“Who’s Stephano? I haven’t heard of him.”
“Oh, sorry. Stephano – Stephano Karaskakis. The Tourist Police Sergeant.”
“Right. I was never told his Christian name.”
“Anyway, Georgio is a bit of a no-hoper. Sits around drinking ouzo all day devising money-making schemes which either never get started or never make any money if they do get started. I think he’s probably a bit jealous of Spiro having the taverna.”
“Spiro does well out of that?”
Larry Lambeth made a ‘so-so’ gesture. “By Corfiot standards, anyway. Not that he makes any money out of Georgio. Or Stephano, come to that. They both eat and drink there all the time, but neither one has ever been seen to pay a single drachma for anything.”
“That’s interesting. And Ginnie does live with Georgio, doesn’t she?”
“Oh yes. Doesn’t advertise the fact, mind you. Better the English punters think of her as single, unconnected with the locals.”
“They’re not married?”
“No, no. Might be a bit of local opposition if he actually made it legal with a foreigner. No problems having one as a chattel, though.”
“And does he beat her up?”
“I’m sure he does. That type has to take his failure out on someone.”
“Hm. Did you know that Georgio had been to England?”
“Yes, I did, actually. Couple of years back. That was yet another of his money-making ideas.”
“Oh?”
“Fact is, Georgio was going to go over to England to buy one of those JCBs – you know, big earth-moving truck things. He was going to buy it, ship it back here and clean up by renting it out. Not such a daft idea, actually. There’s always any amount of construction work going on, and lots of other stuff like shifting sand where they’re making artificial beaches, clearing seaweed, all that.”
“But presumably that project didn’t work out either?”
“No. Fact is, he never even bought it, did he? Probably hadn’t got enough of the old mazooma, anyway – they’re hellish expensive, those things. And no doubt when he got to London, he just drank his way through the money he had got.”
“Hm… And tried to investigate Chris Dover’s business affairs… Now why on earth would he do that?”
“Well, knowing Georgio, he must have reckoned there was some profit in it for him.”
“But how could there be?”
“Search me, lady.”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧
Thirty-Two
Their main course arrived, garnished with a few boiled potatoes and a delectably pungent sauce. Larry Lambeth ordered more retsina and they devoted their full attention to the meal.
When her plate was just a pile of shell fragments, Mrs Pargeter dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin and purred, “That was delicious.”
“Told you this place was good.”
“Yes.” She took a long swallow of retsina. “Larry, you said you’d found out some stuff too…”
“Right, Mrs Pargeter. Right, yes, I have. You know you asked me to get a bit of background on the whole Agios Nikitas set-up?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I done a bit of research, you know, asking around, and it seems like the tourist thing is comparatively new there.”
“How new?”
“Fact is, thirty years ago Agios Nikitas was just a little fishing village. The harbour obviously was there, otherwise just a few huts. Only people who lived there was the fishermen, and they went back to Agralias in the winters.”
“Was there a taverna?”
“Yes. Same building as there is now, but very primitive. Run by Spiro’s old man.”
“Also called Spiro.”
“Right. Pretty safe guess most of the time out here. Anyway, reason I’m concentrating on that time is there was something odd happened then.”
“Odd?”
“An unexplained death. Body never found.”
“Oh? Who died?”
“Well… Look, I better give you a bit more background on the whole Karaskakis family bit.”
“Stephano, you mean?”
“He comes into it, but not just Stephano. They’re all called Karaskakis round here, you see… Spiro, Georgio, Theodosia, Yianni – they’re all Karaskakises.”
“Oh.” Mrs Pargeter looked thoughtful.
“Anyway, old Spiro’s wife had died young… Complications on the birth when she had Theodosia, I think. Fairly primitive medical facilities back in those days. And, time I’m talking about – 1959, round then – old Spiro’s sick, too… dying of cancer, as it turned out, though it wasn’t diagnosed at the time. Anyway, he’s worried about what’s going to happen to the taverna. Tourist business just starting to build up on the island, you see, and, though it hasn’t hit Agios Nikitas in a big way yet, the old man can see that his little taverna’s a potential gold-mine. Trouble is, though, Spiro – young Spiro, you know, the one who owns it now – he’s not that interested. He’s round fifteen and really likes school, touch of the old academic, wants to go to university, that kind of number. Well, old Spiro won’t hear of this, wants the taverna to stay in the family and he doesn’t trust his other son to run it.”
“Other son?” Mrs Pargeter echoed.
“Right. They’re twins, you see. Spiro’s the good one, but Christo is a bit of a tearaway.”
“Christo? Did you say Christo?”
“Yes. That’s the other son’s name. Identical twins they was.”
“Of course,” Mrs Pargeter murmured.
“Anyway, this Christo hangs around with a bad crowd – including, incidentally, his cousins Georgio and Stephano – and, though he’s very interested in getting the taverna ‘cause he reckons there’s money in it, old Spiro doesn’t trust him. He’s determined that, whether the boy wants to or not, the older twin Spiro’s going to take over the family business.”
“So who died?” Mrs Pargeter asked softly.
Larry Lambeth rubbed his chin reflectively. “There’s a lot of different versions of exactly what happened, but it was Christo. Killed in an accident on a boat.”
“How?”
“Story goes, Christo and his cousins –”
“Georgio and Stephano?”
“That’s right. Anyway, they stole a boat. Dinghy with an outboard – someone along the coast had bought a few of them to rent out to the tourists. So they nick this thing, but apparently the outboard’s dodgy – it blows up, the boat catches fire, sinks – and Christo is never seen again.”
“Missing, presumed drowned?”
“That’s it.”
“But what about Georgio and Stephano? Why weren’t they hurt? How did they escape?”
“Well, by coincidence, they aren’t on the boat when the outboard blows. Christo has just dropped them off at the harbour, he goes out for a little joyride on his own and – boof!” Larry’s hands opened out, miming the explosion.
“Was there any suggestion at the time that the boat might have been sabotaged?”
“Certainly was. More than that, there was the suggestion that Christo was sabotaging it himself when it blew up.”
“An own goal? You mean he was making a booby-trap for someone else?”
“You got it, Mrs P. Care to make any guesses who he was planning to bump off?”
“Spiro,” Mrs Pargeter murmured.
“That was the rumour that went around at the time, yes.”
“But it went wrong…”
“Right, Christo hoist with his own whatsit.”
“So, with his brother dead and his father dying, Spiro had no choice but to take over the taverna?”
“Yes. Old man dies soon after, Spiro has to put aside his intellectual aspirations, like, and buckle down to running the family business. Does all right out of it, and all.”
Mrs Pargeter was silent as the avalanche of her thoughts gathered momentum.