The Devil Takes Half (28 page)

“
Did you ever see anyone else up here?”

“
Once. Different person.”

“
What do you mean different?”

“
Little.”

Petros Athanassiou. It had to be. Patronas tapped the bale of hay. “Where'd you get the hay?”

“
Spiros give it to me. He knows me. I stay in house on his land. Is good, has water pipe, electricity.” He stumbled over the words, excited. “Heating that plugs in wall.” As if this unused outbuilding, this shed Korres was letting him use, was something. Things must be pretty bleak in Albania.

“
What do you do for food?”

“
He and his wife give me. Cigarettes, too, sometimes. I even drive his tractor once.”

Patronas gave him his sleeping bag and another fifty Euros. “Be careful,” he warned. “Steer clear of this place.”

Intent on counting the money, the shepherd waved him off.

* * *

Patronas stopped off at the farm to talk to Spiros Korres before heading back to the police station. He was troubled by his conversation with the shepherd. He'd missed something, not followed up when he should have. Perhaps Korres could help him. He found the farmer behind his barn, repairing a loose board with a hammer.

Korres nodded when he saw him. “Afternoon, Chief Officer. What can I do for you?”

“
I just interviewed the man who tends the goats up by Profitis Ilias. He said he lives here on your farm in the winter.”

“
The harelip?” Korres made a slicing gesture across his upper lip with a dirty fingernail. “Yeah, I let him stay in a shed out back. Best hold your nose if you're going there. He's downwind of the pigs.”

The pigs were huge, chocolate-colored beasts, housed in a filthy, mud-slicked pen. The ground was littered with waste, orange peels and watermelon rinds, excrement, and the air was alive with flies, the odor so rank, it made Patronas' eyes water. He located the shed where the shepherd was staying a little farther down. Inside was a cot with a blanket and a chest of drawers. There was even a window overlooking some trees in the back. Inside one of the drawers, he found a small gilt brooch. It was shaped like a quail, with tiny rhinestone eyes.

Slipping on a pair of gloves, he put the brooch in an evidence bag and walked back to where Korres was working. He emptied the evidence bag out in the palm of his hand and asked the farmer if he could identify the pin or knew where the shepherd had found it.

“
Harelip found it the day Marina died. Cast off in the bushes behind the goats, he said. My wife looks after him and he wanted to give it to her. I told him it wasn't his and to put it back where he found it, let you people deal with it. But he said he was afraid.”

“
Afraid of what?”

“
Didn't say. Police would be my guess. I don't know where he came from, but he's scared of the authorities. Truth is, he's scared of everything. Like a horse that's never been broke.”

“
What else did he say?”

“
Only that there was a lot of blood.”

So the shepherd's footprints were probably mixed up with the killer's, ditto with the fingerprints and trace elements the forensic specialists had collected in the lean-to. He'd have to have the shepherd printed, Korres and his son, Vassilis, also.

“
You should have passed the pin on to me,” he said. “Get it dusted for prints.”

“
Been pointless. Harelip had been carrying it around all day.” He shrugged. “I figured what the hell, let him keep it. It was nothing, just cheap costume jewelry. You can see where it's chipped, there, the metal underneath. Should have heard him though, the way he was snorting and carrying on, you could tell old harelip thought he'd found himself the crown jewels.”

“
Did he find anything else up there?”

“
He might have. He's always secreting things away. Food mostly. Stockpiles cans and crap under that shed of his. He's a funny one, gets upset when you try and take things away from him. Doesn't really understand the concept of ownership. Thinks that if he finds something, it belongs to him.”

“
It's good of you to let him stay here.”

Korres waved him off, unwilling to accept the compliment. “Hell, someone has to keep the pigs company.”

* * *

Before leaving the farm, Patronas made another turn around the shed, checking the crawl space for Minoan artifacts or anything else that might have bearing on the case. He found his fifty Euros zipped up in a soiled child's pencil case along with a used lottery ticket and a handful of coins, drachmas mostly, no longer in circulation. There was also a random assortment of cans: tomatoes, sardines, evaporated milk. Food, just as Korres had said. A blanket had been secreted under the shed as well. Folded up inside it, he found a rusted toy motorcar and half of a German paperback novel. He tucked more money in the pencil case, thinking that once he'd caught the killer, he'd do something for the harelipped man.

He looked down at the brooch in his hand, wondering what to do with it. He was sure Korres' assessment was correct, that the pin was worthless, gold plated at best, but what if it had belonged to Voula, not Marina, and been pulled off during the murder? Or Titina Argentis? That would place her at the scene. He sighed. He'd have to go to Campos and show it to Nikos Papoulis, see if he could identify it. If not, he'd speak to the others.

The road to Campos was empty. He parked in front of Marina's house and got out. A pair of red-throated swallows, glossy and black, were sitting on the wires in front of the house. No children were playing in the yard and all the toys had been taken in. He stood on the steps for a moment, collecting his thoughts, before knocking on the door.

As was the custom on Chios, Nikos Papoulis was wearing a black armband in mourning for his wife. His eyes were red, his face tired. “Chief Officer,” he said, opening the door a little wider. “Come in, come in.”

Patronas stayed outside. “I'm sorry to bother you,” he said, “but a new piece of evidence has come to my attention.” He handed him the plastic envelope. “You recognize this? Someone found it near the crime scene.”

Papoulis opened the envelope and ran his finger over the brooch. “No. I've never seen it before.”

“
Are you sure? Could it have been Marina's?”

“
I don't think so.”

Patronas put the brooch back in his pocket. “Is Margarita here? I need you to ask her something.” He thought the girl might be more comfortable speaking with her father. “I want to know if she remembers anything her mother said that day, the day she disappeared. She can read, can't she, Margarita?”

He nodded.

“
Ask her if she saw the papers her mother had for me. What they said.”

The man returned a few minutes later. His daughter had nothing new to add, he said. The papers had been in an envelope; she hadn't seen them. Their mother had trusted her with the
svingis
and she'd been holding the plate on her lap. She'd been worrying about getting the syrup on her good dress, concentrating on that. She was sorry, that's all she knew. “She started to cry.” He looked on the verge of tears himself.

“
What about the brooch?”

“
She never saw any brooch.”

He shows honey. He mixes poison.

—
Greek proverb

B
oatmen were yelling out their destinations, seeking tourists for day trips to nearby islands, and there was a long line of trucks waiting to board the morning ferry to Athens. Patronas had chosen this hour on purpose, hoping to catch the people on his list before rumors of the Minoan city started to circulate. He would have to move quickly or he'd catch half of Chios in his net.

A row of rented sailboats were tied up on the quay in front of the hotel, and he could hear people talking on a few, English most of them, judging by the accents. He'd been foolish, trying to link McLean to a specific boat in July with all the transient traffic to and from the island. McLean could have used any one of these boats in partnership with one of the English owners, and no one would have been the wiser. And this was just the main harbor. There must be fifty quays where a person could moor a boat, and that was just the formal ones with breakwaters and supervision, not the hundreds of empty coves and inlets where a man could safely drop anchor and get ashore.

He crossed the lobby and spoke to the hostess in the dining room. She checked her list. “They haven't come down for breakfast. They must still be in their rooms.”

The chief officer thought he'd start with Devon McLean and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The inside of the elevator was mirrored and he frowned when he caught a glimpse of himself. Had he forgotten to shave this morning? Peering at himself, he ran an exploratory hand across his chin. Sure enough. Whiskers everywhere. His eyebrows seemed bigger than he remembered, too, sticking out like the tufts of fur on a lynx. He wetted a finger and smoothed them down. It didn't matter. McLean was English. He'd think he was an aborigine no matter how he looked.

The archeologist was the embodiment of graciousness, ordering breakfast for the two of them from room service. He even consoled him after a fashion about Marina's death, assuring him no one expected him to mount a proper investigation.

“
I mean, frankly, Chief Officer, no matter how hard you try, you're going to miss things. What experience have you had with serial killers?” His tone was arch and patronizing.

Patronas frowned.
Vrasta.
Boil him
.
Taking a deep breath, he got out his notebook. “Last time we spoke about the excavation that Eleni Argentis was conducting at Profitis Ilias, you told me what she'd uncovered was virtually worthless. Suppose she found something more valuable than those shards? Something unexpected up there?”

“
Like what?” The Englishman's voice was mocking. “The Elgin Marbles? Come, come, Chief Officer, you and I both know she'd found nothing of value. You've seen those trenches. There was nothing there. Nothing.”

“
It has come to my attention that she might have discovered evidence of a Minoan settlement.” Bait the hook. “Perhaps even of human sacrifice.”

“
Really. Now that would be interesting. Who told you that?”

“
Someone she'd contacted about it. An authority in Athens.”

McLean sat back, making a tent with his long fingers. “Well, now. What was it she found? A temple felled by an earthquake like the one in Crete? Where the boy was being bled out? The skeleton of a giant bull with human femurs in its pen? What?”

“
I don't know exactly. Among her things were photos of a site that appeared to be untouched. It was full of bones, thousands of bones. I don't know if that means anything. I'm just a layman.” He thought the secret would be safe with the Englishman. Though McLean's Greek was good, he didn't strike Patronas as a man who would befriend a native. No, the Englishman's contacts would be limited to the waiters and maids in the hotel. Staff, in other words. People who were there to serve him, who knew their place.

“
Perhaps the photos were from someplace else. Crete perhaps.”

“
No. They were taken on Chios. We recognized the location.”

“
Where was it?”

“
A hill near Profitis Ilias.”

“
If that's true and not some police trick, it would be an astounding discovery. Minoan skeletons from the time of Thera are extremely rare. None have been found at
Akrotiri
. The feeling among archeologists is that the people there must have fled. No one knew where to, though. It's long been a mystery. The consensus is, they must have been consumed in the ensuing cataclysm.”

Patronas regarded him intently. “Maybe not. Maybe they made it here.”

“
I suppose anything is possible.” The archeologist was unwilling to concede the point.

“
We plan to turn the site over to a team from Athens on Monday.”

“
Good idea. They'll sort it out.”

“
One last question: did Alcott discuss the murders with you?”

“
Yes. He was as horrified as I was. The sheer brutality of it. Petros, especially. You told me he held him down and cut his throat.” Interesting, he hadn't told him that. Not exactly.

“
Do you have any idea why someone would do that?”

“
You mean like a sacrificial lamb?” McLean said this casually. “I think it was protective camouflage, Chief Officer, a stage set designed to mislead you.”

“
Is that why the killer mutilated Eleni Argentis?” He described what the two fishermen had found at the beach.

“
I don't know. Perhaps the killer was just trying to scare her and it got out of hand.” Realizing his poor choice of words, McLean covered his mouth, his eyes wide. He'd been naughty and it amused him. He looked over to see if Patronas had noticed.

“
Out of hand.” Patronas had noticed all right. “Yes, I suppose it did.”

* * *

The British tutor at Oxford had been reluctant to speak to him. “Ah, yes, Devon McLean.” There had been a lengthy silence. “You said you're with the police?” His voice held no surprise.