This is when Katerina had squeezed his shoulder. Michail raised his arm to the spot now. It still felt warm. Stop the noise, the stupid noise, Michail. Stop making it worse. Stop it. Michail pursed his lips together. His tongue ached. His head resonated uncomfortably.

  Every reason to suspect Laurence-Sinclair. Every reason to detain him. An escaped suspect. A suspect let go without so much as a fight.

  Michail groaned again and stood, unable to sit any longer. Katerina had assured him it was fine: they had not been removed from the case. It had been a troubling day: neither of their brains had been working at full capacity. It was an understandable error. Michail checked the lock on his front door, as he had done twelve times since dragging his wet, tired body into his apartment. Standing was also intolerable. He lowered himself onto the ceramic tile floor and lay on his back, palms facing upwards. Birds sang from the roofs outside. He closed his eyes and arrived at his first year of the Gymnasium, aged thirteen. His parents said he was big for his age; a fine, strong specimen. He never felt big. Do children ever? He was in his Ancient Greek class and copying sentences from the board. The genitive absolute. Wonderful. A concise concoction, separate and clear. οἱ ἄνθροποι τιμῶσι τους θεοὺς εν τῷ ουρανῷ ὂντας. Whilst the gods are in heaven, men worship them. With the gods being in heaven. Since the gods are in heaven. As the gods are in heaven. Look up. Memorise. Write. Translate. Look up. Memorise. The routine was heavenly. Language worked as it should. Only those students in the class who did not complete their studies at home, who ignorantly glossed over constructions, found the language difficult. It was easy, really. One logical step after another.

  Something hit him in the back of the head. This was not unusual. His immature classmates tried to distract him all the time. He ignored it. Best not to react. This is what his father had said. Best not to give them anything to work with. He continued, progressing, whilst they wasted their time. Another strike. A pebble bounced onto the floor. Michail blew through his mouth. An obvious signal, he thought, that he was displeased and trying to concentrate. But it happened again. This time the pebble bounced off a bone on the top of his neck. ‘Oh!’ he cried, regretting it immediately.

  Fits of giggles erupted from the back of the classroom. Even the keen students sitting at the front laughed behind their hands. Michail shoved his head down and translated the sentence he had just written. Once the city was destroyed…

  ‘Michail?’

  The teacher tapped on his desk. Michail stopped writing, wishing this unwanted attention would disappear.

  ‘Look up when your teacher addresses you,’ she said. He knew it was a simple request. Easy enough in theory. But his rhythm had already been broken. The translation was unfinished. Best to be a good student. Best to finish the sentence quickly so that he could prove his academic prowess. He began to write again.

  ‘I said look up!’ The teacher’s voice was so loud. If she would just pay his books some attention, instead of him, then she would be impressed. She had not yet seen how much work he had completed. He did not know what to do. He tapped his page, quickly, trying to alert her to all the good translation work he had finished. However, his tapping did not have the desired effect. Instead, his teacher grew angry.

  ‘Michail Mikras, I have asked you to look at me whilst I am speaking.’

  A chant began from behind him. The teacher shushed them, though she sounded half-hearted. ‘Kamaki, kamaki, kamaki!’ They called him a flirt, which made no sense. They said he was playing hard to get. He just wanted to be left alone. ‘Kamaki, kamaki, kamaki!’ Michail felt his cheeks grow warm. He was certain he would not be able to muster the courage to face his teacher now; not with the added pressure of the chanting.

  He stared at his desk and focused on the rhythmic movement of his right leg. There. He breathed.

  Back and forth. Predictable and kind. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  He felt a searing pain across the back of his hand, his writing hand, with which he had been translating. And again. And again. The ruler did not break his skin. It was like it burnt it. His hand was on fire. But Michail bowed his head and looked at his desk and recited the grammatical rules of the genitive absolute in his head. He could remove himself from any situation he wanted. It was just a matter of concentration. The mind was stronger than people thought.

  As a grown man lying, damp, on his apartment floor, Michail did not agree with his thirteen-year-old self. It was not just a matter of concentration. Especially, he thought, when the problem one was trying to forget was caused by oneself. He had never thought he would be guilty of lack of attention to detail. That was something reserved for other, less diligent, officers; the ones who laughed and ate lunch easily with one another. He had always made sure to work hard, to be the very best. He massaged the back of his right hand.

  The English lady’s feet teetered down the circular stairwell and stopped outside his door. Michail listened to the three familiar knocks without moving from the floor. ‘Michail?’ The woman’s voice tremored in broken Greek. ‘I heard… noises? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he called.

  ‘Will you let me in?’

  Michail, who had been awake for almost twenty-four hours wanted more than anything to fall asleep in his damp clothes precisely where he lay. However, his neighbour was persistent. She liked his company, he assumed, and did not like to take no for an answer. He often found her waiting in his corridor when he got home from a late shift; she claimed to be checking in on his whereabouts. He sighed, eyes stinging, thinking of his father who had always insisted on kindness to elders. ‘One moment, Moira,’ he called.

  He unbolted the door, turned the lock, and unhooked the safety chain. The old woman narrowed her eyes, evidently wondering why he felt the need for such excessive security. His stomach sank as he imagined telling her that, because of him, a potential murderer was on the loose. Perhaps he ought to urge her to install better locks?

  He stepped aside from the door and gestured to his couch, which was now bathed in the rosy morning sun. She shuffled in and took a seat, beaming at him. In this light, she did not seem as old as he had previously imagined. She had only ever been in his apartment after dark, usually after work. Her hair hung grey and long and her shoulders were beginning to hunch, but her face was moderately smooth. She did not look much older than his parents, perhaps mid-seventies or so. She eyed the scene beadily, as she always did. Michail admired her attention to detail; she viewed everything, even the menial things, as if viewing a work of art. She would, he thought, have made a better Hellenic police officer than him.

  ‘Moira.’ He closed the door behind her and fiddled with the locking system, hoping that it would not alarm her. ‘I am afraid I am very tired. I must sleep, quickly, and then return to the station.’

  ‘In this light, it is magnificent,’ she replied in her best Greek, gazing out of his window.

  Michail nodded, suddenly aware of the fact that the Acropolis was the most public of crime scenes. Especially here in Thissio, where it was difficult to avoid. It is why he had stretched himself – beyond financial rationale – to rent an apartment here. He had never regretted it: the view was worth the majority of his payslip.

  ‘Sit with me?’ Moira patted the sofa. Too tired to protest, Michail sat down, placing a hand on each knee.

  ‘You know, the ancients did not always plan to build such a commemoration. After the Persians sacked their city, they swore an oath to leave the Acropolis sanctuary as rubble. A ruinous memorial. I always wonder what they intended to remember. War? Defeat? It certainly did not stop them fighting.’

  She had a knack of diving straight into conversation, which Michail appreciated. He leaned back, beginning to relax. Her voice was both monotonous and melodic at the same time. She had written a few books when she had been a scholar in England. He enjoyed her expertise. She now lectured at the British School at Athens and gave tours of the city to visiting students. She continued, ‘They placed temporary tents, linens I imagine, over the images – the statues – of the gods. Even without the proper structures, they believed their gods needed a home, a proper resting place.’

  Michail thought of the forensic tents the police erected over cold bodies.

  ‘It was over thirty years before Pericles commissioned the rebuilding project,’ Moira finished.

  Michail replied slowly, inhaling her floral scent, ‘Athens became ashamed of their mess. They wanted to show competency, their power. If one has an unkempt appearance, then it is safe to assume that the brain is unkempt.’

  Moira turned to observe him. She wore her usual thick-rimmed glasses, which she tended to treat as microscopes, pushing them closer to her eyes when she wanted to peer at something in more detail. She looked at his stained and dampened uniform with a raised eyebrow. Michail did not feel the need to explain himself.

  ‘Tidy desk, tidy mind.’ Moira smiled. ‘But I came to check in on you. Like I said, I heard some disturbances. The ceiling is not thick.’

  ‘I am sorry–’

  ‘Not at all.’ She reached across and placed a hand on his knee. Usually, he would have been highly disturbed, but she seemed confident in the gesture and Michail did not have the energy to argue with her. ‘I know young men – have known – they can become lost and angry at themselves. It sounded… it sounded like you were in pain, Michail.’

  Michail put her forwardness down to the language barrier. He removed her hand from his knee. ‘I have been on private police business.’

  ‘Oh?’ She did not seem concerned about having her gesture rejected. ‘I have heard, as most have in the city, about the murder yesterday.’ She leaned closer to him. He smelled peppermint on her breath, and underneath it, red wine. ‘Most terrible, isn’t it? They say that Hephaestus…’

  ‘It is a private, ongoing police investigation.’ Michail stood. ‘Now, if you do not mind–’

  ‘There was a young boy’s body on the Acropolis yesterday.’

  Michail clenched his fists, then released them. It was perfectly plausible that she thought she was making good conversation. There was no reason why she would know or even assume that he was on the case. Perhaps the police in England were more candid. He made a mental note to ask Ms Sampson.

  ‘How do you…?’

  ‘He was English, on a school trip. They are staying in the area. I was awake last night, the sirens, lights, there was a crowd, too, you must have noticed? I went out to see what the hullabaloo was about. His teacher was, as you might imagine, distraught. He was waiting for the parents to arrive.’

  Again, all plausible. Statements were to be taken from the school group today, the teacher included. Michail rubbed his eyes.

  ‘You are exhausted,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I have not slept yet, as I said.’

  ‘You should take better care of yourself.’ She pointed to the Parthenon. ‘Even the greatest of structures take their time. No point pressuring yourself.’

  ‘Thank you for stopping in. I hope the book is going well.’

  Moira turned to him, a wide smile forming across her face. ‘Oh yes, very well indeed, Officer Mikras. The myths are all around us, this is becoming clear.’

  With that, she pushed herself off the sofa, releasing a small ‘hmph’ and padded, barefoot, to the door. ‘Robust security,’ she commented, fiddling with the bolt.

  ‘You can never be too safe,’ Michail said, watching her nimble fingers work the locks. ‘Thank you for visiting me, Moira. Speak soon.’

  It was only after she left that Michail noticed something strange, though not necessarily significant. He put it down to her being an academic, but as he pulled off his wet uniform, he could not shift it from his thoughts. Most terrible. He agreed, of course, that murder was most terrible. But she had not used the modern Greek word, tromeros, instead using the Ancient Greek, deinos. He pulled down his fold-out bed and fell into it. Deinos. It did translate as terrible on occasion; he was certain of it.

  However, a thought niggled like a worm in his brain as he fell into a fitful, grateful sleep. Because he also knew that it translated as something else. Deinos was also used to mean marvellous, miraculous, awe-inspiring. As he fell into semi-consciousness, he regarded an image of Moira, giving a tour of the Acropolis hill, springing from rock to rock, barefooted, gesticulating at several mutilated and bloody corpses that were strewn about the site. Her audience clapped and cheered as she said, ‘Marvellous, they are, just marvellous. A brilliant specimen of how the gods persist! We should be grateful for them and worship them as our own!’

  Michail awoke to another woman knocking on his door. This time it was a careless hammering. He rolled over without delay, reaching for his phone. 8.45am; he had managed two and a half hours’ sleep, at least. Katerina’s voice sounded from the hallway. ‘Michail! I have coffee! Open up!’

  The mention of coffee was enough. He folded down his sheet, stepped out of bed, folded the sheet back up so that it was tucked neatly in, and pushed the mattress against the wall. The mechanism clicked satisfactorily.

  ‘Michail! Come on!’ she shouted as he worked his way through the locking system again.

  Michail thought Katerina looked surprisingly well turned out, all things considered. There were subtle bags beneath her eyes, but she smiled brightly as she handed him his coffee and pushed past him into the apartment. She eyed the wet clothes hung over the chair. ‘You’ve got spare, right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The mention of his uniform made him very aware that he was standing in nothing but his underwear. Surprisingly, this did not seem to bother Katerina. ‘Great view,’ Katerina announced. Michail grabbed his dressing robe from the back of the bathroom door.

  ‘You know my address?’ he asked, wriggling into the robe.

  ‘Easy to find.’ Katerina faced him. ‘And I thought we could go to work together.’

  He took a long sip of coffee and swayed slightly. He was light-headed, still exhausted. ‘Ms Sampson is furious with us.’

  Katerina narrowed her eyes. ‘Sofia was unprofessional, Michail. She should have never… she should have controlled herself. I hung about when you ran… after you left. She apologised to me. I think the body… spooked her. She was rabbiting on about a message, you know, one of the social media comments. She reckons she missed a clue. She thinks she could have stopped the boy’s murder–’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Yet to be confirmed, I know. But this social media post about an olive branch, which is what killed him, has got people excited. Then there’s Laurence-Sinclair. Oh, and the axe murder, it’s in the papers…’ She dug into her handbag and produced the day’s Hellenakratia. ‘Front page – look.’

  In large, capital letters, the headline read: THE AWAKENING: GAY PROSTITUTE IMMIGRANT DIES BY HAND OF GOD. The accompanying photo showed the Hephaestion axe, covered in blood, attached to the temple. Michail shook his head in disgust. ‘I would hardly call this a real newspaper.’ The image of the publication’s darling editor-in-chief, Christos Panagos, beamed at him, showcasing a smug smile. What sort of an editor put their photograph on the front page?

  ‘Not the point,’ Katerina replied. ‘Some people do call it a real newspaper and buy it every day. This is what they’re reading.’

  She shook the paper out and read, ‘The young man, thought to be an illegal immigrant squatting in the Exarcheia district, is alleged to have been a sex worker and to have dealt in illegal drugs. Rebel freedom-fighter organisation, The Awakening, has suggested a religious theory: that the goddess of our city, Athena, has arisen and will purge us of the “filth” and “unholy”, who reside and infect our city. The theory is based on the nature of the crime which imitates…’

  Michail laughed. ‘Nonsense, obviously, Katerina. They don’t even know our victim’s name! Let alone know his sexual orientation. This is right-wing hate, as expected from such a publication. It does not even make sense. Hephaestus cut Zeus’s head open to help him, not to punish him.’

  Katerina nodded. ‘Agreed on the right-wing hate stuff. But they claim to have a name: a Marius Zamfir, Romanian. And they are suggesting that the birth of Athena is the beginning of some sort of string of events. They are calling it a “symbolic awakening”. They obviously have some contacts at The Awakening organisation, whoever they are.’ She shrugged, exasperated. ‘I don’t like it either, but there are more leads here than anything we came up with yesterday and we need something.’

  ‘How do they know his name?’ Michail shouted over his shoulder, rushing to shower.

  ‘No idea,’ Katerina replied, taking a seat at the dining table. ‘But maybe this will help us find Laurence-Sinclair, and if there’s one thing that will get us back in Sofia’s good books, it will be that.’

  Snake

  Katerina waited at the café below Michail’s apartment building for him to get dressed. The smell of freshly baked bread made her stomach tighten; she was exhausted, and the idea of eating was nauseating. Bright-pink flowers bloomed in wooden tubs at the entrance. Katerina imagined spending a day sat amongst the flowers, sipping coffee and thinking of nothing in particular. She could deceive her mother, who would no doubt be waiting for her, as usual, in the kitchen, when she arrived home. Another productive day, Mama, they have chosen me for the most important tasks. Her mother would praise her cleverest of daughters, but ask for no further details, no matter how fatigued Katerina seemed. No matter how late she returned home. She knew what her mother was really interested in. He called again today. Such a nice man. A good man. Katerina, please tell me you have regained your senses. The day stretched ahead of her like an impossible feat.

  Michail’s apartment was only a short walk back along the Apostolou Pavlou road where they had parked the car last night. She was surprised that Michail lived so centrally. Rest assured, it was a lovely place to be. Even if his flat was tiny. Katerina found herself wondering how on earth Michail would find room for a significant other in there. Was it intentionally small, for that reason? She tried to picture the type Michail might go for but drew a blank. Had he ever had a serious relationship? She imagined him getting ready for bed – a private moment reserved for the eyes of lovers. He would fold down his bed, plump the pillows, she was sure. He probably slept on his back… feeling herself blush, she distracted her thoughts by counting pedestrians. Clearly, she was more tired than she thought.