by Ben Pastor
Bora folded and put away the maps as he spoke. “Crete was under Venetian dominion centuries ago.”
“Indeed.” Kostaridis observed the German’s motions but kept a pleasant, self-deprecating smile. “I began my career in the Cretan Gendarmerie under Colonel Craveri, who patterned it after the Italian Carabineers at the turn of the century. Twenty-five years ago there were still Italian officers among us. If I may ask, how is it that you speak Italian?”
There was nothing to keep Bora from answering that he’d spent many summer weeks in Rome at the home of Donna Maria Ascanio, his stepfather’s first wife. Instead – it was his way of drawing lines and defining distances, at least for now – he said, “It isn’t relevant, is it? Kindly state the reason for your visit.” Without adding that he was in haste (it was not true, and besides, it would give more information than he cared to share), Bora reached for the Browning pistol and ostentatiously started loading it.
No offer had been made for him to sit, and the only chair was occupied by Bora’s riding breeches. Kostaridis remained standing. He kept – it must have been a habit – his head slightly tilted on his left shoulder, but not like someone suffering from a stiff neck. “I was first contacted by maggiore Voos, shall we say, regarding a shipment of Dafni and Mandilaria.” (Ah, that’s how you pronounce those names correctly, Bora told himself. No wonder Panagiotis didn’t understand at first.) “This morning, maggiore Voos informed Police Chief Signor Polioudakis that for anything regarding the deaths at Ampelokastro” – he pronounced it Ambelokastro – “I should confer with you.”
Too late, Bora realized that an interruption in his gun-loading could betray surprise, much as he’d caught puzzlement in Busch’s delayed response when hearing he’d never been to Crete. So he pretended to double-check the shell he had in his hand before slipping it in with the rest. Silence per se was no sign of eagerness, and would force the policeman to say more. Kostaridis took a step around the bed, where a slight draught from the window relieved the stifling warmth of the room. From his new position he stared with great interest at the field-grey tunic draped on the back of the chair. The Horseman’s Badge in gold stood out on it, the only medal Bora wore while on embassy duty. Wholly out of context, he said, “I was a member of the Greek team that won a bronze medal for shooting, thirty metres, military pistol, at the 1920 Olympics with Karainitis, Vaphiadis, Zappas and the Theofillakis brothers. The shooting range was at Beverloo, not far from Antwerp.”
Yes, Belgium, the first Olympics after the Great War. They exchanged a look of appraisal across the floor. “Germany was not invited to the Games that year,” Bora replied, dryly. The Greek ill-disposed him. He seemed insignificant to him and unforgivably shabby. A badly cleaned stain on his chest pocket betrayed the leakage of a fountain pen; black socks and sandals had more than an occasional familiarity with dusty streets. The young NKVD toughs at the street corner by Beria’s house came to mind: sturdy, well-attired, capable of conveying danger; so different from the slipshod, frog-eyed fellow facing him.
The German’s lack of empathy left Kostaridis undeterred. He said, “If I understood correctly, capitano, my duty is to provide any supplementary information you may need. Frankly, everything leads us to confirm that German soldiers, shall we say, carried out the attack. But I was told no stone must be left unturned in seeking out possible alternative explanations for what happened to Signor Filligi.”
“…and Signor Villiger’s domestics.”
“And his domestics.”
“They must have names, these people.”
“They do. Siphronia was the woman. The hired hands were – let’s see.” (Kostaridis took out of his pocket a used, folded envelope.) “I’ve got it written here – Fotis, Panos and Konstandes. I don’t think you’ll need their surnames.”
“They’re not house animals. I will need their surnames.”
Kostaridis read them out loud, and then showed their spelling on the envelope. No change of expression, only that shooter’s head-tilt, although Bora’s concern about the deaths of four local servants must strike him as unusual.
Bora rode the advantage he’d gained. “Do you have a list of possible culprits for me already, or are you in the process of drafting one?”
“Not a list per se, capitano. Rumours —”
“I have no time for rumours, Chief Constable. Either you have some information, or you don’t. If you don’t, I’ll bid you good day.” Being rude was not like Bora; being curt when faced with imprecision, very much so. His reply was the equivalent of pushing Kostaridis out of the room. The policeman stopped the door with his metaphorical foot.
“Maybe you should know who Signor Filligi was, and what he did and meant to Cretans.”
“How long will it take?”
“If you listen closely, fifteen minutes will do.”
It took less than that to summarize two years of the victim’s life: Villiger’s arrival at the start of 1939, the acquisition of Ampelokastro from an American scholar relocated to the mainland, his interest in antiquities and living remnants of the original Cretan people. Familiarity with the local language did not particularly distinguish him from other intellectual expatriates: the English, for example. He’d been a part of the island to the extent that any foreigner can be accepted by islanders. Nothing extravagant about him except his camera-toting trips. Once a month he hand-delivered the film to Iraklion for development, dined in town, checked on the regular money transfers received from Switzerland through the Iraklion branch of the National Bank of Greece.
Bora didn’t miss a word. He actually began taking notes, which was as close as he came to admitting he appreciated the information. “Were you on the crime scene?” he prompted Kostaridis.
“I was. Your army notified us on 31 May, after they’d made a first inspection.”
“These photos – were they shown to you?”
“No.” And because Bora seemed disinclined to share his own folder, the policeman went back to his subject. “Subsequently, the villa was entered between the first and second day of June, reportedly by German troops seeking shelter for the night. It’s to be expected that if they left the door open when they moved on, locals would quickly have flocked in to loot.”
It was diplomatic talk on Kostaridis’ part. Busch privately admitted claims of pillage on the part of the invaders: it was possible the Cretans had stepped in to finish what the Germans had begun. Different kinds of insects come to pick on the same carcass. “It complicates matters,” Bora said, coldly.
“I agree.”
“The bodies – where did they end up?”
“The young men were claimed by the families and returned to their villages. The woman, well, she was quickly interred in Iraklion to avoid problems. Signor Filligi, as far as I know, a German ambulance took to Chanià for burial with the non-Orthodox and other foreigners.”
“‘Quickly interred’, ‘problems’.” Bora looked up from his notebook. “What do you mean by that?”
Kostaridis shrugged. “Superstitions, nothing relevant to the enquiry. Si dice che a volte i morti di morte violenta camminano. Now, for the alternatives —”
“What do you mean, ‘They say that those who died a violent death walk’?”
“Nothing but local superstition, capitano. For the alternatives it would be wise, shall we say, to keep in mind one name in particular: Rifat Bayar Agrali, whom they address as Rifat Bey. He owns the property bordering Ampelokastro.”
“I thought the generic title of respect among the Turks was Effendi.”
“A word actually deriving from authentes, which is Greek,” Kostaridis tactfully pointed out.
“Yes, but the Agrali family gave administrators to Crete, so Bey stuck to the clan.”
“Should I keep this fellow in mind because he may have something to do with this, or because he’s a Turk?”
“I could tell you ‘Both’, capitano, and you’d make a certain judgement call. I could say nothing, and your judgement
call would be another. I’ll admit that I don’t like Turks. This city was ninety per cent Turkish 100 years ago. As our martyrs of 1824 said, ‘I was born a Christian, and a Christian I shall die.’”
Bora stopped short of a smile, but liked the answer. “Well, I have no love lost for the Mahdists, myself. They beheaded my great-grandfather in the Sudan.” Just then, a sudden gust of wind pulled the windowpanes together, and he had to lunge for the imperilled ashtray before it plunged five floors down onto someone’s head. He recovered it, but his undershirt floated out of his grasp into the sun.
“There’s a garden below,” Kostaridis drawled. “It won’t go far.”
A quick glance down confirmed the fact. Bora turned back to the room, aware that he’d lost the psychological upper hand and some of his dignity. “So,” he said rather more sternly than was called for, “what did Agrali have to do with Villiger, dead or alive?”
“Other than proximity? Sometimes geographic proximity creates problems. And then there are two aggravating circumstances, shall we say. Rifat Bey has a vicious temper. That is number one. Rifat Bey does not like Germans. That is number two.”
Bora interrupted. “Villiger wasn’t German.”
Kostaridis’ smile was more condescending than apologetic this time. “Forgive me, but a Greek-speaker is a Greek; a German-speaker is a German. Besides, to us Greeks – Cretan or not – every foreigner is a frangos, whether or not he’s a Frank by race.”
“Good. Fine, then.” It annoyed Bora that the policeman was secretly amused. Of course, I nearly dropped an ashtray and barely saved my shorts from following the undershirt. “Well, where do I find this German-hating Turk?”
“Maybe you should know more about him, too.”
Bora laid the loaded and holstered Browning on the bed. This game of Chinese boxes could be a local habit of telling things piecemeal, or else Kostaridis’ affectation, like his recurrent “shall we say”. Clearly the policeman was studying him, making judgements, drawing his conclusions. Not one chance he was nearly as sleepy as he looked. I may have started this conversation on the wrong foot, he admitted to himself. I could be making things more difficult for myself as a result. “I took Italian classes,” he volunteered, “but before then, I’d practised it in Rome as a child. I learnt curse words before I knew how to conjugate verbs. Feel free to move my uniform and sit down.”
It wasn’t much of an olive branch, but Kostaridis showed himself a sportsman. He carefully rested Bora’s breeches and tunic at the foot of the bed before taking their place on the chair. “Thank you.” He sat hugging his knees with his hands, like an old man, although he must have been between forty and fifty at most. “Sphingokephalo is the name of Rifat Bey’s house, on Sphingokephalo Hill.”
“I thought all Turks were made to leave Greek soil some eighteen years ago.”
“Yes, but after the so-called Balkan Agreement of ’34 and the normalization that followed, a few exceptions were negotiated. Additionally, through his mother Rifat Agrali was related to the Turkish signatory. He was born and raised on the island; his family – from Spaniako in the west, originally – owned a chain of emporiums and tobacco stores. They were the local distributors for choice American cigarettes, Anargyros’ Murad, for one.”
Standing with his arms folded and his back to the wall, Bora nodded. As a young woman his maternal grandmother was nicknamed Murad girl, like the rosy-cheeked odalisque on tobacco boxes and posters, and despite her being a Scot, both he and Peter took their dark hair from her. “I’m familiar with Murad,” he said.
“Well, capitano, when the ‘population exchange’ between Greece and Turkey was agreed upon in 1923, Rifat Bey lost all he’d inherited from his elders in Crete, and his wife to cholera. Greeks repatriated from Anatolia took over his family business and houses, including Villa Sphingokephalo. What goes around comes around, I say. But there’s no keeping a Turk down, is there? While in Istanbul, he took a rich Greek woman as his second wife. In Rhodes, he somehow became a partner of TEMI, the Italian Aegean Tobacco Manufacture. So, eleven years after being expelled, he was just the man who could manage to return to Crete. He couldn’t buy back the family business, most of it gone under with the economic crisis. He could and did reclaim his house and property south of Iraklion, buying it from the repatriated Greeks who’d settled there and let it go to the dogs, it must be admitted.”
“Not much of a deal, as I see it.”
“Wait. He spent a fortune refurbishing the villa, and until last month he could boast of the highest quality Malvasia vines around. Cretan Muslims drink wine, in case you don’t know. He has a large garage at Agios Mironas to service his trucks, which regularly ply the routes from Iraklion to his other businesses in the Plain of Messarà, and to Ierapetra. When his second wife died a couple of years ago, he built her a marble monument he hired an English architect to design. Bellissimo. You can see it from afar, from all directions. I’m told the villa was untouched by the fighting, although an air raid destroyed his winery, so he’s likely to be even less well-disposed toward Germans of any kind.”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with Villiger, even if their properties are adjacent.”
Kostaridis looked at the ashtray, safely on the bedside table, as if inspiration could be derived from it. “That brings me to aggravating circumstance number three. A small watercourse, shall we say, runs between the two estates.” (Bora wondered, Shall we say it’s a watercourse, or shall we say the properties deserve the rank of estates?) “Saving the Messarà plain and a few other spots, irrigation is a problem on the island. Signor Filligi begrudged the water necessary to Rifat Bey’s vineyard. You’ll object: not everyone involved in a land dispute can be suspected of his neighbour’s death. But, capitano, a complaint was made against the Turk for opening fire against Filligi himself on a matter of trespassing. And with Rifat Bey there have been, shall we say, coincidences before. Three out of four of the repatriated Cretans who’d taken over the Agralis’ business died within months of his return. True, he made no attempt to recover the family stores afterwards, but vengeance is a spice you can enjoy without sprinkling it on any food.”
Bora sulked. The German word Gerede rolled in his mind. Chatter, gossip, hearsay. Too easy, too comfortable. A door opened where he’d not knocked in the first place. To a Cretan official, putting the blame on a Turk was just as expedient as accusing Germans, or vice versa. The truth might lie on either side, or neither. What did Professor Heidegger say? He who is really on the right scent doesn’t talk about it.
“I don’t understand this talk of coincidences, Chief Constable. Either you have reason to suspect the Turk, or you don’t. If you believe him an instigator, you must be also implying that he secured assassins equipped with military weapons.”
“That would not be a problem in Crete these days. Last time I checked, Rifat Bey had a regular arsenal in his house, including several high precision rifles.” When Kostaridis rolled his eyes from the ashtray to Bora, he gave the impression of having just thought of something else. “There’s another possible lead as well, linked to the housekeeper at Ampelokastro.”
Of course, there we go, cherchez la femme. I expected you to bring it up, because it’s the sort of lead that would take a long time to follow. Bora fidgeted. “Do you mean a love triangle?”
“No-o-o.” Again, Kostaridis drawled his vowels. The sound was nasal, accompanied by a raising of eyebrows. “Or maybe yes, who is to say. Maybe even more than a triangle; with women geometry can be funny. In the presence of outsiders Signor Filligi showed none of that interest in his housekeeper, but then we know how things are sometimes. He took photographs of her, questo si?’ On the other hand, he photographed every native Cretan who had blue eyes or fair skin, male or female, no matter how old they were.”
Maybe a love triangle, maybe more, maybe none. Annoyed as he was, Bora couldn’t object to Kostaridis’ other observation. Judging from the crime scene photos, Villiger’s housekeeper and hir
ed men were fair, blonde- or red-haired: the right link, according to the Reichskommissar’s theory, to the noble “racial ancestors” of the Teutons. “What is your personal opinion, then?”
Kostaridis followed with his eyes Bora’s quick move to grasp his linen underpants (sewn by his mother) from the windowsill before another gust took them. He could have looked away. Policeman that he was, instead, he observed things, even the least remarkable ones. So he was all the less credible when he innocently said, “I try not to form an opinion until I have enough elements, capitano. Fact is, Siphronia’s husband is confined to the colony at Spinalonga. His brothers – I know you’ll ask, so I’m telling you beforehand that they’re on the run or in hiding – never accepted her being in a frangos’ employ, and their kin’s impotence to avenge his honour. They could have, shall we say, taken advantage of the recent fighting to carry out their brand of justice. It’s remote, but a possibility. In the eyes of traditional farm folk, the woman was compromised and no longer fit to be seen in honest company.”
And that’s an opinion. “Spinalonga.” Bora thought of the maps he’d been studying. “It’s an island off the eastern coast, isn’t it? What colony are you speaking of?”
“The leper hospital facing Elounda.”
“What? The lepers, too?” Bora had the distinct impression of being made a fool of. “Why not a three-headed dog while you’re at it?”
Kostaridis squared his unhappy face at him, hardly the expression of a trickster who enjoys his joke. “That’s a good point about the dog, capitano. The dead dog in the garden wasn’t Signor Filligi’s.”