by Stav Sherez
‘You seem very sure of yourself.’
His voice startled them. Jason almost dropped his glass.
Wynn leant down over their table. His breath stinking of cigarettes. One wedged in the corner of his smile. ‘I didn’t realise you’d talked to the priest,’ he said, placing two drinks on their table. ‘Compliments of the club,’ he added, still standing, blocking the light from the dance floor. His eyes went from Kitty to Jason; in the artificial light they looked wild and feral like something you’d glimpse in a dark wood.
‘So, I see you two met after all.’
Jason froze. It felt like every muscle in his body had been siphoned out.
Kitty stared up at Wynn’s corkscrew hair and white-toothed smile. ‘What did you say?’ Her voice was hesitant, unsure.
‘Two English people on a small island. I guess things happen the way they do.’
Jason couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move his lips. His hand stayed glued to the glass. Was this the last moment he’d spend with Kitty?
‘What are you talking about?’ She’d regained some of her confidence, her voice rising high over the programmed beats.
Wynn shrugged. ‘Oh nothing, just passing the time,’ he replied, grinning at Jason. ‘Enjoy your drinks.’ He turned and walked off into the dark.
Jason tried to get his breathing back under control. The dance floor swirled around him. The sky seemed closer and the ground further away. If only he hadn’t got drunk that first night, had gone to another club, had said no … if only they’d met some other way …
‘Oh my God.’ Kitty grabbed Jason’s wrist. Her fingers clamped tight. She was staring off into the far corner, into another booth where an older man sat, his fingers stroking a salt and pepper moustache. The man nodded at Kitty and smiled. Even in the dark Jason could see her face drain of colour, hear her breath stutter and stop.
‘Who’s that?’ He had a sudden flash that her husband had arrived unannounced and their time together was over, but Kitty just shook her head, took a large swallow of wine and turned so that her back was facing the man with the moustache. She looked up at the stars. Then back down at the table.
He took her hand and held it gently. She stared into her glass, lost in thought. It was getting late. Jason felt drained. Wynn’s sudden interruption had left him unable to connect to this moment but, as he felt Kitty’s hand on his, he realised it had somehow brought them closer together.
SIXTEEN
Wynn glances down at the table, the scarred palimpsest of previous interrogations. Half-moon valleys from nails dug in tight. Stains that could be spit, coffee or blood. Names carved and scratched out.
‘I asked you a question.’
Nikos looms over him. There’s a cigarette in his hand and a bemused expression on his face. His fingers reach up to his moustache, then back down to his pockets as if unable to control them.
‘A question you know I can’t answer.’ Wynn smiles, notes the way Nikos’s mouth tightens and purses. He’s getting to him, and that’s good.
‘I know you sell drugs for someone. I need to know who.’
‘What would make you think that? You seen me collect payslips?’
‘I see you and that’s all I need to see. A piece of shit drifter like you wouldn’t be doing this by himself.’
Wynn notes the detective’s anger, the red rising thread within him. If he can only play this right.
‘Even if I was working for someone, you think I would tell you?’
Nikos shakes his head. Side to side. Slow and easy. ‘No,’ he replies, ‘I guess you wouldn’t. I guess you’re too stupid to see the big picture here. After all, if you were working for someone you could tell me who they were and get yourself out of this mess.’ He waits a beat, then turns his back to Wynn.
The silence fills the room like smoke. It’s all in the waiting, Nikos knows. In what you don’t say. The gaps you leave.
He’d been watching the drug dealer these past few days. The American couple had confirmed his link to Caroline. The two murdered boys had bought ferry tickets every week, doing the rounds of the islands. The girl from the bar had said they’d often come in with Wynn. Every other lead has dead-ended. The past is a room he doesn’t want to enter. Not yet, though he knows, deep down in that place where you keep secrets from yourself, that soon he’ll have to unlock that door. And that once a door is open, everything springs out. All the lies and secrets and things hidden so well. All the years too. But maybe this has nothing to do with that. Maybe these current murders only look the same. Maybe that’s the point.
Wynn had come along easy. Professionals always did. They knew the score. Knew there was no point running or ducking. Knew too that they were protected. He thinks of the phone call, Petrakis’s dry and bitter tirade. The feeling swells in him, he has to grip the table, but maybe, just maybe the two things are one. Maybe he can do what he was sent to this island to do and solve the murders at the same time.
He turns and faces the table. Wynn stares at him wide-eyed and unguarded. There’s a ten by eight manilla envelope on the table. Wynn hasn’t looked at it once.
‘Open it,’ Nikos says.
‘Uh-uh,’ Wynn shakes his head, ‘No disrespect, detective, but I’m not getting my fingerprints on that.’
Careful. Another sign of a professional. Nikos leans over, takes the photos out of the envelope. Four of them. He lays them face up on the table in front of Wynn.
Wynn looks down, flinches, kicks his chair back. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘It’s not him,’ Nikos deadpans.
‘What the fuck are you showing me these for?’ Wynn moves his chair back as far as it will go. Suddenly this is real. Suddenly this is no longer about a handful of pills. The realisation hits Wynn like a blow to the head. Is he being set up? He begins spooling back through conversations that meant one thing and now mean something else. His hands start to shake. He shoves them into his pockets so the detective won’t notice.
‘Don’t recognise your handiwork?’
Wynn snaps his head up. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes wild, trying to rest anywhere but on the table.
The photos stare up at him. Four head shots. No faces. Just teeth and gums, muscle and sinew. Eyes boring out of hollow sockets. Hair hanging limp, thick with blood.
‘You think I did this?’
Nikos admits, it’s a good performance. Good as any he’s seen. ‘The one on the left,’ he says, ‘we found her last week. Pretty girl. Or was. Second-year student. Father waiting for her at home.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Maybe you don’t recognise her without her face. She worked for you, Wynn.’
Wynn’s shaking his head so furiously, Nikos thinks it might snap off like a doll that’s been played with too much.
‘I’ve talked to her friends. I’ve talked to bartenders and DJs. They all saw her with you the night she was killed. Her friends told me she wanted them to go in with her. Buy some drugs and sell them on. This beginning to sound familiar?’
Nikos takes out another photo. The before portrait blown up from her passport. ‘Recognise her now?’
Wynn’s nodding. Sweat pouring down his face. ‘I didn’t kill her,’ is all he says. He’s trying to think of a way out of this. He wonders who knows he’s in here talking to the police. Whether they’ll believe he kept his mouth shut.
‘You think that really matters? We just want a peaceful island. A prosperous island.’ The words come rolling off Nikos’s tongue so easily it scares him. ‘We need an arrest. A conviction. People to feel safe again.’ He watches Wynn take it all in, sees the composure slip from his face, the gradual realisation that the rules he plays by are not the rules here.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Wynn repeats, his voice laced with doubt and hesitation.
‘I told you. We don’t really care about that little detail. You were seen with her the night she went up to the monastery. We have witnesses who’ll testify to this. What did you te
ll her, Wynn? To meet you up by the ruins so she could take delivery of a package?’
‘No.’
‘We have witnesses, remember.’
Wynn’s body is as taut as an athlete’s before the start of a race. ‘If, as you say, she was working for me then why the hell would I want to kill her?’
Nikos smiles. The hard part’s over with. ‘You didn’t want competition. Isn’t that how drug dealers work? You agreed to let her sell but you were never going to let her go through with it. You set up a meeting place, and then you wiped out a future competitor making it look like the work of a serial killer.’
Nikos picks up the other photos, spreads them out. Places his hand on the back of Wynn’s head and forces it down. Wynn fights, but sitting down, physics is against him. Nikos pushes until Wynn’s face is two inches from the surface of the photos.
‘What about them? Did you know them too? Did they also work for you? Did they also possess entrepreneurial desires? Look at them, you fuck!’
Nikos takes his hand away. Wynn’s head snaps back. His breath comes in short staccato bursts.
‘Tell me who you work for, and all this goes away. I know you’re not working for yourself. You’re not Greek. I know how these things work. No one’s going to allow a foreigner control of the island trade. You’re an errand boy. A butler in chinos and sweatshirt. They give you the drugs, they set the price. You go out there and sell, recruit others.’
Wynn’s shaking his head. ‘That’s not the way it is.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘You’re looking in the wrong place.’
Nikos backs up from the table.
‘You should be looking at who was up there at the monastery when the priest got killed.’
Nikos stops pacing the room. He turns around and stares at Wynn. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘When that girl was killed. When the priest was killed. I was at the club. I’m always at the club. Fuck, at least forty people can vouch for me.’
‘I’m not asking for your alibi, I’m asking what you meant just then.’
Wynn leans back into his seat. Flash-toothed grin returning to his face. ‘This has nothing to do with drugs, detective. This isn’t the fucking wild west or south central LA. You’re asking all the wrong questions.’
‘What should I be asking?’
‘Maybe your first question should be what were the two English tourists doing up at the monastery the night the priest was killed.’
Nikos stops. He takes a deep breath. Holds it in. ‘Which English tourists?’
‘The writer, Kitty and her boyfriend, Jason.’
‘You know this for sure?’ He can’t work out if Wynn is telling the truth or trying to sidetrack the investigation. His gut tells him the first, his head the latter.
‘They were up there, detective. You should be talking to them.’
SEVENTEEN
She walked back to her hotel in the deep swell of the night. Jason had offered to accompany her, but she wanted to do it alone. She braced the gauntlet of waiters and post-club revellers packing the streets, bare-chested, like animals crowding a slaughterhouse. She watched their bodies twist, twirl and sweat under the artificial lights. Did they even know people were being murdered on the island? Did they care?
The hotel was cool and quiet. At the price she was paying, she wasn’t surprised. Built when people still came here for ruins and history, it now stood atop the hill like a post-revolutionary palace. They didn’t serve English breakfasts, there was no club, and the restaurant required shirt and tie.
She made it to the lift and then changed her mind. She was still buzzing from the conversation with Jason. The feeling they were getting somewhere. She swiped her key card and entered. The business room was just a room like her own except it had an internet connection. There were two tables, two computers and a printer.
She sat down and stared at the keyboard. She’d never liked the Internet. This chaos of unregulated and self-propelling information like an infinite labyrinth with no escape. The way it drained you of time.
The priest was dead. Jason’s news had been unexpected. She’d been seeing a pattern, tracing its outlines, and now the pattern was gone. It had only existed in her imagining. Was this the same priest who’d borrowed the book on the cult? Why would a priest want a book on the cult?
She began typing.
Pages of script flashed in front of her. Greek headlines and hieroglyphs. She struggled through the words, her phrasebook by her side, the language coming slowly back to her like a dream you never really forgot.
She found two references to a missing priest. She read them slowly, trying to squeeze as much information from the four scant paragraphs which appeared, three weeks apart, on the website of a local newspaper. The first was a guide to monasteries of the islands. Dated over a year ago. The Black Monastery was listed alongside others. It praised the fine location and great views but said the building had been rebuilt so many times it was not considered a good example of island architecture. Two priests were mentioned: Theo Karelis and Laszlo Vondas. She re-read it and closed the link.
The second piece was about the missing priest.
It was dated from a year ago, 11 June. The day after he disappeared.
She read the terse paragraph. A priest from Palassos had disappeared. Theo Karelis, sixty-eight, long-time resident of the island and former abbot, had not appeared at a funeral he was supposed to preside over. A search of his flat found everything as it should be, passport, wallet and ID card all accounted for. But no priest. The matter was being treated as suspicious.
The photos were old and grainy, but the man in them was at least twenty years older than the one they’d encountered at the monastery.
She banged keys, loving the feel of pressure on her fingertips. Waited for pages to download. But there was nothing more. She pulled away from the screen and thought about what she’d read. One priest missing and the other dead. Both originally working out of the Black Monastery. Within a stone’s throw of the ruins.
* * *
She took the lift up to her room. Feeling her body pulse and twitch. Paths and suppositions flooding her head like electricity. She wanted to call Jason and tell him what she’d found. She knew it was too soon. They’d just said goodbye. She didn’t want to alienate him, become the constant whining presence on the other end of the phone. She would leave it until they met again.
Her room was cool, the air conditioner going full blast. She took a bottle out of the minibar, poured it into a small plastic cup, added ice and sat down at the table. She sipped her drink, was about to open her laptop, when she noticed the flashing red light of the answering machine.
Jason. Her first thought. He’d called, left a message. She felt light-headed but was sure it was the whisky. She pressed the button. Heard the tape rewind, whir and click.
But it wasn’t Jason’s voice.
‘Hey, babe.’ Don’s voice sounded warmer on tape than in person; something she’d never got used to.
‘Just calling to say the gig went fine. And, hey, thanks for asking.’
The long tone sounded like a spike punched into her head. The tape stopped, but she could still hear it, a thin insect whine. She rewound the tape, listened again, thinking maybe she’d misunderstood him but no, the biting tone was even more evident the second time around. It was only when she was apart from him that she could see the deliberateness of his actions, how he’d probably spent hours getting the words sharpened just right. She wanted to pick up the phone and tell him what was happening here, the mugging, the murders … but he would just shrug, say Well, you were stupid to go alone. She got up and wiped the tape. She pressed the button so hard it snapped and sprung to the floor.
She turned her thoughts to the priest. This was safer territory. She kept thinking about Don, hearing his voice, but she tuned it out, pretended he was a TV blaring from the next room. She thought about what she’d read and what it meant. She didn
’t believe in coincidence, and the disappearance of one priest and murder of the other was, she was certain, somehow tied to the recent killings.
She turned on the radio. A classical station. Put it down low. Took off her shoes. Her feet felt tired and old, the skin dry and cracked. She stared at her laptop. She wanted to get things down. The sequence of murders. The clues. The timelines and history. She always thought better when she had things written down. Lying there in front of her. Statistics and facts, hemmed into columns, trapped under the buzzing screen.
She swallowed another sip of whisky. She looked around the room, rubbed the circulation back into her feet and opened her laptop.
She felt it immediately. Something warm and sticky covered her fingers. She looked down. The tips of her fingers had turned black. She shook them vigorously, sending black spatters flying. She put a finger up to her nose. It smelled deep and rich. She stared at the stuccoed wall in front of her, the spatters of oil like dead flies. She looked back down and pressed the reboot button. Nothing happened. No noise. No blinking lights.
She picked up the laptop. It left behind a black puddle spreading like a tear across the table. Shiny and viscous, slowly oozing. She looked at her hands, black and sticky. She bit down on the scream coming from her throat. She got up, went to the bathroom, letting the hot water course over her hands, blackening the soap, watching the grey residue swirl down the sink.
Someone had been in her room. Were they still there? She’d checked the main bedroom and the bathroom was clear. But there was still the balcony. A cold tremor rippled across her spine. She stood, staring at herself in the mirror, willing her heart to slow down. The phone rang in the other room. She left the hot water running. By the time she got to it, the answering machine had clicked on. She stood over it, not wanting to pick up, not knowing why. The message played and then beeped. There was silence and then, faintly, she could hear breathing – soft, almost like the wind. She stared at the machine as if this would make it give up its secrets. The breathing continued for a minute and then clicked off.
