Signs of a Struggle

by Tony Kaplan

  But then she’d left a note. She’d wanted to be found.

  I nod and turn and walk out. Panagiotis puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry, my friend,” he says sincerely. When we get outside, he offers me a cigarette. I haven’t smoked since I was at university, but I accept. To still my shaking hand. To evict the smell of death from my nostrils.

  “The note she left. I want to see it,” I say. Panagiotis nods. I inhale deeply. The nicotine hits my system. My head swims and for a moment I think I am going to faint. I steady myself. Panagiotis ushers me to a wooden bench under a small palm. He goes off to get a bottle of water for me from a street vendor nearby in a small cabin. By the time he gets back, all my weeks of suppressed worry, trying not to think the worst, has burst through me and I have given up to the tears that flow freely now. He hands me the bottle. I thank him and gulp the ice cold water down, gasping, drowning,. Panagiotis hugs me to him. I bury my head in his prodigious chest. I smell his perspiration and cheap deodorant. I draw myself away. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Okay, okay, I tell myself, you can do this. You must do this.

  Then I vomit.

  We go back to Panagiotis’s office. Panagiotis respects my silence and I am thankful to him for this consideration. He shows me to the only chair other than his in his office and hands me a stained piece of A4 paper. Scrawled on it is, “Sorry. I can not go on. Lucy Discombe.” That’s all the note says.

  And there it is again – the absence of the elision – the “can not” rather than the “can’t” I would have expected. Not even “cannot”, but “can not”. Is this even Lucy’s handwriting?

  Panagiotis is speaking. “Dr Trepanis said it is what he was worry, that she would go depress-ed and kill herself. Is very sad.” I am still studying the note for any familiarity. When have I seen Lucy’s handwriting? – we have always corresponded in electronically-processed letters. But I have seen her writing – the Radagast headed letter of introduction from Lucy that Nikos Angelopoulos, the Mayor, had copied for me. That was handwritten. Something makes me hold back from telling this to the Police Chief, sitting opposite me with a look of abject compassion on his fat features. “She was tie a rope around her and then around a big concrete – there is a lot of old brick and concrete on the old harbour from when was break down, when it was finished. She was strong woman to carry to the end of the jetty and then throw herself in the water, poor woman.” He watches me for my reaction. I shake my head sadly for something to do. “Is maybe why she tell you to go away?”

  I remember the e-mail. Should I tell him the e-mail was almost certainly a fiction, a decoy? But did I tell him she told me to go away? How does he know that? Did I tell him? I don’t remember telling him. Was he the author I was supposed to think was Lucy? He is the one who calls me Thomas ("Dhomas.") I study him for any tell-tale signs of dissembling, of deceptiveness, of cunning. But all I see is his concern for me, then gradually his puzzlement as he perceives my suspicion-fuelled examination of him. I sit up, straighten my face and murmur my agreement. He looks relieved.

  He asks me about Lucy’s next of kin and I tell him what I know. Shit, I am going to have to tell Irini. She’s going to go nuts. I start planning what I am going to say. Panagiotis is telling me he will arrange for the Australian Consul to make arrangements for the body.

  “Will there be an autopsy?” I ask.

  “The police on the big island will decide this. But I think no, they will say she is kill herself.”

  Fuck, what should I do? What if she’s been murdered? They must do an autopsy. Fuck, they don’t even know how long she’s been in the water – the e-mail was recent. To me it looks like Lucy’s body had been underwater for much longer. But what do I know? Someone should do an autopsy. But the police here? – will they whitewash it? Already they’re treating it as a foregone conclusion. But the e-mail - the deception - someone was trying to put me off. It must be murder. Surely?

  I’ll wait and talk to Antonis. He’s from Homicide in Athens – he’ll know what to do.

  29

  It is only when I come over the rise before the village, that I realise I have ridden all the way from Agia Sofia without taking in any of my surroundings. I have been in my head. My legs are a long way down and numb. I have been thinking of Lucy, trying to call up all the nice memories of her I have stored, but it is difficult to eradicate from my mind the image I have of her on the slab in the mortuary, her eye-sockets hollow, her mouth a rictus like a perpetual scream. With her lips eaten off, her teeth and gums were exposed. Her teeth are far longer than I had expected. Her long teeth are a shock. Her gums were a blue beyond purple.

  Beautiful, brave, crazy Lucy. Why had I asked to see her dead body? Why did I agree to identify her? What did I expect? Now I will live with that image of her in death to obstruct all the other memories of her I have. She won’t rest in peace. In my head anyway.

  I detour past her house, the house she lived in on the island. I stop outside. I find myself revving the engine, my anger thrumming, burning petrol, wanting to leave, not able to go. The old crone opposite comes to her gate and remonstrates in her creaking goose-like clatter of consonants. What does she want of me? Is it about Lucy’s unpaid rent? I think of trying to tell her that Lucy is dead, but can’t face the tortuousness of the untranslatables, so I put the bike in first and wobble down the corrugated lane to the waterfront.

  I go to my lodgings. I find the handwritten letter the Mayor had given me, ostensibly written by Lucy. I compare the handwriting with the suicide note. As I expected. The handwriting bears no similarity. Either the letter the Mayor had given me was not written by Lucy, or the suicide note was not hers. Why would the letter of introduction be phoney? That wouldn’t make any sense.

  I must go to find Antonis.

  He is on the balcony at the kafenion, drinking his coffee and smoking a cigarillo meditatively. “You’re lucky I am still here. I must go to the main town, but only after lunch,” he says, as he indicates for me to sit.

  "She's dead," I say flatly.

  "Oh, no, my friend!" he says, shocked. His face, when I tell him about her disfigurement contorts with horror and disgust. “Oh, no! Oh, my friend, I am so sorry,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  Then I tell him about the bogus e-mail and my suspicion of the police’s involvement. “Don’t you think it suspicious that the laptop went missing hours after I told Panagiotis I’d found it in Lucy’s cupboard? Plus, the first e-mail to me from her computer – addressing me as “Thomas” – that’s what Panagiotis would have thought was my name from my passport. Lucy knew me as Tom. It didn’t sound like her – “Do not” rather than “don’t”, “cannot” rather than “can’t” – it wasn’t her style – I can show you old e-mails.” Then I show him the two handwritten documents. He examines them and then he concedes that they could not have been written by the same hand. He returns them to me. “So what you want from me? This is not my jurisdiction.”

  “They will cover it up. Panagiotis says they may not even do an autopsy. Can you at least get the body sent to Athens for autopsy, get a pathologist’s independent report? Say it’s because she is foreign and with the coverage of the body in the bridge, the foreign correspondents will be all over it and wanting answers. Say you must be sure there is no linkage to your case. I can back you up. I can write something to suggest a connection. You are an Inspector. Can an Inspector over-rule a Chief of Police?” I ask.

  He grimaces irritably. “Panagiotis is a Sergeant. He is Chief because he is the most senior on the island - he supervises the other three. He calls himself this: ‘Chief of Police’. Hmph!” He shakes his head derisively and then settles back to thinking about my proposition. He takes a drag on his cigarillo, exhales ponderously, takes a slow sip of his coffee, places the cup carefully back on the saucer and then nods. “Okay, I think I can do that. But we have to tell Panagiotis that you suspect what you call ‘foul play’, no? We have to tell him about the e-
mails, yes?”

  “If we have to,” I say. “Do we have to?”

  “Yes,” he says, “I cannot go behind his back side. If this comes out later, it will not be good.”

  He waits to see that I agree. Then he continues. “Maybe I should go with you to look around her house, see what a policeman can see,” he says, with the smug insinuation that I have missed something obvious.

  He jumps on the back of my bike behind me and we ride over to Lucy’s house, or what used to be her house. The old lady is at her front gate as usual, when we pull up, she shouts at us and gesticulates. “What is she saying?” I ask.

  Antonis smiles. “She says you make too much noise with your bike.” The old lady is still jabbering away. “She says ever since Lucy came here, all her nights have been disturbed by your big motorbike. Every night Lucy was there.” The old lady’s grumbling is petering out. “Now, not so much, not since Lucy is not there.”

  But I wasn’t here when Lucy was here. It wasn’t my bike that woke her. Who was her visitor? The only one I can think of with a big bike is Kosta, the Police Chief's son, the macho cop, with his police bike. What would Kosta have been doing visiting Lucy late at night? As we walk up to the front door, I voice my suspicions to Antonis. He looks dubious, like maybe now I’m making it up, getting paranoid. Maybe I am. Who else has a big bike? What about that German guy, the Enforcer, what was his name? Jurgen Something. Did he have a bike? Kind of goes with my image of him. Come to think of it, how did Lucy get around? Did she have a motorbike? "Good question," Antonis says, and asks the old lady. Lucy had a scooter. So where is it? Panagiotis made no mention of a scooter where she was found – that would have been obvious to the American divers surely? He’d have mentioned it. It will be part of the investigation, Antonis assures me, as I collect the key from under the flowerpot where I last left it.

  Antonis looks around the house. He is looking at it very differently from me. He is clinical. I am imagining Lucy here, her objects and her clothes evincing fantasies of her living, being here, in this room, at the chopping board with vegetables, at the cooker, stirring the large steel pot, choosing what to wear from her drawer, in the shower, naked. In my mind, her skin turns blue. I shut out the image. Antonis uses a pen from his pocket to move things, to uncover things, the habit of not disturbing evidence at a crime scene. But if he thinks there is anything suspicious, he is not telling me.

  He takes out his phone and calls a number. I hear him greeting Panagiotis. They exchange friendly banter, and then Antonis gets serious, and I hear despeeneedha Discombe mentioned. I see Antonis listening with a patient look and he raises his eyebrows to me, as if to say, “I told you he wouldn’t like it.” He says, “Nai, nai,” a few times, then the conversation is over. He puts his phone away. “He says he will need authorisation from his superiors at Regional Head Quarters on the big island. I said I will phone them. It’s okay. The Commander there used to work in Athens. I know him a little bit.”

  “That’s good,” I say. I feel relieved and gratified that I am doing something to put right this injustice, this travesty.

  Antonis looks at me thoughtfully. “But he says, if she was killed, he knows who may have done it.” He doesn’t keep me waiting long. “The NGO you were asking about, the man who is called The Enforcer – Jurgen Preissler – he didn’t leave when his boss did. He is still on the island.”

  30

  My phone is in my hand. I have to call Irini. To tell her that Lucy, her friend, our friend, is dead. That she has probably been murdered. That the killer may have been sent by the NGO she was working for. That he is still lurking. That Lucy’s face in death was a horror show that haunts me every minute of the day. What do I tell her? What do I leave out?

  I sigh and make myself punch in her number. She answers instantaneously. “Hey Tom, what’s up?”

  I tell her. I tell her Lucy has been found. I leave a pause. “It’s not good news.” I hear her intake of breath (or imagine it into being). “She’s dead, Irini. They found her body.”

  “Oh, God, no!”

  “They thought she’d killed herself, but I think she may have been murdered,” I say. The “murdered” sounds so melodramatic. Should I have just said, “killed”? “The NGO she was working with may be involved,” I say, sounding, to my own ear, dispassionate, professional.

  “Oh, God, Tom, how are you?” Her concern for me suddenly chokes me up and I can’t speak. “Tom?”

  Eventually I say, “Bearing up,” a trite phase that I’ve heard people using in these situations to imply fortitude. I feel disembodied.

  Then her tone changes. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, why didn’t we do something straight away? You kept saying not to worry. I knew something was wrong. I fucking knew it! Why didn’t you fucking listen to me? Fuck it, if you’d gone straight away she’d still be alive! Jesus, Tom!”

  I hear her anger and it enlivens mine, to myself. She is saying what I didn’t want to think. All she is saying is true. Why did I doubt her? Was I so caught up in my petty romanticism, my hubris? I am too fucking shallow. I am immature. I am a fucking…

  “Tom? You still there?” Irini is sounding contrite.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, involuntarily sounding sorry for myself, hurt. What a cunt. I agree with her and now I’m trying to make her feel guilty.

  “Sorry,” she says, “That was unfair. I’m sure you did what you could.”

  I absorb her patronising me. I could say, Why the fuck didn’t you drop everything and come to Greece yourself? But I don’t. I just think it, with some self-gratification. Instead, I say, “This is not over.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asks.

  I tell her about the autopsy that I’ve organised, and that I’ll be in touch with the Australian Embassy and that I’ll stay here until the killer has been caught.

  “Be careful,” she says. “Don’t do anything crazy.”

  “Like what?” I ask tersely, aggressively. She doesn’t respond. How would she know what I could do if came down to it? “Can you contact Lucy’s relatives? Or do you want the Embassy to do that? They’ll have to decide what to do with the… her body.”

  After a pause, she whispers, “Okay. Okay, I’ll do that. I don’t know if I can get anyone… Maybe it’s best if the Embassy do it.”

  Yeah, yeah, pass the buck. Quick to criticise, but when it comes to doing the hard stuff… Fuck it, let it go, I tell myself. “I’ll let the Embassy know. Maybe you should at least let me have any contact details you have. You think you can do that?” This last bit comes out more acerbically than I’d intended. Or did I?

  “Oh, Tom,” she says, “Poor Tom.” Her forte is sympathy and concern. Fuck her. She’s useless. I’ll do this on my own.

  "Bye, Irini,” I say and click off just as I hear her going, “Oh, Tom,” one last time.

  I put my phone back in my pocket. I know what I must do. I will go with Lucy's body to Athens. I will take her. I will not let her do her last journey alone.

  ****

  I open my laptop and begin to write. The world needs to know what is going on here. I write and write. I let my anger infuse the sentences which flow out my fingers like Russian vine, the tendrils - my hatred of political manipulation, of short-sightedness, of self-interest, of the egos of small NGOs around whom the world-as -they-know-it rotates, the degradation of the environment for short term gain, the fabrications of eco-tourism. I let rip. “Radagast” gets roasted. Fuck it, I don’t care if The Enforcer is still on the island. I name him. Jurgen Pressler, I am coming for you. Erica von Strondheim, don’t fucking put the phone down on me again, you rich bitch fuck! I name The Poseidon and its developer, Christos Papademos. Don’t fuck with my friends, you lying cunt, you silver tongued Judas! I outline the political machinations of the Mayor, his pragmatism and his opportunism. New PASOK. New Labour. Sell-outs, all of them. In thrall to capitalism, to making a buck. I have a go at the ineptitude of the local police. Anything for a quiet life. Jumping to
false conclusions, accommodating the local players. Is there even more to come? I sit back and ponder this and realise I’m done. I’m emptied out. My anger is on the page. This is how I fight.

  I read what I’ve written. A bit strident in places, a bit more determined and categorical than my usual measured style, but what the fuck, it reads well. I want it to be powerful. I write, to finish the piece, a precis of Lucy's shortened life – her struggle with the demons of a fucked-up childhood, her clawing an education, becoming a brave and tireless campaigner and journalist, a hero of the struggle for a better planet.

  I stride over to the Seaview, cursorily accept Michali’s and Nitsa’s condolences, plug into the modem and press “Send”.

  31

  The next day, I wake early, swim, shower, drink my bitter coffee and eat the sweet biscuits, which are courtesy of Yiannis and Soulla, as a token of their sympathy (they look grief-stricken themselves) and go to find Antonis. Stelios, his cousin, tells me Antonis has already left for Agia Sofia – some colleagues from Athens have arrived and he is going to meet them. Perhaps, I think to myself, this is the team that will take Lucy’s body to the capital for a post-mortem. In my head I thank Antonis for his diligence but feel a little let down – I could have gone with him. Maybe he didn’t want to trouble me. Maybe that’s his way – get things done quietly and without a fuss.