Donatos manoeuvred himself over to the counter, and found the phone number Sakis had left. He picked up the phone, and dialled. Pressing the receiver hard against his ear, blocking his other ear with a finger against the machinery’s noise, he heard the click of the connection being made, and the number he was dialling ring out. There was no answer. He broke the connection, and dialled again, taking special care to get the digits right. Again, there was no answer.
He dropped the receiver back in its cradle. Sakis had left the Nissan’s keys on the counter. Donatos picked them up, and laying his walking canes across his knees, wheeled himself out into the yard.
Six
The fat man lodged his olive oil upright behind his hold-all, and drove as far as the point where the track forked. Checking his watch, he found there was an hour or two at least before lunchtime, and so he followed the right-hand road to the Kapsis estate.
The Kapsis’s property had similarities to the Papayiannis’s; the same high walls of old stone marked the yard’s boundaries, and the farmhouse’s origins lay in the same era, though its improvements were more conventional, and truer to a single architectural style.
The fat man parked the Tzen in the equivalent place to where he’d parked in the Papayiannis yard, between a once-black Citroën whose paintwork was sun-faded to an uneven gunmetal, and a run of ramshackle livestock pens where the original roofs had fallen in, and the woodworm-infested struts now supported tin sheets weighted with rocks. The pens held several milk-goats, and as he climbed from the car, the goats stopped chewing on the scraps of cabbage leaves littering their dirty straw, and watched him with their strange, slit eyes. A trickle of water ran into their trough, with the overflow draining through the foul-smelling straw and across the yard. Outside the pen was a milking-stool, a leather apron hanging on a nail and an overturned bucket. Chickens pecked at the weeds growing around an Italian scooter, whose windscreen was cracked from base to top; a rusting tractor had the field debris of its final outing dried deep in its tyre treads, and below its chassis a duck slept, its head hidden under its wing. On a heap of olive nets, a cockerel stretched its neck and crowed.
Taking care to avoid the chicken and duck droppings which littered the yard, the fat man made his way towards the farmhouse. Effort had been made to care for the old building – scented geraniums and mauve crocuses flourished in the window boxes, and the whitewash on the façade was reasonably fresh – but the whitewash didn’t hide the bulge of a failing wall and a troubling crack which ran from ground to eaves. Outside the front door, a trellis supported a trailing vine, whose autumn-red leaves were thinning on its tendrils; and under the trellis was Marianna Kapsis, watching a small boy pump up the tyre of his bicycle.
‘Give it a bit more elbow-grease,’ said Marianna to the boy. ‘You’ll be here all day doing it like that.’
The boy’s arm moved faster, but the pump’s head came away from the tyre valve. The boy’s eyes filled with tears.
‘I can’t do it, Yiayia,’ he wailed. ‘Can’t you do it for me? Papa always does it for me.’
Marianna flicked ash from her cigarette, and looked down at the child’s grubby hands and the bike’s oil-clogged chain. She studied her rose-pink nails. On her right index finger, the varnish was chipped.
‘Papa isn’t here, kamari mou,’ she said. ‘And your Yiayia doesn’t know anything about bicycles.’
‘May I help?’ asked the fat man, as he reached them. He gave the boy a warm smile, and held out his hand to Marianna. ‘Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens. I’m here to buy some of your oil, but if I can do this young man a service, I’m happy to do so.’
Indifferently, Marianna scrutinised him; but having taken in his bearing and the calibre of his clothes, she passed her cigarette to her left hand, and contriving a smile, held out her right. As he took it, he caught the sharpness of the hairspray holding her swept-back style. Under her dress and cardigan, her figure was spreading, and inside her sling-back shoes, the skin of her heels was cracked and pale; but her make-up, though unsubtle, flattered her face, and covered the inevitable wanness of middle age.
‘Marianna Kapsis,’ she said. ‘Kalos irthate.’
‘Thank you,’ said the fat man, and moving closer to the boy, he bent down and held his hand out again. ‘And what do they call you?’
The boy was shy, and fiddling with the pump and the valve, lowered his head.
‘Answer the gentleman, Yianni,’ said Marianna, drawing on her cigarette.
‘Yianni, eh?’ said the fat man. ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, I don’t mind. But I am rather good with bicycle pumps, so if you’d like me to help you, give me a little room, and I will.’ In silence, the boy shifted back a metre or two, and the fat man crouched beside him, and fitted the pump to the tyre. With several quick motions, the tyre was inflated, and the cap screwed back on to the valve. ‘Good as new. And that’s a very smart bike. I wonder if you like nougat?’ Again, the boy didn’t reply, but the fat man stood, and reached into his pocket to draw out a long bar of pink nougat studded with pistachios. ‘I had two of these, but I could only eat one. I’ll leave it here on your bicycle saddle, in case you’d like it. And if you wouldn’t, maybe you have a brother or a sister who would.’
The boy ignored him, and made a show of testing the pressure of his front tyre, squeezing the rubber between finger and thumb.
‘Say thank you, Yianni,’ said Marianna.
The boy remained silent. Marianna gave the fat man another smile.
‘Children,’ she said. ‘You do your best. So, you’re wanting some oil?’
‘I am,’ said the fat man. ‘I hear good things about Kapsis olive oil.’
She dropped her cigarette, and ground it out under the toe of her shoe.
‘I’ll show you the mill,’ she said.
In the position where, on the Papayiannis property, the new factory was built, on the Kapsis yard was a long barn of unworked stone and crude terracotta tiles. Bulging sacks of olives were stacked outside the great arched doors at its centre. Marianna pulled open the left-hand door, and led him into the barn.
There were no windows, only air-vents through which weak rays of sunlight lit motes of drifting dust. Under the naked undersides of the tiles, a fluttering sparrow settled on one of the old beams, where drifts of powdery cobwebs dangled from the struts.
Marianna snapped on a Bakelite switch, and the overhead lights flickered and faded before filling the barn with jaundiced light, which revealed at the barn’s far end a colossal vat cut from a single piece of stone and mounted on a plinth. Over the vat, a haphazard collection of beams and poles were rigged to turn a system of iron cogs, which in turn revolved three millstones within the vat, set upright and attached to a central spindle. Around the vat, a shallow groove worn in the stone-flagged floor marked the track of generations of donkeys. Against the rear wall was a press, a rectangular arch of black iron pierced by a lengthy bolt, at whose base was a tall stack of round hemp mats. Nearby was an old-fashioned generator, set up to drive the engine for a system of canvas belts which brought some measure of automation to the old-fashioned mill, and the rest of the equipment necessary for oil production – troughs and storage tanks, sieves and sinks.
The fat man went to the vat, slapped the stone appreciatively, and looked up admiringly at the ingenious complexities of the machinery above it. Marianna followed him.
‘This is a splendid piece of equipment,’ he said. ‘Do you know its date?’
‘The year I couldn’t tell you,’ she said, ‘but it goes back six generations at least. The Kapsis’s aren’t amateur oil-producers, kyrie. If there’s anything to know about oil, this family knows it.’
‘And you still employ the traditional methods. That’s increasingly rare, these days.’ He touched one of the millstones. Grinding had worn the cold surface smooth. ‘I paid a visit to your neighbours before I came here.’ He moved to the far side of the vat, and watched her as he spoke. ‘Their operation is very
different from yours. They seem to have embraced the new technology wholeheartedly.’
‘A man may embrace a pig,’ said Marianna, curtly, ‘but it won’t make for a happy marriage. You’d like to try the oil before you buy, I’m sure.’
‘I would.’
By the doors was a table covered with the untidy mess of running the business: leather-bound ledgers and cheap invoice books, letters in coffee-stained envelopes, plates from bygone meals, loose papers, pencils and pens. Under the table were several boxes, irregular sizes and made for varied products – wine, biscuits and bleach. Marianna crouched to lift the flaps on a box, and lifted out a bottle of oil.
She sat down in a captain’s chair, and ran her hands over the worn arms.
‘This was my husband’s chair,’ she said. ‘Every time I sit here, I think of him. He was a fine, tall man, strong, like you.’ She looked at him, very directly. ‘Are you married, kalé?’
‘I? No. I’m not the marrying kind.’
‘All men say that. Don’t think you’re too old. My husband was well over fifty when I married him, and I made him very happy. Maybe you should think about it. It isn’t natural for a man to live alone. It isn’t healthy. Maybe you just need to find the right woman.’
The fat man laughed.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, ‘but I’m not quite the catch you might think. I’m here one day, and gone the next, and not marriage material at all.’
She opened a drawer in the table, and taking out a glass tasting cup identical to the one offered by Donatos Papayiannis, held it up to the daylight, revealing an oily fingerprint.
‘Allow me,’ said the fat man, pulling a paisley silk handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped the cup thoroughly, and put the handkerchief back in his pocket.
Marianna uncapped the bottle and poured a measure of oil into the cup.
‘We’ve none of this season’s bottled yet, but last season’s is still in its prime,’ she said. ‘You’ve tasted their oil, now try ours. See what a difference tradition makes. You’ll taste the history of Greece in Kapsis oil. Those stones give their essence to the oil, and you can’t fake that with steel. Stones and olives are God-given gifts, meant to complement each other. Do we see steel occurring naturally in nature? No, we do not. Steel gives nothing to the oil. The oil slides off it. But those millstones that crush our olives came from the same earth that grew them. They were made to work together, and are sympatico with each other. The same with the press. Kapsis women cut that hemp, and wove those mats with their own hands. Hemp and olives, from the same soil. Papayiannis oil, what is that? Spun and forced from the olives in a centrifuge, all hard metal. My husband used to say our oil has soul, and everything we do here, we do with respect, and we use this method not because we are backwards, not because we are dinosaurs, but because we carry on the traditions of the land, because we respect quality and want the best product. Everything here has its place and its part, and you’ll find that in the flavour of the oil. Here, taste.’ She held out the glass. The oil’s colour was striking, the yellow light giving an acid tint to its extraordinary greenness. ‘Taste.’ Her expression was intense, almost fanatical, her evangelism such that she might, had she been able, have tipped the oil down his throat herself.
He took a drink of the oil, played it over his tongue, and swallowed. Its flavour burst in his mouth, a distillation of grassy meadows and the olive groves, the essence, as she had said, of the olives themselves; and as he swallowed, his throat burned with a pepperiness so fiery, he coughed, and coughed again.
‘There!’ she said. ‘You taste that fieriness, that burn! What do you think?’
‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘It’s very good indeed.’ He savoured the rest of the oil, working it round his mouth to draw out its subtleties.
‘Better than mechanical oil, for certain,’ she said. ‘You’ll acknowledge that, I’m sure. This oil is pure, oil as it was meant to be.’
‘It is excellent, and I shall be pleased to buy a litre. I know my father would like to try it. He regards himself as a connoisseur of oils.’
‘You should take two litres, then. One for yourself, and one for him.’
‘No, no,’ said the fat man. ‘He has orchards of his own. A taste of mine will suffice.’
She named a price somewhat higher than Papayiannis’s. As the fat man took out his wallet, sparrows fluttered overhead, and a small, brown feather dropped on to Marianna’s shoulder.
‘Those birds,’ she said, brushing it off. ‘It’s impossible to keep them out. They get in under the eaves.’
The fat man looked up at white smears of excrement on the beams.
‘I must say,’ he said carefully, handing over his money, ‘your neighbours’ operation looks very prosperous.’
She laughed, and dug into a cash box for change.
‘Appearances deceive,’ she said. ‘They’re up to their necks in debt. They borrowed millions to turn that farm into a factory, and it’ll take years before they break even. We make an honest living here, and pay our dues as they arise. My husband left me no debts, and I’ve incurred none since I lost him. Every year, we show a profit. Honest oil from honest people. How can it not be better than factory oil from a bunch of thieves?’
‘Thieves?’ The fat man slipped his change into his wallet. ‘In what way are they thieves?’
‘You’ll have seen as you drove in that ugly fence between our properties. Through all the past generations, no fences were ever needed. That fence went up – and imagine what they paid for it, kalé – for one reason only. They wanted to claim trees that aren’t theirs. The line is in the wrong place, and they know it. They’re desperate people, kalé. They think stealing our trees will save them, but it won’t. It’ll take more than trees to save them from foreclosure.’
‘When did the fence go up?’
‘It was the old man’s doing. He got into a dispute with my husband, and he’s never put it behind him. I think worry about that man’s malice helped my husband to his grave. Donatos Papayiannis is an evil and bitter old man.’
The fat man’s eyebrows lifted.
‘Really? He didn’t strike me that way.’
‘Because the man’s a chameleon, a creature who changes his colours depending on his company. But he’s bred them all to be spiteful and vindictive. Vindictive beyond belief.’
She turned her face away, but not before he saw the tears filling her eyes.
‘May I ask,’ he said, cautiously, ‘vindictive in what way?’
‘My grandson, kyrie! That fine young man, in the prime of his life, is at this moment in a hospital bed, horribly burned! His poor face!’ She seemed about to break down; then she found strength, gathered herself and stood up. ‘I must get back to Yianni. His mother is my granddaughter, Dmitris’s sister. I have care of him whilst they’re all at his bedside. And in the meantime, the mill is idle. My stepson supervises the mill, and of course he can’t think of working, but every hour the olives aren’t pressed, they deteriorate. That’s what our neighbours have done to us – my grandson’s life ruined, and a harvest and a pressing falling behind, maybe entirely lost.’
‘Is there no possibility it was an accident? Boys who leap bonfires know they take a risk. They do it as an act of bravery.’
‘It was no accident,’ she said, fiercely. ‘He was tripped.’
‘Have you visited him?’ asked the fat man, as they went outside.
She nodded.
‘I saw him last night, and it broke my heart – his head all bandaged, his arm so red and raw . . . He wasn’t conscious. They’re keeping him sedated.’
‘And are the police investigating your suspicions?’
‘They say their hands are tied, that there are no witnesses. They’re lazy, and want no trouble.’
‘I’m very much afraid you may be right,’ said the fat man. The day was moving into afternoon, and the sun was high; the flowers in their pots were fully open to its benign warmth. ‘One thing before
I go. The crocuses over there, below the window.’
She glanced across the yard.
‘The mauve? They’re pretty, aren’t they?’
‘Colchicum autumnale, the autumn crocus, sometimes called “naked ladies” because of their habit of flowering before they show their leaves. Where did you get them?’
She shrugged.
‘I really don’t remember. Somewhere out in the fields.’
‘If you’ll take my advice, you’ll take them back there, as far away as possible from your family, certainly as far away as you can from any children. They might be pretty, as you say, but they are a deadly poisonous plant.’
On the road back into Dendra, the fat man found a phone box, and stopped the car. Searching in his pocket, he found change for a long-distance call, and from his hold-all, pulled out a little notebook with a tiny pencil tucked inside the spine. Flicking through the back pages to a list of contact details, he found the number he wanted, and dialled.
Within a moment or two, a woman answered.
‘Ilias Mentis, legal services,’ she said.
‘Yassou, koukla mou,’ said the fat man, in a light tone.
‘Kyrie Diaktoros, yassou!’ said the woman. ‘Where are you? Are you coming to see us?’
‘Alas, no. I’m a long way from home, and a long way from you. But I need Ilias to do something for me. Is he there?’
‘He’s here, but he’s with a client. Shall I have him ring you when he’s free?’
‘I’m calling from a public phone, so that won’t be possible. But what I need from him is straightforward enough, though as usual I need it in a hurry. Maybe you could take down the details, and pass them on to him?’
‘I’ll find a pen,’ she said.
After the fat man left, Marianna lit another cigarette, and sat for a while smoking. In the breeze, the purple crocuses shivered on slender stems.
The Feast of Artemis (Mysteries of/Greek Detective 7) Page 8
