Andreas took a schoolboy-like joy in watching the jacketed cops labor up the hill in twice the time it had taken him. It wasn't because of the equipment they carried but because three of the strangers clearly were deferring to the fourth — and much stouter — man's difficulty with the climb. At least now Andreas knew who was in charge. By the time they reached the church, the heavy one was sweating like the proverbial pig but still wore his jacket and tie. He stopped about five yards from Andreas and looked back as if reviewing his path. Andreas knew he was trying to catch his breath. He took that moment to step forward and introduce himself.
'Welcome to Mykonos.'
The stout man turned toward him and nodded. He said nothing, just kept trying to breathe.
'I'm Andreas Kaldis.'
The man nodded again and was able to say, 'I know.' He was about a half foot shorter than Andreas, with bushy, dark brown hair. From the almost pure gray of his eyebrows, Andreas guessed his hair was dyed.
Andreas was starting to enjoy this but decided he'd better stop. No reason to antagonize the man unnecessarily.
The man said, 'I knew your father, good man.'
That caught Andreas off guard. His father had been on the secret police force during the Junta or the Regime of the Colonels or the Dictatorship, depending on your point of view. Most cops avoided open discussions of those seven years and certainly wouldn't risk offering compliments on someone from that part of Greek police history to a stranger, even a son. Especially a son of his father.
Against his original instincts, Andreas thought he might actually like this guy. 'Thank you for saying that,' he said and extended his hand.
Taking off his sunglasses, the other man reached out and shook his hand. 'Tassos Stamatos, chief homicide investigator for the Cyclades.'
Andreas had heard of him, a real old-timer. One of those guys who'd never retire and had the political connections to keep his job. He probably was about sixty, but strangely, his weight and short, bulldog build made him look ten years younger. Andreas decided there was no need to mention his homicide background to Tassos. It seemed pretty clear he already knew it. Politically connected cops knew that sort of stuff. It's how they kept off the wrong toes.
'So, what do we have here, Kaldis?' Tassos asked, his tone crisply official.
Andreas took the use of his last name as force of habit more than an effort to show who was in charge. 'A body in a crypt, female, probably between fifteen and thirty, Caucasian, light-colored hair, dead a few weeks I'd say.' He stopped.
'That's it?' Tassos seemed surprised.
'No, not at all,' said Andreas.
A glint of anger came to Tassos' voice. 'What's this, a little test for the boys from the islands?'
So he knew Andreas' history. He tried putting the conversation on a more personal footing. 'Not at all, Tassos, I just thought it might be better for you to look at this with fresh eyes and reach your own conclusions.'
Tassos stared at Andreas for a moment. He seemed to be deciding whether this was just another — albeit former — Athens hot-shot putting on the local cops. 'All right, have it your way. Show me what we've got.'
Andreas pointed him toward the open door and watched as Tassos studied the room from the doorway, just as Andreas had, then carefully approached and methodically examined the body with his flashlight, just as Andreas had. Tassos walked past Andreas without saying a word. Once outside, he told the three men with him, 'I want everything in there recorded and rerecorded. Get an ambulance here. We're taking the body and everything else in there back to Syros.' Then he walked away from the church.
From their equipment, Andreas could tell one of the three was with the coroner's office and another was a crime scene technician. The third probably was one of Tassos' investigators. All three went inside. Andreas told them to let him know when they were ready to inspect the body — and told Kouros to keep an eye on them to make sure they did.
Tassos was sitting on a low stone wall in the shade of a wild fig tree looking at the view. Andreas sat next to him. A soft breeze was blowing in off the sea, mixing the scents of wildflowers and herbs.
'There are no views in the world like the ones from our Greek islands, Andreas.' A bridge had been built.
'It's eternal,' said Andreas.
Neither spoke for a moment.
'What are we going to do about this?' Tassos' voice was flat and serious.
'Do we have a choice?' Andreas used the same tone.
'A murder in paradise is bad. A tourist murdered in paradise is worse. But something like this… is unthinkable.' Tassos was shaking his head.
'Why do you say she's a tourist?'
Tassos looked down and kicked at the dirt. 'In thirty years on Syros I've only seen a few Mykonian or other local woman that tall, and she's not one of them.'
Andreas smiled at the obvious — and Tassos' insight. 'What's on your mind?'
Tassos looked down. 'Something neither of us wants to say, and no one anywhere in Greece will want to hear.'
'That's about what I thought.'
'So, I guess we won't call it what it is, just use the clues to catch the bastard who did it.' Tassos kicked at the dirt again.
'As long as we catch the bad guy,' Andreas said.
'Yeah, as long as we catch the bad guy.'
Andreas picked up a bit of something else in Tassos' tone. 'What's bothering you?'
Tassos looked up and stared out toward the sea. 'One summer, about ten years ago, an American girl working at a bar here in town didn't show up for her shift. A girlfriend went looking for her and found her room covered in blood but no body. Brutal thing. Another young woman, a Scandinavian, disappeared around the same time. The whole island went crazy.'
A small lizard, as brown as the dirt, scurried out from the base of the wall, past their feet, and into the shade of a wild thistle. Tassos didn't seem to notice.
'We tied the American to an Irishman here on holiday. He'd met her at the bar. He was a convicted child killer released from an English prison after twenty-five years.' Tassos paused long enough to shake his head, a disgusted look on his face. 'On humanitarian grounds, because of a bad heart. We caught up with him by the Bulgarian border and brought him back to Mykonos for questioning. Had to get him drunk to talk — his heart wouldn't stand up to how I wanted to interrogate the bastard.' He didn't have to explain to Andreas what he meant by that.
'He finally showed us where he'd buried the American's body — over there by Paradise Beach.' He gestured south. 'But he wouldn't say what happened to the other one. He refused to talk about it. Never denied it, never admitted it.' Tassos took out his cigarettes and offered one to Andreas. They shared a match.
'We had the military, police cadets, Boy Scouts, farmers — anyone willing to help — out looking for the other woman's body. Never thought we'd find her, but we did.'
Tassos took a drag on his cigarette. 'She was in a shallow grave, right by a road not far from here — almost like she was meant to be found there, to end the search. The Irishman still wouldn't admit to killing her but everyone from the mayor on down wanted to pin it on him, mark both murders solved and move on to other things. One killer here was enough bad publicity — no reason to suggest another one might still be lurking around.'
He paused to puff again. 'Besides, if someone else did it, it had to be a tourist long gone by now who wouldn't dare come back — at least that's what the mayor said.'