Blood & Gold - Ivan Kanaris - E-Book

Blood & Gold E-Book

Ivan Kanaris

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Beschreibung

Athens. Autumn. The start of a crazy week for private investigator George Zafiris. On Monday a friend is killed by a hit and run driver. On Tuesday the body vanishes. On Wednesday Zafiris begins to ask questions, and on Thursday the first death threats are made. By Friday things are starting to get complicated. A brilliant young concert violinist disappears, quickly followed by her husband. The police seem to be co-operative, but everywhere Zafiris looks, he finds obstructions, dishonesty, mysterious delays. As the country's debt crisis takes its toll on the people of Athens, suicides and illness proliferate. Zafiris finds his own life spinning dangerously out of control. A few days in an ancient monastery on Mount Athos seem to offer some respite. But there's a surprise waiting there too.

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

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Praise for Codename Xenophon:

‘Leo Kanaris takes us to post-crash Athens as austerity bites and political corruption spirals… Codename Xenophon is compelling and evocative (the sparkling sea and sun)… Kanaris has written a little gem, perfect for the beach.’

Scarlet MccGuire in Tribune

‘Blessed with all the virtues of a traditional murder mystery, this debut novel has a sharp political edge. Three years in Athens left Leo Kanaris with a loathing for the self-serving parasites and bureaucrats who “had paralysed the country for decades”. In Codename Xenophon, this insider’s view of a paralytic society is seen through the eyes of George Zafiris, a private investigator who does his best to tread the straight and narrow, while those around him are too greedy or plain scared to take responsibility. It is the apparently motiveless killing of an elderly academic that embroils Zafiris in political machinations at the highest level. But, as his dogged perseverance begins to pay off, he comes to realise that even the best intentions can have tragic consequences. With vivid characterisation and a plot that thickens without obscuring the essential threads, Kanaris emerges as a sharp new talent in crime writing.’

Barry Turner in The Daily Mail

‘The narrative flits from a frenzied Athens to the idyllic islands as politicians, Russian crooks, corrupt (and/or incompetent) policemen thicken the plot, the world-weary Zafiris nimbly negotiating a Byzantine culture in which morality, truth and justice are malleable concepts. The first in a proposed quartet to feature George Zafiris, Codename Xenophon is a bleak but blackly comic tale that does full justice to its laconic, Chandleresque heritage.’

Declan Burke in The Irish Times

‘Anyone picking up this book needs to be cautioned at the outset: it will eat considerably into your time for other things and be extraordinarily difficult to lay aside. In Codename Xenophon Leo Kanaris has woven a tight and quirky tale of murder, high-level intrigue and corruption in the timely setting of modern Athens and its island satellite, Aigina.’

John Carr in The Anglo-Hellenic Review

‘This debut novel is interesting, educational, thoughtful and well worth the time to read. I look forward to more investigations with George Zafiris.’

The Poisoned Pen Review

‘Set in Athens in 2010, Kanaris’s impressive debut, the first in a projected quartet, effectively evokes Greece’s noble antiquity while portraying its current financial crisis, which his hero, PI George Zafiris, attributes to former prime minister Papandreou, who created the “most bloated, obstructive bureaucracy on the planet.” Zafiris, scraping by from case to case, aching from the infidelity of a wife he still loves, and at every step hamstrung by corrupt and arrogant police, investigates the shooting of a Greek scholar and confronts a Gordian knot of governmental corruption, adulterous relationships, and vicious criminals. Struggling to preserve his self-respect, Zafiris prevails – almost. Disgusted by those whose respect for Greece’s past leads them to avoid present-day responsibilities, Zafiris worries constantly over his country and its future, but he survives through fitful glimpses of the spirit that gave birth to Western civilization, still strong after 2,500 years.’

Starred review in Publishers Weekly

Contents

Praise for Codename Xenophon

Title

The Author

Characters (In Order of Appearance)

Part One The Man on a Bicycle

1 Meeting in Maroussi

2 Funeral by the Sea

3 Conversation with a Fly-Half

4 The Answering Machine

5 Information Underload

6 Town Hall

7 Threads in a Web

8 Among Doctors

9 Dinner with Petros

10 EAP

11 Boxed

12 Unboxed

13 A Body in the Bushes

14 Three Brothers

15 Dr Skouras

Part Two North and South

16 Memento Mori

17 The Musicians

18 Missing

19 Edessa

20 Alexander’s Gold

21 Into the City

22 Kokoras I

23 The Holy Mountain

24 A Monk’s Life

25 Kokoras II

26 Unexpected Quarter

27 Anna II

28 The Diarist

29 Untouchable

30 The Crop

Part Three The Package

31 Hospital Papers

32 The Two Andonis

33 Pursuit

34 Catch-Up

35 End Game

36 News Bulletin

37 The Death Trap

38 The Other Side

Copyright

The Author

Leo Kanaris was a teacher for many years. He now writes full time and lives in southern Greece.

He is the author of two novels featuring the private investigator George Zafiris: Codename Xenophon and Blood & Gold.

He is currently working on his third George Zafiris novel: Dangerous Days.

Characters (in order of appearance)

George Zafiris – private investigator

Colonel Sotiriou – Head of the Violent Crimes Department, Athens Police

Dimitris – proprietor of the Café Agamemnon

Nikolaos Karás – rugby-playing police officer

Mario Filiotis – Mayor of Astypalea

Eleni Filiotis – wife of Mario Filiotis

Andreas Filiotis – brother of Mario

Mrs Kyriakou – secretary to the Mayor of Astypalea

Zoe Zafiris – wife of George Zafiris

Pavlos Marangós – car dealer, Athens

Dr Skouras – Consultant in General Medicine, Red Cross Hospital, Athens

Haris Pezas – owner of an electrical shop, would-be assistant of George Zafiris

Petros Karagounis – businessman, schoolfriend of George Zafiris and Mario Filiotis

Keti Kenteri – violinist

Anna Kenteri – sister of Keti Kenteri

Paris Aliveris – composer, husband of Keti Kenteri

Emmanuel Karyotakis – funeral director

Gavrilis – hotel owner in Edessa

Thanasis and Rena – taverna owners in Pella

Dr Mylona – Inspector of Classical Archaeology, Thessaloniki

Byron Kakridis – Minister of Justice

‘O Kokoras’ (‘the Cockerel’) – construction boss and Edessa strong man

Stephanos – school-teacher from Preveza

Father Seraphim – monk on Mount Athos

Nick Zafiris – son of George and Zoe Zafiris

‘Stelios’ – photographer

Vladimir Merkulov – Russian businessman

Margaritis – butcher in Markopoulo, friend of Haris Pezas

Andreas Marangós – pornographic film director

Part One

The Man on a Bicycle

1 Meeting in Maroussi

Athens, September 2015. George Zafiris, private investigator, was seated at a café in Maroussi, reading a police report. A cup of Greek coffee stood untouched on the table in front of him. The day was cool for the time of year and a breeze ruffled the paper in his hands.

‘On Friday 29 August a bearded man, 50 years of age, wearing a grey suit, was riding a bicycle along Spyros Louis Avenue, between the Olympic Stadium and the Golden Hall. A truck loaded with firewood was travelling behind. For unknown reasons the man on the bicycle lost his balance and was hit by the truck. An emergency call was received by police at 11.03 am. Service vehicles arrived at 11.15 am. The driver of blue Magirus Deutz HK 4596, Gavrilis Pagakis, aged 37 from Larissa, was arrested and charged with manslaughter. The victim died from his injuries. He has been identified as Mr Mario Filiotis, Mayor of Astypalea.’

George read the report a second time, folded it, laid it on the table.

Opposite him sat Colonel Sotiriou, Head of the Violent Crimes Unit, watching him closely.

‘Well?’ said Sotiriou.

‘It’s written by a moron,’ he said.

‘I agree it’s not a model of report writing,’ said Sotiriou. ‘But you can’t be sure the person who wrote it is a moron.’

‘OK,’ said George. ‘Maybe he’s just badly trained. Maybe he’s on drugs. Maybe his head is being scrambled by death-rays from outer space. That’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘Why did Mario Filiotis fall off his bicycle? He wasn’t a man to do that.’

‘Good question.’

‘You must know who wrote this.’

Sotiriou gazed back at him blankly.

‘I take that to mean yes?’

Sotiriou did not answer directly. ‘He’s no fool,’ he said.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘He passed the report to me personally.’

‘And what were you supposed to do with it? Apart from the obvious.’

Sotiriou did not reply.

‘This was a road accident,’ said George, ‘not a violent crime.’

‘Exactly.’

Sotiriou eyed him attentively.

‘OK,’ said George. ‘So he knows more.’

‘That is what I assume.’

‘Have you asked him?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

The Colonel ignored the question. ‘Give me the report,’ he said.

George pushed the sheet of paper across the table. The Colonel held a cigarette lighter to one corner. The report flared and shrivelled in the ashtray.

‘What’s the officer’s name?’ asked George.

‘Karás,’ said the Colonel. ‘Lieutenant Nikolaos Karás.’

‘Can I talk to him?’

‘Only in private.’

‘How am I going to do that?’

‘He plays rugby.’

‘Rugby?’

‘That’s right.’

George was puzzled.

‘It’s a kind of football,’ said Sotiriou. ‘Played with an olive-shaped ball.’

‘I know that, for heaven’s sake!’

‘His team is the Attica Warriors. They train on Tuesday evenings. Olympic complex, B ground. Go there tomorrow, half past eight. Watch the last ten minutes of training. He’ll find you.’

‘Suppose I’m busy tomorrow?’

‘If you want the job, be there.’

‘And who’s my client?’ asked George.

‘For the moment I am.’

‘You?’

‘In strict confidence.’

‘Are you paying?’

‘Funds will be provided.’

‘Public or private?’

‘Let me worry about that.’

Sotiriou stood up. They shook hands without warmth and the Colonel slipped away.

George stayed to finish his coffee. He replayed the conversation in his mind, seeing the Colonel’s face, his grey-green eyes, the skull-bones thinly covered by tight yellow skin. He was an odd man. Cold, scholarly, hard to fathom. He had insisted on meeting in Maroussi, miles from his office. George had asked yesterday for the police report on Mario’s death, expecting to be refused. Sotriou had offered it at once.

He paid the bill and walked down Thiseos Street, past a beggar child mangling out La Cucuracha on an accordion, past empty shops with peeling yellow ‘To Let’ notices, past another beggar – an old man in a worn-out suit kneeling on a folded newspaper – until he came to a bakery on the square. Hot bread smells wafted through the doorway.

He asked for horiátiko psomí and handed over two euros. Fifty cents came back with a rustic loaf, still warm in a paper bag. He held it to him like a baby. Outside on the pavement, he dropped the fifty-cent coin into the old man’s palm and was thanked politely in return. This was no professional beggar. The voice was educated. He looked like a retired schoolmaster or bank clerk. What torments had this man been through? George did not feel like asking. There were too many cases like that in this endless, tedious crisis.

His friend Mario was dead. He had no space in his heart for anyone else right now.

George walked back up Thiseos Street to his motorbike, unlocked the luggage box and rested the loaf among a jumble of receipts and business cards. He owed the bike to Mario, who had told him to stop driving a car in the city.

‘And how the hell am I supposed to get around?’ George had asked.

‘Ride a bike.’

‘A bike in Athens? Think I want to kill myself?’

Mario replied: ‘Just living here a bit of you dies every day.’ He swung the Ducati off its stand, kicked the starter, felt the rush of force as he revved the engine. He accelerated quickly into the stream of cars.

On Kifissias Avenue, riding south, he kept thinking of his friend. Above the traffic, the glass towers, the dark haze of exhaust fumes, he glanced up at the blue sky, in which a few monumental nimbus clouds hung suspended. Out there in space he could imagine Mario’s soul floating – planing like an eagle, surveying the struggle he had been released from. Athens would seem like a toy village to him, its crazy intrigues as inconsequential as the scurryings of an ant-hill.

He hoped that something survived of that remarkable man. An essence, an indestructible core of energy. It seemed unlikely. Yet also necessary. Otherwise what was the point of anything?

The Olympic Stadium loomed up on his right, its white steel arches like the bones of a bird’s wing flung across the sky. On an impulse, he swung off Kifissias onto Spyros Louis. Maybe worth a look, he thought. The scene of the accident.

This road was busy too, a fast-moving horde of cars, trucks and buses. The stadium lay to his right, behind fences, its vast aerial structure a souvenir of the age of extravagance. Where had that all gone? The ambition, the optimism, the belief? All that remained was an enormous bill, the interest payments multiplying, compounding unstoppably, choking the life out of Greece.

He found a place to pull over, where the road widened for a bus stop. He cut the engine and lifted off his helmet, narrowing his eyes at the glare. Around him, a landscape of concrete. Everything on the road moving at seventy to eighty kilometres an hour. A strange place to go cycling. Practically an invitation to some fool talking into his phone to knock you down. But then the whole city was hostile to cyclists. Hostile to pedestrians, dogs, birds, every living thing. George climbed off the bike and picked his way along a narrow strip of pavement. Crushed Coca Cola cans and empty Marlboro packets littered the ground, their colours washed pale by the sun. Weeds thrust pugnacious heads through broken paving stones. The traffic rushed by.

He glanced up, wondering about street cameras. There had to be one along here. All the football matches in the stadium, the wild supporters, the paint-sprayers and seat-burners. That was surely worth a little surveillance? But the lampposts were bare.

Except one, right there opposite the entrance to the stadium. A trio of loose wires dangling off the post like seaweed, just out of reach of his upstretched arm.

He grabbed a quick photo of it on his phone, then straddled his bike and turned for home.

2 Funeral by the Sea

George lived in a 1970s apartment block in Aristotle Street, one of thousands in the centre of Athens. Faced with marble but poorly maintained, it turned a blank and dirty face to the world. Things improved once you got past the grubby entrance hall and up the echoing stairway. An armoured front door, installed a few years ago to discourage unwelcome visitors, led to a five-room apartment, comfortably arranged, with George’s books, pictures, music, collections of seashells and old weapons. Sometimes his son Nick was at home, back from his engineering studies abroad. Sometimes too his wife Zoe – when she was not on Andros, leading the artistic life. At the end of summer she would be in Athens more. Andros was cold and damp in winter.

He unlocked the front door, dropped the loaf on the kitchen table and opened the fridge, looking for a beer. There was a bottle of Fix in the door, but his eye went at once to something else: a package on a shelf. The wrapper was from Lourantos, the cheese and salami shop on Andros.

He closed the fridge without taking the beer and went quietly through to the bedroom. Zoe was asleep there, face down, wrapped in a sheet. A bottle of pills stood open on the bedside table.

He inspected the label. ‘Fermoxan’. He wondered what that might be.

Back in the kitchen, he opened his laptop.

Fermoxan: used in anxiety disorder, depression, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Common side effects: nausea, sexual dysfunction, agitation, blurred vision, constipation, diarrhoea, dizziness, drowsiness, dry mouth, headaches, insomnia, loss of appetite, strange dreams, sweating, tremors, vomiting, weakness, weight gain…

He read this with alarm. Not so much for the grim catalogue of negatives as for what it implied. This was heavy medicine. Prescription only.

George opened the fridge again. This time he took out the bottle of Fix. He levered off the top and sipped the beer, watching the sky, thinking.

Three days ago, he had been in Astypalea. Sprawled in bed in a room he had taken for the night, above the ‘Australia’ taverna, fretting and turning, unable to sleep. He remembered fumbling for his watch in the half-light, struggling to make out the figures. Twenty past five. It was too early to get up – he had slept at two – but his mind was alert and already at work.

He stood up, moved unsteadily into the bathroom and let rip into the gloom. His mouth was dry, head like a blast furnace.

He pulled the chain; pipes gurgled and clanked all around him. He crossed the room to the open window and stared out at the sky. The town lay below, curved and stepped like the tiers of an ancient theatre. The air was cool and damp. A pair of dogs barked, exchanging warlike salutes across the darkness.

As he watched, still half asleep, the air began to brighten. The sun’s first rays struck the fort on the ridge across the bay. They flared on a flagpole, a line of roofs, the whitewashed cupola of a church. Down in the harbour, still in shadow, a row of fishing caïques lay unmoving at the quay.

He pulled on some clothes and splashed water on his face.

In the kitchen, Olga, the owner of the taverna, was salting an enormous piece of lamb. She paused, wiping her hands on aproned flanks.

‘Good morning, Mr Zafiris! Coffee?’

‘Please.’

He watched her stir the little copper pot, the gas flames dancing blue and gold.

‘Did you know Mario?’ he asked.

‘We all knew him.’

‘What was your opinion of him?’

‘A very good man.’

‘And as Mayor?’

‘He did great things.’

‘For example?’

‘The airport. New roads. Restoring old buildings. A man of action. Not the usual politician, who is all talk.’

She began scattering potatoes in the roasting tin: each one seemed a token of Mario’s achievements. ‘Education. Respect for nature. Respect for ourselves. For each other. For the community. We stopped burning rubbish. We cleaned up the beaches, the countryside. We smartened up the town.’

‘He built an airport and roads,’ said George, ‘but respected nature. How did he manage that?’

‘What’s your problem?’

‘It’s usually one or the other,’ said George.

‘Mario held public meetings. Told us that grants from Europe were linked with measures to protect nature. He said, “You can’t have one without the other. You must do it right.” Proper accounts, receipts, everything. Have you heard of such a thing? In Greece?’

‘Never,’ said George.

‘When a man like that goes, you ask yourself why didn’t God protect him? He always takes the good ones for himself, and leaves us the criminals, the destroyers, the idiots.’

‘Who’ll take his place?’

‘The deputy.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Nothing special. An opportunist. A follower, not a leader.’

‘Will you come to the funeral?’

‘Of course!’

She opened the oven door, letting out a blast of hot air, and shoved the tray of lamb and potatoes in.

‘Everyone will be there. A man like that comes once in a generation, if you’re lucky.’

The coffee bubbled up inside the pot. She poured it into a little white china cup and said, ‘Go out and sit on the terrace. It’s a lovely day. I’ll bring it to you.’

*

At ten o’clock a fishing boat rounded the headland, its mast a white cross against the sea’s blue. George waited on the quay. Around him were figures from the taverna last night: police chief, deputy mayor, director of the archaeological museum… None of Mario’s school-friends had made it from Athens. One or two had sent apologies. The rest not even that.

The locals were out in force. Old people mostly – bent, wiry, their rough faces hacked out of the same rust-brown rock as the island’s farms and roads. The young looked like a different species, fat and pale, crammed into tight black dresses and suits.

Eleni, Mario’s widow, stood out, tall and haggard, with her two teenage sons. Their faces were blank as stone. Next to Eleni, a stocky man in his forties, with an angry, restless air: this was Andreas, Mario’s brother. George walked over and offered his condolences. Eleni thanked him, her green eyes glittering, electric, and said softly, ‘He rests with God.’

The fishing boat touched the quayside. On the foredeck lay the coffin, heaped with white lilies. Six men in dark suits and sunglasses moved forward from the crowd. They climbed on board, hoisted the coffin to their shoulders and stepped awkwardly onto the quay. As they set off towards the town, the crowd formed up behind them.

George walked beside Andreas. It was a tough climb to the church, a steep slope of ribbed concrete, the sun hot on their backs. They trudged heavily, saying nothing. Townsfolk watched from open windows and doorways, crossing themselves as the procession passed.

At last the street curved into the shade and George felt able to think again.

‘This is a crime,’ said Andreas suddenly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They killed him.’

‘Who?’

‘Everyone. Everything.’

‘That’s not a crime.’

‘To me it’s a crime. People abused his generosity.’

‘You can’t prosecute a whole community.’

‘I told him: half the petitioners who come to see you are just trying to cheat their neighbours. The only injustice is what they’re planning – with your help. He gave them all a hearing. Every damned one! Even known liars and tricksters. Why? Why, God damn it?! At the cost of his health? His family?’

‘Everyone says he was a good man.’

‘I’m sick of hearing that.’

The street cut back into the sun.

‘What are you saying?’

‘They killed him! These people, his friends and neighbours, all these hypocrites, crossing themselves, looking so holy and miserable!’

The procession faltered as if his accusation had been blasted out on loudspeakers. One of the pall-bearers, an old man, was in difficulties. His strength seemed to drain from him, his feet became tangled. The man behind lost his rhythm under the lurching weight. The syncopation spread. Before they could stop it the coffin was slipping backwards. They could not hold it. It slithered from their shoulders and hit the ground with a loud crash of splintering wood.

‘Pah!’ snorted Andreas. ‘They can’t even get this right!’

The pall-bearers stopped, wiped sweat off their faces, glad of the rest.

‘You can’t blame the public,’ said George. ‘He should have protected himself.’

‘One hundred per cent! They’re evil, grasping, cheating bastards. Every damned one!’

‘We’ve all lost a friend,’ said George, ‘and you’ve lost a brother. But let’s try to be rational. You can’t blame these people for something that happened on a bicycle in Athens.’

Andreas gave him a look of pity and disgust. ‘You’ll see how they did it,’ he said. ‘Mark my words.’

A murmur began in the crowd, a current of puzzlement. The priest looked about him, his eyes flickering fearfully above the long grey beard. The chief of police stepped forward. Two men started shouting at each other.

Andreas pushed through to the front. ‘What’s going on?’

George followed. Between the mourners he saw the coffin, one corner smashed open, its blue silk interior visible. People looked away as if in shame, but George’s eye was caught by something else, something unexpected. The edge of a clear polythene bag, hanging out of the coffin. He could not see what it contained, but whatever it was it didn’t look right. The chief of police told everyone to stand back. He knelt beside the coffin, picked out the bag, unsealed it, and extracted a square, slender box. He raised the lid and found a layer of tissue paper, which he lifted delicately aside. A wreath of tiny golden leaves sparkled in the sun.

*

While the front line of the crowd marvelled, others pushed forward to get a glimpse. The police chief quickly took charge. ‘The funeral is cancelled,’ he announced. ‘Go home. This is now an incident! A matter for the police!’

He organised a cordon around the damaged coffin and repeated the order to go home.

No one budged.

He surveyed the crowd with disgust. ‘Shame on you,’ he said.

‘We want to know what’s happened,’ said a man.

‘You can see what’s happened!’

The crowd remained and the police chief with a scornful expression pulled a mobile telephone from his pocket.

‘Bring a truck,’ he barked. ‘Up the main street. Outside the bank. The mayor’s funeral has gone tis poutanas.’

Andreas shook his head and muttered, ‘Listen to him, the animal! All he knows is poutanes.’

The police chief turned to the crowd again. ‘I told you to leave,’ he shouted. ‘Move back! Away from the coffin!’

Soon the rumble of a powerful engine could be heard. The police truck appeared at the bottom of the hill and with much shouting and hooting it ground its way forward through the reluctantly parting crowd.

Two young officers jumped out, dropped the tailgate, and with the help of the pall-bearers loaded the coffin onto the back.

‘Where to?’ asked the driver as he opened his door. ‘The cemetery?’

‘Are you mad? Think, man! This is potentially a crime. It needs investigation, a report!’

‘Very good, sir. So… where then?’

‘The station!’

‘Will you come in the truck?’

‘No. I need to stay here, speak to the priest, organise this mess. I want you to unload at the station, put the coffin in a cell and lock it. No one goes near it and you answer no questions! I’ll be there soon.’

An hour later they were crowded into the police station, family and friends, discussing what to do. Five chairs, ten people, cigarettes burning. Voices talking over each other, competing to make the same few obvious points. The coffin was resting on the bed in one of the cells next door.

‘This will have to be officially investigated,’ said the chief of police. ‘It’s a major incident.’

‘All I want to know,’ said Andreas, ‘is where is Mario? Because he sure as hell isn’t in any of those plastic bags!’

It was a question no one could answer. They telephoned the funeral directors in Athens, who said the paperwork was in order. Andreas shouted, ‘This is not about paperwork, you morons. It’s about a man! My brother!’

He slammed down the phone.

They rang the hospital where Mario had been taken, but the receptionist could not get an answer from the mortuary. There was a strike, she said, try again tomorrow.

‘A strike in the mortuary,’ said Andreas. ‘There you have our country in a nutshell. Death wrapped in death. Public services that serve no one but the public servants themselves!’

‘Let’s not exaggerate,’ said the police chief. ‘There are plenty of honest public servants in this country.’

‘They should be exhibited in a museum,’ said Andreas.

The police chief asked the director of the archaeological service to examine the items in the coffin. She opened half a dozen packages and peered at them with a magnifying glass. She pronounced them to be a mixture of Hellenistic and Roman finds, of excellent workmanship and unusually well preserved. Probably from a tomb, a royal or aristocratic burial. She held one of them up, a necklace of tiny golden bees. For a few moments all were spellbound by their delicate beauty.

The police chief asked her what such objects might be doing in a coffin on Astypalea.

She replaced the necklace carefully in its box.

‘Illegal export,’ she said. ‘That’s the most likely explanation. There’s never a shortage of buyers, especially abroad. If that’s the case, and they have been taken illegally from a dig or a museum vault, burial on a quiet island would be a convenient half-way stage on their journey, allowing them to disappear for a while, until the trail goes cold.’

‘But where is Mario?’ said Andreas. ‘What the hell is the connection between all this gold and my dead brother? He wasn’t a smuggler! He wasn’t an archaeologist! Where is he?’

‘I can’t help you with that. All I can do is try to find out where these treasures have come from.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Andreas. ‘It’s no bloody use to me.’

Mario’s wife asked him to calm down. He snapped back angrily: ‘Am I the only one with any feelings?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re the only one shouting.’

‘Why don’t you shout too? He’s your husband!’

She stood up abruptly.

‘I’m taking the children home. They’re upset enough already. You’re making things worse, as you always do.’

They left the room with the same stony faces they had shown to the world all morning.

Andreas continued to fulminate. He said he would personally cut off the testicles of whoever was responsible for this crime and throw them bleeding to the sharks.

George looked at his watch. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, ‘but I need to get the airport.’

‘I’ll take you,’ said Andreas. ‘We’re wasting our time here.’

*

George watched the aeroplane float down out of a burning azure sky. It bounced once, settled on its wheels and rolled in, buzzing like a chainsaw. A door opened in its side and steps zigzagged to the ground. A dozen passengers emerged, groping into the fiery light. The two pilots followed, in dazzling white shirts and dark glasses. They stood on the tarmac, taking in the emptiness, the silence.

An announcement crackled out of the loudspeakers. George walked slowly to the aircraft with the other passengers. They bent themselves into the seats in the stuffy interior, the air smelling of hot plastic and upholstery. George felt tired and depressed. He hated leaving the islands – any island, even one he had visited for a funeral. He accepted a boiled sweet from the dark-eyed young stewardess and gazed out at a tumble of rocks beside the runway.

With a roar the plane moved off, accelerating bumpily along the tarmac, lifting quickly into the air. George saw the butterfly-shape of Astypalea laid out below, one of those strange echoes in nature, like clouds that resemble the outlines of countries or lakes that magically form the head of a wolf… Ahead stood Amorgos, a wind-sharpened blade of rock, rising sheer and pale from the water. Beyond it, a hundred miles of sea. Then Athens, the tormented, the addictive, the intolerable… He waved away the offer of a drink and closed his eyes, exhausted.

A change in the engine’s note brought him back to consciousness. Sleepily he checked his watch. Thirty-five minutes gone, and they were starting their descent. They sloped down through a ferocious heat haze towards the city, the earth scarcely visible through its mustardy blur of dust and boiling exhaust fumes. Why, he wondered, do I live down there, in all that filth?

3 Conversation with a Fly-Half

Back at home that evening, searching on the internet, George quickly found a rugby club, but it was in Athens, Georgia. In fact he found a complete parallel city to his own, a utopian Athens of functioning public institutions and friendly policemen, with an all-new marble Parthenon gleaming like freshly moulded plastic. He lingered for a few minutes on this improbable place, this mockery of the ‘real’ Athens rooted in the red soil of Attica, where a pact was made with the Furies to cancel the ancient debt of blood and revenge, building instead a state founded on law, tolerance and mutual respect. That was a pious myth if ever there was one… Smarting at the painful turn of his thoughts, he clicked off the Georgian Athens and returned to his own. He searched on through the results till he found the Athens Warriors Rugby Football Club.

It was one page only. A team photograph showed two rows of muscular young men, wild-haired and grinning. There were no names to the players. Any one of them could have been Police Lieutenant Nikolaos Karás. The team trained on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Anyone interested could telephone the Secretary.

At the Olympic complex the next evening, in a landscape of empty swimming pools and unused sports fields, he watched a tangle of bodies writhing on the grass. The ball, lost in the knot of limbs, suddenly escaped. A lone figure scooped it up and sprinted furiously for freedom. An opponent raced to intercept him, his arms reaching greedily out. He dodged to the right and ran on. Another appeared, flung himself at his legs, cutting him down. As he fell he flicked the ball to his right. One of his team grabbed it, ran on, passed again, took the return pass and dived over the line. The trainer’s whistle shrilled and a shout of triumph went up from his team.

‘Bravo ré pousti!’

George was in a cloud of nostalgia. Winter afternoons in London. Mist dripping through bare trees. Wet mud in his clothes and hair. His spirits riding strangely high. Happiness sharpened on a whetstone of cold and discomfort. He tried to explain it to his friends back in Athens, kids who played basketball on balmy evenings and went water-skiing. They couldn’t see the point and ignorantly laughed.

The final whistle blew and the players strolled off the field. George waited a while, watching them pull on tracksuits and untie their boots. One of them stood up briskly, waved to the others and jogged across to him.

‘Mr Zafiris?’

‘That’s right. Nikos Karás?’

‘The same.’ They shook hands.

‘Do you have a car?’

‘Motor bike,’ said George.

‘OK, I’ll take mine. You can follow me.’

They threaded through the streets south of the stadium to a bar under a quartet of plane trees. They ordered two Fix beers.

‘I need to eat something,’ said Karás. ‘Bring a big plate of mezé.’

‘It’s a high energy game,’ said George.

‘Seen it before?’

‘I used to play.’

‘Oh yes? Which team?’

‘London University.’

Karás nodded. ‘That’s the place to learn. The game’s too crude here. We like the aggression, but we’re not so good on the teamwork.’

‘I saw a nice try.’

‘That was Thanasis. I gave him the return pass.’

‘That’s teamwork.’

‘I know. And practice. We rehearsed that exact move this evening. But under match conditions we revert to type and it’s every man for himself.’

The beer and mezé arrived. They filled their glasses and wished each other good health. Karás pushed the plate of food towards George. ‘Help yourself.’

George said, ‘You eat. I’ll just drink for now.’

Karás speared a piece of stewed octopus.

‘You’ve read my report?’

George nodded.

‘What did you think?’

‘It left a lot of questions unanswered.’

‘Of course.’

‘You knew it as you wrote it?’

‘I did.’

‘So why did you file it?’

‘I had no choice.’

‘Someone put pressure on you.’

‘Pressure yes. But it wasn’t “someone”. More like the whole police command.’

‘Why did they do that?’

‘I have no idea, but I didn’t like it.’

‘So you went to Sotiriou.’

‘As you see…’

‘Why him?’

‘He’s a relative.’

‘A close relative?’

‘My mother’s first cousin. I’ve known him since I was a boy. He inspired me to go into the police.’

‘I see,’ said George.

He wondered whether to say the victim was a friend.

‘I’d like to get the story clear,’ he said. ‘Were you at the scene of the accident?’

‘I was.’

‘The first one there?’

‘I believe so.’

‘And what did you see?’

‘A long skid. The truck diagonally across the road at the end of it, the bicycle bent and crushed about five metres away, the victim lying on the ground as if he was asleep.’

‘What about the truck driver?’

‘In his cab. Shaking.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘First I checked the victim.’ Karás grimaced. ‘Kaput.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No pulse.’

‘Was there a medical team?’

‘They came in a couple of minutes. They tried to revive him, but nothing.’

‘Tell me about the truck driver.’

‘I asked him to step out, gave him the usual warnings and assurances. He was like a zombie.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Dazed. Frightened.’

‘Why frightened?’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’

‘What did he say about the accident?’

Karás hesitated.

‘I need to ask you something before I answer that.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘How do you know Colonel Sotiriou?’

‘I’ve dealt with him over many years.’

‘You have a good relationship?’

‘Good enough. We’ve had our differences, but there’s respect between us.’