‘Will you be all right getting up there?’ Yiorgos eyed her heels.

  Without replying, Sofia turned her back to him and proceeded to take what looked like the shortest route to the entrance of the Acropolis.

  ‘Sofia!’ Yiorgos called behind her. ‘It is safer to take the long way around, by the canteen!’

  Ignoring him and what she counted as a jeering tone, furious that he had kept her out of the loop, she willed herself up the hill, clutching at a handful of foliage to haul her weight onto more steady ground. Setting her sights ahead, to the great gateway, the Propylaia, she scrambled up the loose dirt, ignoring the mud splattering her legs.

  ‘Sofia!’

  As she steadied herself on the plain that stretched out before the steps to the Propylaia, Yiorgos caught up with her. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  She spoke as she walked. ‘Since you see no urgency to call me about the death of yet another person in our city, nor to oversee the preliminary examination yourself, you force me to take matters into my own hands, Yiorgos.’

  He held his suit jacket over his head as a canopy. Sofia allowed the rain to hammer against her skin. It was invigorating. It also messed up her lipstick. Yiorgos, still cowering under his suit, replied, ‘Sofia, forgive me, but, as you will see, there is no need for urgency here.’

  She pressed on. The steps to the Propylaia were slippery, almost impossible to climb. Wishing that Yiorgos had not followed her, she was forced to double over and use her hands as stabilisers.

  ‘We should wait for the rain to pass,’ Yiorgos shouted up to her. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  Sofia, breathless, leaned against one of the columns at the top of the steps. She wiped her eyes clean of rainwater, sure that her face was now a mess of smudged mascara. Glimpsing through the scaffolding into the enclosed sanctuary, Sofia looked for the body tent. The uplit temple buildings glistened in the moon’s white gaze. It was reassuring to have a little light, at least. Unable to make out where the tent was from here, she took a step forward and her foot slipped on the marble. Catching on to a piece of metal scaffolding she let out a pathetic yelp as her ankle gave way.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Yiorgos shouted from behind.

  ‘I’m fine, Yiorgos,’ she said through clenched teeth; more out of embarrassment than anything else. ‘Will you let me get on?’

  She did not wait for him to catch her up. Pulling herself back to a standing position, she checked her ankle was stable, and walked through the tremendous open doorway that led into the Acropolis. She took a moment to gather herself under the shelter of the archway, shielded from the rain. Clenching her jaw tight, she sat down, taking shallow, ragged breaths, listening to the rain’s orchestral feet pound away on the site’s floor. She bit her lip, furious at herself for overreacting. It had been a long day indeed. She allowed herself a moment to take in the Parthenon.

  Yiorgos eventually sat beside her. She assumed he knew better than to place a comforting arm around her shoulders and she was right. He wrung his jacket tightly, propelling a spring of water in front of them. He seemed to be taking in the temple too. Sofia opened her mouth to apologise for her overzealous behaviour but could not quite find a way. Finally, she spotted the body tent. It was erected to the left of the Parthenon. It was so small in comparison; no wonder it had been hard to find. It glowed green and moved with the shadows cast by the forensic scientists inside it.

  The rain began to slow. Yiorgos said nothing.

  Sofia pushed herself up from the stone floor, careful not to slip. ‘I’m here now. I may as well see the victim.’

  Yiorgos nodded, following her lead, speaking behind her as she walked precariously through the open air. As quickly as it had begun, the rain stopped, and heat began to bleed into the saturated night. She made straight for the tent. Tiny brushes of steam rose from its roof. As if it burned.

  ‘They are about to bring his body down by stretcher, Sofia. Like I said, there is no urgency. Forensics say it’s a straightforward penetrative trauma to his neck.’

  Him. His body. A boy child.

  ‘He was unlucky, I think. Kids on a school trip broke out of their hotel and came up here. Sounds like there was some sort of a dare to climb up the temple, the Erechtheum. He fell. Had he fallen at another angle… they will need to confirm it, but it looks like the branch pierced his windpipe and obstructed his airway. He would have suffocated before bleeding out.’

  They reached the tent as the forensic team began to pack away their equipment. Snatched greetings were exchanged. Sofia placed her hands on her hips, unable to enter the tent just yet. The body, before forensics arrived, would have laid in the view of the Caryatids, the marble maidens who acted as support columns for the Erechtheum temple. They hovered above like stone witnesses. Were theirs the last faces the boy had seen before he died?

  And then Yiorgos’s words caught up with her.

  ‘Fallen?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ Yiorgos stood next to her.

  ‘Fallen – you said that the boy had fallen.’

  ‘Yes, I said that,’ replied Yiorgos, seeming nervous.

  Sofia ran her fingers through her sopping hair, piecing together the information she had been given, trying to understand the events of the night. ‘This was an accident?’ she asked.

  Yiorgos nodded. ‘I tried to tell–’

  ‘Then why are we here?’ Sofia looked around for a dry place to sit, her legs ached. There was nowhere appropriate. She did not want to think about the dead boy. She did not want it to be her business. And this was not her business, by the sounds of it. She could have avoided being here altogether.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Yiorgos asked.

  ‘Why are we here? We investigate violent crimes. If this is not a crime, why are you here wasting my department’s time?’

  Just as she finished speaking, and just as Yiorgos opened his mouth to explain, a blast of sirens sounded from the bottom of the hill. Sofia looked at Yiorgos, who shrugged. Then, through the darkness, up the slopes, around the columns of the Propylaia, across the muddy ground, towards those tall and watchful Caryatid women, arose a chanting. Its source was not a huge crowd, Sofia surmised it was about ten, perhaps fifteen people, but the words were clear to her, all the same.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Yiorgos asked.

  ‘Athena is victorious,’ Sofia replied. ‘Athena is victorious.’

  ‘Fanatics,’ sneered Yiorgos. ‘They will be taken away.’

  The forensic team exited the tent and stopped to listen to the shouts. The phrase, scuttling through the air with alternating stresses, seemed to grow louder the more they listened. Sofia had an odd compulsion to stand in front of the boy, to protect him from the noise. Heat rose from her feet up through her legs.

  ‘A branch,’ she whispered.

  Yiorgos either did not hear her or did not care. She spoke again, more loudly, ‘A branch, Yiorgos. You said something about a branch.’ She turned to the forensic team impatiently. ‘What killed him? Yiorgos, you said it was a branch, he fell upon a branch, what type of branch, do you know?’

  Yiorgos stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged. One of the forensics stepped forwards. ‘We believe it was a loose branch from the tree – the olive tree – just over there. There is a small section missing, probably blown off by a wind.’

  Sofia ran towards the tent, ripping open the fabric door. He lay in a foetal position, one hand clasped over his mouth. His eyes were open, panicked. He must have only been about fourteen years old. Sofia felt the unacceptable prickle of tears brim at the bottom of her eyes. She shut them for a second, breathing slowly, deeply. Opening them again, she saw the thing that had killed him. The branch splintered through his throat completely. How innocuous it would have seemed, hiding on the ground. An innocent branch. A dormant snake. She bent down and recognised the unmistakable thin green leaves. The unquestionable round, bitter olive fruit.

  The heat now reached Sofia’s chest. She coughed, uncomfortable, and pushed her way out of the tent. She could not look at the boy any longer. She could not stand it. The heat.

  ‘The olive tree?’ she asked. ‘The sacred olive tree?’ She turned to look at where the tree stood, to the right of the Caryatids, by the west porch of the Erechtheum. Planted by Athena herself, as the myth went. Her mother had recounted the story, in its various versions, countless times. Its branches wafted softly in the hot breeze. Indeed, there was a noticeable gap in the otherwise evenly spread branches.

  Athena is victorious. Athena is victorious. The chants wove and wove around Sofia’s head, covering her nose, her mouth, infiltrating her ears. The buildings glowed.

  ‘Sofia?’ Yiorgos grabbed her arm.

  She fell to the ground, as if mourning. Yiorgos pulled her up but she wanted to fall again. Because what she saw was no longer the Acropolis with the temples and her colleagues and the tent. She saw a memory. A recent one. It was so bright and painful that she could not ignore it. She was branded by it. Sat at the cafeteria table in the Hellenic Police Headquarters, she watched herself, poised, flanked by two new officers, bent over a mobile telephone, scrolling, scrolling, scan, move on, scan, move on, scan, move on. But she had missed a detail. Funny how the memory works. Funny how it twists and hides and reveals only when it is good and ready. Funny how significance only is significant when it is too late. But then, memory makes everything significant. Scan, move on, scan, move on. But there it was, laid bare and open, a warning unheeded:

  Supplicate Athena the Pure and Wise! Be grateful for the gift she bestowed. The olive tree was her weapon once and shall become her weapon again. Athena is victorious. Athena is victorious.

  The Signet Ring

  Michail sat at his dining-room table in his Thissio apartment. He had arranged the kitchen-cum-dining room-cum-living room-cum-bedroom so that the focal point of the flat – the medium-sized window exhibiting the Acropolis – could be seen from all necessary angles. As he woke in his fold-out bed, it was the first thing he saw. His sofa was arranged so that it commanded an uninterrupted view, and he could spend whole evenings meditating upon it. And so, still wet from the downpour and shocked to be alone at last, Michail stared at it. Dawn was rising. The Parthenon was pinkish. The boy’s body would have been removed by now. One point six one eight.

  It had been Katerina’s idea to scan the area on the far side of the slope, following the main tourist path up to the Acropolis. She had thought it was worth widening the span of the search and it was, at least, better lit than the gaps between the trees. Michail had agreed, pleased she was showing some intuition.

  It had also been Katerina who spotted Dr Laurence-Sinclair struggling to hoist himself up the steep slope behind the remains of the Theatre of Dionysus. She had run ahead to help him up from the slippery ground as the rain fell heavily. He had seemed confused for a brief amount of time; however, Michail had suspected nothing untoward. He had seemed so vulnerable, skidding about the slopes. It was, of course, highly irregular for him to be cavorting about the site in the middle of the night: that was obvious now. But hindsight is a tantalising beast. Laurence-Sinclair had prepared a credible explanation. Michail re-enacted the exchange slowly from his dining-room table, moving his lips as he remembered the words, the pauses, the expressions.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Michail had said, not too aggressively, but loud enough to be heard over the thunder.

  ‘Pardon me, sorry?’ Laurence-Sinclair had asked. Michail thought he remembered that Laurence-Sinclair’s eyes had darted about – a suspicious sign. He should have pressed him more thoroughly.

  Katerina had by now steadied Laurence-Sinclair, helping him to his feet. His legs appeared to be wobbling uncontrollably. ‘Why are you here?’ Michail had asked again.

  A garbled story about hearing sirens and lights and a general panic had followed. He had been working from the Acropolis Museum, it seemed, which loomed shiny and modern behind them. Michail had been tired, and the rain irritated him, more than it did most others. Laurence-Sinclair had taken great pains to explain his movements: he had been walking home from a late night’s work when Katerina and Michail had frightened him. So, he had tried to run up the slope to the Theatre of Dionysus. ‘Stupid thing, I am. This must look awfully suspect! Nothing untoward here, I can assure you.’ Michail noted that Laurence-Sinclair reserved a significant gaze for Katerina.

  It was around this time that the chanting had begun.

  On his table, Michail knocked three times with his right hand and then three times with his left. As he knocked with his right again, he began to feel nauseous. He had made a mistake. Laurence-Sinclair had looked vulnerable and Michail had allowed himself to be taken in by this narrative. He had ignored the obvious, that it was highly irregular to be strolling about the Acropolis site at night. Irregularities were the stars that made up the constellations of investigations. They drew patterns. They pointed to timelines and stories. ‘Catastrophic,’ Michail said to his window. ‘A catastrophic mistake.’ The reflection of his face hovered translucent over the dawn-kissed Acropolis.

  Of course, the catastrophe was only fully realised when Katerina had found the ring. Wishing Laurence-Sinclair goodnight and telling him to go home, thank you for your concern, Doctor, we appreciate it, they had continued along the path, examining the shrubbery growing between the ancient stones. As they ascended the slope, Michail had taken a moment to peer over the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. It was a beautiful piece of architecture, of that he was certain. But he had allowed himself to become distracted. Every particle in his body should have been focused on the search, not the Odeon.

  The strange chanting had continued to pervade the darkness. Katerina, he noticed, kept an eye on him. He wondered whether she was frightened, as ridiculous as that would be. Police officers existed to protect. Fear made them less efficient.

  Katerina had got lucky. Luck was a term Michail disliked intensely. It was meaningless and reserved for those who did not apply themselves properly. Planning and logic could not simply be replaced by ‘luck’. Katerina had displayed neither planning nor logic as she searched the Acropolis hill, despite Michail’s best efforts to explain the most efficient and tactical approach of combing a large surface area. Instead, she had swivelled her phone this way and that, kicked aside random rocks and shaken the low-growing twigs as if clues might be spurting from them. But it seemed that luck favoured the irrational. Because, as Michail stepped backwards, calculating where best to begin his grid-based search, she called out, ‘His ring!’

  In her hand, she held a small silver signet ring. Michail had run towards her, opened the evidence bag, and demanded that she stop contaminating potential evidence immediately. She dropped the ring into the clear plastic, carelessly, he thought, and mumbled something beneath her breath he did not hear properly. Thinking he ought to show her some encouragement, Michail held the evidence bag up to the torchlight. ‘Whose ring?’ he had asked.

  ‘Laurence-Sinclair’s ring!’ Katerina pointed down the slopes to the Theatre of Dionysus. ‘He must have been here earlier and dropped–’

  ‘It could be anyone’s.’

  ‘No. I recognise the snakes.’ Katerina took the evidence bag from him. ‘See?’ She pointed at two twisted serpents melded onto the ring’s edges. ‘I noticed them this morning.’

  Attention to detail! Meticulous analysis! These were his best qualities. His strengths. How had he missed something so glaringly obvious? He blamed Katerina, of course. If she had noticed the ring that morning then she should have noticed Laurence-Sinclair not wearing it that night; especially as she had been the one to help him up.

  It was obvious that Laurence-Sinclair had lied to them. He had said he had been at the Acropolis Museum, at the bottom of the hill. Yet his ring was here, just up from the Odeon, close to the body that lay on the Acropolis above.

  In a fit of rage, fired by impulse, Michail had galloped back down the hill in pursuit of Laurence-Sinclair. At his dining table, Michail panted as he had done hours before. Leaping breathlessly, sliding down the gravel, Michail propelled himself towards the Theatre of Dionysus. He was aware of Katerina shouting after him. He hoped she did not follow him and put herself at risk of falling. But there was no time to lose.

  ‘There is no time to lose!’ he shouted from his seat, unsure whether he had actually shouted it whilst chasing Laurence-Sinclair or not. He gripped the edges of the table, rocking backwards and forwards. What a disaster! He was not fit to be an officer of the Hellenic Police Force. He was a detriment, a risk. How would the public rest easy and calm tonight, tomorrow, this week with such a liability as him? Michail could not take his eyes off the sunrise. It brought tears to them, the way it graced the Parthenon marble with such considerate intimacy. It illuminated his failure. Those masterfully rendered columns, the impeccably measured metopes were too perfect for him to bear at this moment. He looked away, shielding his eyes, returning to the memory.

  He had skidded across the worn stones of the Theatre of Dionysus. He had shouted his name, ‘Laurence-Sinclair! Laurence-Sinclair!’ But the words had played to an empty audience. He ran down the path, across the street, over the wide slabs that led to the Acropolis Museum. He had hammered on the glass doors. ‘Laurence-Sinclair!’

  The rain had stopped. But Laurence-Sinclair was gone.

  ‘A potential suspect!’ Ms Sampson’s eyes had been black when they reported back to her. She had kicked the side of her car.

  Michail had remained silent. Katerina had tried to explain. ‘We had no reason to suspect…’

  ‘You had every reason to suspect him!’ shouted Ms Sampson. ‘And will you stop that stupid noise!’