Free Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) by Paul Johnston Page A

‘What are we going to do?’
    He smiled at her, then left her kneeling on the floor as he went to screw the stair light back in. He didn’t have any thoughts about what they were going to do as a couple. Although he found Niki sexually exciting—she was a wild woman between the sheets or anywhere else—he struggled to handle her mood swings. He knew what was going to happen tonight. As she was hopeless in the kitchen he’d cook something for her and they’d go to bed, but they’d got to the stage where that wasn’t enough. Niki wanted him to share the large flat in the coastal suburb of Palaio Faliron that she’d been left by her long-suffering foster parents. The one thing he was sure about was that he was staying in Pikilis.
    As Mavros balanced himself on the ladder he was gripped by panic. If she shook the legs now, he’d go head first down the stairs. He lowered his eyes and was confronted by Niki’s raised backside. Shaking his head at the injustice he’d done her, he climbed slowly down. It was time he sorted himself out.

    Then he remembered Deniz Ozal and his missing sister. An island in the Aegean. Trigono came at him out of the shimmering blue with a whispered promise of sanctuary.
    In that second he made the decision.
         
     
    The old man in the tower on Trigono ran a trembling hand through his sculpted white beard. It was time. He’d been sitting in front of the tattered leather-bound volume for hours, but he hadn’t been able to open it. Yes, it was time to lay the ghost once and for all. But he still couldn’t bring himself to touch the book, as if it were infected with some deadly virus.
    Running his eyes around the sumptuously decorated room with its circular walls in an attempt to distract himself, he rested them on the framed poster by the door. Larger versions of it were all over Athens, advertising the museum’s latest exhibition. The lekythos with its exquisite lines, the painted figure of Charon on his boat, the icons of death that had haunted him for as long as he could remember and had inspired him to establish the museum—now they seemed to be mocking him. ‘What do you know about death?’ they were asking. ‘What do you really know?’
    Panos Theocharis forced himself to look at the book that was in front of him on the antique mahogany desk. What he knew about death, what he had experienced, was largely contained in this compact volume. But not in his words. These were the words of the man he’d tried to destroy. How bitter would the story they told be to him? Did he have any right to read another man’s private confessions?
    He turned his head towards the high window and took in the lights of the village that lay beyond the expanse of cultivated fields. He’d been told about the deaths, the drowned boy and girl, but even that news had failed to distract him from the diary. No, he couldn’t put it off any more. He had to do it now.
    Taking a deep breath that rattled in his lungs, Theocharis put his fingers on the soft, dark leather and opened the book. The man he had forgotten for decades flew out like an avenger from the lines of faded blue ink and seized him by the throat.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    ‘Y EAH ? Who is it?’ Deniz Ozal was breathless.
    ‘This is Mavros.’
    ‘What the fuck happened to you, bud?’ He grunted. ‘Get off me, you—’
    ‘Is this a bad time?’
    ‘You were meant to call me at ten, weren’t you?’ Ozal had raised his voice. ‘I said get off me. Jesus.’
    Mavros was on his balcony with the mobile. Niki had stayed and he’d waited until she was asleep before phoning. He didn’t want her to hear that he was about to leave the city. ‘I can call again in the morning if you’ve got company.’
    There was a rustle followed by a high-pitched giggle. ‘Nah,’ Ozal said. ‘It’s just a hooker who’s bitten off more than she can chew, if you get my meaning.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Anyway, how d’you know I didn’t give the