The Black Monastery

by Stav Sherez

  She remembered the feeling of humiliation and anger when she was here before, but no one seemed to recognise her when she gave her name at the desk. Don’s phone call had unsettled her. When was it he stopped caring? When was it she started realising? Perhaps after the accident, but it was hard to tell. A slow, spinning away that was only measurable once it was too late. She bit down on her memories and asked to speak to someone regarding a burglary. The desk sergeant looked up, bored and tired, his eyes small shrivelled things. ‘Someone who can speak English,’ she added.

  ‘You’re back again.’

  She turned and saw the policeman with the moustache. He was smiling, but it was not a friendly smile. There was too much teeth and too little eyes.

  ‘My room was broken into,’ she said, trying not to be unnerved by his gaze. ‘I want to report it to someone who can speak English.’

  To her surprise, the policeman held out his hand. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we can talk in my office.’

  After last week’s treatment, she was too astonished to say anything. She followed him, noticing how everyone else in the station room stopped and watched her, mumbling among themselves, voices thick with smoke and speculation.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so noisy at the moment,’ the policeman said, pointing to a chair behind the table. ‘I’ve been wanting to speak to you,’ he added, watching her sit down before taking his own place.

  ‘You found out who mugged me?’ She was unable to contain her surprise.

  The policeman smiled. ‘I’m afraid not. As you can see,’ he pointed to the frenzy of movement in the main room, ‘we’re working hard on it.’ His laugh was like dry wood crackling under fire.

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘No, of course not, I’m sorry.’ And he genuinely did seem so, Kitty thought, warming to him despite herself. ‘Now, please tell me why you’re here.’

  She told him. About the missing files. The damage to her computer. The tickets in her bag. While she was running through all this, the policeman just kept nodding and stroking his moustache.

  ‘Are you going to write any of this down?’

  The policeman shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ll remember,’ he said, ‘I have a long memory.’

  He was insinuating something, she knew. She was about to reply, then closed her mouth, thinking better of it.

  ‘Actually, I had some questions for you,’ he leant forward, his elbows covering the table. ‘It’s good you came in. Saved me the trouble of trying to find you.’

  She nodded, not knowing what to say. She’d written scenes like this a hundred times before, but she’d never felt the dread she was now feeling. A thick, dark coating filling her heart and mouth.

  ‘You were at the monastery a few nights ago. The night the priest was killed.’

  It wasn’t a question, so she just nodded, wondering how he knew.

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Sightseeing.’

  The detective laughed. His hand slapping the table. ‘Yes. Very good. Of course. Except that the monastery was closed. Has been for a while.’

  ‘Tell that to my guidebook.’ They’d done nothing wrong, she knew, and she wasn’t going to let this morose policeman make her feel like they had.

  He seemed to be contemplating this, nodding to himself. ‘It was you or your boyfriend’s decision to go up there?’

  Kitty felt the blood fill her face. She didn’t know why, the policeman was just doing his job, but her reactions were becoming unpredictable to her like a character in a bad soap opera. She wondered if it was the island or if it was just being alone. ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

  ‘So you say. But that doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘We were bored. We read about the monastery in the guidebook. Is it illegal to go up there?’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘No. It isn’t. I’m sorry if I sounded hostile. Comes with the job, I’m afraid. I just wanted to know if you saw anything strange, anything unusual?’

  The priest, the trap, the scream. ‘No, nothing out of the ordinary. A closed monastery and a lot of trees. Am I a suspect?’

  Nikos shook his head, ‘No, of course not. I’m sorry.’ He took her hand. She almost pulled back but there was something in his eyes. ‘Things have got … how can I say? … very difficult around here. I didn’t meant to suggest you had anything to do with the priest’s death. I was hoping someone might have seen something. I just need to eliminate all the loose ends.’

  Kitty let her hand rest in his. It was strangely familiar. ‘And whatever’s left is the solution?’

  The policeman smiled. ‘We’ve obviously been reading the same books.’

  They stared at each other. She’d thought he seemed cold and inscrutable but as she looked at him she could see he was hiding something deeper, a sadness at the very core of him, a man lost in the middle of his life. She smiled, wondering how alike they really were despite culture and continents. ‘I hope you find the killer,’ she said.

  He nodded slowly, ‘I really hope so too,’ but she could see he believed in it less than she did.

  TWENTY-ONE

  They met at a taverna by the harbour. The sea splashed and eddied, the boats rocked and twisted in their moorings. The sun scorched and sizzled.

  ‘There were two tickets. You know what that means?’ Her voice sounded thin and brittle like something made out of ice.

  Jason nodded. A thick swelling in his throat prevented him from saying anything. What was there left to say? Someone had placed two tickets for today’s boat to Athens in Kitty’s suitcase. The message was clear. He looked up. She seemed smaller now, and he felt angry for the way they’d reduced her.

  ‘All of this is my fault. I’m so sorry.’ It was the closest he could come to admitting the thing which loomed over him like a second sky. The constant pebble in his shoe. If only … a cinema queue in central London … an adjacent seat on a long flight …

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Her face was unreadable. For a moment, he thought she knew. That, maybe, Wynn had told her.

  Jason paused. Sensing this was not the time for confessions. Maybe he could have told her at the beginning, but now he was the only person she could trust on the island. He looked at Kitty and knew he couldn’t take that away from her. The first lie can be forgiven, but the ones that pile up to buttress it?

  ‘How much did you lose?’

  She shrugged. ‘Everything on the computer’s backed up. The notes and pages … I’m not sure I would have gone back to them anyway. Perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps you need to have your bridges burned for you.’

  He wasn’t sure what she meant.

  ‘Any idea what they were after?’

  Their legs touched under the table; there was no awkwardness nor quick movement away.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? I go to the museum, ask about the cult, say I’m writing an article, and a few days later all my notes and work disappears. That old man who interrupted the librarian and me. It’s got to be him. I think the man with the jaw sent him. The librarian closed up after talking to him. The ridiculous thing is that all they got was Lily stuff.’

  He didn’t remind her that Wynn had overheard their conversation in the club that night, their theories and speculations. That Wynn might have reasons of his own.

  ‘The police say anything useful?’

  She shook her head. ‘I mentioned the man at the museum. The detective didn’t even make a note of it. He was far more interested in what we were doing at the monastery that night.’

  ‘How did he know we were up there?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Did you tell him we talked to the priest?’

  ‘No.’

  Jason stared at her. Thrilled but also a little bit scared by her deception. ‘No?’

  ‘There was nothing to tell. The detective treated me like a suspect. He was waiting for me to slip up, I could see it in his eyes, the way he twiddled his moustache every time I answered
a question like it was some kind of lie detector. If I’d told him we’d seen the priest, I don’t think he would have let me go. I think we’re getting close. I see it in the way people react. In the way things are starting to come together. We’ve put coincidence behind us. I don’t think we should use those tickets. I don’t think we should give up.’

  Her fingers wound in and out of the coffee cup in front of her. The nails clicking a tattoo against the porcelain.

  Jason took her hand. She let it rest in his, then moved it away, as if suddenly aware of a breach in her defences. ‘Those people ordered after us.’ She pointed to a couple of locals whose food was being delivered. Jason looked around for their waiter but he was gone. The food they’d ordered, forgotten. He was about to suggest they leave, the atmosphere unfriendly and turning more so, when he heard Kitty call out to someone then stop mid-sentence. He saw the fine contour of goosebumps explode across her neck. A woman, silver-haired and stooped, holding the hand of a man with a Tom of Finland moustache, looked at their table uncomprehendingly. Then something in the woman’s expression changed as the man leaned into her, whispering in her ear.

  Kitty looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Her body tried to disappear into the chair but it was too late. Jason heard her take two massive gulps of air. Watched blood rush back into her cheeks as she sat up to greet the mismatched couple.

  ‘Jason. This is the curator of the museum … the one I told you about.’

  ‘Alexia,’ the woman said.

  He stood up to shake her hand but she didn’t proffer it.

  Kitty turned to him, ‘That’s the detective who questioned me.’ Her words were like rapid expulsions of air, atmospheric bullets that pierced right through Jason’s skin.

  ‘My husband,’ was all Alexia said, pointing to the man. He looked towards them, neither friendly nor unfriendly, nodding his head slightly.

  ‘Sit down. Have a drink with us,’ Kitty said, surprising Jason as much as it did the woman who began to make her excuses but was abruptly cut off by her husband. ‘Yes. Thank you, we will,’ he said, pulling out a chair for his wife.

  ‘How’s your holiday?’ the woman asked, but Jason could see she was just saying it to be polite. She seemed distracted and uncomfortable sitting there.

  Kitty smiled. ‘Oh, you know. Can’t fault it for excitement. Your husband knows the details.’ The way she said the word husband, it was like she was squeezing the syllables through the gaps in her teeth.

  The detective nodded. ‘I thought we would bump into each other again but not quite so soon. I’m sorry about this morning. The situation is very tense and sometimes I lose sight of things.’

  Alexia took her husband’s hand. ‘Nikos still pines for the days when he was a real street detective, don’t you?’

  ‘How long have you been a policeman?’ Something had thawed in Kitty’s tone.

  ‘Thirty years, more or less,’ he replied, an amused smile upturning the corners of his mouth.

  Jason saw Kitty shift, her whole body taut like a spring. ‘In Athens or here?’

  Nikos looked at his wife. His expression seemed neutral but Alexia understood it and nodded back. ‘Mainly in Athens. I served for a couple of years here back in the early days.’

  Kitty and Jason exchanged glances. ‘Were you here during the first cult murders?’ Kitty said, her elbows white and sculpted spreading across the table, trying to bridge the distance between her and the policeman.

  ‘Yes and no.’

  Nikos sipped his coffee and lit a cigarette. That their positions had changed and Kitty was now doing the questioning didn’t seem to bother him. He sighed, and smoke curled out of his mouth like the tendrils of a fairy-tale serpent.

  ‘It was my first month on the job. Everyone at the academy laughed at me when I said I wanted to be stationed on my home island. Said there was nothing to do there but catch animal rapists. All the fun was in Athens. But I didn’t think Athens was that much fun. These were the last days of the dictatorship, and the police, while nominally independent, weren’t really at all. Here on the island no one bothered us. Also, it was the place I grew up. My mother was still alive, though barely, and I wanted to take care of her. But something happened to the island afterwards. Things changed.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. Things got a little darker for a while. The life of the village seemed stained by what had happened. The two children, of course. In a big city maybe it’s different, but when something like this happens in a small community it changes everyone, affects everyone, not just family and friends. I think locals became more suspicious of foreigners and tourists for a while. There were beatings, I’m afraid. But then I guess, like everything else, it became part of the past, something to be forgotten. The developers moved in. The dictatorship finally crumbled, and tourism became the main focus. The only thing to save a lot of these islands from destitution. It’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the island’s transformed, new buildings go up, the quality of life changes.’ He pointed towards the harbour where men sat bare-chested swigging cans of lager. ‘You know how it is though, money eventually outweighs everything else. You put up with it. The fake restaurants, the discos and noise and puking. Why? Because it means you can buy your mother a refrigerator or air conditioning. It’s a decision everyone has to make for themselves.’

  Kitty sat absorbed in the words Nikos was saying. Jason could see the little vein at the left side of her forehead twitch as she assimilated the information.

  ‘Do you think the cult’s resurfaced?’ Jason asked, watching as Kitty turned and looked at him, a faint smile visible on her lower lip.

  Nikos shook his head. ‘No. That’s not it at all.’

  ‘What do you mean? You don’t think 1974 and the recent murders are connected?’

  ‘This has nothing to do with that,’ Nikos replied bluntly, ‘though perhaps whoever is behind this wants these connections to be made.’ There was a look between husband and wife which Jason caught but could not interpret. He wondered why the policeman was so adamant.

  ‘You think it’s a copycat crime?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘Yes. There’s no way it can be connected to what happened thirty-three years ago.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Nikos suddenly got up, looked at his wife. ‘Believe me, I’m sure. It’s my job to be sure. It was very nice to meet you but we have to go now.’

  Jason caught the look of surprise – and was it annoyance? – in Alexia’s face even though she tried to hide it.

  The abruptness of the man’s goodbye stayed with them as they sipped their drinks. When they tried to pay, the waiter explained that Nikos had settled it. They were finishing their coffee when Kitty jerked away from Jason. ‘Over there.’ She pointed to the side of the café, to an old man getting up. ‘That’s him,’ she said, breathless and sharp. ‘The man I told you about. The one who interrupted Alexia and me in the library. I think he’s the one who broke into my room. He must have been watching us.’

  Jason looked at the old man, his string vest and drunken walk, all crab-like and stuttering. He didn’t look like any sort of burglar.

  Kitty got up, grabbed her bag.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  But, of course, he already knew.

  TWENTY-TWO

  They’ve been here before. The things he doesn’t want to talk about. The past. The years before he met her. Impossible to explain his reluctance to talk about these things without telling her everything. And, despite all the years, the shared breakfasts and late-night conversations, he still doesn’t know how she’d take it, whether she’d hold his head and say forget it, that’s all past and gone and you’re not that man any more, or whether she’d look at him, her face turning stony as a statue and the next morning she would be gone, unable to continue living with a man such as he’d revealed himself to be.

  ‘You told them it wasn’t connected but I know that’s not what you think.’ He
r voice is like wind, laden with jasmine and distance.

  ‘How can it be connected?’ The terseness of his reply causes her to withdraw her hand.

  Explosions of emotion scare her, make her fold back into herself. He’s never asked her about her parents but senses that a deep wounding and flattening resides there, and it is more for himself than for her that he never pries or tries to understand. He likes her just the way she is and doesn’t want to reassess her according to a long-buried pattern. He knows it’s what made her so. But that knowledge is enough.

  He begins drinking on the boat to Athens, and he doesn’t stop for twenty-four hours. The sea is grey and roiling. The boat lurches and buckles. The drinks spill from his hand. The memories tumble and fold like waves.

  His life seems marked by boat trips: the one thirty-three years ago going to meet the detectives, bringing them back to a scene of mass slaughter; then a year later, him and Alexia sitting on deck with all their belongings, moving back to Athens, away from the island, away from the nightmares. But, of course, they never really stopped. Even in their new flat in Athens they scrolled like a film across the backs of his eyelids, the hard meat of his guilt. He’d thought that geography and space could change the past. He’d thought distance could make him a different man.

  And then, six months ago, the long ride back to the island, their belongings at their side again, their hair grey and their eyes bleary and bored. His life a long string of personal failures mitigated only by the comfort of his wife’s arms, her stillness and forgiveness.

  He steps off the boat in Piraeus and into the nearest bar. It is dark and smoky and full of longshoremen and ferry stewards. There is no day or night here, no clocks or windows, only the measure of drink in the glass and the length of the cigarette burning between his fingers. He has an appointment tomorrow at the university with a man who lectures on cults. The strange death of Vondas. The scrawled-out cult book. Wynn’s seeming innocence. He realises he needs to know more about how cults operate if he has any hope of disentangling this case. He knows it’s knowledge he’s avoided and that this case is like punishment for the years of denial and fear.