The Golden Silence

by Paul Johnston

  Damis watched as Panos ushered a car into a parking space with exaggerated arm movements. The fool looked like he was herding goats back home in the mountains. Screw Lakis, Damis thought, and screw Ricardo. The family was what counted. They were the key to everything, Stratos Chiotis and his cold-eyed looker of a wife Rea. Now that the old man was nothing but a bedridden wreck, the wife was in charge. Since there were no siblings or children and the other relatives were working in the legitimate businesses, she was the one for him. But in the nine months he’d been a bouncer and general provider of muscle, he’d only seen the woman a couple of times when she came to inspect the operation. He had to find a way of getting to her.

  ‘Are you concentrating?’ Lakis’s voice was low, his breath a mixture of cigarettes and mouthwash. ‘I wouldn’t like to think any man of mine let his mind wander.’

  ‘I’m concentrating, Boss,’ Damis replied, sounding as keen as he could.

  ‘Good.’ Lakis moved his mouth closer. ‘Because I’ve been watching you and I don’t like everything I see.’

  Damis kept his eyes on the customers who were being greeted by Yannis. ‘You can depend on me,’ he said between his teeth.

  ‘Make sure I can.’ The Boss went back inside.

  For a few seconds Damis thought he’d blown it.

  No chance, he told himself. He was far too good for that.

  Mavros walked down the slope and took the number eight trolley-bus from outside the university’s illuminated facade. The roads were packed, as was the trolley. The shops were open late and people were stocking up for Easter—gifts for relatives back home in the provinces, new clothes for themselves and their kids, anything to display how prosperous they were. It was natural that an atheist like Mavros would dislike Easter, but the religious ceremonies weren’t what got him down. He found the build-up to the explosions of grief and joy on the big weekend quite moving, at least from a distance. The pretext that the occasion gave the faithful to show off was what he despised.

  He got off halfway up the incline of Alexandhras Avenue, helping off an old woman weighed down with plastic bags.

  ‘Bless you, my boy,’ she said with a toothless grin. ‘May your family have joy of you.’

  He smiled back at her, wondering how much joy he gave Dorothy and his sister Anna. His mother had never really come to terms with the job he had chosen, even though she knew that the urge to find Andonis was behind it. And Anna? In recent years they’d got closer, but for a long time he’d resented the happy life she’d made for herself with her husband and children, as if Andonis’s disappearance was no longer important. No doubt she’d approve of his decision to give up on their brother.

  Crossing the wide thoroughfare at the lights, Mavros walked into a grid of narrow streets. The area of Gyzi lay back from the avenue on a slope that steepened rapidly. There were flights of steps between some levels, cars and motorbikes parked precariously. What struck him most was the compressed nature of the place. Streetlights lit the lower levels of the apartment blocks, but the upper floors loomed over him. He felt like a traveller fighting through a dense forest of monstrous stone trees. People shrank into insignificance, their presence marked more by the vehicles they drove than by their own physical substance. He was in a realm of shadows, a set from a German Expressionist film that used skewed angles and perspectives to hint at mankind’s twisted heart.

  The noise emanating from a bar on the corner ahead dispelled the fanciful thoughts. Motorbikes were blocking the pavement, their riders lounging against graffiti-covered walls. The drinking-hole’s name, Bonzo’s, was proclaimed by a crudely painted sign. Mavros stepped on to the road to get past, smiling as he recognised the music. One of the leatherclad youths attempted a tough guy’s stare as he approached.

  ‘Something funny?’

  Mavros locked eyes with him. ‘I was listening to Led Zeppelin when you were at your mother’s tit, my friend.’

  There was a pause as the guy glanced at his companions, and they started to laugh.

  ‘Looking forward to collecting your pension then, are you, Grandad?’ one of them asked. ‘You’re wearing a wig, aren’t you?’

  Mavros walked on, the smile still playing on his lips. They looked pretty harmless and they’d soon find out that life wasn’t all guitar solos and power riffs. There wasn’t any point in spoiling their fun. Besides, they outnumbered him four to one.

  Crossing the road, he found the street door of the missing girl’s block and rang the bell marked ‘Tratsou’. He spoke his name into the microphone when the father’s voice came through and walked into the unlit hall after the lock disengaged automatically.

  ‘Second floor,’ the Russian-Greek shouted down the stairwell. ‘The lift doesn’t work.’

  Mavros went up and was met by a stocky figure with a thick beard.

  ‘Idiot caretaker,’ the man said. ‘Soon building will fall down.’

  Mavros looked around the dingy landing. ‘At least you’re not in a tent any more.’ He’d seen from Niki’s file that the family spent their first two months in Greece in a reception centre with limited facilities. He took the hand that was extended and felt its strong grip.

  ‘You are investigator, eh?’ Tratsou said sceptically, running an eye over him. ‘You look like pop star.’

  Mavros shrugged. ‘You look like a gorilla, but I don’t mind.’

  There was a pause and then the man laughed, but only briefly. ‘You find my Katia, I give you everything I have.’

  Mavros heard the longing in his voice. The burly construction worker was struggling to keep a grip on his emotions. ‘I’ll do everything I can, Mr Tratsou.’

  ‘You call me Dmitri,’ the Russian-Greek said, leading him to the open door of his apartment. ‘I call you Alex, yes?’

  A pale, thin woman came down the stuffy corridor, wiping her hands on a cloth. She looked at Mavros beseechingly, her eyes red and damp. A stream of indistinguishable sounds came from her chapped lips.

  ‘This my wife Maria,’ Tratsou said, saying a few words in Russian. ‘I tell her you find Katia.’

  Mavros touched her arm and smiled. She bowed her head as if she was praying.

  ‘Come, Alex, we can talk in here.’ Tratsou led him into a sitting-room that was even hotter than the hallway. The walls were hung with icons and photographs of elderly men and women. ‘Maria, she remembers the old country and the family we leave behind. Me, I love Greece and I want to get rich. This not possible in former Soviet Union.’

  ‘Unless you’re a businessman.’ Mavros accepted a glass of tea from the woman, who gave him another imploring look. ‘Or a criminal.’

  ‘And I am not,’ Dmitri said, signalling to his wife to leave.

  Mavros nodded. ‘You’re working on the new motorway from the airport, aren’t you?’

  Dmitri slurped his tea. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How did you get the job?’

  The Russian-Greek raised his shoulders. ‘Friend of a friend.’

  ‘You mean someone else from the former Soviet Union?’

  ‘No, Alex, I mean my social worker, your Niki.’ He gave a restrained laugh. ‘She made introduction to boss. I have experience, I know what I do.’

  ‘They just found a body up there, didn’t they?’

  ‘About a kilometre from my site.’ Dmitri ran his stubby fingers through his beard. ‘I thought I get away from such things when I leave Soviet Union, but no, they are everywhere.’

  ‘They are everywhere,’ Mavros agreed. He’d been wondering if his new client could have any connection with the Russian gangs who’d been building up their presence in Greece. There might be a link there with his daughter’s disappearance.

  The bearded man leaned forward on the sofa, his hands on his knees. ‘So, how we find my Katia?’

  ‘We start by you giving me as much information as you can about your daughter and everyone she came into contact with. Friends, relatives, teachers, people she spoke to in the local shops…it do
esn’t matter how insignificant. It’s a pity your wife doesn’t speak Greek. I’d like to hear what she has to say.’

  The Russian-Greek met his gaze. ‘Maria is good woman. She tell me everything. I not hide anything from you.’

  ‘I’m sure you won’t, Dmitri. Here’s what I want you to do. Write down the names of the people Katia knows and any phone numbers and addresses. I’ll go through it with you later.’

  ‘What you going to do?’

  ‘I want to see Katia’s room. No, you stay here. I prefer to go on my own, if that’s all right. Which one is it?’

  Dmitri got to his feet. ‘First on left. I tell Maria what you do.’

  Mavros watched from the corridor as the Russian-Greek comforted his wife, who was weeping and wringing her hands. Mavros knew he was intruding, but it was important to examine the room alone. He’d often found that he learned more about a person from the space they lived in than from the people they lived with.

  But how much would he discover about the young woman a month after she’d last been there?

  * * *

  During the afternoon, the Father and Son packed their gear into the BMW in the garage beneath the house. It was a typical mid-nineteenth-century merchant’s mansion. The tall white walls were pierced by narrow windows, those on the lower floors barred, and the red-tiled roof steeply pitched. The balconies on the top floor sat on stone supports. Storks were nesting on one of the chimneys, but they didn’t cause a problem. The old man had installed central heating when he bought the house fifteen years earlier. At the same time he’d cleared out the disused storeroom in the basement and converted it into a garage. That enabled them to keep the car off the street, as well as giving them privacy when it came to loading and unloading.

  The Son prepared a meal before the long drive, standing at the marble sink to clean salad vegetables. The Father was at the window that looked out across the lake. He was smoking a strong-smelling cigarette.

  ‘You’ve packed your tools?’ the Son asked over his shoulder.

  ‘You really think I’m going senile, don’t you, boy?’

  The Son laughed softly. ‘Like it or not, you’re getting old.’

  The Father stared out over the lake’s now placid water. The mountains beyond it were shimmering in the sunlight, the watercourses and stone chutes cutting into their sides like wounds. ‘There are still things I can do better than you.’

  ‘You think so?’ the Son said under his breath. ‘We need to eat.’ He carried a cabbage and carrot salad to the table where he had already set out bread, cheese and olives. He watched as the old man stepped across the wooden boards, his gait stiffer than it used to be.

  ‘What’s this?’ the Father demanded as he sat down. ‘Rabbit food? Your mother always gave me meat.’

  ‘Even during Lent?’

  The Father’s hand came down hard on the tabletop. ‘Yes, even during Lent. Your mother always gave me what I wanted.’

  That was why she always looked old, the Son thought. The bastard had treated her like a slave with his shouts and slaps. Not that it mattered. The Son had never cared for his mother. He’d never cared for anyone. That was the legacy of the Father.

  ‘Wipe that stupid smile off your face,’ the old man said, tearing a piece of bread apart. ‘Tell me what she said. In detail, you hear? I put you in charge of communicating with the employer so that I could concentrate on my handiwork, not so you could keep things from me.’

  Your handiwork, thought the Son. Why can’t you call it by its real name? ‘You know how it works,’ he said, when he’d finished chewing. ‘We go down to Athens and wait for them to contact us.’

  ‘Don’t play games,’ the Father growled. ‘She told you what kind of job it’s going to be.’

  The Son nodded. ‘You heard the news, didn’t you? That body they found on the motorway site was one of the family’s people. The opposition beat the man to death, no doubt after extracting every useful piece of information from him.’

  ‘So we reciprocate on the family’s behalf.’ The Father finished eating and lit another cigarette, exhaling across the table. ‘I take it we’ll be paid the normal rate.’

  ‘Of course.’ The Son waved the smoke away. ‘And there may be more work in the offing.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’ the Father asked with a glare. ‘I’ll need extra clothes.’

  There are plenty of clothes shops in Athens, old fool, the Son thought. ‘I wanted to keep it for a surprise. And now you’ve made me blab it out.’

  The Father gave a bitter laugh. ‘Haven’t you learned, boy? No one can keep secrets from me.’

  The Son got up and started collecting the plates. What the old man said had always been true. Silence was not an option when he went to work on people. But the Father wasn’t the only expert. It was time the younger generation prevailed. Maybe this trip to Athens would give him the opportunity he’d been waiting for.

  He turned on the tap and ran water over the plates, his eyes fixed on the magnetic strip he’d attached to the wall a few days before. Five stainless steel knives were glistening in the light from the shadeless bulb, their edges honed.

  Closing the door behind him, Mavros looked around the small bedroom. As he did, he tried to project himself into the mind of its occupant. It seemed that Katia was a typical high-school student. The walls were covered with posters of popular actresses and singers, the bedspread adorned with pink hearts. There were photos of girls and boys, probably school-friends, pinned to a board. He took some. Her desk was piled high with school texts and exercise books, arranged more tidily than most teenagers managed. There was no computer, so Katia hadn’t been involved with any suspicious chat-rooms, at least not from home. The only other pieces of furniture were a cheap wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers.

  He sat down at the desk and flicked through the school books. Most were heavily annotated, with no doodles. It looked like she was a keen pupil, as Niki said. The drawers contained nothing except stationery and old texts. He got up and pulled open the drawers of the chest. Nothing except clothes, all neatly folded. The wardrobe was filled with surprisingly good quality dresses and coats. Her father hadn’t stinted on her appearance and it seemed that she hadn’t taken much with her.

  Mavros sat down on the bed and ran his eye around the room again. There was a small icon on the wall, her mother’s doing, he was sure. It was almost covered by a purple scarf that hung from a hook above. On the chest stood a small music centre, a pile of Greek pop CDs beside it. It could have been the room of any Athenian schoolgirl. Katia had apparently taken steps to shake off her Russian background and conform to her new homeland’s standards. But there was something missing. He couldn’t grasp the personality of the young woman.

  He stood in the middle of the room and tried to think like an eighteen year old. There must be a hiding place, somewhere that Katia kept her secret possessions—the makeup her father wouldn’t approve of, the flashy jewellery she’d have bought herself and, if Mavros was lucky, the letters written to her by boys. It was impossible that such a stunning young woman wouldn’t have had admirers. But where was the hiding place? The space beneath the bed was taken up by empty suitcases and the bottom of the wardrobe contained only a rack of shoes, all of them packed with newspaper to keep their shape. He took the stuffing out of a couple of shoes and there it was—evidence that Katia was a normal young woman. The lipstick and mascara were wrapped in plastic bags, as were a pair of earrings and a silver bracelet. But she hadn’t taken them with her. It seemed that she’d left unprepared. Did that mean she hadn’t gone willingly?

  He heard movement outside and put his finds back, not wishing to alarm the parents with that idea.

  Dmitri’s head appeared round the door. ‘You find anything?’

  Mavros shook his head. ‘Your daughter is very tidy.’

  ‘My wife is very tidy. I ask her if she find anything strange in here and she say no.’

  They we
nt back into the main room. Dmitri presented him with a list of names in surprisingly good writing.

  ‘My grandfather teach me Greek letters when I was boy,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a help.’ Mavros took out the photos he’d removed from Katia’s pin board. ‘Tell me, does your daughter have a boyfriend?’

  The Russian-Greek averted his eyes. ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to believe that a pretty girl like Katia didn’t attract the attention of the boys in her class.’

  ‘What you saying?’ Dmitri said angrily. ‘My daughter is slut?’

  ‘Calm down,’ Mavros said, opening his arms. ‘I’m trying to find her and I can only do that if you help me.’

  ‘All right. There was a boy…a young man. But not any more.’

  Mavros saw that that bearded man was reluctant to speak further. ‘What happened, Dmitri?’

  ‘He was bad for her. I tell him to go away.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About two months ago.’

  Mavros looked at the list. ‘Is he on here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Katia is not with him, I am sure. She promise me.’

  ‘Okay, but you can see I have to talk to him.’

  The Russian-Greek didn’t look convinced. ‘His first name is Sifis. I don’t know the other.’

  ‘Was he at school with her?’

  ‘No. Older. Maybe twenty-five. That was problem for me.’