‘Mikis Tsifakis,’ the driver replied. ‘You writing about the film?’

Mavros nodded vaguely. ‘How about you? Contracted by the production company?’

Mikis nodded happily. ‘My old man has hired out most of our fleet. That was him in the BMW.’

‘Good work?’

‘Ah, good enough. These Americans, they know how to keep their costs down.’

‘So, tell me, have you driven anyone famous?’

The young man beamed. ‘You bet. When the old man’s busy, I drive Cara Parks.’

‘Wow, what’s she like in the flesh?’ Mavros asked, playing the part of the lust-driven fan.

Mikis laughed. ‘Even more luscious than on screen. She’s nice, as well. She doesn’t have any airs. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes alone with that woman.’

Mavros spotted another interesting angle. ‘I suppose she always has an entourage in tow.’

‘Not really. A couple of security guys and a stuck-up woman called Maria, who I’ve heard speak Greek, but she never bothers with me. She acts like Cara’s personal Cerberus.’

‘She’s got three heads?’

Mikis glanced at him, grinning. ‘A tongue that’s three times more cutting than my grandmother’s.’

Mavros looked at the citrus groves to his right and the almost constant line of hotels and villas on the left, before getting to the point. ‘I hear this Maria’s gone missing.’

The driver’s face tightened. ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

Mavros wasn’t sure he was telling the truth, but he let it go. The Jeep took a left turn and stopped in front of an elaborate, barred gate. There was a column of TV vans and men with cameras on the roadside, a police officer watching them. A man dressed in traditional Cretan garb — high boots, baggy trousers, the vraka, and a tight headscarf, the mandili— came out of a hut and nodded at Mikis before admitting the vehicle.

‘The Heavenly Blue Resort,’ Mavros read on a gilt sign. ‘I’ve heard of this place.’

‘You should have,’ the young man said proudly. ‘Biggest and best hotel on the island. Mr Kersten brought in architects and designers from all over the world to upgrade it ten years ago.’

Although he habitually binned the travel, property and design sections of the Sunday newspapers with little more than a glance, Mavros had read about the resort and its German owner. It had been one of the few European-class hotels in Greece when it first opened for business in the 60s and it maintained that status. Suddenly he found himself wishing that the search for Maria Kondos would take weeks.

Mikis drove the Jeep along a tree-lined avenue to a large expanse of well-watered lawn, beyond which stood an imposing six-storey concrete building whose modernist brutalism was diluted by the flowers on every balcony. To its left and right were complexes of villas, along with more swimming pools than Mavros had ever seen in one location, even though the sea was only a few hundred metres away.

‘Amazing, eh?’ the driver said.

Mavros agreed, though the fact that all the staff seemed to be in Cretan costumes struck him as excessively kitschy.

‘Here you are.’ Mikis handed him a card. ‘Give me a call if you need a ride. It makes a change to have a Greek-speaking passenger.’

Mavros accepted it and extended a hand with a tip.

‘Not necessary,’ Mikis said, with a smile. ‘In fact, forbidden under the terms of our contract.’

Mavros stuck the banknote in the young man’s shirt pocket. ‘Not my contract. See you, my friend.’ He got out, sure that he would be making use of Mikis in the near future.

‘Good day, sir,’ said a young woman weighed down with a colourful but less than practical full-length costume. ‘Welcome to the Heavenly Blue Resort. Follow me to reception.’

Mavros did so, taking in the tastefully minimalist decor — pale grey marble floor, replicas — he presumed — of Minoan, Classical and Venetian art works on the walls, a high ceiling with lights hanging from wires entwined by convincing fake vines. The German owner definitely had better taste than the average hotelier in Greece.

‘Yes, Mr Mavros, we’re expecting you,’ said the receptionist, a svelte young man, in English, imagining the new arrival was a Greek-American. He looked momentarily confused when he saw Mavros’s Greek ID card.

‘Don’t worry, English is fine,’ Mavros said. ‘But don’t go talking about me in Greek when I turn my back.’

The receptionist looked horrified at the idea. ‘Here’s your key card, sir. You’re on the first floor, lifts over there. Do you need help with-’

‘No,’ Mavros said, lifting his small bag. ‘Long live Hollywood.’

A smile flickered across the receptionist’s face.

Mavros took the stairs to the first floor and walked down a long corridor to his room. The trek, which, along with the low level, showed that he wasn’t a major player, was worth it. The room was actually a small suite, the bedroom looking towards the sea and the sitting-room towards the mountains of the Rodhopou peninsula to the west. The air con was running and a television greeted him in sibilant tones. He turned both off and opened the balcony windows. People in shorts were walking to and from the villas, while others drove golf buggies to more distant locations. Even searching the grounds for Maria Kondos would take plenty of man hours.

He found the safe in one of the wardrobes and punched in the number supplied in an envelope, before changing it to the day and month of Niki’s birthday. There were two thousand Euros inside, along with a receipt, which he signed. Maybe his employers really did believe he could solve the case in a day. In any case, he wasn’t going to have many living expenses.

After a shower and change of shirt, Mavros picked up the phone and asked to be connected to Cara Parks’ suite. A harsh female voice answered in English.

‘The name’s Mavros. Ms Parks is expecting me.’ He heard muffled voices and then the woman came back on the line.

‘Come now,’ she said curtly. ‘501.’

Mavros climbed the stairs, all four flights, assuming it was the done thing to arrive at a Hollywood starlet’s suite panting.

From The Descent of Icarus:

It was a simple choice. I turned the MG34 towards the New Zealanders and emptied a drum of ammunition at them. The trees took many of the rounds, but there was no shortage of men yelling, falling and soon lying motionless. Then I looked round, the woman’s scream louder than all the shooting in the area.

I twisted aside just before the heavy butt of the antediluvian rifle crashed into the earth. There wasn’t time to fit another drum, so I swung the machine gun at her and swept her legs from beneath her. She didn’t stop coming at me, pulling herself forward despite the blood that was pouring from her shoulder. To my amazement, she laced her fingers round my neck and started to apply pressure.

Back then, I was ninety kilos of muscle and I broke her grip easily enough. Then she smashed her head into my face, breaking my nose. Where had she learned to fight like this? A Cretan cathouse? Again, I pushed her off me, wiping my sleeve across my streaming nose.

‘Rudi!’

I looked beyond the woman and saw Peter Wachter and a small group of comrades approach across the open ground. She tried to headbutt me again and I finally lost patience, landing a right that Max Schmeling, former world heavyweight champion and now also a paratrooper somewhere in Crete, would have been proud of. She hit the dirt and lay still.

‘Fuck’s sake, Rudi,’ Peter said, as he crouched down beside me. ‘You take out a section of Maoris and then get your nose crushed by a woman?’

‘Defensive positions, boys,’ Lieutenant Schmidt ordered. ‘Well done, Kersten, at least with the New Zealanders.’ He smiled grimly. ‘But that wasn’t all of them.’

A 109 shrieked past overhead, its machine guns blasting, and then we heard an unknown sound that got all our hackles up. It was a chant, voiced loudly and in perfect unison, by numerous voices in a language none of us had ever heard. But we got the message clearly enough. It was a more terrifying war cry than anything our instructors had come up with, a challenge that made clear mercy would not be forthcoming. When it stopped, there was the sound of heavy men crashing through the trees.