by Ben Pastor
On the stairs, Savelli’s complaints rose in pitch as he felt bolder with a Greek national. He was shouting by the time he reached the ground floor.
All the more surprising was the silence that followed. Either the professor had run out of steam, or else Kostaridis had seen to it that he shut up. Bora stepped to the windowsill, to look into the garden below.
The two were on the gravel path. Kostaridis, a cigarette stub still in his mouth, was unceremoniously searching the Italian’s pockets. His frisking was quick, professional; you could judge its purse-snatcher lightness from up here. When something small rapidly passed from Savelli’s pocket to his, after which they parted ways, Bora pulled back promptly.
He was systematically searching the books on Kostaridis’ return. One at a time he held them upside down, fanning them so that bookmarks or sheets inside would fall out. Villiger, he thought, must have used just about any piece of paper to mark his pages, an unusual trait in a pedantic researcher. From the flapping leaves rained down receipts, postcards, snapshots, business cards, even the occasional bookmark. Bora swept them up as they touched the floor, and drove them into the large pockets of his British Army shorts.
“Has the Italian gone?”
“Yes.” Kostaridis didn’t bring up the object he’d taken from the professor, and neither did Bora for now.
“Savelli is an Italian surname, but Pericles – spelt with an S – sounds Greek.”
“No, no. He’s one of those Italians with cultivated Grecian names.”
In no particular order, Bora replaced the books on the shelves as he finished looking through them. “You said you’d been notified by the Italian police in Rhodes. Why didn’t you tell me about him earlier?”
The Greek shrugged his shoulders. “You’re right, I should have. But it didn’t seem directly related to the murder. Five years ago Savelli came here from Rhodes, where he’d worked for a time as vice-director of the Archaeological Museum. He’d got into hot water, shall we say, and was sacked on account of some missing gold coins. Although it was never proven he had anything to do with it, the Italian colonial authorities claimed the coins turned up in a British private collection, whose proprietor Savelli knew. Oh, and he also ran into trouble with officers of the local Italian garrison (I believe it was the 9th Infantry Regiment of the Regina Division at that time), over a cabaret artist who performed at the Circolo della Caccia in Borgo Sant’Anastasia. And —”
“Please tell me everything at once without my having to prompt you.”
“As you wish.” Kostaridis said it as if getting to the point were a waste of good storytelling. “The artist, one Signora Cordoval, was a favourite with the officers and frequently their guest at Villa Fiorita, incidentally not run by a Greek national but by a shady character, an Egyptian who went by the name of Jalloud. Have you ever been to Rhodes? They don’t call it the Island of Roses without a reason. Foreigners have been living it up in its hotels, pensions and clubs for some thirty years. Italians mostly, but Egyptians and Turks as well. If you like dolce far niente, that’s the place.”
“I don’t like dolce far niente.”
“Right. That’s what I thought. Well, the star of the Italian-occupied archipelago formally accused the professor of manhandling her in a fit of jealousy. It must be said she betrayed him famously. The head of the local Carabineers bragged to me that he could personally vouch for it. But on the other hand Savelli had the gall of violating the superstitious rule of – do you know what seradura is?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. It sounds like lock or locking in Italian.”
“It’s what Sephardic Jews call the superstition of closing up a house during someone’s ‘unexplained’ illness. For a given time you’re supposed to cloister the sick alone except for a healer who performs all kinds of rituals, from anointing him with sugar and spices to administering crushed resin and ground coffee.” Kostaridis opened his arms as if to concede a point. “You smile, but Signora Cordoval didn’t find it amusing when Savelli hammered on the door of the house where her old father lay infirm, and broke a window to get in when they wouldn’t open to him.”
So the singer was Jewish. Bora made a mental note. On another shelf, books on racial theory gave him a taste of Villiger’s other field of interest. “You keep saying Signora Cordoval, but what was her given name?”
“Signora was her given name. It’s common among those people.”
“Ah. Did the father, the old man, die as a result of the infraction?”
“No, but Savelli had to run from the Jewish quarter for dear life, chased down Calle de los Ricos by those who lived there. This is to tell you, capitano, that he’s no respecter of rules. He demanded that Signora give back the money he’d spent on gifts, and especially a family brooch. She turned him down, and shortly thereafter – given the story of the missing artefacts – he repaired to Crete in disgrace, as an independent scholar. At the police we heard no more of him until four years ago, when the artist came to Iraklion on tour. We were called to the scene because he broke into her dressing room to recover the famous brooch, claiming it belonged to his late mother.”
“Ah, yes. Mamma. That’s Italian.”
“In the end she agreed to give the jewel back and he had to pay good money for damages to the theatre, and her wardrobe. And besides —”
Bora interrupted what he recognized as another pointless round of drivel on Kostaridis’ part. “All right, all right. So, Savelli is a tightwad, a brute and – because it takes one to know one – he claims to have been stolen from when he’s suspected of selling ancient coinage. The police of two nations are on to him. Scholarly diatribe or not, I doubt he could manage to get five people killed for a handful of books and papers.”
“Well, this is not a paperweight.”
Out of Kostaridis’ pocket, the cylindrical case of a photographic roll appeared, which he held between thumb and forefinger. “The professor swears it’s his, of course. See for yourself: there are similar empty containers in the top drawer of the desk. This one is full, and might contain another set of pictures of Cretan peasants, or something else entirely.” He turned to watch Bora furiously rifle the desk. “Signor Filligi must have kept the roll well hidden, because when we searched the room empty containers were all there was.”
Cardboard boxes and aluminium cases of Agfa Isopan camera film filled the drawer. Bora looked up from them in frustration. “Damn, no one mentioned this desk in the reports. I wonder what else is gone. Didn’t you tell me Villiger took his film to Iraklion for developing?”
“I did. Ever since Greece entered the war, the owner of the camera shop has been reporting on foreign customers to the police. That’s how we learnt of the many photos Signor Filligi took of the locals.”
“But some he probably printed himself. In the study downstairs I saw an empty bottle of Rodinal, which is a concentrated developing agent. He must have owned a camera as well, or more than one.”
“Poios xerei – that’s ‘Who knows’ in Greek. You’ll see it’s a useful expression in Crete. We got here late, capitano.” If frogs could smile, they would smile from ear to ear like Kostaridis, without showing their gums and without amusement. “I can tell you that Rhodes’ reputation for dolce far niente does not exclude its use by all kinds of people as a place of intrigue. The more time you have on your hands – you know, idleness being the devil’s workshop, and all that. The Italians recruited their spies among intellectuals, who’d naturally be acquainted with the expatriate society and the military.”
Just like Villiger, who worked for Himmler… Bora had to admit there was nothing of interest left in the desk. Aside from the culprits and Powell, between the War Crimes Bureau and the Greek police, the camping soldiers, the thieving peasants and the Italian professor, there’s no telling how many people trampled through Ampelokastro before this morning. “Why didn’t you detain Professor Savelli for questioning?”
“For three reasons: first, he’s not a suspect;
second, he’s not the type who’ll take to the mountains in any case. Third, his landlord is a police informant and would have tipped us off if Savelli had acted suspiciously at the time of the murder. Besides, espionage” – he used a word Bora had never pronounced – “isn’t anything our district is equipped to handle. Anyhow, from the professor’s rental at the outskirts of Kamari, on foot it takes fifteen, twenty minutes to get here. You’ve seen how distances don’t really matter in Crete: it’s how long it takes you to get from one place to the next.”
If only the same could be said of investigations, where time matters, and how! Bora did miss his carefree task of fetching wine for the Russians. I’d be heading back to Moscow right now and my biggest worry would be not overdrinking at embassy parties. Here I am, into the only week at my disposal, when a month wouldn’t be enough to understand what happened to Villiger, let alone to pursue all the possible leads.
“By the way, is it espionage?” Kostaridis asked, suavely.
Bora had no answer, and wouldn’t have given it if he had one. This is hopeless, he glumly kept thinking as he went tramping through the bedrooms, a needless survey after they’d been emptied by scavengers. Not a piece of furniture, no bedding or clothes left.
“They’d already been raided when I saw them,” Kostaridis commented. “The housekeeper slept in the house, but there’s no telling if the field hands ever did: there’s a hut in the olive grove with pallets in it. I’m willing to bet they only came in for their wages at the end of the month, which is probably why the door was unlocked, and they were all caught together. And if you have been wondering whether there was anything more between master and male servants, my reply is that we do not know.”
They returned downstairs, Bora visibly preoccupied, Kostaridis uncaring that his big toe showed pitilessly through the black sock.
With a crime scene gravely tampered with, and intimate details of Villiger’s household unknown, it would be much easier to confirm the official story and blame the paratroopers. There’s still that one needle in the haystack, but Major Busch is deluded if he believes I’ll be able to track down a runaway such as Powell has become, with or without the American woman’s help. He’s the only one who could give me details on the actual timing of the shooting, on the murder scene minutes after it happened, and generally corroborate what Lieutenant Sinclair understood from him. It’s a temptation to say, “Preger’s men did it: overreactions and mistakes happen in war. This is as far as I could get in a week; I’ll see you after we conquer Russia.”
More scraps of paper and cards emerged from the books piled between the bloodstains and the bullet-scarred walls. Bora gathered them automatically. Then he joined Kostaridis as he crossed the littered floor and went to stand in the patched shade of the garden. The odour of wilting grass and sun-dried earth flowed in from the olive grove all around, a sleepy scent that made one feel lethargic.
Not Bora, whose zeal was only whetted by disappointment. Carelessly taking out of his chest pocket the Ray-Ban case, he said, “The Jewish cabaret artist, where is she now?”
“Don’t know.”
The promptness of Kostaridis’ reply surprised him. “Are you telling me you don’t know because I’m German, or because you really don’t know?”
“Is the information relevant to the enquiry?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then I don’t know where she is, and that’s all.”
“I can find out, you’re aware.”
“‘Find out’ where she is, or whether I’m lying?”
“Both.”
“In that case, it makes no difference what I say now.”
“Have it your way.” Bora started for the front gate. “I’m just fishing around for ideas.” He put on the sunglasses, aware that Kostaridis might take it as a move to conceal his eyes. Which, after all, was exactly what it was.
The matter of trust surfaced openly when the policeman stepped aside to let him out of the gate first and Bora declined with a smile.
“Is that why you pointed your gun at me back there in the defile, capitano?”
“I don’t care for traps. Why, do you trust me?”
“It’s irrelevant: I’m a fatalist.”
“I’m not. Spain and Poland taught me I must keep an eye on my fate.”
Years later, when asked about the episode, Kostaridis would observe that his first impression of Bora had been of someone still intact. As if nothing had yet touched him, and his life had unfolded within a circle of physical and psychological safety. It surprised him to hear that the German already had two military campaigns behind him. Good for him, he recalled thinking without envy. There are some who go through life unscathed. But the disenchanted earthiness of his culture suggested that – in a war that would last until the adversaries wore one another out – sooner or later the bill would be presented to Martin Bora.
Once they left the shade of the garden, the parched daylight flew at them, reverberating from the gravel of the road. Tall, blooming henbane, with black-hearted yellow flowers and toothed leaves, grew on its verge. Insects teemed over the dusty willows and grass along the brook. No bird sounds. Perfect silence, lack of wind. Moments in which time became its own seal and no longer seemed capable of past or future.
The question of trust given or not, received or withdrawn, was a tightrope Bora had been trained to test before walking: with Kostaridis he felt he was back to the preliminary stage. He stepped away from the policeman to size up the bare rock wall beyond the brook, with the ochre-yellow parapet crowning the top. Close to home, the Sandstone Mountains had provided just one of the hiking opportunities for him, even before Spain had him crawling up and down the Aragon heights. And in the Grampian Hills he’d learnt fell running from his Edinburgh cousins. He could at a glance judge the relative ease of the climb. Do I really keep an eye on my fate, or want to?
From somewhere else Sphingokephalo Hill might well resemble the profile of a lion with the head of a woman; from here, it hardly deserved the name. Regardless, anyone looking down from it was in the ideal position to observe and hear the goings-on at Ampelokastro. The villa’s terrace hugged the rock like a battlement, anchored to the building and on the ledge probably eight or ten feet higher than the ground it stood on.
Bora preceded Kostaridis across the hump of packed earth and decrepit masonry that bridged the cement culvert. “Time to go and check on the Turk,” he said, and passed the straps of his rucksack over his shoulders. “I’m climbing directly from this side.”
“Why? By the regular road we can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I can be there in six or seven.”
Kostaridis shielded his eyes to look up the incline. His attitude was that of one who concedes there’s no teaching the futility of needless exertion if exertion itself is seen as a merit. “You had better watch out: he doesn’t like surprises.”
“See you at the top.”
The Sphinx’s head – or its neck, at any rate – posed no difficulty to an ascent. Midway through the clamber, Bora found a hold secure enough to pause and look at the vineyards that formed a partial green belt around the hill. The destroyed winery Kostaridis spoke of must be in town, because all seemed to have been spared here. As for Ampelokastro below, it came more and more into full view: the palm trees, however, shielded the garden. You might see men walking through the front gate, and that was all. The culvert, and anyone hiding in the muddy bed of the brook, might or might not be visible from the top of the hill.
Bora climbed without effort, and kept asking himself questions he’d have to turn over to others, Major Busch first among them. What exactly did Villiger do for the Reichskommissar? Did it entail more than just measuring skulls and eye colour? If his field hands were receiving their wages when they were killed, does it follow that the attackers knew this, or did they accidentally catch the whole household together? No cash was found on the scene as far as I know, or was stolen before the photos were taken. If Preger’s m
en really had nothing to do with this, I have one chance in a million of finding a solution.
Only the last stretch, chipped smooth with a pickaxe to discourage intrusion, gave Bora the thrill of risk, but by then the terrace was at hand. He vigorously hoisted himself up and gained the wide parapet. Simultaneously, from a glass door that banged wide open, three large fawn-coloured dogs, with black faces and curly tails, lunged furiously at him. Bora, who’d barely risen from a straddle to an upright position, nearly lost his footing; driven back to the edge, it was a miracle that he didn’t fall backwards. In a frenzy of barking and growling, the charging dogs resembled the three-headed hound of hell. Christ, they’re foaming at the mouth. If one of them jumps up, they all will, and I’m screwed. Bora groped for his holster until he found the comforting bulk of the pistol grip.
“Ouzo, Mumia, Almansour!”
From the terrace door a deep-voiced hulk of a man came out, himself brandishing a pistol. “Ouzo! Mumia, Almansour!”
Rifat Agrali had the physique you’d expect of an Ottoman in a Mozart opera, down to his portliness and moustache, except that he was blonde. As he stepped out into the sun, his whiskers glittered like sheaves of pale straw. “Ouzo, Mumia, Almansour!”
Instantly the animals turned away from the parapet and trotted to sit at their master’s feet. “E tu, inglese, che vuoi?”
They faced each other, right arm extended and gun in hand. Bora did no more than let go of the trigger. Whatever the circumstances, being asked in Italian what he wanted was less of an irritant than having a weapon squared at him. He said, in Italian, “I’d have shot them, you know.”
“And I’d have shot you right after.”
“I doubt it.”