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a
star next to her name. A Greek. He’d be able to converse with her
in his native tongue, not have to struggle in German,
mispronouncing the word for ‘murder victim,’ Mordopfer and
the word for ‘killed,’ getötet .
    Or God forbid,
spend hours speaking English stuttering like poor King George in
the movie, who’d had to be coached before he could declare war on
Germany. Patronas had about fifteen minutes of solid English in
him. Any longer and it came apart.
    After he and
Tembelos finished gathering evidence, they shed their Tyvek gear,
lifted the dead man up and placed him in a black body bag, zipped
it and carried it back down the hill on their shoulders to the
waiting Jeep. An official in Chora had told them the cruise ship
was due at midday and Patronas was determined to leave the village
before it arrived. He didn’t want tourists to take pictures of the
deceased with their cellphones and post them on the Internet,
didn’t want the island to be tainted by the killing. He had the
priest lead the way, hoping his robed presence would fool any
people they encountered into thinking their sad little procession
was a makeshift funeral.
    He found it
strange that the family hadn’t wanted to accompany the body, to see
the old man off as it were. Usually, grieving relatives behaved
differently, refused to let go. They’d cry until they could cry no
more, as if their tears could restore the dead to life. These
people were different, and it wasn’t just because they were from
somewhere else. No, something was going on here.
    He looked back at
the house. Could be they simply couldn’t bear it. Watching the body
of a loved one being trundled off was hard. He recalled when his
mother’s body was taken, how he felt like he’d been struck by a
tree. Could be the man and his wife wanted to spare themselves
that, spare their children.
     
    They loaded the
body without incident. Evangelos Demos started the car and they
drove off, the plan being to transport the body by boat to Leros,
where there was an airport. From there it would be flown on to
Athens.
    Not wanting to
put the body in the trunk of the Jeep, they’d put it in the
backseat, laying it partially in Patronas’ lap.
    A fine
metaphor for the case , he thought sourly, looking down at the
shrouded form.
    The murder of a
foreign national, it would be the case from hell, no doubt about
it. The language barrier alone would be a formidable obstacle.
Patronas didn’t speak much German, and he didn’t know anyone who
did. The German language had gone out of fashion, students in
Greece preferring now to study English.
    And Evangelos
Demos would be no help. No, Comrade Stalin up there in the front
seat would only get in the way.
    Also, once the
media got wind of the crime, politicians from both countries might
well get involved. Right-wing or left, it wouldn’t matter, they’d
all have plenty to say, their voices rising in a self-serving
chorus and impeding his investigation. Vigilantes had begun
attacking foreign immigrants all over Europe in recent months, even
killed a few. God help Greece if that were the case
here.
    Egine
hamos, this was. Utter chaos.
    Worse would be if
there was a second murder, if someone decided to take it upon
himself to cleanse his country of outsiders … a home-grown
Hitler.
    Patronas closed
his eyes. He was too old to deal with such horrors, his homeland
too broken. Please Jesus, let that not be the case
here.
    “ Let’s
hope this is not what I think it is,” he told the others. “That
this man was not singled out because of his nationality.
    The priest
nodded. “ ‘To kill without pity or mercy,’ that’s what Hitler
said. ‘Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?’ Let us pray
no one in Greece has succumbed to such madness.”
     
    The crew on the
police cruiser rushed to help when Patronas and Tembelos carried
the body bag up the gangplank of the boat. “What happened to them?
Was it an accident?” one of the men