Hand of God

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 keep 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.

I turned as Svetlana stepped out on to the deck, towel in hand and glistening. She draped the towel over the back of a basket chair then dived into the water, swam a couple of lengths and then came to the water’s edge. I sat down on a chair near her.

She sank below the surface for a moment and then came powering up again, lifting herself onto the side with arms that were more muscular than I remembered, and sat there in the sun like the Little Mermaid.

‘So, tell me what you think you know,’ she said.

I told her. It didn’t take very long. I was almost embarrassed at the sudden realisation of how little I did know. Perhaps that’s how it is with detective work. You know nothing; and then, a few minutes later, you think you know almost everything.

‘I last spoke to Bekim about two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘He emailed me from London with the intention of hooking up in Athens. I said I couldn’t come because I was working. And he understood that. So, naturally he’d have called Nataliya. No, wait. I need to go back to the beginning, about six years ago. It’s not that I feel the need to justify myself to you, Scott. I don’t. It’s just that when you said you’d kept my name from the police I realised that you’d done me a huge favour. I think that in return I need to tell you absolutely everything.’