The Devil Takes Half (19 page)

“
At first I did. For example, I was with him the night he found the hand in the trench. He was in wretched shape. Kept talking about what ‘they'd done to her.' The blood. You've heard him. Blaming himself.”

“
Blaming himself?”

McLean nodded. “I must say, Jon had had a great deal to drink, a
very
great deal, and he was more than a little incoherent. I had to get a porter to help me get him back to his room. He kept saying if only he'd gotten here sooner, he could have saved her, that kind of thing. It didn't make much sense.” He hesitated for a moment. “You know, Chief Officer, Alcott's a decent man. He was an even better one before he met Eleni. You should have seen him when he was in his prime. I went on a dig with him in Cyprus.” The archeologist smiled at the memory. “It was amazing. Jon was unstoppable. A force of nature.”

The chief officer frowned. There was something in his voice, he thought, watching McLean closely. Something off. The way he said ‘Jon' caressed Alcott's name.

McLean continued talking. “When he got entangled with her, he lost something—his edge, his focus. He was like an animal with its leg caught in a vise: he just couldn't get free. You know, he risked everything, not just his marriage but his tenure, his reputation, with that affair. It was a terrible thing to see. We, members of the archeological community, all talked about it. At every conference people discussed the situation. I'm hoping once this unhappy episode has passed, he'll be able to resume his life. Get on with it, as it were.”

“
I know you said you visited the site. You didn't think much of it.”

“
Second rate, if you want the truth. I thought it was pathetic, actually, the way she'd made such a fuss about those miserable shards. Interrupting our summer schedules and bringing us here for nothing. Half of Greece is covered with better relics than the ones she and that boy, Petros, found. I'm not sure even half of it is Minoan. I think much of it dates from a much later time. Roman, perhaps, or even the early Christian era.”

“
I thought you came on your own. I didn't realize Eleni had summoned you here.”

“
It was strictly voluntary on my part, don't get me wrong. Curiosity killing the cat and all that. She spoke to a colleague of mine in Athens, who in turn spoke to me. I was intrigued by what I'd heard. I won't deny it. I thought she'd found a second Knossos. What a disappointment it all was, however. What a waste of time.”

“
So you don't think she was killed because of the excavation?”

“
Not by anyone knowledgeable. A local might think those bits had value, but anyone in the field could tell instantly they were virtually worthless.”

* * *

The young woman at reception ran a manicured finger down the ledger. “It says here Devon McLean checked in on July twenty-fifth. But he arrived on Chios long before that.”

“
How do you know?”

“
A waiter at the hotel saw him. ‘That white skin,' he said. He was sure it was him.”

“
Where did he see him?”

“
Volissos.”

“
He and the other archeologist, the American, had a big fight the night he arrived. Out on the terrace. Something about a woman. The American was drunk. The Englishman was trying to calm him down.” She drummed her nails on the counter impatiently. The phones were ringing and she needed to get back to work. “I wish I could tell you more. All the people you asked me about? They've all been here at one time or another. Petros' mother and her boyfriend. What a pair: the
porne
and the
porno
, the he-slut and the she-slut. Made a nuisance of themselves, ordered drinks and ran up a big tab, then when the waiter brought the bill, they argued with him and refused to pay.
So cheap, they could get milk from a ram
.
”

“
Anyone else?”

“
Titina Argentis.”

“
What did she want?”

“
I'm not sure. She came in late at night like she didn't want anyone to see her. It was after my shift, but I heard she was sitting in the lounge with the Englishman. It was the middle of July; I don't know the exact date. Like I said, I didn't see them myself. The night manager told me.”

Patronas turned toward the dining room, where the waiters were setting up for dinner. “Which one saw McLean in Volissos?”

“
Him.” The girl pointed to a short man on the far side of the room. “Takis.”

“
Sure, I saw him,” the waiter said when questioned by Patronas. “It was late June, about three weeks before he checked in here.”

“
Are you sure it was him?”

“
Hard to miss a man like that. All pale and delicate, he was, smearing cream on his face like a woman. He's not your usual here. Men like that, you see them on Mykonos. He was on a boat. It was anchored far off, so I couldn't really see it. But I could tell it was big. Not a yacht, but a good-sized cabin cruiser or maybe a cigarette boat. Looked sleek from where I stood. Fast.”

He spins the rope of Ocnus.

—
Greek proverb

P
atronas thought of Ocnus as he drove. Ocnus was a ropemaker whose ropes were eaten by an ass as fast as he could make them. In other words, everything he did was a waste of time. Patronas felt much the same. Weeks of effort and nothing to show for it. He could almost hear the ass chewing.

Patronas took Giorgos Tembelos with him when he went to Volissos. There'd been some trouble in the village over cigarette smuggling, and he thought Tembelos, who had relatives there, might have better luck talking to the locals. When he'd arrested the ringleader, the man had taken a swing at him, claiming everyone with a boat supplemented their income with Turkish cigarettes and that he had been unfairly singled out. The bonds of family ran deep in Volissos and Patronas was afraid he was in for a long afternoon.

The ride took them through the backstreets and up over Mount Aipos. The limestone peak rose sharply, the second highest point of land on Chios after Profitis Ilias, and Patronas hated the narrow road that traversed it. A dented guard rail ran along the side, and he tried not to look down as he drove. Not so Giorgos, who was enthralled by the view and kept pointing out landmarks—the bell tower of the cathedral, the three old windmills outside Chora—and getting progressively more excited the higher up they went.

Beyond the crest of Mount Aipos was a lifeless plateau of pockmarked limestone that extended for miles. As a boy, Patronas had been fascinated by the area, home to nothing, not even insects. He'd believed that if he visited the moon, its surface would be like this, all gray rock and dust. Now, as an adult, he thought the desolation probably dated from the massacre of 1822 when the Turks had burned the villages along the coast. He guessed the flames had overtaken the woods on the mountain, and they, like the rest of Chios, had never recovered. A ship owner from the United States was trying to reestablish a forest in the area. The green of the tiny saplings made the land around them seem still more barren.

The landscape began to change as they neared the sea on the west of the island, the lunar plateau giving way to gently sloping hills, heavily forested with dense thickets of pines. Patronas loved the sight of the wind-bent pines, the grass yellow beneath them, the great wash of the Aegean in the distance, sparkling in the sunlight.

“
You ever catch who did it?” Tembelos pointed to a swatch of land that had been burned the previous summer, the singed ground and blackened trees.

Patronas shook his head. He'd found a pile of discarded metal cans still reeking of gasoline and a mattress that had been soaked in it and set ablaze, but he'd never caught the arsonist. It still galled him. Greek law was very strict, forbidding construction in areas that were forested. In recent years the solution had been to burn the trees down, but then the law had been amended, forbidding construction indefinitely in areas where there had been fires. Patronas was counting on the culprit not knowing that the law had changed and filing for a permit to build. Then he'd have him.

As they rounded the curve, the village of Volissos came into view. It had grown in recent years, the cement breakwater expanded to accommodate tourist boats from abroad. He could smell fish frying in the small taverna on the quay and see people eating outside at tables under umbrellas.

He dropped Tembelos off and drove back to where the road curved high above the village. Getting out his binoculars, he scanned the harbor, searching for a fast boat, but saw nothing, only fishing boats and a flotilla of rented sailboats, making their way east.

He raised the binoculars higher and looked farther out to sea. There was a boat that looked like the one the waiter described, laying at anchor about 500 meters offshore. The Coast Guard said the boat was registered in Libya, a practice not unusual in Greece. Boats were often registered there to avoid paying taxes. The owner had filed no additional papers since anchoring. Although the boat had been there for weeks, they'd been unable to catch up with whoever owned it. Too many boats, too many people. Patronas asked them to keep an eye on it and let him know when it left and which direction it went in. “Follow it if you have to. Keep it in view.”

Tembelos had heard from the owner of the local grocery store that a man had been living on the boat in question—well, perhaps not
living
, but staying there occasionally. He'd bought food from the grocer and gone back and forth a few times. He'd been a foreigner,
xenii
, with red hair and white skin and had always been alone—a curiosity in and of itself during the summer when the village was full of couples on holiday. His solitude was probably the only reason the grocer remembered him.

“
Did he make a positive ID when you showed him the photo of McLean?” Not experts, they'd gone to great lengths to secure a candid photo of the Englishman, sitting at the pool at his hotel.

Tembelos shook his head. “He wouldn't swear to it. He did say he saw a woman onboard once or twice. Not with him. Alone. Looked local, he said. Not a girlfriend. A maid or housekeeper, judging by the way she was dressed.”

“
Boat isn't that big. What'd he need a maid for?”

“
Maybe she's his accomplice.”

“
If that's the boat, it'd have a Zodiac tied to it.”

“
Maybe he let the air out, hid it in the trunk of his car.”

“
No car, either. I checked. No one named McLean or fitting his description has rented a car from anyone on Chios, on or off the books.” Patronas lit a cigarette and looked out at the beach. He wished he was swimming, tossing a ball to children in the water, not chasing phantoms. “We got nothing, Giorgos. Nothing linking McLean to a boat or a car. No firm evidence he was even in Volissos, let alone onboard that vessel out there. The man the grocer saw? Maybe he was a guest on that boat and the woman, the so-called maid, is the rightful owner.”

Tembelos persisted. “I still think he's involved.”

“
We have no proof. This case is like a magic trick, Giorgos. One minute, you think you're getting somewhere and then,” he flung his hands in the air, Houdini releasing a bird, “poof, you got nothing.”

On the way home they stopped in Lampi, a small village on a gritty beach. A rough breakwater had been built to create a harbor, and Patronas could see three good-sized fishing boats tied up there. Far out to sea, a cigarette boat caught his eye, riding low in the water.

He called to the waiter. “Whose boat is that?”

“
Don't know. It's been there for a couple of weeks now, never a person to be seen. No flags flying. Nothing to identify it. My mother has been keeping an eye on it. She thinks the Turks might own it. Drugs.”

Patronas nodded. “How far is it from here to the cove where Costas Stamnas found the remains?”

“
About a kilometer. You passed it on your way here. There are some rocks jutting out of the sea. The beach is right in front of them.”

“
Was that boat here when it happened?”

The man shrugged. “Who can say? It's summer. A lot of boats come through here now. Yachts. Cruise ships. That boat might have been here. I don't remember.”

* * *

Patronas drove south. They were deep in mastica country, a bush that only grew on the southeastern coast of Chios. Its cultivation had given the islanders special privileges during the time of the Ottomans; its resin was much prized by the women in the harem, who chewed it to sweeten their breath. These privileges had been revoked when the Pasha sent troops to punish the population for supporting the rebels during the Greek War of Independence. During the two-week maelstrom, Turkish Janissaries had slaughtered over 25,000 people and enslaved 60,000 more. Chios had never recovered. The houses in this area had a desolate air, the town squares and churches, a sense of abandonment. Only the elderly lived here now. People still grew mastica, but only for local consumption. The Ottomans were gone. There were no harems anymore.

“
We're like the Jews in Germany,” Patronas said, gesturing to one of the villages. “They were the most assimilated in Europe, had the best lives, the most money and then … boom, look what happened to them. Just like us.”