The Green Lady by Paul Johnston Read Free Book Online Page A

extended an open hand, fingers wide. ‘Straight to hell with you, freak.’
    â€˜See you there.’
    Mavros walked out into the sweltering early evening. Normally he would have walked to Omonia Square, but he hailed a passing cab. Thanks to Angie Poulou, he was in funds.
    The cypress trees around the estate on Ekali pointed their green fingers to the bright blue sky as if it were guilty of stealing her daughter. Angie sat on the broad terrace by the swimming pool, a wide sunhat on her head and a towel over her legs. The two street cats Lia had adopted were sleeping in the shade, their front legs entwined. Angie blinked back tears.
    What was she doing, taking on a private investigator? Paschos would explode if he found out – and, with the huge web of contacts he maintained, that would only be a matter of time. She didn’t care any more. All she had to do was talk to the press and he would be revealed as the schemer he was. Why had she gone along with his insane plan to keep Lia’s disappearance secret? In the beginning it seemed to make sense – deprive the kidnappers of the oxygen of publicity – but after she’d got over the initial shock, she should have stood up to him. For all his faults, he wasn’t a violent man. He’d never hit her, unlike the husbands of several women she knew, and he did listen to her, although these days she only saw him when they were on parade together.
    Angie took a few bites of the salad she had prepared, having given Fidelia, the Filipina cook, the day off, but she had no appetite. She felt empty inside, as if she was wasting away. She couldn’t live without Lia. Every possible fate – physical abuse, rape, torture, starvation, the white slave trade, accidental death, murder and more – had kept her awake at night in recent months. The fact that she couldn’t tell anyone the truth had given her migraines and driven her to the darkened room she used as a private space. After a week of that, she’d searched for a reliable investigator and found Alex Mavros.
    In truth he seemed more maverick than cautious, though the big case on Crete involving a Hollywood film company and a drug-producing village had shown how effective he could be. Besides, what she needed was someone who knew how the system worked while standing outside it. His half Scots half Greek background seemed to have given him that. When they met, she had trusted him immediately.
    But who was she fooling? What could one man do, when the best minds in the Greek police had failed? According to Paschos, British and American law and order professionals in Athens for the Games had also been consulted, but had got nowhere. Lia had gone to a place that appeared on no map or screen. Perhaps she’d been beneath the surface of the earth from soon after she was snatched, occupying an unmarked grave that would never be found. Angie wouldn’t be able to live with that. She had sworn to herself that if Alex Mavros didn’t pick up any traces of Lia, she would go public. That would probably lead to the end of her marriage, but she didn’t care. Paschos had shown concern over Lia only in the first few days. After that, he got back to work and presented his usual implacable face to the world. His efforts to comfort her had been no more than perfunctory.
    The cats woke up and started chasing each other around the pool. Angie thought of the countless times she had played and swum with her daughter in this very place. But now the familiar lines of the tiles and stone walls, the canvas canopies and marble benches, blurred into obscure shapes, as if her home and everything she had experienced in it had been illusory – even her husband and, worst of all, Lia.
    Only Alex Mavros with his strange left eye could bring Angie back to the world she had known, the world with her daughter at its centre.
    Lambis Bitsos, crime correspondent for the left-of-centre paper
The Free News
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