Blood & Gold

by Leo Kanaris

  ‘That’s private family business. We don’t discuss these matters with third parties.’

  George was frustrated. ‘I’m going to leave you my number,’ he said. ‘If you can find out any more for me, anything at all, I’ll be very grateful, and so will the family here in Greece. They found an empty coffin at the funeral and they’re very upset.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  ‘I’m not asking for any big secrets, just that one thing… Which crematorium did you say?’

  ‘Lavender Lawn. Brooklyn Heights.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said George. ‘I look forward to your call.’

  He hung up. Then found Lavender Lawn Crematorium and telephoned the number given on the website. A well-trained lady with a brassy voice confirmed that Mr Medouris had been cremated on September 5th. She would not discuss the ceremony, or how many mourners attended. George said he was a friend of the family and wanted to send a tribute. The lady said he could send it to the crematorium and it would be passed on to the family.

  George replaced the phone. Everything was in order. At the same time everything was wrong. Mario Filiotis had been burned to dust in a far-off city, while his family grieved over a vacant coffin. And someone in Brooklyn, with the real or assumed name of Medouris, had been expecting a consignment of ancient gold, but found a corpse in its place. Of the two, only Mario was likely to rest in peace.

  He telephoned Eleni and gave her the news.

  ‘Are you sure of that?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll never be sure,’ he replied. ‘All that’s left is ash.’

  For a time she was silent.

  ‘The people in New York were expecting gold,’ she said. ‘Instead they got a body. They didn’t make any queries? They just went ahead and burnt it?’

  ‘That seems to be what happened.’

  ‘They would have reacted.’

  ‘Privately, yes. But officially they could only do what they were pretending to do in the first place.’

  ‘There’s more to this,’ she said.

  ‘Quite probably. But short of sending someone to New York…’

  ‘Would you go?’

  ‘I would, but it might be better to hire someone over there.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She thanked him for his efforts. George said goodbye, knowing this would not be the end of it.

  At five-thirty, he rang Sotiriou about Paris Aliveris. The Colonel listened patiently and, without dismissing George’s suspicions, gave him to understand that they would be put on a shelf and, until someone in his overstretched, under-funded and demoralised department found time to deal with them, ignored. George warned that a man who could push his wife off a cliff and lie so convincingly was not a man to be left at liberty, but Sotiriou reminded him that supposition, even on the part of a respected investigator, did not amount to grounds for arrest.

  ‘You should at least send in the forensic team,’ said George.

  ‘Forensic team? What do you expect them to find?’

  ‘Traces of soil on his shoes, in his clothes. Or his car.’

  ‘Very good! And then he will say it’s his right to go walking in the Tourkovounia!’

  ‘And kill people?’

  ‘That is your assumption.’

  ‘Any story he tells will have to be backed up. If there’s anything there to link him to that death you’ve got a chance. Without that you’ve got nothing.’

  Sotiriou did not speak for a few moments.

  ‘Well?’ said George impatiently. ‘How about it?’

  ‘You really are the most tiresome informant.’

  ‘Give me a break, Colonel! I’m doing you a service.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘So you’ll send a forensic team.’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  ‘Not too long! He’ll –’

  ‘I have another call, Mr Zafiris. No doubt we’ll talk again soon.’

  The phone went dead.

  What George had been prevented from saying by the Colonel’s interruption was ‘he’ll try to escape’. He thought of calling back just to say those words, but anger and frustration stopped him. Instead he went home to have a quiet evening with Zoe. He cooked penne all’arrabbiata. They drank a bottle of red Naoussa and watched an old black and white comedy on television, deliberately forgetting all serious things.

  Next morning at ten Sotiriou telephoned him. Something had happened overnight. Having considered the matter carefully, he had decided to send a forensic team to Keti Kenteri’s house in Delta Street. They had visited at six-thirty this morning. The owner was not there. His resident housekeeper, a Filipina, said he had gone on holiday. The team had nevertheless begun its work. Meanwhile enquiries at the airport revealed that Paris had left for Bucharest the night before.

  ‘Why Bucharest?’ asked George.

  ‘I hoped you would be able to tell me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said George. ‘But what difference does it make? He’s gone.’

  ‘So it would seem,’ said the Colonel. ‘We must hope he doesn’t stay away too long.’

  George at once telephoned Anna Kenteri. Did Paris have any connections with Romania? She could think of none, except that the country was known for its musicians; he quite possibly had friends and colleagues there. Was he a gregarious type, he wondered? Did he form alliances and friendships easily, or was he a loner? How much did she know about him generally? Anna replied decisively: he was a good communicator, had many friends, used to be a lot of fun. George picked her up on this at once. Why ‘used to be’? She replied that a change had come over him in the last few years.

  ‘Coinciding with Keti’s success as a performer?’ asked George.

  ‘I need to think about that.’

  ‘Tell me about the change.’

  She hesitated. ‘Hard to describe. The humour seemed to fade. The lightness. He used to cook wonderful meals, held evenings at the house with improvised sessions, using any instruments that happened to be there, playing jazz, folk songs, Middle Eastern melodies. But gradually all that stopped. Was it the crisis? I don’t know…’

  George asked about his origins. He came from Edessa, she said, in Northern Greece. A landowning family with a big old village house a few miles from the town. He had an older brother and sister. The brother was an executive in a bank, the sister a university professor in Boston.

  ‘Are the parents still alive?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Did they get on well with Keti?’

  ‘She loved them!’

  ‘And they loved her?’

  ‘Just as much.’

  It sounded almost improbably happy. He decided he he had better talk to them. She gave him their address.

  As he wrote the word ‘Edessa’ he was reminded of something, but he could not remember what. He knew he had heard the town mentioned recently, but by whom? In what context? It was just out of reach. He checked back through the notebook where he wrote down the significant points of each day’s work, names, addresses, phone numbers, connections, ideas, occasional mind maps. There were some notes he had made about the Hellenic Navy and the frogman special unit, his conversation with Dr Skouras, and further back the seven points Haris had given him about EAP… And there it was. One of the places where the family had property… If Paris’s parents lived in Edessa, they might have some useful information. It gave him two reasons to go and visit them. Plus the fact that Edessa was near Pella, where those golden wreaths had been discovered. That was three reasons.

  What to do about Zoe, however?

  He told her his plan and asked if she felt like coming along. She said there was no need. She was feeling much better. In fact she was planning to call Dr Skouras and tell him, since he had asked.

  George said, ‘Please don’t tell him I’ve gone to Edessa.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Just don’t. It’s a personal matter.’

  ‘I don’t like it w
hen you don’t explain,’ she said.

  George said, ‘He might spoil things for me.’

  ‘Intentionally?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Or maybe yes. I can’t tell. Just don’t mention it, OK?’

  19 Edessa

  George kept his car, a red Alfa Romeo Spider, in a garage on Ippokratous Street. In financial terms it made no sense, but there had to be more to life than the figures on a balance sheet. Reducing everything to numbers is an obsession of mankind; it generates wealth but ignores emotion, assigns false meanings and risks destroying life itself. This was why he had quit his job at the National Bank, and never missed its suffocating arithmetical atmosphere of complacency. How can you measure, in monetary terms, the summer air swirling around your head, the engine roaring in your ears? What numbers could possibly represent the open road? What units of currency? Five hundred dollars a minute? Ten million?

  He knew what the car cost to run. He knew its price on the market. But he had never attempted to assess its importance to him. As well as a joy to drive, it was a relic of his youth. Just by sitting in it and turning on the ignition he felt connected to his younger self, as if the flowing petrol and flickering electric sparks were running through him and the engine were part of his soul.

  With the country’s economic crisis and the drop in his income, he would soon have to think again. You can only ignore money if you have enough of it. He was running short now. The Alfa was a luxury and he knew it. It might have to go, and with it all the pleasure it brought him.

  It was also, as his friends pointed out, a bit conspicuous for a private detective’s car.

  The road north out of Athens was a gift from the European Union. A big modern highway, six lanes wide, it flew from Piraeus to Thessaloniki, ignoring the labyrinthine suburbs and pot-holed country lanes. It took an annoying S-shaped detour around the northern end of Evvia, past Lamia and Volos, before resuming its flight towards the north, but that was a small price to pay. The scenery was huge, majestic, a grand tour of Greek history and myth. Thebes, Thermopylae, Mount Olympus… He drove along shores mirrored in level sea, around mountains that dissolved in their own slate-blue shadows. He stopped to eat grilled squid in a waterside taverna at Arkitsa, drove on into the golden afternoon.

  As he turned inland for Edessa he found himself among fertile hills, rich in vineyards and orchards. The town stood on a great cliff that reared abruptly from the lush valley floor, a rush of water spilling from its lip like an overflowing rain spout. He had a sudden immobilising sense of déjà-vu, a pang of memory from childhood that was fierce yet imprecise. When had he been here before?

  Pulling the Alfa over to the side of the road, he closed his eyes and tried to let the memories return. At last a distant visit to an uncle and aunt presented itself to his mind, playing in a courtyard with a cousin, a boy in blue shorts and white shirt with slicked down hair. They had not known what to make of each other. His younger sister too, curly and blonde, more fun, more congenial. He could smell again the box hedges in the garden, taste the krema sprinkled with cinnamon which they served the children every afternoon after their siesta. He saw the town’s river come shooting over the precipice, a wild white fall of water that he had wondered at as a boy, transfixed by its terrifying energy as it hurled itself into space.

  He reached into the back for his overnight bag. Inside was his address book. Perhaps his cousins were still there?

  He found the number and tried it. A recorded message told him the line was no longer in use. Perhaps not surprising after so many years. But he had an address too. He would try that.

  On the way into town he was unpleasantly surprised to see election posters for the former Socialist Minister of Home Affairs, Byron Kakridis, now a convert to Syriza. Not a man that he wished to be reminded of, a crook and a bully who still owed him a few thousand euros and the country several million. The putridly handsome face grinned out with bogus benevolence from lampposts, walls and railings, promising a bright future despite the bankruptcy that he had done so much to create. Next to him were the posters for other candidates – New Democracy, Pasok, KKE, Golden Dawn. Kakridis had somehow beaten them all, been elected again, despite his lamentable record. George wondered how that had been achieved.

  The Hotel Pindos, a converted private house, had just five guest rooms. It was in the old part of town, in a row of buildings along the cliff-top, with immense views fading into the haze across the plain.

  The owner, a young man called Gavrilis, opened the shutters onto the balcony and said, ‘You feel as if you’re flying.’

  George asked if the business felt that way too.

  ‘No,’ said Gavrilis decisively. ‘We’re struggling. No more weekenders from Thessaloniki, no one from Athens. A few travelling business people like yourself and the occasional foreigner who gets lost on a quest for Alexander the Great. Come downstairs and I’ll make you coffee,’ he said.

  George followed him down to a big kitchen where rows of jars full of jam were set out on the table with a pile of labels in one corner.

  ‘Fig jam,’ said Gavrilis. ‘For guests, friends, family – and for sale.’

  ‘I’ll buy one,’ said George.

  ‘More than one I hope,’ said Gavrilis. ‘Greek coffee or espresso?’

  ‘Greek.’

  ‘I’m glad you said that. It’s since we learnt to drink Italian coffee that things have been ruined here.’

  ‘You can’t blame the coffee!’

  ‘I don’t. We’re to blame. Importing everything. Now we even import debt!’

  George said nothing. He was sick of talking politics.

  Gavrilis stirred the coffee in the pot, waited for it to boil, then poured it into little white cups. He placed a small piece of loukoumi dusted with icing sugar on each saucer.

  George asked him if he happened to know his cousins Aliki and Philippos Zafiris.

  ‘Of course,’ said Gavrilis. ‘They had a beautiful house. One of the best in Edessa.’

  ‘Are they still there?’

  ‘No, they sold it and moved away.’

  ‘Why?’

  Gavrilis looked vague. ‘They were trying to convert it into a hotel. But things went wrong.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘They handled it badly. Tried to go it alone, trod on people’s toes, and the timing was wrong. Bang in the middle of the crisis.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘I don’t know. France, I think. Or Canada.’

  ‘Whose toes did they tread on?’

  ‘Many people.’ Gavrilis seemed uncomfortable. ‘It was a great shame.’

  ‘And the house?’

  ‘Destroyed by fire.’

  George nodded. ‘A great shame indeed.’

  After coffee, George walked into town to look for the Aliveris house.

  It was not quite as he imagined it. In fact it was not a house at all, but an apartment in an expensive block. Underground garage, wide verandahs overflowing with plants, well-dressed couples entering and departing. He pressed the bell at the gate and a light came on. A video camera explored his face.

  ‘Who’s there?’ asked an aged voice.

  ‘George Zafiris, private investigator.’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  George began to explain but the light went out.

  Annoyed, he rang again.

  As soon as the light came on he was talking. ‘Your son is in danger,’ he said, ‘I need to contact him urgently.’

  ‘Our son is not here.’

  ‘I know that, but I need to speak to him.’

  ‘He has a telephone.’

  ‘He doesn’t answer when I call.’

  ‘Then he doesn’t want to hear from you.’

  The light went out again.

  George pressed the bell a third time. ‘The police in Athens are looking for him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He seems to have left the city.’

  ‘We don’t kno
w you.’

  ‘Call Anna Kenteri. She’ll tell you about me.’ He repeated his name in case they had forgotten it.

  The light went off again. George waited by the gate, thinking it must be a family tradition to keep people hanging about in the street. A humiliating business. It made him feel foolish, standing on a pavement talking into entry phones. At times like this he regretted giving up smoking. So much of Greek life is waiting. Cigarettes are its perfect partner. A way of turning the nation’s vast reserves of energy into ash.

  The light came on again. ‘Are you there, Mr Zafiris?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘We’ve spoken to Anna. She says you are investigating Keti’s death.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So why do you want to speak to Paris?’

  ‘I have a very good reason, but I’m not going to stand here talking into a machine.’

  ‘We don’t let strangers into the house.’

  ‘Then meet me in a café in half an hour. The one in the public gardens, by the waterfall.’

  ‘Very well. How will we recognise you?’

  ‘I’ll be at a table, alone, with a can of soda. I’m wearing a blue shirt.’

  ‘Yes. I can see you at the gate. The shirt looks grey-blue rather than plain blue.’

  ‘That’s right. See you in half an hour.’

  On the way to the gardens, walking through the streets in the shade of orange trees and cypresses, with doves burbling in the branches, George was disturbed by a call from Colonel Sotiriou. The head of the Violent Crimes Squad was nonplussed to find him five hundred kilometres away and unable to meet. He had things to say. George encouraged him to say them. Sotiriou replied testily that some of what he had to say was not suitable for the telephone, but he could tell him that Keti Kenteri’s phone had been found in the bushes on the Tourkovounia. This was a potential breakthrough. Technical experts were working on it, extracting and analysing the data. One thing stood out at once, however: a recorded conversation between Keti and her husband, in which he spoke angrily. It was not entirely clear when the recording was made but it might even have been immediately prior to her death.

  ‘It looks as if you were right, Mr Zafiris,’ the Colonel concluded. ‘This is our evidence!’