Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) Read Free Page A

up smoking a year ago. He’d known Yiorgos since he’d roamed the backstreets around the hill of Strefi in central Athens as a kid. The Fat Man was eighteen years older than Alex, making him fifty-seven, but he’d always had a soft spot for the boy. Mavros was sure that Yiorgos had initially befriended him because his father, Spyros Mavros, was a high-ranking member of the Communist Party. But a deeper friendship had developed over the years, one based on their mutual antipathy towards authority in any shape or form. Except Mavros had taken that a lot further than his friend by steadfastly refusing to join the Party. He had seen too much of the damage caused by strongly held beliefs. What Yiorgos said about everyone having to work was a bad joke. His mother, now in her early eighties, kept the café going with her cooking and cleaning, but only just. The Fat Man survived by running illicit card tables late at night. If pressed, he justified himself by giving a sly smile and characterising Marx and Lenin as political gamblers.
    The pastry and pills arrived, Mavros washing down the latter with the unchilled tap water the Fat Man had brought. He took a forkful of the galaktoboureko and closed his eyes as the glorious flavour of the filling flooded his taste buds. ‘Aaach,’ he moaned. ‘How does she do it? It gets better all the time.’
    The café owner nodded, his jowls wobbling. ‘The crazy old woman won’t tell me the trick, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘So when she goes…’
    ‘Come on, Fat Man,’ Mavros complained. ‘I’m eating my breakfast and you’re talking about dying?’
    ‘What’s the point of keeping quiet about it? We’re all going to die some time.’
    Mavros looked at his watch and waved him away. Any minute now a potential client would be arriving. He took his notebook from the pocket of his jeans and reminded himself of the name. Deniz Ozal. Turkish, but the accent on the telephone was American. He said he’d been given Mavros’s name by Nikos Kriaras, a police commander the US embassy had contacted on his behalf. Apparently his sister had gone missing. So Mavros had told him to come to the Fat Man’s. That was his version of the café owner’s test. Any clients who turned tail at the sight of the run-down dive weren’t serious enough for him. The Kolonaki boutique owners, dressed up in the latest outfits from Paris, had probably been excited by the sensation of slumming; and by the smell of the galaktoboureko , which the husband had paid substantially over the odds to sample.
    Mavros sat back to enjoy the remaining mouthfuls of his portion.
       
     
    The door to the main room opened not long after he had finished eating. He looked up and watched as a middle-aged man of medium height with a thin moustache walked in with an assured air. He glanced at the Fat Man, twitched his head dismissively then turned towards the yard. He took in Mavros with a piercing look, running his eyes all the way up from the dark blue espadrilles to the mane of hair, concentrating finally on the firm, stubbled jaw, the aquiline nose and the dark blue eyes.
    ‘You the private dick?’ he said in English.
    ‘I’m the dick,’ Mavros confirmed with a loose smile. ‘And you’re Deniz Ozal.’ He pointed to a chair with a wicker base.
    The man was wearing a pair of tailored olive-green trousers with a matching short-sleeved shirt that he hadn’t tucked in. The bulge of his stomach was still obvious. He rested his heavy briefcase on the floor, looked over his shoulder to establish that no one else was in the vicinity, and sat down opposite Mavros.
    ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, wincing. ‘How do you people sit on these chairs all day?’ He peered at what Mavros was sitting on. ‘Oh, I get it. The torture gear’s for the tourists.’
    Mavros glanced at his canvas chair and shrugged. ‘You can have this one if you want.’
    ‘Nah, forget it,’ Ozal said. ‘Do me good to remember the shit my ancestors went