by Philip Kerr
‘What day of the week did the attack take place, Sara?’
‘It was a Saturday night in September.’
‘And would you happen to remember if there’d been a football game that day?’
‘No, I don’t. But it was the last Saturday in September, so you could probably find out.’
After we finished our Skype conversation I called up Google Maps and saw that the Karaiskakis Stadium where Olympiacos played was exactly 3.5 kilometres from the Hotel Delfini in Marina Zea; and there was a large patch of waste ground immediately to the southwest of the ground, on the Piraeus side. Given where she’d been dumped after the attack, it was beginning to look like a real possibility that Nataliya’s death might be connected with the attack on Sara Gill and others. In view of the racism of the Greeks, had she been attacked because she was Asian? The Greek newspapers were often reporting attacks on Romas and Pakistanis by the far-right Golden Dawn organisation. And I knew from my own experience that a dark skin was enough to bring hatred and contempt down on your head. I was equally intrigued by Sara’s description of the logo on her attacker’s T-shirt: the word labyrinth had of course reminded me of the tattoo on Nataliya’s left shoulder. Was this a connection, too?
Absently I stared at Bekim Develi’s belongings laid out on the bungalow floor, thinking about Sara Gill’s closing remark. At the back of my head, a half-perceived thought began to gain clarity. After a moment or two I realised that perhaps the key that I’d been looking for was staring me in the face. I bent down and picked it off the floor.
It was the key not to a suitcase, or a car, or a hotel room, or a left-luggage locker, but to Bekim’s house on the island of Paros.
42
The next day I caught the lunchtime flight to Paros aboard a DHC-8-100, a propeller plane with more vibrations than the Beach Boys and none of them good. Paros was just one of a group of islands known as the Cyclades which, from the air, resembled a betting slip torn up and its pieces scattered on a bright blue carpet. Paros wasn’t the smallest island of the group although you could have been forgiven for thinking that it might have been when you saw the tiny airport with its postage stamp of a runway.
I hired a little Suzuki 4x4 at Loukis Rent-a-Car immediately opposite the sleepy little airport terminal, and using the directions from the guy in the office I set out for the southwest tip of the island, where Bekim’s house was to be found. The island itself was like a large links golf course – scrubland with drystone walls and very few trees. But for the omnipresent noise of cicadas you might almost have thought yourself in a remote part of Ireland suffering an unusually severe heat wave. The locals were just as wizened and peasant-like. Nearly every building I saw was made of white stone with all of the doors, window frames and shutters, balcony railings, and gates painted the same shade of blue, as if only one colour could be obtained at the local hardware shop. Either that or everyone on the whole island was an Everton supporter.
Less than fifteen minutes later I was driving up a rutted track to a collection of rectangular white buildings surrounded by empty rough land that bordered a perfect little private beach. Bekim’s house resembled an outpost in some forgotten French colony. I parked my car around the back in the shade and tried to call Prometheus, to see how he was making out with Nataliya’s iPhone, but I couldn’t get a signal.
Inside, the house was much less traditional, with open-plan rooms, polished wooden floors and the sort of Eames furniture that belonged in an episode of Mad Men. On the wall, in pride of place opposite a huge fireplace, was a wonderful painting of a football match by Peter Howson which, instantly, I coveted. In the dining room was another picture by Howson, this one a portrait of Henrik Larsson painted during his seventh season for Celtic in 2003–2004; again I wanted it. Elsewhere I found numerous modern sculptures in white marble and polished black granite by an artist called Richard King that were as beautiful as they were tactile. As far as I could see there was no television and no telephone, and very little post on the doormat, or anywhere else, for that matter.
In the kitchen I made myself some Greek coffee, sat down at the kitchen table and flicked through some old copies of the Athens News, an English-language newspaper. It made depressing reading. On most of the front pages there were colour pictures of the Hellenic police taking on rioters outside the Greek parliament building. On another front page I saw a thuggish-looking man holding a big black flag with a symbol that looked a bit like the UN logo; inside the branches was a sort of small golden labyrinth. Except that this wasn’t really a labyrinth at all, but a sort of simplified swastika. I turned the page and found another photograph, this time of a man wearing a black T-shirt with the same sign. According to the caption the man belonged to the Order of the Golden Dawn, the far-right political party. And suddenly I knew the kind of T-shirt that Sara Gill’s attacker had been wearing. He was a neo-Nazi; a fascist.
I finished my coffee and then conducted a thorough search of the house which yielded precisely nothing else of interest except that Bekim had a peculiar fondness for tinned Heinz soups and spaghetti hoops. There were cupboards full of the stuff. I was on the point of concluding that the whole trip had been a waste of time when the back door opened and a small hobbit of a woman came into the kitchen, carrying a basket of cleaning things. She gave a scream and dropped the basket to the floor when she saw me and, having apologised for giving her a fright, I explained that I was a friend of Mr Develi’s.
‘He no here right now,’ she said and it was quickly obvious that the woman – whose name was Zoi – had no idea that her employer was even dead. I thought it best not to tell her, at least for the present: it was information I wanted, not tears. ‘He is playing football in London.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said dangling the door key. ‘It was Mr Develi who gave me this key.’
She nodded, still suspicious.
‘I’ve been staying on the mainland, in Athens, and Bekim said I should come and stay here if I got the chance.’
That much was true at any rate.
‘You stay here tonight?’ she asked.
‘Yes. If that’s all right. Just until tomorrow.’
‘You want me to fix a bed for you?’
‘No, I think I can manage.’ I looked around. ‘Have you worked for him long?’
‘I clean this house for Mr Develi since he came to the island. Eight years ago. He like it here very much because Paros is quiet and people leave him alone. Most locals don’t even know that he is such a famous footballer. He very private here. Like other rich people who live on Antiparos.’
Antiparos was the neighbouring smaller island to the west.
It felt strange to hear Bekim described in the present tense; as if he wasn’t dead at all. Of course, in this woman’s mind, he was still very much alive.
‘Bekim Develi. The Goulandris family. Tom Hanks. His wife, Rita Wilson, she is Greek. Everyone like it here because nobody knows they’re here. Is a big secret.’
I couldn’t help but wonder about that, given the alacrity with which Zoi had told me of their presence on the island.
‘Do you cook for him, too? Bekim, I mean.’
‘No. He say he very fussy. He doesn’t like Greek food. Only Greek wine. Just very plain English things. Eggs, bread, salad. I bring him these things but always he prepares his own food.’
It seemed strange to have a holiday home on a Greek island if you didn’t like Greek food; then again most English tourists in Greece seemed to subsist on a diet of hamburgers and chips.
‘I can cook for you if you like, Mr... ?’
‘Manson. Scott Manson.’ I picked up a photograph on one of the kitchen shelves and showed it to her; it was a team photograph taken at the end of the last season when we’d just learned we’d made it to the fourth spot and had qualified for Champions League football. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if we’d come fifth. Would Bekim still be alive? ‘That’s me there,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ s
he said, more reassured now than before. ‘That is you.’
‘I’ll probably go into town tonight and find something to eat in a local taverna,’ I said. ‘So there’s no need to trouble yourself.’
‘Is no trouble. I like to cook. But as you wish, mister.’
‘Otherwise I can make do with a plate of tinned spaghetti. Like Mr Develi.’
She pulled a face at the thought of that. ‘Ugh. I don’t know how he can eat things out of a tin.’
‘He sounds like a difficult man to work for,’ I said.
‘Mr Develi?’ Zoi frowned and shook her head. ‘He is a wonderful man,’ she said. ‘No one ever had a better person to work for than him. He is kind and generous like no one I ever met. Other people who know him will tell you this, too.’
‘Really? I thought you said he was very private here.’
‘He has friends on the island. Of course he does. There’s the artist lady in Sotires, who knows him best, I think. Mrs Yaros. She and Mr Develi are very good friends. She’s a sculptor. Lots of sculptors live on Paros. They used to come here for the fine marble but now all the best marble is gone, I think. I think maybe she know him better than anyone around here.’
‘I’d like to meet this Mrs Yaros. Do you think she’s at home?’
Zoi nodded. ‘I saw her this morning. In the supermarket.’
‘What’s her address?’
‘I don’t know the address. But her house is easy to find. You drive away from here, turn left, go for three miles, past old garage, turn right and her house is at the top of a steep hill. Is grey and white. There is a big blue gate. And sometimes a dog. The dog isn’t friendly, so you’d best wait in the car until she comes to fetch you.’
‘Thanks for the advice.’
I finished my coffee and then got back into the car. Even though I’d parked it in the shade the little Suzuki felt as hot as a crematorium. I switched on the air conditioning, started the engine and drove back down the track towards the garage. A few minutes later I was through the blue gate and driving up a steep, paved slope which had the little Suzuki straining to reach the top. But for the tip about the dog I might almost have got out and walked. The slope levelled out at the edge of a terraced garden and, above the sound of the engine, I heard what sounded like a dentist’s drill. For a moment I thought I might have got the wrong house. Then, in an open workshop/studio, I caught sight of a slight figure in a mechanic’s blue overalls, covered in a fine white dust. It was hard to make out if this was a man or a woman because of the protective mask he or she was wearing. I steered under the shade of a carport and waited for the dog or its owner, but when neither came I opened the car door cautiously and called out.
‘Mrs Yaros? Forgive me for dropping in on you like this. My name is Scott Manson. And I’m a friend of Bekim Develi.’
By the time I had walked to the workshop the figure in the overalls had switched off the compressed air cylinder that powered a tiny drill being used to fashion an impossibly beautiful spiral of marble that looked like a piece of material falling through the air, removed her mask and tossed a mane of blonde hair from one shoulder to the other.
I recognised the woman immediately. It was Svetlana Yaroshinskaya, better known to me as Valentina.
43
‘What on earth are you doing here? I don’t understand. This is private property. Did Bekim tell you how to find me?’
Somehow the woman managed to look more beautiful in her dusty overalls, although that could have had something to do with the fact that she had already unbuttoned them to reveal her generous cleavage. I opened my mouth to account for my presence but she wasn’t yet in the mood for explanations.
‘I must say that was very unkind of him, to say where I was. You can tell him from me: I’m very angry. He’s betrayed my trust.’
The pink sandals she was wearing and her painted toenails were about the only concessions she’d made to her own femininity; that and the diamond stud I could see glinting in her belly button.
‘It wasn’t Bekim who told me how to find you,’ I said. ‘It was Zoi. His housekeeper.’
‘How did you even know I was here?’
‘I didn’t. I came to see a Mrs Yaros. And instead it’s you, Valentina. Frankly, I’m as surprised as you are. I had assumed Mrs Yaros was a Greek. I mean, it sounds Greek.’
She nodded. ‘That’s how I like it. Yaros is short for Yaroshinskaya – my real name. And please don’t call me Valentina. Not on Paros. I’m never Valentina when I’m here. My first name is Svetlana.’
‘All right.’ I raised my hands in surrender. ‘No problem.’
‘So why are you here?’
Like Zoi, Valentina clearly had no idea that Bekim Develi was even dead. For a moment I considered telling her I’d come to buy a sculpture, to spare her feelings a little, but in her dusty overalls she looked tough enough to hear what I had to say without a lengthy team talk.
‘I’m here because Bekim is dead,’ I said, bluntly. ‘Last Tuesday night, during a football game against Olympiacos, he collapsed and died on the pitch in front of twenty-five thousand people.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Poor Bekim. I didn’t know.’
‘So I gather.’
‘You’d better come into the house.’
She led the way around an odd-shaped swimming pool to a small back door, and stepped over a sleeping dog.
‘Zoi told me he was fierce,’ I said, hesitating.
‘He used to be. But he’s too old to offer much in the way of defence now.’
‘I know the feeling.’
I followed her into a sparsely furnished house that was more of a museum to work I presumed must be her own. We went through a drawing room and into the kitchen where she lit a cigarette and started to make Greek coffee. Next to the cooker was a photograph of Svetlana in St Petersburg standing next to an enormous equestrian statue of Peter the Great. I’d seen it from the bus on the team’s pre-season tour of Russia; at the time the tour had seemed like a disaster but of course that was before I knew what a real football disaster felt like.
‘What was it?’ she asked. ‘A heart attack, I suppose.’
‘Something like that. We’re still awaiting the autopsy, I’m afraid. Nothing in Athens moves quickly, it seems. Especially when everyone seems to be on strike.’
She sighed. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’
‘I’m beginning to see why Bekim liked it here so much,’ I said. ‘Anyone would think televisions and the internet and the newspapers had never been invented.’
Svetlana answered with a shrug, and then: ‘Most people who come to live on the island want to get away from the world,’ she said. ‘We’re a bit like the lotus-eaters in Homer’s Odyssey. You know? Once you eat the fruit you lose the desire to leave? I don’t know – like most islanders I just want to live in peace and quiet. These days it’s only bad news on TV and in the papers. On Paros we try not to pay attention to what happens in Athens. It’s nearly always depressing.
‘I suppose Alex is too upset to come to Greece and sort things out. Which is why you’re here.’
I turned my attention to a framed drawing on the opposite wall; a good drawing of a young woman who resembled Nataliya.
‘I’m not here for him or even her. I’m here for me. And for the team. You see, none of us is permitted to leave Athens until the police have satisfied themselves that Bekim had nothing to do with the death of a girl with whom he had sex on the night before he died. A Russian girl I believe you know.’
Svetlana let out a sigh that filled the kitchen with cigarette smoke and made me want one myself. ‘Nataliya.’
‘Is this a drawing of her?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was found in the harbour with a weight tied to her feet.’
‘Oh, God.’ Her eyes filled with tears for a moment and tearing off a square of kitchen towel she dabbed at them for a minute. ‘The poor kid.’
‘Until now I’ve been trying to ke
ep your name from the police. As a favour.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Your name, your phone number, your Skype address, your email. Not that I can see it would have made much difference. You never seem to answer them, anyway.’
‘My phone doesn’t get a signal here. I don’t have a landline. My computer is in the repair shop right now. Something’s wrong with it.’ She frowned. ‘And the police think what? That Bekim had something to do with Nataliya’s death?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Impossible. He was always very kind to her. And she was fond of him. Almost as fond of him as I was.’
She took the drawing off the wall and contemplated it sadly.
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said. ‘Not least because I’m checking out a few leads myself in the hope of clearing his name. You might say I’ve turned detective on the assumption that I couldn’t achieve any less than the Hellenic police. I came to the island to look for something that might offer a clue as to how or why she met her death. And it looks as if I was right. I have found something.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘You, of course.’
‘Me? I can’t tell you what happened to her.’ She put the drawing back on the wall and rubbed one of her breasts absently.
‘Perhaps not. But you can help to colour in my drawing. If you do that, I’ll try my best to keep your name from the police.’
‘I need to wash and then cool down.’ She unbuttoned her overalls, let them fall to the ground and, naked, sipped some of the delicious coffee she’d made. The cup, and more especially the saucer, made the informality of her appearance all the more alluring.
‘You’ve no idea how hot it is in that studio. The air conditioning has broken down. And I have dust in every part of my body.’
Wet or dry Svetlana was the best thing to look at for miles around. While she showered, I took a few minutes to admire some of the sculptures that surrounded the pool: elegant pieces of marble and granite that had the quality of natural objects – plants, shells, marine life – which, given that they were carved from stone, were all the more impressive.
