The Feast of Artemis (Mysteries of/Greek Detective 7)

by Anne Zouroudi

  Under the influence of wine and food, and in spite of the discomfort in his stomach, the fat man slept away the rest of the afternoon, to be woken by the slight chill which filled his room as the sunlight faded. His stomach was settling, to the point where it might tolerate an invigorating coffee, so he splashed his face with cold water, and ran a comb through his hair. Taking with him his suit trousers and his hold-all, he went downstairs.

  He asked Lefteris to bring him Greek coffee without sugar and a bag for his trousers, and took a seat at a courtyard table. He lit a cigarette. The branches of the walnut tree moved in a rising breeze. In the street at the bottom of the steps, children shouted as they kicked a football against a wall, whilst overhead, a jet plane drew a white ribbon across the darkening sky. As he stubbed out his cigarette, the French clock in the dining room struck the hour in a tinkling melody of preparatory bells, followed by six bright chimes.

  He finished his coffee, and as the evening was becoming cold, went inside the hotel reception, and studied more of the curiosities on display. There was a lithograph of the War of Independence hero Dimitrios Panourgias, his head wrapped in a turban like a Turk, and the fossil of a fish, each fine dorsal bone preserved in mud become stone. Behind the lithograph was a black and white photo of workmen with picks and shovels, and standing behind them, his hand on the shoulder of a workman, a man with the moustache of a Cretan and a resemblance to Panourgias himself.

  A door banged, and there were footsteps along the corridor before Lefteris appeared, holding out a smart carrier bag from the Attica department store.

  ‘Stavroula found this for your trousers,’ he said. ‘She wondered if you know this shop, since you come from Athens? She has a cousin who visits from time to time, and she always brings her a gift from there.’

  ‘I know the place very well,’ said the fat man. ‘Your wife’s cousin has excellent taste. But I’ve spent too long, in my time, eating pastries in their café. To my shame, I once ate three pieces of their exemplary chocolate hazelnut cake at one sitting, though only two of them served with the vanilla cream. It is those kinds of over-indulgences which send me on a mission to the tailor’s now.’

  ‘We can’t keep the bodies of our youth for ever,’ said Lefteris. ‘And life is short. Better to indulge ourselves whilst we’re able, wouldn’t you say? I’d rather eat a slice or two of pastry and carry it on my stomach than eat nothing but semolina like poor Aunt Katya.’

  ‘But her abstemious diet seems to do her no harm. On the contrary, she is remarkably fit, for her age. Maybe I should follow her example, at least for a while.’

  Lefteris laughed.

  ‘Put yourself on a milk and slops diet, and you’ll lose your most important faculties,’ he said. ‘A man needs more than that to keep him functioning – red meat, and red wine, to give you vitamins where you need them.’

  The fat man put his suit trousers in the carrier bag.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said.

  ‘I almost forgot. What about your plum cake?’

  The fat man’s stomach gave a warning grumble.

  ‘Later, perhaps,’ he answered, and started down the steps towards the street.

  Dusk was falling as the small Datsun pick-up pulled into the Papayiannis yard. The driver turned in a wide arc; the full beam of his headlights flashed across the gateway, and came to rest on Sakis’s truck, highlighting the mica sparkles in the red paint.

  ‘Thanks, filé,’ said Sakis to the driver. ‘I’ll be there by seven tomorrow.’

  He pulled the handle to get out; but with the door half-open, he hesitated. He had left the truck parked nose to the wall. Now its nose faced into the yard.

  The driver squinted into the glare and gloom.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to your truck?’

  Both men climbed from the pick-up. The driver crouched by the Nissan’s wheel arch, peering underneath to assess the damage. Sakis touched the huge dent on the wing, and gazed bewildered at the hole where the headlamp had been.

  ‘Something’s hit you hard,’ said the driver, leaning under the vehicle. ‘I reckon your chassis rail’s going to need some straightening. What do you think, a tractor, maybe?’

  Sakis shook his head.

  ‘She wasn’t parked this way round,’ he said. ‘Someone’s moved her.’

  He headed for the house, the Datsun’s driver following close behind. Before he reached it, the front door was flung open.

  ‘Sakis!’ said his mother. ‘Thank God you’re here! Your father’s had an accident!’ She told the men the story: the collision with the bus which might have killed him, his refusal to go to hospital, the policeman who had driven the truck and Donatos home.

  Sakis’s face was grave.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked, quietly.

  ‘I made him go to bed,’ said his mother. ‘He isn’t well, but he says he’ll sleep it off. He says he’ll be fine, but I don’t think so. I think it’s his heart, Sakis. I think the shock . . .’ She wiped tears from her eyes. ‘Talk to him,’ she pleaded. ‘Talk some sense into him, can’t you?’

  Sakis took the stairs two at a time. His father lay wide-eyed in the bed, his canes propped against the foot. In the lamplight, a shade of blue darkened the habitual redness of his face. He winced at every short breath, and there was bubbling in his lungs.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ asked Sakis. ‘What were you playing at?’

  Weakly, Donatos shook his head.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t . . .’ He lacked the breath to finish the sentence. ‘Son . . .’ He lifted his hand from the blankets. Heavy veins stood proud on the yellowing skin. ‘Son, I don’t want . . .’

  Sakis took the old man’s hand, and squeezed it.

  ‘Just rest a while, Papa,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’

  Downstairs, his mother was pouring whisky for the Datsun’s driver. Sakis went to the phone.

  ‘Do you think he’s all right?’ asked his mother, tremulously. ‘The police said he was hit really hard, that another metre forward and he’d be . . . Who are you ringing?’

  Sakis dialled, and didn’t reply. His call was answered quickly.

  ‘We need an ambulance,’ he said. ‘We need an ambulance now.’

  He gave the details he was asked for, and hung up the phone.

  ‘Your father’ll be angry,’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘He told me I wasn’t to call anyone.’

  Sakis drew his mother to him, and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘Sometimes, he’s just a stubborn old mule,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean he knows what’s for the best.’

  Eight

  In Dendra’s back streets, few people were out. Behind a church, an impatient foot stamped on the kick-start of a temperamental motorbike, until the engine roared briefly, and died. Hot water trickled into a fouled drain, the laundry scent of ersatz lavender rising with the steam. A woman threw open a window, releasing the smell of frying fish, and the pop, sizzle and smoke of overheated oil.

  The hotelier’s directions had been convoluted, but the fat man came at last to a landmark that had been mentioned – a plaque commemorating the birthplace of an almost forgotten poet, where the fat man was to take the street opposite. Here, graceful buildings – once the homes of prosperous merchants – were falling into semi-dilapidation, the upper-floor windows boarded over or covered with filthy net curtains, the lower floors inhabited but neglected, or turned over to small businesses, workshops and shops whose frontages spilled light on to the lane.

  A youth shouted angrily, ‘Adé, malaka!’ and slammed a door, hard; a startled cat ran across the fat man’s path. A seller of leather goods, opening up for the evening, was using a boat hook to hang handbags from his fascia. The fat man wished him kali spera, and browsed through a rack of belts until he found one a little longer than his usual size. He tried it round his waist, finding that only on its last hole was it a comfortable fit; s
omewhat abashed, he paid for the belt, and slipped it furtively into his hold-all like a troublesome secret.

  Next door was a delicatessen whose signage claimed the shop’s origins in 1925. In the window, the glass shelves were filled with bottles and jars – artichokes, sauerkraut and asparagus, fruits in syrup, vinegars and fine wines. There was a range of Italian pastas, and imported delicacies – pepper paste for Hungarian goulash, French foie gras and Polish bilberries. On the lowest shelf were trays of pâtisserie – croissants, gateaus and tarts – and samples of the twenty kinds of nuts roasted on the premises. A sign advertised fresh taramasalata. The fat man listened to his doubting stomach, and walked away.

  The tailor’s shop announced itself with a symbol of scissors hanging over the doorway. Inside, the place was musty from damp rising through the cobbled floor, and lit only by a low-wattage bulb, except over the workbench where an anglepoise lamp was extended to light a commercial sewing machine. Floor and bench were littered with scraps of material and snippings of thread; on the bench was an overflowing box of cotton reels, all shades of grey and brown. There were scissors and shears, and boxes of pins, and a miniature chest of drawers with Perspex fronts holding cards of buttons and zips; and in the corner, a dummy wore the loosely stitched pieces of a jacket, the sleeves missing but the lapels and pockets already in place. Bolts of cloth were ranged end-up behind the door, protected from the damp by sheets of polythene. An anorak was thrown over a chaise longue upholstered in fraying brocade; around the walls were photographs of models in suits, in styles contemporary in the cities a decade before.

  Via a complex and amateurish system of wiring, the sewing machine was plugged into the light socket, whilst the open fuse box behind the bench showed several fuses blown. As the fat man entered, the sewing machine rattled on, run by the tailor with a pedal, as his hands guided the needle over black cloth marked up with tailors’ chalk and long, white tacking stitches. The fat man closed the door noisily, but still the tailor didn’t hear him; so when the machine finally stopped, and the tailor was adjusting the cloth to follow the next seam to be stitched, the fat man gave a light cough.

  The tailor jumped round in his chair, and looked at the fat man over half-moon glasses. He was dressed for the cold, layered in a shirt, a sweater, and a down-quilted gilet, which did nothing to flatter his portliness.

  ‘Kali spera,’ said the fat man. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said the tailor. ‘But this machine makes so much noise, when it gets going I can’t hear anything at all. You could sneak up behind me and whack me on the head, or take everything you see in the shop, and if I were sewing, I’d have no idea you’d even been in. I used to have a bell on the door, but it made no difference.’

  ‘Maybe you could set up some kind of lamp as a signal?’ suggested the fat man. ‘If a lamp lit up on the bench when the door was opened, your customers wouldn’t take you by surprise.’

  But the tailor looked doubtful.

  ‘That would need electricity,’ he said. ‘And the electrics here are far from reliable. If I run any more than a forty-watt bulb, all the fuses blow. Still, I’m lucky to have electricity at all. My father ran this shop for decades with nothing but candles.’

  He dipped his hand into an open drawer in the bench, and helped himself from a bag of chocolate raisins inside. As he tossed the raisins into his mouth, he remembered his manners, and held the bag out to the fat man.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said.

  But the fat man shook his head.

  ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘They come from the delicatessen,’ said the tailor. ‘I got a taste for them when I was trying to give up smoking. I’m courting a widow who doesn’t like the smell of cigarettes, and she bought me a bag to wean me off the tobacco. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Every time I wanted a cigarette, I was to have one of these instead, as a little treat. I was only a twenty-a-day man, so that wouldn’t have been so bad. But these things are so good, who can eat just one? I used to be thin as a stick of bamboo, and look at me now. She says I should swap the raisins for cherries, or plums, but who could eat that many plums without it taking its toll on the system? There’s no lavatory here, and my house is streets away. So what’s a man to do? I just keep eating the raisins. If you ask me, I was better off with the cigarettes.’

  He helped himself to a few more raisins and popped them in his mouth, before returning the bag to the drawer and determinedly shutting it.

  ‘You have my every sympathy,’ said the fat man. ‘I should introduce myself. Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens. Chairo poli.’

  He held out his hand, and the tailor leaned forward to take it.

  ‘Miltiadis Sloukas,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I came for the feast, but it seems to have been the straw which broke the camel’s back, as far as my waistbands are concerned. So I have a small job for you, if you can do it quickly. I shan’t be in town very long.’ He took his trousers from the department-store carrier bag. ‘These will have to be let out. I have resisted for some time, but the truth is, I can no longer wear them.’

  Miltiadis turned back to the bench and examined the trousers under the anglepoise lamp.

  ‘This is beautiful cloth,’ he said, rubbing it between his fingers. ‘Wonderful quality.’ He looked inside the waistband for a maker’s label, but there was none. ‘Was it made here, in Greece?’

  ‘It’s Italian. I have all my suits made there.’

  ‘Why? What have you got against Greek tailors? I could make you a decent suit.’ He looked the fat man up and down, struggling to gauge his size; on close inspection he seemed not fat, but powerfully built.

  ‘I’m sure you could,’ said the fat man, ‘but I already have plenty of suits, if they did but fit me. If you can alter these trousers, that will help me a great deal. You see I am reduced to summer wear. I blame no one but myself, of course. When I’m presented with good things to eat, I tend to eat them. Just this morning, I ate a more than adequate breakfast, but then stumbled across a gelateria, and ate two scoops of ice cream. Small scoops, in my defence, and the ice cream was exceptional. An Italian made that too. Probably you know of him. His name – was it Rico, perhaps?’

  ‘Renzo,’ said the tailor. ‘I know Renzo. If I were you, I wouldn’t eat there again. The place has a bad reputation.’

  He gave his attention back to the trousers, closely examining the seams. The fat man’s stomach gave an uneasy rumble.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked. ‘What do you mean by a “bad reputation”?’

  ‘I think I can get you a couple of centimetres on each side,’ said the tailor, still peering at the seams. ‘Maybe four, five centimetres in total. Will that be enough?’

  ‘Whatever you can manage. Even two or three would help. I must say I found Renzo’s ice cream delicious, yet you and others seem to think my eating there was foolhardy. Clearly you know something that I do not.’

  ‘It’s just my opinion, that’s all. People should make up their own minds. All I’m saying is, if you eat there, make sure you have your doctor’s number to hand. When do you need your trousers? I have to finish this suit before I can start on them.’ He indicated the half-made jacket on the dummy, and the trousers he’d been stitching on the bench. ‘The man’s getting married in a couple of days. It’s been a very short engagement, but the girl he’s marrying is starting to show. Whether she’s really his responsibility or not, is another matter. Some questions are better not asked.’

  ‘If there are questions better not asked, I’m the man to ask them,’ said the fat man. ‘So tell me, why should I not eat the Italian’s ice cream?’

  ‘I don’t like to repeat gossip,’ said the tailor. ‘All I’m saying is, I wouldn’t eat there myself. People died, and dozens were ill. The newspapers were all over the story. Dendra was national news, for a while. Didn’t you see it?’ He pulled open the drawer, and helped him
self to another handful of chocolate raisins. ‘These things are too good to leave alone. I shut them out of sight, and I hear them calling my name. Are you sure you won’t have some?’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you. No, I didn’t see that. I travel a great deal, and often I’m out of the reach of the daily papers. But people died, you said. How many, and what of?’

  The tailor chewed his raisins as he spoke.

  ‘There were four dead by the end, all poisoned. By what, remains a mystery. They suggested at first it might be something in the water, but if that were the case, everyone in the community would have been affected. Then they thought it was in some kind of food. What food was never proven. The bacteria were of animal origin, that’s all they could say for certain. So they looked around for a common denominator, something everyone who’d become ill had eaten, and they couldn’t find one. But the most likely candidate was Renzo’s. As you say, his ice cream is second to none, and the whole of Dendra used to eat there, though no one local eats there now. Who’d eat something that might poison them? You’d have to be mad or stupid to do that.’

  ‘Even though it was never proven?’

  ‘There was speculation in the papers, and folks took that as proof. They wouldn’t print something that wasn’t true, would they?’

  ‘But if he had poisoned all those people, surely the police would have arrested him, and shut him down?’

  ‘I don’t say the poisoning was deliberate. That would make him a psychopath, a madman. Maybe he just didn’t keep the place clean. Foreigners don’t have the same standards as us, do they? Look at the gypsies. Look at the Albanians. And I had a Turk come in here once wanting a suit, and he stank like a billy-goat. Say Renzo doesn’t wash his hands properly, germs get in the food, it might be as simple as that. And the police did talk to him. I heard that from my brother. But like I say, there was nothing but the ice cream that was even close to being a common denominator. It was the only thing that made sense.’

  ‘Almost made sense.’