Unhallowed Shadows

by Stefanos Kottas

  The alarm was ringing like crazy, next to his head. With a grouchy moan, Marcos turned it off and rubbed his eyes. He got off his bed and headed to the bathroom, to splash some water on his face. He threw the on switch on the espresso machine in the kitchen, went back to his room, got dressed and then headed back to make some coffee. Two minutes later, he was sitting on his desk; dozens of envelopes and scattered papers lay before him, next to a small lamp. He rifled through them and when he didn’t find anything pressing amongst the various bills and police events invitations, he threw the whole lot into a drawer. Now before him he had only two items: his coffee and the cell phone Erica had given him. He gulped down the hot liquid and picked up the device. The odd encounter he had that previous night kept returning to his mind, since the moment he woke up. He toyed with the phone, flipping through the various menus, while his mind worked over time. He loved a good mystery, but more than that he loved the feeling he got when he finally solved them. He got up, stuck the phone in a pocket of his trouser, put on his coat and walked out to the street. His car was parked in front of the exit, black, small and discreet. He got in and headed for the station.

  As he was driving, he was still thinking about his next move. Each riddle was solved based on the clues it provided, by analyzing and connecting the information available. Now, all he had at his disposal was a name: Lucia Burton. The last name was definitely not Greek, but her first name was sometimes used in his country; there was a chance, albeit small, that she was a Greek citizen. If the search at the station’s criminal records proved fruitless, he could try to trace some information at the national registry. His contacts over at the Ministry of Finance could also dig up her financial report. He gritted his teeth; he had a lot of work ahead of him.

  The hours passed without Marcos even realizing it. Hunger was what got him eventually to realize that he had worked all through the morning and decide to go out. The day was drawing to an end, stores were closing one after the other while people were either heading back home or getting ready for their evening out. He found a small restaurant close to the station and walked in. It was one of the many old restaurants still found scattered in Athens; always painted white, but with the smell of rancid cooking oil hanging in the air. Still, he paid little attention to it; the various dishes displayed on a glass case in front of the cash registry looked decently prepared, and that was enough for him. He gave his order to the woman standing there, the only one on duty. She put everything on a tray, he paid for his food and went and sat at a corner of the dining area. He was the only customer at the time so the woman, once she scrutinized him, went about her business, completely ignoring him thereafter.

  Marcos placed on the table, next to the tray, the envelope he had been carrying on him all day. Inside was the information he had managed to gather and, admittedly, it wasn’t much. He opened it and started reading for the umpteenth time what he had uncovered, while he was eating hungrily his food. The tax authorities had data on Lucia Burton going back twenty five years, and she had been registered as daughter of one Emanuel Burton. She had a piece of real estate in her name, a cafeteria managed by her father. At the same time, however, there wasn’t a single reference to be found at the city registry to that name, nor that of her father’s. The forms submitted to the tax authorities, all those years before, did not include the necessary documents. As the man who had talked to him there had told him, “After all this time, these documents, assuming they were even submitted, will have been lost. Documents are still getting lost in our day!” Marcos then went by the cafeteria, but couldn’t find anyone to shed some light, other than the employees, who told him that they had never met the owner, suggesting he talked to their manager. He did find that manager, who in turn informed him that he had been hired by a recruiting firm. Next, he visited the firm in question, but hit yet another dead end. The business of Emanuel Burton was originally managed by a former employee of the firm, who had been killed in a traffic accident some fifteen years ago. Annoyed, Marcos had turned to the Ministry, hoping to get his contact to help him. Indeed, he managed to look at the records for the cafeteria and discovered that all profits were deposited in an account that hadn’t been accessed for the last five years. Before that, there were withdrawals made from various places all over Greece, as well as from banks abroad. He had seen the list with all the places from where the withdrawals had been made, but none of it proved useful. The withdrawals from abroad had been made over ten years ago and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintained records with the movements of its citizens abroad only for a period of ten years. Had he started this investigation a couple of years earlier, he might have discovered something, assuming he still had a contact in that ministry. He had one last idea, which was checking the electoral registry, but that proved fruitless as well. The woman had not registered to vote in any of the country’s municipalities. He was chasing a ghost. For some reason, someone had created a new identity in the name of a young woman, setting up a business for her to have some income, which, however, wasn’t accessed all that often. None of that made sense to Marcos.

  After all this pointless running around, he had spent a whole day over at police archives, digging up the files on each and every kidnapping case from the last five years. None of those met his criteria, but he had made copies of all files and left them in his car. He looked for anything that might be linked to this young woman. Since someone had gone into all this trouble to create a new life for this woman, surely he could do the same for other shady people. He gathered information on any case relating to organized crime, financial crime, fraud and drug trafficking during that period, which he then sorted into solved and unsolved and set about looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Soon he was forced to put aside most of those pertaining to financial crimes, fraud and robberies. They were countless; in the prefecture of Attica alone, each year authorities recorded thirty five thousand robberies. He focused on drug trafficking, his old field of expertise. He was able to work more effectively this way and managed to locate five cases in which drug traffickers had used businesses to launder their money. In all those cases the authorities had failed to discover who had opened the laundering business or who the mastermind behind the fraud was. The cases appeared to be unrelated, but he had nothing to lose by looking more closely into the files. Perhaps, with a bit of luck, he could discover the man who had set up Lucia Burton’s fake identity and discover who she truly was.

  He was sitting absentmindedly over his now empty plate, still holding the spoon in his mouth. The waitress’ shadow fell on the envelope he had before him, making him raise his head. He saw her smirking and realized he must be looking rather silly, so he put his spoon down.

  “Can I get you anything else? We’re closing in twenty”, said the waitress and he thought about ordering some dessert, should there be any left.

  Before he had the chance to speak, his attention was drawn to a spot behind the woman, on the street outside the restaurant. A beggar had sat on the ground, leaning on a post and was looking in, straight at them. Under different circumstances Marcos wouldn’t have spared a second thought, but this man was familiar. He came across him every time he walked by a square close to his house, but the place where he was sitting right now was at least a couple of miles away from that spot. He jumped up, called to the waitress to keep an eye on the envelope and run out. The beggar, the moment he saw him running towards where he was sitting, jumped up too and hastily fled the scene. Marcos gave chase, without thinking about the fact that he had left his pistol in his car. He crossed the street, run in an alley, narrowly avoiding a trash can the beggar had thrown down to delay his pursuer. He saw the man disappear at the end of the alley. Running harder, he got at the place where the alley ended. He managed to see a shadow disappear behind the corner of some store. He made to cross the street, avoided one incoming car and ended up on the hood of another which he had failed to see coming from the other direction. The impact numbed his leg and simul
taneously he felt a sharp pain in his arm. He rolled off the hood and onto the ground, next to the car, groaning softly. He touched his sore shoulder and luckily it didn’t feel broken. He was back on his feet before the driver had the time to get out. He had been lucky; he was in pain but thankfully the car wasn’t speeding, so he had escaped relatively unscathed. Ignoring the people who had begun to gather around, he tried to pursue the man, but it proved pointless. He was limping and already he had lost precious time; the beggar had fled.

  Obviously annoyed, while showing around his police id so that people would let him be, he went back slowly to the restaurant where the chase had begun.

  He managed to get there in time, the place was still open. He opened the door and walked in, looking for the waitress and the envelope he had left on the table. He found neither. He looked around more closely. His table was exactly the way he had left it; the chair had fallen as he had jumped up. He approached the cash registry, but the machine was neither broken nor was the money missing. His first thought was to contact the station and ask for backup. He changed his mind, didn’t make the call; he wasn’t feeling like explaining his actions during the day. He looked outside, towards his car, where he had left his pistol. He changed his mind once more, grabbed a knife from the bench, hid it inside his sleeve and walked to the back of the restaurant, where the kitchen was. With his fingertips, he slowly opened the door, as quietly as possible. He peeked inside but couldn’t see a thing, since next to the door there were shelves filled with sacks and wooden crates. He opened wide the door, ready for action. If there was anyone inside, he would see them, for sure. He walked determinedly in the kitchen.

  The first thing he noticed was a pair of legs on the floor. Then he saw the blood pooling around. The cook was face down and a knife was sticking from his waist, close to his kidneys. Marcos wasted no time, took out his cell phone and called immediately an ambulance. He was letting the operator know where he was while he was checking for the man’s pulse. He did fell a throb on the tips of his fingers: weak, there wasn’t much time left. He used his cell phone again, this time calling a landline at his station. He heard a familiar voice picking up.

  “How may I help?”

  “Costas, this is Marcos. Come at once to the restaurant, the one two streets over the station. I’ve a seriously wounded man here and I don’t know when the ambulance will be coming”.

  Marcos’ voice clearly conveyed the emergency. He had called the medic’s office at the station, since he was a friend of the doctor there.

  “Coming!” was the single word Costas spoke in response, before Marcos heard him hang up.

  Perhaps now the man stood a better chance of surviving. With a heavy heart, Marcos began punching another number on his cell phone. After all, he would not avoid reporting on his activities that day and, on top of that, he would have to add the disappearance of a young woman on it.

  He had to spend almost three hours at the station writing down his report, speaking to his superiors and describing again and again what had happened. Each time, he avoided even mentioning Erica. The reason he was looking for Lucia Burton, he claimed, was because he believed that she was dead. He had gotten this information from some journalist. Time and again he refused to reveal the journalist’s name. He further claimed that he hadn’t informed the department prior to this latest development because he wasn’t even certain there was an actual case here. He kept repeating the same lies he had been working out in his mind from the moment he had called the station from the restaurant. He never complained, he was being patient, asking no questions of his own. The only thing he was interested to learn was whether the cook had made it. To his great relief, he was informed that the man’s condition was now deemed stable.

  Marcos was convinced that his colleagues had not believed his story. They were guessing that he had been hiding something, but their hands were tied. Of course, the way he had gotten himself caught in this mess, Marcos couldn’t exactly tell them the whole truth, that someone had placed him under surveillance, in the process almost killing a man and kidnapping a young woman. In his mind, there was a direct connection with this last point and what he was looking for. Lucia Burton was a missing young woman and whoever had attacked the cook hadn’t done the same to the waitress at the restaurant; that, at least, was the logical conclusion based on the fact that no body had been found. He felt that he was on the right track and knew exactly what he had to do in order to discover his next clue.

  He got in his car and drove to his apartment, stopping a short way before that, close to the city rail station servicing his neighborhood. He parked the car and before getting out he made sure he had his gun with him. Next to the rail station there was a park and an orthodox church. Behind the church there was a paved path leading to a small square, away from houses or other buildings. There was nothing special about it, just a couple of trees, two stone benches and a beggar sleeping on one of those. It was the beggar who had been spying on him a few hours ago and had managed to flee the scene with surprising ease.

  Marcos wasted no time on niceties. He grabbed the man by the hair while he was asleep and threw him off the bench. The beggar shouted in surprise but Marcos followed up with a powerful kick that hit him on the ribcage. The air in the man’s lungs exited as a scream, causing him great anguish. Marcos grabbed again the man from his hair and with his other hand punched him straight in the face. He wouldn’t be seeing from that eye for the rest of the week.

  “This is how you repay me? How many times have I helped you out? Didn’t I even try getting you a job?” said Marcos angrily, continuing to land blows on the man.

  The beggar in front of him made no attempt to defend himself. He raised his hand in surrender, but Marcos ignored the gesture and kicked him again.

  “A man almost died and a young woman has been kidnapped. Tell me, who hired you!” he demanded, lifting up the man from his shirt to look him in the eye.

  The beggar was panting, panicked.

  “No one hired me”, he whimpered, with tears in his eyes.

  He saw Marcos’ face bristle in anger and shouted, desperately:

  ‘No, wait!”

  At the same moment he closed his eyes reflexively, seeing his tormentor ready to land another blow. The punch he had been expecting never came.

  “I’m listening, George”, was the only thing Marcos told him, still grabbing him by the shirt.

  “No one hired me. You were being followed already. My brother in law came to find me this morning and demanded that I kept an eye on you. You know that I can’t refuse him. Please, I didn’t know what would happen! Don’t hit me, no more, please!”

  George, the beggar, collapsed and broke up in tears. He felt Marcos letting him go and crumbled on the ground.

  Marcos realized that the man had told him the truth. George had ended up as the neighborhood’s beggar following a series of unlucky turns in his life and admittedly he wasn’t a bad man. His sister made sure that he wouldn’t go hungry, but he couldn’t take him to her house, because of her husband. Rumor had it that he had dealings with mobsters, but Marcos had been unable to prove a thing. He had spoken several times with George, offering alms and his sympathy. A wave of guilt crashed over him, but he couldn’t relent; a young woman, completely innocent, was in danger.

  “I need a name, George. Your brother in law, who is he working for? This time, you will tell me”.

  George looked up from the ground where he was still lying, his one eye already swollen, but he appeared unaware of that for the time being.

  “… Eddie”, he whispered. “Don’t seek him out, they’ll kill you”, he added with a trembling voice.

  “Don’t worry”, said Marcos. “I’ve got an idea…”

  He took out from his pocket a cell phone that recently had come in his possession and called the single number stored in it.

  Each time she dreamt a scene from Naram-Sin’s life, she felt as if she hadn’t fed in days. Erica opened her eyes
and rubbed her temples, trying to recover. Her head was aching, she felt blood dripping from her nose. Stumbling, she headed for the fridge, grabbed a bag of blood, opened it and hungrily consumed its contents. The pain quickly subsided and immediately she felt better. She splashed some water on her face and then turned on her computer.

  Travis had provided her with several computers, laptops and desktops, enough to stock a store, but this particular one she had bought on her own. She hadn’t connected it to the internet and made sure she kept it away from her associate. She didn’t think he would ever betray her, but in the computer she had stored a particular archive which was meant for her eyes only.

  She opened a text file entitled “Legacy” and wrote with every detail the dream she had had, below all the other dreams she had seen since she had become a vampire. She wouldn’t have forgotten a single one, but writing them down helped her to better analyze them. She had been trying to discover a common thread, some lead.

  The ringing of her cell phone made her jump from her seat. She realized that time had passed without her realizing it. She looked at the cell phone’s screen, it read “Marcos”. She picked up at once.

  “Hi, baby”, she said, teasingly.

  She could hear his breathing from the other end of the line, stressed and short. He had news to tell her, she was positive. Indeed, the policeman did not disappoint. He gave her a detailed report on everything that had happened that day, as well as all the information he had managed to gather.