Crying Blue Murder (MIRA)

by Paul Johnston

  He was there, beyond the solid wall that even in daylight looked impenetrable but which concealed a narrow passage leading into a chamber larger than the room Maro shared with her three sisters. She slid round the jagged corner and moved into the circle of light cast by the oil lamp. In heavy peasant clothes, her man was kneeling on a blanket facing her with his arms open wide. His face had been darkened by the sun, but he still didn’t look like an islander. His skin wasn’t rough enough, his eyes unburdened by the demands of work on the boats or in the stony fields. That made him seem even more of a god to her.

  They nestled together, his arms tight around her, not muscular like her brother Manolis’s, the hands not calloused by a lifetime hauling nets like her father’s, but safer and more caring. The protection this wiry foreigner could offer was worth more to her than that of her family. The men stood as a bulwark between her and the world because that was what the custom required, not because they loved her.

  ‘Ah, Maro,’ Tzortz said, his mouth close to her ear. The way he spoke her name always made the hairs on her neck and arms rise, the sound full of a longing that was all the more powerful because they’d been able to satisfy it every night since her brother’s accident.

  They made love on the blanket, the light turned lower so that their naked limbs and secret places kept some of their mystery. Their movements were slow and deliberate; they bit each other’s lips gently as they concentrated on reaching the point where they fell together into the deep river of passion. Then they swam for what seemed like hours in a world beyond time, only coming back to the surface when the delirium began to wear off.

  ‘Ach, Tzortz,’ she said, her hand on him damp and softening. ‘How is it that you love me? I am nobody, a girl who knows nothing. I will live on Trigono and die on Trigono, but you? You will sail far away when the war is finished. You will go back to your own people and forget me.’ Her eyes filled with tears but, even before he spoke, she knew there was no need for them.

  ‘I will never leave you, Maro,’ he whispered, the words dripping from his lips like honey. ‘You know that. I will stay on Trigono after the war and we will raise a flock of little Maros and Tzortzes.’ He stroked her chin as she laughed. ‘I promise you,’ he said, looking at her with blue eyes that burned as bright as any star in the pastures of heaven. ‘I will never leave Trigono.’

  They stayed close together and the drug of their love gradually wore off.

  ‘But Tzortz,’ she said. ‘We must be careful. My brother suspects us, I’m sure of that. And that Theocharis, you must not trust him. His father owned the mines here, you know that.’ She bowed her head. ‘He worked the men terribly. Many died in the shafts and caves around here. The families of the local ones were paid only enough to keep them quiet and the ones who came from distant places were left to rot where they fell unless their friends scraped a hole for them.’ She looked back into her lover’s eyes. ‘Beware of Panos Theocharis. And of Manolis Gryparis. They are not your friends.’

  He nodded slowly at her then smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Maro. I know what I’m doing. Nothing can come between us.’ He drew her tightly to him. ‘Our love has made us immortal.’

  It was then that Kyra Maro came back to herself and blinked, the narrow confines of her bedroom gathering around her like a cell. She sat up with difficulty and wiped the rheum and the tears from her eyes. Immortal, she thought. Tzortz was wrong about that. He’d been wrong about many things. She looked under the bed at the box containing Tasos’s remains. No one was immortal. The creaking in her own bones would soon cease for ever. And her lover? He had come back as he promised, but she had gained no relief—only a terrible agony that had never left her. There was no immortality, whatever the idiot priests said.

  She got off the bed and walked unsteadily into the front room. There was a loaf of bread and a piece of hard goat’s cheese on the table. Rena must have been in when she was asleep. At least she hadn’t come when Maro was speaking to Tasos.

  ‘Ach, Rena,’ she said under her breath. ‘You’re a good woman at heart, you look after me even though we aren’t related. But people fear you, they think they know the truth about you. Eventually they will crush you like they crushed me. The village is harsh to its women if they stray from the path laid down by custom. But the men, why is it that they can do as they please? My brother Manolis and his vicious, animal son Lefteris, they have both escaped punishment for their sins. And what about Theocharis in his tower, as cruel as any king in the old stories? There has been no retribution for him either.’

  Kyra Maro sat down and scrabbled to break off the end of the loaf. Before she put a morsel of bread into her mouth, she cleared her throat and spat into her handkerchief.

  ‘My curse on them all,’ she said, raising her head defiantly. But her eyes were still wet with tears.

  Mavros rode the mountain bike to the hire office and then walked back to Rena’s. He crossed the courtyard to his room and sniffed the air inside. There was something different about the place. He looked in the bathroom and saw that the toilet paper bin had been emptied. Rena had obviously been in to clean before she left the village. Then it struck him that she could have been nosing around. Since he’d seen her in such an animated state on Vigla, her eyes burning and her face set firm against the Dutchman, he had wondered about his landlady. She was usually quiet and reserved, but she seemed to be harbouring some painful secret. He wouldn’t like to be around when it got too much for her—there was something frighteningly intense about her. And yet she was kind to the old woman and to the wretched donkey, and she’d been hospitable to him. Perhaps he wasn’t making enough of an allowance for the extremes of the Cycladic character.

  He checked his possessions. They were all as he had left them, though the drawers in the small chest were uneven, as if they had been opened and closed again. Rena was an obsessive cleaner. There was no dust in the rooms and the windows shone in the afternoon sun, so maybe she was nothing more than fastidious about her housework. Anyway, he had everything important with him in his pockets and his bag.

  Mavros walked out into the courtyard. There was no sign of Rena; the kitchen door was pulled to and the shutters closed upstairs. He called her name but there was no response. She was presumably still out on the slopes above the Kambos or putting her donkey back in the field that belonged to old Manolis’s brother. This was his chance to check her house. He thought about the ethics of his profession for a second or two and then went into the unlit passageway. He opened the door farther down and ran his eyes over the standard, spotless saloni that was reserved for formal occasions, the walls lined with dark-stained furniture and the armchairs and sofa covered with transparent plastic sheeting. It was unlikely that there would be anything pertaining to Rosa Ozal in it, and a quick examination of the cabinet confirmed that.

  Mavros went upstairs and opened the doors quietly. There was a well-appointed bathroom with unusually tasteful pale cream tiles—many islanders went for the most garish colours and patterns that they could find. The two guest rooms were pretty spartan—wood-frame beds, posters of Greek tourist attractions on the walls and cheap panelled wardrobes. He checked them and found nothing apart from spare blankets and electric anti-mosquito devices, the flex neatly wrapped round each one.

  He went into Rena’s bedroom, having carefully closed the other doors. It was more ornately decorated, the double bed under a bright embroidered cover and the walls painted in a pale shade of pink. Mavros wondered if they would have been that colour when Rena’s husband was alive and decided that they would not. Then it struck him that he’d seen no photographs of her departed family in any of the rooms, not even in the saloni—in fact, he’d seen no photographs of any people. That was unusual. Most Greeks, especially in rural areas, cherished the faded sepia shots of their ancestors. Wedding photos of grandparents and parents, memorial portraits of lost family members, were treasured almost as much as the smoke-blackened icons that were handed down from generation to generation
. Rena had no such photos on display, nor did she have any icons. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Taking a deep breath, Mavros opened the wardrobe. He wasn’t comfortable poking his nose into his landlady’s possessions, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make progress with the case. Rosa Ozal had stayed in this house and he wasn’t convinced when Rena said that nothing had been left behind when the woman left suddenly. There were the standard island woman’s clothes, the formal suits for feast days in plastic covers, the black blouses and skirts neatly pressed. It seemed that Rena had disposed of all her brightly coloured clothing after her husband’s death. But if she was so adamant about mourning him in the traditional way, why was his photograph absent? There were a few pairs of high- heeled black shoes but other than that, her footwear was simple and unfashionable. He didn’t think it likely that his landlady attended many of the glendia, the eating, drinking and dancing sessions with which the locals kept themselves amused in the winter months.

  After running his fingers quickly through drawers full of sensible underwear and cotton nightdresses, Mavros looked around the room. There was a bedside table by the single pillow but, apart from a pristine copy of the Bible, the drawer was empty. There were no other books in the room, or anywhere else in the house. He dropped to his knees and glanced under the chest and wardrobe. Nothing, not even a layer of dust. He swore in frustration, as much because he didn’t know what he was looking for as because he couldn’t find anything. Then he inclined his head and saw something protruding from beneath the pillow. It was the corner of what looked like a blue plastic folder.

  Feeling a rush of excitement, Mavros slid his hand under the counterpane and pulled out the object. Here were the photographs that should have been in frames in the main room. He opened the flap and took out a blurred image of an elderly couple, the man’s thick moustache failing to disguise a weak and unassuming face, the woman’s hard gaze giving the impression of an unbreakable will. Their clothes and the condition of the photo suggested it had been taken in the late fifties or early sixties. He assumed they were Rena’s parents, not that there was much family resemblance. The photo had been crumpled up at some stage then smoothed out, which struck him as odd.

  The next image was that of a youngish man with a mocking smile, his hair thin and his cheekbones unusually fleshless. If he hadn’t been gazing at the lens so arrogantly, he’d have given the impression of an invalid who was soon to succumb. Mavros wondered if he was Rena’s husband. This photo too had been crushed and then flattened out again, the surface creased by numerous broken lines. Why had she done that? If she’d disliked her parents and her husband, she would surely just have thrown the photos away. Perhaps family loyalty had made her relent.

  All that was left in the folder now was a Kodak envelope containing a batch of photos. He took them out and immediately felt his head jerk back. Here she was, the woman he was looking for. There were several shots of Rosa Ozal sitting in Rena’s kitchen, her fine features adorned with broad smiles. In one photo she had her arms wide open, as if she were about to wrap them round the photographer. And then there was an image of the missing woman on the bed that Mavros was standing beside—the cover was identical. In this one Rosa was naked, her arms folded beneath well-formed, tanned breasts, the nipples hard and extended. She was looking straight at the lens, her lips parted and her expression rapt.

  Mavros stood with one hand cupping his chin. Now at least he could see why Rena had been reticent when he’d questioned her about Rosa. A local widow engaging in a physical relationship with a foreign woman wouldn’t impress the residents of Trigono. Then he came to the last photograph and got another surprise. This time there was a different woman on Rena’s bed. He recognised her immediately. She was the one he’d seen in Eleni the archaeologist’s album, the blonde with the finely sculpted, severe features. Her hair was wet and close to her scalp as if she’d just come out of the shower. She too was naked, her legs apart at the knees and her right hand over her pubis. Her left arm was under her firm breasts and her eyes were locked on the camera.

  Mavros wondered if Rena was the photographer in both cases. It seemed likely, given the location. That would explain her guarded manner and the removal of her husband’s photo. Had she discovered her sexuality and fallen in with lesbian tourists? There were plenty of those in the archipelago every summer. But how did that fit in with what Rena had told him about Rosa and Rinus? Did the Dutchman hit the missing Turkish-American woman because she’d rejected his advances? Or could there be more to it, given his sideline in pushing drugs?

  Moving his foot, Mavros felt something under the bed. He put the photos back in the folder and replaced it under the pillow, then dropped to his knees and felt around with one hand, his fingers closing around the handle of a suitcase. He pulled it out, registering that it was fairly heavy. The two clasps had been locked. He thought about what he was about to do for a few seconds then decided to go ahead. He had already stuck his nose into his landlady’s life so far that breaking into her case wasn’t any worse—not that he felt proud of himself. He fumbled around in his bag for the paper clip he always carried, straightened it out and inserted it into the first lock. It was stiff but eventually the hinge flipped open. The second one was easier. He took a deep breath, hoping both that it was worth it and that Rena wouldn’t notice the locks were disengaged. Then he raised the lid.

  There were two objects inside the suitcase. The more striking one was a marble Cycladic figurine about thirty centimetres long. It was a female form, lying with the knees together and slightly raised, the arms crossed beneath small breasts. The surface of the cream-coloured stone was smooth, the blank oval head angled back so that, had there been eyes, they would have been staring straight up. Mavros lifted the piece and felt its weight, then held it to his chest as if it were a child. As far as he could tell, it was an original rather than a copy—and the fact that Rena had hidden it away gave support to this conclusion. But where did it come from? Could Eleni have something to do with it? And what about the photos with her and Rosa Ozal? The archaeologist had hinted at finds that she’d made at the dig, but she and Rena seemed to hate each other. Then Mavros remembered the pose that Rosa had struck in the photo, arms folded beneath her breasts. Could the figurine be linked to Rosa in some way?

  Mavros rocked back on his heels after he’d replaced the piece, feeling pins and needles but remaining in a squat. He had just read the words in Greek that were on the front cover of the small blue volume in the case. Trigono 1941-1943: Endurance and Resistance by Andhreas S. Vlastos. Here it was at last, the book that had disappeared from the public library and which, according to the author’s widow, Panos Theocharis had taken steps to suppress. Why had Rena secreted a copy under her bed? He flicked through the pages, aware that the longer he spent in the room, the greater the chance of being caught by his landlady on her return. But taking the book away to study it in depth was an even bigger risk. He would be the obvious suspect given his earlier questions about the library, and the idea of being caught out by Rena was repellent. So he tried to speed-read through the densely packed text, noticing the name Panos Theocharis several times. But the references mentioned only anodyne details of his family background and his war service in Egypt. Then he stopped, his eye caught by another familiar name. It was written in Latin characters and prefaced by the word Ipolochagos, Greek for the rank of lieutenant. George Lawrence. The officer in the photo he’d found in the chimney and whose name he suspected had been erased from the village’s memorial.

  Mavros pulled out his notebook and scribbled down the sparse details given by Vlastos. Lieutenant George Lawrence had been sent to Trigono in October 1942 to plan and execute sabotage operations. He had a minor reputation as a poet in Egypt and had published some work in the magazines of the time. But his service on Trigono was marked by disagreements with the local resistance leaders and with Panos Theocharis, who had been sent to the island with a unit of Greek commandos.
And that was it. Nothing more about the mysterious Lawrence, as far as a rapid trawl through the rest of the book showed. He shook his head in frustration. Could there be some kind of connection, via George Lawrence, between Panos Theocharis and Rosa Ozal? Why had the photos and the diskette been put in the chimney? He was still assuming that Rosa had been responsible for that.

  There was a sound from the street below. Mavros went over quickly to the shuttered window and saw Rena in her dusty scarf, blouse and skirt at the door. He considered what to do for a moment, then put the book back in the suitcase, closed it and replaced it under the bed. He went downstairs three steps at a time, making it to the passageway as the door was opening and darting round the corner into the yard. Keeping close to the wall, he slid round to the table and sat down, assuming a relaxed pose.

  As Rena came into the light, he looked up and saw an old woman staring down at him from the neighbouring house. She must have seen him sidling round the wall. If she told Rena about his behaviour, he’d have some explaining to do. Then it struck him that he had omitted to close her bedroom door after him. He was probably in trouble even if she didn’t spot the unlocked suitcase.

  Rena gave him a tentative smile and walked to her kitchen. Mavros got his breathing under control. It seemed he was losing his touch in more ways than one. What he’d discovered in Rena’s bedroom—the photos of Rosa and the other woman, the Cycladic figurine, the book with its references to Theocharis and George Lawrence—had left him as confused as he’d ever been during an investigation. The only angle to check that he could come up with was the detail about Lawrence being a published poet. A call to his mother, publisher of many minor writers, might cast light on the officer who’d been on Trigono during the war—the officer who had been in dispute with Panos Theocharis.