The Golden Silence

by Paul Johnston

  ‘Sweet,’ Bitsos said with a tight smile. ‘Like my character.’

  ‘That’ll be right,’ said the Fat Man, lumbering away.

  The reporter sat down and raised his eyebrows. ‘I noticed you beat a hasty retreat from the crime scene, Alex. And didn’t bother to return my calls.’

  Mavros stuffed the fax pages in his pocket. ‘I was busy,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Sorry?’ Bitsos said, cupping his ear. ‘You look like you’re carrying a weight, my friend. Why did the commander bring you to the scene?’

  Mavros thought about how to respond. He wanted to keep the reporter on his side. It was possible he knew something about Jenny Ikonomou’s brother. ‘I saw the dead man in the Silver Lady last night.’

  ‘Did you now?’ Bitsos thanked the Fat Man insincerely and sipped from the miniature cup that had arrived on the table. ‘I’d forgotten how good the slob’s coffee is.’

  ‘Careful. Yiorgos and I are friends.’

  The journalist shrugged. ‘So are we, Alex. Supposedly. I saw what you were reading. What’s Jenny Ikonomou got to do with your case?’

  ‘You know she has a brother?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Ricardo Zannis. He’s with the Chioti family.’

  Mavros nodded. ‘I saw him in the Silver Lady.’

  ‘That figures. There’s a rumour he runs it. The police have established that the dead man worked there. He was in charge of security.’ Bitsos gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Should have spent more time looking out for himself.’

  ‘I think Ricardo was involved,’ Mavros said. ‘I saw him leave the club with the victim and another guy late last night.’ He shot Bitsos a warning glance. ‘That’s between you and me.’

  ‘You aren’t two-timing Kriaras, are you? Don’t worry, I won’t be using it anyway. Ricardo Zannis has some very nasty friends.’

  Mavros pulled his chair closer. ‘Tell me more.’

  Bitsos drank his coffee to the grounds. ‘He was in the States for years, working for a Greek gang in New York. He had a bad reputation. One night he beat a pimp to death. What he didn’t know—or maybe didn’t care about—was that the guy worked for one of the Italian families. Result: the delightful Ricardo turned up here with his tail between his legs about ten years ago. He’s kept his head down, but he’s been linked to the Chiotis family for a long time.’ He picked at the elongated nail of his little finger. ‘That’s not all I’ve heard.’

  Mavros saw the lascivious look on the reporter’s face and his heart sank. ‘What?’

  ‘Apparently he has a liking for young female flesh. He has people looking out for suitable girls.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Bitsos peered at him. ‘What do you think? They vanish and he has his way with them.’ His eyes widened. ‘Oh, Christ, your missing girl.’

  Mavros was trying to dispel the red mist that had risen up before him. Katia had been in the same house as Ricardo before she disappeared. He wondered how much the exalted actress who owned the Pink Palace knew about her brother’s activities.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DAMIS WAS LYING on the bed in the hotel, his breathing shallow and his stomach empty. He’d returned before the rush hour started, having got rid of Lakis’s body with Ricardo. Since then he’d spent much of the time in the bathroom with his arms wrapped round the toilet. The place was equipped with goldplated taps and pure white marble units, but he might as well have been in the filthiest squatter for all the good they did. What he’d seen, what he’d participated in, made him feel worse than a concentration camp guard.

  At least Rea Chioti had cut him some slack. She’d called him not long after he got back and his heart skipped more than one beat when he saw who was with her. Ricardo was full of himself, his chest out and his face ruddy, as if he’d spent the morning exercising a horse rather than dumping a mutilated corpse.

  ‘What’s the matter, young Dami?’ he said with a laugh. ‘Bitten off more than you can chew?’

  Damis looked at the head of the family. She was sitting in an armchair, her legs crossed above the knee and her face impassive. ‘What can I do for you, Mrs Chioti?’

  She ran an eye over him. ‘Tell my assistant to order you a new suit.’ She glanced at the bald man. ‘I understand from Ricardo that you were correct. The traitor was the man you picked out.’

  ‘I was sure it was him.’

  ‘Yes, you were,’ she said thoughtfully.

  Ricardo stepped forward. ‘And you were lucky, Dami. How did you manage to lose control of your knife? Just as well Lakis was in a state of panic. If he’d remembered you were carrying a gun, God knows what would have happened.’

  Damis felt his cheeks redden, but Mrs Chioti didn’t look concerned.

  The bald man came up to him. ‘You’re nothing if you can’t stomach a squealer getting what he deserves.’

  ‘That’ll do, Ricardo,’ Rea Chioti said firmly. ‘Not everyone has your aptitude for such work. I’ll be in touch.’

  Ricardo pursed his lips and accepted his dismissal. He winked at Damis as he headed for the door.

  Damis kept his head bowed. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs—’

  ‘Don’t apologise. Some parts of the business are demanding. You’re young and you’re learning quickly. You can take the rest of the day off.’

  Back in his suite Damis closed his eyes, then quickly opened them again. The horror of seeing Lakis suspended in the air with taut pyramids of skin raised from his groin wouldn’t leave him. It had been a relief to put the body face down on the rock, obscuring the wounds and the hooks with lines dangling from them like rat’s tails. But there had been no relief for him since.

  He rolled off the bed and started to do consecutive sets of press-ups, first with both hands on the ground, then only one. When he’d finished sets of a hundred left and right, he got up and looked out of the window. There was a crush of people in the street below, many walking straight at each other and then veering apart at the last moment. Some were young, others decrepit; some well-dressed, others in little more than rags; most aware of what was going on around them, some in their own drug-induced worlds. He clenched his fist and pounded it against the open palm of his other hand. That was what this was all about. Drugs. The way they cut people off from their friends and families, from those who loved them. From life.

  Damis couldn’t forget seeing Martha in the hospital’s secure unit. Her clothes flapped about wasted limbs that jerked uncontrollably. Her eyes, once beautiful deep pools, were red-veined, the pupils wide and vacant. He spoke to her but she didn’t hear, her lips moving constantly as she mumbled words he couldn’t understand. It was her smell that was hardest to bear. He’d taken in every scent of her body. The sweet warmth of her armpits. The tang of her sex cut with the wild flowers they’d lain on. The aromatic smell of her hair when he crushed his face into it, and the perfume she used to dab beneath her ears. But now she stank. Blasts from her unwashed skin and knotted hair forced him back, his hand over his face. Martha was a living corpse. The body he’d possessed was rotting away.

  Martha, he said to himself. He was doing this for Martha. If she’d been able to understand, she’d have approved. She’d always been so protective of animals and children, of creatures who couldn’t help themselves. Yes, she’d appreciate what he was trying to do.

  Then Damis saw Lakis again—the tortured flesh, the throat ruptured from screaming. How could he ever justify that to Martha? He’d tried to help, had deliberately dropped his knife when he was cutting the ropes, but it was useless. They might have escaped Ricardo, but the other two, the Father and the Son, they were monsters, inhuman and implacable. He hoped he’d never see either of them again.

  Damis gave a hollow laugh. Who was he fooling? Ricardo didn’t frighten him but, if he were to honour the oath he’d sworn after Martha had been lost to him, there would have to be a reckoning with the Father and the Son. One thing puzzled him. Rea Chioti obviously knew exactly what those men did. She employed them, but she showed no emotion
. How had the woman become so immune to the pain of her fellow human beings?

  Mavros went back to his flat and came up with a plan. As far as he’d been able to establish, Jenny Ikonomou was the last person to see Katia. From what the actress had said, it seemed that her brother stayed at the Pink Palace at least part of the time. The last thing Mavros wanted was to run into the scumbag before he could see her, so he decided to wait until early evening before phoning. Ricardo had been busy during the night and he’d probably be sleeping during the day. By evening he’d be back at the Silver Lady, making preparations to relieve more suckers of their cash.

  He watched Bitsos report the Lazanis killing on the afternoon news. He was dozing off on the sofa when it occurred to him that his mother might have met Jenny Ikonomou. The Pink Palace wasn’t far from Dorothy’s apartment building and she had friends who worked in the theatre. He rang her.

  ‘Jenny? Yes, I know her, dear. Though she hasn’t come to many parties since she disposed of her husband.’

  ‘What do you mean “disposed of”, Mother?’

  She laughed. ‘Well, she was a lot younger than him and she’s a passionate woman.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘We knew her parents,’ Dorothy continued. ‘Spyros used to be scathing about them. I don’t remember their names. He was a doctor. He used to treat the society fools, the ones with more money than brains, and she was a terrible snob. They had a huge place over on Aegina and—’

  ‘She was in the youth party,’ Mavros put in.

  There was a brief silence. ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Andonis never brought her to the house?’

  His mother gave a soft laugh. ‘Your brother used to sneak girls in the back way. He said it was for reasons of security, but I knew better. I don’t remember her, though.’

  Mavros found himself smiling at a recollection that came up out of the void—Andonis with a finger raised to his lips when the nine-year-old Alex had caught him in the corridor outside his bedroom with a flustered girl. His brother’s bright blue eyes and winning smile meant he was never short of female admirers.

  ‘Are you there, dear?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. Did you ever meet her brother?’

  ‘Her brother? No, I don’t…oh, wait a minute, a completely bald man?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I did. Horrible type. There was a scandal about him. All hushed up, of course.’

  Mavros realised he was pressing the receiver hard against his ear. ‘What was that?’ he asked innocently. His mother claimed she never gossiped, so he had to be careful.

  ‘It was very unsavoury. He was supposed to have raped a girl on the set of one of his sister’s films.’ Dorothy lowered her voice. ‘And the thing was, she really was a girl. Only fourteen, the daughter of a cameraman who’d taken her there for a treat. It cost them a lot to brush that under the carpet.’ She stopped abruptly, as if she’d suddenly realised that her tongue was running away with her. ‘Why do you want to know, Alex?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I was talking to Anna and Jenny Ikonomou’s name came up.’ Diverting attention to his sister always got him out of jail.

  ‘Indeed,’ Dorothy said sharply. ‘I’ve learned to be careful what I say in front of Anna in case it appears in some magazine.’

  Mavros ended the call. What his mother had told him was useful background material, but it didn’t help him with his approach to the actress. He had to find a way to gain her confidence. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that she hadn’t told him everything she knew about Katia. But how could he get her to lower her guard, at least until he was inside the house? He spent the rest of the afternoon thinking.

  At seven-thirty he called the Pink Palace. If Ricardo answered, he would put the phone down—he’d activated the option to withhold his number.

  ‘Ikonomou.’ It was her.

  ‘This is Alex Mavros. You were good enough to see me yesterday.’

  ‘Yes?’ the actress said, her voice almost inaudible.

  ‘I’m calling again about Katia, the young woman who stayed with you. I’m happy to say that she’s contacted her parents. She’s safe and well. The only thing is, she’s mislaid an earring and she thinks it may be in your house.’

  ‘Katia is well?’ Jenny Ikonomou said, her voice louder. ‘She wants to come to my house?’

  ‘Ah, no,’ Mavros said, elaborating the story he’d formulated. ‘She’s actually in Italy. She met a boy and had a rush of blood to the head. You know how young people are. Her parents have asked me to retrieve the earring. Apparently it was her great-grandmother’s and it has sentimental value.’ He waited nervously to hear if the ruse had worked.

  ‘You’re sure that Katia is all right?’ the actress repeated. ‘She’s in Italy, you say?’

  ‘Yes, I spoke to her myself. Would it be possible for me to come round now, Mrs Ikonomou?’

  ‘Well…yes, I suppose so. Very well.’

  Mavros grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. It looked like his gamble was working. Unless Jenny Ikonomou knew Katia’s real whereabouts. If that was the case, he was walking into a bear trap he’d made for himself.

  Rea Chioti was hunched over the telephone. ‘Can you pick him up? That’s all I want to know.’

  ‘He’s one of Fyodor’s top men,’ Ricardo replied. ‘It won’t be easy.’

  ‘I didn’t ask if it would be easy.’

  There was a pause. ‘Yes, we can pick him up when he goes to collect the take. But it’ll be messy. He always has at least two bodyguards with him.’

  ‘Make sure you have superior fire power. I’ll give you the ex-bouncer.’

  There was another brief silence. ‘He’s green. I’m not sure if he has the balls.’

  ‘He put himself between me and a sniper. I wonder if you’d have done that.’

  Ricardo laughed drily. ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘Do it tonight. We’re at war. I want it as loud and as brutal as possible.’

  ‘All right. You’ll advise the—’

  ‘Yes, I’ll advise them.’ She put the phone down on the coffee table and thought about Ricardo. He’d become one of Stratos’s most trusted lieutenants in the years before her husband’s condition worsened. He was capable of the worst jobs, but she didn’t fully trust him. She’d taken him away from front-line enforcement and installed him in the Silver Lady, where he’d raised the profits substantially. But the nightclub had brought him closer to vulnerable women and that was Ricardo’s weakness. She’d heard stories about his viciousness to dancers and waitresses, and she wasn’t impressed. Still, he was a good man to have on her side in a war and, when the Russians made their move, she’d been forced to bring him back. He was one of the few people who would work with the Father and Son.

  She picked up her mobile and pressed the buttons—she never stored any numbers in its memory in case it fell into the wrong hands.

  ‘Hello.’ The Son’s voice was neutral.

  ‘Grouper,’ she said, choosing a code word.

  ‘Scorpion fish,’ came the reply, without hesitation.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. The Son had sent her an encrypted list of fish names to be used. She was to select one and he would respond with one that began with the next letter in the Greek alphabet. She accepted the need for the precaution, but she wasn’t impressed that fish names were used. She knew what the Father and Son did with hooks. ‘I need you tonight.’ She gave him the time and location of the pick-up.

  ‘I’ll be ready.’

  ‘You mean you’ll both be ready.’

  ‘Of course,’ the Son said after a pause.

  Rea walked over to the window. In the distance, the wind was streaming over Mount Lykavittos, a large blue-and-white flag waving in front of the domed chapel. She wondered what was going on. The Son’s tone had been different from usual, almost jaunty. He was a strange one. The Father was hard and merciless but, unlike the Son, there was a passion about hi
m. She recalled the first time she had seen him, his cheeks red and his mouth wide as he screamed at her, told her she was a filthy whore who’d betrayed her country and the martyrs who fought to save it from the stinking Communists. The Father was committed to the patriotic cause. Or so she’d thought at the time. Later she discovered from her husband that the Father had worked for the family since before the dictatorship.

  She turned from the window and went to the desk. The Father was compromised, but at least he’d once had ideals, no matter how poisonous they were. The Son was different. From what she’d heard from Ricardo and the others, he believed in nothing except inflicting pain. That was useful to her, but it also made her uneasy. Like the Father, she’d once had ideals, though they were the opposite of his. Growing up in the slums, her mother dead from consumption when she was nine and her father a trade unionist who died in the first month of the dictatorship, she’d thrown herself into the struggle for the people’s rights.

  She stared into the mirror. If only she was back at the villa in front of the painting in the study. She could have opened the safe and looked into the bulging eyes of the mask, the golden mask of silence. There was so much she had buried, so much of her life that she’d consigned to the abyss. The Father had taught her how to do that, but now it seemed she was forgetting the lesson. She’d sacrificed the Party and her comrades because of her lust for a man who was unattainable. She’d given into the pain and the temptation, she’d destroyed Manos and the woman he loved on a whim. She’d turned that weakness into strength in the years she’d been with Stratos, she’d used what she discovered about herself in the cells to benefit the family business—but she needed the mask to sustain herself. The mask reminded her of that weakness and the reminding made her strong again. She needed to see it.

  Rea summoned her assistant and told her to make the arrangements. She would go back to the villa to be with her husband. If Ricardo and the Son did their jobs, the Russians would soon be reeling, no longer able to mount attempts on her life. The mask, the golden mask. She needed to see the woman’s twisted face, the sewn lips that had been preserved for eternity. She needed to see it like a junkie needed a fix.