A Killing Place in the Sun

by Robert F Barker

  The sudden sound of stones, skittering somewhere away to his right made Billy tense. About to check behind, he jumped as a dark shape suddenly burst into view, cutting across his vision to lope and skip away down the hillside.

  'Fuck me,' Billy breathed out, as the goat settled again several yards away. 'I’ll have you for chops, you bastard.'

  He laughed at himself, easing the tension that was suddenly in him, glad that none of the others had been on hand to witness his jumpy reaction. Nevertheless he was annoyed he hadn’t heard the goat’s approach sooner. It went to show how quiet some animals can be. It must have been grazing behind him when he moved. What with the lizards treating him like part of the landscape every time he went doggo, he would be happy to be the hell out of it. He was just glad there were fewer snakes than he’d expected, and those he’d seen were only the harmless, black ones. Lizards he could stand, but snakes gave him the shivers.

  Movement far below brought him back to the present, and he bent to the binoculars again. But they’d shifted out of line. He must have banged them when the goat made him jump. Taking them from the stand, he brought them up and to bear on the front of the house. But in this new position, he had to lift his head, stretching so he could sight over the low wall of rocks camouflaging the hide.

  As he took in the flash of green skipping down the steps, he felt something run across his neck. But after the goat thing he forced himself not to overreact to what he was sure was just some other member of the local fauna. Nevertheless he reached down to brush whatever it was away, keeping the binoculars trained.

  Something wasn’t right.

  His fingers made contact with something slick and warm and he felt the first stirrings of panic as the image of a snake came to him; one of the green ones this time. He looked down.

  At first he couldn’t work out what he was seeing. Something dark, and liquid, pooling beneath him. Had he managed to split open his water bottle as well when he moved? But as he raised himself to let more light in he realised that whatever it was, it was a deep shade of red. Suddenly he gagged and for the first time felt the spurting against his hand. He brought it up. It was covered in blood.

  What the fuck?

  Instinctively his hand went to his throat, and his fumbling fingers disappeared into the gaping wound that was now there.

  'JESUS.'

  He jack-knifed round but even before he could bring the figure into focus, he recognised the onset of the sickening, light-headed feeling that follows quickly in cases of catastrophic arterial hemorrhaging. The sudden change of position opened the slit further and, as another spurt of his rapidly diminishing blood supply cascaded before his eyes, he finally got a good look at the man sitting calmly on the rocks behind, wiping his still-bloody blade on the gaiters of his combat trousers.

  The cold green eyes of The Mummy stared back at former Marine Lance-Corporal William Desmond Hines, watching, dispassionately, as the dying Mancunian’s body began to convulse in the pre-death spasms that are characteristic of a ruptured carotid. And for all the interest in the dying man’s struggles that was reflected in the killer’s face, he could have been watching paint dry.

  In that instant Billy knew who, and more importantly what, The Mummy was. He hadn’t heard a fucking thing for Chrissake. Hadn’t even realised it was his throat being slit. So quick. So deadly.

  Even as consciousness began to drain away, Billy’s training kicked in. He had to warn the others. But, trying to reach for the Cougar, he could barely get his arm off the ground, and he knew. It was already too late.

  The last things Moss Side Billy saw were the killer’s striking green eyes staring at him, waiting for him to stop moving, so he could move on to whoever was next. And as Billy’s own eyes flickered shut for the final time, the last thing he heard was Kishore’s tinny voice saying, 'Bookings to Dress Circle. Any sign of Goldilocks yet, over?'

  CHAPTER 39

  It was getting on for two years since Murray had last visited the picturesque village of Lofou in the hills above Limassol. In that time it had changed little - apart from the fact that Valuka’s builders were now working on a whole new set of properties.

  Valuka Erigos was the enterprising owner of the Lofou Tavern. Ten years earlier he had returned to his home with a first-class honours degree in Business Studies from Sheffield University. Since then he had transformed the village.

  Following the Turkish invasion in the seventies, most of the mainly Turkish villagers were forced out. Over the years the homes they abandoned fell into ruin. Lofou’s fortunes fell yet further when many of the families left behind decided there was easier money to be made down on the coast, where the tourists were, than up here, picking almonds and growing olives. But the cycle of decline was interrupted by Valuka’s return. He spotted the potential at once.

  Quietly, so as keep his strategy hidden as long as possible, Valuka started buying up the old properties and converting them into smart weekend and holiday apartments. These he rented out to those tourists who were looking for a more, 'Authentic Cyprus Holiday Experience', as well as the houses’ original owners. By then they had realised - too late - that rather than the bustle of the coastal resorts, somewhere quiet in the hills was just what they needed to recharge their batteries.

  By the time of Murray’s first visit, during Priscilla, Valuka owned more than half the village and was adding to his investment by providing his guests with food and drink at any of the three eating-houses he also ran - not forgetting the coffee and gift shop. As a place where the Priscilla team could regroup off-base and away from prying eyes, Lofou was ideal, having all the key pre-requisites; privacy, easy access and, most of all, a plentiful supply of good food and Keo.

  After checking with Valuka - 'Number 205,' he told him after Murray prised himself from his welcoming embrace - Murray wound his way through the narrow cobbled streets until he found the stout wooden gates which, together with high stone walls, ensured each block of apartments benefited from its own private courtyard.

  He rang the bell. After a short wait the gate opened a few inches. A face peered out. He recognised it at once.

  'Jesus-fucking-Christ,' the Irishman said.

  Murray knew something was badly wrong as soon as the gates closed behind him. The way they were all sat around, heads down, told him. The last time he’d seen them like this was after the fire-fight where they lost ‘Sailor’, their local Saudi guide. A snap head-count came up with two less than he’d expected. But he let them get the backslapping and declarations of the, 'we-all-thought-you-were-dead' variety out of the way before asking. The sombre mood returned at once and it fell to Red to break the news.

  'Someone’s aced Billy.'

  Murray felt the same awful gut-wrench he’d experienced twice in his life, the last being when he heard Ileana trying to start his Jeep. He waited while the first wave passed.

  'How?'

  Red told him what they either knew or had pieced together. Wazzer and Ryan had found Billy’s body when they went to see why he wasn’t answering his radio. 'It must be someone pretty special to take Billy like that,' Red said.

  Murray nodded. Not the big Siberian with the scar then. He was a gun-or-bare-hands type. But he decided to leave the question of why they were out there when they thought he was dead to another time. Besides, he could guess.

  'This was pinned to him.'

  Red passed across the bloodied piece of paper. Written in a neat, precise hand, the message read, “ONE AND COUNTING.”

  Murray read it several times, letting the implications behind the words settle. 'Any ideas?' he said.

  Red’s hesitation told Murray he wasn’t sure. 'A handy-looking guy arrived a couple of days ago. We’ve only clocked him twice since. But from what we saw he had all the right credentials.'

  'A specialist?'

  'Could be.'

  Murray took a deep breath. Someone like that could ruin all his plans.

  'Fuck.'

  'That’s w
hat we thought,' someone said.

  Murray looked round to where Bear was sitting on a planter made out of an upturned barrel, cut in half and painted white. The question in the former pugilist’s face was, What you going to do about it?

  For a while, over Keo and whiskey, they lamented their loss. Apart from anything else, Billy was the one they’d all relied on for new jokes. Eventually, as in the old days, Murray moved to bring them round.

  'We all know the drill. When something like this happens, we do a check.'

  He looked into each of the faces. They all returned his gaze steadily. No comments, no dissenters. He wasn’t surprised. They weren’t the sort who would be put off by a little thing called death. Whatever they’d originally come for, it was now deeply personal.

  Murray looked for the sheaf of papers he’d come with, having picked them up off Klerides after running the builder all round Pafos to make sure he wasn’t being tailed. They were on the chair where he’d dropped them on hearing about Billy. Clearing the empty cans and bottles off the table, he spread them out. As the others recognised them for what they were, they crowded round. Murray didn’t have to wait for their attention.

  'Let me bring you up to date.'

  CHAPTER 40

  Coming away from the hospital - still no change - Pippis headed for the Traffic Division Headquarters out at Yiroskipou. Earlier that day, he’d checked the duty-roster to confirm the officers he was to meet with were working, though he hadn’t rung to warn of his coming. If anything went wrong and Internal Investigations got involved, he would rather there were no footprints. As he drove, Pippis juggled in his mind the several problems that were increasingly eating up his time. Chief among them by a long way of course, was Ileana.

  Pippis was more than grateful for everything the military medics were doing for his daughter. They had also worked hard at reassuring Maria and himself there was every chance that when she woke, and in time, she would be the same bright, young girl they had raised - once she adjusted to the fact of her missing limbs.

  But Pippis knew enough about doctors not to set too much store by words that, on the face of it, sounded heartening, but actually reflected a worrying uncertainty. He had picked up the way the consultant just managed to stop himself saying, ‘if’ rather than, ‘when’, when he talked of Ileana waking up. And Pippis knew that in medical speak, 'No reason we know of why…' – in this case why Ileana should not recover without brain damage – amounted to little more than, 'We are in God’s hands.' Which was why Maria was spending so much time at Agios Georgiou - the Church of St George – on the hill above where they lived. And though it had been many years since Pippis had invested any real meaning in his Sunday prayers, he was doing so now.

  And when he wasn’t thinking of his beautiful young daughter swathed in bandages and plaster, breathing through a tube and fed nourishment by needles in her arms, there was the other matter. The one that right now, was keeping him going through the day. At least it held out the prospect of some form of closure – which was more than could be said of the investigation he was running. He meant no slur on the hard-working officers under his command, but his suspicion was that the enquiry had as much chance of success, as him becoming the Island’s next Chief of Police - despite what his Deputy Chief Constable kept saying during his regular 'Performance Reviews.'

  But while the twin shadows of Ileana and the ‘family affair’ as it was now being referred to, dominated his waking hours, his day-to-day responsibilities still demanded attention, despite Andri’s best efforts to field them. In particular he needed to review the draft Operational Order for the forthcoming Aphrodite Festival the following weekend.

  The annual Opera Gala performed in front of Pafos’s famous Medieval Fort on the Harbour – this year it was to be Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’ – is the premier social event of the Island’s summer season. Attracting as it does locals and tourists in large numbers, the festival is renowned as the event no member of Cyprus’s social or political elite can afford to miss. It is also the biggest in the Pafos Police calendar, as well as the one the Chief Constable himself likes most to be seen at. For that reason if no other, Pippis never failed to give the forty-odd-page order produced by his Events Planning Team his closest attention before signing it off. This year, he had special reasons for checking that the fine detail met with his approval.

  Professional duties apart, Pippis also had to keep reminding himself that he was still a father and husband. And that in between everything, he needed to make time for Gina, Chris and Maria - especially Maria. The night before, she had fallen as deep as he had seen her since the explosion - the twin effects of exhaustion and worry. Day by day, the hours she was spending at her daughter’s bedside, speaking words of hope and encouragement that were yet to elicit any reply, were taking their toll.

  All this whirled through Pippis’s head as he pulled up at the traffic lights at the junction of Makarios and Hemfer Avenues, focusing on the right turn he would be making fifty metres through the junction. Such was his preoccupation, he didn’t think twice when a movement in his mirror drew his eye. Behind, a battered pick-up truck seemed to have a problem, the driver having got out to raise the bonnet to make some adjustment to the engine. Had Pippis been paying more attention, he may have read something into the way the man yelped and jumped as his hand made contact with something hot, causing him to drop whatever tool he was holding. Bending to retrieve it from under the spare-wheel mounting on the back of Pippis’s car, he was momentarily lost to Pippis’s sight - which was why Pippis remained oblivious when the man reached under the back bumper and pressed a small, black box to the underside of the vehicle’s chassis. Pausing only to make sure the magnetised case was holding secure, he stood up, finished attending to his engine, slammed shut the bonnet and returned to his vehicle.

  By the time the pick-up moved off again, Pippis was already through the junction, getting ready for his right turn, thoughts already on what he would be saying to the men he was about to ‘bump’ into.

  CHAPTER 41

  On the hills overlooking Episkopi Bay, to the west of Limassol and close to the Episkopi garrison, the ruins of the ancient city-kingdom of Kourion provide a fascinating glimpse of Cyprus’s complex history. Founded by the Greeks and added to over the ages by Venetians, Arabs and Romans, the World Heritage site comprises archaeological treasures that bear comparison, on a smaller scale, with sites in Rome or Pompeii.

  The most spectacular of Kourion’s attractions is the carefully-restored Greco-Roman Theatre, with its stunning, sea-view backdrop. Also used in ancient times for occasional gladiatorial contests, it is now a popular summer venue for open air musical and theatrical productions. So beautiful is the panorama from the theatre’s steeply-raked steps, visitors often linger far longer than intended to wallow in the richness of their surroundings.

  On the face of it, Murray was doing exactly that. In reality he was waiting. And though he had been sitting there over thirty minutes, not once had he checked the time, nor turned to scrutinise the tourists and snappers milling around him. His gaze was fixed on the sea’s far horizon. His thoughts however, dwelt a little nearer.

  At the base of the cliff upon which the theatre stands, lies Episkopi Beach. Popular with base personnel as well as tourists, it boasts a line of three, fine sea-food restaurants. They all serve excellent fish and chips, though regulars always argue that ‘theirs’ is the best. The middle of the three, the ‘Blue-Chris’ was Murray’s and Kathy’s particular favourite. And it was while Kathy was driving back to the base one day having lunched there, Jack dozing in the seat next to her, that she met the battered, old, fruit farm truck with the steering mechanism that was about to fail, disastrously, coming towards her.

  Murray had never been back there since the accident. But having arrived early for his rendezvous and taken his spot on the steps, he had wondered, several times, if he would pluck up the courage to just wander over and gaze down on the place that had been in
their, ‘top three’ of the island’s many attractions. He was doing so again when a voice said, 'Mr Murray?'

  He turned. A couple of metres to his left, on the tier above his, a man stood looking out over the sea, just as Murray had been doing. Sporting a tangle of curly black hair, he looked to be in his thirties, though the dark glasses made it difficult to tell. His clothes - white-linen shirt open to the navel and khaki cut-offs - contrasted with his dark complexion. And the rubber flip-flops were the sort Murray couldn’t stand. The ones with the annoying strap that sits between the big toe and its neighbour. Murray recognised the look. He saw it often around the smarter hotels in high summer. It was, he thought, carefully calculated to achieve the right balance between laid-back beach-bum, and smart-but-casual Adonis. The Shirley Valentines loved it. That said, given their choice of meeting place, it was less obtrusive than the ubiquitous cream suit favoured by most Arab Government Officials these days.

  'Thanks for coming,' Murray said.

  Already satisfied, it seemed, that he was talking to the right man, the newcomer stepped down to Murray’s level. To a casual onlooker they would simply be strangers sharing the view of the sun dancing on the sea, perhaps exchanging suitably impressed comments on the surroundings. And as the man spoke he turned, slowly, as if noting the Theatre’s architectural features.

  'Your friends, the Iridotus, know the right people, it seems.'

  'So it appears, though right now I’m not sure they count me as, ‘friend.'

  Turning back, the man stood with his hands splayed on hips, looking towards the sea again. After waiting long enough to dispel any impression they might be together he said, 'Why am I here Mr Murray?'

  Murray’s face hardened. The fact he’d come at all meant he knew damn well why. 'You’ve looked me up. You tell me.'