Jeffrey Siger - Murder in Mykonos

Alex started to shake again. 'No, please, I can't. Please.'

Andreas was reluctant to force the man, but then again, cops don't bend over in the presence of suspects — however unsuspected they may be. 'Sit over there in the corner.' He gestured to the far left. 'Yianni, move the slab so we can get the hell out of here.'

Kouros walked over and put his fingers on a corner edge of the slab. It was a lot heavier than it looked, and when it didn't budge at his initial tug Kouros gave a quick look over at Alex — which Andreas took for a sign of respect — then gripped and pulled hard enough to send the lid across the floor and crashing into the wall. Neither man bothered to check for damage. They were too busy gagging at the stench from the decomposing body beneath the slab.

Catia Vanden Haag was not concerned; just put off. Her only child, Annika, was away on holiday, and she'd heard from her just once since Catia and her husband returned home to the Netherlands after attending Annika's graduation ceremonies at Yale University. It was by postcard on her arrival in London to join her boyfriend, Peter, for the start of their six-week backpacking adventure through Italy and Greece — 'Having a great time, glad you're not here.' Catia knew her daughter well enough to know her note explained everything — she was too busy doing God knows what with her boyfriend to think of her poor mother.

A tendency to focus with single-minded determination on the matter at hand to the exclusion of everything else was a trait Annika inherited from her Dutch diplomat father. Catia smiled as she thought of a trait or two she'd passed on: the Greek passion for doing God knows what — and the physical stamina to recover afterward. Catia well remembered her own days of flitting through summers with boys in her native Greece. She was not worried one bit about Annika. Sooner or later she'd get a call.

It came that afternoon, but not from Annika.

Peter's father was calling to apologize.

'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.