkeys for new grazing. And why me? I don’t know except she said rather cryptically that it had to be no-one else. Odd don’t you think?’

  ‘Very. I think it’s all a bit macabre. And just what does Leslie’s book tell you?’

  ‘Some of what I’ve already told you. I haven’t had time to study it properly yet. I thought you might like to take a look at it.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He sounded wary as if he was nervous to where all this might lead them. ‘You’ve been very secretive I must say,’ he thought for a moment. ‘And what doesn’t the book tell you?’

  ‘Well, you’ll see when you look through it. There are a few parts that seem to be written in some sort of code or cipher. It’s scattered throughout the book; some bits are easy to work out. I’ve found out whom he dislikes here and that’s most of the people in the book and his reasons for disliking them. He mentions what he did to Bernard and Tony and embellishes some of his affairs with various women. You’ll never guess how many affairs he had over the years if you can believe them all. And some of the women! Wow! It’s mind-boggling. Also, not once does he write regretting any of it. Not his shoddy treatment of Tilly, or Bernard. Nor his blackmailing of poor pathetic Tony, or the way he treated his wives, children and finally Alicia. Their affair lasted the longest and was off and on over many years. His cruelty didn’t seem to matter one iota to him. It was of no consequence whatsoever,’ she snapped her fingers to emphasise her point.

  ‘He was arrogant through and through.’

  ‘Yes. One really interesting part is when he mentions Kristiakis back in the seventies. Evidently, Kristiakis threatened him with a beating and Leslie drew a pistol on him and laughed in his face. He doesn’t say why they quarrelled; certainly there is no mention of Antigone, not in any romantic sense anyway.’

  ‘Perhaps nothing really happened. Perhaps it was all in Kristiakis’ mind. Antigone would have been quite young anyway, nothing more than a girl.’

  ‘Yes maybe. Nonetheless, it is a riveting read if you like that sort of thing. In truth, I found it all to be a bit sick really.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at it a bit later on. Come here.’ Diana slid over to his side of the settee and he pulled her onto his lap.

  ‘Please don’t involve yourself anymore. Not without telling me first,’ he spoke into her neck, his breath warm against her skin. Diana snuggled against him as he caressed her shoulders.

  ‘Mmm. That’s so nice.’ She allowed a short pause before adding. ‘Just one problem though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I can’t get the idea of Kristiakis’ innocence out of my head. He was there in the vicinity; he has a police record, a motive and so forth.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well as we’ve already said, it may be difficult to prove this now he’s dead.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But what if he didn’t hang himself? He was drunk, or rather he stank of drink. I don’t suppose the police checked his blood alcohol level, and why would they? Anyway, wouldn’t it be easy, to put a noose on someone as drunk as a skunk and then hang them? As far as we know he left no suicide note. In all the best murder books, most suicides take a certain care when they want to kill themselves. You know, like locking doors so no one like a child can find them. Or even tidying up; little silly things that might matter to them. Kristiakis chose an old building that wasn’t only unlocked, it was wide open to all and sundry, hardly secretive. So, if that was the case and he was murdered too, it leaves two obvious questions. Just who did it and why? We need to know what the police have decided on this one before we go any further.’

  Steve said nothing. After a pause Di sat upright in his lap and peered closely at him.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’

  Giving a heart-felt groan, Steve leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. ‘I can think of no way in which I’m going to be able to stop your sleuthing. And that undeniably, will have to include me.’

  Chapter 37. Yanoulla

  I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,

  returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  Macbeth. Act 3 Scene 4

  It was not for the first time, that Yanoulla had to review her past life. She’d never been very happy for long, and this past month or so found her world spiralling down into new depths of misery. Looking back over the years, she realised the only truly happy events she could count on the fingers of one hand.

  For years she’d watched Kristiakis grow from a skinny, gangling boy to a young man, with dark smouldering blue eyes, a divinely muscled body and long legs. Despite being nearly ten years older than he, she yearned for him to notice her. Her yearning had bordered on undeniable lust. She was aware that she was no beauty. Her nose was too big and dominated her face. But she considered she possessed other worthwhile features that worked in her favour. She’d always kept her body trim and her long hair was silky and glossy. But, despite all her endeavours Kristiakis never had eyes for her.

  When they were younger she’d particularly suffered. During the Annual Summer festival the young men slipped, lean and slim-hipped onto the dance floor as soon as the band struck up vkiolarides. The excited girls broke off from their chattering groups, forming a ring inside that of the boys. Thus, the Syrtos folk dance began, symbolizing the harmony between male and female rôles in Cypriot society. When heart beats were raised and the young faces flushed, the band upped the tempo to the very lively Sousta, and the boys and girls made another large circle portraying the spirit of their community.

  During this dance, men would break off and dance alone. Yanoulla watched the boy, Kristiakis now a man, demonstrate the vi
rtue of his sex that was appreciated and respected by the gathering; namely his strength.

  Yanoulla’s heart pounded, as she flashed a broad smile at the dazzling handsome Kristiakis as he stamped his boot-shod feet and dipped at the waist before whirling away to the music that had them all mesmerised. The music was fast; the melody produced by violin, accompanied by the laouto and the steady rhythm of the tempoutsia. There was also backing from the accordion, bouzouki and guitar to enliven the dancers. Yanoulla held her breath watching Kristiakis perform the men’s dance namely the kartzilamas, accompanied by a lifelong friend. Their virility and agility was only too apparent in their dynamic moves. Altogether it was a dazzling display, with a breathless energy right to the very end. The young women knew that the performance was for them as they watched from their corner of the dance floor. Yanoulla wished with all her heart that Kristiakis danced for her alone as he twirled and stamped before the climax of the finale.

  Everyone clapped and cheered when they finished, and the band moved into its next number, the slower Antikristos where men and women danced gracefully together as couples and in rows across from each other. With each man choosing his partner, Yanoulla had waited, hoping and praying that this time, this year, he would choose her. As he dragged a laughing, barely protesting voluptuous young beauty onto the floor, Yanoulla knew that once gain she had been bypassed. She stood in the shadows watching; a sour taste of pure envy on her tongue as he took the girl’s hand and placed a possessive arm snugly around her waist. Sensuously, they began the dance that expressed the joy of life and love.

  Bitterly disappointed, Yanoulla turned and left the summer festival. As usual she was one of the first to leave.

  Over the years, whenever she had the chance, Yanoulla thrust herself in front of Kristiakis, willing him to notice her. When she guessed about the illicit meetings between his sister Antigone and the British officer, Yanoulla drew his attention to it, thereby hoping that her good neighbourly act would put her in his good books. Unfortunately for her it failed. Finally realising she would never get him in a million years, and feeling dejected, she turned to Alexis and his earlier proposal of marriage.