by Leta Serafim
Patronas glanced at it quickly. It was almost identical to the sheet he’d discovered in Petros Athanassiou’s bedroom. “Where’d you get this?”
“Outside Papa Michalis’ room.” She studied the paper for a moment. “Circles inside circles. What do you suppose it means?”
“I don’t know.” Carefully, Patronas folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “Did you notice anything unusual in the days prior to the murder? Someone who didn’t belong? Anything out of the ordinary?” He was taking care to address her formally.
“Now that you mention it, there was a strange smell one night. Like rotting meat. I couldn’t pinpoint it. I remember I was coming back from church when I first noticed it. It was very faint, the smell. I thought at first one of the chickens had died and I looked around in their cage for the carcass. But there was nothing.”
“What time was this?”
“After vespers.”
“What were you doing up here at that hour?”
“Keeping Papa Michalis company. I often do.”
“Was it only the one time you noticed the smell or did you notice it again?”
“No, just that once, that one time. The night before Petros died.”
“Have you noticed a change in Papa Michalis? The last few weeks, has he acted any differently?” The paper.
She turned to face him. “You can’t be serious. Father would never hurt anyone.”
“What about Petros? Was there a change in him?”
She returned to her work, angry now. “I don’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Come on, Marina. I’m just doing my job. Police work being what it is, you sometimes have to speak ill of the dead.”
“Well, find someone else to do it.”
“Marina.” He caught himself as he said her name. “I want to find the man who did this.” He described the scene on the beach, the plastic bag that had held what was left of Eleni Argentis.
That stopped her. “What can I do? I wasn’t there when it happened. I was up here at the monastery.”
“People around here know you. They’re more apt to talk to you than to me or one of my men. I’d appreciate it if you would question them—informally, of course. Don’t let them know what you’re doing. Start with Vassilis’ father, Spiros Korres—he owns the farm on the way here—and work your way through the neighborhood. I’ll bet someone saw something. People often know more than they think they do.”
“I know Spiros’ wife, Antigone. I’ll stop by their house on my way home.”
“There’s one other thing. Petros’ mother told me she and her boyfriend arrived here on July twenty-second. Could you check the boat manifests at your travel agency and verify that? Same thing with the two archeologists. Jonathan Alcott supposedly arrived on July twenty-fourth, Devon McLean a day later. I need to make sure they’re telling the truth.”
She wiped her hands on her apron. “Let me write that down.” She dug a little journal out of her purse and asked him to spell their names and give her the dates again. “Okay. I’ll check it out.”
He thought for a minute. “Run Antonis and Titina Argentis through your computer, too. See when they got to Chios.”
“What did you do with Eleni, with her ….” She stopped and started again. “With what you found?”
“Sent it to Athens. They have better facilities there. Perhaps they’ll find something.”
“So there won’t be a funeral.”
“Not for the time being.” He knew this would be the worst part for Marina, not the violent death of Eleni Argentis or the torture that might have preceded it. It would be that lack of a funeral, that denial of a final blessing.
* * *
It was growing dark by the time Patronas left the monastery, and Papa Michalis got a lantern and walked him down to the car. Olive trees blanketed the terraced fields below, their gray-green leaves fluttering in the wind like flecks of mica. The lights were coming on in the villages below and Patronas could see the headlights of a distant car on the road to the airport. A bird left its perch in the wall and soared out over the valley.
Patronas looked back at the monastery. Silhouetted against the sky, the hulking mass was like something out of the Dark Ages. “All those empty rooms. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“I’m used to it. There were never very many of us up here, only four or five.”
“What happened to them?”
“They complained to the bishop about the lack of heat. They’re on Psarra now.”
“Psarra?!” Rocky and mountainous, Psarra was a tiny island with a sad history. The Turks had killed more than 15,000 people there in 1824 and the survivors had fled after the massacre, never to return. It was virtually uninhabited, with no electricity or telephone.
“I fear if I complain about the isolation, the same thing will happen to me. I will join my brethren on Psarra or someplace worse. Yiaros, the old penal colony, or that rock where they used to keep the lepers. Bishop Germanos is, how shall I say, a little irrational with respect to me. Given to fits. Apolektikos.”
“Why?”
“We fell out over the poor boxes. He wanted to send the money to Athens and I thought it was best if we spent it here. I impetuously shared my opinion with a few people and the Bishop found out. He was so angry he wanted to excommunicate me, but as there were insufficient grounds, he compromised on Profitis Ilias. The thinking being I would be contained up there, like a toxic virus, and could do no harm.”
The priest gave him a bleak smile. “Unfortunately, there’s no Canon law against vindictiveness.” He looked back at the citadel. “It’s not so bad. I can come and go as I please. Visit Chora whenever I like. I am, as you policemen say, ‘under house arrest.’ ”
“You should leave this place, Father. Two people dead. It’s not safe.”
“Nonsense. Profitis Ilias is secure. The doors are metal, and they bolt from the inside. No single person could get through them. They’re old, but they’re strong. They were designed to repel armies.”
Patronas watched him walk back up the path to the monastery, the propane lantern he was carrying a small spot of light against the black hill.
Chapter 13
Marriage is an evil most men welcome.
—Menander
The chief officer’s wife was stirring something on the stove. “We’ll eat in a minute, Yiannis.”
Patronas studied the back of his wife. She was rooted to the earth, Dimitra, no doubt about it, the bulk of her weight concentrated in her hips and thighs as if the force of gravity was pulling her down. She’d recently started dying her hair, a reddish-brown color that reminded him of the polish he used on his shoes. It did little to enhance her appearance. A tree in autumn—that was Dimitra.
He had to admit she was not without abilities. She could supervise the mating of donkeys, the birthing of lambs. Skin a rabbit without flinching and stew the latter in a dish so tasty she’d been asked to include the recipe in a cookbook. She’d declined, of course. It was her recipe. Why share? She could brew a tolerable wine and spin yarn out of lamb’s wool, put up supplies for the winter, lay out a body for burial.
Occasionally, she helped him with his police work, passing on gossip or asking questions in such a way that he was forced to rethink his assumptions. Her world view was a dark one. People were out to get you, Dimitra felt. Given half a chance, they’ll stab you in the back and cause you suffering in thousands of different ways.
He’d never thought about what his life would be like without her. She was just there, a part of the house like the floor or the walls. No, not like that. Dimitra was more of an appliance. Not a car or a television, something that could give you a lift or entertain you. Something dull, but necessary. A clock. Yes, that was it. Dimitra was a clock. Tick, tick, ticking away the hours of his life.
After dinner, Patronas showed her the two pieces of paper. She read more than he did. Perhaps she’d recognize the drawing.
She put on her glasses to s
ee them better. “Where’d you get these?”
“I found one at the boy’s house. The other Marina Papoulis gave me.”
“When was this?”
“This afternoon.”
“I wondered what you were doing with her.” Her face was hard to read. “The neighbor told me that she’d seen Marina, and Marina mentioned that she’d seen you, that the two of you had spent the afternoon together.”
“All this has to do with the case, Dimitra. She and Papa Michalis, they’re helping me.”
“Yiannis,” she asked in a low voice, “what are you doing to us?”
“Nothing. I’m not doing anything, Dimitra.”
“Yes, you are. Your mother told me about you and Marina. She said you wanted to marry her.”
He wondered why his mother had done this. Was she still upset over the lost dowry? The fact that Dimitra’s father owned, not a fleet of tankers as she’d originally assumed, but a gas station, a two-pump gas station in the slums of Castro, not far from the home of Petros’ grandmother. Did his mother think enough time had passed? That Dimitra would let a thing like that go? She should have known better.
“I was at your mother’s house and she had some old albums out. Photographs of you when you were a boy. ‘Look how happy he looks in this picture,’ she said, ‘standing there with Marina.’ You were on a school outing. Corfu, I think.”
“Come on, Dimitra. That was a long time ago.”
“Why do you have to spend so much time at Profitis Ilias? Why can’t you work at your office?”
“Because I’m Chief Officer and it’s a crime scene. In case you’ve forgotten, two people were killed up there. The priest even set up a ‘murder room’ for me.” Patronas shook his head as he said this. Murder room. Holy Mother of God. Poor Papa Michalis.
“So you’re going to go on seeing her?”
“Yes, I suppose I am. It’s a small place and she’s there, so, yes, we’re going to see each other. We’re going have conversations, maybe even drink coffee or eat a meal together.” He said this in the same voice he used at the station when his men questioned an order and he wanted to verbally slap them down.
“Stay away from her, Yiannis. You hear me! You stay away from her!”
An old-fashioned Greek male, Patronas normally wouldn’t have allowed himself to be spoken to in such a way, but he had work to do tonight and didn’t want to fight with her. All the signs were there—the accusatory tone, the prosecutorial mien. Dimitra had more stamina than he and could argue until morning.
“For God’s sake, Dimitra, what is all this? What’s the matter with you? There’s nothing going on between Marina and me. You know that. I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“Yes, you are. You’re remembering. You think I don’t know? Every time you see her, you remember when you were a boy, when it was all ahead of you, and she was the one you loved, loved in a way that only happens once.”
Stung, he got up from the table. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Wait,” she called after him.
“What is it now, Dimitra?”
She smoothed down the paper he’d given her. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s the Phaistos Disc. Nobody knows what it means, but the tourists, they love it. They buy copies of it, Phaistos bracelets, Phaistos key chains. They claim it has spiritual powers.”
She went into the living room and returned with a book, a tourist guide from Crete, and began flipping through the pages. “Look, here’s a picture.” She pointed to a photograph.
He compared the photograph to the drawings Petros had made. They looked similar, but the boy’s paper had been handled so much, it was impossible to tell if the images were identical.
* * *
Patronas called Papa Michalis later that night. “When we were up at the monastery, you said that Eleni thought islands had a role in the Minoan universe. Think back. Did she ever say anything about a disc? The Phaistos Disc?”
“Funny, that. We were having dinner up at the monastery one night—the three of us, Eleni and Petros and me—and she started talking about a book she’d been reading about the Aborigines in Australia. Bruce Chatwin, I think it was. She said the Aborigines sang their universe into being, that they navigated the world using special songs and chants. It sounded like nonsense to me. But I remember she did say one thing that stuck in my mind. She said the Aboriginal drawings, the ones they’d made of Australia, reminded her of some of the Minoan stuff she’d seen. ‘Maybe we need to look at the Phaistos Disc again,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s a map.’ ”
* * *
If it was a map, it was unlike any he’d ever seen. Patronas studied the image on his computer screen. The Phaistos Disc was a round clay disc stamped on both sides with hieroglyphics. Some of them were obvious—bare-breasted women were bare-breasted women the world over—but as for the rest—the boomerangs and forked sticks, the lonely humanoid-types with tails—he hadn’t a clue. Searching the Web hadn’t helped, as theories on the Phaistos Disc abounded. Some thought it was a board game; others claimed it was a shopping list, the fish symbol meaning simply ‘buy fish.’ But if it was a shopping list, why were there so many different kinds of people on it? Had the Minoans, in addition to killing their own, been buying and selling them, too?
Other theories were even more implausible. Sir Arthur Evans, who’d discovered Knossos, alleged it was a paean to victory. Another thought it was a letter to the Hittites from Lukka Land.
This surprised Patronas, who hadn’t known there were Lukkas, let alone a ‘Lukka Land.’
He’d been staring at the Disc for so long, he’d begun to see pornographic things in the hieroglyphics: male and female parts, dirty bits. He scrolled farther down. The other websites were worse. There was one connecting the Phaistos Disc with the stars, but no stars he’d ever heard of. Stars with quasi-mystical names, stars he suspected existed only in the mind of the site’s webmaster. There was also a lot about the spirals on the Disc, spirals being the ‘defining motif of the universe.’ Groups of Germans were sparring over whether the Disc was stamped or incised, which would have made it the first ‘typewritten’ account of …. That was the problem, no one knew.
Then there were listings connecting the Disc with the lost kingdom of Atlantis, but not the historic kingdom the archeologists Alcott and McLean had spoken of. No, this was a place where the folks went for rides in UFOs and kept pet unicorns, where the cuckoo was the national bird.
One website stated the thing was a primitive computer disc, used by the Minoans as a navigational device. “Ah-ha,” he said, noting the similarities between a navigational device and a map, until he got farther into the site and realized that what was being navigated was the galaxy—the mystical, spiral galaxy. He was reluctant to contact the Archeology Department in Athens, worrying he’d tip his hand, in case Eleni had been right and there was something up there. The last thing he wanted in the middle of his murder investigation was more archeologists milling around, itching to get their hands on his hillside.
He got a magnifying glass out of the drawer and studied the images again. According to something he’d read online, what he was seeing was one form of the Minoan language, Linear A, as yet undeciphered. And unlikely to be, he decided, putting his magnifying glass away and shutting the drawer. At least not by him.
Chapter 14
“Neighbor, your house is burning.”
“Impossible, I have the keys.”
—Greek proverb
When they’d first been married, Patronas had called his wife the ‘electric fork,’ teasing her about how fast she ate. Later it became the ‘electric tongue,’ for the sharpness of her speech. ‘Electric’ in the sense that an electric eel or an electric chair was ‘electric.’ That is, her tongue was a force to be reckoned with, a sort of built-in, human stun gun. Today, Dimitra ate little and said nothing.
The priest was in the church when Patronas got to Profitis Ilias, chanting the liturgy. Patronas sniffed. He coul
d smell incense in the air, but no hint of the decay Marina had spoken of. He lit a candle and stood waiting in the semi-darkness until the priest finished.
After the priest put away his vestments, Patronas approached him. “Father, I want you and Marina Papoulis to leave Profitis Ilias.”
“I can’t. I explained to you.”
“Then send Marina away. Replace her with one of my men.”
“Your men can’t cook.”
“I’ll bring you food from a taverna. It’s important, Father. I don’t want her here. It’s too dangerous.” With an extra policeman, the priest would be safe. Dimitra would calm down, and he, Yiannis Patronas, Chief Officer of the Police Force of Nomos Chios, could get on with his homicide investigation. It was the perfect solution.
The priest frowned. “Does she really have to go? We have fun. Sometimes she stays up here and we watch television together. Last week we watched The Hound of the Baskervilles, an old Sherlock Holmes movie on the BBC. You might think such an endeavor is frivolous, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unseemly entertainment for a priest, but it isn’t, Chief Officer. Oh, no, it’s work. I took notes while I watched. I studied Holmes’ technique. He’s a genius. He’ll help us crack this case.”
“You think we’re going solve these murders by watching television?” Patronas allowed himself a little sarcasm.
“Indeed, we are. I’m going to learn Holmes’ methodology and apply it here. Inference, Chief Officer.” He held up a bony finger. “Inference is the key. Holmes sees what no other sees. In The Silver Blaze—probably the most famous example—the clue was ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’ The dog did nothing in the night-time. Ergo: the dog did not bark. Only Sherlock Holmes could see that. He is a maestro when it comes to discerning such things.”
“Sherlock Holmes could see a dog not bark.”
“Hear then. Hear a dog not bark.”
“How can you hear a dog not bark?” He was beginning to think the priest had serious problems.