The Silver Stain

FIFTEEN

Inspector Margaritis was not pleased with Mavros. It had taken the police nearly an hour to reach the set, during which time Mavros had informed Luke Jannet and Rosie Yellenberg, arranging with the latter for a cordon to be set up by members of the crew between Cara Parks’ trailer and the place where Rudolf Kersten lay. He had put a clean handkerchief over the old man’s face to protect it from the flies that were already gathering.

The actress returned from the shoot with a shawl over her shoulders. She was tearful and accepted that she couldn’t use her trailer until the police had checked it. In the event, Maria Kondos had stayed at the Heavenly Blue to rest.

‘What did he say to you when you came out?’ Mavros asked.

‘He. . he told me to give. . to give my all,’ she replied, sobbing. ‘That she — my character — deserved. . deserved the best.’

Mavros thought about that. Guilt, or was there something more behind the words? Had he chosen to kill himself or, more likely, been killed when the massacre was being filmed?

‘Oh, Alex, he was such a sweet old man. How could he have done that?’

He squeezed her arm and went to meet the inspector. There were several cars, marked and unmarked, in his procession, along with an ambulance.

‘What the hell were you doing, Mavro?’ Margaritis demanded, after he’d seen the body laid out in the orange grove.

‘Hoping I could save his life. His face wasn’t distended and he might have still been alive.’

Margaritis watched the technicians as they examined the ground in front of the tree. There weren’t any obvious marks among the dusty dead leaves, even from the dead man’s feet.

‘You realize you’re my prime suspect,’ the inspector said.

Mavros shrugged. ‘Ask around. I was watching the shoot and plenty of people must have seen me. Then I spoke to David Waggoner and the security man outside the trailer. Kersten had left half an hour before, according to him.’

‘Don’t worry, I will be asking around. In the meantime, you’ll be sitting in a police car with this pair of beauties.’

Two uniformed officers stepped forward.

‘Phone,’ Margaritis demanded, extending a hand.

Knowing that cooperation was the only way to go, Mavros gave him his mobile.

‘Search him.’

The older and more corpulent policeman subjected him to a less than subtle body search, handing the inspector his notebook and wallet.

Mavros watched as a doctor knelt down by Rudolf Kersten. He was about to point out his broken neck, but decided anything he said might count against him. The cops took his arms and walked him to a squad car, where he was put in the back seat with the windows closed. In the sultry heat, he tried to make sense of what was going on.

He was almost certain that Kersten had been murdered — that his neck had been broken before he’d been strung up — but he had doubts the police would see it that way, even if they cleared him. So who could be in the frame? David Waggoner, although highly antagonistic to the dead man, had been on the platform throughout the shoot — Mavros had glanced round and seen him several times, including once when he was speaking on his mobile. Two possibilities struck him — either some local, maybe encouraged by Waggoner and enraged, as Mavros himself had been, by the film’s stirring up of old horrors, had taken a long-standing vendetta to its conclusion; or, that the killing had nothing to do with the film or the war, but rather was connected to Kersten’s silver collection. Did Oskar Mesner, the old man’s grandson, have the balls to kill him? That thought didn’t make Mavros feel good, considering he had been the one to humiliate the young German and take the coins back from him. But, despite Mesner’s involvement with the far-right in Germany and Greece, he doubted that murder was in his repertoire — not even getting some other skin-headed bastard to do it.

Then he thought of Waggoner’s dinner companion Tryfon Roufos, the extremely bent antiquities dealer cum thief. He had never heard rumours of Roufos using violence, though he certainly used common criminals to steal ancient objects and icons. It didn’t seem likely that a robbery would have happened in the orange grove, unless blackmail had been involved. Had Waggoner fed Roufos information about the German’s role in the war, forcing the old man to bring pocketfuls of coins to the set, and the exchange accidentally turned to murder? If it had, Mavros found it less than likely that the men involved would have wasted time faking Kersten’s suicide.

He heard shrieks from behind the car and looked round. He had phoned Hildegard Kersten before Margaritis arrived, but hadn’t told her that her husband was dead. Some insensitive bastard must have broken the news when she arrived. He watched her run past, her hair loose and her feet kicking up dust.

‘Let me out,’ he said to the cops in front. ‘That’s the widow. I’m working for her.’ Strictly speaking, it was an untruth, but he wanted to help the old woman cope with her husband’s death, even though he knew that would be no easy task.

‘Tough shit,’ the bulky sergeant said. ‘You’re here to sweat like the rest of us.’

A few minutes later, the radio crackled into activity.

‘Bring the dick to the scene,’ said Margaritis. ‘Hands off him.’

Obviously Hildegard Kersten had applied her husband’s considerable standing in the community to bring the inspector round. The cops glared at him as he got out of the car. Fortunately the T-shirt he’d borrowed from his brother-in-law was extra large, so it didn’t stick to him as much as one of his own would have.

The widow was standing a few yards in front of her husband — the crime scene team having already given up on trying to find footprints. At least the doctor had put the handkerchief back on the dead man’s face.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Mavros said, standing behind Hildegard.

‘Ah, there you are, Alex,’ she said, in English. ‘This ridiculous man says you’re a suspect. I told him. .’ Suddenly she started to sob loudly again, though that quickly became silent weeping. Mavros put his arm around her and she huddled against him. ‘I want. . I want you to find out who. . who killed Rudi,’ she said, looking up at him with tear-filmed blue eyes. ‘They say. . they say he probably committed suicide. He would. . he would never do. . that to me.’

Mavros looked over her grey head to Margaritis, who was looking at him with undisguised hostility.

‘You’re saying it’s suicide?’

The inspector looked down. ‘The forensic surgeon will carry out a post-mortem, but our initial feeling is that Mr Kersten hanged himself, yes.’

‘Which means I’m a free man,’ Mavros said, extending his hand. ‘My things, please.’

Margaritis couldn’t argue with that. ‘Over here, please, Mr Mavro,’ he said.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ Mavros said to the widow.

‘This is not over,’ the inspector said. ‘We’ll be checking your movements very carefully, you Athenian scumbag. And, by the way, I understand English. If you get in the way of my investigation or step out of line by a millimetre, you’re dog food.’

‘My things, please.’ Mavros got back his phone, wallet and notebook.

‘By the way,’ Margaritis said, with a sharp smile. ‘You should be careful. I hear the Kornariates want to drink your blood.’

Mavros raised his shoulders. ‘If you people had done your job, Kornaria would be a normal, law-abiding village.’

The inspector’s eyes opened wide, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Mavros went back to the widow.

‘Come, I’ll take you home,’ he said softly.

‘No, I’m going. . I’m going with Rudi,’ she protested, but eventually allowed herself to be steered out of the trees.

Mikis was standing with Yerasimos beside the Mercedes that had brought Rudolf Kersten to his place of ending. Hildegard headed for the big car, dismissing the driver who had brought her.

‘Follow us,’ Mavros said to Mikis. ‘I think I’m going to need you.’

In the limousine, Hildegard sank back in the leather and inhaled. ‘I can smell my Rudi,’ she said, then steeled herself. ‘Whatever the police and their idiot doctors say, I know Rudi was murdered. You will help me, Alex?’

‘It’s rather out of my area of expertise.’ He was still troubled by his anger against the dead man but, even if he had taken part in the massacre, Hildegard was in no way to blame.

‘If money is the problem. .’

‘No, no, you’ve already shown how generous you can be.’ Mavros looked through the tinted glass at the villas alongside the road, then turned back to her. ‘I’ll need to ask some difficult questions.’

The widow looked at him unwaveringly. ‘I have no secrets from you, Alex.’

‘Did your husband keep any secrets from you?’

‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘What do you want to know?’

Mavros took out his notebook, and then closed it. After its recent confiscation by Margaritis, he didn’t want to put anything potentially incriminating in it.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘assuming it is murder, who do you think could have done it and why?’

‘David Waggoner,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘He has always hated Rudi.’

‘Why?’

Hildegard gave him a sharp look. ‘Because of the war, of course.’

‘Yes, but specifically?’

‘Oh, because of the massacre at Makrymari. You know about it?’

Mavros nodded. ‘Your husband took part in it.’

‘No!’ she cried, causing Yerasimos to look in the mirror. ‘I’m sorry. No, Alex, that isn’t true. He was forced by a vile captain to stand in the firing squad, but he had suffered a serious head wound and he collapsed when the execution started.’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yes, but he also wrote it down as a kind of memoir. It’s in the safe back at the hotel. It’s in German.’

They had already established that he didn’t speak the language.

‘Is there anything about Waggoner in it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s just the point. Rudi was in the battle at Galatsi and he describes a fair-haired and stocky British officer in a tank. He later saw the same man shooting wounded Germans in the head.’

Jesus, Mavros thought. The Battle of Crete was like a tumour in the island’s entrails, a stain on its history that contaminated the present.

‘How did your husband survive the fighting?’

‘He was saved by that woman, the one known as Black Katina. On the day he landed, he had avoided killing her.’

Now Mavros understood Rudolf Kersten’s actions at the memorial wall and his words to Cara Parks before the recreation of the massacre. He felt ashamed of his anger.

‘Why would Waggoner wait for so many years?’ he asked.

‘Because he’d been blackmailing Rudi since we came to Crete. How do you think he could afford that house up in the mountains? He hasn’t worked since he was drummed out of the British Army. Now we have little except the apartment, which is on a lifelong peppercorn lease. The resort has been sold and all our property in Germany liquidated. Rudi told him there would be no more money last month.’

‘Not quite everything,’ Mavros said. ‘There’s the coin collection.’

‘Yes, there is. Rudi’s precious silver. I never liked his collecting those objects. He should have given them all to museums.’

‘As he did with the Jewish relics.’

Hildegard looked at him. ‘You already know much about us.’

‘Not enough, apparently.’ He told her about Waggoner’s location during the film shoot.

‘Ach, that is nothing. He would have used the grandson of one of his andartes in the war.’

‘Maybe. Have you considered that your own grandson might be involved?’

She stared at him with undisguised horror, as the Mercedes stopped at the gate of the Heavenly Blue. ‘Oskar? No. . it’s impossible. He doesn’t have the nerve to do something so awful.’

‘He has some unpleasant friends.’

‘Those fools with the shaven heads and the big boots? Straw men, all of them. They wouldn’t dare.’

‘Your grandson did steal those thirty coins.’

‘He’s lazy — a leech. His father died when he was three and his mother spoiled him, not that she ever had much. He grew up in the East after reunification — she found some man there, a spendthrift who tried to get money from Rudi. He was always strict with Franziska, so they never got more than the minimum to supplement their benefits. And before you ask, both our daughter and he are dead, in a car crash ten years ago.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mavros said, getting out of the car. Yerasimos held the door open for Hildegard. ‘Is there someone you can call to sit with you?’

‘We have many friends on Crete, but I prefer to be on my own now.’ The widow gave him a brief smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not what the police doctors would call suicidal. Knock on the door or call if you need anything.’ She kissed his cheek.

‘Thank you, Alex. You don’t know how much this means to me.’

Mavros watched her go, the weight of her sorrow pressing down on him. Then he remembered something and ran after her.

‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Do you know a Tryfon Roufos?’

‘Horrible man!’ Hildegard exclaimed. ‘He’s been badgering Rudi for months about the silver collection. Only a few days ago, they had words on the telephone.’ She walked towards the apartment door, the staff bowing to her, their faces tear-stained.

Mikis appeared at his shoulder. ‘This is terrible. I can’t believe Mr Kersten killed himself.’

‘He didn’t. Let’s go and find the fuckers who made it look like he did.’

‘So, left or right?’ Mikis asked, as they went past the resort gate in the Jeep.

‘Left for Chania,’ Mavros replied. ‘Now that Maria Kondos is out of the clinic, what are your pals up to?’

‘Their jobs. Why? Do you need them again?’

‘Maybe later. I’ve found out some interesting things.’ He told the Cretan about Waggoner’s blackmailing of the Kerstens and Roufos’s attempts to buy his silver collection.

‘I always thought the Englishman was a piece of shit,’ Mikis said, accelerating past a tractor. ‘I’ve seen plenty of those guys at the battle celebrations and they’re friendly enough — even the Germans. But Waggoner always seemed to be on his own, as if even his former comrades didn’t like his smell.’

‘You know anything about the communists on Crete during the war?’ Mavros asked, wondering again about his father’s role.

‘Not much. There weren’t many of them to start with and those that stayed were pretty well boxed in by the resistance leaders and the British.’

‘Waggoner claimed he was betrayed by one of them.’

‘That cache of silver was to be shipped to Egypt. According to my grandfather, who was a shepherd in Selino, with contacts in the resistance, the Germans killed most of the andartes, as well as the monks at Ayios Athanasios, and grabbed the loot.’

‘That’s right. According to Waggoner, an EAM operative known as Kanellos tipped off the occupiers.’

‘No, that’s rubbish,’ the driver said, slowing as they reached the city limits. ‘The informer was one of Waggoner’s own Cretans. He killed the man himself after he came back from Egypt. My grandfather knew the guy — he’d been tortured by the Germans and his family had been threatened. Standard occupiers’ tactics.’

Mavros blinked away the sudden film of tears that had covered his eyes. So his father hadn’t been a rat. He’d never really believed he was, but the confirmation made him feel much better. It also showed that David Waggoner had lied in his memoir. Was he embarrassed about shooting one of his own men — his admission to such an act earlier made that unlikely — or by his lack of judgement in trusting the man?

‘Shit, I’ve just remembered something.’ Mikis pulled to the side without warning, provoking a blast on the horn from the driver behind, and took out his phone. ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said, after speed-dialling. He ran through the story and then asked where the traitor had come from. ‘OK, thanks, see you later,’ he signed off, turning to Mavros. ‘Thought as much. The traitor was from Kornaria.’

‘What a surprise,’ Mavros said, with a wry smile.

‘Yeah. Achilleas Kondoyannis was his name.’

‘Kondoyannis? What the hell?’

Mikis nodded. ‘The name the guy in the kafeneion gave us.’

‘A relative? People called Kondoyannis emigrating to the USA might easily have shortened their name to Kondos.’

‘Right,’ the Cretan said, smiling at the pun — ‘kondos’ was Greek for ‘short’. ‘Maria Kondos. You think that’s why she was up there? Some kind of payback for the disgrace some relative brought on the village?’

‘The village where, as we know, vendettas are a speciality. It certainly needs to be checked out. Let’s get back to the Heavenly Blue and talk to the less-than-talkative Maria.’

‘I thought she’d started speaking again.’

‘Not much.’

Mikis applied full lock and turned the Jeep back the way they’d come.

In the hotel, Mavros ran up to his room and booted up his laptop. A search for ‘Kondoyannis USA’ brought up numerous references, though not as many as ‘Kondos USA’. Cross-referencing them would be a long job. He was about to give up and go in search of Maria when a newspaper headline caught his eye — ‘Florida Mobster Kondoyannis Jailed’. Maybe the surname hadn’t been changed, after all. The article was dated January 17th 2003 and described the end of the trial of Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis, fifty-seven, boss of one of northern Florida’s ‘most vicious’ criminal organizations. Born in Tallahassee, ‘the Bat’, so named for his use of a metal alloy baseball bat to deal with his enemies, had risen to the top of a gang run by Greek immigrants, originally from the island of Crete. Initially, they had been involved in illegal gambling and robberies, but in the last twenty years had controlled a significant part of the drugs trade in the South. Scrolling down, Mavros found a photograph of the mobster, a bull-chested man with short black curly hair. His features, including heavy rings beneath the eyes, were certainly Greek. He had been convicted of heroin, marijuana and hashish trafficking, using shipping containers supposedly full of olive oil, and of two murders. It was suspected he had links with organized crime in Sicily and other parts of the Mediterranean. Then there was another photo, this time of ‘the Bat’ with his family before his arrest. Next to a short, plump woman stood a figure with long black hair — his daughter Maria. There was no doubt that she was Cara Parks’ assistant. Presumably she had changed her name when she went to Hollywood. That was one of several things he needed urgently to ask her.

Before he could get out of the door, his phone rang.

‘Alex, it’s Cara.’

‘Oh, hi. Is your assistant with you?’

‘That’s just it. I expected she’d be in my suite when I came back from the shoot — she stayed there to handle the backlog of fan mail — but she wasn’t. I still have a card to her suite, so I checked. She isn’t there. I’ve asked at reception and no one has seen her, even though she’s still in that wheelchair. Apparently the shift changed. They’re contacting the people who were on duty, but no news yet.’

‘Here we go again. Tell me, did you know that Maria’s father is a recently jailed Florida mobster of Cretan stock?’

‘What? You must be joking.’ The actress sounded genuinely surprised.

‘No, I’m not. The question is, was she involved in the family business?’

‘That’s ridiculous, Alex. She wouldn’t have time. .’

‘Really? Might only take a few phone calls a day to ensure the drugs were running into LA smoothly.’

There was a pause. ‘And that mountain village she was in grows dope, doesn’t it?’

‘Kornaria? Oh, yes, in a big way. And guess what — David Waggoner’s got a house up there. Are you sure you never saw them in conversation?’

This time there was a longer silence. ‘I don’t know. Maybe when we were preparing for the Galatsi battle scenes.’

‘Any raised voices?’

‘I. . I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

‘All right.’

‘Alex, you will find Maria, won’t you? You will finish the case?’

He said he would try and hung up. It looked like all roads led to Kornaria, where the locals would shoot him before saying ‘Kali mera’.