The Silver Stain

TWENTY

‘What happened?’ Cara Parks demanded. ‘Rosie told me that Maria was kidnapped.’

Mavros wondered how the producer knew that — had the police or paramedics blabbed to the local radio station, or was she in with the men who’d taken Maria?

He told the actress what had happened to Maria at Yiota Prevelaki’s house and about Mikis’s head wound. That reminded him to call the hospital. Doctor Stavrakakis told him that the driver was still unconscious and that there was swelling inside his cranium — if it continued to expand, he would have to operate.

‘Did you believe Rosie and her brother?’ he asked. ‘I mean, when they said they had nothing to do with their father’s drug trafficking?’

‘I don’t know what to believe. Thinking of them as brother and sister is hard enough. But dope-dealers?’

‘Hm.’ Mavros gave her a potted version of what he had learned from Maria’s cousin and from Hildegard Kersten.

‘Hold up,’ the actress said. ‘Where are you going with this? Are you suggesting Maria’s in the drug business as well?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m having trouble understanding why she’s been kidnapped twice. And why she refused to tell anyone — even you — about what happened to her after we got her back from Kornaria.’

‘She had a head injury,’ Cara said, but she wasn’t even convincing herself. ‘Jesus. This is the kind of shit that’ll fuck the movie up big time.’

Mavros wasn’t impressed. ‘Well, fuck Freedom or Death then. Do you know what really happened at Makrymari? The woman your character is based on didn’t get away while her fellow villagers bravely took the bullets for her. She was shot down like the rest of them. That’s what happens on this island, in case you haven’t noticed. People live and die violently.’ Suddenly he thought of the black youth Cara had driven into. ‘Like on Mulholland Drive.’

Cara’s head went down. ‘Old Mr Kersten didn’t commit suicide, did he?’ she said, in a small voice.

‘The authorities are saying he did, but I’m certain he was murdered. As well as looking for Maria, I’m trying to find his killer.’

The actress looked up. ‘I’ll help you.’

‘By doing what, exactly? Can you fire a gun?’

‘Rifle, shotgun, pistol and revolver,’ she said, with a smile. ‘My daddy made sure I could handle firearms before I turned sixteen.’

‘Right,’ Mavros said, taken aback. ‘I suppose you can fight as well.’

‘Kick-boxing, judo and karate — state champion at high school.’

He took an involuntary step back. ‘Uh-huh. So, Ms Parks, what do you think you can personally bring to this role?’

She laughed. ‘I might be able to save your ass, Alex — not just in a brawl with those crazy villagers, but with Maria. If she really is her mobster father’s daughter, she might cut up rough — but not with me. She loves me, for Christ’s sake.’

‘What makes you think Maria’s not being held captive up in Kornaria? She’d been mistreated when she came down the hillside the last time.’

Cara thought about that. ‘It’s hard to put my finger on. She was different when she was in the clinic. Sure, she’d been through some shit — like you guys on the road back down — but she didn’t seem particularly affected by it. I’m beginning to think she might be a better actor than me. I mean, you saw her when she said she was coming back to work. She didn’t exactly look traumatized, did she?’

‘No,’ he replied, remembering the Greek-American’s demeanour. ‘More like traumatizing.’

Cara laughed. ‘Give me a moment. I’ve got to change.’

She reappeared in a dark-blue tracksuit that emphasized her curves. Her trainers were pristine but thick-soled, and she’d gathered her hair back.

‘Charlie’s Angel?’ Mavros asked.

‘And Frankenstein’s monster.’ She offered her arm. ‘Let’s knock ’em out, Boris.’

The big man on the door stared at them as they brushed past him. Cara told him not to follow them.

‘Take the stairs,’ Mavros said. ‘I’ll race you.’

Despite the start he’d given himself, she overtook him one flight down and was waiting on the ground floor when he got there, panting. He missed his footing on the bottom step and toppled forward. Cara moved quickly towards him and caught him in surprisingly strong arms.

‘Shit,’ he grunted and they both started to laugh hysterically, holding on to each other like kids who’d taken their first toke.

‘What’s the joke?’ came a voice that silenced Mavros instantly.

He looked over the actress’s shoulder and saw Niki a few metres away, an overnight bag between her bare legs and her face set hard.

‘My woman,’ Mavros whispered to Cara. ‘Cover for me. Please.’

‘Don’t sweat it,’ she returned, taking her arms away and stepping back. ‘My, my, Alex, you need to be more careful. If I hadn’t caught you, you’d have done some serious damage to that magnificent nose.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ he muttered, going towards the seething Niki. ‘My love,’ he said, in Greek. ‘What are you doing here?’

Niki stared at the bandage on his neck. ‘Let’s stick to English. I’d like your friend to hear.’ She pronounced the ‘f’ word as if it were a curse. ‘And you are?’ she said, moving forward and extending her hand.

‘Cara Parks,’ the actress said, smiling broadly. ‘It’s so nice to meet you. Alex has told me so much about you.’

Mavros glared at her, aware that he hadn’t mentioned Niki’s existence.

‘I’m Alex’s other, better half,’ Niki said acidly. ‘What was so funny?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Cara said, waving her hand loosely. ‘We were just horsing around.’

Niki turned her frozen gaze on Mavros and then looked back at the actress.

‘Cara Parks? The star? Oh my God.’ She put her hand out again. ‘It’s a real pleasure to meet you. I love your work.’

Mavros knew he wasn’t off the hook, but Niki’s transformation from ice queen to quivering fan was an eye-opener.

While the women were building bridges, Mavros went over to reception and asked for Renzo Capaldi. The security manager arrived hotfoot.

‘Ah, Mr Mavros. I have been looking for you. How is the throat?’

‘Painful. Why did you want me?’

‘To tell you that I am going to look after Mrs Kersten personally. I will patrol outside her windows all night.’ The Italian raised his massive shoulders. ‘Of course, my staff will be doing their usual rounds, but I will provide extra protection.’

‘That’s very good of you.’

‘It’s nothing. Mr Kersten was a great man and a very kind employer. I. . I would do anything to bring him back.’ Tears appeared in his eyes and he wiped them away with the arm of his suit.

Mavros nodded to him and went over to the women.

Niki’s gaze was slightly less frosty. ‘Cara tells me you’re going out on a job.’

The actress smiled at him, despite the look she got in return.

‘Job?’ he repeated. ‘I’d hardly call it that.’

‘Oh?’ Niki said. ‘And how would you describe going to rescue Cara’s assistant from a village full of criminals?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m coming too.’

Mavros’s joy was confined.

‘Where are we going?’ Niki asked. She was squeezed between Cara Parks and Mavros in the Jeep, having left her bag at the hotel. He had explained about his neck wound without going into too much detail.

‘Chania,’ he replied.

‘Not the village?’ Niki smiled crookedly. ‘You don’t think we’re up to it, do you?’

‘Three of us taking on a horde of heavily armed Cretan mountain men who have proclaimed a vendetta. .’ He stopped himself too late.

‘A vendetta?’ Niki said. ‘Against who?’

‘Um, me,’ Mavros mumbled. ‘And the guy who was driving this.’ He had no choice but to recount the story, without going into Mikis’s use of the Colt.

‘You threw a rock into the face of an armed man from the most dangerous village in Crete?’ Niki said, her voicing rising to a shriek. ‘Are you completely insane?’

‘He was only knocked out,’ Cara said, trying to calm her. ‘And Alex got my friend Maria back.’

‘Who’s since been kidnapped — again.’ Niki turned and gave her an appraising look. ‘I can see why they call you “Twin Peaks”. Are they real?’

Mavros restrained himself from smashing his head against the steering wheel. ‘For Christ’s sake, Niki, get a grip. Cara isn’t the enemy.’

‘Is that right?’ Niki took a deep breath. ‘OK, I’m sorry, that was rude. I’m. . I’m worried.’ She looked through the windscreen. ‘This island is like a foreign country — one with extremely restless natives.’

‘They’re not all bad,’ Mavros said. ‘Behave yourself, please. We’re about to meet some of the good ones.’

He had looked at the map before they left the Heavenly Blue and now found the Tsifakis depot without trouble. There was a fenced enclosure with numerous cars and small buses beyond a wide gate. The offices were in what looked like an old factory. A lot of money had clearly been spent on its renovation.

Haris Tsifakis met them in the stone-flagged reception area.

‘Alex,’ he said, nodding. ‘Ms Parks.’ He waited to be introduced to Niki.

‘Oh, this is my. . partner from Athens,’ Mavros said awkwardly.

‘Niki Glezou.’ When she wanted, Niki could be very user-friendly. She gave the Cretan a broad smile and shook his hand vigorously.

‘What news of Mikis?’ Mavros asked.

‘My wife is at the clinic,’ he said, his face falling. ‘Our son is still unconscious. It seems he will need an operation, but the doctors want to wait until this evening to decide. Please, come to my office.’ He led them into a large room with two mahogany desks, both equipped with computers and several telephones. ‘Eleni and I have always worked together. We set up the car-hire business in 1966 and grew it very quickly, largely thanks to Mr Kersten. He used us for guest tours and transfers.’ He shook his head. ‘His death is a tragedy.’

Mavros was interested by the Cretan’s response. He wasn’t old enough to have fought in the war, but his parents’ generation would have lived through the horrors of the German occupation. He still revered a man who had landed by parachute on the first day of the invasion.

‘Can I use one of the computers?’ he asked.

Haris went behind the nearer desk and booted up the machine. Mavros found what he wanted in under a minute and printed out the image.

‘We urgently need to find this man,’ he said, handing over the picture. ‘I know he’s in Chania or the environs.’

‘That’s the antiquities dealer who’s always walking out of court with a sick smile on his face,’ the Cretan said.

‘Tryfon Roufos,’ Mavros confirmed. ‘Can you find where’s he’s staying?’

‘Easily — if he’s in a hotel or pension.’ Haris picked up a phone and gave instructions to an employee. ‘If he’s in a private house, it’ll take a bit longer, but I can circulate his photo.’

‘I saw him in a taverna in the old town a few nights ago,’ Mavros said. He described the location.

‘Tou Philippou. Good, the owner is a friend.’

‘He was with David Waggoner.’

‘Was he now? I’ve never thought much of Mr Waggoner. He made much of his exploits here during the war, but the truth is that the local resistance leaders were much more important in the fight against the occupiers.’

Mavros didn’t need much more convincing that the former SOE man had feet of clay. The question was, had he orchestrated Rudolf Kersten’s death?

‘Leave this with me,’ Haris said. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I get anything. I presume you want to keep the Jeep?’

‘Is that all right?’

‘Of course.’ The Cretan beamed at Cara. ‘It’s on the film’s account.’

Mavros thanked him and led the women out.

‘You didn’t tell me Roufos was on Crete,’ Niki said, as they headed for the vehicle. ‘Then again, there are a lot of things you haven’t told me.’

‘This Roufos,’ Cara said, as she opened the Jeep’s door. ‘What’s he supposed to have done?’

‘A lot,’ Mavros said.

Two pairs of eyes bored into him as he started the engine.

‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ Mavros ran through Roufos’s interest in Kersten’s coin collection, his attempt to scare him off by sending round the three skinheads, and his connection with Waggoner. ‘The Englishman has a house on the outskirts of Kornaria-’

‘The village where Maria was held,’ the actress put in. ‘So what is it you think, Alex? That Roufos is involved in her kidnapping?’

He shrugged. ‘That’s one of several things I want to ask him. I’d also like to. . shit!’

A large pickup cut in front of him as he tried to turn out of the Tsifakis depot. Three muscle-pumped men got out and walked slowly towards the Jeep, their faces set in stone.

Hildegard Kirsten had been going through her husband’s clothes and wardrobe. She didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to check the pockets of his jackets and shirts, even though they had almost all been laundered. She found a single euro in one of the jackets he had worn recently, perhaps that evening they had met Alex Mavros and the beautiful actress at the beachside bar. She put the coin against her cheek and tried to transfer the touch of Rudi’s fingers on it to her skin.

Blinking back tears, she slipped the euro into the pocket of her skirt, where she had also put the labrys, and continued running her hands over his clothes. Many of them were old, but their experiences of the war and its aftermath in Germany had made them reluctant to discard anything that might be useful — and relative poverty had recently been threatening them.

Then she found it. Tucked away in the back pocket of a pair of slacks Rudi had worn a week ago was a single sheet of A4 paper, folded twice. She had a strong feeling of foreboding as, fingers trembling, she knelt on the floor and spread out the page. The writing, in German, was Rudi’s, his well-formed and spaced letters as legible as they had been in his love letters to her all those years ago. But this was very far from being one of them. The blue ink from the fountain pen he always used was unfaded and looked to have been written recently. She read:

Waggoner — Oskar to dispose of with contacts. Coins value 100K

Roufos — sell half remaining coins for H

Mavros — send to Kornaria

Hildegard rocked back on her heels, struggling to fathom what the words meant. Did ‘dispose of’ mean kill, using their grandson’s awful shaven-headed, neo-Nazi friends? Had Rudi gone back on his anti-Nazi principles of decades and considered using the new generation of far-right thugs to get rid of the man who had bled them dry? Could he have seriously considered breaking up his precious collection, even if ‘H’ referred to her? But worst of all was the last line. Alex Mavros had been a good friend to them and was trying to find out what had happened to Rudi. Why had he been planning to send him to the drug-producing village? She and Rudi had never been up there — Germans were not welcome, even benefactors — but, from what she’d understood, going there would be highly dangerous for the investigator, especially after his involvement in the return of the actress’s assistant.

Confused and suddenly feeling very old, Hildegard stood up slowly and went over to the desk. The least she could do was warn Alex Mavros about Kornaria.

Mavros’s first reaction was to reach beneath the driving seat for any other weapons Mikis might have stashed there. All he found was a long spanner. He grabbed it and put his shoulder to the door.

‘Wait! Wait!’ said the closest of the hulking men. ‘We’re on your side. Mr Tsifakis told us to keep a look out for you.’

Mavros ran an eye over them. Now he recognized one of Mikis’s friends, who had been on guard duty outside the clinic when Maria Kondos was there.

‘Shit, you gave me a fright!’

‘Sorry about that. The old man must have screwed up your number.’

Mavros gave him the correct number. ‘And you are?’

‘Yannis.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘And these are Christos and the Pig.’

The latter was marginally larger than his companions, but certainly not overweight. ‘You should see his flat,’ Yannis explained, with a laugh. He looked into the Jeep. ‘Who are these lovely ladies?’

Cara smiled sweetly at him, while Niki ratcheted up her stare to high frost.

‘Anyway,’ Yannis continued, ‘what can we do for you? Mr Tsifakis doesn’t want anything nasty to happen.’

‘That’s comforting. Have you got any weapons?’

‘What do you need?’

Mavros smiled. ‘In the middle of the city, nothing. Later, who knows?’

‘Put it this way,’ said the big man. ‘This pickup has enough arms to keep a small army at bay.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t need them,’ Mavros said, thinking of the mountain men who were on his case and realizing how small that hope was. ‘Listen, Yanni, give me your phone numbers and I’ll call you if I need you.’

The Cretan looked in at the women again. ‘You sure you don’t want us to cover your. . backsides?’

‘Ha. Not right now.’ Mavros input the numbers into his mobile’s memory.

‘OK, happy travels,’ Yannis said, waving into the Jeep.

‘Who were those madmen?’ Niki asked, when they set off again.

‘Our guardian angels,’ Mavros said. ‘But we don’t need them now. It’s time for an early dinner.’ He headed into the centre of Chania, keeping an eye on his mirror. There were no macho-man pickups to be seen.

Then his phone rang. He listened to what Hildegard Kersten had to say, struggling to make sense of it. ‘You mean your husband was doing business with Roufos?’

‘At least thinking about it. Alex, you must be very careful. Whatever you do, stay away from Kornaria.’

‘I’m working on that,’ he replied, not telling her that he was sure he’d have to go to the village to get to the bottom of Maria Kondos’s kidnapping and of her husband’s death.

‘If you see Oskar, tell him to stay away from Waggoner. And to come and visit me. I have things to tell him.’

Mavros agreed to that and cut the connection. If he saw Oskar, it would probably be in the company of numerous unfriendly skinheads, and he had the feeling the Kerstens’ grandson would not have forgotten his humiliation in the orange groves.

Then his phone rang again. It was Haris Tsifakis.

‘I’ve found Roufos.’

‘Wow, that was quick.’

‘You’d better get over there as soon as you can. My contact says he’s been looking jumpy.’

‘I’ll bet he has.’

‘Do you want Mikis’s friends to come along?’

‘No, thanks. I can handle that sleazy beanpole.’

‘What about your women?’

Mavros hoped Niki didn’t hear that characterization of her and Cara. ‘You think I can get rid of them? Besides, they might distract the tosser.’

The Cretan laughed. ‘Make sure they don’t distract you, my friend.’

Mavros glanced at them. Cara was looking out of the side window, while Niki’s eyes were fixed straight ahead. For a second, he wished the Jeep was fitted with passenger ejector seats.