‘A good-looking boy. A gentleman.’ Mrs Kodjagas uses the English word. Zoë blinks in surprise. ‘What was his name?’

‘Tom. Lieutenant Tom Collyer.’

‘God keep you safe,’ says the old lady. She takes Zoë’s hand and presses it to her face. ‘You and … O Kapetanios. God keep you both.’ Her eyes are shining, but already, whatever has spread its wings over them is leaving. It can’t stay here, after all.

Zoë gets up and walks nervously towards the place where the body lies. Men are crouching in the door of the cafe, looking down the street. One of them is holding the dead man’s shoe. She looks around the corner and sees the two Battalionists in the distance, strolling along, arm in arm down the middle of the dirt roadway. She runs across and crouches down. The man’s face is nothing but meat and splinters of bone, but she recognises him by his clothes: Christos Vlessas, the black marketeer, long since retired from that and now a postal clerk.

‘What happened?’ she asks Mr Savas, the owner of the cafe.

‘Christ in heaven …’ Mr Savas is kneeling in the road, stroking the dead man’s back as if it might comfort him. His hands are trembling violently. ‘Pandelis came in, stinking drunk. Christos just happened to look around. Pandelis must have thought he was giving him the evil eye, because he orders Christos to stand up and give him the salute. So Christos stands up, good as gold, and gives him an army salute. And Pandelis goes berserk. He wanted the fascist salute, see? Starts calling him a communist and a faggot, starts slapping him, and the next thing, they’ve dragged him outside …’

‘But Christos wasn’t a communist!’

‘For fuck’s sake …’ Mr Savas is weeping openly. ‘I’m a communist. Every other bastard here is a communist. But not Christos! Oh, the bastards, the bastards!’