by Leta Serafim
“Did she discuss the case on the phone while she was here?” he asked the owner of the travel agency. He could petition OTE, the Greek communications agency, for the phone records of the travel agency, but that would take forever, time he didn’t have.
She thought for moment. “She did call someone in Volissos a day before she went missing. I remember because she asked me if I had the number before she called. She said she wanted to check if there was a boat registered.”
“In whose name? Do you remember?”
“No, Chief Officer. I’m sorry.”
So Marina and he had been trying to establish the same thing … the date of McLean’s arrival by boat.
The chief officer began to go through her files, reading every scrap of paper. Afterward, he got down on his hands and knees and checked the floor underneath her desk in case she’d dropped something. He picked up her battered cloth slippers and tenderly moved them aside. He pictured her kicking off her good shoes and putting them on, padding around the office in them. Tears welled in his eyes and he choked back a sob.
* * *
The Pakistani drew back when Patronas walked up to his kiosk, his face wary. The chief officer had made a point of driving the Citroen, not a squad car, to Castro, but the man apparently knew both him and his car on sight. “Yes,” he stammered.
“A couple of days ago, Papa Michalis and Marina Papoulis were here. I understand they spoke with you.”
“That’s right,” the man said, relief visible in his face. Patronas was sure he was illegal, he and his family both. Let the authorities in Athens worry about it. The right wing politicians. He didn’t care what part of the world people came from or how long they stayed. Borders weren’t his problem.
“What did you tell them?”
“About Mr. Manos. Man who visit him. Company, parea.”
“What did you say about the man?”
“Woman, she wants to know how he looks.” He reached into the kiosk and pulled out two comic books. “I say, like this.” He tapped the cover of the top one. “Like cartoon.”
Patronas reached for the comics. “May I have them?”
“Sure. Take.”
They were French comics, reprints of the original series featuring Tintin. Patronas scanned the first, L’Affaire Tournesol, while he sat in his car. Although his French was rudimentary, he could follow the storyline. It featured a Professor Calculus, who’d been kidnapped, and an obnoxious tourist, Jolyona Wagg, who wore shorts and got in the way. Tintin himself had red hair. Okay, thought Patronas, which one is it? Devon McLean had red hair, but was dissimilar to Tintin in every other respect. Wagg, the American from the Rock Bottom Insurance Agency, reminded Patronas a bit of Alcott, not in physical appearance so much as in dress and attitude. The other comic, The Castafiore Emerald, included a woman, Bianca Castafiore, who sang opera, wore a mink coat, and appeared slightly ridiculous. Titina Argentis?
It would be a stretch, but maybe. He’d have to check with the Pakistani again. But when he returned to the kiosk, the man was gone.
Frustrated, he drove back to the police station. Tembelos and the others were still up at the monastery, so the place was quiet. He got out his notebook and wrote down what the Pakistani had told him. When he finished, he read back through everything. What did he have? He’d verified that three of the suspects had come to Chios long before they said they had and that two had come together. A coincidence? He didn’t think so. Manos Kleftis and Voula Athanassiou had both come in June and returned again in July, as had Devon McLean. He leafed through the comics again. It had to be Tintin the Pakistani had been talking about, Tintin with his orange-red hair. Which meant the ‘cartoon’ man was McLean. Based on the Englishman’s appearance, his fair skin and womanish body, Patronas had dismissed him as a suspect. He’d assumed he was harmless, a rabbit. Apparently he was something else. Not a murderer perhaps, but someone who would pick through the leavings of one. A jackal, a crow.
Chapter 33
Even at the fountain, he finds no water.
—Greek proverb
A thought occurred to Patronas as he read through his notes, something he’d missed and needed to ask the shepherd about. He thought he was beginning to catch a glimpse of what had transpired prior to the murders, the people involved. He could be completely wrong. It might have been Antonis Argentis working with his mother, the two of them after Eleni’s inheritance. But then why kill Petros and Marina? No, it had to be the discovery of the Minoan city beneath Profitis Ilias that had set the whole thing in motion.
The shepherd had proven to be an elusive quarry. No one had seen him on the hill since Marina’s death, yet it was evident someone was tending the goats, freshening their water and seeing to it that the animals had food. It even looked like the new pen had been raked out, straw scattered on the ground.
Patronas rubbed his eyes. He had stayed up all night waiting for the shepherd, who he assumed came out while the others slept. It was a few minutes before dawn and he could see the hills around Profitis Ilias slowly taking shape in the pale light. He heard a rooster crowing in the village below. The wind was blowing, and it stirred the thistles, the dust in the abandoned corral.
The shepherd appeared a little while later, coming up over the rocks from the direction of Korres’ farm. He was carrying a bale of hay, moving quickly and calling to the goats in his strange lisping speech. The goats began moving around the pen, restless, bleating plaintively in response.
“Kale mera,” Patronas called to him. “Good day.”
Perhaps remembering the fifty Euros, the man smiled and moved to shake the chief officer’s hand. He was wearing the same tattered clothes and taped-up shoes, and his hair was even filthier than Patronas remembered, the grimy ringlets forming a matted halo around his face.
Patronas offered to share his breakfast with him, and the man seized the bread greedily and shoved it into his mouth, then reached for a piece of the feta cheese. He didn’t want coffee, but cooed when he saw the figs, cradling them in his hand and eating them slowly, one by one. He smiled at him as he ate. Patronas tried not to look at him; his split lip was caked with seeds and juice.
No murderer this, he thought. No, this is an innocent. Put him in animal skins and he could pass for John the Baptist or a prophet in the Old Testament, one of those who lived on snakes and nettles and didn’t bathe.
“As you know, a woman was killed here four days ago,” he said. “August fifteenth it was. It happened here in the corral or close by. After she was murdered, she was dragged down the stairs and into the cave.”
Still eating, the shepherd nodded. “I hear of this.”
“Did you see who did it? Were you here when it happened?”
“No. I am far away. I only hear.” He wiped his mouth with his hand and led Patronas to an outcropping of rock near the bottom of the hill, demonstrating how he’d crouched down in the shadows. “After Petros die, I am afraid. I hide when people come. I no show myself.”
“You said ‘people.’ ” Patronas wanted to get this clarified, as there was a language difference and the word in Greek frequently caused foreigners trouble. “How many came?”
“The day lady scream, two.”
“What did they look like?”
“I no see.” Uncomfortable, he moved his foot back and forth in the dirt. “I am away.”
“Other times, did people come?”
“Two, always same. Come at night.”
“Did you see either of them?”
The man shook his head.
“Did you ever see anyone else up here?”
“Once. Different person.”
“What do you mean different?”
“Little.”
Petros Athanassiou. It had to be. Patronas tapped the bale of hay. “Where’d you get the hay?”
“Spiros give it to me. He knows me. I stay in house on his land. Is good, has water pipe, electricity.” He stumbled over the words, excited. “Heating that plugs in w
all.” As if this unused outbuilding, this shed Korres was letting him use, was something. Things must be pretty bleak in Albania.
“What do you do for food?”
“He and his wife give me. Cigarettes, too, sometimes. I even drive his tractor once.”
Patronas gave him his sleeping bag and another fifty Euros. “Be careful,” he warned. “Steer clear of this place.”
Intent on counting the money, the shepherd waved him off.
* * *
Patronas stopped off at the farm to talk to Spiros Korres before heading back to the police station. He was troubled by his conversation with the shepherd. He’d missed something, not followed up when he should have. Perhaps Korres could help him. He found the farmer behind his barn, repairing a loose board with a hammer.
Korres nodded when he saw him. “Afternoon, Chief Officer. What can I do for you?”
“I just interviewed the man who tends the goats up by Profitis Ilias. He said he lives here on your farm in the winter.”
“The harelip?” Korres made a slicing gesture across his upper lip with a dirty fingernail. “Yeah, I let him stay in a shed out back. Best hold your nose if you’re going there. He’s downwind of the pigs.”
The pigs were huge, chocolate-colored beasts, housed in a filthy, mud-slicked pen. The ground was littered with waste, orange peels and watermelon rinds, excrement, and the air was alive with flies, the odor so rank, it made Patronas’ eyes water. He located the shed where the shepherd was staying a little farther down. Inside was a cot with a blanket and a chest of drawers. There was even a window overlooking some trees in the back. Inside one of the drawers, he found a small gilt brooch. It was shaped like a quail, with tiny rhinestone eyes.
Slipping on a pair of gloves, he put the brooch in an evidence bag and walked back to where Korres was working. He emptied the evidence bag out in the palm of his hand and asked the farmer if he could identify the pin or knew where the shepherd had found it.
“Harelip found it the day Marina died. Cast off in the bushes behind the goats, he said. My wife looks after him and he wanted to give it to her. I told him it wasn’t his and to put it back where he found it, let you people deal with it. But he said he was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Didn’t say. Police would be my guess. I don’t know where he came from, but he’s scared of the authorities. Truth is, he’s scared of everything. Like a horse that’s never been broke.”
“What else did he say?”
“Only that there was a lot of blood.”
So the shepherd’s footprints were probably mixed up with the killer’s, ditto with the fingerprints and trace elements the forensic specialists had collected in the lean-to. He’d have to have the shepherd printed, Korres and his son, Vassilis, also.
“You should have passed the pin on to me,” he said. “Get it dusted for prints.”
“Been pointless. Harelip had been carrying it around all day.” He shrugged. “I figured what the hell, let him keep it. It was nothing, just cheap costume jewelry. You can see where it’s chipped, there, the metal underneath. Should have heard him though, the way he was snorting and carrying on, you could tell old harelip thought he’d found himself the crown jewels.”
“Did he find anything else up there?”
“He might have. He’s always secreting things away. Food mostly. Stockpiles cans and crap under that shed of his. He’s a funny one, gets upset when you try and take things away from him. Doesn’t really understand the concept of ownership. Thinks that if he finds something, it belongs to him.”
“It’s good of you to let him stay here.”
Korres waved him off, unwilling to accept the compliment. “Hell, someone has to keep the pigs company.”
* * *
Before leaving the farm, Patronas made another turn around the shed, checking the crawl space for Minoan artifacts or anything else that might have bearing on the case. He found his fifty Euros zipped up in a soiled child’s pencil case along with a used lottery ticket and a handful of coins, drachmas mostly, no longer in circulation. There was also a random assortment of cans: tomatoes, sardines, evaporated milk. Food, just as Korres had said. A blanket had been secreted under the shed as well. Folded up inside it, he found a rusted toy motorcar and half of a German paperback novel. He tucked more money in the pencil case, thinking that once he’d caught the killer, he’d do something for the harelipped man.
He looked down at the brooch in his hand, wondering what to do with it. He was sure Korres’ assessment was correct, that the pin was worthless, gold plated at best, but what if it had belonged to Voula, not Marina, and been pulled off during the murder? Or Titina Argentis? That would place her at the scene. He sighed. He’d have to go to Campos and show it to Nikos Papoulis, see if he could identify it. If not, he’d speak to the others.
The road to Campos was empty. He parked in front of Marina’s house and got out. A pair of red-throated swallows, glossy and black, were sitting on the wires in front of the house. No children were playing in the yard and all the toys had been taken in. He stood on the steps for a moment, collecting his thoughts, before knocking on the door.
As was the custom on Chios, Nikos Papoulis was wearing a black armband in mourning for his wife. His eyes were red, his face tired. “Chief Officer,” he said, opening the door a little wider. “Come in, come in.”
Patronas stayed outside. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but a new piece of evidence has come to my attention.” He handed him the plastic envelope. “You recognize this? Someone found it near the crime scene.”
Papoulis opened the envelope and ran his finger over the brooch. “No. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Are you sure? Could it have been Marina’s?”
“I don’t think so.”
Patronas put the brooch back in his pocket. “Is Margarita here? I need you to ask her something.” He thought the girl might be more comfortable speaking with her father. “I want to know if she remembers anything her mother said that day, the day she disappeared. She can read, can’t she, Margarita?”
He nodded.
“Ask her if she saw the papers her mother had for me. What they said.”
The man returned a few minutes later. His daughter had nothing new to add, he said. The papers had been in an envelope; she hadn’t seen them. Their mother had trusted her with the svingis and she’d been holding the plate on her lap. She’d been worrying about getting the syrup on her good dress, concentrating on that. She was sorry, that’s all she knew. “She started to cry.” He looked on the verge of tears himself.
“What about the brooch?”
“She never saw any brooch.”
Chapter 34
He shows honey. He mixes poison.
—Greek proverb
Boatmen were yelling out their destinations, seeking tourists for day trips to nearby islands, and there was a long line of trucks waiting to board the morning ferry to Athens. Patronas had chosen this hour on purpose, hoping to catch the people on his list before rumors of the Minoan city started to circulate. He would have to move quickly or he’d catch half of Chios in his net.
A row of rented sailboats were tied up on the quay in front of the hotel, and he could hear people talking on a few, English most of them, judging by the accents. He’d been foolish, trying to link McLean to a specific boat in July with all the transient traffic to and from the island. McLean could have used any one of these boats in partnership with one of the English owners, and no one would have been the wiser. And this was just the main harbor. There must be fifty quays where a person could moor a boat, and that was just the formal ones with breakwaters and supervision, not the hundreds of empty coves and inlets where a man could safely drop anchor and get ashore.
He crossed the lobby and spoke to the hostess in the dining room. She checked her list. “They haven’t come down for breakfast. They must still be in their rooms.”
The chief officer thought he’d
start with Devon McLean and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The inside of the elevator was mirrored and he frowned when he caught a glimpse of himself. Had he forgotten to shave this morning? Peering at himself, he ran an exploratory hand across his chin. Sure enough. Whiskers everywhere. His eyebrows seemed bigger than he remembered, too, sticking out like the tufts of fur on a lynx. He wetted a finger and smoothed them down. It didn’t matter. McLean was English. He’d think he was an aborigine no matter how he looked.
The archeologist was the embodiment of graciousness, ordering breakfast for the two of them from room service. He even consoled him after a fashion about Marina’s death, assuring him no one expected him to mount a proper investigation.
“I mean, frankly, Chief Officer, no matter how hard you try, you’re going to miss things. What experience have you had with serial killers?” His tone was arch and patronizing.
Patronas frowned. Vrasta. Boil him. Taking a deep breath, he got out his notebook. “Last time we spoke about the excavation that Eleni Argentis was conducting at Profitis Ilias, you told me what she’d uncovered was virtually worthless. Suppose she found something more valuable than those shards? Something unexpected up there?”
“Like what?” The Englishman’s voice was mocking. “The Elgin Marbles? Come, come, Chief Officer, you and I both know she’d found nothing of value. You’ve seen those trenches. There was nothing there. Nothing.”
“It has come to my attention that she might have discovered evidence of a Minoan settlement.” Bait the hook. “Perhaps even of human sacrifice.”
“Really. Now that would be interesting. Who told you that?”