‘They filmed some combat scenes here last week,’ Mikis said. ‘I guess they’re getting their money’s worth by staging the massacre in the same place.’
Mavros caught sight of Luke Jannet, surrounded by technicians at a large camera on a track. A raised platform under a sunshade had been set up behind the machines. Rosie Yellenberg was standing on it, wearing headphones and speaking constantly into a mouthpiece. David Waggoner was a few seats along, in blazer and dark glasses, while Rudolf Kersten was sitting outside a caravan with a security guy on the door. Mavros watched as Cara Parks appeared in a shabby but well-cut black dress, a black wig covering her blonde locks. She had been made up to have unnaturally rosy cheeks, though her arms were dirty and there was a fake bloodstain on her right shoulder. As she came out, Kersten got to his feet and spoke to her, an urgent look on his face. The actress nodded and then patted his arm. She was led by a production assistant to the edge of the set. There was no sign of Maria Kondos, though she may have been in the trailer.
A woman with a stentorian voice started bellowing instructions through a megaphone. Men in Fallschirmjager uniforms, several wearing shorts, started pushing extras dressed in Cretan costume and peasant clothing towards an open space in front of the trees. Before they got there, a heavily-built officer raised his hand and strode to Cara. He ripped her dress down from the neck, uncovering a bloody bandage on the right side and what was supposed to be heavy bruising on the left. No doubt deliberately, the costume had been sewn so that both her heavy breasts became visible. She crossed her arms over them and walked to the line that the old men and boys had already formed. She stood in the centre and then shouted in a clear voice, ‘Freedom or Death!’
Just before the machine-pistols started to rattle blanks, Cara stepped backwards and the men in the line joined up to cover her. Cameras on rails and pickups followed her as she sprinted to the trees and disappeared behind them, by which time the men were spurting fake blood and twitching on the ground. Paratroopers ran after her, the officer screaming orders impotently.
‘Cut!’ the women with the megaphone yelled.
Mavros watched as Luke Jannet went into a huddle with his sidekicks. Shortly afterwards, the woman started ordering people around again — the scene with the victims being chosen and sent to the line-up was to be shot again, which involved a long delay as their clothes were changed and new blood packets and squibs attached. During that time, Cara Parks ran to the trees several times as she was filmed from different angles. Mavros began to get bored with the process and moved away.
He heard his name called from the raised platform. David Waggoner was waving to him.
‘What did you think of that?’ the former SOE man asked, when Mavros had joined him.
‘Pretty powerful, I suppose.’
‘Nothing like the real thing, of course.’ Waggoner wiped his brow. He looked rather unwell.
‘You witnessed one?’
‘In a way of speaking.’ The old man looked into Mavros’s eyes.
‘You took part in one.’
‘Not as large as this, but we had to dispose of Germans and traitors.’
Mavros held his gaze. ‘You killed enemy soldiers in cold blood?’
Waggoner looked back at the set. ‘Cold blood, hot blood — those distinctions don’t exist in war. As you just saw, they certainly didn’t exist for the Krauts.’
His use of the term showed how little the passage of time had changed old prejudices, though Mavros doubted Rudolf Kersten would have used equivalent language about his war-time enemies.
‘Anyway, my point was that the real massacre at Makrymari didn’t happen as in the film.’
Mavros nodded. ‘Black Katina didn’t make it to the trees.’
The old soldier raised an eyebrow. ‘You have been digging.’
‘You met her, didn’t you?’
‘Indeed I did. At Galatsi. There was a charge and she led the locals.’ The wrinkled face slackened for a few moments. ‘My God, she was magnificent. We were under heavy fire from the Fallschirmjagers. My tank was knocked out and I found myself fighting alongside her. She led a charmed life — although she’d been wounded in the shoulder previously — and she was merciless. We killed the lot of them.’
‘So how did she end up in the execution line?’
‘I’m not sure. I was wounded when the enemy started firing from the higher ground — they cut down almost all the survivors. I presume Katina was captured at some point. You should ask that bastard Kersten. He was at Galatsi and he was in the firing squad at Makrymari.’
If what Waggoner said was true, how could Kersten bear to watch the reconstruction of the massacre? That he was plagued by guilt had been shown by his kneeling in front of the memorial wall at the village, but attending the shoot was incredible. Mavros’s Greek side, reinforced by the involvement of his father in the battle, was overwhelming the reserve he had inherited from his mother.
Leaving Waggoner without a word, he went in search of the German. He was no longer outside Cara Parks’ trailer. Mavros asked the security guard if he’d seen him.
‘He went over there,’ the big man said, pointing towards a grove of orange trees.
‘How long ago?’
‘About half an hour, I guess.’
So Kersten hadn’t witnessed the execution scene, Mavros thought, his anger still raging. He’d gone to hide; but he would have heard the sound of the machine-pistols. Served the bastard right.
‘Kersten?’ Mavros shouted, running through the first line of trees. ‘Where are you? Ker-’ He broke off and slowed down, but his heart continued to pump hard.
The old man was hanging from a branch, his belt round his neck. His knees were partially bent and the points of his shoes touched the earth, his trousers having slipped down his thin hips. His eyes were bulging, but his face was its normal tanned colour.
Mavros knew he shouldn’t interfere with the scene, but there was a chance Rudolf Kersten was still alive — hanging yourself that way took a lot longer than the clean break of a gallows. He turned to the left and approached the body from the rear. Putting his arms under the old man’s, he lifted him up, then struggled to open the belt enough to slip the head through the noose. He dragged Kersten to the rear and laid him down, ripping open his shirt and putting his ear to his chest. There was no heart beat. He was about to start artificial respiration when the old man’s head flopped to the side slackly.
Rudolf Kersten had managed to break his neck even though the tips of his feet were still on the ground.
FIFTEEN
Inspector Margaritis was not pleased with Mavros. It had taken the police nearly an hour to reach the set, during which time Mavros had informed Luke Jannet and Rosie Yellenberg, arranging with the latter for a cordon to be set up by members of the crew between Cara Parks’ trailer and the place where Rudolf Kersten lay. He had put a clean handkerchief over the old man’s face to protect it from the flies that were already gathering.
The actress returned from the shoot with a shawl over her shoulders. She was tearful and accepted that she couldn’t use her trailer until the police had checked it. In the event, Maria Kondos had stayed at the Heavenly Blue to rest.
‘What did he say to you when you came out?’ Mavros asked.
‘He. . he told me to give. . to give my all,’ she replied, sobbing. ‘That she — my character — deserved. . deserved the best.’
Mavros thought about that. Guilt, or was there something more behind the words? Had he chosen to kill himself or, more likely, been killed when the massacre was being filmed?
‘Oh, Alex, he was such a sweet old man. How could he have done that?’
He squeezed her arm and went to meet the inspector. There were several cars, marked and unmarked, in his procession, along with an ambulance.
‘What the hell were you doing, Mavro?’ Margaritis demanded, after he’d seen the body laid out in the orange grove.
‘Hoping I could save his life. His face w
asn’t distended and he might have still been alive.’
Margaritis watched the technicians as they examined the ground in front of the tree. There weren’t any obvious marks among the dusty dead leaves, even from the dead man’s feet.
‘You realize you’re my prime suspect,’ the inspector said.
Mavros shrugged. ‘Ask around. I was watching the shoot and plenty of people must have seen me. Then I spoke to David Waggoner and the security man outside the trailer. Kersten had left half an hour before, according to him.’
‘Don’t worry, I will be asking around. In the meantime, you’ll be sitting in a police car with this pair of beauties.’
Two uniformed officers stepped forward.
‘Phone,’ Margaritis demanded, extending a hand.
Knowing that cooperation was the only way to go, Mavros gave him his mobile.
‘Search him.’
The older and more corpulent policeman subjected him to a less than subtle body search, handing the inspector his notebook and wallet.
Mavros watched as a doctor knelt down by Rudolf Kersten. He was about to point out his broken neck, but decided anything he said might count against him. The cops took his arms and walked him to a squad car, where he was put in the back seat with the windows closed. In the sultry heat, he tried to make sense of what was going on.
He was almost certain that Kersten had been murdered — that his neck had been broken before he’d been strung up — but he had doubts the police would see it that way, even if they cleared him. So who could be in the frame? David Waggoner, although highly antagonistic to the dead man, had been on the platform throughout the shoot — Mavros had glanced round and seen him several times, including once when he was speaking on his mobile. Two possibilities struck him — either some local, maybe encouraged by Waggoner and enraged, as Mavros himself had been, by the film’s stirring up of old horrors, had taken a long-standing vendetta to its conclusion; or, that the killing had nothing to do with the film or the war, but rather was connected to Kersten’s silver collection. Did Oskar Mesner, the old man’s grandson, have the balls to kill him? That thought didn’t make Mavros feel good, considering he had been the one to humiliate the young German and take the coins back from him. But, despite Mesner’s involvement with the far-right in Germany and Greece, he doubted that murder was in his repertoire — not even getting some other skin-headed bastard to do it.
Then he thought of Waggoner’s dinner companion Tryfon Roufos, the extremely bent antiquities dealer cum thief. He had never heard rumours of Roufos using violence, though he certainly used common criminals to steal ancient objects and icons. It didn’t seem likely that a robbery would have happened in the orange grove, unless blackmail had been involved. Had Waggoner fed Roufos information about the German’s role in the war, forcing the old man to bring pocketfuls of coins to the set, and the exchange accidentally turned to murder? If it had, Mavros found it less than likely that the men involved would have wasted time faking Kersten’s suicide.
He heard shrieks from behind the car and looked round. He had phoned Hildegard Kersten before Margaritis arrived, but hadn’t told her that her husband was dead. Some insensitive bastard must have broken the news when she arrived. He watched her run past, her hair loose and her feet kicking up dust.
‘Let me out,’ he said to the cops in front. ‘That’s the widow. I’m working for her.’ Strictly speaking, it was an untruth, but he wanted to help the old woman cope with her husband’s death, even though he knew that would be no easy task.
‘Tough shit,’ the bulky sergeant said. ‘You’re here to sweat like the rest of us.’
A few minutes later, the radio crackled into activity.
‘Bring the dick to the scene,’ said Margaritis. ‘Hands off him.’
Obviously Hildegard Kersten had applied her husband’s considerable standing in the community to bring the inspector round. The cops glared at him as he got out of the car. Fortunately the T-shirt he’d borrowed from his brother-in-law was extra large, so it didn’t stick to him as much as one of his own would have.
The widow was standing a few yards in front of her husband — the crime scene team having already given up on trying to find footprints. At least the doctor had put the handkerchief back on the dead man’s face.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Mavros said, standing behind Hildegard.
‘Ah, there you are, Alex,’ she said, in English. ‘This ridiculous man says you’re a suspect. I told him. .’ Suddenly she started to sob loudly again, though that quickly became silent weeping. Mavros put his arm around her and she huddled against him. ‘I want. . I want you to find out who. . who killed Rudi,’ she said, looking up at him with tear-filmed blue eyes. ‘They say. . they say he probably committed suicide. He would. . he would never do. . that to me.’
Mavros looked over her grey head to Margaritis, who was looking at him with undisguised hostility.
‘You’re saying it’s suicide?’
The inspector looked down. ‘The forensic surgeon will carry out a post-mortem, but our initial feeling is that Mr Kersten hanged himself, yes.’
‘Which means I’m a free man,’ Mavros said, extending his hand. ‘My things, please.’
Margaritis couldn’t argue with that. ‘Over here, please, Mr Mavro,’ he said.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ Mavros said to the widow.
‘This is not over,’ the inspector said. ‘We’ll be checking your movements very carefully, you Athenian scumbag. And, by the way, I understand English. If you get in the way of my investigation or step out of line by a millimetre, you’re dog food.’
‘My things, please.’ Mavros got back his phone, wallet and notebook.
‘By the way,’ Margaritis said, with a sharp smile. ‘You should be careful. I hear the Kornariates want to drink your blood.’
Mavros raised his shoulders. ‘If you people had done your job, Kornaria would be a normal, law-abiding village.’
The inspector’s eyes opened wide, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Mavros went back to the widow.
‘Come, I’ll take you home,’ he said softly.
‘No, I’m going. . I’m going with Rudi,’ she protested, but eventually allowed herself to be steered out of the trees.
Mikis was standing with Yerasimos beside the Mercedes that had brought Rudolf Kersten to his place of ending. Hildegard headed for the big car, dismissing the driver who had brought her.
‘Follow us,’ Mavros said to Mikis. ‘I think I’m going to need you.’
In the limousine, Hildegard sank back in the leather and inhaled. ‘I can smell my Rudi,’ she said, then steeled herself. ‘Whatever the police and their idiot doctors say, I know Rudi was murdered. You will help me, Alex?’
‘It’s rather out of my area of expertise.’ He was still troubled by his anger against the dead man but, even if he had taken part in the massacre, Hildegard was in no way to blame.
‘If money is the problem. .’
‘No, no, you’ve already shown how generous you can be.’ Mavros looked through the tinted glass at the villas alongside the road, then turned back to her. ‘I’ll need to ask some difficult questions.’
The widow looked at him unwaveringly. ‘I have no secrets from you, Alex.’
‘Did your husband keep any secrets from you?’
‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘What do you want to know?’
Mavros took out his notebook, and then closed it. After its recent confiscation by Margaritis, he didn’t want to put anything potentially incriminating in it.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘assuming it is murder, who do you think could have done it and why?’
‘David Waggoner,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘He has always hated Rudi.’
‘Why?’
Hildegard gave him a sharp look. ‘Because of the war, of course.’
‘Yes, but specifically?’
‘Oh, because of the massacre at Makrymari. You know about it?’
/> Mavros nodded. ‘Your husband took part in it.’
‘No!’ she cried, causing Yerasimos to look in the mirror. ‘I’m sorry. No, Alex, that isn’t true. He was forced by a vile captain to stand in the firing squad, but he had suffered a serious head wound and he collapsed when the execution started.’
‘He told you that?’
‘Yes, but he also wrote it down as a kind of memoir. It’s in the safe back at the hotel. It’s in German.’
They had already established that he didn’t speak the language.
‘Is there anything about Waggoner in it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s just the point. Rudi was in the battle at Galatsi and he describes a fair-haired and stocky British officer in a tank. He later saw the same man shooting wounded Germans in the head.’
Jesus, Mavros thought. The Battle of Crete was like a tumour in the island’s entrails, a stain on its history that contaminated the present.
‘How did your husband survive the fighting?’
‘He was saved by that woman, the one known as Black Katina. On the day he landed, he had avoided killing her.’
Now Mavros understood Rudolf Kersten’s actions at the memorial wall and his words to Cara Parks before the recreation of the massacre. He felt ashamed of his anger.
‘Why would Waggoner wait for so many years?’ he asked.
‘Because he’d been blackmailing Rudi since we came to Crete. How do you think he could afford that house up in the mountains? He hasn’t worked since he was drummed out of the British Army. Now we have little except the apartment, which is on a lifelong peppercorn lease. The resort has been sold and all our property in Germany liquidated. Rudi told him there would be no more money last month.’
‘Not quite everything,’ Mavros said. ‘There’s the coin collection.’
‘Yes, there is. Rudi’s precious silver. I never liked his collecting those objects. He should have given them all to museums.’
‘As he did with the Jewish relics.’
Hildegard looked at him. ‘You already know much about us.’
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