‘That was very quick.’
‘We don’t have as many suspicious deaths as you do in the big city.’
Mavros made to move past them. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to see how my friend is.’
‘This won’t take a minute,’ the inspector said, grabbing his arm and pressing long nails through Mavros’s shirt. ‘Get off the island, you meddling piece of shit. There’s nothing to keep you here.’
Mavros said nothing about Maria Kondos’s abduction. ‘You’re not the first person to say that. Who’s paying you?’ He leaned close to the thin man’s sparsely covered head. In the background he saw a large man with grey hair and a face that was a heavier version of Mikis’s. The woman next to him was almost as bulky and her face was set hard as she looked at the policemen. He reckoned he could go put the boot in. ‘Waggoner? Roufos? Or the wankers up in Kornaria?’
Margaritis dropped his arm like it was a piece of carrion. ‘You-’
‘ Youfuck off,’ Mavros said, glaring. ‘If you want to arrest me, go ahead.’ The inspector stood motionless. ‘Thought not.’
‘What happened to the woman and young Tsifakis?’
‘Slipped on a step.’
Margaritis snorted. ‘Both of them? Anyway, that’s not what we heard. There was another woman.’
Some citizen of Galatsi had obviously become suspicious when Maria was carried out of the house.
Mikis’s parents came over.
‘What’s going on, Inspector?’ his father demanded.
‘Nothing,’ Margaritis said, with an unctuous bow. ‘We’re finished.’ He departed.
‘Haris Tsifakis,’ the big man said, extending a thick-fingered hand. ‘My wife, Eleni. Pleased to finally meet you, Mr Mavro.’
‘Alex, please.’ Mavros shook their hands. ‘I’m very sorry about-’
‘No need for that,’ Tsifakis said brusquely. ‘Mikis can look after himself.’
‘Not this time,’ his wife said, looking into Mavros’s eyes. ‘We know you and Mikis have put yourselves up against some of the island’s most dangerous people. That shows courage. But tell me that you didn’t lead my son into unnecessary danger.’
‘To be honest, he’s been the one leading me most of the time,’ Mavros said, provoking a grin from Mikis’s father.
‘That’s my boy. Let’s go and see how he is.’
Mavros led them to the lifts and they went up to the fourth floor.
‘You again,’ said Doctor Stavrakakis to Mavros. ‘Do you like this place so much you’re going to take up residence?’
‘How is my son?’ Eleni put in.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Tsifaki.’ The family was obviously well known. ‘I’m afraid he’s still unconscious. We’re carrying out various tests, but there’s little I can tell you now.’ He glanced at Mavros. ‘As our Athenian friend knows, head wounds are unpredictable. How is Ms Kondos?’
‘She was kidnapped this morning.’
The neurologist looked less taken aback than he might have done.
‘The woman that came in with Mikis, how is she?’
‘Mrs Prevelaki? I checked her. There’s no significant head trauma, though she’ll have to be wary of concussion. She’s downstairs having her lip stitched. I think you know the way. You might take the opportunity to have that dressing changed.’
The doctor nodded to Mikis’s parents and walked away.
‘This is connected with those drug-dealing bastards in Kornaria, isn’t it?’ Haris said. ‘Don’t worry about the vendetta. We can come back at them with plenty of firepower.’
His wife nodded avidly, making Mavros glad he was on their side.
‘In the meantime, we’ll stay to see how Mikis gets on,’ she said. ‘Let us know when you need help.’
Mavros nodded and walked to the stairs, noting that she had said ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. That didn’t make him feel great, though he appreciated their support. He’d much rather have had the gun-wielding Mikis by his side.
Yiota Prevelaki was sitting outside the treatment room on the ground floor, with a dressing around her mouth.
Mavros took the seat next to her. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘They gave me a local anaesthetic,’ she said, lisping. ‘I’ll be all right until it wears off.’
‘Then you just take painkillers.’
The woman looked at him. ‘Maria told me about you. How you saved her from those animals in Kornaria.’
‘That was my friend upstairs more than me.’
‘There was something about a rock in an armed man’s face?’
‘Ah, that. I got lucky.’
She smiled with difficulty. ‘You’re too modest, Mr Mavro.’
‘Alex, please. Are you waiting for someone?’
‘No, my husband’s on a ship in the Pacific. I was summoning up strength to call a taxi.’
‘I’ll take you home.’
When they were in the Jeep, Mavros made a mess of engaging first gear.
‘Your friend’s a driver, isn’t he?’ Yiota said. ‘The Tsifakis family is an important one in Chania.’
He nodded. ‘I hope he pulls through.’
‘So do I. What are you going to do now? Maria must be back in Kornaria now. You can’t go up there. They’ll use you for target practice.’
‘I’ll deal with that when I have to. First, I need to know more about your cousin.’ He pulled on to the main road heading west.
‘I can’t tell you much-ow!’
‘Careful,’ Mavros said, touching his own dressing, which he’d forgotten to get changed. ‘That spray will be wearing off.’
Yiota nodded slowly. ‘There isn’t much I can tell you about Maria, Alex. We exchange emails from time to time, but we’ve never been close. I didn’t even see her when the film crew arrived — until she called me yesterday afternoon.’
‘Did you go to pick her up from the Heavenly Blue?’
‘I don’t drive. No, she came in a taxi — not one of the Tsifakis cars. She got the driver to pick her up from the back of the hotel.’
‘So she told you she’d been in Kornaria.’
‘Yes, she said she’d gone for a walk outside the resort on Sunday evening — something about being sick of being cooped up — and that a car stopped and the driver offered her a lift.’
‘Did she know the driver — was it a man or a woman?’
‘A man, I think, but she didn’t say whether she knew him. Someone was hiding in the back seat and suddenly a hood was over her head and a rope round her neck. She was pushed forward so that she was out of sight.’
‘Sounds like the guys who grabbed her today — or equally proficient hard men.’
Yiota Prevelaki turned to him. ‘Not everyone in our family is worthy of approbation, Alex.’ She stared at his expression. ‘What? A village woman isn’t allowed to use learned vocabulary? I trained as a teacher, but my husband’s family doesn’t allow me to work.’ There was a weight of pain in her voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, embarrassed both by underestimating her and at the plight of an educated woman in a Cretan village. ‘Don’t worry, I know about the Kondoyannis family in Florida and the delightful Michael “the Bat”.’
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘Well, I have nothing to do with them.’
They drove past the gate to the resort, which was now besieged by even more journalists and reporters.
‘Rudolf Kersten was a hero to many people here,’ Yiota said.
Mavros made no comment, still unsure what to believe about the old German’s activities.
‘I don’t know much about the film Maria is working on, though,’ Yiota said. ‘Have you met Cara Parks?’
‘I have.’
‘What’s she like? She doesn’t strike me as the most likely Cretan resistance hero.’
Mavros got the feeling she was leading the conversation in another direction.
‘Listen, Yiota, your cousin is in serious danger. I don’t know if she told you, but she didn’t say anything to us about what happened to her in Kornaria. If I’m going to have any chance of rescuing her again, I need to know everything about her.’
His passenger lowered her head. ‘I can’t, Alex. She’s family.’