‘Yes?’ answered a deep male voice in Greek.

‘I’m a friend of Maria’s. Is she there?’

‘A friend of whose?’ the man asked, but the pause before he spoke gave Mavros the firm impression that he was prevaricating.

‘Don’t mess me around, friend,’ he said brusquely. ‘Maria Kondos gave me this number. Tell her to come to the phone.’

There was more hesitation. ‘Who are you?’ the man demanded, his tone also more aggressive. ‘I don’t know any Maria Kondos.’

You don’t know any Maria Kondos, Mavros thought, but you repeat her name in its ungrammatical form without hesitation. ‘Do I have to come over and drag her out of there?’ he shouted. ‘She owes me money and I need it now!’

The gears in his interlocutor’s mind were grinding almost audibly. The sensible thing for him to have done would have been to cut the connection, but his Cretan machismo wouldn’t permit that.

‘She owes you money? I don’t believe you! I’ll find you and cut your balls off!’

‘Not if I find you first,’ Mavros countered, wondering how to get Maria to the phone.

‘Fuck your mother and your sister,’ the man said.

The line went dead. When he tried again, it was engaged. Someone had stepped in before the Cretan bull had said too much, or perhaps he’d come to his senses. Mavros had seen a map of the island on top of one of the piles of papers on the floor. He scanned it and found Kornaria. It was isolated and at the end of a very windy, unsurfaced road, and seemed like an improbable place for a Greek-American to be. The impression that the man knew her didn’t mean she was in the village, and setting out on a long and tricky drive on the off-chance didn’t seem like the best use of his time at that juncture.

Besides, he still had a suspicion that Maria had never left the hotel. There was one way to confirm that, at least in terms of the land side of the resort — he would check later if boats came and went from the beach. He went down to reception and asked where the security office was. A young lad in Cretan costume led him, his high boots squeaking on the marble.

A large man in a suit whose tenor voice Mavros recognized opened the door.

‘Mr Capaldi,’ he said, smiling.

‘Ah, hello.’ The door stayed only half-open. ‘You need something else?’

‘I want to see the CCTV recordings from Sunday evening.’

The Italian stood motionless. ‘You have authorization for this?’

Mavros shrugged. ‘Call Mr Kersten.’ He took out his mobile. ‘Better still, I’ll call him.’

Capaldi’s hand came up quickly. ‘Not necessary. Come inside.’

They went down a passage and into a small room. The Italian squeezed into a desk chair and waved Mavros to a battered armchair.

‘No, thanks. Tell me, did you check the Sunday evening traffic recorded at the main gate?’

Renzo Capaldi suddenly looked like a schoolboy caught with his hand down his trousers. ‘No. I was not told to.’

‘It didn’t occur to you that Ms Kondos might have left on foot?’

The Italian laughed dismissively. ‘People do not walk out of the Heavenly Blue, especially not the film crew. There is the press, the photographers.’

‘So you won’t mind if I check?’

Capaldi accepted that without enthusiasm and installed Mavros at a screen connected to a large server. He showed him which keys to use to stop and restart the sequence of images, and to speed up or slow them down. Mavros decided to start from nine thirty on Sunday evening, shortly after Cara Parks had last seen the missing woman. At first he found the pixelated images hard to make out, but soon he became accustomed to them. There were regular processions of cars turning in and out of the gate. Those entering mainly came from the west, presumably film personnel coming back from the airfield at Maleme. Those leaving mostly turned east, probably heading for the bars and restaurants of Chania.

Then, when the timer at the top right of the screen showed 22.17:23, he caught sight of a female form in a knee-length black dress approaching the gate. Her face wasn’t visible, but her hair was similar to Maria Kondos’s. She waited until a van came in and left on the opposite side of it from the camera, speeding up to remain obscured. She disappeared into the darkness beyond the furthest light just over a minute later. Mavros spoke Capaldi’s name as he went back to the first sight of the missing woman.

‘See this?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ the Italian said apprehensively.

‘Is it her?’

‘Could be. Can’t see face.’

‘“Could be” will do for me,’ Mavros said. ‘I want you to do the following — take the number of every car that turned east for an hour after she left. If you have a record of the driver or registered owner, I need that too. All right? Call me on 171 as soon as you can.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Renzo Capaldi said, without irony. He seemed to have realized the seriousness of the situation.

Back in his room, Mavros booted up his laptop and went on to the Internet, accessing a site that illicitly provided a reverse phone directory. The number he had called in Kornaria was registered to a Vasilios Dhrakakis, farmer. Then he entered the missing woman’s name in a search engine. There were plenty of references, but as he went through them it became clear they were all articles about Cara Parks that referred to her assistant en passant — which made Mavros wonder. He was no connoisseur of glossy magazine-style journalism, but he was pretty sure that the hired help didn’t often get namechecked. Then, on the third page of listings, he found something much more interesting.

‘Actress PA in Youth Auto Death’ was the headline in a Los Angeles newspaper, dated August 9th 2000. It seemed that Maria Kondos, aged 32, assistant to ‘rising star’ Cara Parks, hit and killed Michael ‘Zee-Boy’ Timmins, a seventeen-year-old African American boy, while driving Cara Parks’ Mercedes late at night. The case against her fell apart when the defence produced witnesses, who saw Timmins stumbling down Mulholland Drive on what the post-mortem proved to be a crack cocaine high. He also had a police record as a member of a major drugs gang, the Letter-Men.

Mavros sat back and thought about that. It seemed unlikely to have any connection with Maria Kondos’s disappearance after three years, but he wondered how she’d been affected by the ordeal. That was a question he could ask Cara Parks.

There was a knock at the door. Renzo Capaldi was standing there with some printed papers.

‘Here’s what you wanted, Mr Mavros,’ he said, eager to please. ‘Seventy-one cars turned towards Chania in that hour. Twenty-eight of them were taxis.’ He handed over a sheet with licence plate numbers. ‘Do you want me to find out the drivers’ names and where they took their passengers, if they weren’t dropping off?’

Mavros nodded and saw the big man’s shoulders slump.

‘And the other forty-three were either vehicles belonging to the hire company of the film crew or were used by individual guests or visitors.’ He gave Mavros the second sheet, which showed licence numbers and names.

‘Thanks,’ Mavros said, running his eyes down the names. He recognized Tsifakis, the company owned by the driver Mikis’s father, on nineteen of the cars. Of the remaining twenty-four, only one name stuck out — that of David Waggoner. He mentioned it to Capaldi.

‘Oh, the old British colonel. He doesn’t stay here, but he’s in and out every day seeing people on the production. He’s got one of those Range Rovers — as big as a tank.’

‘And the others?’

‘Guests who have long-lease villas in the resort. They’re the only people here this month apart from the film crew.’

‘OK,’ Mavros said. ‘Concentrate on the taxi drivers — I’ll need a contact number, preferably a mobile, for each one.’

Capaldi went off down the corridor, surprisingly light on his feet for such a hulking figure.

Back in the room, Mavros highlighted the hired vehicles used by the production team — Rosie Yellenberg would probably be able to link each of them to particular members of the crew.