After a half hour of relentless toil, knees obliterated by the steep trail and the loose shifting rock, Savva couldn't concentrate on peering through the undergrowth for evidence. Instead his eyes probed, like a man lost in the desert, for the next spot of shade. He prayed for a breeze, for clouds to cover the sun, anything for the heat to relent.
Stelios came back to sit with him on their fourth rotation. The group sat dispersed between three small olive trees, like blue sheep, sides heaving, tongues lolling out, desperate for relief from the sun. No one talked now. The body lay in its own spot, in a meter thick line of shade cast by an overhanging rock: as innocuous as a trucker's covered load of lumber.
Stelios bent to tie his shoelace. "I'm sorry about my attitude earlier, Sir,"
Savva's eyes flitted over Stelios' boots. Under a thin layer of dirt they were pristine, without the scratches on the sides, or the wear around the eyelets on the boots of the man in the body bag. "Forget it."
"It won't happen again; disrespect at a crime scene."
"No it won't."
When Stelios ambled off, his long legs barely unfolding as he stepped down to the men and motioned for them to pick up their once more, Savva rubbed his knees. He had to take more exercise. He had to get rid of the pudge. He couldn't become an old man. A plan, that's what he needed, a plan he could stick to, a plan instead of the taverna on a whim.
They passed into a gulley, remarkably and gloriously hidden from the sun. Savva dragged his soaking shirt away from his skin and almost tripped when he felt the first flat step. He would've collapsed to kiss the rocks if he'd been alone. A kilometer expanse of shifting sunbaked plain lay between him and the vehicles, but he could see them. Stelios called out for the stretcher-bearers to walk faster, spurned on as he was by the easy walk. The load grew lighter as the cars inched closer and the promise of an end to their funerary duties.
Savva watched with a frown as the stretcher was loaded into the medical examiner's van. The black body bag was little more than a blur before the white doors closed and Dr. Panteleon scurried over to the driver's seat and started the vehicle.
"I'll see you at the station, Sir?" Stelios said.
Savva turned around. "You'll need to shower and change first."
"That bad?"
"You've spent half the day scaling a mountain and then climbing back down with a body."
"It is that bad."
"I can smell you from fifty feet away."
"Alright."
"Meet me at my house after you've finished and bring something to eat."
Stelios nodded, motioned Kaikas over, and the two of them got into her car. Savva reached for the door of his grey Saab, the plastic handle burned underneath his sweaty fingers. He poured tepid water over the hand and turned back to the mountain. A body in the sea, he'd understand. A body could be weighed down, dropped a few kilometers out, with no one the wiser. Why then at the top of a trail? Why a rage-fueled attack? Was it planned? Had the killer meant the body to be found?
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