‘Hello girls,’ Ioli said with a sincere smile. Neither replied. The youngest, aged five stared at us, a spitting image of her mother, while the oldest, aged seven, was a mixture of both her parents. The oldest, had huge eyes and with the sadness surrounding her, she reminded me of a Keane painting.
‘Girls, go up to your room and play… Quietly.’
Both stood up and like robots executed their grandmother’s request. Two tragic, orphan figures made their way up the stairs. A door closing creaked from the floor above.
‘Can I offer you anything to drink?’ Greek hospitality prevailed under any circumstances.
‘Thank you, Mrs Moutsina. We are fine. We just need to ask you a few questions, if you are up for it.’
‘Better now, than after. My daughter is never coming back and I have to be strong for those two little girls.’
We went through the typical set of questions, noting down whereabouts, close friends and words spoken.
‘Thank you for all your help, Mrs Moutsina,’ Ioli said and we both stood up, closing our notepads.
She looked up at us, unsatisfied with the end of the interview.
‘Have you looked into Mario’s girlfriends?’ She took one look at our faces. ‘What? You thought I did not know? Everyone knew.’
‘Did your daughter know?’ Ioli asked.
‘Of course she did! She just chose not to pay attention. She saw only the good in him. Had a real Cinderella complex with him, she used to joke. Never marry a man that handsome. Not even if you’re a top model. I told her, a man is only as faithful as his options. I saw the danger, in a union of Mario with my Katerina, but she was too foolish to see. I mean, even water knows to jump off the griddle when it’s hot. But Kate stayed and now she’s gone.’ Her throat closed and she said no more. She looked up to an icon of the Holy Mary, high above the fireplace, and tears ran down the deep trenches of her wan face.
I pulled some inner courage together and managed to form the question.
‘Knowing your daughter, do you believe she would be capable of hurting Mario?’
‘Never! She loved him too much,’ she answered without turning.
We left her in her pain. A pain well-wishers say goes away with time, but that is just a lie. A lie we tell because we don’t know what else to say. My daughter was murdered, 8 years old. Four years have passed since then and the pain is still there, still real. A hole in my very existence, my soul in grief. I am a broken man without fear of dying. A man avoiding any kind of human attachment. No, pain does not go away.
We drove in silence. Santorini’s capital, Thira was the cleanest town I had ever seen. Good, clean roads, trees and bushes trimmed and planted according to plan, houses and shops freshly painted and the few people that were brave enough to face the evening’s cold breath, had a friendly, Greek island smile decorating their faces. Every now and then, a gap between houses, offered the most spectacular view. The sea, painted orange as the winter sun approached, calmly met the sky above.
Santorini offers the best sunset on the planet.
Ioli said that all you have to do is google ‘Santorini Sunset’ and fall in love.
Wild winds howled outside, warning people to stay inside. Freezing air roamed the narrow roads and hurried our pace into the local police station. The two constables had returned from going door to door and had prepared four steaming hot chocolates, each with two floating marshmallows.
We found out many things in the next half an hour.
Constable Christina made one hell of an amazing hot choco.
Constable Hercule had a real name. Costas Loukaki. His grandfather was from Crete. That alone earned a ten minute conversation between Hercule and Ioli. Places, names, stories were all fished out of memory and laid on the table.
Nefeles Suites was the name of the hotel we were going to stay in.
‘I know it sounds fancy and all, but it is a three star. And for a three star it offers the best rooms and views on the island,’ Christina said. The rule was not to stay in four or five star hotels. Three was appropriate.
We also found out that snow could fall on even such a tropical island. Pure white flakes flew outside, swirling around careless and free. Small Greek flakes though, not enough to pile up, not like snow in Astoria, New York, where little Costa made his first snowman and caught a cold making his first snow angel. Yes, not that kind of snow, for sure.
Unfortunately, we found out that by reading through reports formed by the door to door day trip, you learn a lot of pointless gossip, write down quite a few times I saw nothing, I wasn’t home, I can’t help you and you wonder how a gunshot went unnoticed on a Monday morning.
Costa Loukaki A.K.A. Hercule, programmed our patrol car’s GPS and proudly announced that we would find our hotel without problems.
‘Only problem is there’s no parking. It is on the edge of the cliff, like most of our hotels. You park three minutes away,’ Christina popped his bubble.
Ioli made her well-what-to-do gesture and I assured them that we would be fine. Fine was not how things went down. Slipping down and landing hard on my ass was not fine. Ioli stepping in a deep, frozen, blood-stopping puddle was not fine. By the time we reached the hotel, we looked like something that even the cat would not drag in.
‘Welcome to Nefeles,’ the kind brunette said with a warm, inviting smile and eyes full of kindness. A rare sight in Athens. The norm on the islands.
We introduced ourselves and with cold water invading through our clothes we followed the cheerful receptionist into areas with strong central heating. The place had a homey feeling to it with wooden furniture and paintings in earthy tones. Large vases hosted long fake flowers and tall bamboo sticks, while a narrow river of pool water ran beside us. I gazed around, happy by the choice of hotel, while Ioli looked worried about our dirty shoe marks that decorated the once clean and polished floor tiles.
The chatty receptionist spoke all the way to our room’s doors.
‘Your rooms are cozy, open plan style bedrooms with sitting areas and of course panoramic views of the volcano! The bathroom is marble lined with an amazing bathtub. You have a private balcony with stunning views. The heating is on. Anything you need for tea or coffee is available, and we have satellite TV. Not just central European crap, we have movie channels, sports channels, you name it. Discovery channel, animal planet. You won’t believe the things I have learnt from flicking through them. Not so busy here in the winter! Anyway, anything else you may need just dial 0 on the phone and I will be at your service. Here are your keys. 201 for the gentleman and 202 for the lady. Enjoy your stay!’ And off she went, wishing good evening to a senior couple, probably on their fourth honeymoon following their wedding vow renewal after fifty years of the ball and chain.
‘Thank God, she’s gone. If she named one more damn channel, my headache was ready to swing into full migraine,’ Ioli said, holding the upper part of her nose and squinting her eyes.
‘And that face helps?’
‘With all due respect, screw you, Captain,’ she laughed out loud. ‘OK, go shower, change and I’ll come over with our food options.’
I did not argue. My tummy was making its crocodile noises and I knew Ioli would go past migraine and into bitch mood if she did not feed soon.
Twenty five minutes later, room service A.K.A. chatty receptionist found us both shiny and refreshed in the sitting area A.K.A. sofa with coffee table. Ioli had ordered pork chops with oregano and onions, golden, Cypriot, oven potatoes and a Greek salad with fresh and juicy-looking tomatoes and cucumbers. Feta cheese covered the top of the salad and olive oil painted it green. I looked at the two ice-cold Mythos beers and smiled.
‘You remembered my beer?’
‘Let’s dig in.’ Her excitement wrapped around every word she said.
I let her enjoy her meal, before attempting to ask what had been on my mind, days in and days out.
‘You OK?’
‘Want a simple yes?’
&nbs
p; ‘Not really.’
‘Yeah, it sucked that I got shot and it hurt like a motherfucker, but three months of therapy brought my body back to shape.’
‘And your mind?’
‘Mama helped with that. Being home felt good but… with the risk of sounding like some psycho freak, I missed work, murders and all.’
‘Your mama is one great lady.’
‘Yes, she is. Though we argued every Sunday when she tried to wake me up for church.’
‘Not religious, Ioli?’
Her eyes opened wide, she flashed me her pearly white teeth and took a sip from her beer.
‘You know, it’s a weird topic for me. I mean, like all Greeks, my parents woke me every Sunday and took me to church. School took us, grandmothers took us. We went on all the major holidays and our houses are filled with icons. And, there’s me, doubting everything. Sitting there, unable to switch my thoughts off.’
‘Doubting what exactly?’
‘Not God himself, but all this Saint this, and do this, and pray like this, and dress like this, eat this and not that… I mean, what the fuck does food have to do with your soul? My parents ate a huge bowl of delicious black-eyed beans with Greek pumpkin and tuna and olive oil and bread, and my aunt brought cake made of some sort of non-dairy fake chocolate. That is not fasting. I mean, why is it a sin to eat a tiny burger? The amount is smaller.’ She paused. ‘I sound silly, don’t I?’
‘No, no. I get where you’re coming from. I had the same upbringing. I never thought about doubts until Gaby died. What God kills children, right? Then, I accepted that God does not interfere with us, free will and all, and I just live each day, working, doing good to society and when death comes, maybe answers will appear.’
‘Or maybe we will rot into nothingness…’
‘Death fears you?’
‘Not death itself. The idea that everything we do is in vain, if there is nothing to follow.’
‘To life after death,’ I raised my voice and my beer. Her beer met mine and with an ‘ygeia mas’ and a ‘kalinyxta’, we went our separate ways.
I stripped down to my black boxers and fell like a log on top of the bed. The central heating quite enough for my thick skin. Ioli went to her room, brushed her teeth, let her hair loose, took off her minimal make-up, washed and scrubbed her face, undressed, wore her light blue pyjamas with the cute penguins on, dived under the warm bed covers and picked up her Kindle Fire from the 1940’s bedside table. She felt happy; her favorite writer, Lena Manta, had added a mystery book to her portfolio.
‘The five keys…’ she read to herself. Her police mind pretty much figured out the culprit, but she enjoyed being transferred to her reading land. Page 102 was hard to read. Not due to the subject matter though. Falling eyelids made it hard to read. She switched off the light and her Kindle, assumed her sleeping position and whispered a ‘Goodnight, God. Keep mama and papa safe. Amen.’
The next thing that we heard was the banging on our doors. Hercule banged away on mine, while Christina knocked on Ioli’s door.
‘One minute,’ I managed to say. Two words more than I usually manage at six in the morning. Ioli uttered more words than me. Most were a repetition of the f word or combinations of the f word with others. The girl did have a good imagination. My ears managed to electrify my mind’s inner circuit and I formed the words coming out of Hercule’s mouth into a sentence.
Stella had hanged herself.
Her husband noticed her missing from their bed, opened their bedroom door and found her swinging above the stairs. He ran to his lifeless wife, crying, shouting, holding her up. His love was gone. She hung colder than the night. The small note in her hand, gave way to rage. Enough fury to strangle his pain.
FOR MARIO… SEE YOU SOON.
Tears now fell for an entirely different reason. He sat on the last step. Blank mind. When he felt ready, he called it in.
Chapter 21
New York
Mister Sebastianos, Sebastian to all his friends, woke up and praised the Lord for another day. He praised him even more, when a whiff of bacon and eggs came out of the kitchen and into the room. After peeing for the seventh time in the last ten hours, he trudged down the corridor, stopping at Jesus’s icon, hanging between family photos. He kissed the icon and thought of the good life he had lived. Through the bad, good always managed to prevail. He did not always agree with the Lord for sending the bad, but he felt thankful for the good.
His wife, Maria, was busy over a hot pan. Both were in their seventies and still very much in love. He hugged her from behind and laid a gentle, tender kiss on her neck. They both enjoyed breakfast together, now they had retired. They ate what they wanted, for as long as they wanted. No train to catch, no ‘I’m late for work’, no telling the kids to hurry up. Even on Sundays -church day-they would have breakfast after church so as to enjoy it at their own pace.
‘We got plans?’ Sebastian asked, teeth still grinding a juicy piece of back bacon.
Maria smiled. ‘You mean, have I got chores for you? No, you are free!’
His weird soft laughter widened her smile further along her round face.
‘Great. I’m going down to the park to play chess with the boys.’
‘In this weather?’
‘First day without rain. We said, whoever is still alive, chess tournament on the first day it stops raining!’ Now, it was her turn to laugh.
‘Well, I hope all your friends are still alive.’
That was his plan for the day. Chess tournament. Until lunch, that was. Maria promised to make his favorite. Moussaka, salad and his collection of much-needed pills.
With his brown flat cap on and his jacket’s collar pulled up all Dracula style, as he referred to it, he exited onto Ditmar’s Boulevard. He walked close to the wall of the red, bricked apartment blocks to keep out of the cold wind’s path. He shot straight to the Agnanti Greek Tavern, on the corner of 19th street. In old man’s time, he was late, and the boys had already drunk their first morning coffee and were across the street, by one of the park’s many entrances.
‘Sebastian’s here, too!’ John declared with a loud voice that made him cough and the gang to laugh.
‘Keep it down. You don’t wanna give yourself another heart attack!’ Pier joked.
Sebastian rushed to cross over. A fine day for chess, but definitely not a fine day for Abigail Moore. Everything that could delay her had happened and now she sped down the road, coffee in one hand, her morning cigarette in the other. Her eye caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure in front of her Ford Explorer SUV. She dropped her coffee in an attempt to turn the wheel and stepped down on the brakes. The icy road did her no favors. She hit Sebastian hard and threw him high into the air. Gravity pulled him back down to earth and his head hit the sidewalk. Blood ebbed out of his open skull.
Maria whistled away, busy with her moussaka preparations when the phone rang. John coughed to clear his throat. His words came from his weak heart.
‘Maria, there’s been an accident. Sebastian was hit by a car. The ambulance picked him up. I am sending my daughter to pick you up. Be strong, Maria. Sebastian is a fighter.’
Maria fell to the floor. Her heart pounded so loud, she thought it would jump out of her chest. She closed her eyes, prayed to the Theotokos and gathered enough courage to pull herself up.
Chapter 22
Jacob Hatzinikolaou, sat silent and morose on a white, plastic patio chair. He seemed unable to speak or face the house. He wore only his boxers and a thin Olympiakos T-shirt. It was just a few degrees above zero, but the cold did not seem to bother him. Constable Christina approached him and covered him in one of those ugly, itchy, grey police blankets. He did not pay any attention to her. The paramedics stood by the door. They had checked Stella for vital signs and waited for the police to arrive and give the okay for the body’s removal.
Ioli entered first and I followed close behind. The body had stopped swinging. The first sunrays were sneaking in from b
ehind charcoal clouds and thin curtains, shedding light upon the frigid corpse. Stella had used thick rope, borrowed from her husband’s shed. Jacob was quite the handyman and had all ‘kinds of crap’ as she referred to his stuff. She had tied the rope around the staircase chandelier and jumped from the top step, snapping her neck in a matter of seconds. Her yellow Snoopy pyjamas and her pink toenails in full contrast to the macabre scene.
Ioli stretched her latex gloves and picked up the ball of paper beneath the dead woman. She unfolded it carefully.
‘For Mario, see you soon,’ she read.
‘That would explain the husband’s state.’
‘Love should be announced as the number one cause of death, if you ask me,’ Ioli said and continued to examine the body. I stood beside her, scanning the body.
‘Suicide?’
‘Looks like it,’ I replied, checking her pajama pockets. Both empty.
‘Wife finds out about affair, wife poisons husband? Husband’s whore shoots wife and then throws herself to death?’ I was not sure if Ioli was talking to me or mumbling to herself, searching for reason.
‘Wouldn’t be the first time. A timeless tale on which books, movies and series are based on.’
Outside Constable Christina managed to get Jacob’s statement. Not that he had much to say. With my permission, she let the paramedics take him to the hospital. His parents and his sisters were notified for support. The old relic of a doctor arrived too, announced that Stella had died two hours ago and ordered the men with him to bring the body to the ambulance. He was in a rush to get out of the cold. Unusual for someone born during the last ice-age.
I loosened the rope.
‘Ever attained fingerprints from a rope?’ Ioli asked, knowing it was hopeless. That is when it hit her. I saw it, in her eyes.
‘She smoked with her left hand. Call Christina to ask her husband if she was left handed.’
Ioli waited eagerly as I spoke. I lowered my phone. Stella was indeed left handed.
Greek Island Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-2-3): Gripping, psychological mystery/thrillers destined to shock you! Page 31
