Just before the machine-pistols started to rattle blanks, Cara stepped backwards and the men in the line joined up to cover her. Cameras on rails and pickups followed her as she sprinted to the trees and disappeared behind them, by which time the men were spurting fake blood and twitching on the ground. Paratroopers ran after her, the officer screaming orders impotently.
‘Cut!’ the women with the megaphone yelled.
Mavros watched as Luke Jannet went into a huddle with his sidekicks. Shortly afterwards, the woman started ordering people around again — the scene with the victims being chosen and sent to the line-up was to be shot again, which involved a long delay as their clothes were changed and new blood packets and squibs attached. During that time, Cara Parks ran to the trees several times as she was filmed from different angles. Mavros began to get bored with the process and moved away.
He heard his name called from the raised platform. David Waggoner was waving to him.
‘What did you think of that?’ the former SOE man asked, when Mavros had joined him.
‘Pretty powerful, I suppose.’
‘Nothing like the real thing, of course.’ Waggoner wiped his brow. He looked rather unwell.
‘You witnessed one?’
‘In a way of speaking.’ The old man looked into Mavros’s eyes.
‘You took part in one.’
‘Not as large as this, but we had to dispose of Germans and traitors.’
Mavros held his gaze. ‘You killed enemy soldiers in cold blood?’
Waggoner looked back at the set. ‘Cold blood, hot blood — those distinctions don’t exist in war. As you just saw, they certainly didn’t exist for the Krauts.’
His use of the term showed how little the passage of time had changed old prejudices, though Mavros doubted Rudolf Kersten would have used equivalent language about his war-time enemies.
‘Anyway, my point was that the real massacre at Makrymari didn’t happen as in the film.’
Mavros nodded. ‘Black Katina didn’t make it to the trees.’
The old soldier raised an eyebrow. ‘You havebeen digging.’
‘You met her, didn’t you?’
‘Indeed I did. At Galatsi. There was a charge and she led the locals.’ The wrinkled face slackened for a few moments. ‘My God, she was magnificent. We were under heavy fire from the Fallschirmjagers. My tank was knocked out and I found myself fighting alongside her. She led a charmed life — although she’d been wounded in the shoulder previously — and she was merciless. We killed the lot of them.’
‘So how did she end up in the execution line?’
‘I’m not sure. I was wounded when the enemy started firing from the higher ground — they cut down almost all the survivors. I presume Katina was captured at some point. You should ask that bastard Kersten. He was at Galatsi and he was in the firing squad at Makrymari.’
If what Waggoner said was true, how could Kersten bear to watch the reconstruction of the massacre? That he was plagued by guilt had been shown by his kneeling in front of the memorial wall at the village, but attending the shoot was incredible. Mavros’s Greek side, reinforced by the involvement of his father in the battle, was overwhelming the reserve he had inherited from his mother.
Leaving Waggoner without a word, he went in search of the German. He was no longer outside Cara Parks’ trailer. Mavros asked the security guard if he’d seen him.
‘He went over there,’ the big man said, pointing towards a grove of orange trees.
‘How long ago?’
‘About half an hour, I guess.’
So Kersten hadn’t witnessed the execution scene, Mavros thought, his anger still raging. He’d gone to hide; but he would have heard the sound of the machine-pistols. Served the bastard right.
‘Kersten?’ Mavros shouted, running through the first line of trees. ‘Where are you? Ker-’ He broke off and slowed down, but his heart continued to pump hard.
The old man was hanging from a branch, his belt round his neck. His knees were partially bent and the points of his shoes touched the earth, his trousers having slipped down his thin hips. His eyes were bulging, but his face was its normal tanned colour.
Mavros knew he shouldn’t interfere with the scene, but there was a chance Rudolf Kersten was still alive — hanging yourself that way took a lot longer than the clean break of a gallows. He turned to the left and approached the body from the rear. Putting his arms under the old man’s, he lifted him up, then struggled to open the belt enough to slip the head through the noose. He dragged Kersten to the rear and laid him down, ripping open his shirt and putting his ear to his chest. There was no heart beat. He was about to start artificial respiration when the old man’s head flopped to the side slackly.
Rudolf Kersten had managed to break his neck even though the tips of his feet were still on the ground.
FIFTEEN
Inspector Margaritis was not pleased with Mavros. It had taken the police nearly an hour to reach the set, during which time Mavros had informed Luke Jannet and Rosie Yellenberg, arranging with the latter for a cordon to be set up by members of the crew between Cara Parks’ trailer and the place where Rudolf Kersten lay. He had put a clean handkerchief over the old man’s face to protect it from the flies that were already gathering.
The actress returned from the shoot with a shawl over her shoulders. She was tearful and accepted that she couldn’t use her trailer until the police had checked it. In the event, Maria Kondos had stayed at the Heavenly Blue to rest.
‘What did he say to you when you came out?’ Mavros asked.
‘He. . he told me to give. . to give my all,’ she replied, sobbing. ‘That she — my character — deserved. . deserved the best.’
Mavros thought about that. Guilt, or was there something more behind the words? Had he chosen to kill himself or, more likely, been killed when the massacre was being filmed?
‘Oh, Alex, he was such a sweet old man. How could he have done that?’
He squeezed her arm and went to meet the inspector. There were several cars, marked and unmarked, in his procession, along with an ambulance.
‘What the hell were you doing, Mavro?’ Margaritis demanded, after he’d seen the body laid out in the orange grove.
‘Hoping I could save his life. His face wasn’t distended and he might have still been alive.’
Margaritis watched the technicians as they examined the ground in front of the tree. There weren’t any obvious marks among the dusty dead leaves, even from the dead man’s feet.
‘You realize you’re my prime suspect,’ the inspector said.
Mavros shrugged. ‘Ask around. I was watching the shoot and plenty of people must have seen me. Then I spoke to David Waggoner and the security man outside the trailer. Kersten had left half an hour before, according to him.’
‘Don’t worry, I will be asking around. In the meantime, you’ll be sitting in a police car with this pair of beauties.’
Two uniformed officers stepped forward.
‘Phone,’ Margaritis demanded, extending a hand.
Knowing that cooperation was the only way to go, Mavros gave him his mobile.
‘Search him.’
The older and more corpulent policeman subjected him to a less than subtle body search, handing the inspector his notebook and wallet.
Mavros watched as a doctor knelt down by Rudolf Kersten. He was about to point out his broken neck, but decided anything he said might count against him. The cops took his arms and walked him to a squad car, where he was put in the back seat with the windows closed. In the sultry heat, he tried to make sense of what was going on.
He was almost certain that Kersten had been murdered — that his neck had been broken before he’d been strung up — but he had doubts the police would see it that way, even if they cleared him. So who could be in the frame? David Waggoner, although highly antagonistic to the dead man, had been on the platform throughout the shoot — Mavros had glanced round and seen him several times, including once when he was speaking on his mobile. Two possibilities struck him — either some local, maybe encouraged by Waggoner and enraged, as Mavros himself had been, by the film’s stirring up of old horrors, had taken a long-standing vendetta to its conclusion; or, that the killing had nothing to do with the film or the war, but rather was connected to Kersten’s silver collection. Did Oskar Mesner, the old man’s grandson, have the balls to kill him? That thought didn’t make Mavros feel good, considering he had been the one to humiliate the young German and take the coins back from him. But, despite Mesner’s involvement with the far-right in Germany and Greece, he doubted that murder was in his repertoire — not even getting some other skin-headed bastard to do it.