Philip Kerr - Hand of God

She sighed. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’

‘I’m beginning to see why Bekim liked it here so much,’ I said. ‘Anyone would think televisions and the internet and the newspapers had never been invented.’

Svetlana answered with a shrug, and then: ‘Most people who come to live on the island want to get away from the world,’ she said. ‘We’re a bit like the lotus-eaters in Homer’s Odyssey . You know? Once you eat the fruit you lose the desire to leave? I don’t know — like most islanders I just want to live in peace and quiet. These days it’s only bad news on TV and in the papers. On Paros we try not to pay attention to what happens in Athens. It’s nearly always depressing.

‘I suppose Alex is too upset to come to Greece and sort things out. Which is why you’re here.’

I turned my attention to a framed drawing on the opposite wall; a good drawing of a young woman who resembled Nataliya.

‘I’m not here for him or even her. I’m here for me. And for the team. You see, none of us is permitted to leave Athens until the police have satisfied themselves that Bekim had nothing to do with the death of a girl with whom he had sex on the night before he died. A Russian girl I believe you know.’

Svetlana let out a sigh that filled the kitchen with cigarette smoke and made me want one myself. ‘Nataliya.’

‘Is this a drawing of her?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was found in the harbour with a weight tied to her feet.’

‘Oh, God.’ Her eyes filled with tears for a moment and tearing off a square of kitchen towel she dabbed at them for a minute. ‘The poor kid.’

‘Until now I’ve been trying to keep your name from the police. As a favour.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Your name, your phone number, your Skype address, your email. Not that I can see it would have made much difference. You never seem to answer them, anyway.’

‘My phone doesn’t get a signal here. I don’t have a landline. My computer is in the repair shop right now. Something’s wrong with it.’ She frowned. ‘And the police think what? That Bekim had something to do with Nataliya’s death?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Impossible. He was always very kind to her. And she was fond of him. Almost as fond of him as I was.’

She took the drawing off the wall and contemplated it sadly.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said. ‘Not least because I’m checking out a few leads myself in the hope of clearing his name. You might say I’ve turned detective on the assumption that I couldn’t achieve any less than the Hellenic police. I came to the island to look for something that might offer a clue as to how or why she met her death. And it looks as if I was right. I have found something.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘You, of course.’

‘Me? I can’t tell you what happened to her.’ She put the drawing back on the wall and rubbed one of her breasts absently.

‘Perhaps not. But you can help to colour in my drawing. If you do that, I’ll try my best to keep your name from the police.’

‘I need to wash and then cool down.’ She unbuttoned her overalls, let them fall to the ground and, naked, sipped some of the delicious coffee she’d made. The cup, and more especially the saucer, made the informality of her appearance all the more alluring.

‘You’ve no idea how hot it is in that studio. The air conditioning has broken down. And I have dust in every part of my body.’

Wet or dry Svetlana was the best thing to look at for miles around. While she showered, I took a few minutes to admire some of the sculptures that surrounded the pool: elegant pieces of marble and granite that had the quality of natural objects — plants, shells, marine life — which, given that they were carved from stone, were all the more impressive.

I turned as Svetlana stepped out on to the deck, towel in hand and glistening. She draped the towel over the back of a basket chair then dived into the water, swam a couple of lengths and then came to the water’s edge. I sat down on a chair near her.

She sank below the surface for a moment and then came powering up again, lifting herself onto the side with arms that were more muscular than I remembered, and sat there in the sun like the Little Mermaid.

‘So, tell me what you think you know,’ she said.

I told her. It didn’t take very long. I was almost embarrassed at the sudden realisation of how little I did know. Perhaps that’s how it is with detective work. You know nothing; and then, a few minutes later, you think you know almost everything.

‘I last spoke to Bekim about two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘He emailed me from London with the intention of hooking up in Athens. I said I couldn’t come because I was working. And he understood that. So, naturally he’d have called Nataliya. No, wait. I need to go back to the beginning, about six years ago. It’s not that I feel the need to justify myself to you, Scott. I don’t. It’s just that when you said you’d kept my name from the police I realised that you’d done me a huge favour. I think that in return I need to tell you absolutely everything.’

‘In 2008, when the recession hit this country really hard, some of the banks looked like they would fail. Like a lot of Russians I had money in the Bank of Cyprus and it seemed for a while that I was going to lose it all. For a while my work stopped selling. Art is always the first thing that most people cut back on. But not Bekim, who has a good eye for paintings, and for sculpture, too. He saved me from going under. He bought several pieces of mine and then came up with a suggestion of how I could earn some regular money. He said that even in Greece there were lots of guys in football who would be prepared to pay for a GFE — a girlfriend experience — with someone who wasn’t a professional escort.

‘I thought it was a joke at first. But then he introduced me to an English woman at the Hellenic Football Federation, Anna Loverdos, and some Greek guy from UEFA she was into. Anyway, they were hot for Bekim’s idea. The whole thing was Bekim’s idea. He said we’d be doing a favour to a lot of guys who would otherwise just go and get themselves into trouble on Sofokleous, which is the red light area of Athens. Bekim was the first, of course. The man has a libido like a goat.

‘The first time I went with another man it was some old guy from FIFA. Something to do with the World Cup in Qatar. I was the cherry on top of the money he’d been paid for his vote. The sex was lousy but the money was great. I got paid five thousand euros for spending the weekend with him because some of that was mouth-shut money. The guy gave me a thousand-euro tip. He could afford it, of course. Later on I read in the newspaper that he got over a million US dollars for his vote.

‘Then Anna called me again and before I knew it she was calling once or twice a month. She would tell me to contact some footballer or perhaps an official from FIFA or UEFA. I’d get paid as much as a couple of thousand euros a night, cash. I told myself that turning tricks wasn’t such a bad thing for an artist to do. Fucking a few guys didn’t seem as bad as some of the things that Caravaggio and Cellini had done.’ She shrugged. ‘You can justify anything to yourself, if you want to. I figured that all I really cared about was my work and that if I had to fuck some rich guy in order to keep doing it, then that’s what I’d do. I won’t deny that there were plenty of times when I even enjoyed it. Especially when it was a player. There are worse things to do than sleep with fit and handsome young men.

‘Like I say, the work was part-time, at first. Maybe a couple of times a month. I paid off all my bills; I even had enough to buy a small flat in Athens. Then Anna started to telephone me a bit more often. It seems that there’s no shortage of guys with money in football. Agents, managers, players, officials, even a few match referees who someone wanted to fix before a big game. So I found another Russian girl to help me out when I was busy. Nataliya. She was much more of a professional than I was; and much better at it, too. I’d either see the client myself, if I needed the money, or I’d give the work to Nataliya and take ten per cent. That seemed fair. It’s less than my art dealer charges. I think Bekim preferred her to me, anyway. She was more adventurous than I am. If he was coming to Athens he’d call me or Nataliya direct. He meant well, of course. And he’d recommend us both to a few people. You included.