'For what?' Catia had no idea what he was talking about.
'Peter told me what happened.'
Catia felt the anxiety before knowing why. 'Richard, what are you saying?'
'I just spoke to him in London and-'
It was so unlike her to interrupt. 'In London? But they're in Italy… or Greece… or…' She realized she had no idea where they were.
'I thought that too, that's why I was so surprised when he called and told me he wasn't.'
'He?' Catia's free hand instinctively went to her throat.
'Yes, that's why I'm calling. I couldn't believe my son would be so stupid as to allow your daughter to travel on holiday alone, no matter what the reason.'
Catia didn't know what to say, so she said the obvious: 'Why aren't they together?'
'I'm embarrassed to say, he won't tell me. All he said was they aren't traveling together and she's all right.'
Her control was back and her voice abrupt. 'Where's my daughter, Richard?'
There was surprise in his voice. 'Haven't you spoken with her?'
'Not since she left for London.'
He paused. 'Peter doesn't know.'
'Then how can he possibly know she's all right?' Her tone was angry and dismissive, but she didn't care.
'Catia, I'm sorry, I don't know what to say.' His voice was sincere, but that wouldn't help find Annika.
Catia was silent for a moment, then asked, 'Do you have your son's telephone number?' Her anger kept her from saying the boy's name.
'Yes,' Richard said, and gave it to her. 'Catia, I… I-'
She cut him off again. 'I have to get off now, but thank you for calling to tell us.'
'I really am sorry.'
'Goodbye.' It took Andreas only an instant to recover from the surprise of finding a body where only bones should be. He pulled his gun and ordered the wide-eyed Alex outside; then pushed a green-faced Kouros out behind him, yelling at him not to dare puke in the middle of a crime scene.
Andreas was pretty sure the laborer wasn't the killer — the corpse wasn't fresh — but he wasn't one for taking chances with murder suspects, and anyone who finds a body is a suspect until proven otherwise. He told Kouros to use the car radio to notify Syros of the body and to hold Alex at the station for further questioning but not to treat him as a murder suspect quite yet. In other words, no blowtorch and days of pain in a closet style interrogation. Andreas said he'd stay at the church until the Syros investigators arrived — but to leave Alex's motorcycle just in case he needed it.
Neither Andreas nor Kouros raised the obvious: another officer could be there in ten minutes to secure the scene and free up Andreas. Nor did Kouros ask what his chief planned to do out here all alone while waiting for the men from Syros. He just silently walked the handcuffed suspect down the hill, put him in the backseat, and got into the car.
Andreas watched them drive off and turned to study the crime scene — his crime scene.
He stood by the door and looked carefully down the hill. Nothing seemed out of place. Not a bush or a weed crushed by a tire or a single telltale sign of dragged or carried weight. Just endless gray-green-to-brown dry brush and brown rocky dirt mixed with wild-goat and donkey crap. The only tracks were Kouros', Alex's and his, and Alex's tracks bore out his story that he'd worked on the wall and walked to the church from there.
Andreas looked up toward the top of the hill and slowly scanned it just as carefully, moving his eyes back and forth in sections. He saw nothing unusual. He didn't expect to, because he couldn't imagine why someone would haul a body over the top of a mountain to get here. There was no more cover going that way than climbing up from the road below — and you'd be visible on the mountain for a lot longer to a lot more people if you did. Anyway, he expected Syros to go over every inch of the mountain looking for clues. Better chance at hitting the lottery, if you asked him.
As far as Andreas was concerned there were two conceivable explanations for the lack of tracks — and one was strictly for James Bond fans. It involved a helicopter dropping a body at a deserted church rather than into the deepest part of the sea. Not a chance.
No tracks meant only one thing to him: the body had been here for at least two weeks. Andreas had arrived in Mykonos the day after an unheard of early-June rainstorm. More like a deluge, he was told. Whatever tracks there were — and there must have been some — were wiped out by that rain. A bit of luck for the killer. Any other signs left on that hillside were long gone by now in the rough, northerly winds that regularly battered this part of the island.
If there was a clue, Andreas knew it had to be inside the church. He scanned the ground outside the door for tracks, scuff marks, any clue to how the body got there. Nothing but footprints he recognized. To be thorough, he checked outside the windows but, as he expected, found nothing there. The sun still wasn't throwing much light inside, and he thought about opening the shutters but decided against disturbing the scene any more than he already had. Even in this light, though, he could see the body. It was bent on its side, its back to him, bald and naked.
Andreas took a small flashlight out of his pocket and scanned the floor. He didn't want to step on anything important. He took three careful steps to the edge of the crypt by the front of the body and knelt down, all the time breathing only through his mouth. That cut down on the stench. He could never get used to that smell — and never wanted to.
The crypt was about four feet deep but about a foot longer and wider than the slab covering it. It was lined with the same sort of gray and red granite that made up the church walls. The body was crammed into a too small space for its height on top of a pile of bones — human bones. For an instant he forgot not to breathe through his nose and gagged on the stench. He turned toward the door to find a fresher breath of air, then back to study the body.
It was taller than five feet, probably closer to six, and slim. Because of the size and bald head, he'd thought from the door it was a man, but now he saw it was a woman; and her head was shaved, not bald. She just looked bald from a distance because the stubble of hair was a very light color, probably blond. Her ankles were bound together by thick hemp twine. A separate piece tied her hands crossed at the wrists, then looped a dozen times around her body, pinning her forearms and hands flat across her body at the bottom of her chest before ending leash-like about her neck.
He wanted to examine her face but didn't think he'd see much without moving the body or getting into the crypt. He couldn't do either until forensics had photographed, videotaped, and catalogued everything. He braced himself with one hand against the edge of the crypt and, with his flashlight in the other, held his breath and leaned in to see what he could.
Her eyes and mouth were closed. Nothing particularly unusual about that — perhaps the only thing so far that wasn't. As he lifted himself away from her face his flashlight caught a bit of white at one nostril. He leaned back in. It wasn't at the nostril, it was in it. It looked like cotton, and it wasn't in one nostril, it was in both.
Andreas got to his feet and walked outside. Like most Greeks, he smoked, but he liked to think he only did when stressed. He lit up. This was not a simple murder. There was a message to this one. He'd seen murders with messages before but not like this. This message was meant to remain secret to everyone but the sender.
He knew the word to describe this sort of preparation — the religious location, shaved head, bound feet, clasped hands, naked body, and whatever in the nostrils — but he couldn't say it until he had more proof. Suggesting there'd been a ritual murder on Mykonos wouldn't get him any more compliments from the mayor, or any closer to his old job in Athens. He would just wait for Syros to investigate and let them break the bad news to the town fathers.
He finished his cigarette and decided to have another look inside. Perhaps something about the church held a clue to why the killer chose this spot. Andreas wasn't very religious, but like virtually every Greek, he was Orthodox and he knew the basics. Everything looked perfectly normal. The candles were in the right places, as were the required four icons: the Blessed Virgin, Jesus, the archangels and the saint after which the church was named. He didn't recognize that icon and leaned forward to read the name. Saint Calliope. If he remembered correctly, she was a young woman tortured and put to death for her commitment to Christianity. That would fit.
He went outside again and sat in the shade of the church wall, waiting. Later, he heard the sirens. The boys
