When the Devil's Idle

by Leta Serafim

  “You were grinning.”

  “So what if I was? A man’s allowed to grin.”

  “I don’t know, Yiannis,” the priest said. “I think when one is discussing a homicide, it might be better if one dispensed with grinning. At such a time, such behavior is unseemly. It makes one appear insensitive at the very least.”

  “Thank you for that, Father. In the future, I will dispense with grinning.” He tapped his pencil on his notebook. “So, to sum up, we have nothing concrete in the case, no witnesses or physical evidence, nothing that will lead us to the killer.”

  “Gardener’s clean,” Tembelos reported. “I ran his fingerprints and there was nothing. There was a match on the shoes, too, exactly like he told us.”

  “What about the housekeeper, Maria Georgiou?”

  “Same thing. The case is heating up. If we don’t catch the killer, it could get ugly. Ministry’s already clamoring for action.”

  “We need to turn the housekeeper, Maria Georgiou, inside out, also the members of the family,” Patronas said. “Check their history. Something’s going on here, but as of yet, I haven’t established what it is.”

  “You can’t rule out a random act of violence,” the priest said, “directed at them because of their nationality.”

  “Worse would be if it were a case of mistaken identity,” Patronas said, “the killer targeting the owners—the Bauers—and killing one of their guests by mistake.”

  He was thinking of Charlie Manson, who along with his disciples had wiped out six people without blinking an eye, not realizing his intended victim was a subletter. “Personally, I think someone targeted the family for reasons we don’t know. The cat, the old man. It stands to reason.”

  “I’d start with the housekeeper,” Tembelos said. “What she said doesn’t add up. That bit about coming to Patmos on holiday and staying on as a maid.”

  “Unlikely, Giorgos. She’s in her seventies.”

  Papa Michalis continued to promote the locked room concept. Citing a case in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, he described how the killer had released a cobra through a fake vent and activated its poisonous energy by whistling. “ ‘Oh, my God, it was the band,’ the victim shouted, ‘the speckled band.’ ”

  “Fiction, Father, fiction,” Patronas said impatiently. “Remember? We discussed it.”

  “My point is if you are determined to kill someone, a lock is no deterrent. Sometimes murderers are ingenious. Using a cobra as a murder weapon is brilliant when you think about it. Absolutely brilliant. No fingerprints involved, no way to trace it back to you. The snake does all the work.”

  “I repeat, Father, there is no snake involved here. A stone maybe, but no snake.”

  “A stone? What makes you think that?”

  And around they went again, weighing the possibilities. The victim had been hit on the head, but with what? A hammer or a rock? A shovel or pickax? Rock, scissors, paper.

  Forget swimming, Patronas told himself. I might as well drown myself.

  At one point, Evangelos launched into a long, convoluted discourse on terrorism, which no one paid much attention to. “Christodoulos Xeros of November Seventeenth escaped in January and he’s threatening to organize the Greeks to fight against the austerity measures. He might be making a move here against the Germans. We need to go to Lipsi and speak with the authorities there, see if there’s been any movement in or out. Could be the Greek terrorists have liaised with Osama Bin Laden.”

  “Liaised?” Tembelos raised his eyebrows. “Such a big word, Evangelos, ‘liaised.’ ”

  “Evangelos, they are all in jail,” Patronas snapped. “November Seventeenth is gone. They’re history.”

  “I spoke to Athens again and they want us to explore the possibility. ‘Leave no stone unturned,’ they said.”

  And back they were to where they’d started. Rocks, scissors, paper.

  “I think it all comes down to history,” Patronas finally said. “We keep coming back to it. It’s the operative word.”

  Patronas swam for a long time that night, rolling around like a seal in the shallows before paddling out into the harbor. He trailed after a departing ship, one of the Blue Star ferries, floating up and down on its massive wake, watching the single light of the boat move back and forth across the water like the fiery eye of the Cyclops. There was a warning buoy in the middle of the harbor, and he swam toward it.

  According to a local legend, a sorcerer named Kynops had fought with St. John there, lost the battle and been turned into a rock, where he remained to this day, petrified and unmoving at the bottom of the sea. Hence the buoy. There were many such tales in Greece, describing how pagan forces had been defeated by the new order, Christianity. They dated from the time the two traditions had overlapped, the power of the saints gradually overtaking that of the gods on Mount Olympus—but then again, not quite. You could still find depictions of St. Dionysius with vine leaves in his hair, nearly identical to his ancient counterpart, the wine-sodden god Dionysus, and there was no question that Prophet Ilias, saint of the mountaintops, was a reincarnation of the Greek god, Apollo, both of them chasing across the sky in fiery chariots.

  Antigone Balis had told him the story of Kynops that morning, saying many people on Patmos still believed it.

  “The coast guard has tried to dynamite the rock many times,” she’d said. “It’s a hazard to ships. But they’ve never succeeded, and fish caught anywhere near it taste foul.”

  “What? Like sulfur?”

  “Stop teasing,” she’d said and swatted his hand.

  Patronas smiled, remembering the exchange. It had felt like flirting. Maybe it was.

  Sticking his head underwater, he searched for the rock, wanting to tell her that he’d seen it, but it was close to midnight; the water was dark and impenetrable and he saw nothing.

  He grabbed onto the buoy and rested for a moment, fatigue washing over him. Made of metal, it rocked back and forth under his weight, clanging softly.

  Releasing it, Patronas swam farther out into the harbor. He was a good swimmer and moved quickly through the water. A sailboat was anchored not far from him and he could hear people talking on board, the trill of a woman’s laughter. The lights of Skala glimmered in the distance, but where he was, all was darkness.

  The woman’s laugh came again.

  For a moment his solitude overwhelmed him.

  “I’m so alone.”

  Everywhere people were enjoying the summer’s night, but for him there was nothing. Antigone Balis or someone like her was a dream, a hopeless dream.

  “So alone,” he said again.

  Dimitra, his dead parents, the only family he’d ever known, all of them lost or soon would be. Where had it all gone? His hopes for children, a house full of toys and laughter? He lifted up a handful of seawater and let it run through his fingers.

  All my life I’ve been an onlooker, he thought. Maybe that’s why I became a policeman, so I could peek through a keyhole because I’m unable to open the door. My only friends are a priest who talks too much and a cop who barely talks at all. He didn’t count Evangelos Demos.

  He lingered at the buoy a few more minutes before starting back, swimming at a leisurely pace. The stars were so near, he felt like he could reach up and grab them, cast them into the water and watch them explode like fireworks in its inky depths. He could see the entire length of the Milky Way, gauzy and bright with stars, follow it with his eyes as if it were a road across the heavens. He wondered what lay beyond it—if the universe went on forever, expanding, like people said.

  Maybe, like his mother believed, there was a heaven and he’d find his way there one day. Somehow he doubted it. No, probably he’d be buried in the dirt when his time came and that would be that. Otherwise, his grave would be as it was tonight, dark and solitary, the sense of life being lived all around him, just beyond his reach.

  Patronas was sound asleep when the priest barged in and shook him awake. He had taken Patronas�
�� notebook the previous night, saying he wanted to study it downstairs before turning in, and had it open in his hands. He was very agitated, vibrating like a tuning fork.

  “The maid, Maria Georgiou, is she really from Aghios Stefanos?”

  Patronas nodded.

  “Aghios Stefanos in northern Greece?” Papa Michalis’ voice rose. “It’s important. There are other villages with the same name.”

  “Judging by her accent, that would be my conclusion, Father. ‘Tha si’ instead of ‘tha sou.’ Epirus for sure.”

  The old man seemed strangely exhilarated. Holmes closing in on Moriarty.

  “What is it, Father? Tell me.”

  “Aghios Stefanos has a terrible history. The Nazis ….” His voice rose. “You must remember what happened there. You must have learned about it in school. It was one of the worst massacres of the war. Not as bad as Kalavryta and Distomo, but a tragedy, nonetheless. They killed whole families, women and children, and beat the village priest to death. That’s how I came to know the story. They talked about it in the seminary when I was a student and held a memorial service for him on the anniversary of the day. August sixteenth, I still remember, it was—the day after the Assumption of the Virgin, if you can imagine. They said people were asleep in their beds when the soldiers came and that some of them tried to escape by wading across the river. The Nazis shot them, too. The water ran red for days.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A hundred, maybe fifty or sixty more. All non-combatants.”

  “Maria Georgiou said her father was a priest.”

  “If that is indeed true, this might well have been an act of revenge, Yiannis.”

  Patronas nodded. “As a motive, it’s a good one.”

  “A tragedy if it was.” The priest’s voice was sorrowful. “ ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’ ”

  “That yours or did you read it somewhere?”

  “It’s Chinese, Confucius.” He continued, “Nearly all religions counsel against revenge. It says in Romans, Avenge not yourselves … for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. The Lord, not you or me, Yiannis. The Lord. Maria Georgiou was the daughter of a priest. She should have known that.”

  “Seventy years is a long time to wait, Father. Maybe she got tired of waiting on the Lord.”

  Chapter Ten

  Time leads truth to the light.

  —Greek Proverb

  Patronas immediately telephoned Athens, thinking he’d better tread carefully. He had no proof that Maria Georgiou was responsible. It could be coincidence that the daughter of a victim of the Nazis was in the house with that family, but he doubted it. The murder of Walter Bechtel might well have been a revenge killing, a kind of geriatric score settling. Still, he needed hard evidence. The tragic history of one’s birthplace is hardly admissible in a court of law, and as he’d told Papa Michalis, the war was a long time ago. It didn’t help that his suspect was a seventy-eight-year-old woman, and as a general rule, women that age didn’t beat people’s brains in, no matter what the provocation. Also, there was no evidence that the victim had been anywhere near Aghios Stefanos during the war or taken part in the massacre of its inhabitants.

  Maria Georgiou was a long shot, he knew, but at this point, she was all he had.

  “Can you get me whatever you have on German reprisal operations in Epirus?” he asked the dispatcher, explaining what he was looking for and why.

  “Our records don’t go back that far. You’d be better off going to the village yourself and talking to the old timers. Take a photograph of the victim with you and pass it around, see if they recognize him. Her family, too. If her father was indeed the priest, they’ll remember. Or you could speak to someone from the university. Some of those reprisal operations still have cases pending in court and they’ve been gathering evidence for years. They might be able to help you.”

  To complicate matters, his boss in Athens called later that morning and told him to follow up on Lipsi the next day. “I want to be able to tell the German ambassador that we are pursuing every angle, and that includes a possible terrorist attack.”

  “Lipsi, sir?” he said politely. “A terrorist attack? It seems a little far-fetched, in my opinion.”

  “No more far-fetched than you and your revenge fantasy, Patronas, your female Count of Monte Cristo. The dispatcher told me your theory and I think it’s crazy.”

  “I have a feeling about this, sir.”

  “A feeling? You plan on taking that into court? Have the prosecutor announce that you, Chief Officer Yiannis Patronas of the Chios Police Force, have a feeling? You have any proof that the victim, Walter Bechtel, was even in Greece in 1944? Anyone identify him as a member of the First Mountain Division, as one of Roser’s men?”

  His boss had researched the massacre, which made Patronas hopeful. All was not lost. He’d get a chance to look into it.

  “I haven’t got a positive ID yet. Give me a couple days in Epirus with my men, and if I don’t find anything, I’ll go to Lipsi.”

  “No. You’ll go to Lipsi tomorrow. You hear me? Tomorrow. After that, we will discuss a trip to Epirus.”

  As instructed, Patronas duly departed for Lipsi early the next morning, planning to return early and prepare for the trip to Epirus. Evangelos Demos had elected to stay on Patmos and research Aghios Stefanos, as had Giorgos Tembelos and Papa Michalis. They were all eager to see what they could discover on the Internet, believing as Patronas did that the massacre was the key to the case.

  Lipsi was picturesque, the area around the harbor a study in blue and white like something generated by the National Tourist office, but Patronas discovered nothing relevant to the case while he was there.

  He and a local policeman had examined the files on the terrorist organization and discussed it at length, the bulk of the crimes having been committed long before either of them entered the force.

  “They were active for more than twenty-five years,” the man said. “Launched one hundred and three attacks and assassinated twenty-three people. I was five years old when they killed their first victim in Athens—the American CIA station master, Robert Welch.”

  “Any actions you know of against Germans?”

  “None that I’m aware of.”

  “Any acts of violence perpetrated by November Seventeenth on or near Patmos?”

  “No. They wouldn’t have risked it, not with their leader living so close by.”

  “He was a mathematician, wasn’t he? A university professor in France. I saw photographs of his house on the news. How did he afford it?”

  “That’s one of the many mysteries concerning November Seventeenth, Chief Officer. No one knows.”

  Patronas left the police station around two o’clock, intent on making the three o’clock boat back to Patmos and picking up the investigation where he’d left off, the massacre in Aghios Stefanos. The wind had quieted down, the placid water of the harbor golden in the sun. A group of children were crouched down next to the sea, tossing chunks of stale bread into the water and catching the fish that gathered with a net.

  The island reminded Patronas of the Chios of his boyhood, the slow idyllic summers he’d spent with friends before his father died and everything changed. He’d caught fish the same way, silvery little minnows.

  Two men were sitting outside on kitchen chairs, mending yellow nets with long metal needles, and he paused to speak to them about the case.

  “My boss in Athens thinks November Seventeenth might be involved,” he said.

  “Not a chance,” one of the men said. “You said the victim was an elderly German. With November Seventeenth, there was a point to what they did. They wouldn’t have wasted their bullets on an old man.”

  Patronas nodded, seeing logic in the man’s words. Hadn’t been a bullet, but he had a point. The terrorists had eluded capture by law enforcement for a quarter of a century. They’d never do something as stupid as killing
Walter Bechtel. No, the German’s murderer had been on another kind of mission.

  He passed around his pack of cigarettes and bought them all coffees. “It must have been something, the day they arrested the head of November Seventeenth, Giotopoulos.”

  “Hamos,” the same man said, chaos. “Lipsi is small, only six hundred people, and the government sent more than that here just to arrest him, over seven hundred. They couldn’t afford to let him get away, you see, not after he’d made fools of them for all those years.”

  The fishermen smirked. It pleased them that the officials in Athens had been bested by the terrorist. Patronas could see it in their faces.

  “They had frogmen in the water, gunboats. It was as if war had broken out.”

  “You ever talk to him? The terrorist?”

  “Sometimes.” The man hesitated before answering, began to shut down.

  “He say anything against Germany?”

  “Not that I can remember. Anyway, that was before things got really bad. Hell, now everyone’s against the Germans.”

  “It must be distressing being there in that house with the grieving family,” Papa Michalis said, “especially if, as you allege, Maria Georgiou is the guilty party. Having to wash dishes and put away the laundry as if nothing happened. It would require great presence of mind.”

  They were eating dinner at a taverna in Skala. Evangelos Demos and Giorgos Tembelos were still working at the police station researching Aghios Stefanos on their computers.

  Patronas had already lost a day and when he returned from Lipsi had wanted to go back to the hotel and review his notes. The priest, however, was hungry and insisted they eat first. He chose a fish restaurant, saying he longed for some barbounia—little red mullets—which cost close to sixty euros a kilo. “Being on an island always makes me yearn for fish.”

  “You live on an island.”

  “Hence, my yearning is continuous.” He took the largest of the fish and put it on his plate, looked at it reverently for a moment. “Such a lovely color, barbounia, such a sweet red.”