The Silver Stain

THREE

Mavros followed Luke Jannet off the plane and was hit by a blast of heat — Crete was hotter than Athens had been. Then he got a surprise.

‘Neat, aren’t they?’ Jannet said, following the direction of his gaze.

‘Something like that,’ Mavros muttered. His Greek heritage had asserted itself and the World War Two German aircraft with swastikas on their tails did not impress him.

‘A Ju 52 transport aircraft — they dropped paratroopers — and an Me109 fighter,’ the director said proudly. ‘We’ll be filming more aerial shots tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘But you’ll be busy finding that fuckin’ dyke.’

‘Unless I find her today.’

Jannet gave him a thoughtful look. ‘Don’t get overambitious, my man. This is a big island.’ He grinned. ‘But if you do, you’re welcome to see the planes in action.’

Mavros followed him towards a pair of cars. The director got into the first, a large dark-blue BMW, while Alice hung back.

‘The Jeep will take you to the shoot hotel. Ms Parks has been told to expect you. An account has been opened in your name for meals, car hire and so on, and you’ll find a cash advance in the safe in your room. We should exchange cell numbers.’ They did so. ‘I’ll be available to help you, subject to Mr Jannet’s needs. If you run into any difficulties with crew members, let me know. Will there be anything else?’

‘Sounds like you’ve thought of most things.’

She smiled. ‘Mr Jannet will be expecting regular reports.’

‘Hey, Ali, shake your tail feather.’

Mavros watched as her slim form inserted itself into the BMW. He’d have liked to know what Alice Quincy really thought about her boss, but she was almost as inscrutable as a jade Buddha. Even more, he’d have liked to know what else she knew about Maria Kondos and Cara Parks.

The Jeep, with a parachute-festooned Freedom or Death logo on the door, was driven by a young man with a moustache Nietzsche would have been proud of.

‘First time in Crete?’ he asked, revealing a lower line of gleaming teeth.

Mavros considered sticking to English, but decided he’d find out more by speaking Greek. He introduced himself, saying he was a writer from Athens.

‘Mikis Tsifakis,’ the driver replied. ‘You writing about the film?’

Mavros nodded vaguely. ‘How about you? Contracted by the production company?’

Mikis nodded happily. ‘My old man has hired out most of our fleet. That was him in the BMW.’

‘Good work?’

‘Ah, good enough. These Americans, they know how to keep their costs down.’

‘So, tell me, have you driven anyone famous?’

The young man beamed. ‘You bet. When the old man’s busy, I drive Cara Parks.’

‘Wow, what’s she like in the flesh?’ Mavros asked, playing the part of the lust-driven fan.

Mikis laughed. ‘Even more luscious than on screen. She’s nice, as well. She doesn’t have any airs. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes alone with that woman.’

Mavros spotted another interesting angle. ‘I suppose she always has an entourage in tow.’

‘Not really. A couple of security guys and a stuck-up woman called Maria, who I’ve heard speak Greek, but she never bothers with me. She acts like Cara’s personal Cerberus.’

‘She’s got three heads?’

Mikis glanced at him, grinning. ‘A tongue that’s three times more cutting than my grandmother’s.’

Mavros looked at the citrus groves to his right and the almost constant line of hotels and villas on the left, before getting to the point. ‘I hear this Maria’s gone missing.’

The driver’s face tightened. ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

Mavros wasn’t sure he was telling the truth, but he let it go. The Jeep took a left turn and stopped in front of an elaborate, barred gate. There was a column of TV vans and men with cameras on the roadside, a police officer watching them. A man dressed in traditional Cretan garb — high boots, baggy trousers, the vraka, and a tight headscarf, the mandili — came out of a hut and nodded at Mikis before admitting the vehicle.

‘The Heavenly Blue Resort,’ Mavros read on a gilt sign. ‘I’ve heard of this place.’

‘You should have,’ the young man said proudly. ‘Biggest and best hotel on the island. Mr Kersten brought in architects and designers from all over the world to upgrade it ten years ago.’

Although he habitually binned the travel, property and design sections of the Sunday newspapers with little more than a glance, Mavros had read about the resort and its German owner. It had been one of the few European-class hotels in Greece when it first opened for business in the 60s and it maintained that status. Suddenly he found himself wishing that the search for Maria Kondos would take weeks.

Mikis drove the Jeep along a tree-lined avenue to a large expanse of well-watered lawn, beyond which stood an imposing six-storey concrete building whose modernist brutalism was diluted by the flowers on every balcony. To its left and right were complexes of villas, along with more swimming pools than Mavros had ever seen in one location, even though the sea was only a few hundred metres away.

‘Amazing, eh?’ the driver said.

Mavros agreed, though the fact that all the staff seemed to be in Cretan costumes struck him as excessively kitschy.

‘Here you are.’ Mikis handed him a card. ‘Give me a call if you need a ride. It makes a change to have a Greek-speaking passenger.’

Mavros accepted it and extended a hand with a tip.

‘Not necessary,’ Mikis said, with a smile. ‘In fact, forbidden under the terms of our contract.’

Mavros stuck the banknote in the young man’s shirt pocket. ‘Not my contract. See you, my friend.’ He got out, sure that he would be making use of Mikis in the near future.

‘Good day, sir,’ said a young woman weighed down with a colourful but less than practical full-length costume. ‘Welcome to the Heavenly Blue Resort. Follow me to reception.’

Mavros did so, taking in the tastefully minimalist decor — pale grey marble floor, replicas — he presumed — of Minoan, Classical and Venetian art works on the walls, a high ceiling with lights hanging from wires entwined by convincing fake vines. The German owner definitely had better taste than the average hotelier in Greece.

‘Yes, Mr Mavros, we’re expecting you,’ said the receptionist, a svelte young man, in English, imagining the new arrival was a Greek-American. He looked momentarily confused when he saw Mavros’s Greek ID card.

‘Don’t worry, English is fine,’ Mavros said. ‘But don’t go talking about me in Greek when I turn my back.’

The receptionist looked horrified at the idea. ‘Here’s your key card, sir. You’re on the first floor, lifts over there. Do you need help with-’

‘No,’ Mavros said, lifting his small bag. ‘Long live Hollywood.’

A smile flickered across the receptionist’s face.

Mavros took the stairs to the first floor and walked down a long corridor to his room. The trek, which, along with the low level, showed that he wasn’t a major player, was worth it. The room was actually a small suite, the bedroom looking towards the sea and the sitting-room towards the mountains of the Rodhopou peninsula to the west. The air con was running and a television greeted him in sibilant tones. He turned both off and opened the balcony windows. People in shorts were walking to and from the villas, while others drove golf buggies to more distant locations. Even searching the grounds for Maria Kondos would take plenty of man hours.

He found the safe in one of the wardrobes and punched in the number supplied in an envelope, before changing it to the day and month of Niki’s birthday. There were two thousand Euros inside, along with a receipt, which he signed. Maybe his employers really did believe he could solve the case in a day. In any case, he wasn’t going to have many living expenses.

After a shower and change of shirt, Mavros picked up the phone and asked to be connected to Cara Parks’ suite. A harsh female voice answered in English.

‘The name’s Mavros. Ms Parks is expecting me.’ He heard muffled voices and then the woman came back on the line.

‘Come now,’ she said curtly. ‘501.’

Mavros climbed the stairs, all four flights, assuming it was the done thing to arrive at a Hollywood starlet’s suite panting.

From The Descent of Icarus:

It was a simple choice. I turned the MG34 towards the New Zealanders and emptied a drum of ammunition at them. The trees took many of the rounds, but there was no shortage of men yelling, falling and soon lying motionless. Then I looked round, the woman’s scream louder than all the shooting in the area.

I twisted aside just before the heavy butt of the antediluvian rifle crashed into the earth. There wasn’t time to fit another drum, so I swung the machine gun at her and swept her legs from beneath her. She didn’t stop coming at me, pulling herself forward despite the blood that was pouring from her shoulder. To my amazement, she laced her fingers round my neck and started to apply pressure.

Back then, I was ninety kilos of muscle and I broke her grip easily enough. Then she smashed her head into my face, breaking my nose. Where had she learned to fight like this? A Cretan cathouse? Again, I pushed her off me, wiping my sleeve across my streaming nose.

‘Rudi!’

I looked beyond the woman and saw Peter Wachter and a small group of comrades approach across the open ground. She tried to headbutt me again and I finally lost patience, landing a right that Max Schmeling, former world heavyweight champion and now also a paratrooper somewhere in Crete, would have been proud of. She hit the dirt and lay still.

‘Fuck’s sake, Rudi,’ Peter said, as he crouched down beside me. ‘You take out a section of Maoris and then get your nose crushed by a woman?’

‘Defensive positions, boys,’ Lieutenant Schmidt ordered. ‘Well done, Kersten, at least with the New Zealanders.’ He smiled grimly. ‘But that wasn’t all of them.’

A 109 shrieked past overhead, its machine guns blasting, and then we heard an unknown sound that got all our hackles up. It was a chant, voiced loudly and in perfect unison, by numerous voices in a language none of us had ever heard. But we got the message clearly enough. It was a more terrifying war cry than anything our instructors had come up with, a challenge that made clear mercy would not be forthcoming. When it stopped, there was the sound of heavy men crashing through the trees.

Schmidt looked at the five of us and shook his head. ‘Screw this, we need to get back across the open ground. On your feet.’

We got up, Wachter fitting a drum and handing the MG34 to me. The rest of them loaded up with as many weapons and as much ammo as they could carry.

‘What about her?’ I asked the lieutenant. The woman was rolling her head from side to side, her jaw already swelling.

He shrugged. ‘She attacked a Fallschirmjager. Shoot her.’

The Maoris were still shouting and we could see their shapes approaching.

I aimed the machine gun at her, waiting till the others were looking in the opposite direction. Then I let off a blast, tearing up grass and stones from the soil. Some of the debris hit her face, but she was alive when I followed my comrades into the open.

Only Peter Wachter and I made it, the others picked off by the Maoris as their jump boots kicked up pollen from the yellow and white flowers. I never expected to see the woman again but in that, as in so many things, I was completely wrong.

There was a security guard outside 501, so he got the benefit of Mavros’s heavy breathing rather than the actress. He wasn’t a clown in Cretan costume, but a heavy-duty steroid-cruncher — shaved head nearly reaching the top of the door and biceps flexing beneath the sleeves of a black suit.

‘ID,’ he demanded, in English.

Mavros decided against saying, ‘It speaks’, and handed over his card. Then he froze as hands with home-made sausage fingers patted him down without any attempt at delicacy. Then the gorilla knocked twice on the door.

Things got no better. Mavros was confronted by a short but heavily built woman in her thirties, her bottle-blonde hair cut short. She was wearing something akin to an ancient Greek chiton. It wasn’t flattering.

‘Rosie Yellenberg,’ she said, not offering her hand. ‘Producer. Follow me, Mr Mavros.’

The hall was about the size of a cricket pitch, leading on to a living area that could have accommodated two teams and their extended families comfortably. It was sparsely furnished but, to Mavros’s untutored eye, every piece looked top of the range. Sitting in the corner of a red leather sofa was an unexpectedly small figure in jeans, her hair in a turban. To his surprise, Cara Parks got up and extended a hand. Close up, her famously curvaceous figure was unavoidable, even though the presence she had on the screen was diminished.

‘Sit down here, won’t you?’ she said, patting the sofa about a metre away from her. ‘Can we offer you some refreshment?’ The actress’s voice was soft and her dark eyes were on his.

‘No, thanks.’ Mavros looked across at Rosie Yellenberg, who was hovering by the large glass coffee table. ‘Do you think I could talk to Ms Parks alone?’ he asked, in a tone he hoped would brook no opposition.

The producer’s jaw jutted forward but, before she could speak, the actress cut in.

‘Sure, I’d prefer that too. Close the door after you, Rosie dear.’

The look that passed between the two women would have melted an asteroid.

‘You always do that?’ Cara Parks asked, when they were alone. ‘I mean, lay down the law at the start of meetings.’

Mavros smiled. ‘Only when I get the feeling people are surplus to requirements.’

The actress laughed, but he noticed there were lines round her unmade-up eyes. ‘Well, you got that right. Ms Yellenberg’s taken it upon herself to be my nursemaid since Maria. . Maria left. Every five minutes I’ve been getting a lecture about how important it is not to delay the schedule, how much money’s at stake, you can guess the kind of thing.’

Mavros nodded. ‘Why’s she dressed up like an ancient Greek goddess?’

‘Who knows? She certainly isn’t Aphrodite.’

He noted the familiarity with Greek myth, which seemed unlikely to be a standard feature of major movie actors. ‘So, Ms Parks-’

‘Call me Cara.’ She gave him a tight smile. ‘Until I tell you different. And I’ll call you?’

‘Alex.’

‘Your English is perfect.’

He gave her a rundown of his background.

‘You certainly sound like the man for the job. So what do you think’s happened to my Maria?’ The actress frowned. ‘That didn’t come across right. Just to be perfectly clear about this — no matter what anyone tells you, I haven’t got the hots for her. She has for me, but she doesn’t let that get in the way of being an excellent assistant.’

‘To be honest, since that’s what we’re being here, it’s a bit early to say.’

‘What have they told you? That she’s a rude bitch with plenty of enemies in the crew?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, it’s true enough. You’ve got to understand, people like me need protection. Not just the man-mountain on the door, but people with brains — people who take the heat and let you get on with your job.’ She gave him a penetrating look. ‘Which, whatever you might think, Mr Private Eye, isn’t just a question of looking sexy in front of the cameras.’

Mavros raised his hands. ‘Not guilty. I saw Spring Surprise. You needed to be much more than sexy in that film. Though you were that too, of course.’ He put a brake on the babbling that the star’s powerful presence was causing. ‘Tell me about Maria, please.’

Cara Parks leaned back on the arm of the sofa. ‘Tell you about her? She’s been with me for over five years. We hit it off straightaway. I wasn’t sure about doing a dumb scream movie — believe it or not, my background is in off-Broadway theatre — but my agent was keen and so was Maria. Turned out to be the best move I ever made. And I couldn’t have done it without her. The crews on those movies can be pretty gross, but Maria licked them into shape and even the nude scenes were OK.’

Mavros tried hard to put those from his mind. ‘So you’d say you were friends beyond the work level?’

‘Friends, no. For a start, there isn’t anything beyond work in Hollywood. Even going for a drink means bonding with people who have some professional interest. Put it this way — I’ve never been to Maria’s house. But I can call her any time and she’s there for me. I guess what I’m saying is that as well as needing her, I respect her. Any good?’

Mavros nodded. ‘When and where did you last see her?’

‘Right here, on this piece of furniture. It must have been about nine in the evening on Sunday. I was looking over my lines and Maria was telling that asshole Jannet to keep his comments till the morning.’

‘You and the director don’t get on?’

Cara raised her shoulders. ‘It’s no biggie. He’s good at his job and I don’t have any fundamental problems with what he wants.’

‘But you don’t like him?’ Mavros persisted, probing her unwillingness to come clean.

‘No, I don’t,’ the actress replied, after a pause. ‘He’s a loudmouth and a bully, though that applies to plenty of his kind. Is this relevant?’

Mavros didn’t answer. ‘When did you realize Maria was missing?’

‘She always comes to the suite at least an hour before I’m due to leave for a shoot. But on Monday she didn’t. I called her, both in her room and on her cell. She didn’t answer either. It turned out that no one in the hotel had seen her since Sunday evening. Nobody else seemed to care. If I hadn’t started shouting, the assholes wouldn’t even have called the cops — and they were worse than useless.’ She paused. ‘I hope you aren’t.’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I’m not.’ He reckoned displaying his battle scars was de rigueur. ‘I’ve found everyone I’ve gone looking for professionally. But I’m not surprised the police weren’t interested. It still isn’t much more than thirty-six hours since Maria disappeared and she’s an adult. If there are no suspicious circumstances, all the police in any country will do is add her name to a list.’

‘Well, I guess that’s why you’ve been brought in. Tell me, Alex, what do you usually do when a woman goes missing?’

‘The same as I do when a man or a child goes missing. Follow up on the people in their immediate circle. It hardly ever happens that people disappear without a trace.’

Cara Parks’ expression was grim. ‘You’ll be earning your corn, Alex. Maria’s immediate circle comprises the residents of this resort complex.’

‘I’m sure you can narrow them down a bit,’ Mavros said, taking out his notebook. ‘Who did she spend time with on set?’

‘Apart from me and the other people who look after me, no one that I know of.’

‘Give me their names.’ He noted her personal hairdresser, dialogue coach, costume designer and various others. ‘What about in her free time?’

The actress laughed. ‘Free time? You don’t get much of that on location. For all I know, Maria might have spent every evening in the hotel bar or disco — though I doubt it — but she was always fresh at six a.m.’

‘No significant other?’

Cara looked blank. ‘Oh, you mean lover. Never heard of one. Sorry.’

‘That’s OK. I’ll take it from here.’

‘And you’ll find her.’ She raised her hand. ‘I know you’ve never failed, Alex, but this is important to me. I care about Maria, I really do.’

Mavros watched her carefully. Her eyes were damp and her lips had trembled. For all her acting skills, she looked sincere.

‘Where was she staying?’

The star held up an envelope. ‘243. There’s a duplicate key card here. The hotel’s been asked to leave the room untouched.’

‘Thanks.’ Mavros got up.

‘No, thank you,’ Cara Parks said, rising and shaking his hand again. ‘I know you’ll help us out.’

‘I don’t suppose Maria’s ever done this kind of thing before?’

‘Nope.’

‘By the way, what role are you playing in the film?’

The actress took a moment to refocus. ‘Oh, I’m Eleni Panakaki. The village girl-next-door who becomes a heroine and nearly gets herself shot. It’s a good part, plus I get it on with a Maori officer — except he’s white, not one of the tattooed hunks you see walking around here.’

‘Hugh Rook,’ Mavros said, remembering the actor from a magazine article. He was a former pretty boy trying to extend his range.

‘Yeah,’ Cara said, without enthusiasm. ‘Spends most of his time talking to his parents. They’re in the hotel too. Apparently his grandfather fought in the battle.’

Interesting, Mavros thought, but hardly significant. He headed for the door.

‘Ade yeia,’ the actress hazarded.

He raised a hand without turning round as he repeated the second word of the farewell phrase. The dialogue coach had been doing a good job.