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.’
‘She’ll be dead family soon!’ he shouted, making her jolt upright. ‘Is that what you want?’
Yiota Prevelaki was quiet until he drew up outside her house. Then she turned to him and spoke in a low voice.
‘The only thing Maria told me was that another Greek-American family has muscled in on the Kondoyannis business, including her father’s links with the Kornaria producers. They seem to think she has something to do with the drugs trade.’
‘And she doesn’t?’
‘No!’ Yiota exclaimed.
‘Are you sure of that?’
Her gaze dropped. ‘No,’ she answered.
Mavros got out and walked her to the front door.
‘Please try to get her back,’ the woman said softly.
‘I will,’ Mavros said, squeezing her hand.
As he walked back to the Jeep, he wondered if the other Greek-American family was that of Luke Jannet and Rosie Yellenberg. Despite their assurances that they had nothing to do with their father’s activities, had they been playing him for a fool from the start?
Cara Parks called as Mavros was approaching the Heavenly Blue. He told her he’d be with her shortly. First, he intended to talk to Hildegard Kersten. Though he had little to tell her, he had some questions.
The widow expressed shock when she saw his neck and was patently unconvinced when he said his razor had slipped. She welcomed him into the apartment, which was the same as it had been when her husband was alive, apart from orderly piles of paper on the desk. She brought coffee and sat down on the sofa next to him.
‘So, Alex, have you found anything out about my Rudi?’
‘I presume you’ve heard from the police that his death has been classified as suicide by the medical examiner?’
She nodded slowly, her lips tightly pressed together. ‘You know as well as I do how unreliable those people are. All they want is a quiet life.’
Don’t we all, Mavros thought, taking a deep breath. ‘Hildegard, I’m getting conflicting stories about your
