by Leta Serafim
* * *
The young woman at reception ran a manicured finger down the ledger. “It says here Devon McLean checked in on July twenty-fifth. But he arrived on Chios long before that.”
“How do you know?”
“A waiter at the hotel saw him. ‘That white skin,’ he said. He was sure it was him.”
“Where did he see him?”
“Volissos.”
“He and the other archeologist, the American, had a big fight the night he arrived. Out on the terrace. Something about a woman. The American was drunk. The Englishman was trying to calm him down.” She drummed her nails on the counter impatiently. The phones were ringing and she needed to get back to work. “I wish I could tell you more. All the people you asked me about? They’ve all been here at one time or another. Petros’ mother and her boyfriend. What a pair: the porne and the porno, the he-slut and the she-slut. Made a nuisance of themselves, ordered drinks and ran up a big tab, then when the waiter brought the bill, they argued with him and refused to pay. So cheap, they could get milk from a ram.”
“Anyone else?”
“Titina Argentis.”
“What did she want?”
“I’m not sure. She came in late at night like she didn’t want anyone to see her. It was after my shift, but I heard she was sitting in the lounge with the Englishman. It was the middle of July; I don’t know the exact date. Like I said, I didn’t see them myself. The night manager told me.”
Patronas turned toward the dining room, where the waiters were setting up for dinner. “Which one saw McLean in Volissos?”
“Him.” The girl pointed to a short man on the far side of the room. “Takis.”
“Sure, I saw him,” the waiter said when questioned by Patronas. “It was late June, about three weeks before he checked in here.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Hard to miss a man like that. All pale and delicate, he was, smearing cream on his face like a woman. He’s not your usual here. Men like that, you see them on Mykonos. He was on a boat. It was anchored far off, so I couldn’t really see it. But I could tell it was big. Not a yacht, but a good-sized cabin cruiser or maybe a cigarette boat. Looked sleek from where I stood. Fast.”
Chapter 21
He spins the rope of Ocnus.
—Greek proverb
Patronas thought of Ocnus as he drove. Ocnus was a ropemaker whose ropes were eaten by an ass as fast as he could make them. In other words, everything he did was a waste of time. Patronas felt much the same. Weeks of effort and nothing to show for it. He could almost hear the ass chewing.
Patronas took Giorgos Tembelos with him when he went to Volissos. There’d been some trouble in the village over cigarette smuggling, and he thought Tembelos, who had relatives there, might have better luck talking to the locals. When he’d arrested the ringleader, the man had taken a swing at him, claiming everyone with a boat supplemented their income with Turkish cigarettes and that he had been unfairly singled out. The bonds of family ran deep in Volissos and Patronas was afraid he was in for a long afternoon.
The ride took them through the backstreets and up over Mount Aipos. The limestone peak rose sharply, the second highest point of land on Chios after Profitis Ilias, and Patronas hated the narrow road that traversed it. A dented guard rail ran along the side, and he tried not to look down as he drove. Not so Giorgos, who was enthralled by the view and kept pointing out landmarks—the bell tower of the cathedral, the three old windmills outside Chora—and getting progressively more excited the higher up they went.
Beyond the crest of Mount Aipos was a lifeless plateau of pockmarked limestone that extended for miles. As a boy, Patronas had been fascinated by the area, home to nothing, not even insects. He’d believed that if he visited the moon, its surface would be like this, all gray rock and dust. Now, as an adult, he thought the desolation probably dated from the massacre of 1822 when the Turks had burned the villages along the coast. He guessed the flames had overtaken the woods on the mountain, and they, like the rest of Chios, had never recovered. A ship owner from the United States was trying to reestablish a forest in the area. The green of the tiny saplings made the land around them seem still more barren.
The landscape began to change as they neared the sea on the west of the island, the lunar plateau giving way to gently sloping hills, heavily forested with dense thickets of pines. Patronas loved the sight of the wind-bent pines, the grass yellow beneath them, the great wash of the Aegean in the distance, sparkling in the sunlight.
“You ever catch who did it?” Tembelos pointed to a swatch of land that had been burned the previous summer, the singed ground and blackened trees.
Patronas shook his head. He’d found a pile of discarded metal cans still reeking of gasoline and a mattress that had been soaked in it and set ablaze, but he’d never caught the arsonist. It still galled him. Greek law was very strict, forbidding construction in areas that were forested. In recent years the solution had been to burn the trees down, but then the law had been amended, forbidding construction indefinitely in areas where there had been fires. Patronas was counting on the culprit not knowing that the law had changed and filing for a permit to build. Then he’d have him.
As they rounded the curve, the village of Volissos came into view. It had grown in recent years, the cement breakwater expanded to accommodate tourist boats from abroad. He could smell fish frying in the small taverna on the quay and see people eating outside at tables under umbrellas.
He dropped Tembelos off and drove back to where the road curved high above the village. Getting out his binoculars, he scanned the harbor, searching for a fast boat, but saw nothing, only fishing boats and a flotilla of rented sailboats, making their way east.
He raised the binoculars higher and looked farther out to sea. There was a boat that looked like the one the waiter described, laying at anchor about 500 meters offshore. The Coast Guard said the boat was registered in Libya, a practice not unusual in Greece. Boats were often registered there to avoid paying taxes. The owner had filed no additional papers since anchoring. Although the boat had been there for weeks, they’d been unable to catch up with whoever owned it. Too many boats, too many people. Patronas asked them to keep an eye on it and let him know when it left and which direction it went in. “Follow it if you have to. Keep it in view.”
Tembelos had heard from the owner of the local grocery store that a man had been living on the boat in question—well, perhaps not living, but staying there occasionally. He’d bought food from the grocer and gone back and forth a few times. He’d been a foreigner, xenii, with red hair and white skin and had always been alone—a curiosity in and of itself during the summer when the village was full of couples on holiday. His solitude was probably the only reason the grocer remembered him.
“Did he make a positive ID when you showed him the photo of McLean?” Not experts, they’d gone to great lengths to secure a candid photo of the Englishman, sitting at the pool at his hotel.
Tembelos shook his head. “He wouldn’t swear to it. He did say he saw a woman onboard once or twice. Not with him. Alone. Looked local, he said. Not a girlfriend. A maid or housekeeper, judging by the way she was dressed.”
“Boat isn’t that big. What’d he need a maid for?”
“Maybe she’s his accomplice.”
“If that’s the boat, it’d have a Zodiac tied to it.”
“Maybe he let the air out, hid it in the trunk of his car.”
“No car, either. I checked. No one named McLean or fitting his description has rented a car from anyone on Chios, on or off the books.” Patronas lit a cigarette and looked out at the beach. He wished he was swimming, tossing a ball to children in the water, not chasing phantoms. “We got nothing, Giorgos. Nothing linking McLean to a boat or a car. No firm evidence he was even in Volissos, let alone onboard that vessel out there. The man the grocer saw? Maybe he was a guest on that boat and the woman, the so-called maid, is the rightful owner.”
>
Tembelos persisted. “I still think he’s involved.”
“We have no proof. This case is like a magic trick, Giorgos. One minute, you think you’re getting somewhere and then,” he flung his hands in the air, Houdini releasing a bird, “poof, you got nothing.”
On the way home they stopped in Lampi, a small village on a gritty beach. A rough breakwater had been built to create a harbor, and Patronas could see three good-sized fishing boats tied up there. Far out to sea, a cigarette boat caught his eye, riding low in the water.
He called to the waiter. “Whose boat is that?”
“Don’t know. It’s been there for a couple of weeks now, never a person to be seen. No flags flying. Nothing to identify it. My mother has been keeping an eye on it. She thinks the Turks might own it. Drugs.”
Patronas nodded. “How far is it from here to the cove where Costas Stamnas found the remains?”
“About a kilometer. You passed it on your way here. There are some rocks jutting out of the sea. The beach is right in front of them.”
“Was that boat here when it happened?”
The man shrugged. “Who can say? It’s summer. A lot of boats come through here now. Yachts. Cruise ships. That boat might have been here. I don’t remember.”
* * *
Patronas drove south. They were deep in mastica country, a bush that only grew on the southeastern coast of Chios. Its cultivation had given the islanders special privileges during the time of the Ottomans; its resin was much prized by the women in the harem, who chewed it to sweeten their breath. These privileges had been revoked when the Pasha sent troops to punish the population for supporting the rebels during the Greek War of Independence. During the two-week maelstrom, Turkish Janissaries had slaughtered over 25,000 people and enslaved 60,000 more. Chios had never recovered. The houses in this area had a desolate air, the town squares and churches, a sense of abandonment. Only the elderly lived here now. People still grew mastica, but only for local consumption. The Ottomans were gone. There were no harems anymore.
“We’re like the Jews in Germany,” Patronas said, gesturing to one of the villages. “They were the most assimilated in Europe, had the best lives, the most money and then … boom, look what happened to them. Just like us.”
“It was worse what happened to the Jews,” Tembelos said, remembering a trip he’d taken to Munich to see his brother, who worked in a Volkswagen factory. They’d visited Dachau and he’d never forgotten it. The science experiments with the Russians in the icy water, the open skull and exposed brains of other men. Had the men been dead when they’d done it, he’d wondered? An air of hopelessness still hung over the place. It had been like catching a glimpse of hell.
The mastica bushes were still well cared for, the ground beneath them spread with white cloths or aluminum foil to catch the resin. The majority of the villages along this route had been built in the Middle Ages, the first floors opening out onto the street and used as stables.
Patronas decided this practice must still be in use, judging by the piles of manure and clouds of flies, the smell. The priest in the local church was hard of hearing and had no news of value, nor did Patronas or Tembelos discover much talking to the old women in the villages they visited. They wanted to complain about the deficiencies of their daughters-in-law, not catch murderers.
Their final stop was a boutique hotel near the Argentis mansion in Campos. Too expensive for locals, it was patronized largely by foreign tourists and Greek ship owners who lived abroad.
The clerk at the reception desk led Patronas into the kitchen, and he spent an hour talking to the staff—all local people. They discussed the families of Chiots who lived in England and came to the hotel—the bankruptcy of one, brought low by the prolific spending of the heir. No one had seen any artifacts pass hands or heard rumors of smuggling. They were all appalled by the death of Petros, less so the death of the Argentis woman.
“Trelli,” one man said. “Crazy.” A woman that rich, working with men, sifting dirt for a living. They despised her stepmother, even going so far as to call her a gorgon, a legendary female monster of ancient Greece whose glance could turn a man to stone. They called her Medusa, too. There was no end of insults. Eleni’s half-brother they liked better. He left generous tips and remembered the waiters’ names. Not too familiar, the proper blend of warmth and distance. He would never be one of them, but for a rich person, he was okay. They loathed Petros’ family, but for different reasons. Voula had brought shame on the island. Her boyfriend, they’d seen frequently in town, drinking and making friendly with the locals, but too often he let others buy and pinched cigarettes when they weren’t looking. They called the American archeologist ‘Indiana Jones,’ the British one ‘Brideshead,’ after the BBC production of the same name that had recently aired on local television. The latter they suspected was a poustis, a homosexual. However, when Patronas questioned them about it, they admitted there’d been no sightings of McLean with a man, no Greek lover boys they knew of.
Patronas had been hoping to discover signs of new wealth as he drove around the island—an expensive car where there shouldn’t have been one, a home built by someone who’d previously had nothing. Everything the waiters told him, he already knew. As police work, it had been a waste of time. Nothing. “We spoke of winds and water,” he muttered, recalling the old saying.
Chapter 22
Either the shore is crooked or our boat’s going the wrong way.
—Greek proverb
The next morning Patronas reluctantly returned to Profitis Ilias and ordered his men to search the site again. The answer had to lie here; it could be no place else. Although he and the others walked four abreast over the entire area, they found nothing. Someone had been there, Tembelos reported back to him. A shepherd, probably, as the goats were no longer in the corral, but spread out on the slopes below, hobbling around on three legs, the fourth leg fettered to keep them from wandering too far off.
The disturbed earth near the summit was exactly what Patronas had thought—some peasant’s secret garden. In daylight, the tomatoes were clearly evident in the dirt, fenced with chicken wire to keep the goats out. No, this was just another empty Greek hill. Torn shafts of lichen covered the rocks, the soil poor, gravel mostly interspersed with patches of clay. Brambles and thorns grew between the rocks, the only vegetation the goats had spared.
When the sun went down, Patronas handed Evangelos Demos a can of paint and ordered him to watch for the bats. “It’s almost dark. They should be out any minute now. The paint glows in the dark. Mark the place where they come from.”
His assistant nodded, not liking any of this. “But, sir, they might be rabid.”
“If they attack you, shoot them.”
“How long do I have to stay up here?”
“Until you locate where they come from. Till dawn, if necessary.”
He posted the others around the monastery and gave them the same assignment. “I’ll take the corral. You two take the north and south sides of the hill. There’s got to be another way in here. My hunch is, it’s an underground passageway. It’s imperative that we find it.”
“Bats, Jesus,” Giorgos Tembelos said.
* * *
Drawing his gun, Patronas crept toward the dark figure on the far side of the corral. The goats were restive, and he could hear them milling around inside, their hooves clattering softly against the gravelly soil. He had been chasing bats in and out of the corral all night, hoping the animals would lead him to the secret entrance to the monastery—the one he was convinced existed. He had ordered Evangelos Demos and Giorgos Tembelos to do the same.
“I’ve got my cellphone on,” he’d told them. “Call me if anyone approaches the monastery.”
He wondered what had happened, why they hadn’t called, how the intruder had gotten past them. The figure was encased entirely in black, gleaming faintly in darkness, exactly as Costas Stamnas and Papa Michalis had described. Its skull looked distorted
and Patronas saw no eyes, no face. Whoever it was, hunched over at the back of the corral.
Raising his gun, Patronas moved closer. He didn’t know what it was that alerted the intruder, but suddenly he lifted his face and looked directly at Patronas. Then he bolted out of the corral and was gone.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” It was then Patronas realized that it was his phone the man had seen, the phone he’d taken care to turn to vibrate and to stow in the front pocket of his shirt. His phone, which was all lit up and shining like a beacon.
Patronas fired twice and charged after the intruder, moving through the herd of goats as quickly as possible, shoving the animals roughly aside with his hands. They began to panic, bleating and climbing on top of one another, desperate to get away. Without the lantern, he couldn’t see well and slipped over something. At first he thought it was another goat, but it wasn’t. It was his assistant, Evangelos Demos, lying face down in the dirt.
Patronas knelt down and rolled him over. “Evangelos, Evangelos, can you hear me?” He raised the man up and cradled him in his arms. The back of his head was wet. Patronas looked around. There was no sign of Giorgos Tembelos or the dark shape that had been in the corral.
* * *
Evangelos Demos told Patronas he heard a noise and had gone to explore. It was a clanging noise, he said, the sound of metal hitting rock. He’d been knee-deep in goats when he’d seen the figure. Hooded it had been, black. He’d pulled his gun and fired a shot, but the intruder had been too fast for him and hit him hard with something, knocking him down.
“Did you get a look at his face?” Patronas asked. They were in the emergency room of the hospital, his assistant on a stretcher beside him. He wished he could smoke. Doctors were walking around. The sight of them always increased his longing for cigarettes.
“No. It happened too fast.”
His assistant had survived the assault, though he had required emergency surgery to close the gap in his skull. Aside from the Frankenstein-like stitches, Evangelos Demos appeared to be all right. Probably it was the thickness of his skull that saved him, Patronas thought uncharitably. He’d spent hours at his assistant’s side and his initial concern had worn off. Though they’d discussed the incident repeatedly, Evangelos Demos had been unable to come up with a single scrap of useful information. His assistant was and remained what he’d always been—stupid with a helmet on.