Flotsam: The Artemesis Mysteries, #1

By Jill Castelo

It's out of season in the small Greek port of Artemesis. Among the community of foreign sailors overwintering there one man is found drowned in mysterious circumstances. The Port Policeman enlists the help of the local doctor to investigate. The stories he unearths make him look at the strangers passing through with new eyes. Just who was the not so innocent victim, Ivan, and why did so many wish him dead?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Castelo
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223111511

Jill Castelo

Jill Castelo has spent the last 25 years living on water. She has lived on a narrowboat in the UK and more recently on a vintage motor sailer in Greece.  

Book preview

CHAPTER 1                     

Stavros Kourakis walked down to the seashore every morning before dawn. That was when the air was fresh, the water at its most calm and clear.  He automatically checked the walls of the old stone pier for octopus. There had been so many when he was a boy but these days they were becoming a rare find. He studied the sky and sea to gage the weather. It was autumn and each day was unpredictable with storms often gathering in the surrounding mountains. This morning was bright and crisp but last night the rain and wind had howled around his cottage pounding on the tin roof.  He was glad to be in his bed and no longer battling it out at sea, one consolation for being old. He left the pier and moved along the path by the rocks still searching. His thoughts strayed to his late wife as they often did these days. It was easier to get out early to banish his melancholy.

A dog howled in the distance stirring up a staccato of answering barks from around the village. A little wave washed in with a quiet swish and it was at that moment he saw the hand, swaying gently near the edge of a rock. He held his breath taking it in, adjusting his eyes in case they were playing tricks on him. He had a vague memory of a kind of seaweed that resembled a dead man's hand so he moved in closer peering over the rock. It was then he realized the hand was attached to a body which lay half in the water, half splayed out on the rocks. The force of the water had washed it up with some plastic water bottles, a lone shoe and a few bits of tangled rope. He couldn't take his eyes off it although he longed to turn away because his gaze seemed like an intrusion, too intimate. The man was wearing a fur hat with ear flaps which the sea had failed to dislodge. He had a beard and his eyes were wide and staring and even in its present state he doubted the body was Greek, a foreigner he was sure. He felt he should attempt to drag it out fully onto the rocks. That would be the right thing, the respectful thing in case it slipped back into the water but he just couldn't make himself touch that hand. Dawn was fully breaking now but even its familiar glow couldn't rid the day of its strangeness. He hesitated, flummoxed and feeling his age, then realized what he must do. Find Michaelis.

CHAPTER 2

Across the bay from the village of Stavros Kourakis lay a larger village, Artemesis, popular with tourists but now lapsed back into its slow off season state. It was late October and the only tourists left in town were a handful of live aboard sailors in the harbour, grateful for a free mooring despite the precarious safety of the port. Their boats mingled with the few fishermen who still worked through the winter and the empty yachts of sailors who had returned home. Most had been craned out but some would brave the