The Silver Stain

by Paul Johnston

  ‘And it’s still there?’ Mavros asked, amazed.

  ‘Yes. People left it as a memorial of Cretan suffering, I think, even though some call it the Evil Bird. The only thing they did was knock off the swastika the bird was holding.’

  Mikis answered his phone and spoke briefly. ‘That was Yerasimos. They’re on the move again, heading west.’

  Mavros considered calling Kersten, but he had the feeling the old man had reasons of his own for attending the filming and he didn’t think it was his place to interfere. He wanted to see the shoot himself, and he was also interested to see if David Waggoner would be present. He wasn’t going to tell him that Kanellos was his father, but he might be able to get more information about Spyros’s activities on Crete, even from a biased participant. He rang Hildegard Kersten and said that her husband was in a Tsifakis company car and being well looked after. She didn’t sound happy, but she was grateful for the news.

  Mikis’s phone rang again several minutes later.

  ‘Yerasimos again,’ he said, after cutting the connection. ‘Mr Kersten is at Makrymari.’

  ‘The real massacre village?’

  ‘Correct. Do you want me to head there?’

  ‘If you can get us there without him seeing me.’

  ‘Done.’ Mikis took the next left off the main road and followed a narrow track through the orange trees. ‘This takes us round the back of the village.’

  The leaves filtered the bright sunlight and the temperature was suddenly lower. It was a bucolic scene, the plump oranges weighing down the branches and the ground beneath covered with dark-red dust. Mavros thought of the early days of the war, when the paratroopers had been caught in the foliage and killed before they could untangle themselves. In the midst of beauty had been death. And his father . . .

  Makrymari was a small village, the white houses shaded by vines and oleanders. The buildings were all in good condition. A few hens clucked to their chicks.

  ‘There isn’t much to see here,’ Mikis said, pulling in behind a bulky pickup. ‘Only the memorial.’

  Mavros walked forward slowly, taking in a curved wall in the middle of the fourth, open side of the square. Rudolf Kersten was on his knees in front of it, his head bowed. Mavros retreated behind a eucalyptus tree and waited until the old man had got up unsteadily and left a small bunch of wild flowers on the ground in front of the wall. The German then went back to the Mercedes at the far end of the square and got in, Yerasimos holding the rear door open.

  When the car had turned and disappeared, Mavros walked through the uncut grass, past the spot where Kersten’s knees had crushed it, to the rough stone wall. Looking along, he realized what it represented. There were names at chest height every metre or so. Beneath them were dates of birth and death, the latter all being June 3rd 1941.

  ‘It’s the line of the executed,’ Mikis said.

  ‘I got that.’ Mavros looked at the name above the flowers – poppies that were already wilting, crown daisies and a couple of gladioli – and got a shock. ‘Aikaterini tou Pavlou Alivizaki,’ he read. A woman.

  ‘Black Katina, they call her,’ Mikis said. ‘Her father died before the war and she was in mourning. She also killed over twenty Germans and was one of the few who survived the Battle of Galatsi. They found recoil marks on her shoulder.’

  Mavros put a hand out and touched the wall. He wondered if his father had met her when he was trying to dissuade the Cretans from the charge. He felt closer to him by thinking that he had.

  ‘Who carried out the massacre?’ he asked.

  ‘Paratroopers. There was a Captain Blatter who hated civilians who resisted. Not only that, but Göring had authorized summary executions.’

  ‘Do you think Kersten was here?’

  ‘He’s never confirmed or denied it, but he paid for the memorial wall and gave plenty of money to the families of the fallen – to the whole village, in fact.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Mavros said. Maybe Waggoner had been right – maybe Rudolf Kersten really had paid blood money.

  Mikis’s phone rang.

  ‘That was Yerasimos,’ he said, after he’d finished. ‘They’re at the shoot.’

  Mavros followed him back to the Jeep, wondering what kind of man could go straight from the place where he’d witnessed a massacre to a film set?

  A large parking lot had been set up in a dusty field. After showing their passes, Mavros and the Cretan were admitted through the chain gate that marked off the shoot area. There were trailers, generators and cameras all over the place, men and women in caps and shorts running between them. Beyond, there were old buildings that had been supplemented with painted wooden facades and plants in pots.

  ‘They filmed some combat scenes here last week,’ Mikis said. ‘I guess they’re getting their money’s worth by staging the massacre in the same place.’

  Mavros caught sight of Luke Jannet, surrounded by technicians at a large camera on a track. A raised platform under a sunshade had been set up behind the machines. Rosie Yellenberg was standing on it, wearing headphones and speaking constantly into a mouthpiece. David Waggoner was a few seats along, in blazer and dark glasses, while Rudolf Kersten was sitting outside a caravan with a security guy on the door. Mavros watched as Cara Parks appeared in a shabby but well-cut black dress, a black wig covering her blonde locks. She had been made up to have unnaturally rosy cheeks, though her arms were dirty and there was a fake bloodstain on her right shoulder. As she came out, Kersten got to his feet and spoke to her, an urgent look on his face. The actress nodded and then patted his arm. She was led by a production assistant to the edge of the set. There was no sign of Maria Kondos, though she may have been in the trailer.

  A woman with a stentorian voice started bellowing instructions through a megaphone. Men in Fallschirmjäger uniforms, several wearing shorts, started pushing extras dressed in Cretan costume and peasant clothing towards an open space in front of the trees. Before they got there, a heavily-built officer raised his hand and strode to Cara. He ripped her dress down from the neck, uncovering a bloody bandage on the right side and what was supposed to be heavy bruising on the left. No doubt deliberately, the costume had been sewn so that both her heavy breasts became visible. She crossed her arms over them and walked to the line that the old men and boys had already formed. She stood in the centre and then shouted in a clear voice, ‘Freedom or Death!’

  Just before the machine-pistols started to rattle blanks, Cara stepped backwards and the men in the line joined up to cover her. Cameras on rails and pickups followed her as she sprinted to the trees and disappeared behind them, by which time the men were spurting fake blood and twitching on the ground. Paratroopers ran after her, the officer screaming orders impotently.

  ‘Cut!’ the women with the megaphone yelled.

  Mavros watched as Luke Jannet went into a huddle with his sidekicks. Shortly afterwards, the woman started ordering people around again – the scene with the victims being chosen and sent to the line-up was to be shot again, which involved a long delay as their clothes were changed and new blood packets and squibs attached. During that time, Cara Parks ran to the trees several times as she was filmed from different angles. Mavros began to get bored with the process and moved away.

  He heard his name called from the raised platform. David Waggoner was waving to him.

  ‘What did you think of that?’ the former SOE man asked, when Mavros had joined him.

  ‘Pretty powerful, I suppose.’

  ‘Nothing like the real thing, of course.’ Waggoner wiped his brow. He looked rather unwell.

  ‘You witnessed one?’

  ‘In a way of speaking.’ The old man looked into Mavros’s eyes.

  ‘You took part in one.’

  ‘Not as large as this, but we had to dispose of Germans and traitors.’

  Mavros held his gaze. ‘You killed enemy soldiers in cold blood?’

  Waggoner looked back at the set. ‘Cold blood, hot blood – those distinctions
don’t exist in war. As you just saw, they certainly didn’t exist for the Krauts.’

  His use of the term showed how little the passage of time had changed old prejudices, though Mavros doubted Rudolf Kersten would have used equivalent language about his war-time enemies.

  ‘Anyway, my point was that the real massacre at Makrymari didn’t happen as in the film.’

  Mavros nodded. ‘Black Katina didn’t make it to the trees.’

  The old soldier raised an eyebrow. ‘You have been digging.’

  ‘You met her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Indeed I did. At Galatsi. There was a charge and she led the locals.’ The wrinkled face slackened for a few moments. ‘My God, she was magnificent. We were under heavy fire from the Fallschirmjägers. My tank was knocked out and I found myself fighting alongside her. She led a charmed life – although she’d been wounded in the shoulder previously – and she was merciless. We killed the lot of them.’

  ‘So how did she end up in the execution line?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I was wounded when the enemy started firing from the higher ground – they cut down almost all the survivors. I presume Katina was captured at some point. You should ask that bastard Kersten. He was at Galatsi and he was in the firing squad at Makrymari.’

  If what Waggoner said was true, how could Kersten bear to watch the reconstruction of the massacre? That he was plagued by guilt had been shown by his kneeling in front of the memorial wall at the village, but attending the shoot was incredible. Mavros’s Greek side, reinforced by the involvement of his father in the battle, was overwhelming the reserve he had inherited from his mother.

  Leaving Waggoner without a word, he went in search of the German. He was no longer outside Cara Parks’ trailer. Mavros asked the security guard if he’d seen him.

  ‘He went over there,’ the big man said, pointing towards a grove of orange trees.

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘About half an hour, I guess.’

  So Kersten hadn’t witnessed the execution scene, Mavros thought, his anger still raging. He’d gone to hide; but he would have heard the sound of the machine-pistols. Served the bastard right.

  ‘Kersten?’ Mavros shouted, running through the first line of trees. ‘Where are you? Ker—’ He broke off and slowed down, but his heart continued to pump hard.

  The old man was hanging from a branch, his belt round his neck. His knees were partially bent and the points of his shoes touched the earth, his trousers having slipped down his thin hips. His eyes were bulging, but his face was its normal tanned colour.

  Mavros knew he shouldn’t interfere with the scene, but there was a chance Rudolf Kersten was still alive – hanging yourself that way took a lot longer than the clean break of a gallows. He turned to the left and approached the body from the rear. Putting his arms under the old man’s, he lifted him up, then struggled to open the belt enough to slip the head through the noose. He dragged Kersten to the rear and laid him down, ripping open his shirt and putting his ear to his chest. There was no heart beat. He was about to start artificial respiration when the old man’s head flopped to the side slackly.

  Rudolf Kersten had managed to break his neck even though the tips of his feet were still on the ground.

  FIFTEEN

  Inspector Margaritis was not pleased with Mavros. It had taken the police nearly an hour to reach the set, during which time Mavros had informed Luke Jannet and Rosie Yellenberg, arranging with the latter for a cordon to be set up by members of the crew between Cara Parks’ trailer and the place where Rudolf Kersten lay. He had put a clean handkerchief over the old man’s face to protect it from the flies that were already gathering.

  The actress returned from the shoot with a shawl over her shoulders. She was tearful and accepted that she couldn’t use her trailer until the police had checked it. In the event, Maria Kondos had stayed at the Heavenly Blue to rest.

  ‘What did he say to you when you came out?’ Mavros asked.

  ‘He . . . he told me to give . . . to give my all,’ she replied, sobbing. ‘That she – my character – deserved . . . deserved the best.’

  Mavros thought about that. Guilt, or was there something more behind the words? Had he chosen to kill himself or, more likely, been killed when the massacre was being filmed?

  ‘Oh, Alex, he was such a sweet old man. How could he have done that?’

  He squeezed her arm and went to meet the inspector. There were several cars, marked and unmarked, in his procession, along with an ambulance.

  ‘What the hell were you doing, Mavro?’ Margaritis demanded, after he’d seen the body laid out in the orange grove.

  ‘Hoping I could save his life. His face wasn’t distended and he might have still been alive.’

  Margaritis watched the technicians as they examined the ground in front of the tree. There weren’t any obvious marks among the dusty dead leaves, even from the dead man’s feet.

  ‘You realize you’re my prime suspect,’ the inspector said.

  Mavros shrugged. ‘Ask around. I was watching the shoot and plenty of people must have seen me. Then I spoke to David Waggoner and the security man outside the trailer. Kersten had left half an hour before, according to him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will be asking around. In the meantime, you’ll be sitting in a police car with this pair of beauties.’

  Two uniformed officers stepped forward.

  ‘Phone,’ Margaritis demanded, extending a hand.

  Knowing that cooperation was the only way to go, Mavros gave him his mobile.

  ‘Search him.’

  The older and more corpulent policeman subjected him to a less than subtle body search, handing the inspector his notebook and wallet.

  Mavros watched as a doctor knelt down by Rudolf Kersten. He was about to point out his broken neck, but decided anything he said might count against him. The cops took his arms and walked him to a squad car, where he was put in the back seat with the windows closed. In the sultry heat, he tried to make sense of what was going on.

  He was almost certain that Kersten had been murdered – that his neck had been broken before he’d been strung up – but he had doubts the police would see it that way, even if they cleared him. So who could be in the frame? David Waggoner, although highly antagonistic to the dead man, had been on the platform throughout the shoot – Mavros had glanced round and seen him several times, including once when he was speaking on his mobile. Two possibilities struck him – either some local, maybe encouraged by Waggoner and enraged, as Mavros himself had been, by the film’s stirring up of old horrors, had taken a long-standing vendetta to its conclusion; or, that the killing had nothing to do with the film or the war, but rather was connected to Kersten’s silver collection. Did Oskar Mesner, the old man’s grandson, have the balls to kill him? That thought didn’t make Mavros feel good, considering he had been the one to humiliate the young German and take the coins back from him. But, despite Mesner’s involvement with the far-right in Germany and Greece, he doubted that murder was in his repertoire – not even getting some other skin-headed bastard to do it.

  Then he thought of Waggoner’s dinner companion Tryfon Roufos, the extremely bent antiquities dealer cum thief. He had never heard rumours of Roufos using violence, though he certainly used common criminals to steal ancient objects and icons. It didn’t seem likely that a robbery would have happened in the orange grove, unless blackmail had been involved. Had Waggoner fed Roufos information about the German’s role in the war, forcing the old man to bring pocketfuls of coins to the set, and the exchange accidentally turned to murder? If it had, Mavros found it less than likely that the men involved would have wasted time faking Kersten’s suicide.

  He heard shrieks from behind the car and looked round. He had phoned Hildegard Kersten before Margaritis arrived, but hadn’t told her that her husband was dead. Some insensitive bastard must have broken the news when she arrived. He watched her run past, her hair loose and her feet kicking up dust.


  ‘Let me out,’ he said to the cops in front. ‘That’s the widow. I’m working for her.’ Strictly speaking, it was an untruth, but he wanted to help the old woman cope with her husband’s death, even though he knew that would be no easy task.

  ‘Tough shit,’ the bulky sergeant said. ‘You’re here to sweat like the rest of us.’

  A few minutes later, the radio crackled into activity.

  ‘Bring the dick to the scene,’ said Margaritis. ‘Hands off him.’

  Obviously Hildegard Kersten had applied her husband’s considerable standing in the community to bring the inspector round. The cops glared at him as he got out of the car. Fortunately the T-shirt he’d borrowed from his brother-in-law was extra large, so it didn’t stick to him as much as one of his own would have.

  The widow was standing a few yards in front of her husband – the crime scene team having already given up on trying to find footprints. At least the doctor had put the handkerchief back on the dead man’s face.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Mavros said, standing behind Hildegard.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Alex,’ she said, in English. ‘This ridiculous man says you’re a suspect. I told him . . .’ Suddenly she started to sob loudly again, though that quickly became silent weeping. Mavros put his arm around her and she huddled against him. ‘I want . . . I want you to find out who . . . who killed Rudi,’ she said, looking up at him with tear-filmed blue eyes. ‘They say . . . they say he probably committed suicide. He would . . . he would never do . . . that to me.’

  Mavros looked over her grey head to Margaritis, who was looking at him with undisguised hostility.

  ‘You’re saying it’s suicide?’

  The inspector looked down. ‘The forensic surgeon will carry out a post-mortem, but our initial feeling is that Mr Kersten hanged himself, yes.’

  ‘Which means I’m a free man,’ Mavros said, extending his hand. ‘My things, please.’

  Margaritis couldn’t argue with that. ‘Over here, please, Mr Mavro,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ Mavros said to the widow.