The Golden Silence

by Paul Johnston

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Niki’s face was serious again. ‘Katia’s parents are distraught. She wants to go to university. She’s not the kind to disappear and certainly not the kind to stay out of touch. Something’s very wrong here.’ She kicked him, not very hard. ‘She’s vulnerable, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you want to help?’

  The truth was that the family’s plight had moved Mavros, even though from experience he knew the likeliest explanation was that Katia had gone off with a boyfriend. He was holding back because he always tried to avoid mixing business with his private life. The terrorism case had made him even more unwilling to do that.

  ‘All right,’ he said, reaching for his glass. ‘I’ll look into it. But I want you to promise that you’ll keep your distance. I have to do this my way.’

  She raised her own glass and clinked it against his. ‘Done, Alex. Oh, there’s…there’s one more thing.’

  Her reticence made him suspicious. ‘What?’

  ‘The father, Dmitri. He’s a bit…well, impulsive. You’ll have to keep an eye on him.’

  Mavros sat back and let out a sigh. He was a sucker for people who went missing, but he knew well enough that they often did so because the ones they left behind had driven them to it. The odds were that her father had done that with the beautiful Katia.

  The house on the hillside was quiet, the clamour of the city twenty-five kilometres away to the north. The wind was coming through the line of cypresses that barricaded the estate, making the tops of the trees bend like restless fingertips. Far below, the white-capped waves pushed out from the rocky coastline towards the islands in the gulf.

  ‘Very well,’ said Rea Chioti, turning from the bulletproof window to dismiss the nurse. ‘I’ll be over to see my husband shortly.’

  The woman in white tunic and blue trousers bowed her head and retreated on rubber soles.

  Rea watched her go and then walked over to the large mahogany desk in the corner of the room. Before Parkinson’s disease had confined Stratos to his bed, he’d run the family enterprises from that desk, preferring the villa to his numerous other properties. He would go to one of the offices when business required, but he was always happier in the house he’d built after their marriage in the mid-seventies, when he was fifty-five and she wasn’t yet thirty.

  ‘You never thought it would come to this, did you, Strato?’ she said under her breath. ‘A woman running your life’s work.’

  One of the phones rang, the red light flashing to show that the line was secure.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  She recognised the voice and returned the greeting, not using the interlocutor’s name. In the early days her husband had taught her the basic tenets of security and she still applied them despite the advances in technology.

  ‘We have the targets under surveillance as instructed.’ The man’s tone was respectful, though not as much as she’d have liked. Like many of his colleagues, he’d been troubled when she took over the family business, even though her ailing husband gave his blessing.

  ‘Good. I’ll advise you which one to move on tomorrow.’

  ‘They’re coming?’ It was understood that the Father and Son were never referred to openly.

  ‘Yes, they’re coming.’

  ‘One more thing. The shipment we discussed yesterday. It’ll be on the street tonight.’

  ‘Good. And the problem at the club?’

  ‘Resolved. We brought in three Lithuanian women. Two of them can actually dance.’

  Rea made no reaction to her subordinate’s irony. She had no qualms about any of the family’s operations, but she could imagine what it must be like for the women who worked in the clubs and brothels.

  ‘Make sure we’re not left short again,’ she ordered.

  ‘I’ve already taken steps.’

  She terminated the call and moved away from the desk. Above the marble fireplace there was a portrait of one of Stratos’s ancestors—a glowering warrior in a brightly coloured tunic, his belt stuffed with pistols and his long moustaches twisted. She pressed a catch at the bottom of the ornate frame and swung the painting away from the wall. Behind it was a stainless-steel door. Before she pressed out the code on the panel she caught sight of her reflection. As ever, her appearance pained her. Her auburn hair, perfectly styled, set off the smooth skin of her face, the long, straight nose and the bright red of her lips. She knew that many women in their fifties would have begged for such a face. The problem was that it wasn’t her own.

  The steel door opened. There it was, the most prized of her possessions. She’d bought it from a tame antiquities dealer and no one else knew about it, not even her husband. The funeral mask dated to the fifteenth century BC and it had been found in a secretly excavated Mycenaean tomb. Standing in front of the artefact at the same level, she looked into the eyes. The person they belonged to would have been alive not long before this likeness in gold had been placed over the features—veins pulsing, eyes moving between long lashes, lips speaking honeyed words. Yes, she was sure the mask was a woman’s, whatever the experts might say to the contrary—a woman who had seen much of life, its joy and its pain. A woman like herself.

  Rea stepped back a few paces, her eyes still locked on the golden face. Its power attracted her, but at the same time she was repelled. She understood too well. There was a magical quality to the hammered metal, as if the person beneath had been a sorceress, a conqueror of men. The mask was bent and twisted, the left side out of kilter. Although the nose had been crushed in the collapsed tomb, she could see that it had been long and imperious. The ears, stylised loops, were delicate and feminine, despite the curious perspective. But it was the lips that sealed the gender for her. They were formed into a pout, but not one that was coquettish—rather, it was a display of indomitable will. And they had been stitched together, the lines of threat and the puncture marks made by a master craftsman. What man would have been memorialised after death like that? A warrior was buried with his swords and spears, his strength celebrated beyond death. But a woman? As now, the female of the species had only her wits and her tongue to save her from the bestiality of men. What had this woman said, what words of love or deception had she spoken?

  Rea caught her breath and steadied herself against a chair. She couldn’t block out the thought that the mask hadn’t only been bent out of shape by the pressure of the earth. Perhaps it represented the woman as she was before she died—in agony, her lips sewn tightly together, her features damaged by beating, the left eye bulging. What torture had she undergone before her spirit failed?

  Stepping forward quickly, she slammed the safe door and pushed the painting back over it. The mask, the gold mask. She should have left it undisturbed, but that was never an option. It had too much to say to her, even though the woman it once covered had been silent for thousands of years.

  Rea went back to her desk and looked at the figures her numbers men had produced. The profits made in the previous month by the family’s legitimate and criminal businesses were down. But all she could think of was the mask of a woman who had remained true to herself in the face of death itself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AFTER LUNCH MAVROS walked back to his flat and stretched out on the sofa. Niki had gone off to another meeting, happy that he’d agreed to take on the search for the missing girl. He felt less lively. It was often like this at the beginning of a case. Before he got involved, he struggled to raise an interest. He slid the photo of the young woman from the envelope Niki had given him and examined it again. A smile, dimples under the prominent cheekbones, but more than a hint of uncertainty. Niki was right. Katia was definitely vulnerable.

  He picked up the phone and dialled her home number.

  ‘Yes?’ came a gruff male voice.

  ‘Mr Tratsou?’

  ‘Who is this?’ The man’s Greek was fluent enough, but there was a heavy Russian accent. He sounded very tense.

  ‘My name’s Mavros, Alex Mavros. Your social worker Niki�
�’

  ‘Yes yes, I know who you are. This morning Niki told me you help us.’

  Mavros shook his head. She had set him up completely.

  ‘You are private investigator, yes? You find my Katia?’

  ‘I’m going to try. Can we meet?’

  ‘Come to house, nine o’clock. You have address?’

  Mavros confirmed that he did and rang off. Dmitri Tratsou hadn’t given him the impression of an impulsive man, more one whose world had been shaken to the core by the disappearance of his daughter. He hoped that this wasn’t going to be one of those cases that ended with him giving parents the worst kind of news—infatuation with a grasping partner, drug addiction, prostitution. It happened often enough.

  Reaching over to his jacket, he took the newspaper from the pocket and read through the story on the front page. The author Lambis Bitsos, a lanky, perpetually hungry and pornography-obsessed journalist, was a long-standing contract of his. They’d traded information in the past, though he hadn’t seen Bitsos recently. He’d kept his mouth shut about the terrorism case and the reporter hadn’t been impressed.

  He read on and swore under his breath. The story referred to the police commander Nikos Kriaras, now head of the organised crime division. Kriaras was another old contact, one who’d provided him with several clients. He’d been deeply involved in the terrorism case too, but they were no longer in touch.

  ‘What do you know about the criminal underworld, Niko?’ he said to himself. Then he remembered how well-connected Kriaras was. He probably had a different gang boss round to dinner every weekend.

  Feeling the weight of the food and alcohol, Mavros drifted into an uneasy doze. He found himself running after a blonde woman through dark and deserted streets, the name Katia issuing from his lips. Then she was in a building site, no workers around, the bulldozers and drilling machines motionless. And then she disappeared, as if she’d been grabbed from below. He reached the edge of a pit and made out a bloody face down at the bottom, naked and still. But the hair was no longer fair, it was brown, and the skin was covered in bruises and wealts. Mavros watched in horror as the head began to move. The features were blurred, but they gradually came into focus like a photographic image being fixed in the tray. It was his brother Andonis’s face, a soft smile on his lips.

  Mavros woke with a start, his whole body taut. In recent months Andonis had been more distant, but suddenly he was back. He had to do something about it. There was only one person who could help. Grabbing his jacket and phone, he headed for the door.

  The nearby square was packed with people, the building works at the underground station making the chaos even worse than usual. Souvenir shop owners were touting the new season’s wares. Mavros wiped his brow. There were still a couple of weeks to Easter and it was already hot in the city.

  As he moved up the steep slope towards his mother’s apartment building, he felt his calves complain. She lived on the side of the inner city’s highest hill, but she was all right—she took taxis everywhere. He walked to keep fit, and because two-and four-wheeled transport was more trouble than it was worth in Athens. That policy had its drawbacks, one being that he never felt like going anywhere after a large lunch. He stopped to catch his breath in the open space of a square with a Roman reservoir. Boys playing football had hung their jackets on the statue of a poet, giving him the look of an overdressed tramp.

  Mavros normally used the stairs, but this time he succumbed and took the lift to his mother’s apartment on the sixth floor.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said, knocking on the door. He had a key, but he knew she would have the chain on.

  ‘Alex.’ Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou leaned forward and kissed her second son. ‘You should have rung. I’m on my way out.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s all right, dear, you can come in for a minute.’ Dorothy looked at him. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ he said, following her in. She was wearing a smart woollen suit, a string of pearls round her neck. ‘I can’t stay long anyway. Where are you going?’

  ‘To a book launch.’ Although she’d been in Greece since the late-forties, Dorothy’s accent retained a Scottish burr. After her husband’s death in 1967, she’d built up her own publishing company.

  ‘You look great, Mother.’

  ‘Och, I’m fading and you know it. White hair and a limp. I feel like an old granny.’

  ‘You are an old granny,’ he said, sitting down at the end of the sofa nearest the bookcase with the family photos.

  Dorothy laughed. ‘Thank you, my son. Though I have no grandchildren from you. How’s Niki?’

  ‘God, Mother, don’t put any pressure on me, will you? Niki’s all right. I had lunch with her today.’

  ‘I’m glad you two seem to be getting on better these days.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, remembering the problems they’d been through. ‘Maybe things will work out. I don’t know.’

  ‘You sound pessimistic,’ Dorothy said, sitting down beside him. ‘Don’t be.’

  Mavros had turned to the black-and-white photos—his father Spyros with his thick moustache and penetrating gaze; the youthful Andonis smiling as he had so often. ‘I didn’t inherit that from either of them, did I?’

  His mother took his hand. ‘They both had their dark times, Spyros especially. But he got over them.’ She nudged him. ‘At the risk of repeating myself for the thousandth time, you have to let Andonis go. You’ve been looking for him since you came back from university and it’s ruining your life.’

  Mavros swallowed hard. ‘Searching for him has made me what I am.’

  ‘I know, Alex. And you’re very good at finding people. But now you have to concentrate on those you can help. Andonis isn’t coming back.’ Her voice broke as she spoke the last sentence, but she gave a brave smile. Over the years, she and Mavros’s sister Anna had come to terms with the disappearance. Only he had kept fighting it.

  Mavros thought back to the dream he’d had of Andonis. It seemed he couldn’t even read a newspaper story without seeing his long-lost brother. ‘I know, Mother,’ he said, blinking. ‘I’m going to let go. I can’t…I can’t hold on to him any longer.’ He was expecting Andonis to appear again, but this time there was nothing. He wondered if, by making the resolution, he’d finally sent him into the void.

  Dorothy squeezed his hand and they sat in silence for a while.

  ‘I must be going, Alex,’ she said gently, looking at her watch.

  ‘Right.’ Mavros got up and helped her to her feet.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, dear?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ And, in truth, he was. He felt better than he had for a long time. But he didn’t risk a last look at the family photographs.

  Damis Naskos, his pumped-up biceps sheathed in a dark suit jacket and his short brown hair spiked with gel, tightened the lace of his shoe and stood up. He was in a room at the rear of the Silver Lady Club on the coast road with the other security personnel, as they were called ironically by Lakis the Boss. Bouncers was what they were. Not that Lakis was much better. He was only a low-level arselicker who answered to the club manager Mr Ricardo, a hard man with no hair but plenty of attitude. Even though the Chiotis family controlled eleven other clubs and thirty-seven bars, Mr Ricardo reckoned he was something really special. Damis never got more than a scowl from him.

  ‘Have you seen the new girls?’ asked Yannis the Driver. He chauffeured Lakis around when there were drugs to be offloaded. ‘One of them’s got an amazin’ pair of jugs on her. They say she’s from Lithuania. I’ve never had one of them.’

  Damis shrugged. ‘Me neither. I had a Latvian once.’

  ‘What the fuck’s a Latvian?’ Yannis burst into raucous laughter. ‘You sure she wasn’t one of those slags from the Ukraine in disguise?’

  ‘Yeah, those stinking cows get everywhere,’ put in Peasant Panos, dropping the knuckle-duster he’d been polishing into his jacket pocket. ‘One of them g
ave me a terrible dose of—’

  ‘Gentlemen, that will do,’ Lakis the Boss interrupted, his greased-back hair gleaming in the strong light. He surveyed them with an icy smile. ‘Our customers will be arriving shortly. Get to work.’

  The three of them nodded obediently. Damis followed the others out, straightening his tie. Panos, a country boy from the wilds of central Greece with less brain power than an ox, was always first on any job—not because he wanted to impress the Boss, but because he enjoyed putting himself about. Yannis the Driver, on the other hand, was very keen on showing the Boss how smart he was. Damis let them take the lead. He’d been keeping his head down, making sure he was well set.

  ‘Evening, ladies,’ Yannis called to the gaggle of scantily dressed dancers on the Silver Lady’s stage. Although the lighting and the music systems were top-quality, the tables and chairs were flimsy, recycled from one of the family’s other clubs that had been burned out in the last turf wars.

  The women ignored them. Not that Yannis and Panos cared. The bouncers were assigned a dancer at the end of each night unless a customer took priority. When that happened, there were always plenty of hookers who’d oblige for free. Most were from the old Eastern Block, illegals who had no choice about what they did. Damis felt sorry for them. He’d often seen them dabbing away tears and he was sure that, given the chance, they’d go back home like a shot. But he’d been careful never to make his sympathy obvious.

  He took up his position by the door, under the five-times lifesize figure of the naked silver woman. The family must have paid off plenty of local officials for her. Yannis was at the end of the red carpet and Panos was out in the car park. There weren’t many punters around yet. It was early, but Lakis the Boss liked to get them out as soon as the doors were open. Just in case any rival headbangers had a go.

  He slid a hand round his back and checked that the automatic pistol was in position. He’d never had to fire it yet, but he’d pulled it out a few times. The way things were going—the families kidnapping each other’s men and beating the shit out of them, then dumping them in the open to make a point—he didn’t think it would be long till he had to use his firearms skills. He just hoped the action wouldn’t get too hot before he had a chance to better himself. Then again, maybe a good bit of inter-gang violence would be the thing to put him in the spotlight.