Signs of a Struggle

by Tony Kaplan

  I see he will brook no argument. But can’t he see this should be investigated by someone independent? Maybe Radagast and Jurgen Preissler are still the chief suspects, but if Lucy was killed on the beach at the Poseidon, then the politicians, the police or the developers could all be involved. Christos must know more. Surely. Well, let’s see what Panagiotis says. Maybe he’ll surprise me.

  But the Chief doesn’t surprise me. “My friend, why should I trouble Christos Papademos? He is important man on this island. Maybe she was kill-ed where you say. How can we know this? And so? I am looking still for Jurgen Preissler. Maybe he kill-ed her on the beach. Preissler is Suspect Number One. Until he will show me he is not the guilty one, it is him I am look for. Christos? – no. Why he kill her? She was help him.”

  “We only have his word for that,” I say, knowing already I won’t persuade him.

  “For me, his word is enough. You want me to question the Mayor, Nikos?” he snorts derisively. “Our Mayor is good man. What I ask him? Nikos, you kill Miss Discombe? Ha!”

  “No, but…” What’s the point? I have no evidence. I, myself, am not even sure what or who to believe. But is it right to believe without evidence, other than Christos’s word, that Lucy agreed to do his bidding for money? What if he’s lying? What if she said she agreed, but was double bluffing, playing him, to get information from him? Is it right for the police to have only the one suspect? Would Erica von Strondheim really have had Lucy murdered just to stop her publishing a report favourable to the Poseidon, if indeed that was what Lucy was going to do? Why would it have meant so much? Hubris? That’s a bit much, isn’t it? At least they should question Christos Papademos, shouldn’t they? Maybe one of his construction workers saw something?

  “Panagiotis,” I say, trying to sound my most reasonable and patient best, “surely the police should at least check if the red algae in her lungs are anywhere else on the island, and if so, whether there is a high concentration of rabbit fish spores there too? Are there any other construction sites which use the Egyptian cement, for example?” I ask.

  I hear Panagiotis’s deep sigh on the other end. He too is trying to sound reasonable. “My friend, perhaps the Municipality can tell you this. It is only me and three other policemen for the whole island. Two big investigations. Journalists. What we can do? We don’ give parking tickets no more. We too busy!” I can see his ironic smile. “If you want, you ask the Municipality. I don’t have the time for this. I’m look for Jurgen Preissler. For me, he will tell us who kill your friend. No need for me to waste my time with fish.” I can hear he is itching to terminate the call.

  “Mmm, okay,” I say, after a pause. “I will do my own enquiries.”

  “Good,” he says. “Have a nice day to you.” He puts the phone down.

  Fuck you too, Panagiotis, I think, as I disconnect.

  44

  Okay, I’m an investigative journalist – I can do this. First, let me see what I can get on the algae and the rabbit fish on this coastline. Maybe the Municipality can help. I presume, somehow, that they will be inefficient and unhelpful. But let’s see if they can confound my expectations. I shouldn’t be too hard on the Chief. Panagiotis is working with very few resources and little back-up.

  I get a ride into Agia Sofia with Bobby. He’s a cool kid. I like him. We listen to Guns and Roses on the ancient cassette player. His taste, not mine.

  “How’s it going with Xanthe?” I ask, being a bit snide, I know.

  He gives me a quick sideways glance before going back to concentrating on the winding road. “Okay,” he says, without conviction. “What has my sister been saying?”

  “Nothing,” I say, but my grin gives me away.

  “She’s just jealous of Xanthe,” he says and turns the volume on the cassette player up. “This conversation is over, bro,” he says over the music.

  The Municipal offices are dark and gloomy, but the coolness is welcome. I explain as best as I can to a woman at Customer Services that I need information about the coastal water around the island. I try to sound as neutral and academic as I can, so as not to alarm her into resistance. She nods, writes something in her log and goes off to speak to a colleague who may be able to help me. She comes back a short time later with a serious-looking young man, mid-twenties I guess, dressed in an open-necked white Polyester shirt and black trousers, creased to precision like a knife-edge.

  “Yes, can I help you? I am the Environment Officer. Tsammis Grissos,” he offers me his hand. His accent has a North American inflection. “Sam, if you can’t manage Tsammis,” he says with a sly smile.

  I shake his hand. “Canadian?” I ask.

  He grins broadly. “How did you know? Most people say ‘American’. I hate that. Thanks for noticing,” he says pleasantly.

  I explain what I am after. I don’t tell him about the autopsy and he doesn’t ask. He takes me into his office, which is no bigger than an average stationary cupboard and taps some keys on his computer. “I’m trying to go paperless,” he says, looking at the screen which has lighted up with maps and diagrams. “You’re not the first journalist to be interested in environmental degradation on Mythos,” he says.

  Shit, why didn’t I think to enquire here before? Of course Lucy would have thought to check out the local Environmental Officer. I didn’t even think there would be one. “You met Lucy Discombe?” I ask cautiously.

  “Sure,” he says, not taking his eyes of the screen. “We were partners in crime,” he says and sneaks me a naughty look. “Well, not actual crime. But we saw things the same way.”

  “Christos Papademos at the Poseidon said she’d changed her tune, that she was going to write a report favourable to them,” I tell him.

  Tsammis scoffs. “No way! Lucy? No way,” he says. “She had all this stuff on rabbit fish breeding and algal overgrowth and unsustainable water supply to the lagoon. No way.”

  I feel my goose-bumps rising, and it wasn’t just from the coldness of this office. “Do you by any chance know Jurgen Preissler?” I think to ask.

  “Jurgen’s a friend. He stayed with me recently,” Tsammis says nonchalantly.

  I swallow. “Do you know the police are looking for him in connection with Lucy’s murder?”

  He looks at me sharply. “Lucy is dead?”

  Fuck, I’d assumed he would know. But maybe a geek like him doesn’t follow the news. “She was overpowered and drowned. The police think Jurgen did it.”

  “No ways!” he says incredulously. “Lucy dead? Jurgen loved Lucy – well, not romantically – Jurgen is gay. But as a friend, a fellow eco-warrior. No way could he have overpowered Lucy. She was much bigger and stronger than him. Jurgen is puny!”

  “He is called the Enforcer,” I point out.

  “That’s because he knows so much about environmental law. He’s German – you know, pedantic. A ‘letter of the law’ kind of guy. He ties officials in knots. They’re terrified of him!”

  “He’s killed before,” I remind him.

  “The poor guy had to have years of psychoanalysis to get over his guilt at those workers dying in the fire. He never meant to kill anybody. Trust me, the guy is harmless,” Tsammis says.

  Yeah, well, you are his friend, I think, so you are biased. Is Tsammis gay? Was Jurgen his lover? I search his face for clues, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for. What if he is right? I have never seen a photo of The Enforcer. Have I just fanaticised a burly square-headed juggernaut killer because he’s German and called The Enforcer? Am I biased against Radagast because I have a deep-seated prejudice against aristocrats and women with fake accents? Does Panagiotis know what Jurgen looks like, that he is “puny”? Has he been leading me on?

  “I’m so sorry about Lucy,” Tsammis says. “She was great. I liked her very much.”

  “Thanks,” I say, needlessly. “I’m trying to find out what happened. What have you got on the algal growths and the rabbit fish distribution along the coast?”

  He looks back a
t the screen and taps some more keys. “Okay, so look here. A satellite photo. Infra-red. The only place with any density of the algal growth is off the lagoon. And,” he taps another key and the picture changes, “the only place where the rabbit fish are congregating are at the Poseidon beach and on the very southern tip of the island.” He taps the keys again and sits back. “But the only place they co-occur is near the lagoon, near the Poseidon.”

  As I thought. I could kiss him, but I don’t. In case he is gay and gets the wrong idea. “Thank you so much, Tsammis. I’m going to have to buy you a drink,” I say, offering him my hand.

  “We’ll drink to Lucy,” he says.

  45

  I ride back with Bobby to Agia Anna in a better mood than I’ve been in since Lucy’s body was found. I feel as if I’m doing something for her; I’m getting somewhere. I feel… effective. I feel less guilty. I ponder whether to reveal my new information to Panagiotis. The evidence is inferential and Panagiotis will be sure to rubbish it – he is fixated on getting his German arch-villain. I need something more. If only we knew who had, or could find, Lucy’s laptop. And where is Lucy’s scooter? I should check all the rental agencies in Agia Sofia. Maybe Panagiotis has thought of this already – I should check with him.

  My phone goes. I am surprised to see it is Marsha calling from London. That’s unusual – normally she is rigorous about cost saving and would e-mail me. Must be urgent. “Hello, Marsha,” I say in a debonair voice, “to what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

  As soon as I hear her desperate tone, I wish I’d not answered the call and let it go to voicemail. “Oh, Tom, you have to come back! I’m at the end of my rope. Eric has gone off sick.” She almost says the inverted commas aloud. Then she corrects her tone. “Well, he has appendicitis – he’s in the Royal Free. Apparently it was touch and go. But now he’s going to be off for a month! I’m all alone in the office and I can’t keep up. You only had two weeks leave. You’ve used that up now, as of today, right? I can’t extend your leave. You have to come back. I’m up to my eyeballs with the Labour leadership election and the IRA decommissioning and I need you to cover the international stories – two big ones – the Israelis pulling their settlers out of Gaza and here’s one close to your heart, the very first gas and oil exploration in the Arctic – the Norwegians are about to start drilling in their Snohwit (I think that means Snow White) field north of Hammerfest in the Arctic Circle. Greenpeace are going in. Maybe you could go in with them? Use your contacts.” A pause. “Or on second thought, scrub that – I need you here. Maybe just use interviews with your contacts, you know live-and-direct,” she says, trying to talk up what will probably be following someone else’s story from a distance.

  “But I haven’t finished my work here,” I say, deflated. Marsha is pig-headed and self-serving when she wants to be, which is, like, usually. She likes to call it “single-minded”.

  “The body in the bridge story has gone viral. You did well to break it. But now the big news agencies are on to it. They’ll cover it better that we can. They have the resources and the contacts. They have people who speak Greek, for Christ’s sake. We’re a small outfit. I don’t need you to be on the ground there. I need you here,” she says, trying to make it sound like that’s a good thing.

  “There have been developments in the Lucy Discombe case too,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah. What?”

  When I try to formulate this in words, I realise that nothing much has changed – not substantially. All I’ve got to go on is inferential. “It’s a big story,” I squeal. “Circumventing environmental regulation, degrading coastlines, threatened species…”

  “It’s old news,” Marsha says tartly.

  “It’s happening now!”

  “It’s been said before. Its stuff people know about. It doesn’t have traction. It doesn’t have leverage. It’s boring!”

  “Marsha, once an environment is ruined, it stays that way. When a species is eradicated, it doesn’t come back,” I say in as level a tone as I can manage.

  “Fuck, Tom, who do you think you’re talking to? It’s not the issue – it’s the story. It’s nothing new.”

  “Killing environmental activists isn’t newsworthy? Not a good enough story?”

  “Tom, you’ve got nothing that conclusively proves your friend didn’t just go crazy and kill herself. That’s not a story. At least it’s not a story that should keep you there, not here.”

  “She didn’t kill herself. She had bruises on her face and neck. Her body was moved!”

  “You don’t know that for sure…”

  “Yes, I do! It could be a rival environmental outfit. It could be a conspiracy.”

  “Tom…” I can almost hear her sigh.

  “Just give me a few more days… a week,” I say. I know I am losing the argument. But I need to be here to get Lucy’s murder solved.

  “You have until after the weekend. Three days. Book your flight. I expect you at your desk on Monday morning,” my editor says with finality. She, who must be obeyed.

  “Yeah, okay,” I concede, hoping my dispirited tone will make her feel guilty.

  “Right,” she says, not guilty at all, “I thought you would see it my way.”

  46

  There is also Agapi. I recognise that she is one of the reasons I don't want to leave the island yet. I feel so attracted to her, and almost... am I imagining it? - a spiritual bond? What do I want? Am I just using her as a salve to the open wound of my grief? Or is it my destiny to meet a Greek woman, to find the Greek in me through her? Is she the one? I have three days to decide.

  As soon as we get back I go looking for her. She is not at the Seaview. It is after two p.m. The humourless stand-in waiter tells me Agapi has gone home to sleep. I walk quickly over to her house. Short, assertive strides, my sandals snagging in the pebbled road not once, but three times, and I get a thorn in my foot! This does nothing for my mood.

  Agapi is not asleep. She is helping her mother hang up washing on a line. She smiles when she sees me approaching and comes to meet me. Her mother watches her with narrowed eyes. Agapi holds out her hands to me and we kiss, discretely, on both cheeks. She picks up on my serious mood. “Come,” she says and we walk down to the beach below her house.

  “Please sleep with me tonight, in my bed, the whole night. I want to wake with you next to me in the morning. Your mother can look after Eleni,” I say.

  She looks at me quizzically. “Why?”

  “I have to go back to London soon. My work…”

  She nods. A little frown clouds her face. “What is happen with us?” she says and then looks out to sea. A wave crashes and foams. “Yesterday, when you fuck me so quick, you was think of her, the one who was killed. Nai?" Agapi says.

  Is she right? In my subconscious, was it Lucy I was fucking so violently?

  She takes the absence of a response as affirmation. She nods sympathetically. "And also, you didn’t have on…” She shows me with a hand over an extended finger. I was so turned on, I didn’t use a condom. Stupid.

  “I’m sorry,” I say regretfully.

  She waves away my apology. “It was nice feeling. I like-ed. But after, I worry. I think, you not going to stay on the island. You will go back to your home and to your family. If I get… with child…” She trails off. “I don’ want to look after two children without a father for them.” She folds her arms across her chest like a shield against the cold. “If you stay, is different.” She turns to look at me sympathetically. She is also sad for herself. “You would stay for me?”

  I look to the churning water. Would I stay? What do I really know about her? She is a poor waitress from a small Island in Greece, with a limited education and experience of the world which for her extends as far as the next bigger island. She has a child. She has a mother she looks after. What do we have in common? On paper, this relationship has nothing going for it. But I know my heart. Or do I? I feel love for her. I am in love. Am I being blinded? Am
I vulnerable because I have lost my dream of Lucy? I have lost Lucy – is Agapi just a convenient replacement, a transitional girlfriend? - because she cares, because she is a comfort?

  “I don’t know,” I say softly and the wind carries away my words. We stand in silence. Then I blurt out, “Come to London with me.”

  Agapi snorts. “What I do in London?” she scoffs. “I have here my mother and my child. Mythos is place I know, is all what I know. Why I must leave?” She smiles wistfully. “My mother she say to me, ‘Take shoes from your own place, even if they need mending.’ Is mean is better to take a man from your village. Me katalavenis? If you stay, maybe is different.” She looks at me intently, her squiggled frown ironic? Playful?

  I have to look away. I am in danger of falling, I am so taken with this woman’s casual beauty.

  When I do look back at her, she still has her eyes on me. Agapi nods, seriously. “It is for you to decide.” She lifts herself on tiptoes to gives me a kiss on the cheek, then turns and walks slowly back to her mother, who is watching her all the way.

  47

  The sun has gone down. I play with the stifado Yiannis has put in front of me. He is very proud of his wife’s pork and bean stew and I’m probably hurting their feeling by not tucking in with relish. But I haven’t the heart for it right now.

  What should I do about Agapi? I know the answer I will reach eventually when I’ve played with my feelings enough, churned myself through the washing machine. Washing cycle set to Fragile item. I am such a coward. I am so stuck in my ways, like I’m middle-aged already. Is it the security of the known I can’t give up? Do I fear uncertainty so acutely? Yet I know I can be more than I am. I want to be more than I am. Has Agapi been sent to me by my father’s spirit to help me find my Greek self? Would he want me to marry a Greek woman, to bring him home, to keep alive the name of Xanakis?