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From the Devil's Farm
A Greek Islands Mystery
By Leta Serafim Coffeetown Press
Copyright © 2017 Leta Serafim
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60381-244-3
CHAPTER 1
Despise evil.
— The Delphic Oracle
Beneath the shadow of the old church, the woman paused to catch her breath and take a sip of water. She'd woken before dawn to make the long trek to the ruins, but in the end they had disappointed her. Part of a pagan citadel dating back to 1400 BC, the site had been ransacked for its marble over the centuries. It was mostly rubble now, the shapes of the Bronze Age buildings barely discernible in the stony earth. She'd explored every inch of it, seeking what, she did not know. Helen of Troy maybe? In the end, she had found nothing, only a grid of low-lying walls that went on forever.
The site occupied a hilltop behind the church of Aghios Andreas, one of the highest points of land on the Greek island of Sifnos. And if her guidebook was to be believed, it had been built by the Mycenaeans, the same race of warriors Homer had championed in The Iliad. But she'd seen no trace of those men today, little evidence of anything save for rocks and dust.
The museum didn't open until eight, so she'd had the place to herself, the only sound the relentless drone of the wind. Her hair had come loose and she pinned it back, irritated by the way it kept whipping across her face.
A goat path led away from the museum, and she decided to follow it to see where it led. Little more than a set of footprints in the brush, it disappeared a few minutes later, only a few broken branches in the undergrowth indicating the way.
She passed through a sheltered valley surrounded by bare hills and continued on.
She'd been walking about twenty minutes when she spied a second set of ruins high on a shaft of rock. Curious, she headed toward them and began to climb. The site was in even worse condition than the one by the museum. Dark in color, it consisted of a single platform carved out of basalt, the blocks of roughly dressed stones positioned at a right angle against the steep slope.
The air smelled rank and there were flies everywhere, thick clouds of them, noisy in the silence. Nervous, she hesitated for a moment and looked back over her shoulder, then stepped up onto the platform.
The dead boy was trussed like a goat at Easter, bound by a chain at the wrists and ankles and hung over a pit at the center of the space. He had a gaping wound in his throat, and someone had built a fire, now cold, beneath him.
The woman staggered back and began to scream, growing more and more hysterical. She fumbled for her cellphone. Not knowing how to summon the police, what the emergency number was in Greece, she called her hotel and asked the man at the front desk to do it. There was no longer a police station on Sifnos, the man informed her; it would take him some time to notify the proper authorities and get them there. He begged her to return to the parking lot, to wait there, and not to speak to anyone except the police about what she'd seen. Greece was hanging by a thread. No need for people to know that children were being murdered here.
Chief Officer Yiannis Patronas was fast asleep in the police station on the island of Chios when the phone on his desk began to ring. He was sprawled on a cot in his office with a sheet drawn up to his chin — his temporary bedroom since leaving his wife. He'd been dreaming of his mother with her apron on in the kitchen of their old house — a happy dream — and he kept his eyes resolutely closed, hoping to hang on to a fragment of it.
But then his cellphone started up. The ringtone from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," the signal he kept for his boss, Haralambos Stathis, in Athens.
Cursing, he checked his watch: 5:45 a.m.
Never one for pleasantries, Stathis started right in. "A child has been murdered on Sifnos. I need you to round up your team and get there as fast as you can. Head up the investigation."
"Team?" Patronas repeated, confused. Team? What team? He had no team he knew of.
"Yes, those men you work with: Giorgos Tembelos, Evangelos Demos, and that priest, the old fellow who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes. What's his name? Papa Michalis."
Patronas sighed. "Oh ... them."
Although the three men had been his colleagues for years, and he numbered them among his closest friends, they were hardly superheroes when it came to police work, especially Evangelos Demos, who squealed like a pig at the sight of blood and mostly just got in the way.
"But I'm on Chios," Patronas complained. "I'm nowhere near Sifnos."
"There's a flight from Chios to Athens at 6:30 a.m.," Stathis said. "I want you on it."
After Patronas hung up, he began sorting through his belongings in preparation for the journey. His old-fashioned tape recorder was the first thing he put in his briefcase, followed by a forensic kit of his own devising. Finally he opened the bottom drawer in his desk and extracted his razor and toothbrush.
Though freshly laundered, his uniform was hopelessly wrinkled. He'd have to buy an iron one of these days and learn how to use it. Stuffing it between the frame and the mattress and sleeping on it wasn't working. He couldn't keep living like this — storing his toiletries in the file cabinet, spending his nights on a fold-up cot. It would kill him.
His ex-wife, Dimitra, had seen to the details of their domestic life. Now she was gone, living happily ever after in Italy, the last he'd heard. She'd gotten the house in the divorce settlement — it was hers by rights, part of her dowry when they'd married — which had left Patronas out in the street with a suitcase and no place to go, adrift in every sense of the word. Given the current state of the Greek economy, he could barely feed himself, let alone rent an apartment.
Dimitra had always said police work was his life, the only thing that mattered to him — not her, never her. And so it had come to pass. The office had become not just his life but his physical home, too. The place where he ate, slept, and on occasion when the washroom was empty, bathed. He'd even decorated his little cubicle for Christmas, stringing up tinsel and purchasing an inflatable tree. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, he was there. Not from dedication — God, no — but because he had nowhere else to go. There had been B.D. (before divorce), and A.D. (after divorce). But unlike time, his life wasn't marching forward.
He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Turning his head from side to side, he checked his ears. His mother had told him they increased in size as you aged and he inspected his apprehensively. They were the same as always, as was the rest of him — swarthy and bewhiskered. He drew himself up and smoothed down his hair. Not bad, he concluded, giving himself a last once-over. I might be the size of a pygmy, but by God I'm handsome. A Greek god ... Adonis, maybe. He studied himself a few more minutes and sighed. Adonis who'd been put in the dryer and shrunk.
The trip to Sifnos would take five hours if he was lucky. Chios was in the Northern Aegean, within a stone's throw of Turkey, and Sifnos was one of the Cyclades islands, far to the south of it. Might take even longer, depending on the schedule of the boats. Although Patronas had argued against it, saying it would waste precious time, his boss had insisted they all fly first to Athens —'it's only an hour by plane' — then take the ferry to Sifnos — 'it's short trip, less than three hours' — saying he couldn't justify the expense of flying them there by helicopter. According to Stathis, a man Patronas had worked with for over twenty-two years, dead was dead. Corpses didn't wander off while you were getting there; they stayed where they were.
To make matters worse, his boss had insisted that Patronas 'bring the body out undetected.' Those were his exact words — an impossibility in Patronas' mind. Mid-summer, Sifnos would be crawling with tourists, and thanks to television, everyone would know what a body bag looked like. Chances are, news of the murder would be all over the Internet before he and his men had finished processing the scene.
The case already grieved him. A child ... God Almighty. What was the world coming to? Not only was his country financially bankrupt, it appeared at least one of its inhabitants was morally depraved as well.
Grabbing a pen, he wrote a note for a staff member, a self-styled computer expert named Nikos Zannaras, and told him to check for similar crimes when he came to work that morning. Patronas doubted there'd be any other murders like the one Stathis had described, at least not in Greece, so he instructed Zannaras to contact Interpol and scour the world.
Then he called Tembelos and the others, instructing them to meet him in front of the station in fifteen minutes and be prepared to travel.
He wished Stathis hadn't insisted he take Evangelos. A paidovouvalos, a fat man with a kid's face, he'd caused Patronas nothing but trouble since rejoining the Chios Police Force. The latest incident had been the theft of a valuable mosaic from Nea Moni, an eleventh-century monastery, which the perpetrators, a group of professionals from France, had chiseled off the wall and walked away with right under Evangelos' substantial nose. It hadn't helped his assistant's reputation that he'd been seen exchanging pleasantries with the thieves in the parking lot and had wished them 'bon voyage' upon their departure.
Consequently, Patronas had taken him off active patrol and set him to work reorganizing the archives in the back of the station, instructing him to start at 1945 and work his way forward. A lifetime of paperwork, in other words. Nicely contained, Evangelos was, and Patronas was reluctant to turn him loose again.
"The murdered child was seven or eight years old," Stathis had said. "A little boy of indeterminate nationality. The woman who found him thought he might be Pakistani or Indian, given his slight build and coloring. Frankly, I don't care what he was. A child is a child. She said he's dark enough to be a gypsy, but he could well have been one of ours."
"You said he was killed on Sifnos?"
"Yes, in an area called Thanatos."
Patronas felt a twinge of unease. Thanatos meant death in Greek.
"It was brutal. Whoever did it set him on fire."
"They burned him alive?"
"Maybe afterwards, to cover their tracks. We won't know until the coroner takes a look.
"The government closed the police station on Sifnos and moved all the personnel to the regional unit on the island of Milos in the former Cyclades Prefecture. There's only one man left there now, Petros Nikolaidis. He's talking to the woman now and taking her statement."
"I know Petros. We were students together at the police academy. He's been on Sifnos for years, hasn't he?"
"Yup. He knows the island and you know murder. You'll make a great team, the two of you — Batman and Robin."
Patronas reached for his little spiral notebook, thinking that his boss was in a mood so he'd better tread lightly. He wrote, 'No cops on Sifnos.' Possibly, the absence of a police presence was the reason the killer had chosen the island.
"Was this woman the only witness?" he asked.
"As far as I know. Seems odd that she walked up to Thanatos, given the nature of the place. It's some kind of old shrine, dating back to the time of Christ. Falling down, apparently. Not much of a tourist draw. There's a well-known excavation nearby. I spoke to the director of the museum there. A group of Americans were in the area earlier this week, he said, not far from where the body was found. But aside from them, no one else went near it. Like I said, it's not a place people seek out."
"Any locals in the vicinity?" Patronas hated dealing with foreigners. Different languages, different cultures, it always made a case harder to manage.
"According to the museum director, the locals don't go there," Stathis said. "Woman's name is Lydia Pappas. Born and educated here, but lives abroad. Boston, I think. After you process the crime scene, I want you to turn her inside out. See if her story holds up."
"But she's Greek, sir. Greeks don't kill kids."
"Already made up your mind, have you, Patronas? Decided on the nationality of the perpetrator?" Patronas knew better than to argue. Defending himself would only make it worse.
His boss was pushy and ruthless, a bruising little bulldozer of a man, but tonight he was more irritable than usual. He had a son, Patronas remembered, a boy about the same age as the victim.
"The child was tied up and hung over a fire by his arms and legs," Stathis said. "I want you to catch the person who did this, Patronas, and find him fast. And if that person should suffer a fatal mishap while you have him in custody, so much the better."
Stolid and unemotional, Petros Nikolaidis chose his words carefully when Patronas called him. "I don't know much about Thanatos," he said. "No one does. There are a lot of stories, and the locals say it's inhabited by witches. Just today an old man approached me and warned me to be careful. A native of Sifnos, he said he wasn't surprised to hear a child had been killed up there. 'This means only one thing,' he said. 'They're back. The devils who worship in that place.'"
Patronas laughed uneasily. "Come on, Petros. Old people say a lot of things."
It was true. Greece abounded with such legends. Foreign archeologists loved them and would visit remote villages in the hinterlands and listen to the elders, thinking they'd discover the Cyclops asleep in a cave or the wings of Icarus on a distant beach. The Minotaur on Crete was a favorite of theirs. Supposedly it had played a part in a ritual of human sacrifice, its victims appeasing a wrathful god. Patronas' mother-in-law had been full of such tales and he, for one, had no use for them. Let the archeologists look as much as they want. The Cyclops no longer walked this earth.
"How'd the old man hear about the murder?" he asked.
"His nephew runs the museum at Aghios Andreas. Old man probably knew about the killing before we did."
After arranging for a place to meet on Sifnos, Patronas said goodbye to Nikolaidis and slipped the phone in his pocket. He took a last look around his office to see if there was anything else he needed. Then, stepping around the remnants of last night's supper — a half-eaten pepperoni pizza — he opened the door and headed out to meet the others. Giorgos Tembelos, a shambling man with white hair, was waiting for him on the front steps, suitcase in hand, next to Evangelos Demos and Papa Michalis.
"It's bad," Patronas told them. "Another murder. Victim's a little boy."
Papa Michalis let out strangled moan. "Where?"
"On Sifnos. A place called Thanatos."
CHAPTER 2
Venture into danger with prudence.
— The Delphic Oracle
The plane departed Chios on schedule. After landing in Athens, they hurriedly flagged down a cab and roared to the port of Piraeus, where they boarded the first boat to Sifnos. Stathis had arranged for a member of the Limeniko, the Coast Guard, to meet them at Kamares, the port of Sifnos, and drive them from there to Aghios Andreas. There was no road to Thanatos, he'd informed Patronas. They'd have to shoulder their gear and hike up to the murder scene.
A man in a blue uniform was waiting for them on the quay, standing next to an unmarked white van. After introducing himself, he reached for Patronas' bag and stowed it inside.
A Coast Guard cruiser was tied up nearby, and Patronas looked it over as he fastened his seatbelt, thinking it might be useful. He could spirit the child's body onboard and transport it to Piraeus that way. Fewer people would be involved and it would get to Athens faster. He'd have to check with Stathis and see if it could be done.
Although the cruiser was small, it was well equipped, one of the modern vessels used to search for contraband and illegal immigrants on the uninhabited islands in the Greek archipelago. Greece had close to five thousand islands, and the recent onslaught of immigrants coming ashore from Turkey had strained the government's resources, leading to sporadic acts of violence against the invaders — men from Pakistan and Bangladesh originally, now Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Patronas didn't envy the Hellenic Coast Guard its mandate. Given the country's porous nature, it would be impossible to seal it off or stop any boatman from discharging his cargo, be it human or otherwise, on its shores. Over the last few weeks, the Coast Guard had intercepted thousands of migrants, crossing over from Turkey to the Greek islands of Lesvos and Kos, in multiple incidents. The government then announced the number of undocumented people expected to enter Greece would more than triple in the coming year. Close to a million people were on the move across the Middle East, officials had reported, all seeking to pass through Greece and enter Northern Europe.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from From the Devil's Farm by Leta Serafim. Copyright © 2017 Leta Serafim. Excerpted by permission of Coffeetown Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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