The Taint of Midas

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘A life of variety like this one makes the ordinary attractive. A few years of every day being the same would be a blessing to me. That’s what my retirement savings will buy me: a place somewhere nothing ever changes.’

  Across the square, the heavy doors of the town hall swung open.

  ‘Here he is,’ said Gazis quietly. ‘The man of the moment.’

  Three men in French-tailored trousers and pastel, well-pressed shirts ran down to the Mercedes. Behind dark glasses, their eyes were hidden. The driver folded his paper and tossed it through the open window on to his seat, then opened the rear door for one of the men. The car cut into the traffic, making the turn towards the centre of town.

  ‘Like Mafia,’ said Gazis. He took his beret from the chair beside him, brushing pastry flakes from its crown and smoothing his hair before he put it on. ‘I’m still proud to wear this uniform. I’ve been proud since the day I buttoned up my first blue shirt. And you know the easiest way to stay proud, son? The rule is very simple.’ Petridis looked expectant as Gazis leaned forward to advise him. ‘Never do anything you wouldn’t want your mother to know about.’

  Along the ground-floor corridor, officers were gathering for the day shift. On the rear door, a new sign had been posted, large red letters laminated on card: Staff use only. This door to be kept closed at all times.

  But the air conditioning had failed again.

  ‘If it’s like last year,’ said Gazis, as he and Petridis descended the metal-banistered staircase, ‘they’ll get it fixed some time in November. We’ll have air-cooled offices right through the winter, colder than you can imagine. And come May, it’ll be on the blink again. Every year the same. Better tell your grandma to start knitting you some vests.’

  The rear door was wedged open, as always – today, by a pencil-stub shoved under its edge. Outside, amongst the police cars and prisoner-transport vans, policemen talked, smoking and sipping iced coffee. To promote a through-draught, the public entrance at the corridor’s far end was propped open, too, giving a view of the promenade and its squat, fat-trunked palm trees. On the water, the tour boats were lined up stern-on, gangplanks lowered, placards at their ends advertising the day’s excursions – beaches, islands, ruins – and the boatmen were competing for the business of the dithering tourists. Already, the day was hot.

  At the curve in the stairs, Gazis stopped beneath the Chief Constable’s portrait.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Something to aspire to.’

  Petridis looked up at the photograph, seeing a corpulent man in martial uniform, who smiled severely, as if smiling was an indulgence he did not often permit himself.

  ‘They’ve touched up his hair,’ said Gazis. ‘He’s balder than that when you meet him. Greyer, too.’

  In the picture, the Chief Constable sat rigidly beneath a coat of arms Gazis recognised.

  ‘They borrowed that from the Law Courts,’ he said. ‘Someone must have thought it would give the right tone. That’s the motto we’re supposed to work by.’

  Petridis squinted at the coat of arms, unable to make out the wording on the scroll at the lion’s feet.

  ‘Equality in justice,’ Gazis told him. ‘Unless you’re the Mayor, of course.’

  Near the public entrance, the Desk Sergeant in his glass booth pressed a phone to his ear; as he listened, he watched a woman weeping on a bench, a small girl all in pink silent and solemn at her side. Close by, two constables listened to a joke told by a third; at the obscene punchline, the officers all laughed, and the weeping woman turned away her face.

  Gazis sent Petridis to sign out their car. Gazis checked his watch by the clock on the wall, finding the clock one hour and eleven minutes slow. Down the corridor in the dispatcher’s office, Petridis laughed, and a young girl’s voice scolded him for his flirtatiousness. Intending to hurry Petridis, Gazis moved down the hall, but outside Interview Room 1, he stopped.

  The interview-room door was opening; inside the room, two men were speaking.

  ‘Thank you for coming in,’ said one, ‘and for all your assistance. We appreciate your taking the time.’

  The second man spoke in a remarkable accent: clean, perfect Greek, a TV announcer’s voice.

  ‘No trouble at all,’ he said. ‘If I can be of further help, please let me know.’

  The door opened wide, and the fat man stepped into the corridor. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen beneath, as if he had passed a sleepless night.

  Neither Gazis nor the fat man smiled.

  ‘Good morning, Sergeant,’ said the fat man. ‘As you requested, I’ve come to give my statement.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Gazis. ‘It would have caused you some embarrassment, no doubt, if we’d had to come and fetch you.’

  ‘I’m not easily embarrassed,’ said the fat man, ‘and as you see, I came quite voluntarily. As I told you yesterday, my involvement begins and ends with finding the body of my poor friend. I suspect you doubt my version of events; but I think you’ll find Detective Belesis here will confirm that it wasn’t my car involved in this tragedy.’

  Gazis looked at Belesis, who shrugged indifferently.

  ‘He’s right, Thanos,’ said Belesis. ‘The vehicle that hit the old man was white, no doubt about it. But, as I’ve explained to the gentleman, in cases like this, with nothing to go on, it’s unlikely we’ll identify the culprit.’

  ‘Culprit?’ queried the fat man. ‘The word is killer, surely?’

  Belesis seemed uncomfortable.

  ‘Killer, I suppose so, yes. Paint samples have gone to the lab, of course. And we’ll be in touch if there’s any news.’

  The detective waited for the fat man to walk away, but the fat man showed no intention of leaving. Instead, he frowned, as if considering putting a question. Belesis, having no answers, looked up at the inaccurate clock.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘is that the time? I’ve a meeting in five minutes. Thanks again for coming in.’

  He left them, taking the stairs two at a time. Petridis emerged from the dispatcher’s office, jangling a set of keys.

  ‘Well,’ said Gazis to the fat man, ‘Detective Belesis doesn’t sound too hopeful for your friend. You’ll be disappointed, if there’s little hope of a conviction.’

  ‘In my experience, there’s always hope of a conviction,’ said the fat man. ‘And that hope, unsurprisingly, increases in direct proportion to the amount of effort expended to resolve the case. This is manslaughter at best, Sergeant, and possibly something worse. As I said to Detective Belesis, I would not expect the constabulary to abandon so serious a matter as a “no-hoper”.’ He waved a hand towards the portrait of the Chief Constable. ‘I draw your attention to the motto beneath which your leader sits. Equality in Justice. My friend is entitled to justice, as is every man. Elderly though he may have been, his time had not yet come. The case is no less serious because the culprit, as Detective Belesis terms him, pre-empted death by only weeks, or months.’

  Gazis’s expression was apologetic.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said. ‘But the question remains, where does one start?’

  ‘Clearly,’ said the fat man, ‘Detective Belesis would like to avoid starting at all. I hope I find a better ally in you, Sergeant. And if I were investigating, I’d start in the obvious place – the local garages. Someone’s got a vehicle with damage on it they’d prefer no one to see. The likelihood is, they’ll move quickly to get it repaired. A visit to a few garages whilst you’re out and about will soon spread the word.’

  ‘We could contact the press,’ put in Petridis, ‘get it in the town newspaper and on the radio. That way, the garage proprietors would come to us.’

  Gazis and the fat man looked at him.

  ‘You’re learning,’ said Gazis. ‘We’ll make a policeman of you yet. We’ll have to clear it with CID, but they won’t stand in our way. They’re not likely to object to us taking on their workload.’

  ‘I want to offer you
my services, if you need them,’ said the fat man. ‘Please contact me if I can help in any way. I know sometimes your hands are tied by protocol and regulations. In those circumstances, a civilian’s greater freedom can be useful.’

  He held out his hand, and Gazis took it.

  ‘I’ll stay in touch,’ said Gazis.

  ‘Is he off our list, then?’ asked Petridis, as the fat man passed through the public entrance. ‘He was our prime suspect.’

  ‘He was our only suspect,’ said Gazis. ‘Be glad we didn’t take that, yesterday, as definite guilt. Mr Diaktoros isn’t a man to overlook a night down in the cells. If we’d made that mistake, we’d be on our way to the third floor now, pleading for our jobs. So, there’s the second rule of policing for the day, and it’s an important one. Never be afraid, Constable, to doubt your first conclusions. Of course, having no suspect is not the best place to begin any case. But our man’s out there, and our job’s straightforward. We have to name him.’

  Forty minutes into their shift, Gazis and Petridis responded to an ‘all units’ call. Gazis drove fast through the town traffic; Petridis switched on the blue lights and played with the soundbox, switching the siren to double time at every junction, or when he saw a pretty girl.

  Their colleagues had already closed Apostoli Pavlou Street. Blue-and-white tape criss-crossed the road between two lamp posts. An unmanned police car was angled across the intersection, blocking access. Gazis parked on the pavement of 25th March Street and, telling Petridis to leave the lights flashing, led him at a run to where the crowd had gathered.

  On the building site, the rubble of a collapsed wall lay scattered with poles of scaffolding. Three walls still standing had shifted from the perpendicular, and loomed, threatening, over a scene of chaos. Amongst fallen bricks and planks, three men lay unmoving. Others crouched grim-faced beside them, clasping their hands. Stripped to the waist, four men had grabbed a length of scaffolding, and rammed its end beneath a block of still-cemented bricks crushing another’s legs; piling all their weight on to the pole’s end, they shouted to the gathering crowd to join them as their lever failed to work. The man whose legs were buried was silent, and pallid; his head slipped to one side as he lost consciousness.

  Bewildered, Petridis looked about him. The sound of approaching sirens merged with crackling VHF transmissions; the thick dust in the still, hot air soon changed his clean, black hair to old man’s grey. A red-faced inspector yelled to Gazis to clear the onlookers, and he and Petridis spread their arms to herd them from the scene.

  ‘Get back!’ ordered Gazis. ‘Get out of here, get back!’

  ‘Go!’ shouted Petridis. ‘Go, all of you!’

  But the people, stubborn and fascinated, ignored them; they stood together in the road, watching the first ambulances arrive, staring as the paramedics ran with stretchers to the labourers on the ground.

  A crying girl, no more than twenty, tugged at Gazis’s sleeve, pleading with him in a language he didn’t know; but her distress was evident and, taking her gently by the arm, Gazis led her on to the site. Petridis watched as he led the girl between the injured men, and saw her shake her head at the first two victims.

  But at the last, where the men still strained to lift the crushing bricks, she found her man; and, whispering his name, she turned his dirty face towards her own, and kissed the lids that covered his closed eyes.

  Eight

  There was a cove where, in years gone by, the fat man liked to swim – a stretch of fine sand shelving gently into clear turquoise water.

  But the road to the beach was hard to recognise. What had been a pitted, rarely used dirt track was paved, and smooth, and the overlook where the first clear view of the sea appeared was now a car park where thirty, forty vehicles – cars, motorbikes and mopeds – were lined up in the midday heat.

  With difficulty, the fat man found a small space for the Pony, then made his way to the edge of the dunes above the beach. At the horizon, the view as he had known it – the dark-blue water merging with the paler sky, the distant headlands and a hazy run of mountains – was still the same.

  But the beach was not as he remembered. The soft sand was filled with rows of sunbeds, where near-naked bodies stretched out beneath the sun or curled up in the shade of striped umbrellas. In the shallow water at the sea’s edge, crowds of young children played, and on the water, more of them floated, splashing and shouting, on every kind of inflatable. Bikinied girls shrieked as they tossed a ball between them. A motorboat prepared to tow a giant rubber banana out to sea.

  In the past, there was a wooden shack, where in the hottest months they served chilled beer, fresh sardines grilled on a driftwood fire, and cool slices of watermelon running with juice. There was no shack now. Where it had stood was a slick and canopied beach bar, manned by young men with wide smiles and tattoos who dispensed vodka cocktails and bobbed their heads to throbbing Euro-pop. There was a queue for hamburgers and hot dogs; there was another queue for ice-cream.

  At the fat man’s feet was rubbish: plastic bottles and empty drinks cans, fast-food wrappers and cigarette ends, the smashed green glass of an empty wine bottle, the torn pages of a magazine, ice-cream sticks. Every possible sign of growing prosperity lay there amongst the dune grasses, tickled by the breeze like flowers in spring, and in the background the music thumped on, its intense, aggressive beat marking, in rapid time, timelessness passing.

  There was another place he knew where only a footpath led to the sea. The beach was small and rocky, with no temptations for developers. By his car, he changed his shoes; his pristine white tennis shoes were unlaced, and zipped away, face to face, in the front pocket of his holdall; his white sports socks were folded carefully beside them. From the same holdall pocket he took a pair of black diving shoes. Before he pulled them on, he flexed his feet. His toes were long and elegant, his ankles beautifully shaped; his calves were strong and muscled, their skin golden from the sun.

  The day’s heat was at its height, and the cicadas hidden in the ferny branches of the tamarisk trees were singing loudly. A tiny jetty, its base a natural outcrop of rock levelled by cement fissured by salt water, jutted into the sea. At the jetty, a small fishing boat – painted blue, with fine details added in red and yellow – was tied in close.

  The fat man found a place of shade beneath the tamarisk trees and laid his holdall by their roots. Removing his shirt, he hung it from a low branch. His naked chest was firm and strong, but swelled into a well-fed belly; his chest hair was thick, but greying. He removed his watch and glasses and tucked them in the pocket of his shorts; then he removed the shorts too, and hung them in the branches with his shirt. He stood now in a pair of yellow bathing shorts and his diving shoes. Without his clothes, he appeared not fat, but imposing. From his holdall he took a snorkel mask and pipe of professional quality and, picking his way across the rocky beach to the water’s edge, waded in up to his knees.

  The sea was clear, and cooling. Small, silver fish darted in the shallows; black urchins formed deep blotches on the rocks. He rinsed his mask and pulled it on, placing the pipe in his mouth. Smoothly, he entered the water, swimming out in an expert crawl to where, from land, the water changed from turquoise to ultramarine, where the sea floor dropped away from almost touchable to the blank, mysterious depths, and the view beneath the surface was a blue infinity, like space.

  For several minutes the fat man lay face down, watching the blueness where nothing moved but the shafts of broken sunlight, savouring the sun’s heat on his back and the gentle rocking of the water’s undulations.

  As he sculled slowly back to shore he made for the jetty, and for a while puttered back and forwards there, watching the quickness of the fish, the slow, steady marching of the sea centipedes, the reflection of light on the weed-covered rocks, the gentle waving of the pink and peach fronds of the anemones.

  He surfaced by the fishing boat, blew water from his pipe, then dived deep to touch the pebbles on the sea floor, resurfa
cing at the boat’s stern. He dived again, resurfaced, and pushing his mask from his face, wiped the stinging salt from his eyes and trod water, peering down at the bottom of the sea.

  ‘Kali mera.’ The fisherman in his boat was brewing coffee. A small butane stove roared on the wooden engine housing; a long-handled kafebriko filled with water and ground coffee was rising to the boil.

  ‘Kali mera,’ responded the fat man.

  ‘How’s the water?’

  ‘Perfect. Warm as a bath.’

  ‘May I offer you coffee?’

  The fat man smiled.

  ‘I’d be much obliged to you,’ he said and, wading from the water, he made his way down the jetty to the boat.

  ‘Climb aboard,’ said the fisherman. ‘Take a seat beneath the canopy. It’s a hot one today. Forty degrees, they’re saying in the town.’

  The boat was stacked, rear and prow, with the fishing paraphernalia of an opportunist: lobster traps, wicker baskets with coiled long-lines for tuna, hand-lines with fine hooks for inshore fishing, heavier lines with vicious barbs for calamari, nets for casting, a harpoon gun for spearing, and an old red bucket with no handle, which held a small catch of whitebait deteriorating in the heat. There was no order on board, but the boat appeared well cared for: the paintwork was fresh and bright, the glass on the instruments was free of salt stains, and above the wheel, the brass bell – engraved with the boat’s name, Agatha – was recently polished.

  Beneath the awning, the fat man sat on the wooden bench that ran inside the stern, and slid his hand along the tiller’s hand-hewn length as if it were a temptation.

  ‘She’s a lovely craft,’ he said. ‘Well put together. Made to last.’

  Wiping it first on his oil-stained shorts, the fisherman offered his own hand.

  ‘They call me Sostis,’ he said. ‘Well, my wife calls me many things, but Sostis is my name.’

  He gave a cautious smile. He was a man whose face and body youth had left; there were flashes of silver in his black hair, and many lines around his eyes from squinting into the sun. He wore no shoes, so the skin on his feet was hard with calluses and his toenails were disfigured and hard as horn. His T-shirt was spotted with the blood of his catches, and his skin showed through a rip at its shoulder seam. In his face was the weariness of a man who was losing life’s battles, and a perplexity in his eyes that seemed habitual.