Alongside Gazis’s car, a red Namco Pony pulled into an empty space.
‘What’ll you have?’ asked Dinos. ‘Coke, orange, lemon?’
‘Lemon.’
Gazis watched as the fat man climbed from the Pony and looked around. Close by was a white car with a pink FM107 logo splashed down its sides; the damage to one wing was significant. As the fat man bent to examine the car, Gazis smiled.
He turned to Dinos.
‘Someone’s taking an interest in your car,’ he said. The fat man was scraping the damaged paintwork with a penknife, catching the flakes of paint in an empty matchbox. ‘Looks to me like he’s taking paint samples.’
But Dinos didn’t hear; he was already on his way outside.
Gazis followed slowly. By the time he reached the car park, Dinos had finished shouting at the fat man and was on his way back into the building.
As he and Gazis passed, Dinos glared.
‘Was this a set-up?’ he asked. ‘You bastards!’
‘Set-up?’ asked Gazis, but Dinos was gone.
Gazis stood by the fat man. The sun was hot on his back.
‘You seem to have upset Dinos,’ he said.
‘It would seem so,’ said the fat man. ‘But, as I tried to explain to him, I am merely working on a process of elimination.’
‘He’ll calm down.’
‘I was coming to see you later,’ said the fat man, ‘so I consider it lucky – though unexpected – to find you here.’
‘I had some business to discuss with Dinos, as a matter of fact.’
The fat man looked at him long and hard.
‘I hope you have done nothing hasty, or rash,’ he said.
Gazis did not reply.
‘Not to worry,’ said the fat man. ‘What’s done can often be undone.’ He held out the matchbox. ‘May I give this into your care? These paint samples are important for our process of elimination. As I said to Dinos, elimination of the innocent is as important a part of this process as conviction of the guilty. I’m afraid I have ruffled his feathers. I shall call on him again later, and hope to convince him my intention was not to offend. In the meantime, even I am feeling the heat, so I shall take myself for a swim.’
‘Perhaps you can kill two birds with one stone,’ said Gazis. ‘I believe Dinos has a date at Kastro beach later on. You could buy him an ice-cream by way of apology.’
The fat man smiled.
‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘please take no further action in the Petridis business. I think you’ll find matters will work themselves out, without your further intervention.’
Gazis frowned.
‘Young Petridis and I have become quite good friends,’ went on the fat man, ‘so I’m aware of his current difficulty. And when I speak to Dinos, I’m convinced I can persuade him to see reason.’
‘You’re welcome to try,’ said Gazis. ‘But if you fail, he and I have come up with a solution of our own.’
‘There’ll be no need for that,’ said the fat man, shortly. ‘Goodbye, for now. I’ll be in touch, when I’ve spoken to Gabrilis’s killer.’
Gazis was startled.
‘Do you know, then, who is guilty?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the fat man, ‘I know who’s guilty. Believe me, I have him very clearly in my sights.’
On the way to the beach, the fat man had planned a short detour, but the address on Petridis’s piece of paper was hard to find. Twice, the fat man drove through the village, and found no road by the name he’d been given. Turning round, once again, at the village outskirts, he saw a young man tinkering with a motorcycle’s brakes and, winding down his window, asked for directions.
The young man knew the house well.
‘A good kilometre from here,’ he said. ‘Just keep driving. You can’t miss it.’
Where the mountain foothills began, the villa stood in isolation, the high, iron railings that surrounded it spiked with fleurs-de-lys, like the fences around embassies or palaces. Its wide gates were open to the road, and the fat man drove through them, along a driveway where dried, dead weeds filled the cracks in the concrete.
The house, when he reached it, was grand but unattractive. A failing lawn spread to the railings, the lines of the original lengths of turf lifting at their parched edges, the surviving grass sparse and pale, kept barely alive by water from a hosepipe that lay, coiled and dribbling, in the house’s shadow. The fat man saw no native trees, no bushes or shrubs, no flowerbeds within the garden; but on the land all around, crickets sang in the thriving wild grasses, as if Nature’s nose were pressed up against the fence.
Beside the front door was an electric doorbell, but above it, hung on a crooked nail hammered into the frame, was a sheep’s bell with a length of cord attached to its clapper. The fat man rang the sheep’s bell, whose tinny rattle seemed in keeping with the foothills’ grasslands. For a minute, he waited, but the sheep’s bell brought no answer; behind the door, a vacuum cleaner droned. Stepping up again to the door, the fat man pressed the electric bell. Immediately, the droning of the vacuum cleaner stopped.
A woman opened the door, her lips set in down-turned lines.
‘Yes?’
‘Kali mera,’ said the fat man. ‘I’m looking for Mr Manos Vrettos.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mrs Vrettos, then?’
‘I am Mrs Vrettos.’
‘A moment of your time, then, kyria. I’m here in relation to a car accident I believe your husband had recently. He’s mentioned it to you, I’m sure.’
‘Oh yes, he mentioned it,’ she said sourly. ‘And I know you’re not from the insurance, because he let the insurance lapse.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said the fat man, ‘I’m working with the police.’
She pulled a frown, which drew deep wrinkles on her brow.
‘It’s not a police matter, surely?’ she asked. ‘It was straightforward, Manos said, the other guy’s stupidity. And of course we have insurance. My husband wouldn’t drive without insurance. But still, I think it would be better if you came back when Manos was here.’
‘But I’m here now, kyria, and truly I need only a few moments to clarify a point or two. I would consider it a great favour if you would save me the return trip.’
‘What can I tell you?’ she asked. ‘I wasn’t there.’
‘But you know how the accident happened?’
‘I know what he told me. He said he wasn’t to blame. Manos was on Chimaras Street; he’d been to the bank. He was driving slowly – so he says – with other cars ahead of him. And this other guy was waiting at the junction, in a side-street. Manos says he must have had an aberration of the brain. The cars ahead of Manos he let go by, and as Manos approached – bam! – he pulled out straight in front of him.’
‘Was there much damage?’
She laughed.
‘Manos’s beautiful car, his BMW! He cares more about that car than he does about me. Now it’s got the front all caved in. Of course he can’t find the time to get it repaired, not in tourist season. It’ll stay like that until October, or beyond.’
‘Was there much damage to the other car?’
‘I haven’t seen it, so I couldn’t really say. Manos daren’t drive fast, not in that beloved car. But he hit the guy side-on, on the wing, so I’m sure the other car had something to show for it.’
‘And can you tell me, Mrs Vrettos, what colour is your husband’s car?’
‘Black,’ she said. ‘My husband’s car is black.’
Nineteen
Four o’clock, and, as the heat-wearied families of foreigners prepared to leave Kastro beach, with the cooling of the day the Greeks were arriving. In the water, a group of army conscripts threw a frisbee; a grandmother and grandfather released, reluctantly, the hands of a small and precious grandchild, and watched, nervous and interfering, as he splashed joyfully in the shallows. In the car pa
rk, Greek cars took the places of those rented by Europeans, and the barmen changed the music, from the tedious pounding of club anthems to the ethnic rhythms of Greek pop. At the beach bar, the slender-limbed, bronzed Italian girls tossed their salty hair like mermaids, and demanded juices and French water from the barmen, whilst overeager English girls with sunburn red as scalds competed for the men’s attention by ordering too many cocktails. The air smelled not of the sea but of frying food; the hot sand was churned with footprints and trampled castles.
Far along the beach, the sand turned into gravel, then pebbles, then into the steep rocks that marked the beach’s end. In the shade of those rocks, the fat man waited. A plush, navy-blue towel was spread beneath him; his swimming shorts were damp, his hair was drying into curls. His tortoiseshell-framed sunglasses had a discreet American logo on the arm; their lenses were tinted teak-brown but, although the tint was subtle, somehow behind the lenses his eyes could not be seen. On his little finger, the ring Sostis had returned to him glinted ostentatiously.
His spot was carefully chosen. The rocks had a clear view of the car park on the flat cliff tops across the bay, where his red Namco Pony, unique amongst the other cars, was parked close to the entrance from the coast road.
At 4:15, a white car with a blaze of fuchsia on its side drove slowly past the Pony, and reversed into a nearby space. As the fat man watched, a man and a girl climbed from the car: Dinos and Mina. Dinos lifted a sportsbag from the rear seat, Mina swung a backpack to her shoulders, and together they walked down to the beach.
The fat man waited. Near the beach bar, where a wooden changing cubicle stood beside a fresh-water shower, Mina kissed Dinos on the cheek, and left him. Dinos came on along the beach; free from Mina, he surveyed the women as he walked, smiling at the Italian girls at the bar, calling out to a German girl stroking suncream on her thighs. Passing the sunbeds and umbrellas, shifting the equipment he carried from hand to hand, he walked to where the sand turned to shingle; there, he paused and looked about him, but, seeing no place to his liking, came on further still. By lying face down on his towel, the fat man made himself anonymous. Attracted by the rocks’ shade, Dinos moved closer and closer until, just a few feet from where the fat man lay, he dropped his sportsbag on the pebbles, together with his flippers, a harpoon gun and a belt of lead weights.
He pulled off his T-shirt and, letting it fall, removed the shorts that covered his swimming trunks, then slipped off his sandals to stand barefoot on the beach. From the sportsbag he took out a snorkel and mask, and a net bag to hold the catch he hoped to make. He touched a fingertip to the harpoon trident’s prongs to check their sharpness and, with the gun still unloaded, pulled the trigger twice to check the mechanism; satisfied, grimacing with the effort, he forced the trident down into the barrel. He bent then to pick up the belt of weights; but, as he was about to clip it on, the fat man got to his feet, and spoke.
‘Yassou, Dinos,’ he said.
In surprise, Dinos turned.
‘We’ve met before,’ said the fat man. ‘This morning, at your office.’
He took a step closer to Dinos, who squinted into the sun, trying to identify the man behind the glasses.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘What the hell were you doing with my car this morning?’
‘Just routine,’ said the fat man.
‘What do you mean, routine? Are you another policeman?’
‘I have been working with Sergeant Gazis, but no, I’m not a policeman. I’ve been making independent enquiries – into the death of my friend, Gabrilis Kaloyeros.’
Dinos snapped his fingers, recalling the memory.
‘That’s where I’ve seen you. You were there, when the ambulance turned up. You were there when Gazis found the body.’
‘I was indeed there, but it wasn’t Gazis who found the body. It was I, and it was a moment I shall never forget. Gabrilis was a good man, and a true friend to me for many years. He did not deserve that lonely, painful death.’
‘My sympathies. But what does that have to do with my car?’
‘It was a white car that killed Gabrilis, as you know, since – I believe – Constable Petridis contacted you, asking you to include in your news bulletins a request for help in tracking down that vehicle.’
Dinos shrugged, and bent to fiddle with the cable connecting the trident to the harpoon gun, rubbing at a blemish with his thumbnail.
‘He may have asked me. I really don’t remember. We get requests like that all the time. Everything from lost dogs to runaway wives. A stolen tractor, once. We don’t put them all on the air.’
‘They don’t all relate to murder, though, do they? This one did. And yet your station didn’t run the appeal.’
‘Didn’t we? And not murder, surely? Manslaughter, at worst. I’m sorry, but as far as we’re concerned, it was just a traffic accident. A tragedy to those that knew him, of course; but to the world at large, my friend, just one of those things.’
He looked across the beach. The fat man followed his eyes, to the bar where Mina stood chatting with two swimsuited girls.
‘Your friend has found companions.’
‘She talks too much, and I’m ready to go. She won’t know where to find me.’
The fat man gazed out over the sea.
‘What are you after, out there?’
‘Anything I can find. Anything I can catch. Gives me a buzz, you know?’
‘Oh yes, I know very well. There’s a lot of that in my work. Hunting. Tracking. Like I’ve tracked you.’
Quizzically, Dinos looked at him.
‘Tracked me? What for?’
‘I had help, of course. From Sergeant Gazis. And the very worthy Constable Petridis. You know George Petridis socially, I gather?’
Dinos turned away and, putting his hand to his eyes to block the sun, scanned the beach again to find Mina.
‘For God’s sake,’ he said under his breath, ‘why doesn’t the silly bitch get over here?’
He laid down the belt of weights, and began to walk away from the fat man towards the bar; but the fat man moved quickly to block him, and put a hand on Dinos’s naked chest.
‘You and I,’ he said, ‘have not finished talking.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Dinos pulled off the fat man’s hand. ‘Get out of my way!’
The fat man stepped aside.
‘Go,’ he said, ‘and I will follow you. And as I follow you, I shall tell everyone what you have done. Everyone on this beach will know.’
‘What do you mean, what I have done? You’re a crazy man! Get out of my way!’
By the beach bar, the army conscripts had joined the three girls. Mina was laughing with them. Dinos cupped his hands at his mouth to amplify his voice, but as he was about to shout the fat man cautioned him.
‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ he said. ‘Don’t call her over here unless you want her to hear what I have to say.’
Angrily, Dinos faced him.
‘And what do you have to say, big guy?’
‘That your opinion of yourself is very high, Dinos. You think you’ve got away with it, that the death of one old man is something you can sweep under the carpet, a minor inconvenience you’ve already overcome. And because your opinion of yourself is so high, your opinion of authority is correspondingly very low. But the constabulary would have got to you in the end, if I hadn’t got to you first. Petridis has already put it all together. There’s a reason Sergeant Gazis doesn’t want him neutralised by you. Petridis has the makings of an excellent detective. In years to come, the boy will be a great asset to the CID.’
Dinos snorted with laughter.
‘And, Christ knows, they need some assets! You seem to know little enough about the local constabulary if you don’t share my opinion about the authorities. It’s an opinion very commonly held, in these parts.’
‘When I spoke of authority, I was not referring to them. I was speaking of myself.’
Sneering, Dinos
looked him up and down.
‘You? And on what authority do you act, friend?’
‘A higher authority than Sergeant Gazis. My authority gives me access to facts the constabulary does not have.’
‘Facts? What facts?’
‘Facts you would prefer me not to know. Before I tell you, I would like you to answer me a question. Are you of the Orthodox faith?’
‘What kind of question is that? Of course I’m Orthodox. Aren’t we all Orthodox here?’
‘Not all, no.’
The fat man bent down and, picking up the belt of lead weights, clicked the buckle fastened and flipped it open again. Dinos snatched the belt from him, and the fat man smiled.
Dinos fastened the belt around his waist.
‘Just get out of my face,’ he said.
‘You killed my friend,’ said the fat man quietly. ‘You killed him, and didn’t even have the decency to hold his hand as he died.’
Dinos gave a bark of laughter.
‘You’re crazy,’ he said, screwing his index finger round at his temple. ‘Crazy man.’
‘Whilst your weakness is your high opinion of your own cleverness,’ said the fat man, ‘your boldness would have been your strength. Your escape plan was audacious, but it didn’t work. I was on the scene too quickly. A day or two, and you would have been gone: a contract in another city, or just a simple, unexplained disappearance when the heat was off. You were smart enough not just to run; at least, you thought it smart. In fact, it was your only hope of getting away. And now it’s too late.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You have no idea how much I know. And you are desperate to find out, but you are good at appearing cool. So let me slake your curiosity, and tell you what I know.
‘What caused the inattention that led to the collision? That I don’t know. Were you talking on the phone? Changing the music you were listening to? Thinking of some girl? Were you tired from lack of sleep, or had you been drinking? It doesn’t matter: you may keep that to yourself. The fact is, you hit him. You knocked him off the road. You stopped your car, braking hard; the skid-marks from your tyres were in the gravel, along with your footprints – running footprints. Did you go down to him? Yes, I think you did, because you were still hoping there was hope, that the old man would get up, brush himself off, no real harm done, that you’d drive him to a doctor’s and be on your way.
The Taint of Midas Page 21