It must have seemed disrespectful to clear them so soon after such a terrible event, but in due course the men and women of the village would be stirring themselves to get up and set everything straight.
The sun was just coming up now, and in a shaft of low light, something glinted. Manolis took a few steps forward, glancing behind him to make sure that nobody was about. Then he stooped down. There, unmistakable on the cobbles, was an earring. It was one of a pair that he had given Anna on her saint’s day a few years ago. They had bright aquamarine stones in an ornate pendulum setting, and although they were worth less than any jewellery she had ever received from Andreas, she had been thrilled with them and wore them on special occasions.
He picked it up and quickly put it in his trouser pocket before hurrying to his truck, parked some way up the road. He had a plan now.
As he drove up the hill towards his home, he could not stop himself thinking of Anna’s final moments. Only God and Andreas knew what she had said, but there was no doubt in his mind that he, Manolis, had been the subject. He was the reason that Anna had died and now he had to live without her. The anguish was unbearable.
Although he had not pulled the trigger, he felt responsible, the one to blame. He would not be the one put on trial, but he knew that rumours spread like hill fires in a drought. Suddenly he felt sympathy for those who had left Spinalonga the previous day. Like them, he would always carry a stigma.
The life he had enjoyed in Elounda was over.
Back in his house, he ran upstairs, threw a few clothes into a bag, and then paused for a second, remembering a roll of drachmas tucked into his top drawer. Taking a final look at his bedroom, he caught sight of two framed photographs sitting on a shelf. He ran his fingernail round the seal on the back of one, pulled out the faded image of his parents and dropped it on top of his bag. Next to it was a baptism photograph: Andreas, Anna in the middle, holding Sofia, and himself. He tore it out of the frame and slid it into his shirt pocket.
Moments after Manolis left his house, a truck came from the other direction. It was Antonis.
The night before, it was he who had led the search party to find Andreas. Antonis still held close the memories of his years as an andarte captain and readily commanded the respect of his contemporaries. He also knew the places where men hid and how to find them. He had split the group of six into three pairs and sent each in a different direction. The men were all young and fast, and within ten minutes they had closed the circle and found their man.
Andreas was cowering in the doorway of the church, still holding the pistol in his hand, but he looked more likely to turn it on himself than use it against anyone else. He was curled into a foetal position, shaking and terrified, and immediately responded to Antonis’s command to put down the gun. He willingly allowed two men to lead him back towards the village square.
It was Antonis who picked up the weapon. For a moment he contemplated firing it into Andreas’s back as he was escorted away. But death would be no punishment for a man who had murdered his own wife in cold blood. Antonis hated his boss. This past decade he had resented the man he worked for, not for a single day forgetting that Andreas Vandoulakis had stolen the woman he loved.
Anna had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. Their families had been interconnected and they had seen each other almost every day from childhood through to adolescence. While he was fighting in the resistance, he found himself thinking of her endlessly, spurred to acts of courage not only by patriotism but by the hope that she might admire him when he returned. Each night, as he laid his head on stony ground, he imagined the moment when Anna would learn of his selfless bravery. He returned bruised in body and mind, and at the gléndi to celebrate the return of all those who had taken part in the resistance against the Germans, he finally held her in his arms. The pair of them had crept away from the party in Plaka to steal their first kiss.
On that same night, Andreas Vandoulakis had appeared in the village. If he was looking for the most beautiful woman in Elounda, he had come to the right place. Anna was there, flushed and beautiful from the dancing and from the touch of Antonis’s lips.
The situation had been further exacerbated by Andreas’s order to Antonis the following day to take a letter to Anna. Antonis could not refuse, even though he knew that he was hastening the end of his own chances with her. With the exception of Fotini, who was sworn to secrecy, he had never mentioned to another soul the way his hopes had been raised and dashed. It would only deepen his humiliation.
Andreas had been Antonis’s boss then, and more than a decade later, he still was. There were few better places to work. The Vandoulakis estate paid well and it caused him no difficulty to take his salary from a man he resented. He enjoyed the physical demands of working with the land, spending all day with men he had known since boyhood, and the company of Manolis, who was now his best friend, someone who had brought so much life and gaiety to their small society. But his anger towards Andreas Vandoulakis had never gone away, and he sensed that Anna knew this. Occasionally when the workers were invited to the boss’s house to celebrate the end of the grape harvest or the making of the raki, Anna would be there, and Antonis had enjoyed seeing her discomfort at his presence.
Anna had known that Antonis had never married. For years Fotini had been doing her best to matchmake her brother with friends and cousins of friends. He was extremely good-looking, with chiselled cheekbones and long lashes around unfathomably dark eyes. Potential matches were even impressed by the scar from the German bullet that had grazed his neck during the occupation. All of them found this war hero attractive physically, but there was something that deterred them: his gruff manner, and perhaps his honesty too. He did not conceal his lack of interest and made it very clear that marriage was the last thing on his mind. Most of these girls did not have time to waste so quickly gave up on him.
‘Come on, Antonis. There are plenty of women around who want a husband. And need one,’ Fotini would say.
‘Well I don’t need a wife,’ he would retort.
He tolerated and was sometimes amused by his sister’s efforts, but they both knew that there was nobody in Plaka or in any of the villages around to match Anna.
‘You need to stop being so fussy!’ were Fotini’s usual words to end the conversation.
That morning, after a few snatched hours of sleep, Antonis had woken up with one thought in his head: he had not seen Manolis at all the previous evening. His friend had said that he was going to the celebration in Plaka and it seemed strange that he had not been there with the rest. It was unlike him to miss such an event.
After they had handed Andreas over to the authorities and Antonis had made a call to Alexandros Vandoulakis to tell him that his son had been arrested, the men of the search party had sat in the bar until the early hours of the morning, speculating over what had happened. Now, the words of one of the men suddenly came back to him:
‘Hope he didn’t kill his cousin too.’
They had seemed absurd at the time, but now they nagged him. He would go immediately to Manolis’s place and check on him.
Manolis’s truck was not there, so clearly he was out. Antonis tried the latch and the door opened.
He had never been inside the house before so had no idea what kind of state his friend normally lived in, but he was unsurprised to see the messy kitchen with its crumbs strewn across the table and an open bottle of wine, half empty. The state of the bedroom upstairs was more revealing. It looked ransacked, with clothes pulled from the wardrobe left lying on the bed and all the drawers open and empty.