‘Yes … how did you know that?’
‘A not very difficult guess.’
Babis shrugged. ‘There, I’ve given you something. Now it’s your turn.’
‘What makes you think I have anything?’
‘Well, the brigadier—’
‘Has a suspicious mind. Look, you lot have been working on the case for a month and you’ve got nowhere. I’ve been around for a couple of days and suddenly there’s progress. What more does he want?’
The lieutenant gave him the eye. ‘Are you pulling a fast one?’
‘My speed is limited these days.’
They went back to the saloni, where Nondas and the Fat Man were on either side of the female officer on the sofa.
‘Come on, sergeant,’ Babis said. ‘We’re finished here.’
‘You’ve got that right,’ Yiorgos muttered.
‘Are you sure we can’t help you with anything?’ the lieutenant asked desperately.
‘Quite sure, thanks,’ Mavros replied. ‘Have a good night.’
Elisavet Latsou gave him a fierce look then followed her superior to the door.
‘Actually, she could have stayed,’ the Fat Man said.
Mavros and Nondas feigned shock.
‘How could you?’ the former said. ‘Your newly acquired other half is only metres away.’
‘Piss off.’ Yiorgos opened the bedroom door. ‘You can come out now. What on earth are you doing?’
The others joined him. Laura Moreno was lying face-up on the bed, Marianthi massaging her feet.
‘Reflexology,’ she said, looking up. ‘I’ve got a certificate.’
‘Why didn’t you do that on me?’ the Fat Man said.
‘All finish,’ Marianthi said in English, before turning back to her lover. ‘As if you gave me a chance,’ she added, in Greek.
Laura sat up and put on her shoes.
‘Had me worried there for a moment,’ Yiorgos said.
‘Right,’ said Mavros, ‘who wants to come to Lesvos tomorrow?’
Kostas Gatsos was in what he now saw was a room with an arched roof. Curved wooden boards had been fixed over the bricks about a metre above the floor. Where was he? A hole in the ground? There were some islands where houses were built into the side of cliffs. Was he on Santorini?
A wooden chair and table had been brought in, as well as a note pad and a pocket calculator. The clock ticked so loudly that he’d smothered it under his blanket. He could still hear it. He had been in the light for over six hours and he was still in shock. They wanted his money. Everything always came down to that; he of all people should have known.
‘Aaaaah!’ he shouted.
The balaclava-wearing guard opened the door and looked in. ‘You die?’
‘That would put paid to your proposition, wouldn’t it?’
The door slammed behind him.
Kostas thought about that. If he were to die, his captors wouldn’t be able to bring about what they wanted. The problem was, he didn’t have it in him to commit suicide. He could have throttled himself with the blanket or stabbed himself with the pen he’d been given, but he was too fond of his life to throw it away. That made him brave. Or did it? He thought of the ancient Greeks who had sacrificed themselves – Leonidas and his Spartans, the Theban Sacred Band, even Socrates, who could have escaped prison before he was forced to drink hemlock. They were real heroes; he’d read about them throughout his life, looking for lessons. But in the final analysis, he was just a pirate with animal cunning and a mind for figures. He threw the calculator against the wall.
Would he give them what they wanted? The sums were huge and would leave him with little to live on, though the family would help. Or would they? He thought of Eirini, his only child now– she had little love for him, particularly because he ignored the useless Vangelis; Loukas was sharp, even Evi had a hard core, and Dinos hated his guts. Then there were the relations by marriage. Although his wives were dead, Pavlos’s wife Myrto disliked Kostas so much she had moved to Paris – or so she’d told him. He wasn’t sure if Pavlos was aware of that. He suspected Nana, their daughter, far away in New York, cared little for her grandfather.
Fuck the Son and his cronies! He wasn’t giving away his billions. They’d have to earn it! They could string him up by hooks, but he didn’t think they had the guts. Then he remembered the iron glint in the Son’s eyes. He was even more vicious than the Father had been. He would take pleasure in seeing Kostas suffer, the longer the better.
The Son. He gave the impression that he was in charge, but someone else had to be behind him. The stone-hearted torturer would never want money to be wasted on a foundation for the poor and on tax; he would want it for himself. So who had organised the kidnap? Could a member of the family be involved? Was Loukas as daring as that? The little schemer might be. It had been hard to know what he was thinking even when he was a boy – his greatest interest had been drawing maps of imaginary countries, islands with great mountain ranges amid dolphin-haunted seas. That made Kostas think of Anydhros, Waterless, the remote Cycladic island he had bought a decade back and done very little work on. The house there was small and a generator was needed to provide electricity. Boats could approach only in the calmest seas and water had to be brought in by tankers.
With no businesses to run and surrounded by the white crests of the Aegean, Kostas Gatsos knew he would go stark staring mad within a month. His stomach somersaulted as he realised that the Son and the judges would be fully aware of that.
TWENTY-TWO
Mavros sent Nondas off, telling him to check if Babis and his sidekick were keeping watch in the street. He called a few minutes later to say he hadn’t seen them.
‘What now?’ the Fat Man asked.
‘I’m sure Laura’s had enough of your bedroom. We’ll go to my mother’s.’
‘And tomorrow?’
‘I’ll let you know about the flight.’
‘Not first thing in the morning.’
‘Why, have you got something better to do?’
Yiorgos grinned. ‘You know, we should take Marianthi to Lesvos. It’s a big island and we’ll have to hire a car.’
‘I’ll think about that. Good night.’
Laura waved to Marianthi, who was on the phone to her sitter.
Mavros and Laura walked down the stairs.
‘They’re a charming couple,’ she said.
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that word used about Yiorgos, even in part.’
‘I’ve seen plenty of liars and cheats. He’s a good man.’
‘He is. And he hasn’t had a female friend since I was in my twenties.’
‘You know him so long?’
‘All my life,’ he said, looking around cautiously and leading her on to the street. ‘All right, I think it’s clear.’ He hailed a taxi.
‘You’re sure it will be all right for me to stay?’ Laura asked, drawing her shawl around her shoulders after they’d got in.
‘Of course. You’ve already made friends with Mother, it seems.’
‘She is very sympathetic. What is her name?’
‘Dorothy.’
‘Like the girl in The Wizard of Oz.’
‘Unlike her in every sense apart from the name. It’s Greek, you know, even though my mother’s Scottish. It means “Gift of God”.’
‘You have brothers, sisters?’
‘Just Anna, Nondas’s wife. She’s younger than me though she thinks she isn’t.’
There was a pause.
‘You are troubled, Alex.’
‘I had a brother too. Andonis. He was eleven years older than me and he disappeared when I was ten. During the dictatorship.’
‘You never heard what happened?’
‘No.’ Mavros suddenly remembered the Son’s words on a dusty hillside near Delphi six years ago. ‘Your brother’s alive.’ For years he’d hoped the bastard had been telling the truth, but now he was sure it was nothing but a cruel taunt.
&nbs
p; The taxi was approaching Kleomenous.
‘What about you?’ Mavros asked.
‘There are five of us. The family’s so close I’ve never felt the need of marrying. Though men keep trying to grab me.’ Laura put her hand to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.’
‘You had a shock in Kaisariani,’ he said, paying the driver. Or was she toying with him?
On the sixth floor Mavros fiddled with the locks. One of the problems of the heavy-duty system they’d applied after the Son’s threats was that his mother couldn’t apply the chain if he was out after she’d gone to bed. It was a risk, but nothing had ever happened.
He led Laura inside.
‘Nice place,’ she said, looking around the saloni. ‘Did you grow up here?’
‘No. The family house was near the Fat Man’s – Yiorgos’s – place. My mother moved here in the late 70s.’
‘After your brother had gone. Does that make him seem even more distant?’
Mavros caught her eye and nodded. ‘You have more empathy than most.’
She laughed softly. ‘People are always telling me I know more about how they feel than they do themselves. I’ve been called a witch more than once.’
‘Well, Circe, let me show you the guestroom.’
‘Circe from the Odyssey, yes? I read it at school.’
‘Good for you. You’ll find everything you need, I think. There’s an en suite bathroom.’
‘Thank you, Alex. I mean for this, but also for taking me under your wing. I will pay, of course.’
‘Forget it. The Gatsos family is covering all my expenses as well as remunerating me ridiculously well. What I need to know is if you want to come with us to Lesvos tomorrow.’
‘You’re going to Kostas’s villa?’
‘Among other places. Do you know it?’
‘I stayed there in the summer.’
‘Really? Who was with you?’
‘Pavlos, Santiago, Eirini Myroni – without her unpleasant husband, rest his soul – Loukas, Evi and several business contacts of the family.’
Mavros wondered why neither Loukas nor Evi had mentioned that. Then again, he hadn’t asked.
‘I like the island so, yes, I will accompany you, if I may. Maybe I can help in the villa. I presume that’s where we’re going?’
Mavros nodded. ‘We shouldn’t be there for long. I’ll organise the tickets.’
‘Goodnight,’ Laura said, kissing him on the check.
As he walked away, Mavros breathed in her scent. It was unfamiliar, exotic, even wild. The woman had a powerful presence.
On the desk he found a large envelope with a courier’s logo. The lawyer Siatkas had done as he’d asked and sent over the threats made to Kostas Gatsos and the responses to them. After he’d booked seats for himself, Laura, the Fat Man and Marianthi on a plane that left in the middle of the afternoon, he ran though the lawyer’s print-outs. Most of the messages were from people letting off crisis-inspired steam – ‘king of thieves’, ‘fucking tax-dodger’, ‘louse on the back of the people’ and so on. They had desisted after Siatkas threatened them with libel. He isolated two that seemed more serious. One was a series of densely printed political statements from a group called The Red Terror. He ran an internet check and found a few references in the newspapers. The feeling was that the rants, which had been received by several politicians and businessmen, had been written by disaffected students. They had not been linked to any acts of violence.
The other was a single email addressed to Kostas Gatsos via the group’s information address. Dated July 29th of that year, it read:
You have murdered people, sunk your own ships, broken international embargoes, treated your crews like slaves and defrauded Lloyd’s of London, as well as hidden your ill-gotten gains from the tax authorities. If you hadn’t paid off the press and used your influence, your sexual misconduct would have brought you universal opprobrium. Kosta Gatso, you will pay the price for those sins. God the Father and Christ the Son will extract every drop of blood from your veins.
Siatkas had responded to that with his standard threat of legal action, but that was toothless as the sender was called NoMan666 and the email account doubtless untraceable. Mavros considered the content. Had the old man really done all those things? He knew that some shipowners committed criminal acts and he had heard of ships being sunk for the insurance money. But had NoMan666 any grounds for what he – or she, the name could easily be a blind, just as the use of the devil’s number was no evidence of Satanism – had written? If so, where had such information originated?
Mavros went down the corridor to his room, passing Laura’s door. He was discomfited and he wasn’t sure why. The South American attracted him, but he didn’t fully trust her. Could she be a plant by Rojas, her experience by the shooting range nothing but a fairy-tale? She seemed genuinely frightened. Then again, people who ran large companies were equipped with titanium backbones. They also knew how to dissemble.
It was only as he lay down on his bed that it struck him. ‘God the Father and Christ the Son’. Was the assassin who had threatened him and his family six years ago involved in the kidnap? Why would the Son have advertised that by sending a message in advance? Because he was a megalomaniac and psychotic sociopath who couldn’t resist playing games, even when he was the only one who understood them.
Sleep did not come easily that night for Mavros.
The dawn breeze woke Jim Thomson and he got up to open the shutters. To the south the sea was calm beyond the town, a low moon casting the last of its light on the surface. He got dressed and quietly made his way out of the house. The sun was behind the mountains and the day was brightening only slowly. He stood on the ridge looking down at the red-tiled roofs and the fishing boats in the small harbour, then turned the other way. Across the straits Turkey ended in a rocky knuckle. Closer to hand a path led to a cemetery surrounded by cypress trees and he decided to walk to it. He hadn’t taken Ivy’s ashes with him, but the rocks beyond the trees struck him as a potential place to consign them to the Aegean.
Against a lightening sky Thomson walked down the concrete track. The cemetery was preternaturally serene, the birds only beginning to chirp and the water ahead washing smoothly over the rocks. He went down there and found a niche to sit in. He was wearing only a T-shirt and the temperature hadn’t risen much yet. He watched the sea take colour, grey gradually becoming pale blue, then reached forward to put his hand in the shallows. The water was cold and he shivered at the idea of Ivy entering it for the last time after so many swims in the warm southern ocean. But he decided this was the place. Tomorrow he would do what he’d promised.
As he was walking back, he saw a line of trees leading to a large house on a crest of rock above the sea’s edge. It had to be the Gatsos villa – he had checked its location when he was on the internet. This was as good a time as any to have a look, before the staff arrived for work. Something more than curiosity was driving him – it was as if the rich man’s house was a magnet attracting the man who had narrowly escaped death on the Gatsos-owned Homeland, for some as yet unclear purpose.
As he got closer, he made out a two-metre high fence outside the line of trees. Old Gatsos had taken his privacy seriously, not that the security measures had saved him. The fence went down the angle of rocks towards the sea. Without questioning what he was doing Jim headed in that direction, suddenly desperate to get inside the place. When he reached the point where fence met water, he saw that it continued along the breakwater and then went beneath the surface. He was in a dilemma. The only way of getting to the shipowner’s house was by entering the element he had avoided for decades. Was it worth it? He looked through the lines of razor wire and saw another fence with a gate between the flat concrete of the dock area and the steps leading up from it. Although there was police tape across the steel barrier, the door itself was slightly open. He decided to brave the water and stripped down to his underpants. Why now, he asked himse
lf. To get a feeling for where Ivy’s going? Without warning, he threw up. That did it. He needed to clean himself.
At first the chill waves that were getting up hampered his movements, but he soon found the strokes he had long forgotten and his breathing became more regular. He swam beyond the breakwater and made a wide turn, moving slowly in case he encountered underwater wire. When he was sure he was safe, he headed towards the jetty and climbed up a row of steel rungs in the concrete. He caught his breath and wrung out his pants. What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t answer the question, but the act of entering the sea had made him fearless. He went up the first steps, tore away the police tape and pushed open the gate.
The steps went up in a series of switchbacks to the low wall surrounding a wide terrace. Thomson moved slowly, unsure if there were guards still on the premises. A large bougainvillea covered a blue pergola, under which wooden loungers lay in disarray. Some of the cushions were on the tiles. He went up to the full-height sliding windows and looked inside. A space had been cleared to his left, the furniture removed to show a deep red stain on the floor tiles and a large splash of similar colour on the far white wall. This was where the old man’s son had been shot. Thomson shivered, and not from the cold. He tried to shift the windows but they were all locked.
Glancing around, he saw an unfenced stair built against the wall on his right. He went up it, poking his head over the top of a parapet. It was protected by a wooden roof and had presumably been a guard post. The rough stone was smooth where sleeves and arms had moved against it. There was a 360 degree view, the roofs on the upper ridge of Molyvos and the castle walls higher up outlined in the brighter blue of the morning.
Thomson blinked and turned towards the mountain to the east. The sun was above its lower slopes now, rays glinting on the radio mast and satellite dish on top of the tiles. He put his hand against his forehead and squinted. Something green and oval was lying in the drain pipe beneath the roof. There was a metallic handle leading from its top with a thin ring a little below. Three letters and a number, the former in what he thought was Cyrillic script, had been stencilled on the bulging side.
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