by Leta Serafim
Being a Greek, Patronas found their behavior unsettling. Maybe that’s how they grieve in Germany, he told himself. They cry themselves out and return to their computers. Maybe it was all the wars that had made them that way. It didn’t matter that they’d caused it all; they’d still suffered. He recalled how Dresden had looked after the bombing, the mountains of burning ash. Maybe when a person’s country becomes a vast cemetery and death is all around, it doesn’t affect you as much. Maybe that’s how you survive—unlike his people, the Greeks, with their black clothes and theatrical mourning.
After his father died, his mother had worn mourning the rest of her life, held memorial services every year on the date as was the custom, crying always when she spoke of it as if her heart would break, as if it had just happened. It had been hard growing up in her house, a child in that world of sorrow.
Still, Patronas questioned the Germans’ reaction. The man and his wife were too young to have any memory of the war. Judging by the house in Chora, they were rich, had suffered no deprivation. So what was he seeing? Surely the man would miss his father, regret his passing, his violent end? After all, he’d lived with them. But Patronas had seen little evidence of that other than Bechtel’s initial tears. This was a murder, after all. Yet there’d been no demand for justice, no crazed talk of vengeance. Though obviously anguished, Gunther Bechtel had also seemed resigned, almost as if he’d been expecting this.
The woman who’d let them into the garden stood in the doorway, watching them furtively. Not a member of the family, Patronas judged, noting the shabby clothes, the apron. A servant, perhaps.
“Who’s that?” he asked Evangelos Demos, nodding in her direction.
“The housekeeper.”
“She from around here?”
“No, northern Greece. Epirus, I think.”
“Epirus? How did she end up here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she met them in Germany and they brought her here.”
In the old days, Greeks from rural villages had immigrated to Germany—the men to work in the automobile factories, the women as maids, any job they could find. Patronas wondered if this woman had been part of that migration or if her move to northern Europe had been more recent. His cousin’s daughter had just left for Hamburg, and others he knew would soon follow. His people were on the move again, leaving their homeland in search of work.
“I think this is her first summer working in Chora,” Evangelos said. “You’ll have to ask her. Her name’s Maria Georgiou, Kyria Maria. She keeps to herself.”
Patronas put a star next to her name. A Greek. He’d be able to converse with her in his native tongue, not have to struggle in German, mispronouncing the word for ‘murder victim,’ Mordopfer and the word for ‘killed,’ getötet.
Or God forbid, spend hours speaking English stuttering like poor King George in the movie, who’d had to be coached before he could declare war on Germany. Patronas had about fifteen minutes of solid English in him. Any longer and it came apart.
After he and Tembelos finished gathering evidence, they shed their Tyvek gear, lifted the dead man up and placed him in a black body bag, zipped it and carried it back down the hill on their shoulders to the waiting Jeep. An official in Chora had told them the cruise ship was due at midday and Patronas was determined to leave the village before it arrived. He didn’t want tourists to take pictures of the deceased with their cellphones and post them on the Internet, didn’t want the island to be tainted by the killing. He had the priest lead the way, hoping his robed presence would fool any people they encountered into thinking their sad little procession was a makeshift funeral.
He found it strange that the family hadn’t wanted to accompany the body, to see the old man off as it were. Usually, grieving relatives behaved differently, refused to let go. They’d cry until they could cry no more, as if their tears could restore the dead to life. These people were different, and it wasn’t just because they were from somewhere else. No, something was going on here.
He looked back at the house. Could be they simply couldn’t bear it. Watching the body of a loved one being trundled off was hard. He recalled when his mother’s body was taken, how he felt like he’d been struck by a tree. Could be the man and his wife wanted to spare themselves that, spare their children.
They loaded the body without incident. Evangelos Demos started the car and they drove off, the plan being to transport the body by boat to Leros, where there was an airport. From there it would be flown on to Athens.
Not wanting to put the body in the trunk of the Jeep, they’d put it in the backseat, laying it partially in Patronas’ lap.
A fine metaphor for the case, he thought sourly, looking down at the shrouded form.
The murder of a foreign national, it would be the case from hell, no doubt about it. The language barrier alone would be a formidable obstacle. Patronas didn’t speak much German, and he didn’t know anyone who did. The German language had gone out of fashion, students in Greece preferring now to study English.
And Evangelos Demos would be no help. No, Comrade Stalin up there in the front seat would only get in the way.
Also, once the media got wind of the crime, politicians from both countries might well get involved. Right-wing or left, it wouldn’t matter, they’d all have plenty to say, their voices rising in a self-serving chorus and impeding his investigation. Vigilantes had begun attacking foreign immigrants all over Europe in recent months, even killed a few. God help Greece if that were the case here.
Egine hamos, this was. Utter chaos.
Worse would be if there was a second murder, if someone decided to take it upon himself to cleanse his country of outsiders … a home-grown Hitler.
Patronas closed his eyes. He was too old to deal with such horrors, his homeland too broken. Please Jesus, let that not be the case here.
“Let’s hope this is not what I think it is,” he told the others. “That this man was not singled out because of his nationality.
The priest nodded. “ ‘To kill without pity or mercy,’ that’s what Hitler said. ‘Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?’ Let us pray no one in Greece has succumbed to such madness.”
The crew on the police cruiser rushed to help when Patronas and Tembelos carried the body bag up the gangplank of the boat. “What happened to them? Was it an accident?” one of the men asked.
“No,” Patronas said. “He was murdered.”
He had called ahead and told them to clear a place in the hold and pack it with ice. A morbid kind of cooler, it would have to do until they reached Leros and the plane. The ice Evangelos had poured on the victim had already doomed a proper forensic examination. A little more wouldn’t do any harm.
“Get there as fast as you can,” he instructed the captain. “I’ve alerted the airport on Leros and they’ll fly him out on the next plane. See that he gets to the proper authorities in Athens.”
Before leaving the crime scene, Patronas had called the Forensic Sciences Division of the Hellenic Police in Athens on his cellphone and told the man in charge to red-flag the case, stating the deceased was a foreign national and that the lab needed to work the case and work it fast. There could well be international repercussions once word got out. No one in law enforcement wanted that kind of trouble.
“Of course,” the man said. “I’ll make sure the technicians start immediately.”
“Make sure they ink his fingers and run them for prints,” Patronas added. “I tried, but the facilities are limited here on Patmos and you people are the experts. Also check the tallow in the evidence bag—it’s labeled, ‘wax, body’—and compare it with the envelope, marked ‘wax, church.’ See if there’s a match.”
His colleague read the request back to him. “I’ll check with the general police divisions on the islands and see if there’s been any other attacks on foreigners,” he said. “Could be this was a simple break-in and he surprised them.”
“Check the mainland, too. All of Greece
. Also run those scars on the victim’s face through the international databases. Maybe you’ll get a hit.”
“Will do.”
“And keep it quiet. No media, no loose talk.”
Patronas checked his notes to see if he’d missed anything. The list in his head kept growing. “One of my men is escorting the body to Athens. His name is Giorgos Tembelos. He should be there in nine or ten hours. He’ll hand over the evidence: the bags I told you about, everything else we found.”
As a precaution, Tembelos was going along to make sure the victim got where he needed to go. Patronas doubted there’d be a problem with the pick-up and delivery, but he was taking no chances.
“By the book, Giorgos,” he cautioned. “No fooling around. No ‘I’m in Athens, I might as well go and visit my mother,’ bullshit. If the hearse isn’t there to meet you when the boat docks—drivers might still be on strike—call headquarters and ask them to send a van. Don’t try to flag a taxi, Giorgos. You hear me? Don’t leave the body lying on the curb and run off looking for a cab. You’ve got the address of the lab. Go directly there and deposit the body, make sure the coroner signs the release form, then turn around and come right back. We can’t afford to screw this up.”
“Okay,” Tembelos said gruffly, miffed at the lengthy instructions.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘okay.’ ”
‘Okay’ had become increasingly popular in Greek along with chillaroume—the Americanism, ‘chill out,’ reworked in Greek. Patronas, for one, didn’t approve of the trend. His homeland was disappearing right before his eyes—his music, his language, everything was going. Socrates would have wept.
“Greek, Giorgos, Greek. That’s who we are, that’s what we speak. The word you should use to signal your assent is entaxei.”
Tembelos was now thoroughly aggravated. “Whatever, you asshole,” he said. “Need me to translate? It’s where you shit.”
Papa Michalis had insisted on accompanying the body to Athens. “I’ll go, not as a policeman, but as a priest and pray for the victim,” he told Patronas.
He’d been deeply moved at the sight of the dead man, even wept a little as they loaded him into the cooler. “To meet such a fate so far from home. It’s like something out of Exodus,” he said. “ ‘He called his name Gershom: for he said I have been a stranger in a strange land.’ ”
He touched the cooler with his hand. “I’ll accompany him on his sad journey and guide him to his rest.”
“Father, he’s not going to his rest,” Patronas said. “He’s going to a forensic laboratory.”
“There, then.”
With great reverence, the priest touched the large cross he wore around his neck, a mannerism Patronas found extremely irritating. Roughly translated, it meant, ‘Don’t trouble me with your earthly concerns, my friend. I am a man of God. I answer to a higher authority.’
In other words, Patronas could go to hell. The priest was simply too polite to say so.
“I think you should stay here,” Patronas insisted.
A mulish expression on his face, Papa Michalis sat down on the floor next to the cooler and set about arranging his robe, “I will go wherever he goes. To a forensic laboratory, if that’s where he’s bound.”
He looked up at Patronas. “I am not unfamiliar with forensic laboratories, Yiannis. I have seen such places on television.” This was said as if watching television conferred an advanced degree in forensics, a PhD.
Patronas wanted to throttle him. “You won’t like it, Father. Place reeks of death.”
“Bah, I’m an old man. I’ve seen my share of death.” He patted the cooler again. “He shouldn’t be alone, especially now. He might not be one of us, Yiannis, but he’s still a child of God.”
And that was that.
Which left Patronas in the front seat of the car with Evangelos Demos. So much for his master plan.
Chapter Four
In the house of the hanged, one does not mention rope.
—Greek Proverb
After the midday heat, the air inside the house felt glacial to Patronas. The victim’s family was there, the woman and two children sitting at a pine table in the kitchen, the man standing behind them.
A fireplace took up most of one wall. A pair of armchairs were positioned in front of it. Patronas took one when he came in, thinking to dominate the proceedings, and motioned for Evangelos Demos to sit in the other.
A woodcut of a dead hare hung above the fireplace. A compelling work, it seemed out of place in the kitchen.
“Albrecht Dürer,” Bechtel said, nodding to the print. “My papa loved it and insisted we bring it with us and hang it where he could see it. ‘Even in Greece,’ he said, ‘we must pay homage to our heritage.’ ”
It was as true a depiction of death as Patronas had ever seen. “Shouldn’t it be in a museum?”
“Dürer was a printmaker, Chief Officer,” Bechtel said, drily. “This is a print.”
The German had shaved his head; and his glistening scalp only served to emphasize the sharp angularity of his features, the hollowed out cheeks and beaked nose, the thin, angry line of his mouth.
Thin and wiry, he was built like a long-distance runner. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, worn cloth espadrilles on his feet. Aside from his coloring, he bore no resemblance to the victim.
He and Patronas had gotten off to a bad start. After returning to the house, Patronas announced he needed to search the grounds one last time before interviewing the family. The murder weapon had yet to be found and he was determined to look for it.
Gunther Bechtel was very unhappy about the delay. “Nearly thirty-six hours and no one from the Greek police has seen fit to interview us. By all means, see to the garden, Chief Officer. Take your time.”
It didn’t help that although they searched the garden high and low, neither Patronas nor Evangelos Demos discovered anything of consequence.
They then gathered in the icy room and at Bechtel’s suggestion began discussing the killing in English, which was the only language they all understood. Bechtel sent the children away, insisting they not be present during the initial interview. Patronas agreed, thinking he could find out what he needed from them later.
He would have preferred to get a translator in order not to miss anything, but given the man’s hostility, he didn’t want to risk a further delay. “Well, then,” he stammered. “Let us commerce.”
“I believe the word you are seeking is ‘commence,’ Chief Officer,” Bechtel said, moving swiftly to correct him. “ ‘Commerce,’ the word you used, does not mean ‘start.’ It means ‘business.’ ”
The interview crept along at a snail’s pace, Patronas painstakingly licking his pencil and entering every word said in his notebook. When he asked the wife to repeat the word, ‘blood,’ not understanding her accent, Gunter Bechtel lost all patience. “One would think that police in a country with over twenty-five million tourists would know rudimentary English—would know the words for ‘victim’ and ‘killed’ and ‘dead.’ ” His voice was venomous.
Patronas let it go. He knew his English sounded bad. As it had for King George, it deteriorated when he got nervous, and he was nervous now. “All my other victims were Greeks,” he said. “This is my first foreign murder.”
Bechtel examined him. “How many other cases have you solved?”
“I am Chief Officer of the Chios Police Force.”
“I repeat: How many cases have you solved?”
Patronas concentrated on his writing. “One,” he said in a low voice.
The German and his wife exchanged glances. “But how can that be?” Bechtel said. “When I called and asked about the delay, they told me they were bringing in an expert.”
He shrugged. “By Greek standards, I am an expert. Such crimes are rare here. We are not a violent people.”
Unlike you and your kind, he longed to say, hell-bent on genocide a generation ago. The Greeks might be lazy and diso
rganized, corrupt, too—he’d give him that—but at least they’d never gassed children.
Gunter Bechtel left the room and returned with an MP3 player. “Use this,” he said, slapping the machine in the palm of his hand. “It will speed things up.”
Patronas fiddled with the MP3 player, not knowing how to operate it and too proud to ask. Noticing his hesitation, the German stepped forward and started it.
“It has a button, Chief Officer. See? You push it.”
Reddening, Patronas stated the date, time, and location of the interview, then set the machine down on the table and angled it toward the German couple. He had his own tape recorder—standard police issue—but had forgotten to bring it with him from Chios.
“Spell your name please,” he said to the woman.
“Gerta Bechtel,” she said in heavily accented English. “G-E-R-T-A B-E-C-H-T-E-L.”
“And the children?”
Gunther Bechtel quickly answered. “They are Hannelore and Walter.”
“And the dead man?”
“Walter Bechtel. My son is named for him.”
“Describe your father to me,”
“He was not my father, not in the biological sense. My actual father was killed in a car accident when I was sixteen and in the Gymnasium. Walter took over for him after he died, caring for my mother and me and helping us financially. He supervised my education and has been my closest adviser, my dearest relative, for as long as I can remember.”
Bechtel paused. “Was,” he said, his face stricken. “He was my dearest relative, my one true friend.”
Gerta Bechtel stirred restlessly beside him.
“You called him ‘Papa,’ ” Patronas said.
“Yes. That’s how I saw him. He might have entered my life late, but his influence on me was profound. He had no children of his own and he legally adopted me after my father died so you see, he was in truth my papa. I owe everything I am to him.”