Murder in Mykonos ak-1 Read online

  Murder in Mykonos

  ( Andreas Kaldis - 1 )

  Jeffrey Siger

  Jeffrey Siger

  Murder in Mykonos

  Prologue

  Just past midnight the massive Rodanthi ferry silently made its grand entrance into Mykonos' narrow, crescent-shaped harbor. Though it was still a bit early in the season for the partying crowds that swelled this Greek island's population from ten thousand to fifty thousand in July and August, the harbor was wildly alive with lights and people.

  It was exactly as the young woman had imagined — a blaze of white buildings under a diamond-studded sky.

  She'd been standing inside with other backpackers on the third-level passenger deck watching the island's lights slowly envelop the horizon. Now she stepped outside and walked to the bow railing. Feeling the Aegean breeze in her face, she re-doubled the elastic band holding her blond ponytail in place. It was all so beautiful. She regretted only one thing: being here alone.

  She felt as much as heard the thrusting power of the reversing engines as the ship began its graceful one-quarter pirouette toward the dock. Drawing in a deep breath from the wind coming off the sea, she picked up her backpack, headed for the stairs nearest the bow, and made her way down to the exit deck. The ferry had docked at its stern, and when she reached the bottom level she had to squeeze her way past a collection of beat-up island-hopping cars, trucks, and motorcycles waiting to disembark. She knew that at six feet tall her well-toned figure was attracting a lot of attention, especially in hiking shorts and a tank top. Several drivers along the way yelled out to her in various languages, offering her a ride anywhere she wanted to go. She acted as if she didn't understand but smiled to herself.

  Most of the passengers were off the boat by the time she was at the gangway. Now she had to find a place to stay. That was not a problem. There were dozens of people offering accommodations, literally tugging at her for attention. She was inundated with photographs, brochures, letters of recommendation, all designed to funnel weary tourists into empty rooms.

  The young woman spoke with the hawkers in English and picked what looked like a charming small hotel just above the town. The man, who claimed to be the owner, promised her a room with a private bath and a view of the town — at a 'special price.' He seemed very nice and with his gray hair was at least wise enough to mask any other interest he might have in her. Already, two couples from the ferry waited in his little van, so she wouldn't be going off alone with a stranger.

  At the hotel she showed the owner her passport. He welcomed her in Dutch and told her he'd had many guests from the Netherlands, things that assured her she'd made the right choice. The room was as promised. She showered, put on her one sexy dress, and went out to wander the maze of winding, narrow paths lined by whitewashed buildings, adorned with brightly colored doors, shutters, and railings.

  The town was awash in jewelry shops and bars. Vacationing families and pilgrims seeking early-morning connections to the nearby ancient and holy island of Delos were in their beds by now. Summer nights in Mykonos belonged to all-night partiers seeking their own sorts of connections. Bedtime could wait until a much later hour. No pretty woman ever needed to pay for a drink or dinner here.

  At one of the bars she met a local Greek about her age. He introduced her to the owner who said the young man was his son. Then he introduced her to an 'old family friend' — an American painter who told her he'd been coming to Mykonos every summer for more than thirty years. They all spoke in English although the young man seemed to know enough Dutch words to use at the right time to be charming. By the time she left the bar it was nearly light and the young man convinced her to ride on the back of his motorcycle to a place where they could watch the sun come up.

  She mounted his bike and put her arms around him; the engine vibrated between her legs. For twenty minutes she pressed her body against his as he raced toward the rising sun. At the beach — deserted, he said, except for a single small house owned by a priest from England — they touched and kissed through the sunrise; then took off their clothes and swam naked. He tried to make love to her, but he had no condom and she refused. He pressed her; she resisted. He pushed her down, yanked away his clothes, and stormed off shouting at her in Greek.

  She heard the sound of his motorcycle as he drove away, leaving her alone to find her way back. She was thankful she hadn't been raped. Tipsy, tired, and angry at herself, she dressed and started up the steep dirt road toward what she hoped would be town. She had to take off her heels to walk, and the stones hurt her feet. She wasn't used to this. She wanted to cry but kept on walking. It was a dry and rocky road, like the island itself. After fifteen minutes or so she heard a motor on the other side of a hill. For an instant she thought it might be him returning. It wasn't. It was a car, a taxi bearing down toward her in a cloud of dust. She was surprised to see one out here so early in the morning but frantically waved for him to stop.

  She spoke to the driver in English and he responded in English. She started to cry. He told her to get in and asked what happened. She told him the story as if replaying a video of her ordeal. He listened quietly, not saying a word. When they reached her hotel he said he knew the young man and she really hadn't been in any danger; but on an island filled with so many strangers she must be very careful who she trusts — especially when it comes to young men with motorcycles. That made her feel a little better, though she still was mad at herself for thinking she was the first one he'd taken on a romantic sunrise motorcycle ride.

  She slept until about two that afternoon, then took a bus to Paradise Beach. She refused to talk to anyone there, but the young Greek men persisted. Eventually, she moved to the nude, gay part of the beach where macho Greek Romeos were afraid to be seen. She stripped naked and read a book, undisturbed. That night she went back into town and spent her time talking with jewelers and souvenir sellers. Enough bar boys. One of the jewelers invited her to dinner at a fashionable restaurant. She had a great time and he was a perfect gentleman.

  He walked her to a taxi and invited her to attend a Greek festival to be held in three days to honor a saint. She thanked him but said she was leaving the island in two days and promised to stop by his shop before she left.

  Then, like so many other backpackers, she simply disappeared. No one paid the balance of her hotel bill — also not unusual in Mykonos. The hotel owner simply threw out whatever she'd left behind, reported nothing to the police, and rented the room to a new pretty woman from another midnight ferry.

  1

  Andreas Kaldis knew why his six-foot-two-inch body was crammed into a midget-sized window seat on a plane to Mykonos, and he didn't like it one bit. He'd been 'promoted' from the Greek police force's number one ass-kicker in central Athens to its chief dog-and-cat protector for Athenian weekenders. At least that's how he saw it. Thirty-four-year-old hotshot homicide detectives like one thing: catching killers. For them, the worst punishment imaginable was being taken away from the action. His promotion to chief of police for one of the smallest of the Cyclades islands meant just that: being as far away from what he was born to do as Andreas could imagine.

  Ninety miles and less than thirty minutes from Athens by plane, or three hours by high-speed ferry, Mykonos was approximately one and a half times the size of the island of Manhattan and had become to Athens what Andreas understood 'the Hamptons' were to New Yorkers. Rich and superrich Athenians — together with thousands of wannabe celebrities from all over Europe — flocked to Mykonos on holiday. Many built mega-million-euro summer homes on the island or paid London hotel prices for far less than English five-star service.

  What the locals wanted didn't matter anymore — even though most didn't know it yet.
The moneyed visitors now had a say in how Mykonos would be run, and they had their complaints. For one thing, they were tired of putting up with the old ways. They also groused about too many break-ins, too many crazy, drunken drivers, and too much local political influence over police enforcement practices. The wealthy were demanding better policing, and they had the political influence to get it.

  Enter Andreas Kaldis. His move to Mykonos — or rather, his departure from Athens — was exceptionally good news to certain powerful people. His aggressive investigation into a series of murders over control of the Athenian drug trade had worried them. Promoting him out of Athens — and out of the investigation — was a political masterstroke that even Andreas could appreciate. It hurt no one and made everyone happy. Everyone but Andreas.

  Officially, he arrived under a mandate involving the European Union's insistence that Mykonos show more even handed law enforcement toward non-Greeks. Andreas took that as a political cover story for Greece's Public Order Ministry, which oversaw the police, to guard against the inevitable griping by Mykonian locals that Athens was trying to control their affairs — a perennial complaint among islanders.

  Also mentioned in the official announcement of his appointent was the fact that Andreas lacked family ties to any Greek island. That made him a particularly desirable choice for police chief because no one could accuse him of favoritism toward islanders — a perennial complaint on the part of mainland Greeks. The fact that Andreas had served his obligatory service in the military at an air force installation on Mykonos was not mentioned.

  Off the record, Andreas had orders to tread lightly with the locals. As a young, single man wielding considerable power on a small island, he knew that word of his every move would get around fast. As far as he was concerned, Athens wasn't a much bigger place when it came to gossip — and he liked it that way. That was how he got some of his best leads. If the warning meant to avoid fooling around with the local women, he already knew better. Any self-respecting cop would. Besides, Andreas had no intention of incurring some local family's vendetta — or of tying his future to a Mykonos clan for the rest of his days.

  His morning flight was packed with early-June tourists. He fit right in, except he already had his tan — it came, along with his dark hair and gray eyes, from his parents. So did his square jaw and decent good looks. The counterbalancing bump and slightly crooked tilt to his nose — the collective work of several folks who'd ended up looking a lot worse — let you know Andreas wasn't someone to mess with.

  'Looks like it's going to be a busy season,' said the guy in the aisle seat next to him. He was about Andreas' size but looked twenty years older.

  Andreas hated talking to people on airplanes. Something about planes made people want to tell you things they'd never dream of talking about with strangers on the ground. Maybe it was something about being up in the air, above the earth and closer to God. Or maybe it was just nerves.

  'You're Greek, aren't you?' The man was speaking Greek with what sounded like a South African accent.

  Andreas had to respond in order to avoid seeming rude. He nodded.

  'Sure hope it's busy. Business was slow last year.'

  This guy isn't going to stop, thought Andreas, nodding again. He turned his head and stared out the window.

  'I'm a jeweler.'

  Andreas knew the man was just trying to be friendly and he didn't have anything against jewelers — someday he might even need one if he found the right girl. But this cheery nosiness was just the sort of thing he dreaded about being posted to Mykonos. Everyone wanted to know everyone else's business. Andreas turned back to the fellow and, with his most practiced, tired-cop look, said, 'That's nice,' and returned to the window.

  The man took the hint and remained silent for the rest of the flight. After they landed and were walking from the plane to the terminal, he offered Andreas his hand, which Andreas shook graciously. 'Enjoy your time here among the gods,' the man said with a smile. 'After all, they were our first tourists.'

  And, no doubt, those same gods knew that they wouldn't be the last.

  As Andreas waited for his bags he looked around and saw a room full of excited, good-time-ready responsibilities. How would he possibly protect and police fifty thousand locals and visitors with only sixty cops — including the additional twenty-five assigned to him for the tourist season? He shook his head and chuckled aloud. Maybe he could summon a few of those gods from Delos in a pinch.

  Outside the terminal he waited for whomever had been assigned to pick him up. The breeze felt good, but after five minutes of pushing his slightly too-long hair out of his eyes and over his forehead, he picked up his briefcase and walked the hundred yards to the police station abutting the airport. It had been relocated there from the center of town a few years before — perhaps to shorten the walk for stranded chiefs. Andreas didn't mind the walk — he ran regularly to keep fit — but he did mind the lack of respect.

  The two-story, thick-walled building had the traditional whitewash with blue trim found in Mykonian architecture. Police and civilian cars, SUVs, and motorcycles as well as an assortment of vehicles mangled in road accidents were parked haphazardly along the front and left side of the building. Andreas wasn't in uniform, and the first things he noticed as he walked in were the ages and abrupt attitudes of the cops who got right in his face and asked what he wanted. All but a handful of the officers under his command were fresh out of the police academy, or still in it and assigned to Mykonos for the summer as part of their training. As green as green could be.

  And their community-relations skills would need serious work. What would be even trickier was that, according to their personnel files, not one of these kids was from Mykonos. Mykonians were fiercely independent; they had no desire to be cops and little respect for those who were. Tourism had made Mykonians, on a per capita basis, the richest people in Greece. The financial benefits of police work — both lawful and otherwise — held no attraction for them. Besides, many boasted ancestors who had been unrepentant pirates.

  One cop asked Andreas a second time — and more aggressively — what he wanted. Andreas couldn't help himself. 'Would you be kind enough to pick up my bags at the airport? I left them with the Olympic ticket agent.'

  The young man, who was built like a bull, looked to his friends, then back at Andreas. 'Listen, wiseass, this is a police station. So get the hell out before you find out what happens when you fuck with cops.' He gave an 'I showed him' smirk to his buddies.

  Andreas fixed his steel-gray eyes on the young cop and let a 'do I have your ass now' smile spread across his face. 'So nice to meet you, Officer — what does that say on your uniform? — Kouros. I'm Andreas Kaldis, your new chief of police.'

  Someone should have checked Kouros' shorts at that moment, but there wasn't time. He proved himself smart enough to be out the door and in a car headed to the airport before Andreas could speak another word. Kouros' friends also jumped to attention, Andreas' point clearly made.

  Chalk one up for the new chief. But there was no time to enjoy his little victory. He'd deal with Kouros and the man responsible for meeting him at the airport later, in private. For the moment, there was a lot of work to do. He just hoped to get half-accustomed to the job before all hell broke loose. By the middle of his first week Andreas knew his job was impossible. Everyone on the island did what they wanted. It was as if the police didn't exist. For now, he could only manage triage, prioritizing what could be done. The impossible situations would be left alone. The insignificant would too. He'd focus attention on what he'd been told was the most politically sensitive concern: danger to tourists. Mykonos thrived because of its tourists, and he had to protect them — if only from themselves.

  By the beginning of his second week he'd set up a series of floating checkpoints for catching drunk drivers, reckless drivers, and helmetless motorcyclists. It was the sort of high-visibility, aggressive police activity that, by word of mouth, would change the behavior of
far more drivers than they could ever arrest.

  He also set up a special unit to back up the cops who worked undercover at the island's most notorious, late-night tourist spots keeping an eye out for pickpockets and drug dealers. If a tourist at any of those places was robbed or assaulted that unit would appear in force — and in uniform. It was a not so subtle way of sending word to the owners that they'd better take care of their patrons if they wanted their places to remain free of more intrusive police activity.

  Thefts from unlocked hotel rooms and unattended bags were grudgingly accepted as an unpreventable fact of modern life. But unprovoked violence and robbery against innocent tourists enjoying the island's freewheeling party life threatened the economic heart of Mykonos. Andreas' message was clear: no such threat to its reputation would be tolerated — from anyone.

  In less than two weeks, Andreas felt that he was having a positive impact on the community. The island's longtime mayor — a sturdy combination of political-machine boss and preening cock of the walk — even stopped by to compliment him. Things seemed to be working out. He thought if he made it through the summer without ruffling any feathers or stepping on any toes he just might be able to work his way back into the good graces of the folks in Athens — and get transferred the hell out of here.

  He thought it might help him to stay cool if he tried a little harder to relax. Go to the beach and blow off some steam. Maybe even one of those beaches where the tourist women like to show off their lack of tan lines. He wondered if they were still as hot for Greeks in uniform as they had been when he'd served here in the air force. It was early afternoon and he was getting into the fantasy when Kouros hurried into his office — after knocking, of course.

  The news was not good: an Albanian moving stone on some property way over on the other side of the island called to say he'd found a dead body.