The Devil Takes Half (21 page)

The police car Tembelos was driving was relatively new. A large and expensive sedan imported from Germany, it wasn't meant to be driven like a race car. Tembelos, the size of a rhinoceros, bounced up and down in the front seat, the expensive Pirelli tires spewing gravel, the springs getting shot to hell
.
Patronas sighed
.
It didn't matter. He'd discuss Giorgos' behavior with the man another time—maybe suggest he lose some weight, re-read the pamphlet on the use of departmental vehicles. Tembelos was his best man, and if he had to sacrifice a car or two to keep him happy, so be it.

The goats were nearby, probably on the lower slopes; he could hear their bells jingling as he walked up the path. The shepherd must move them from hill to hill every few days in search of fresh pasture. He'd have to remember to check and find out who the man was and question him … also whoever was working the garden, though that would be harder to discover. One more task, one more useless task. He was beginning to think he would never find the killer. More than two weeks had passed and he knew no more than when he'd started. The wind had died down and the heat lay like a blanket on the still air. He could hear the chickens clucking inside the monastery. Before he went home, he'd feed them and water the garden.

The shepherd, a forty-year-old Albanian, turned up at the monastery later that evening. Patronas met him bringing his goats around to the place where the trenches were. The man had a cleft palate that had never been repaired and spoke poorly as a result. He'd probably taken on the work to get away from people, those who would tease him and mock his deformity. The goats nuzzled him with their heads while he and the man spoke; the Albanian had names for each of them and constantly stroked and petted them. Tall and well-built, the shepherd had the physical strength necessary for the assault on Papa Michalis, Patronas judged, but not the spirit. He seemed more child than man, cringing when Patronas reached for cigarette, hugging himself and cowering as if afraid of getting hit. His undershirt was dirty, his shoes were mended with duct tape, and his hair was cut so unevenly he had to have hacked it off himself, most probably with a knife
.
Patronas felt sure the shepherd was illiterate. He wouldn't know the value of a Minoan relic, nor how to go about selling it. This man was scared of his own shadow. An unsophisticated, feral creature, he'd be more at home in a stable than a house.

The man swore he hadn't been anywhere near the dig site the day Petros Athanassiou was killed. He liked to roam the hills and nap in the open air, he said. Uncomfortable with Patronas, he kept trying to shield his broken face with his hand, making him difficult to understand. On one point he was adamant, however: he'd seen and heard nothing. Although Patronas had threatened him with deportation, he hadn't budged, and the chief officer was forced to conclude he was telling the truth. The shepherd did say that he'd seen people on the hill, ‘many people,' in the weeks before the attack. Three at least. But when Patronas asked who they were, he just shook his head. It was his garden, too, at the top of the hill. He'd begged Patronas to let him keep it. He was hungry. He had nothing. Patronas slipped him fifty Euros and told him to be on his way.

The shepherd stood where he was for a long time, looking down at the money in his hand as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He kept making a strange, wheezing sound as if something was caught in his throat. It took Patronas a moment to realize it was joy the man was communicating—that the strangled, tortured sound he was hearing was laughter.

* * *

After leaving the shepherd, Patronas reentered the monastery and checked the crypt under the chapel. It was as he'd left it. He could still see the button he'd pulled off his uniform and positioned beneath the metal door. Fingerprinting powder darkened the doorknobs and the windowsills of the other rooms in the monastery, making everything look soiled, unclean. Though the chalk was badly smudged, he could make out the outline of Papa Michalis' body one of his men had drawn on the pavement next to the well. How small the priest had been.

He fed the chickens then found a bucket in the kitchen and walked over to the well to get water for the garden. He attached the wooden bucket to the pulley and let it down, but it stopped abruptly after two meters. Something seemed to be obstructing it.

“
What the devil!” Peering into the well, he dipped a hand in the water and swished it back and forth. The well clearly narrowed, a wall of some kind protruding into the shaft and blocking off a portion of it.

The interior of the well was paved with black and white cobblestones arranged in patterns—dolphins, anchors, boats, things he associated with the sea. Bands of larger stones divided the designs, radiating out from the well in a series of concentric circles. Perhaps Eleni had been onto something after all, he thought, remembering the divining rods and other water symbols on the Phaistos Disc, the spiraling pattern of the hieroglyphics. Water, yes. Perhaps water was the key.

He knelt and tried to pry off the metal facing of the well with his hands. He'd thought it would be heavy and was surprised to find how light it was. Set in a groove in the rock, it slid back easily, revealing a square opening. Thinking the well might be deeper than he'd originally thought—connected to the ancient cistern—he picked up a pebble and dropped it into the hole. There was no splash when it hit, no sound of water. Odd, that.

He peered in after it. The well had a false bottom. Below was empty space.

A smell rose up from the hole, the same deathly odor he'd smelled the night the priest had been attacked. He wished he had a flashlight, something powerful to light the space. It was already late. The sun was setting and it would be dark soon. Reluctantly, he replaced the metal panels and left the monastery, locking the doors behind him, thinking he'd bring his men back with him tomorrow. It would be better that way, more sensible than going it alone. He and his men would explore the opening thoroughly with propane lanterns. They could even break out the electric generators, if necessary, to illuminate the darkness. He told himself that this was only prudent, that to do it now would be foolhardy. He might hurt himself or destroy valuable evidence. But he knew the real reason: that hole scared him to death.

* * *

Patronas quickly drove back to police headquarters. A modern two-story building, it faced the Plateia Vounaki, the central square of Chios. The tables in the patisseries were full of people and Patronas could hear children playing near the old mosque. Once again someone had spray-painted the bronze statue of Kanaris, the famous Greek captain who had rammed a Turkish warship with a burning boat and sunk it during the War of Independence. They'd stuck a spent cigarette butt in his mouth. Maybe the city should build a little fence around the statue, something with spikes that would keep the kids off. The air was so still, he could see the reflections of the boats on the golden surface of the harbor. A sailboat was casting off, part of a flotilla of tourists bound for another island.

He wanted to go sit by the water. Stay there until the stars came out. He was fearful of what lay ahead. That hole, the blackness at the bottom of the well. The prospect of meeting up with someone who could slice a woman to ribbons and throw what was left of her away, who could kill a child, assault a priest …. He'd begged Costas Stamnas and the other fisherman to accept police protection, but the fishermen had laughed him off.

“
I'll take my boat out until you catch him,” Stamnas had told him. “Fishing is good off Karpathos this time of year.” Patronas had wanted to go with him, to throw his net in the water and feel the wind on his face. To be done with this miserable job.

He pushed the door of the police station open and went inside. Giorgos Tembelos was the only one there. He was sitting at his desk, smoking a cigarette and flipping through a magazine. Whether it was a sports or girly magazine, Patronas couldn't tell; that about covered the range of Giorgos' interests.

“
Where's the evidence from Eleni Argentis' house?” he asked him. “I put everything I found in a cardboard box after I was done going through it. Where is it now?”

Tembelos didn't look up. Must be girly. “Evangelos put everything from her house on the shelf in the closet.”

The chief officer rummaged through the box until he found the CDs. He was eager to look at them again, to compare Eleni Argentis' notes with what he now knew about the well. He called Athens and ordered additional crime lights, as the ones in Chios would never do the trick. “As soon as possible,” he told the man at the Ministry. “Send them here on the next plane.”

“
I want you to call everyone and tell them to be at the monastery at first light,” he ordered Tembelos.

“
Everybody took the week off. You forgot? It's August Fifteenth, Monday.”

“
Oh, well. It'll just be the two of us then. I'll meet you there in the morning. And, Giorgos, I want you to be in charge of the equipment. We'll need lanterns, two generators, a string of electric lights, ropes and pick axes and grapples.”

“
Grapples? What happened?” Tembelos asked sleepily. “The bats fight back?”

Unfading are the gardens of kindness.

—
Greek proverb

P
atronas swerved to avoid a pedestrian as he drove through the old Turkish quarter. The deconsecrated mosque had once been a museum, but had been closed for over a decade in deference to Turkish religious sensitivities. The ancient busts and sarcophagi, most dating from the time of Caesar, still littered the courtyard. Dead leaves covered the pavement and collected in the rusting iron fence in front. The old baths were still there, too. Against the sky, he could see the silhouette of the burnished metal domes, an old Turkish cemetery behind them, the headstones shaped like phalluses, narrow with bulbous tops. As far as he knew, there were no headstones for women or children, and he'd often wondered where the Turks had buried them. Jutting out over the street were the large wooden rooms where the wives of the Ottomans had once been housed, watching the life in the street from their second-story windows. The quarter was one of the poorest on the island. The high wooden doorways of the buildings were in need of paint, and the limestone walls were covered with political slogans and ripped posters advertising cheap cellphones and local nightclub acts. The road forked at the end of the quarter. Taking the left fork, he drove toward Campos.

* * *

Marina Papoulis was standing outside, watering the bougainvillea at the front of her home.

“
Papa Michalis is coming from Athens today,” Patronas told her. “I tried to reach you, but you must have been outside. They want me to meet his plane.”

She let the hose drop and turned off the water. “Where's he going to stay?”

“
I don't know. I can't take him back to Profitis Ilias. He's on crutches. He'd never make it up the path.”

“
How about bringing him here? He'll be more comfortable, and I can look after him. It's no trouble. We have plenty of room. While you pick him up, I can air out the guest room and put out clean towels. I've already cooked.” She touched his arm. “We'll have a ‘welcome home' party for him.”

“
Are you sure?”

He'd been worrying about where to put Papa Michalis ever since he'd received the call from KAT. When Patronas had called the Archdiocese, Bishop Gerasimos had suggested Psarra, saying Papa Michalis' fellow priests could look after him, but Patronas hadn't wanted to do that to the old man. He wanted him to be able to stay on Chios, near his friends and a hospital, and he was relieved when Marina Papoulis offered to take him in.

She nodded. “It will be my honor.”

* * *

The passengers from Athens were already disembarking by the time Patronas reached the airport. After everyone had exited, two flight attendants appeared at the door with Papa Michalis. He was standing on crutches, a tight expression on his face. He looked shrunken and old.

When he saw the chief officer, he raised one of his crutches in greeting. A pick-up truck was moving toward the plane, towing a wooden flatbed trailer. With great care, the two attendants helped Papa Michalis onto the flatbed and held him erect while they moved to the terminal. As always, Greeks had found a way to get the job done—to get a crippled man off a plane. Patronas watched the truck progress slowly toward him, Papa Michalis standing there on his crutches as if riding a float in a parade. Lacking modern equipment, the staff had improvised.

“
Welcome home, Father,” he said.

“
Did you see that? They moved me like a suitcase.” Papa Michalis grinned broadly at him. In addition to bandaging his head and putting a cast on his leg, the people at KAT had apparently fixed his teeth as well. The new teeth disturbed Patronas, who found the contrast between the man's eighty-two-year-old face and his sparkling new teeth unsettling. There also appeared to be a problem with the size. The priest obviously didn't think so, as he just kept smiling and smiling.
The poor man,
thought Patronas.
It was as if they'd filled his mouth with piano keys.

“
What's happening with the investigation? Have you got them yet?”

Patronas helped him into the car. “I'll tell you on the way to Marina's.”

But, tired from the trip, the priest fell asleep almost immediately, his white hair sticking up in tufts against the seat of the car.