The Green Lady (7 page)

The door knocker in the shape of a thunderbolt was a dead giveaway. There was a convenient ruin across the cobbles and he took up position behind a partially collapsed wall. By two in the morning, he was ready. The only light in the house, on the second floor, had been extinguished half-an-hour earlier. It was time.

The locks were easy enough to pick. The door was solid, but the occupant had made the mistake of trusting the wood rather than reinforcing it with bolts. The Son slipped in, his feet in cheap trainers. His hands were sheathed in latex and his clothes would be disposed of far from the city. The new wooden staircase was solidly constructed and he made it to the second floor without a sound. The door to the bedroom was open and there was a motionless lump on the bed under a sheet. It was as hot as Egypt in Thessaly in the summer and the air-conditioning unit over the window was labouring to maintain a reasonable temperature. It also made enough noise to cover his final approach.

The Son paused at the door, leather cosh in his right hand and silenced Glock 19 in his left. He didn't intend shooting the target, at least not at first. Pain was to be applied before the comfort of death could be allowed. He took a slow step forward, then realised something was wrong. The object on the bed was too still. His left shoulder erupted in a blaze of agony, but he managed to hold on to the pistol while lashing out at the shadowy figure behind the door. There was a gasp and the woman thudded to the floor.

‘Bitch!' he said in a low voice, rotating his left arm. He saw a short length of piping by the stunned target. ‘You're going to regret that.'

He hauled her to the bed, throwing away the pillows that had been arranged under the sheet. She had been expecting him. Turning on the torch and grasping it between his teeth, he dragged the woman on to the bed, securing her arms and wrists to the frame with pre-cut pieces of wire from his back pockets. He cast the light around and went to the old-fashioned wardrobe that took up half the wall. He saw himself in the mirror on the inside of the door. The crewcut hair, dyed blonde, made him almost unrecognizable from the way he'd been the last time he was in Greece. If anything, he looked like a Serbian mercenary, but he had been given the documentation under a false name to prove he was a Hellene. There were wire coat hangers on a rail, many of them holding up long robes. He took one and straightened it, leaving the hook intact.

Putting the torch on the bedside table, its beam on the target's face, he sat down next to her and blew gently on her partially closed eyes. Soon they opened fully. He grabbed her throat and pressed hard.

‘Don't scream or you'll lose an eye,' he hissed, brandishing the coat hanger in his other hand.

‘Great Father . . . stand with me in this . . . hour of trial . . .' the woman croaked. She was in her sixties, with long grey hair. He knew her name, but that was of no consequence.

‘Your imaginary father's no use to you now,' the Son said, with a harsh smile. ‘Only one thing will make your passage to the underworld easier. Tell me where she is.' He released his grip slightly.

The woman gasped for breath and then spat in his face.

The Son carried out his threat and settled down to a long night of torment.

Mavros woke to the sound of the Fat Man yelling up the stairs.

‘Courier for you, Sleeping Ugly!'

He stumbled down in his shorts and signed the pimply youth's clipboard. In return, he received a large padded envelope.

‘What's this then,' Yiorgos asked, wiping his hands on the discoloured apron he wore over his paunch in the kitchen and grabbing the package from the half-asleep Mavros. ‘Looks like a woman's writing.' He turned it over. ‘No sender's name and address though. You got a secret admirer?'

Mavros went into the
saloni
and turned down the TV. An elderly female Communist MP was arguing about the cost of the Games on one of the morning chat shows.

‘Give me that back, you lump of lard. It's not a
billet doux
, it's work.'

‘Not a billy what?' The Fat Man held the envelope above his head. ‘As the house owner, I'll have to insist on checking it. For all I know, it could be a bomb.'

‘If it is, you're going to make a lovely wall covering.'

‘Come on then, take it off me.'

There followed an ungainly struggle, culminating in the package being torn open and its contents scattering over the parquet floor.

‘
Malaka
,' Mavros said, looking at the photos, leather gloves and sheets of paper.

‘Eh, sorry, my friend,' Yiorgos said. ‘Hey, I know that woman. She was on the TV the other day.' He scratched his bald crown. ‘She's that bastard Poulos's wife, isn't she? Except she looks a lot more worn down on the box. Who's the girl with her?'

Mavros had a decision to make. He could either gather up the material in a cold fury and stomp upstairs, or let his friend in on the case. The fact was, he could do with someone to talk things over with and, unlike Lambis Bitsos, the Fat Man was trustworthy – decades of operating underground for the Party had made him highly circumspect. On the other hand, Yiorgos had a habit of putting himself in places that Mavros would avoid like dengue fever. Then again, there was the issue of him staying rent-free in the bugger's house. Although the Fat Man didn't necessarily expect payment in non-monetary terms, he would be overjoyed to be a part of the investigation.

‘You tell them, Tati,' his friend said, his focus on the television again.

Mavros glanced at the TV. The MP, Tatiana Roubani, was respected across the political spectrum for her outspoken honesty. ‘All right, you're in.'

The Fat Man turned to him and smiled broadly. ‘Yes!' he shouted, punching the air. ‘Ow, that hurt.'

Mavros shook his head, then started picking up the contents of the package. There was a handwritten note from Angie Poulou, her signature an almost illegible scrawl:

Here are more photos and lists of Lia's friends and contacts. Please be careful if you follow any of them, not that I can think of any reason they would be involved in her disappearance. I'm sure she never had a boyfriend – she would have told me – but I've attached a list of the sons of relatives and friends who she knows. Again, I think it's very unlikely they'll give you any leads, but you know your job. Last night I tried to find out from Paschos what's going on with the police investigation. He told me they were following up some new evidence, but he wouldn't say what that is – apparently it's too early to be sure if it's relevant. I don't know. I feel so lost.

Mavros sat down and waited for his friend to reappear with coffee and pastries. The names on Angie's lists included the scions of some of Greece's richest and most influential families. Setting up surveillance on them would be close to impossible, as they were hyper-careful about security and hired private guards. And he couldn't ring the bell outside their high-walled domains, saying he was investigating the disappearance of Lia Poulou. He thought about the gloves. There were private labs who would run DNA tests, for a large fee, but when did she think he would require that kind of input? After he found a mangled body and kept it hidden from the cops while he confirmed, or at least excluded, its identity? That would be several steps too far, even for him. Then he slid his fingers into the tight gloves and felt a jolt of affinity with the missing girl. Suddenly he wanted desperately to find her.

‘So,' Yiorgos said, setting down a tray of coffee, water and great chunks of fresh
galaktoboureko
, ‘what's it all about, Sherlock?'

After drinking, eating and drinking again, Mavros gave him a rundown. His friend looked at the lists, shaking his head in disgust at notorious enemies of the people, then frowned.

‘I don't get this, Alex. You can't talk to the thief Poulos, you can't interview any of these people, and the cops are out of bounds too. How are we going to find the girl?'

Mavros let the first person plural pass. If the Fat Man wanted to play Dr Watson, good luck to him. At least he was smarter than Holmes's sidekick, if substantially more cynical and less handy with a revolver.

‘Did you see anything on the news about a body in a burned farmhouse in Viotia?' he asked, recalling the heads-up Bitsos had given him.

‘Yes. The cops' spokesman said it was probably an accident. You know what old people are like with paraffin fires.'

‘In high summer?'

‘It's cold up in the mountains at night, even now. The body's male, though – he was clear about that.'

Mavros was relieved, thinking of the already grieving mother. But he was also at an impasse, despite only being on the case for a day.

‘You know what I think,' Yiorgos said. ‘We need to check out the family. After all, most crimes start at home.' He was an avid watcher of the sensationalist true crime documentaries that had begun to flood Greek TV channels late at night. ‘Paschos Poulos is capable of anything.'

‘Really?' Mavros said acidly. ‘What do you base that assertion on, Fat Man? Apart from the fact that he's an exploiter of the working man.'

‘And woman. The Party fought the good fight to get a group of female tomato canners reinstated after the management of one of that bastard's companies sacked them without warning.'

‘Bravo,' Mavros said, without enthusiasm. ‘If you're going to spend your time treating Poulos as a class enemy, we won't get anywhere. Besides, you're not even on speaking terms with the Party any more.' The comrades had taken a dim view of the illicit card games Yiorgos ran in his café; they'd also demanded a cut.

‘All right,' the Fat Man said reluctantly. ‘More coffee, my lord?'

‘Piss off. Have you got any other thoughts?'

‘Actually, I have,' his friend said, with a smirk. ‘But you'll have to cut me some slack for the rest of the day.'

Mavros shrugged. ‘Just don't say anything that might get back to Poulos or the cops.'

‘You know I don't move in those circles, Alex.'

That was true. Since Yiorgos had given up the café, he'd only moved in one circle – Mavros's.

Telemachos Xanthakos had been told by a senior Public Order Ministry official to report to a Brigadier Nikos Kriaras, head of the Athens organised crime division and a member of the Olympics security committee. The deputy commissioner had rung him when he'd got back to Livadheia from Kithairon the day before. Kriaras was brusque and overbearing, but seemed to know his job.

‘You understand that the country's image cannot be soiled by crimes such as this one?' he said.

Xanthakos had agreed and was told that Athens would handle the media, as well as the prosecutor. He saw the news before he left his spartan flat that morning and had been surprised to see the spokesman say that it was probably an accidental death. The first thing he did when he got into police HQ was call the medical examiner, Priftakis.

‘I told them the same as I told you, but they changed it. I'll be doing the post-mortem this morning, if you want to find out what really happened.'

The deputy commissioner considered ringing the chief, but knew it would be a waste of time. The old man's strings were being pulled by Athens the same as everyone else's. He called the crime scene team leader and asked if anything else had come to light.

‘Blue paint on the Judas tree. I'm looking for a match, but it'll probably be a pickup – the tracks on the leaves and ground are heavy duty. You know how many vehicles of that sort there are, especially in an agricultural area like this one?'

‘No finger or footprints anywhere?'

‘Not a thing. The fire would have destroyed all prints and trace evidence close to the body, and there was nothing in the vicinity of the building. Your man – or woman, I suppose – was careful.'

‘You think there was only one killer?'

There was a pause. ‘Yes, on balance I do, though I wouldn't stake my pension on it. Two or more individuals would have been that much more likely to leave traces.'

Xanthakos rang off and went down the hall to the detective squad. Inspector Christos Tsitas was the only one in, head down over a report. He and the deputy commissioner respected each other, but weren't friends. Tsitas was a thick-set forty-five-year-old, whose interests were football and hunting.

‘Have we found any witnesses? You heard the vehicle was blue?'

The inspector nodded. ‘I passed it on to the men on the ground. You saw yourself. There aren't many houses at the bottom of the road and the killer probably came and went in the hours of darkness.'

Another one assuming there was only one murderer, Xanthakos thought. ‘Don't you think it would have been hard work for one person to get the victim in there and wire him to the chair.'

‘Not if he was holding a gun on him. Sure, it would have been harder to carry him in if he was unconscious or already restrained.' Tsitas gave a loose smile. ‘Maybe the killer's taking time off from the weightlifting down in Athens.'

‘Very droll,' the deputy commissioner said. ‘I'm going to the morgue, if anyone needs me.'

‘Do you want me to come?'

‘No, we're short-staffed enough as it is.'

‘Hope the smell of roast pork's died down. Take it like a man, sir.'

Xanthakos turned on his heel. He was sure Christos Tsitas had sensed his sexuality, but he wasn't going to let innuendo get to him. Fortunately, he had a strong stomach.

‘Ah, there you are,' Frangiskos Priftakis said through his mask when Xanthakos entered the autopsy room in full scrubs. They never had trousers long enough for him and his lower calves were bare. ‘Did you bring the carving knife?'

‘That would be medical humour, would it?'

‘Suit yourself.' The examiner got down to work, dictating into the microphone that hung above the stainless steel table.