The Church Murders: A stand-alone thriller (Greek Island Mysteries Book 2)

by Luke Christodoulou

  I did not argue. My tummy was making its crocodile noises and I knew Ioli would go past migraine and into bitch mood if she did not feed soon.

  Twenty five minutes later, room service A.K.A. chatty receptionist found us both shiny and refreshed in the sitting area A.K.A. sofa with coffee table. Ioli had ordered pork chops with oregano and onions, golden, Cypriot, oven potatoes and a Greek salad with fresh and juicy-looking tomatoes and cucumbers. Feta cheese covered the top of the salad and olive oil painted it green. I looked at the two ice-cold Mythos beers and smiled.

  ‘You remembered my beer?’

  ‘Let’s dig in.’ Her excitement wrapped around every word she said.

  I let her enjoy her meal, before attempting to ask what had been on my mind, days in and days out.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Want a simple yes?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Yeah, it sucked that I got shot and it hurt like a motherfucker, but three months of therapy brought my body back to shape.’

  ‘And your mind?’

  ‘Mama helped with that. Being home felt good but... with the risk of sounding like some psycho freak, I missed work, murders and all.’

  ‘Your mama is one great lady.’

  ‘Yes, she is. Though we argued every Sunday when she tried to wake me up for church.’

  ‘Not religious, Ioli?’

  Her eyes opened wide, she flashed me her pearly white teeth and took a sip from her beer.

  ‘You know, it’s a weird topic for me. I mean, like all Greeks, my parents woke me every Sunday and took me to church. School took us, grandmothers took us. We went on all the major holidays and our houses are filled with icons. And, there’s me, doubting everything. Sitting there, unable to switch my thoughts off.’

  ‘Doubting what exactly?’

  ‘Not God himself, but all this Saint this, and do this, and pray like this, and dress like this, eat this and not that... I mean, what the fuck does food have to do with your soul? My parents ate a huge bowl of delicious black-eyed beans with Greek pumpkin and tuna and olive oil and bread, and my aunt brought cake made of some sort of non-dairy fake chocolate. That is not fasting. I mean, why is it a sin to eat a tiny burger? The amount is smaller.’ She paused. ‘I sound silly, don’t I?’

  ‘No, no. I get where you’re coming from. I had the same upbringing. I never thought about doubts until Gaby died. What God kills children, right? Then, I accepted that God does not interfere with us, free will and all, and I just live each day, working, doing good to society and when death comes, maybe answers will appear.’

  ‘Or maybe we will rot into nothingness...’

  ‘Death fears you?’

  ‘Not death itself. The idea that everything we do is in vain, if there is nothing to follow.’

  ‘To life after death,’ I raised my voice and my beer. Her beer met mine and with an ‘ygeia mas’ and a ‘kalinyxta’, we went our separate ways.

  I stripped down to my black boxers and fell like a log on top of the bed. The central heating quite enough for my thick skin. Ioli went to her room, brushed her teeth, let her hair loose, took off her minimal make-up, washed and scrubbed her face, undressed, wore her light blue pyjamas with the cute penguins on, dived under the warm bed covers and picked up her Kindle Fire from the 1940’s bedside table. She felt happy; her favorite writer, Lena Manta, had added a mystery book to her portfolio.

  ‘The five keys...’ she read to herself. Her police mind pretty much figured out the culprit, but she enjoyed being transferred to her reading land. Page 102 was hard to read. Not due to the subject matter though. Falling eyelids made it hard to read. She switched off the light and her Kindle, assumed her sleeping position and whispered a ‘Goodnight, God. Keep mama and papa safe. Amen.’

  The next thing that we heard was the banging on our doors. Hercule banged away on mine, while Christina knocked on Ioli’s door.

  ‘One minute,’ I managed to say. Two words more than I usually manage at six in the morning. Ioli uttered more words than me. Most were a repetition of the f word or combinations of the f word with others. The girl did have a good imagination. My ears managed to electrify my mind’s inner circuit and I formed the words coming out of Hercule’s mouth into a sentence.

  Stella had hanged herself.

  Her husband noticed her missing from their bed, opened their bedroom door and found her swinging above the stairs. He ran to his lifeless wife, crying, shouting, holding her up. His love was gone. She hung colder than the night. The small note in her hand, gave way to rage. Enough fury to strangle his pain.

  FOR MARIO... SEE YOU SOON.

  Tears now fell for an entirely different reason. He sat on the last step. Blank mind. When he felt ready, he called it in.

  Chapter 21

  New York

  Mister Sebastianos, Sebastian to all his friends, woke up and praised the Lord for another day. He praised him even more, when a whiff of bacon and eggs came out of the kitchen and into the room. After peeing for the seventh time in the last ten hours, he trudged down the corridor, stopping at Jesus’s icon, hanging between family photos. He kissed the icon and thought of the good life he had lived. Through the bad, good always managed to prevail. He did not always agree with the Lord for sending the bad, but he felt thankful for the good.

  His wife, Maria, was busy over a hot pan. Both were in their seventies and still very much in love. He hugged her from behind and laid a gentle, tender kiss on her neck. They both enjoyed breakfast together, now they had retired. They ate what they wanted, for as long as they wanted. No train to catch, no ‘I’m late for work’, no telling the kids to hurry up. Even on Sundays -church day- they would have breakfast after church so as to enjoy it at their own pace.

  ‘We got plans?’ Sebastian asked, teeth still grinding a juicy piece of back bacon.

  Maria smiled. ‘You mean, have I got chores for you? No, you are free!’

  His weird soft laughter widened her smile further along her round face.

  ‘Great. I’m going down to the park to play chess with the boys.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘First day without rain. We said, whoever is still alive, chess tournament on the first day it stops raining!’ Now, it was her turn to laugh.

  ‘Well, I hope all your friends are still alive.’

  That was his plan for the day. Chess tournament. Until lunch, that was. Maria promised to make his favorite. Moussaka, salad and his collection of much-needed pills.

  With his brown flat cap on and his jacket’s collar pulled up all Dracula style, as he referred to it, he exited onto Ditmar’s Boulevard. He walked close to the wall of the red, bricked apartment blocks to keep out of the cold wind’s path. He shot straight to the Agnanti Greek Tavern, on the corner of 19th street. In old man’s time, he was late, and the boys had already drunk their first morning coffee and were across the street, by one of the park’s many entrances.

  ‘Sebastian’s here, too!’ John declared with a loud voice that made him cough and the gang to laugh.

  ‘Keep it down. You don’t wanna give yourself another heart attack!’ Pier joked.

  Sebastian rushed to cross over. A fine day for chess, but definitely not a fine day for Abigail Moore. Everything that could delay her had happened and now she sped down the road, coffee in one hand, her morning cigarette in the other. Her eye caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure in front of her Ford Explorer SUV. She dropped her coffee in an attempt to turn the wheel and stepped down on the brakes. The icy road did her no favors. She hit Sebastian hard and threw him high into the air. Gravity pulled him back down to earth and his head hit the sidewalk. Blood ebbed out of his open skull.

  Maria whistled away, busy with her moussaka preparations when the phone rang. John coughed to clear his throat. His words came from his weak heart.

  ‘Maria, there’s been an accident. Sebastian was hit by a car. The ambulance picked him up. I am sending my daughter to pick you up. Be strong, Maria. Se
bastian is a fighter.’

  Maria fell to the floor. Her heart pounded so loud, she thought it would jump out of her chest. She closed her eyes, prayed to the Theotokos and gathered enough courage to pull herself up.

  Chapter 22

  Jacob Hatzinikolaou, sat silent and morose on a white, plastic patio chair. He seemed unable to speak or face the house. He wore only his boxers and a thin Olympiakos T-shirt. It was just a few degrees above zero, but the cold did not seem to bother him. Constable Christina approached him and covered him in one of those ugly, itchy, grey police blankets. He did not pay any attention to her. The paramedics stood by the door. They had checked Stella for vital signs and waited for the police to arrive and give the okay for the body’s removal.

  Ioli entered first and I followed close behind. The body had stopped swinging. The first sunrays were sneaking in from behind charcoal clouds and thin curtains, shedding light upon the frigid corpse. Stella had used thick rope, borrowed from her husband’s shed. Jacob was quite the handyman and had all ‘kinds of crap’ as she referred to his stuff. She had tied the rope around the staircase chandelier and jumped from the top step, snapping her neck in a matter of seconds. Her yellow Snoopy pyjamas and her pink toenails in full contrast to the macabre scene.

  Ioli stretched her latex gloves and picked up the ball of paper beneath the dead woman. She unfolded it carefully.

  ‘For Mario, see you soon,’ she read.

  ‘That would explain the husband’s state.’

  ‘Love should be announced as the number one cause of death, if you ask me,’ Ioli said and continued to examine the body. I stood beside her, scanning the body.

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ I replied, checking her pajama pockets. Both empty.

  ‘Wife finds out about affair, wife poisons husband? Husband’s whore shoots wife and then throws herself to death?’ I was not sure if Ioli was talking to me or mumbling to herself, searching for reason.

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time. A timeless tale on which books, movies and series are based on.’

  Outside Constable Christina managed to get Jacob’s statement. Not that he had much to say. With my permission, she let the paramedics take him to the hospital. His parents and his sisters were notified for support. The old relic of a doctor arrived too, announced that Stella had died two hours ago and ordered the men with him to bring the body to the ambulance. He was in a rush to get out of the cold. Unusual for someone born during the last ice-age.

  I loosened the rope.

  ‘Ever attained fingerprints from a rope?’ Ioli asked, knowing it was hopeless. That is when it hit her. I saw it, in her eyes.

  ‘She smoked with her left hand. Call Christina to ask her husband if she was left handed.’

  Ioli waited eagerly as I spoke. I lowered my phone. Stella was indeed left handed.

  ‘Does this look like a knot tied by a left-handed person?’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned...’

  Chapter 23

  After two hours of collecting evidence from the murder scene, we were back at the police station, waiting for Christina to bring in Jacob for questioning. Her apple-shaped body and hazelnut, long, wavy hair soon opened the door. Jacob walked in, dressed this time in a pair of jeans and a black, leather jacket, zipped all the way to the top. His bloodshot eyes were dry of tears. Christina introduced us and escorted him to interrogation room one. He zombie walked behind her. We followed and sat down opposite him. Christina excused herself and off she went to prepare coffees for all.

  ‘We are so sorry for your loss, Mr. Hatzinikolaou, and we are sorry to have to bring you in, just hours after your wife’s death, but it’s important that your memory is fresh.’

  He looked at me emotion-less as I spoke. With a slight nod, he seemed to agree with what I said.

  ‘Did you hear anything last night, Mr. Hatzinikolaou?’

  ‘Please call me, Jacob. That runway of a surname will leave you breathless,’ he joked, yet remained in the same pitiful state. We smiled and let him continue in his own time. ‘I sleep heavy. I mean, real heavy. Always had trouble with school and the army. It must have been six o’clock when I turned and realized I was alone in bed. I got up, peed and called out for Stella. She did not answer, so I went to find her and... There she was. Killed herself. For another man.’ The last three words came out with anger. Fury burned in his eyes. ‘Do you know how long she had been seeing him?’ he clenched his fists and asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, but no.’

  ‘I fucking went fishing with the guy. Saw him in the pub. That mother...’ He slammed down his clenched fists on the table. ‘Sorry,’ he rushed to add.

  ‘Jacob, I won’t even pretend to understand what you are going through at the moment, but you need to relax and think hard if you heard or saw anything. Anything suspicious, maybe? Out of the ordinary?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘No... But... Erm... why are you asking? Was someone with her?’

  ‘What size shoe do you wear, Jacob?’ Ioli asked.

  ‘Forty-two...’ He looked even more puzzled.

  ‘There were footprints on your carpet. Size forty-five. Know anyone with a size forty-five shoe?’

  ‘Wait, she had help?’

  ‘Or maybe she had too much help? Was the note in her handwriting?’

  Christina pushed open the door with her body and with a faint smile, she left the coffees, a plate filled with vanilla cream biscuits and without saying a word, she exited the room.

  ‘Can I see the note again?’

  ‘Sure.’ Ioli placed the nylon evidence bag containing the note before him. Jacob studied it for a second and announced that it was indeed Stella’s handwriting. I showed him a photograph of the rope. He recognized it as his own from his shed.

  ‘Do you think she was... murdered?’

  ‘We don’t know, Jacob, but we have to examine every angle. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her? Any threats made?’

  He shook his head. We drank coffee and listened to his stories about how loved his Stella was. He was a man in torment. But, did he hurt enough to kill her?

  ‘For me, if he knew about the affair, he is a suspect,’ Ioli said, after Jacob had left.

  Ioli spent the rest of the day, labelling fingerprints lifted from the house and faxing them to HQ. She got in touch with the medical examiner, who confirmed death by spinal rupture. No other bruising than that caused by the rope. She had no defense wounds. Everything pointed to a clear case of suicide.

  Just as the evening rolled in and Ioli began to doubt her theory, I called.

  Constable Christina and I were out making door to door enquiries in the freezing cold. At least, it did not rain nor snow. By the time we reached the last house on the street, I was looking more and more like Rudolf. So far, no-one had seen anything. Every single person had been asleep around the time of death. Some houses were completely empty; overflowing post boxes giving away that the owners only stayed here during the lively summer months, which here in Greece are April, May, June, July, August and September. For the islands, you could add October too.

  No early birds on Mitropoleos Street. A quiet street with few houses, a closed-for-the-winter cafe, a couple of shops and one vacant plot overgrowing with January weeds. The last house, opposite the empty plot, looked the oldest of the lot. It begged for a fresh splash of paint. In the front garden plants that survived the drought, fought hard to come back to life on winter’s rain. The wooden steps leading to the main door looked unsafe and an old, black, Ford Capri from the 70’s stood dead in the open door garage. It looked as if it had not been driven in the last ten years; rust and dust had completely covered it and some smart-ass had fingered-written I wish my wife was this dirty on it.

  I knocked, softer than usual. The door looked ready to say goodbye to this world. The windows were open, the worn-in curtains flying out into the wind. Old sixties hits were playing inside. I knocked again.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m
coming. Hold your horses! I heard you the first time!’ a croaky, manly voice came from inside. The door was pulled back and a strong smell of cigars hit us.

  ‘Come in, come in and wipe your feet,’ the short man ordered in the same manner he told off kids and grandkids, whenever they remembered he was still alive and visited him.

  He wobbled from side to side, wooden walking stick in one hand, cigar in the other.

  ‘Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Sir, I am Captain...’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re the cops. I figured that much out. You’ve been going door to door for the last few hours. Tea or coffee? You look like a coffee guy.’

  My face showed my agreement.

  ‘And you, beautiful?’ he asked Christina, in a tender manner and not in that dirty, old man’s manner.

  ‘Tea would be fine, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll make you a mint tea. My wife used to love a strong mint tea this time of day.’ And with that, he trotted off to the kitchen. We sat down on the brown sofa and waited. It was our last house and we were tired. We could spare ten minutes and enjoy a hot cup with a lonely old man.

  Soon, introductions were made and we were enjoying our beverage with Mr. Papadopoulos. He insisted we called him Billy. Made him feel young, he admitted with a mischievous grin.

  ‘Sorry bout the mess. I live alone. Lost my Eleni two years now. Kids all live in Athens.’

  ‘This is an amazing cup of tea.’

  ‘Always use fresh mint. Everyone uses dry mint for some reason. Too lazy to go buy fresh, I guess. So, you are here for that Stella woman?’

  ‘Yes. We were wondering if you may have seen something suspicious even though your house is quite far from hers.’

  ‘Yes, everyone wants a view. That is why I bought this land cheap, even back then and why the opposite plot is empty. Everyone wants to see the sunset. My shades are so rusty, the sun is always orange to me!’ He laughed out loud. We joined him until his laughter was cut off by his cough.

  ‘Stupid old age! Can’t even laugh anymore! Anyway, I watch CSI, Law and Order, Dexter, Castle, Sherlock, you name it. After Mrs. Georgiou next door said the police were going door to door, I noted down all the cars that I remember being on the street at half past five when I woke up.’ He pulled out a once-white, piece of paper. He had my full attention.