He didn’t have a clue.

Mavros watched as one of the gorillas loaded the wheelchair into the boot of the Mercedes, while the other helped Maria into the back seat.

As Mikis was on the way across the street, Mavros’s mobile rang.

‘This is Hildegard Kersten, Alex. I really need your help.’ The old woman sounded close to panic.

‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Rudi. He’s slipped away from the resort. Don’t worry, it’s not like that woman. I know where he’s heading — to that damned massacre set. But he won’t answer his phone and I don’t know who’s driving him.’

Mavros moved to the Jeep, beckoning to Mikis to follow.

‘I’ll check with the car-hire company while we’re on our way to the set. I’ll let you know as soon as I see him.’

‘Thank you,’ Hildegard said. ‘I’m going over there now myself.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? Your husband presumably wants to be there without you.’

There was a pause. ‘Very well. You are correct. I will stay in the apartment. Goodbye.’

Mavros addressed Mikis. ‘Can you ask your old man if any of your drivers is taking Rudolf Kersten to the massacre set?’

‘My mother’s in charge of dispatch,’ Mikis said. It took him under a minute to confirm that Yerasimos had been hailed by Kersten outside the hotel. He had advised that they were at the Black Bird.

‘The Black Bird?’ Mavros said. ‘What’s that?’

‘The German paratroopers’ memorial on the way to Maleme. It was put up during the war.’

‘And it’s still there?’ Mavros asked, amazed.

‘Yes. People left it as a memorial of Cretan suffering, I think, even though some call it the Evil Bird. The only thing they did was knock off the swastika the bird was holding.’

Mikis answered his phone and spoke briefly. ‘That was Yerasimos. They’re on the move again, heading west.’

Mavros considered calling Kersten, but he had the feeling the old man had reasons of his own for attending the filming and he didn’t think it was his place to interfere. He wanted to see the shoot himself, and he was also interested to see if David Waggoner would be present. He wasn’t going to tell him that Kanellos was his father, but he might be able to get more information about Spyros’s activities on Crete, even from a biased participant. He rang Hildegard Kersten and said that her husband was in a Tsifakis company car and being well looked after. She didn’t sound happy, but she was grateful for the news.

Mikis’s phone rang again several minutes later.

‘Yerasimos again,’ he said, after cutting the connection. ‘Mr Kersten is at Makrymari.’

‘The real massacre village?’

‘Correct. Do you want me to head there?’

‘If you can get us there without him seeing me.’

‘Done.’ Mikis took the next left off the main road and followed a narrow track through the orange trees. ‘This takes us round the back of the village.’

The leaves filtered the bright sunlight and the temperature was suddenly lower. It was a bucolic scene, the plump oranges weighing down the branches and the ground beneath covered with dark-red dust. Mavros thought of the early days of the war, when the paratroopers had been caught in the foliage and killed before they could untangle themselves. In the midst of beauty had been death. And his father. .

Makrymari was a small village, the white houses shaded by vines and oleanders. The buildings were all in good condition. A few hens clucked to their chicks.

‘There isn’t much to see here,’ Mikis said, pulling in behind a bulky pickup. ‘Only the memorial.’

Mavros walked forward slowly, taking in a curved wall in the middle of the fourth, open side of the square. Rudolf Kersten was on his knees in front of it, his head bowed. Mavros retreated behind a eucalyptus tree and waited until the old man had got up unsteadily and left a small bunch of wild flowers on the ground in front of the wall. The German then went back to the Mercedes at the far end of the square and got in, Yerasimos holding the rear door open.

When the car had turned and disappeared, Mavros walked through the uncut grass, past the spot where Kersten’s knees had crushed it, to the rough stone wall. Looking along, he realized what it represented. There were names at chest height every metre or so. Beneath them were dates of birth and death, the latter all being June 3rd 1941.

‘It’s the line of the executed,’ Mikis said.

‘I got that.’ Mavros looked at the name above the flowers — poppies that were already wilting, crown daisies and a couple of gladioli — and got a shock. ‘Aikaterini tou Pavlou Alivizaki,’ he read. A woman.

‘Black Katina, they call her,’ Mikis said. ‘Her father died before the war and she was in mourning. She also killed over twenty Germans and was one of the few who survived the Battle of Galatsi. They found recoil marks on her shoulder.’

Mavros put a hand out and touched the wall. He wondered if his father had met her when he was trying to dissuade the Cretans from the charge. He felt closer to him by thinking that he had.

‘Who carried out the massacre?’ he asked.

‘Paratroopers. There was a Captain Blatter who hated civilians who resisted. Not only that, but Goring had authorized summary executions.’

‘Do you think Kersten was here?’

‘He’s never confirmed or denied it, but he paid for the memorial wall and gave plenty of money to the families of the fallen — to the whole village, in fact.’

‘Jesus,’ Mavros said. Maybe Waggoner had been right — maybe Rudolf Kersten really had paid blood money.

Mikis’s phone rang.

‘That was Yerasimos,’ he said, after he’d finished. ‘They’re at the shoot.’

Mavros followed him back to the Jeep, wondering what kind of man could go straight from the place where he’d witnessed a massacre to a film set?

A large parking lot had been set up in a dusty field. After showing their passes, Mavros and the Cretan were admitted through the chain gate that marked off the shoot area. There were trailers, generators and cameras all over the place, men and women in caps and shorts running between them. Beyond, there were old buildings that had been supplemented with painted wooden facades and plants in pots.

‘They filmed some combat scenes here last week,’ Mikis said. ‘I guess they’re getting their money’s worth by staging the massacre in the same place.’

Mavros caught sight of Luke Jannet, surrounded by technicians at a large camera on a track. A raised platform under a sunshade had been set up behind the machines. Rosie Yellenberg was standing on it, wearing headphones and speaking constantly into a mouthpiece. David Waggoner was a few seats along, in blazer and dark glasses, while Rudolf Kersten was sitting outside a caravan with a security guy on the door. Mavros watched as Cara Parks appeared in a shabby but well-cut black dress, a black wig covering her blonde locks. She had been made up to have unnaturally rosy cheeks, though her arms were dirty and there was a fake bloodstain on her right shoulder. As she came out, Kersten got to his feet and spoke to her, an urgent look on his face. The actress nodded and then patted his arm. She was led by a production assistant to the edge of the set. There was no sign of Maria Kondos, though she may have been in the trailer.

A woman with a stentorian voice started bellowing instructions through a megaphone. Men in Fallschirmjageruniforms, several wearing shorts, started pushing extras dressed in Cretan costume and peasant clothing towards an open space in front of the trees. Before they got there, a heavily-built officer raised his hand and strode to Cara. He ripped her dress down from the neck, uncovering a bloody bandage on the right side and what was supposed to be heavy bruising on the left. No doubt deliberately, the costume had been sewn so that both her heavy breasts became visible. She crossed her arms over them and walked to the line that the old men and boys had already formed. She stood in the centre and then shouted in a clear voice, ‘Freedom or Death!’