Turtle Hawks

By Ian Douglas Robertson

Pericles (Peri) Pontakis, investigative journalist and host of the controversial TV show Under World, is fighting a losing battle against corruption in the upper chelons of Greek society. He has little to show for a life's committment to social justice, except a ruined marriage, two alienated children, a mountain of debt, and a multitude of powerful and dangerous enemies. Among his many admirers and acquaintances, his only true friends are Jack, his feisty cat, and the down-and-out journalist, Christos, to whom he lets the apartment below. When his life starts collapsing around him, he decides to change tack and make a documentary about the threatened Loggerhead turtle, in the hope that this undemanding project will enable him to save not only the turtle but his own soul. However, the path to salvation is strewn with unforeseen obstacles, some of which prove not altogether unpleasant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456731953

Ian Douglas Robertson

Ian Douglas Robertson read French and Spanish Language and Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating, he came to live in Greece, where he works as a teacher, actor, translator and writer. He has translated a number of academic works from Greek into English, including The History of the Olympic Games, The History of the Greek National Theatre, etc. He has also translated three novels by Nestor Matsas, one of which has been published in the US under the title Good Morning, Mr. Freud. He has also written simplified readers and plays for young learners of English, as well as a successful advanced GCE O Level textbook. He has written poetry, short stories and novels, but has yet to have a novel published. His short story Alki's Latest Joke was published in the Athens News as part of a story-writing competition. He has played a number of roles both on stage and in film, from Ernest Worthing to Sir Andrew Aquecheek. He is currently negotiating to play Torvald in A Doll's House, which will be one of the first web films to be produced in Greece. His tastes in literature, as in life, are eclectic. Above all, he loves the magic of a good story well told. As a child brought up in Ireland, he listened enraptured to such stories told by some of a dying breed of great storytellers.

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Contents

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1

Though a public man, Pericles cherished his privacy, particularly on Saturday, the one day of the week he could call his own. So, when the phone rang just as he was getting into an episode of Lucky Luke, which came with Saturdays’ Kathimerini, he made sure to identify the number first before answering it.

The thought that it might be Marios unnerved him. On the one hand, he wanted to patch things up between them. On the other, he couldn’t stand the thought of having to refuse him for the umpteenth time. Yet, the long silence that had followed the heated phonecalls was beginning to disturb him. He didn’t enjoy being alienated from his children. He had enough enemies as it was. Yet, why couldn’t his offspring ever understand his point of view?

As one of Greece’s prominent journalists, Peri had acquired many influential connections, people who would bend over backwards to put him under an obligation to them. One of these was the wife of a leading Greek banker, famous for her involvement in various charities and a frequent guest on his show. Peri suspected her husband was not averse to a little underhand dealing, which he might be persuaded to keep quiet about if he owed them a favour. Marios knew that all Peri had to do was have a word with Mrs. X and within hours he’d have a job for the boys in one of Greece’s top banks. Marios saw nothing wrong in this. He had a degree in Economics from ASOE and was prepared to work hard to compensate for his lack of experience. Peri, on the other hand, was unwilling to do what most Greeks consider the most effective means of furthering their ends and those of their nearest and dearest. The result was a fierce argument between father and son, in which incidents were dredged up from the past, further embittering a relationship that had gone seriously sour even before the infamous divorce had shattered the nucleus of the Pontakis family.

Peri was not totally unsympathetic. He understood the boy’s frustration. Times were hard, particularly for young graduates. The economy was sinking into recession and the job market was saturated. Since he’d graduated from university and completed his military service, his son had had a series of deadend positions on subsistence pay and was rapidly beginning to think he would never come even close to emulating his eminently successful father. The job of sub-manager in a sorting office, for example, had paid just enough to cover the rent on a one-room basement flat, leased in a pique of frustration in a desperate attempt to proclaim his independence.

Peri, however, stubbornly refused to give in to his son’s demands. If he was to stand up in public and condemn backhanders and nepotism, he had to make sure his own house was in order. Apart from anything else, to secure the job in the bank for Marios would have been the thin edge of the wedge. The boy would have expected more leg-ups and handouts. It would have been only a matter of time before he was sliding down the slippery slope to wimpdom. Peri was of the opinion you had to be tough to survive in a contemporary Western society, in which job security had become a thing of the past. Besides, all the Pontakis right back to the early 20th century had been fighters, even if they had always fought on the losing side. It was about time Pontakis the Younger let go of his mother’s apron strings and learnt to fend for himself.

Peri remembered his son’s last words. ‘I ask you to do one small favour for me, Baba! One phonecall, for God’s sake! Is that too much to ask? After all, what have you ever done for me?’ Initially, Peri was hurt, then angry and finally dismissive. He didn’t feel obliged to explain his position to his son. The boy should have known by now that his father had a reputation to uphold. He was no novice to Greek affairs. He knew perfectly well that half the population of Greece would have liked nothing better than see Peri Pontakis buried in a hole of his own making. A lot of toes had been stepped on in the twenty years Under World had been investigating the illicit activities of the high and mighty. Peri didn’t answer Marios’ last question and Marios hung up without another word. That was the last time they’d spoken.

After a great deal of eye-squinting, Peri was pretty sure the blurred name on the front of his mobile said Makis not Marios. Another fight with his son would have seriously spoilt the rest of the only day in the week when he didn’t have to wade knee-deep in shit.

Makis, his chief investigator and righthand man was a workaholic like himself but two and half decades his junior and still enthused with a youthful ambition to change Greek society and do battle with the forces of evil. Besides, if it weren’t for corruption, he wouldn’t have a job that kept him in full-time employment.

Pericles hesitated. If they think they can ring you up whenever they feel the itch, soon your life won’t be worth living. Everybody knew, particularly his close associates, that Saturday was sacred for him. It must be something important. Peri pressed the receive button and put the phone to his ear.

‘Makis, this had better be good,’ said Peri, giving full vent to his irritation, insinuating that Makis had violated the unwritten code of journalistic behaviour. The truth was he adored the feeling of urgency that followed such calls. Life once more acquired meaning. More to the point, its purpose ceased to be in question. The call could not have been timelier. He was in the middle of one of his grand funks, an indication that an investigation was becoming stale news.

‘Sorry, boss,’ said Makis cautiously. ‘Shall I call later?’ The truth is Saturday was as sacred to Makis as it was to Peri. It was hard keeping a demanding young wife happy at the best of times, and with a boss like Peri almost impossible any of the time.

‘Haven’t you ever heard of the word privacy?’

‘Peri, you’re talking to a journalist.’

‘Touché! I see you’ve learnt something since you joined the trade. Well, if you want to know, Lucky Luke was just about to nab the Daltons as they robbed the rail workers’ payroll.’

‘I see,’ said Makis. He smiled at the thought of Pericles Pontakis, the bogeyman of Greek society, engrossed in a children’s comic. Yet, if he had to choose a cartoon character to fit his boss, it would be Lucky Luke, the lonely cowboy.

‘So, I like reading comics on my day off,’ said Peri, suspecting Makis was having a little chuckle to himself. ‘I suppose you read Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. We all have our little perversities, you know. So, what is it?’

‘It’s a scandal that involves a lot of people in very high places,’ said Makis stressing the words scandal and high places. They didn’t call Peri the human Enceladus for nothing. Like his mythological counterpart, he liked to shake Greece from time to time, sowing panic among the superficially respectable.

‘I see,’ said Peri unenthusiastically. He didn’t want to give his assistant the impression that hunting down eponymous crooks gave meaning to his life, because it didn’t. No matter how many pedestals he toppled, like Enceladus he still felt imprisoned and frustrated. It was partly due to the unending nature of his mission, but it also had to do with his own nature. The euphoria that followed success evaporated like 100% proof alcohol and the vacuum it created was instantly engulfed by a crushing low, a malaise that weighed down on him like the sickly brown pollution cloud that often hung over Athens.

Makis waited patiently on the line.

Peri eyed the bait. Did he want another scandal just now? He was still fighting corruption in the upper échelons of the Greek civil service and getting nowhere. Corruption was so much a part of Greek life that no one actually saw it as corruption, just a manipulation of the system. It was beginning to drain him. He felt like Perseas and the multi-headed Methusa. To make matters worse, he had a mounting stack of libel cases, which would keep his long-suffering lawyer Stilianidis in gainful employment for the rest of his legal career.

‘Makis, I’m tired of having enemies. Isn’t it time I made some friends?’

Makis was taken aback by the defeatist tone in Peri’s voice. This was not the Peri he knew and loved, the Peri who said, ‘every new enemy is a step in the right direction’.

‘But you don’t like friends,’ said Makis. ‘You said yourself you’re the only man in the media who has the balls to make real enemies.’

‘So, don’t I have the right to evolve?’

After so many years working with Peri, Makis recognised the reference to André Malraux’s famous remark ‘J’ai évolué’, which Peri liked to quote whenever he felt the need to contradict himself. Peri had been a student in France, one of the activists in the Paris riots of May ‘68. The man had always been in the right place at the right time; a student in Paris in 1968 and then a young journalist in Athens in 1973 during the student/worker uprising against the Junta. He had met Caramanlis off the plane from Paris and saw Papandreou sworn in as Greece’s first socialist prime minister. His historical serendipity was the only part of Peri’s life Makis truly envied. Peri had seen it all, lived it all. Yet, the old fighter, whom Makis had always thought was resistant to bullets and bombs, vituperations and vitriol, death threats and lawsuits, Molotov cocktails and flame-throwers, was showing his age, or so it seemed.

‘So, you’re not interested. I thought you couldn’t resist a scandal of global magnitude,’ said Makis, aiming at Peri’s Achilles heel.

Again there was silence.

‘Hello. You haven’t hung up on me, have you, Peri?’

Peri’s voice emerged from the handset as if from a bottomless pit.

‘I’d like to be Nikolouli,’ said Peri dolefully. ‘People love her.’ Peri’s plaintive voice evoked images of a little boy in a department store whose mother had wandered off and left him.

Makis had difficulty containing a chuckle. Mrs. Nikolouli was probably the least controversial character on Greek TV, Peri’s exact opposite in fact. Even the cynics stintingly admired her charismatic kind-auntie persona. The tenacity she displayed in her quest for missing persons was legendary. Skeletons tumbled out of cupboards in droves, despair was rampant, and you got a full frontal of stark misery in all its pitiful mundanity, all this in the comfort of one’s home, a can of Mythos beer in one hand and a packet of Tasty crisps in the other. No wonder they loved her.

Peri could hear Makis tittering. ‘You see,’ said Peri. ‘This is just what I mean. You think I’m some sort of Roboreporter, but I have needs like anyone else. And nobody loves me! Even Jack is acting up. Squirts all over the place. If a man’s cat doesn’t love him, what can he expect from the rest of the world?’

Though comic coming from Peri, Makis knew there was a serious underbelly to it. ‘I love you, Peri,’ said Makis impetuously.

‘Does anyone else love me?’

‘Well, let me think…’

‘You see!’

‘People… admire you,’ said Makis, not quite sure how people actually saw Peri Pontakis.

‘Oh, great!’

‘Ok. So, most people think you’re just a troublemaker, but there are people out there who genuinely think that Greek society would be a lot worse off without you.’

‘I’m seriously thinking of offering my services to Nikolouli,’ said Peri glumly. ‘She has a real talent that woman.’

‘Are you sure it has nothing to do with your ratings? After she nearly found the missing Russian boy, hers soared to 45%. Yours were hovering at around 30% last time I looked, and with interest waning on the doctors’ scandal they could drop still further.’

‘Makis, you are heartless. Have I ever cared about ratings?’

‘Well, I remember you being a bit upset when the bombings in London pushed your ratings down to 20%.’

‘I can see you’re determined to ruin my weekend. Just tell me what your call is about and leave me in peace.’

‘It’s to do with turtles,’ said Makis, slurring the word turtles slightly.

There was an abysmal silence on the other end, interrupted by an Al Pacino-like guffaw. ‘Turtles! For Christ’s sake! Who do you think I am? Jacques Cousteau?’

‘Peri, just think about it! People love turtles. If you save the turtles, they’ll love you too. It’ll do your image no end of good. Not to mention your ratings!’ Damn! He’d uttered the dreaded word again.

‘Look, if you mention my ratings one more time, you really will be fired!’

‘Sorry, it just slipped out.’ ‘Ratings, ratings, ratings,’ muttered Makis in an effort to expunge the offensive word from his active vocabulary.

There was another silence.

‘Makis, tell me, in the name of God, how can I save the turtles?’

Peri was snapping at the bait, albeit tentatively. Makis was wondering whether he would finally be working on a case that made Mariza happy. Recently she’d been wearing an unbelievably attractive T-shirt with the words Save Caretta Caretta scattered around a print of the hideous beast. It would almost certainly warrant a visit or two to the island, where they would stay in the same little hotel where they had spent their honeymoon.

‘Well, first of all, you’re Peri Pontakis…’

‘So?’

‘Well, people are afraid of you…’

‘What do you mean?’ said Peri petulantly.

‘I meant you can cause a stir… in high places.’

‘If all those NGOs can’t raise public awareness about the turtle’s plight, what on earth can I do? Anyway, how do you know the turtle is not being saved at this very moment?’

‘Mariza told me.’ He knew at once Peri would have a field day with a remark like that.

It came in the guise of a withering laugh. ‘Ha! And what does Mariza, bless her heart, know about turtles?’

‘She is well informed, Peri,’ said Makis, aware of how pathetic his words sounded.

‘When is it she reads the news?’

‘Why?’ said Makis apprehensively.

‘Just curious.’

Makis suspected Peri was drawing him into a trap, but he answered anyway. ‘A little after midnight.’

‘You mean 5 a.m., don’t you?’

‘Well, you’ve got to start somewhere,’ said Makis leaping to his damsel’s defence. Makis had first seen her on a late-night stakeout when they had turned on the TV to while away the hours. It was love at first sight. The next day he made a beeline for Channel 5’s news department and got a friend to give him details of her work schedule and marital status. After repeated endeavours, she finally accepted an invitation to go with him to one of Athens’ best restaurants. Three months later, when her passion was at its zenith, he proposed to her. He was actually quite taken aback when she accepted. ‘And, she is very well informed on the turtles nesting in Mediterranean waters,’ added Makis, who was unashamedly proud of his beautiful wife. ‘She’s a very close friend of the head of the organization trying to save the turtles, SAMET.’

‘Sorry, Makis, but we can’t turn Under World into a platform for our pet hang-ups.’

‘Peri, please, give it some thought. It’s a very good cause.’

‘I’ve no doubt it is a good cause but our aim is not to please marginal ecological groups or sentimental environmentalists. Or our wives, for that matter! Apart from a few old grannies who give what they can from their dwindling pensions, quite frankly, no one else could give a shit!’

Makis realized he’d have to pull one more rabbit out of the hat if he was going to bring Peri round to the idea of adopting a turtle, or, preferably, the whole species. ‘By the way I didn’t tell you that the head of SAMET has been receiving death threats.’

‘Death threats? Since when did the Mediterranean turtle become a matter of life and death?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Isn’t Tsiantos a quiet little island which wakes up once a year around May, welcomes a few tourists in search of an annual dose of sun, sea and sex, and in September goes back to sleep again?’

‘No, Peri. When was the last time you went to Tsiantos?’

‘Let’s see. About thirty years ago, I suppose.’

‘Right, well, things have changed. The once sleepy little island with its fishermen and vineyards is now a hotbed of vice and corruption.’ Makis bit his upper lip. He didn’t want to overdo it or Peri would think he was making it up.

‘I see. And I suppose you have this straight from Mariza, who got it straight from the mouth of the old granny who runs SAMET. Am I right?’

‘Not quite, Peri. SAMET is not run by a little old lady but a tall old man. Well, not terribly old. About 60 or so.’

Peri humphed and Makis realized he’d put his foot in it again.

‘Who is quite nutty, no doubt?’

‘A little eccentric but a very genuine sort, I’d say.’

‘That’s a start. So, if I do go and interview this old fellow, am I likely to be wasting an afternoon when I could be doing something about my sex life?’

The tone of Peri’s voice had softened. He was coming round. ‘Fantastic, Peri! You won’t regret it. If this turns out to be unproductive, I’ll hand in my resignation.’

‘You won’t have to. I’ll hand it in for you. So, where can I find him?’

‘Down town. In the Plaka. I’ll text you with the full address and phone number. Do you want me to come with you?’

‘I think I can take an interview without you breathing down my neck. Just call and book me an interview for Monday at ….let’s say… 10 o’clock.’

‘Ah, a problem. He doesn’t go to the office until the afternoon. He’s a bad sleeper, doesn’t get up till midday.’

‘Another of Mariza’s fans I see.’

Peri knew he was being a bastard but felt no remorse. He blamed it on a condition he had been suffering from for some months, which he called ‘acute human-affection deficiency’ or AHAD or ‘A had it once but no longer’.

‘Yes,’ said Makis coolly. ‘I’ll text you. Have a good…’

Peri had already hung up.

2

Peri was wrenched from a restless slumber by a cat pawing at his face. The cat, which had grabbed his temples with its sabre-like claws, was stifling him in the fur of its sagging belly. To avoid being choked to death by his beloved Jack, Peri grabbed the beast by the scruff of the neck and ripped it off his face, leaving an angry gash down one cheek, where Jack had tried to hang on with one claw. Peri yelled in pain. His arm swung back like a Roman catapult. All he had to do was release the pin in his elbow and his cat would be no more than an intriguing objet d’art clinging to the bedroom wall. As always, Jack was granted a stay of execution. The truth was Peri loved his cat more than anything else in the world and wouldn’t lay a finger on him.

In a show of remorse, Jack nuzzled into Peri’s chin and started purring like a turbo jet engine. Peri felt the side of his face and realized he was bleeding. He glanced at the clock and saw a blur of grey on black. For the past year he’d been steadily going blind. As a concession to this frustrating symptom of middle age he had gone out and purchased a pair of 10-euro reading glasses from his local chemist’s. The trouble was he could never find them.

After grimacing attempts to make out the elusive numbers, he realized that without his glasses he would have to turn on the radio to hear the time, which he was loathe to do in case he was front page news, which would mean having to spend the day justifying his claim in the Sunday rag that one-armed bandits were destroying families up and down the country. Nothing aggravated him more than TV and radio interviews, whose sole purpose was to allow a smartass interviewer the opportunity to prove how clever he was.

Peri still couldn’t find his glasses. It occurred to him that he might need a second pair to find the first pair and vowed that the next time he went to the chemist’s he’d buy a half dozen pairs and scatter them liberally around the flat. He began stripping the bed, cover by cover. Jack pounced on every sheet and blanket as if it were a pre-historic bird deploying its wings in an ungainly attempt at flight. Peri finally located his glasses wedged between the upper and lower mattresses. How in God’s name did they get there?

It was nearly 9.30. He should have been halfway to Marousi by now. He was dreading the day. He had to squeeze in an interview with a crank on a mission to save the Mediterranean turtle and then there was the night’s show, which risked being a disaster if Makis and crew didn’t uncover a mound of shit that he could copiously dispense throughout the show. He had promised his viewers sensational revelations, but as yet he had nothing that would come anywhere near to gratifying their insatiable appetite for dirt.

Of course, there was always Plan B. He had some angry guests he could invite on to the show. All he had to do was let them off their leash and they’d go straight for the jugular of his current target, a top surgeon who had refused to perform an operation on an old woman from the country because she couldn’t pay a large sum of money under the counter. The sum in question was the equivalent of what Hariclia and her shepherd husband earned in a year by slaughtering a few lambs and selling a barrel or two of feta cheese at an extortionately low price to a greaser in a shiny suit driving an outsized BMW 4 X 4.

The cost of removing old ‘Auntie’ Hariclia’s malignant left ovary was theoretically covered by the state. Yet, many civil service doctors felt the state’s inability to pay them adequately should be compensated by fakellakia or little envelopes. In most cases, the family rallied round and came up with the ‘little envelope’, but Peri had made it his business to find out how many couldn’t and were quietly dying in the corridors of the state’s overcrowded hospitals. Latest statistics revealed that Greeks paid nearly two billion euros a year on bribes and backhanders.

Peri, still in faded black vest and moth-eaten underpants, stepped over the piles of books, clothes, beer cans and other sundry items that littered the floor of his bedroom. So intent was he on the day ahead that he nearly passed the balcony window without performing his most important ritual of the day. The sight of the Parthenon never failed to bring him down from the giddy heights of celebrity status. He had no delusions of grandeur, but he had to admit that at times the power bestowed on him by the little silver screen could be intoxicating; hence, the need for a moment’s reflection on the superiority of his ancient forbears. Beneath this magnificent structure, which had survived Turkish gunpowder, German barbarity and Lord Elgin, immaculate in creamy white marble, enhanced by the rays of the morning sun, he felt as insignificant as the mosquito on the grubby window pane, its diaphanous frame barely visible in the morning sunlight. His only wish was that one day he would open the curtains and find that the cranes had gone. As one Athenian wit had put it, ‘It took the ancient Greeks seven years to build the Parthenon and the modern Greeks 170 years to repair it.’

He opened the window wide, breathed in a lungful of early-morning exhaust fumes, a pale substitute for what used to be his first cigarette of the day. He genuflected in the direction of the Acropolis and crossed himself three times. As a lapsed Orthodox Christian and an uneasy atheist, he found considerable comfort in a sort of pagan Christianity that more or less summed up his religious disbeliefs.

As he entered the kitchen, he was nearly bowled over by an overwhelming stench. Was it last night’s supper? No. He hadn’t had supper at home for at least a week. Could it be last week’s supper? Hardly. He had observed that pizza tended not to decompose but fossilised into something vaguely mineral. He searched in the vegetable racks but only found putrefying onions and potatoes that had gained a new lease of life in the confined humidity of the bottom shelf.

He wondered whether it was coming from the fridge. He hadn’t done his monthly clean-out for at least three months. What he saw when he opened the fridge was not a pretty sight but at least the rubber insulation around the door sealed in the pungent brew of fermenting fruit and veg.

Using his olfactory organs to the best of their jaded ability he followed his nose, from cupboard to cupboard stalking the offensive odour. He ended up at the sink. He opened the warped door and removed a pile of unopened detergents and sponges and found what he was looking for, the remains of a rat. Now how did that get there?

Peri looked at Jack. Jack rejoined with a how-dare-you-accuse-me look in his eyes and an angry twitch of his whiskers.

‘Well, don’t just look at me like that!’ said Peri, slapping his hairy thighs in frustration.

Jack turned up his nose and walked away.

‘Hey, mister! Don’t walk away from me when we’re about to have a serious conversation? Who puts the food in the bowl?’

Jack cast a disdainful glance in Peri’s direction as if to say, ‘Oh yeah, well, I’m getting sick to death of that cheap tinned food you give me. Even a stray wouldn’t stoop to eat it.’

Peri looked away in shame. He knew he neglected his cat, just as he had neglected his wife and children. He made a mental note to get some good quality cat food from the high-class supermarket on the corner. He could hear Jack’s accusing miaow. ‘You think you can buy me off with expensive presents. I want you to myself for a change, Peri. I don’t want to have to share you with another two million people.’

‘Look, Jack, next weekend we’ll have some quality time together.’

Jack glared at him sceptically.

‘No, look. This time I mean it. I really do.’

Jack put his paws over his ears and curled up on the pile of blankets on the bedroom floor.

Peri felt his chin to convince himself he didn’t need to shave. Though the unshaven look was in fashion, he knew that his salt and pepper whiskers added at least five years to his age, which at his time of life he could ill afford. Shaving was not his favourite ritual of the day, particularly after a late night and a litre or two of wine. He had tried doing it with his eyes shut, but he invariably ended up looking like a stuck pig with bits of cottonwool hanging from its snout.

He’d just have to get Fofi, the make-up artist, to give him a quick once over before the night’s show. She seemed to enjoy it. At least, that’s what he liked to think as she leaned over him, exposing a vast acreage of flesh. Not that he should jump to conclusions. Why should she fancy an old geezer like him? Of course, the answer was obvious. There weren’t many who could boast of having been to bed with Peri Pontakis. Pathetically few, in fact. But he had to be careful. The tattle columns would lap it up and before he knew it they’d have him betrothed to the woman.

He could see the headline; PONTAKIS IN AFFAIR WITH MAKE-UP ARTIST and the sub-heading - Is it the real thing? They were always asking if it was the real thing, as if anything was ever the real thing. He threw a cursory glance in the mirror of the en suite bathroom and noticed the red gash down the side of his face. Well, that’ll give them something to tattle about. Would anyone believe it was made by a loving cat and not a spirited young lady? He could see the headline of the Channel 5 tattle-sheet: PERI GETS COMEUPPANCE FROM UNWILLING PARTNER.

No one at Channel 5 believed he hadn’t taken advantage of some of the beddable females that formed his entourage on and off the set. The opportunities were abundant and despite his advancing years he knew he was not unattractive to the opposite sex. ‘Craggily sexy’ (a loose translation) was a term Ilya had heard some young lady use to describe him.

He just wasn’t the type to indulge in casual sex. It was something he fantasised about, but had never been able to do in real life, married or unmarried. On the few occasions he had, he had sorely regretted it. Life became so intrusively complex, and the affair, though entertaining at first, inevitably turned into a distraction. His life ceased to be his own. He had to think about someone else’s needs and desires, which, as a rule, were not in line with his.

Yet, despite his attempts to deflect the seductive smiles and caresses of the opposite sex, there was always that irresistible and totally inappropriate woman who refused to leave him alone. His current aficionado was his boss’s daughter, the last person on earth he should have an affair with. At 40, she was already on her third marriage and heading rapidly towards her fourth. Why she had set her sights on him was beyond him. She had the pick of every suntanned muscle-bound stud in Greece’s jet set society.

He should have felt flattered, but he was already expending valuable time and energy devising ways of avoiding her. She was forever popping up at the most inappropriate moments, just like her text messages, which were no less pornographic in their explicitness. He didn’t always respond, but when he did it was with a throwaway phrase like ‘Glad you’re well. P.’. Yet, the mere act of replying, he realized, could be misconstrued.

The problem was that he found her quite intoxicating and the more he spurned her the more she intensified her sexual blitz kriegs. ‘I want to feel your manhood inside me.’ ‘Let me take you to heaven.’ He always read her messages, whether out of idle curiosity or perverse prurience he wasn’t sure. The truth was they did trigger pleasant fantasies which helped lull him to sleep at night. Ultimately, Peri knew they were little battering rams pounding away at the door of his beleaguered chastity and he was sorely afraid he would one day capitulate. The boss was no fool. He must know that his beloved daughter was circling his number-one presenter like a bitch on heat. Not that he Peri should worry. His conscience was clear. For the moment, at least. Sooner or later, though, a man in the desert must drink, even if it means dipping into someone else’s water-hole.

He threw on some tired jeans and a worn leather jacket. Though early May, the mornings were still nippy. He grabbed his briefcase and passed the kitchen on the way to the door. The smell of rotting flesh once again filled his nostrils. He hurried to the kitchen sink and slammed the cupboard door shut in the hope the neighbours wouldn’t call the police.

As he was closing his front door he heard slippered feet shuffling along the marble landing below. With any luck it was Christos.

‘Christos, is that you?’ Peri shouted down the stairwell.

There was a moment’s silence followed by a muffled cough and a gravelly voice. ‘Hey, Peri!’

‘Where the hell have you been hiding? I thought you’d done a bunk,’ said Peri with an edge of barbed humour. The man owed him five months’ rent and it was getting beyond a joke.

Peri rounded the bend in the stairs and saw the man in question in the act of regretting having chosen that particular moment to take his rubbish out to the bin. He had thin white hair, a white moustache stained mustardy brown, and bushy black eyebrows that looked unreal, as if they’d been stuck on with theatrical glue.

‘Peri, you’re looking good,’ said Christos with forced interest, shifting uncomfortably in his shabby slippers, edging slowly towards the sanctuary of his apartment. ‘Life treating you well? Love the show, mate. Never miss it.’

‘Well, yeah. And how are things with you, Christos?’ asked Peri injecting as much geniality as he could into his voice.

‘Ah, you know, could be better. The rag trade isn’t what it used to be. It’s all about deadlines now. No one