The Devil Takes Half (27 page)

Nikos Papoulis took the children away before they finished the service, leaving Marina's mother at the graveside. She began to cry, reaching out toward her daughter's grave with her hands and calling her name. The bishop signaled Papa Michalis, who gently led her away and found her a chair in the shade.

After Marina had been laid to rest, her relatives offered coffee and brandy to the mourners in the small building at the back of the cemetery. Papa Michalis stayed near Marina's mother throughout the burial and its aftermath.

If I take anything with me from these hours,
Patronas thought,
it will be the image of those two old people dressed entirely in black—one crippled, the other wracked with grief—leaning against each other, struggling to stay upright.

He kept thinking of the day he'd met Marina for the first time, of the young girl she'd been. Her mother had bought a new dress for her, a white sundress with a smocked top embroidered with tiny yellow sunflowers, and she was wearing white leather shoes, shined so recently he could still smell the polish. Remembering her like that—the way she'd smiled at him that first afternoon, her eyes full of mischief—he wanted to scream. To eat ashes and tear out his hair like the ancients had done.

He grasps even the naked sword.

—
Greek proverb

T
he travel Agency was located on a side street near the harbor, handwritten schedules for the boats to Athens taped to its front door. The owner rose from her desk to greet Patronas. “Chief Officer, what can I do for you?”

“
I need to go through Marina's things.”

“
But your men were here already.” He could see her calculating how much his presence, sitting at the front of her office, was going to cost her in tourist walk-ins. “They came two days ago.”

“
I need to do it again.” He didn't tell her the papers he'd found in the cave were too bloody to read and that he'd had to send them to Athens to be transcribed by the forensic people.

Reluctantly, she led him over to an empty desk. Family photographs were pinned to the wall behind it, and there was a pair of worn slippers lying under the chair.

Patronas turned on the computer, thinking it wouldn't be hard to retrace her steps in cyberspace, just find the sites she'd accessed and follow them. She'd emailed Olympic Airlines and two or three shipping lines the morning before she died, and he called the airlines to see if anyone remembered the query. It took some time, but he found a woman who did. Marina had wanted to know if they'd had anyone flying to Chios from Cyprus by way of Athens on July twenty-fourth. “I told her no,” the woman said. “She said she needed me to check a bunch of other dates, too, and asked for the names of all the passengers who'd flown here from the United States. It was a lot of work, but I got her everything she asked for.”

“
Did you keep a record of this?”

“
Sure. She told me it was for a police investigation and might be used as evidence, so I made a copy and gave it to my supervisor. If you want, I can fax it to you. What's your number?”

A few minutes later, he had the list. Jonathan Alcott had arrived when he said he had, on July twenty-fifth—Olympic Airlines from New York to Athens and then on to Chios. Manos and Voula were listed as passengers on an Olympic flight from Athens to Chios on July twenty-sixth. He checked his notes; that was also the day they'd told him they'd arrived. Devon McLean and Titina Argentis, contrary to what they'd told him, had arrived together three days earlier.

He called the woman back. “Can you check and see when McLean arrived in Greece from Cyprus? Not Chios, Greece. Also Titina Argentis from London.”

“
He didn't,” the woman told him when she called back. “There's no record of Devon McLean on any carrier from Cyprus in the month of July.”

“
Is there any way to check and see if he came by boat?”

“
Not really. I can try. Maybe with all this commotion about terrorists, the cruise ships and ferry boats are keeping the passenger rosters, but I doubt it.”

When she didn't find anything, he asked her to recheck the airplane manifests for June, also May. “Check for the others as well,” he said.

Both Manos Kleftis and Devon McLean were listed—McLean on a flight from Cyprus to Athens on May thirty-first—but there was nothing indicating he'd taken a connecting flight to Chios at any point after. Kleftis had travelled from Athens to Chios on June first, accompanied by Voula Athanassiou, who was listed as a passenger on the same flight. They'd left again a week later only to return when they said they had on the twenty-sixth.

“
Check again for McLean,” he instructed the woman.

“
Nothing. I'm sorry.”

Patronas leaned back in his chair. “Playing the priest,” he said aloud. When they played the priest, card sharks always dealt out three cards, kings usually, which meant Marina had been talking about three men. He was pretty sure McLean and Kleftis were involved. They'd both lied to him. Titina Argentis and McLean had travelled together on the same flight. But who was the third? Marina had told Papa Michalis the two had needed a local, someone who knew Chios. That ruled out Alcott. Could it have been Antonis Argentis? Or was the third person a woman? Voula or Titina perhaps? And what was that nonsense about the ‘cartoon'?

“
Did she discuss the case on the phone while she was here?” he asked the owner of the travel agency. He could petition OTE, the Greek communications agency, for the phone records of the travel agency, but that would take forever, time he didn't have.

She thought for moment. “She did call someone in Volissos a day before she went missing. I remember because she asked me if I had the number before she called. She said she wanted to check if there was a boat registered.”

“
In whose name? Do you remember?”

“
No, Chief Officer. I'm sorry.”

So Marina and he had been trying to establish the same thing … the date of McLean's arrival by boat.

The chief officer began to go through her files, reading every scrap of paper. Afterward, he got down on his hands and knees and checked the floor underneath her desk in case she'd dropped something. He picked up her battered cloth slippers and tenderly moved them aside. He pictured her kicking off her good shoes and putting them on, padding around the office in them. Tears welled in his eyes and he choked back a sob.

* * *

The Pakistani drew back when Patronas walked up to his kiosk, his face wary. The chief officer had made a point of driving the Citroen, not a squad car, to Castro, but the man apparently knew both him and his car on sight. “Yes,” he stammered.

“
A couple of days ago, Papa Michalis and Marina Papoulis were here. I understand they spoke with you.”

“
That's right,” the man said, relief visible in his face. Patronas was sure he was illegal, he and his family both. Let the authorities in Athens worry about it. The right wing politicians. He didn't care what part of the world people came from or how long they stayed. Borders weren't his problem.

“
What did you tell them?”

“
About Mr. Manos. Man who visit him. Company,
parea
.”

“
What did you say about the man?”

“
Woman, she wants to know how he looks.” He reached into the kiosk and pulled out two comic books. “I say, like this.” He tapped the cover of the top one. “Like cartoon.”

Patronas reached for the comics. “May I have them?”

“
Sure. Take.”

They were French comics, reprints of the original series featuring Tintin. Patronas scanned the first,
L'Affaire Tournesol,
while he sat in his car. Although his French was rudimentary, he could follow the storyline. It featured a Professor Calculus, who'd been kidnapped, and an obnoxious tourist, Jolyona Wagg, who wore shorts and got in the way. Tintin himself had red hair.
Okay
, thought Patronas,
which one is it?
Devon McLean had red hair, but was dissimilar to Tintin in every other respect. Wagg, the American from the Rock Bottom Insurance Agency, reminded Patronas a bit of Alcott, not in physical appearance so much as in dress and attitude. The other comic,
The Castafiore Emerald
, included a woman, Bianca Castafiore, who sang opera, wore a mink coat, and appeared slightly ridiculous. Titina Argentis?

It would be a stretch, but maybe. He'd have to check with the Pakistani again. But when he returned to the kiosk, the man was gone.

Frustrated, he drove back to the police station. Tembelos and the others were still up at the monastery, so the place was quiet. He got out his notebook and wrote down what the Pakistani had told him. When he finished, he read back through everything. What did he have? He'd verified that three of the suspects had come to Chios long before they said they had and that two had come together. A coincidence? He didn't think so. Manos Kleftis and Voula Athanassiou had both come in June and returned again in July, as had Devon McLean. He leafed through the comics again. It had to be Tintin the Pakistani had been talking about, Tintin with his orange-red hair. Which meant the ‘cartoon' man was McLean. Based on the Englishman's appearance, his fair skin and womanish body, Patronas had dismissed him as a suspect. He'd assumed he was harmless, a rabbit. Apparently he was something else. Not a murderer perhaps, but someone who would pick through the leavings of one. A jackal, a crow.

Even at the fountain, he finds no water.

—
Greek proverb

A
thought occurred to Patronas as he read through his notes, something he'd missed and needed to ask the shepherd about. He thought he was beginning to catch a glimpse of what had transpired prior to the murders, the people involved. He could be completely wrong. It might have been Antonis Argentis working with his mother, the two of them after Eleni's inheritance. But then why kill Petros and Marina? No, it had to be the discovery of the Minoan city beneath Profitis Ilias that had set the whole thing in motion.

The shepherd had proven to be an elusive quarry. No one had seen him on the hill since Marina's death, yet it was evident someone was tending the goats, freshening their water and seeing to it that the animals had food. It even looked like the new pen had been raked out, straw scattered on the ground.

Patronas rubbed his eyes. He had stayed up all night waiting for the shepherd, who he assumed came out while the others slept. It was a few minutes before dawn and he could see the hills around Profitis Ilias slowly taking shape in the pale light. He heard a rooster crowing in the village below. The wind was blowing, and it stirred the thistles, the dust in the abandoned corral.

The shepherd appeared a little while later, coming up over the rocks from the direction of Korres' farm. He was carrying a bale of hay, moving quickly and calling to the goats in his strange lisping speech. The goats began moving around the pen, restless, bleating plaintively in response.

“
Kale mera
,” Patronas called to him. “Good day.”

Perhaps remembering the fifty Euros, the man smiled and moved to shake the chief officer's hand. He was wearing the same tattered clothes and taped-up shoes, and his hair was even filthier than Patronas remembered, the grimy ringlets forming a matted halo around his face.

Patronas offered to share his breakfast with him, and the man seized the bread greedily and shoved it into his mouth, then reached for a piece of the feta cheese. He didn't want coffee, but cooed when he saw the figs, cradling them in his hand and eating them slowly, one by one. He smiled at him as he ate. Patronas tried not to look at him; his split lip was caked with seeds and juice.

No murderer this,
he thought.
No, this is an innocent. Put him in animal skins and he could pass for John the Baptist or a prophet in the Old Testament, one of those who lived on snakes and nettles and didn't bathe.

“
As you know, a woman was killed here four days ago,” he said. “August fifteenth it was. It happened here in the corral or close by. After she was murdered, she was dragged down the stairs and into the cave.”

Still eating, the shepherd nodded. “I hear of this.”

“
Did you see who did it? Were you here when it happened?”

“
No. I am far away. I only hear.” He wiped his mouth with his hand and led Patronas to an outcropping of rock near the bottom of the hill, demonstrating how he'd crouched down in the shadows. “After Petros die, I am afraid. I hide when people come. I no show myself.”

“
You said ‘people.' ” Patronas wanted to get this clarified, as there was a language difference and the word in Greek frequently caused foreigners trouble. “How many came?”

“
The day lady scream, two.”

“
What did they look like?”

“
I no see.” Uncomfortable, he moved his foot back and forth in the dirt. “I am away.”

“
Other times, did people come?”

“
Two, always same. Come at night.”

“
Did you see either of them?”

The man shook his head.