Crying Blue Murder (MIRA)

by Paul Johnston

  Mavros shook his head. ‘I just got here. What’s going on?’

  ‘The funeral of the boy who drowned. Come down and have a drink.’ He put his hand over his eyes and smiled. ‘It’s open house.’

  ‘No thanks,’ Mavros said. He didn’t intend to miss the procession to the cemetery.

  ‘See you in the bar later, then.’

  Mavros nodded and stepped back.

  Barbara’s voice rang out. ‘I hope he wasn’t listening to what we were saying, Rinus.’

  ‘Why should you care, darling?’ came the sarcastic reply. ‘He’s not your type, is he? Not exactly a muscle-bound peasant with a…’

  Their voices faded as they went inside.

  When Mavros got back to the archway, the church service was finishing. Space had been found for Theocharis and his female companions inside but Aris had stayed in the square, his hands in his pockets and a sour look on his face.

  The priest was chanting one of the final prayers, inviting the gathered brethren to kiss the departed farewell, and suddenly Mavros felt his own losses knife into him. Although as a communist his father had been a dogged atheist, an Orthodox funeral was the only practical option in 1960s Greece. So the family had followed the coffin to the vast Proto Nekrotafio, the First Cemetery of Athens, and let the priests perform the rites. A large crowd of banned Party members had clapped their comrade to his final home—a home, as one of them said zealously to the numbed family, that was shared by all men, rich or poor. The junta of colonels had not yet come to power and forbidden public displays of opposition, but the politics of the time were turbulent and the gathering had an air of protest because of the dead man’s record of imprisonment. The applause as Spyros was carried to the grave was a moral victory over the stony-faced policemen and security operatives who were in attendance.

  Mavros was five, missing his father but only dimly aware of what was going on around him as he gripped his brother Andonis’s hand tightly. Andonis of the bright blue eyes. He was sixteen then, defiant and already trusted by his father’s friends. But there was to be no funeral for him, no memorial, no mention alongside Spyros’s name on the headstone. He had disappeared into the abyss in 1972 without a trace.

  Mavros blinked hard and watched as the open coffin was carried out of the church by young men, the boy’s relatives even more stricken than they had been as he came out into the sunlight for the last time. The one-armed old man was close behind, his heavily lined face expressionless. Damp- eyed women fussed around, their sighs and groans audible from where Mavros was standing. Then he saw the tall man who had gone hunting last night, the father of the drowned boy. His face was impassive, his thick limbs constricted in an ill-fitting suit. By his side was a thin woman, her face ravaged by suffering. Her prominence in the procession and the cowed glance she gave Lefteris showed that she was Yiangos’s mother. As the procession set off for the cemetery, a collective moan rang out across the square above the sound of the villagers’ shuffling feet. Over them all, the late September sun shone out in an indifferent blue sky.

  Mavros had been intending to keep his distance, to soak up the atmosphere and try to make sense of the village, but he found himself drawn into the sombre parade. In Athens the funerals of people who weren’t family or friends meant little to him. The cries of the mourners were drowned out by the unceasing din of traffic, the trees and flowers blighted by the lead-tainted air. But the ceremony on Trigono was different. It had struck him that by following this young man’s coffin he would be sending a message to his brother across the years and the emptiness that lay between them, a message that might finally get through—even though he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to Andonis. Leave me in peace?

  Across the square the Theocharis party had gathered around the Jeep. Mavros could hear the old man telling his son in a low, firm voice that he was tired and that Aris was to join the procession on his behalf. Aris’s lips were twisted, his eyes screwed up, but he acquiesced.

  ‘You too,’ Panos Theocharis said to the archaeologist Eleni. ‘Spend the rest of the day in the village.’ He turned back to his son. ‘Dhimitra will drive me home. She’ll pick you up in the evening after the girl’s funeral. Be sure to pass on the family’s respects, do you hear, Ari?’

  Mavros watched as the woman in the designer suit helped her husband into the vehicle then drove slowly out of the square. Aris Theocharis joined the column of villagers, his chest out and his face red.

  ‘Hello,’ Mavros said before Eleni was swallowed up in the crowd.

  She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. ‘So, Alex from the bar. Taking in the local colour?’

  He nodded awkwardly. ‘It’s very moving,’ he said, trying to maintain the guise of a tourist. ‘Much more emotional than back home.’

  Eleni turned away. ‘Come, then,’ she said brusquely. ‘Maybe you’ll see something—what’s the word?—quaint to tell your friends about.’ Despite the heavy accent, her command of English was good.

  Mavros walked alongside her. They were about thirty metres from the front of the dense procession.

  ‘Did you know the young man who died?’ he asked, making his tone conversational rather than inquisitive.

  The archaeologist nodded. ‘It’s a small place. Everybody knows everybody.’

  ‘Are you from here?’

  She glanced at him as they passed the last houses and followed a winding, unmetalled road to the west. ‘No, I’m from Thessaloniki. But I’ve been excavating sites here for the last four years.’

  Mavros could see cypress trees against the blue of the sea in the distance, their pointed green tips swaying gently in the breeze. ‘So was the boy a friend?’

  This time Eleni’s eyes didn’t move in his direction. ‘I…I knew him quite well, yes.’ She shook her head. ‘Yiangos was a simple soul,’ she said in a neutral voice. ‘He always did what he was told.’

  Mavros considered that brief obituary as the stone walls on either side of the track gave way to pikrodhafnes, the oleanders’ dusty pink and white blossoms forming an undulating line to the white walls of the burial ground. From what he’d understood, the young man had taken the fishing boat when his father was away. Had he been told to do that or was it just a young lovers’ illicit outing that had gone tragically wrong? The police, coastguard and Port Police had apparently seen nothing suspicious about the drownings—if any of them had, the funerals would have been delayed by autopsies and investigations. There were representatives from the three services in the procession, their dark blue uniforms standing out. The policeman Stamatis who had been in the bar was trying hard to look dignified.

  Mavros shook his head to dispel the thoughts. The deaths of the young people were nothing to do with him. He had to start concentrating on Rosa Ozal. But the heart-rending beauty of the scene overwhelmed him. If custom required you to be laid to rest rather than cremated like his Scottish relatives, this burial ground with its view across the unquiet waves was as appealing a place as any he could imagine.

  He heard familiar voices to his left. On a small outcrop of rock above a field that had been burned gold by the sun, the American couple he’d seen in the café and the Bar Astrapi were squatting beside a camera on a tripod.

  ‘It’s not close enough, Lance,’ the woman was complaining. ‘The images will be useless.’

  ‘I’m not going any nearer, Gretchen,’ the man countered, his usually calm voice registering annoyance. ‘It’s not some freak show you can just muscle into. You go if you have to.’

  The woman glared at him and, picking up the camera, came over the field in a cloud of dust. She was wearing kneelength khaki shorts and a halter-neck top that displayed sun- reddened legs and shoulders.

  ‘I think that’s far enough,’ Eleni said to her. ‘You’re not dressed properly.’

  Gretchen stopped, looking at her arms and her unshaven legs as if she hadn’t noticed them until then. ‘What? Oh, for the love of God.’ She turned back angrily towards her partner.r />
  ‘Do you think I’m dressed properly?’ Mavros said in a low voice.

  Eleni looked at his T-shirt and jeans briefly. ‘I suppose so. As long as you stay outside the wall.’

  He nodded. Going inside the sanctuary wasn’t something he had planned on doing. He wasn’t a believer and the bereaved family was entitled to some privacy, at least as far as strangers were concerned. The procession had halted at the gate as people struggled to squeeze into the confined space. When they got closer, Mavros heard raised voices.

  ‘You aren’t going in, witch.’ The old man with the missing arm was standing across the entrance like a statue, his expression fierce. There were gasps and then silence from the other villagers. ‘You aren’t family.’

  All that could be heard above the running of the water up the shore beyond were the feeble sounds of an old woman’s voice.

  ‘But I am family, Manoli,’ she said desperately. ‘You can’t say I’m not. I’m your sister. We are one family and Yiangos was part of it. You can’t keep me out.’

  Mavros looked over the mass of heads and saw a tiny creature in black, her head covered in a scarf. She was leaning against another woman, facing the old man like a songbird standing up to a predator. Another old man with similar features to Manolis had taken up a position next to him, his expression no less stern.

  ‘You aren’t going in, witch,’ Manolis repeated.

  The old woman looked around, her clouded eyes searching for support among the islanders, but none of them returned her gaze.

  ‘Come, Kyra Maro,’ said her companion. ‘It’s finished. You’ve accompanied Yiangos to his last home. Come away now.’

  It was only as the woman turned, an arm round her charge’s shrunken frame, that Mavros recognised his landlady Rena under the black scarf that was covering her head. She led the woman called Maro from the gate, the crowd parting to let them go. Only when they were several paces away did the islanders start pushing into the cemetery again.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Mavros asked Eleni.

  ‘Poor woman,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’s a family feud. They can go on for generations here.’ She moved forward and then stopped. ‘It’s completely full in there.’ There was a hint of relief in her voice. ‘I think I’ll stay outside with you.’

  Mavros and the archaeologist moved towards a gnarled olive tree on the slope to the right of the cemetery. They stood under the shade of the silvery-green leaves and watched as the priest ran through the final ritual, his voice carrying through the clear air.

  After the open coffin was placed in the shallow grave, he recited a prayer cast in the voice of the departed, asking people to mourn for him. ‘Only yesterday I was talking with you, but suddenly the terrible hour of death overtook me…’

  There was a loud, agony-stricken cry from one of the female relatives. Then the priest poured red wine in the shape of the cross over the body and tossed in a handful of earth. The villagers followed suit. When they’d finished, the shroud was raised over Yiangos’s handsome but pallid face and the lid lowered over the coffin. People began to move away immediately, their duty fulfilled.

  Mavros raised a hand to his eye and brushed away the dampness that had gathered. For a few seconds his brother Andonis’s face had been before him rather than that of the young man in the grave. He gazed out over the blue water, pale and glistening in the strength of the sun that would soon reach its zenith. It was only as he turned back that he saw the direction of Eleni’s gaze. She was staring at Aris Theocharis as he took the dead boy’s father Lefteris by the arm and started speaking to him.

  It was a look of pure hatred.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAVROS and Eleni walked back into the square behind the remnants of the procession.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked as they stopped in the shade of the mulberry tree. From the conversation he’d overheard, he knew that she had been told to stay in Faros by Theocharis.

  Eleni was watching Rena open a door in the lane under the kastro and usher in the old woman who had been barred from the cemetery. ‘What?’ she said distractedly. ‘I have nothing planned. I must wait for poor Nafsika’s funeral in the afternoon. I’ll find somewhere in the shade and write up my notes.’ She patted the leather bag on her shoulder and gave a faint smile. ‘I’m always weeks behind.’

  Mavros remembered what the German woman Barbara had said about Eleni. She seemed more melancholic than loudmouthed. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ he asked, looking round at the kafeneion. It was still closed, a pair of tourists standing outside it with bemused expressions. ‘I don’t suppose anything’s going to open until after the second funeral. You could come to my place.’

  ‘Your place?’ The archaeologist ran her eye over him as if he were a find she was appraising. ‘And where is that, Alex?’

  ‘Just down the street,’ Mavros replied, extending his arm. Although Eleni had the worn look of someone who had spent too many years exposed to the elements, there was a vitality in her, but it seemed to be tarnished by some deep sadness. He was curious about her.

  She considered the offer then nodded. ‘All right.’

  As they reached Rena’s door, a pair of old women standing in the middle of the street stopped talking and watched them with unfeigned interest. Eleni nodded to them but they didn’t acknowledge the greeting.

  ‘Ilithies,’ she said under her breath as Mavros admitted her. She shook her head as he glanced at her. ‘They are fools. They see me with a strange man and they immediately think I’m opening my legs for him.’

  ‘Really?’ Mavros replied, feigning surprise. He’d come across similar prejudice in Zakynthos.

  ‘It’s because I’m a xeni,’ Eleni said. ‘A stranger from outside the boundaries of their little world. For them it’s impossible for men and women to have friendly relations, even to drink coffee together, without sex being involved.’ She gave him a cool look as they walked into Rena’s courtyard. ‘You don’t have attitudes like that in your country, do you?’

  Mavros wasn’t clear how serious Eleni’s question was. ‘In Scotland?’ he said. ‘No, men and women don’t drink coffee together there. What they consume is much stronger.’ As the words left his mouth, he remembered that she’d put a fair amount of alcohol away in the bar herself.

  The archaeologist smiled, her face suddenly less tense. ‘If that was an invitation, it’s too early for me.’

  Mavros laughed. ‘And for me.’ He pointed to the table under the pergola. ‘Sit down. I’ll have to raid my landlady’s kitchen for coffee.’

  ‘I prefer chamomili. Camomile?’ Eleni pronounced the English version uncertainly. ‘It’s better for the stomach.’

  Mavros nodded then checked his stride. He didn’t think many bona fide Scotsmen would be able to identify the bundle of dried leaves that he’d seen hanging in the kitchen earlier. ‘You’d better help me look for it,’ he said over his shoulder.

  She followed him in and pointed immediately to the camomile. ‘Whose house is this?’ she asked, glancing round at the spotless room.

  ‘A woman called Rena,’ he said. ‘She was at the funeral with that old—’

  ‘O-pa,’ interrupted Eleni, her face showing concern. ‘The widow. She is a…she is a difficult person.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She shook her head. ‘Never mind. I’ll wait for you outside.’ She parted the muslin and stepped into the shaded yard.

  Mavros heated water, looking out at Eleni through the partially curtained window. What could she have against Rena? He made the drinks, deciding regretfully that instant coffee would be more appropriate for him in his guise as a tourist, and loaded up a tray.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, setting it down. ‘I don’t know what yours will taste like.’

  Eleni sipped and nodded in approval. ‘You should be careful, Alex,’ she said. ‘Rena has a reputation.’

  Mavros looked at her. The sunlight that was filtering through the lea
ves dappled her face. ‘What for? She seemed like a decent enough person to me.’

  Eleni opened her eyes wide at him. ‘Decent?’ she said with a sharp laugh. She didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Well, she’s been kind to me.’ When Mavros gathered she wasn’t going to say any more, he asked, ‘So where do you live on Trigono?’

  ‘Theocharis has an estate out in the Kambos, the plain in the centre of the island where the best farmland is. He’s given me one of the houses to use.’

  He remembered the photo he’d found up the chimney. Could it be of the dig? ‘The excavations are out there?’

  ‘On the Paliopyrgos estate and the slopes of the mountain Vigla behind.’

  Mavros swallowed coffee and grimaced. The powdered stuff was even worse than he’d expected. ‘Have you found anything significant?’

  Eleni held her gaze on him. He thought she had noticed the marking in his eye, but she didn’t mention it. ‘It depends what you call significant,’ she said, looking away. ‘A lot of skeletons, many broken pots, old foundation stones…are you interested in archaeology, Alex?’

  He shrugged. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said with a mocking smile. ‘You go to museums.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m very interested in the past. The past and how it affects the present.’ He realised that he was talking obliquely about how he approached his business. When it came to finding out about his clients’ backgrounds and relating them to the cases he’d taken on, past times influenced his daily life. But they were also part of the core of his being. The face of his brother, Andonis, flew up before him, the features less blurred than they often were. ‘History and the present are inextricably linked, don’t you think?’ he said.

  Eleni was studying him even more closely now, an expression of mild surprise on her round face. ‘To varos tis istorias,’ she said. ‘The weight of history, we call it. It can be very hard to bear, especially in this country. Tell me, what is your job, Alex?’