When the Devil's Idle (24 page)

“
Nothing that we know of,” Patronas told him. “We’re just
following up on that incident in Chora.”

Patronas had been
disturbed by the interview with Maria Georgiou. The Greek woman had
as much as admitted means, motive, and opportunity, yet she’d
insisted she was innocent, swearing on the memory of her murdered
family. A religious woman, she would never have done that had she
been guilty.

“
What
did you think of her?” he asked the priest as they made their way
back to the station.

It was a glorious
summer’s night and the streets were full of people. A cluster of
night-blooming flowers,
nyhtoloulouda
, was growing in
someone’s yard, and its scent hung heavy in the air.

“
Maria
Georgiou was not what I expected,” the priest said. “She’s a great
lady, the kind one doesn’t often meet these days.”

“
But
did she do it?” Patronas insisted.

He’d already
heard everything Papa Michalis could possibly have to say on the
subject of the erosion of modern civilization and its influence on
the Greek female, who used to be dutiful and devout, chaste—on
occasion, the priest had actually used that term—and he didn’t want
to hear it again.

But what the
priest said was this: “She could have done it, certainly, but then
if what she said was true, so could any member of the
family.”

“
In
other words, I’m back where I started.”

“
I
would say so. We need to grill the Bechtels again. Maybe one of
them will spill the beans. ”

“ ‘
Grill’? ‘Spill the beans?’ ”

“
Americanisms, Yiannis. The first, ‘grill,’ is used by law
enforcement officials and means ‘to forcefully interrogate.’ The
second, ‘to spill the beans,’ is a slang expression for
accidentally revealing the truth. Both are used frequently on
television.”

Patronas grunted.
When they charted the course of the western world, where it went
wrong and began to fail, they should maybe start with television.
‘Grill’ was what you did to meat. Everybody knew that. You’d never
do it to a suspect. For God’s sake, policemen didn’t cook
people.

He vowed never to
use another English expression or foreign word, to cleanse his
palette, as it were, of foreign influences. Greek it would be from
this day forth.

“
C
herchez la femme
,” Tembelos
said with a laugh.

They were eating
breakfast together at the hotel, taking turns leering at Antigone
Balis. She obviously enjoyed the attention and had lingered longer
than necessary while refilling their coffees, bending over them and
flashing her brassiere. To Patronas’ dismay, she’d also done this
with the only other guest at the hotel, a businessman from
France.

Evangelos Demos
was sitting with them, working on his laptop. “I must have read six
hundred pages of testimony yesterday,” he complained. “How do the
Jews do it? The ones like Simon Wiesenthal? It must be different
with them. Maybe they have more reasons than we do.”

“
Yeah,
they do, Evangelos,” Tembelos said in disgust, “six million of
them.”

Without a
confession or compelling forensic evidence, they’d gone back to
looking for information on the massacre. Patronas was pretty sure
what he’d learned about the rapes would never make it into court.
Given that the old women hadn’t wanted their pictures taken, it was
unlikely they’d be willing to testify. In addition, the trip from
Aghios Stefanos to Patmos was an arduous one, and at their age,
risky. To charge Maria Georgiou and go forward, the prosecutor
would need something more—irrefutable proof that Bech and Bech
alone had been responsible for the destruction of her
family.

The area next to
the harbor was teeming with tourists. Patronas, who was in the car
with Papa Michalis, hit the brakes to avoid hitting a couple of
teenagers crossing the street.

He continued to
drive along the quay, passing the Skala Hotel on the left, its
entrance obscured by magenta bougainvillea, and the seaside terrace
that fronted Hotel Chris.

Seeking to prove
premeditation, they were on their way to interview the owner of the
rooming house in Campos where Maria Georgiou had stayed.

The priest
indicated a fenced square on the left. “That’s where St. John
baptized the first Christians. There’s a spring there. Another one
in the Monastery of Panagia Koumana.” He pointed to a building
across the harbor. “It was considered a miracle at the time, that
second spring, proof that the Virgin had interceded for them and
answered their prayers. You should visit it sometime. The garden is
magnificent. They have all kinds of birds, even peacocks. Such a
beautiful bird, the peacock, a thing of wonder.”

“
I’ve
been to Panagia Koumana, Father,” Patronas said. “I went there on
my honeymoon.”

The priest’s face
fell. One of the seven sacraments, marriage was a bond he took
seriously. And in spite of all that Dimitra had done to Patronas
and others, he mourned the end of their union. For him, divorce was
a kind of death, like someone who had succumbed after a long
illness.

“
Ach,
Yiannis,” he said. “She’s leaving, Giorgos said, going to Italy and
resettling there.”

“
So?”

“
So I
was thinking you should call her.”

At breakfast
earlier that day, the priest had watched him chatting with Antigone
Balis, and Patronas wondered if sin, or even anticipated sin—as in
his case—gave off a scent the priest could smell the way those
French pigs did truffles. Perhaps that was why he’d brought up
Dimitra’s departure.

“
Why
would I want to call Dimitra? We’re divorced. We have nothing to
say to each other.”

The priest laid a
hand on his arm. “She needs your support,” he said. “She’s
embarking on a journey to parts unknown.”

“
She’s
going to Italy, Father, not leaving the solar system.”

“
I’m
sure she’d welcome a word of encouragement from you. It would be an
act of kindness, and acts of kindness are like pebbles in the
water, Yiannis, they increase the goodness in the world. Call her
and say goodbye. That’s all I’m saying.”

Fearing he’d
overstepped his bounds, the old man went back to the peacocks,
quacking and shrieking in turn to give Patronas an idea of their
unholy call. “Movie stars in silent pictures became laughing stocks
when the talkies came in and people heard their voices. Alas, the
poor peacock is much the same. One of nature’s greatest glories
until it speaks.”

Patronas found
himself missing Evangelos Demos. Evangelos took himself seriously
and wouldn’t be caught dead imitating a peacock.

He turned onto
the road to Campos, passing a humming generating station and walled
cemetery. The latter was exactly as he remembered it, the
rectangular tombs encased by white marble.
We might have lost our
culture, our music, but at least the rituals of death haven’t
changed
, he thought. The dead were buried facing east today,
exactly as they were in the time of Homer. A Greek, one day he too
would be laid to rest facing the rising sun.
Who will mourn my
passing?
he wondered sadly.
Who will care if I’m
gone?

He could see
Panagia Koumana, the monastery the priest had spoken of, in the
distance. Far smaller than St. John’s in Chora, it was nearly
invisible, well hidden in a cleft in the mountain.

He remembered the
trip he and Dimitra had made there, how they’d lingered in the
chapel, kissing the icon of the Virgin and praying for a baby that
never came.

A large cross had
illuminated the monastery at night then, and there’d been young
people, seminarians probably, sitting outside on the hillside,
chanting prayers in the darkness, a herd of goats bleating softly
on the rocks below. The cross was still there, far smaller now than
it had been on his honeymoon, but the goats were gone, as were the
prayerful young Greeks.

Perhaps he’d
revisit the monastery before returning to Chios, see if there
really were peacocks. Maybe take the priest with him and make a day
of it.

“
Father, I need to discuss something with you.”

“
What
is it?”

“
Bechtel came by the police station before you got there, and
we had a lengthy and troubling conversation. To sum it up, he wants
us to drop our inquiries concerning the massacre. He must have
heard what we’re doing, because he said if we continue to pursue
it, all the rumors and lies surrounding his father will resurface
and his children will learn of them.”

“
The
mark of Cain,” the priest said. “It can cast a long shadow, the
past, thrust any family into darkness. His children are innocent.
Why should they be punished? And yet punished they will be.
Bechtel, too, for that matter. He wasn’t even born when his father
was spreading terror in Epirus and yet ….”

Spreading his
arms, he flapped them for emphasis. Another bird this time, a
crow.

“
Would
you
want to be related to Josef Mengele? This is the
same.”

“
Bechtel was very angry,” Patronas said. “He was waiting for me
when I got in and informed me that he’d contacted the German
embassy and filed a request seeking to put an end to our
investigation. Apparently, someone told him about the leads we were
pursuing, the research Tembelos and Evangelos were doing. He’s
claiming we planted the evidence of his father’s complicity in the
massacre, hoping to embarrass Germany.”

The priest shook
his head. “A corrosive thing, rage.”

“
I’m
not sure it was rage. It felt more like grief to me.”

“
Of
course, his sorrow must be profound. Flawed as his uncle was, he
obviously loved him.”

Patronas had
called his boss in Athens after Bechtel left and relayed the
German’s concerns. “He doesn’t want us to arrest her. He says it’s
all propaganda, an effort to humiliate Germany. He contacted the
German ambassador in Athens.”

“
Ignore him. We’re Greeks and this is our country, our justice
system. We’ll fight him on this.”

“
We
really don’t have enough evidence to charge her,” he repeated for
what felt like the hundredth time.

“
Bring
her in anyway,” Stathis had ordered. “Make her sweat, keep after
her until she breaks.”

“
She
won’t break, sir.”

“
Of
course she will. She’s an elderly woman. A few nights under lock
and key and she’ll tell you what you want to know. You just have to
scare her.”

“
I
need more time.”

Stathis had
reluctantly agreed to the delay, but Patronas knew he was running
out of time.

He had been
repelled by Stathis’ words, finding them eerily familiar to what
the survivors in Epirus had said of the dead man, that he liked to
scare people, especially children. “Break her,” his boss had said.
“Do whatever’s necessary.” The same had been said of
Bech.

Profoundly
discouraged, he’d hung up the phone. If he wanted to keep his job,
he would have to do as Stathis ordered. The thought made him
sick.

T
here was nothing on either side of the road, only
great swaths of rock intermixed with patches of brackish soil.
Olive trees were planted on a few of the terraced hillsides, but
unlike the ones on Chios, these trees were buried in brush, their
branches untrimmed and brown. Patmos was like a desert, the absence
of water evident everywhere he looked. A small military outpost
occupied a stony plateau above the beach of Meloi, a huge
anti-aircraft gun set out on the sparse grass in front.

Ah, the
military …. Patronas recalled his days as a soldier. Only they
would use a cannon as a garden ornament.

Farther up the
road, signs began to appear marking the turn-offs for the various
beaches, Agriolivado and Meloi, rooms-to-let in Lampi and
elsewhere. A bus was lumbering up the hill and Patronas followed it
into Ano Campos.

Like many places
in rural Greece, Campos was divided into two parts: an upper
village, Ano Campos, which occupied the summit of a hill and a
lower, less populated area by the sea. There had been historical
reasons for this division. In the days of the Saracen pirates,
people retreated to the mountaintops and stayed there. The beaches
and coves were only now being repopulated with the coming of
tourists.

A group of people
sitting under a grape arbor at the center of the village turned
their heads and stared at the Jeep as it went by. Why, Patronas
wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe their attention had been caught by the
priest, who had stuck his head out the window and was watching the
road like a hunting dog closing in on a rabbit.