The Invisible

by Peter Papathanasiou

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Mystery

Synopsis

"Outback noir has a new star" The Times

Burnt-out from policework, Detective Sergeant George Manolis flies from Australia to Greece for a holiday. Recently divorced and mourning the death of his father, who emigrated from the turbulent Prespes region which straddles the borders of Greece, Albania and North Macedonia, Manolis hopes to reconnect with his roots and heritage.

"A brilliant new name in Australian crime" Weekend Australian

On arrival, Manolis learns of the disappearance of an 'invisible' - a local man who lives without a scrap of paperwork. The police and some locals believe the man's disappearance was pre-planned, while others suspect foul play. Reluctantly, Manolis agrees to work undercover to find the invisible, and must navigate the complicated relationships of a tiny village where grudges run deep.

"Papathanasiou writes unsparingly, confidently, and compellingly" The Quietus

It soon becomes clear to Manolis that he may never locate a man who, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist. And with the clock ticking, the ghosts of the past continue to haunt the events of today as Manolis's investigation leads him to uncover a dark and long-forgotten practice.

"Detective Sergeant George Manolis is a great new addition to the Australian crime scene" EMMA VISKIC, award-winning author of the Caleb Zelic crime series

Release date: September 1, 2022

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

The men gathered around to inspect the contents of the hefty duffel bag, their Balkan accents almost as thick as their necks. They spoke in low voices, their heavy brows creased as they plotted and schemed. The silver-white sun beat down on their broad, sweaty backs.

“So, as we agreed, yes?” Lefty said. “We have a deal, right?”

The first thug continued to rifle through the bag, holding up individual items, rotating and inspecting them in his grubby hands before moving on to the next. He suddenly stopped his examination and looked up at Lefty with dark, suspicious eyes.

“What’s the hurry?” he said, voice light. “Have a drink on us, stay, relax. It’s a beautiful afternoon.”

A second bald bruiser produced an unlabelled bottle of alcohol from a back pocket and thrust it squarely under Lefty’s bulbous nose. The innocuous appearance of the clear liquid belied its potency – the smell alone came close to melting Lefty’s eyebrows clean off his face.

“No thanks,” he replied. “I can’t hang around, I need to get back to Glikonero.”

“For . . . ?”

“Work.”

The four men laughed uncontrollably, their stomachs quivering, their grill-plated teeth like tiny daggers that jutted at all angles from their protruding lower jaws. A few caught the afternoon sun, glinting and golden.

“You? Work?”

“At a taverna,” Lefty said. “They’re expecting me. If I don’t get back, they’ll know something is wrong and call the police.” It was an insurance policy in as much as it was a complete fabrication.

“Perhaps,” came the reply. “But do they know you’re here and doing this?”

Lefty swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Maybe he should take a hit of booze.

The bottle was passed between meaty grips, swigs taken, chests puffed out and shoulders squared. More grumbles followed. An offer was being prepared. Standing on the shore, Lefty watched the nearby lake water with trepidation. It appeared especially choppy that day and, for some reason, distinctly colder and deeper.

“So, here’s what we can offer. How about we give you half as much today, and say that you can marry my sister instead?”

It was a proposition that was followed by more laughter, even louder this time. And all at helpless Lefty’s expense.

“Or his mother,” said another voice.

“Careful,” said a third. “I’ve seen his mum, she’s gorgeous. That’s offering way too much.”

Lefty had dealt with these reprobates before. They were a motley crew of opportunists and ex-cons and parasites with quick scores and no tomorrow in mind. Lefty fully expected them to negotiate and more often than not try to rob him blind. But they were good customers, loyal and quick to refer new business, so he wanted to keep them onside. At the end of the day, he needed them as much as they needed him. But Lefty still had to be prepared for whatever underhand tricks they came up with. And he was.

“Sorry, no deal,” Lefty said. “You know the amount we agreed to, there’s no way I can accept half. And this is top-quality gear. See again for yourselves.”

The foursome dived into the bag again. Their analysis continued, deeper and more intensive this time, along with some argument and infighting. It didn’t take much for the criminal classes to turn on each other when something was at stake and eat their own. Lefty took a step back, brushing some fluff from his black T-shirt, not wanting to get involved. He eyed his small wooden boat with longing, but he couldn’t leave without either his booty or appropriate remuneration.

The biggest Balkan brute stood to his full height, in excess of two metres, towering over Lefty and blocking out the sun. Lefty thought he could have been a basketballer in another life, a defensive beast, and his crooked nose suggested he might have been, elbowed in the face going for rebounds. But the truth behind his disfigurement was likely more sinister. His crew cut sat low on his flat forehead, in perfect alignment with the horizon. The others formed a tight semicircle, cutting off Lefty’s routes of escape. Their collection of crude tattoos was menacing, dancing across their skin as their taut gym muscles trembled and flexed. The bag was a couple of metres away and well out of reach.

“Look,” Lefty said, “if you’re not interested in doing business, that’s fine. I have plenty of other customers who are. Maybe another day. But for now I won’t waste any more of your time and I’ll be on my way . . .”

“Stop,” barked the leader. “We never said we weren’t interested.”

“So then, what’s the issue?”

“What is always the issue, what men go to war over.”

His words hung in the air, but Lefty already knew the answer.

“Price?”

“Yes.”

“But half as much is insulting. I simply can’t accept an offer that low. If you only want to pay half, then only buy half.”

“No. We want it all.” He ground out the words like rock-hard kernels.

“As I said, I can’t accept such a low offer,” Lefty said.

The thug curled his lip into a tight sneer. His colleagues took a step forward.

“Oh, we think you will,” he said. “Or maybe, just maybe, we don’t actually care either way what you say or do, because out here the outcome will be exactly the same.”

Lefty’s eyes darted and his fingers twitched.

“Oh yeah?” he said. “And what outcome is that?”

1

The inner-city housing commission towers loomed ahead like decaying tributes to the sky, a frigate-grey smear of winter. Manolis eyed them with unease. He’d got to know the claustrophobic structures disturbingly well over many years and many investigations. It was the same for anyone working in Homicide: the overcrowded high-rises almost single-handedly doubled the city’s weekly body count. A combination of weaponry, violence, drugs, grog, poverty and desperation was to blame.

In the passenger seat beside the detective sergeant, Senior Constable Andrew “Sparrow” Smith concentrated on the raindrops sluicing down the windscreen of the unmarked police car. Newly promoted and freshly healed after the case of the stoning in Cobb, the unassuming country cop had accepted a reassignment to the city after Manolis had introduced him to his boss. Detective Inspector Paul Bloody Porter had eyed the young Aboriginal man up and down with a steel-blue glare and asked Manolis if the kid was “up for it”.

“Definitely,” Manolis said.

“Good. Cos he’s your responsibility.”

Manolis stood by his assessment, but even he had some reservations about Sparrow and the towers. They were known to test the mettle of the most seasoned lawman, and had even driven a few into early retirement.

Bringing the car to a stop, Manolis applied the handbrake and killed the ignition, which switched off the blaring heater. The cabin took on an immediate chill.

Manolis turned to Sparrow. “Hey,” he said. “Relax, mate. You’ll do fine.”

Manolis had taken the Indigenous cop under his wing and took pleasure and pride in showing him how a real, professional police operation went about its business. Sparrow was still raw but was keen to learn. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bulging in his throat. It was his first raid.

“I never really felt like a country mouse until now,” he said meekly. The concrete edifices were reflected in his nut-brown eyes.

The stoning investigation had eaten away at Manolis too, both professionally and personally. The death in custody, the inhumanity of the immigration regime, the decrepit and desperate state of his home town. Manolis still wasn’t sure he was over it, despite many rigorous psychological examinations and treatments. His sleep was disturbed, he neglected to exercise, and his world became ever smaller as he sought to withdraw. Only his innocent young son brought a bittersweet smile to his lips and helped him temporarily to forget. But Manolis saw Christos growing up way too quickly for his liking and knew he needed to be present in body, at least, even if he wasn’t fully in mind.

The grey-white buildings were a defining feature of the city’s gaunt skyline. Soulless and brutal, they were built using precast concrete panel technology from another era. Porter often referred to the individual flats as “battery cages in the sky”. Manolis loathed the comparison to confined laying hens.

They were headed to the South Tower, a thirty-storey, I-shaped obelisk. Mercifully, they needed only to ascend halfway, to the fourteenth floor. Manolis’s lack of fitness and conditioning showed; he needed to stop twice to catch his breath. It didn’t help that he was wearing a hefty bulletproof vest and protective equipment. The lithe and more youthful Sparrow sprang on ahead, extra PPE kilos and all, along with the small team of police officers assembled for the raid and arrest. Their target was a known methamphetamine dealer. The gear he was peddling at street level was of questionable quality, but what had attracted the attention of Homicide was the death of a rival dealer in a business transaction turned sour. Normally, the self-cleansing of the criminal classes had a way of doing the police’s work on their behalf and bringing an end to unlawful activity one way or another. But in this instance, Manolis and his men felt compelled to intervene before a full-scale urban war erupted and many more people died, guilty and innocent.

Manolis had triple-checked that the address on file was correct before they set out. In such a monolith, where all the rooms, stairwells and corridors looked the same, the chances of an error were high, and the consequences potentially catastrophic. He checked it again as they approached the door, then gave the signal to proceed. He glanced at his watch: six-thirty; a sluggish, purple-blue dawn melting into day as the city began to thaw. All was proceeding by the book.

The forcing open of the door was always the most stomach-churning moment of a raid for Manolis. It was like stepping into another universe where he could be greeted by any manner of threat or emergency: weapons, ammunition, innocents, hostages, children, babies, overdoses. Intelligence and surveillance helped but were far from foolproof. On this occasion, Manolis expected to find only the dealer, who lived alone with an irregular procession of addict girlfriends. He would likely be armed in some capacity, but the hope was to get to him before he reached for his weapon. Manolis and Sparrow brought up the group’s rear, both with pistols drawn and ready. Aside from a stray cat hissing and a hungry newborn screaming, the dark towers lay silent, their sleeping and unconscious addicts not making a sound.

That all changed as the door splintered on impact, its extra locks and latches sent flying like mortar fire from the rotten wood. They’d been installed against building regulations to repel would-be home invaders or other undesirables such as police. Manolis watched his fellow officers disperse, their moves decisive and choreographed as they swarmed through the cramped and darkened rooms. A noxious odour – clear indicator of a makeshift drug lab – assaulted Manolis’s nose before his eyes had even adapted to the darkness. Manolis was familiar with them in backyards and garages but had never before seen one in an apartment complex. If it exploded, the consequences would be cataclysmic for occupants and neighbours alike.

“Armed police! Surrender!”

The search was over in a few seconds, such were the confines of the tiny two-bedroom flat.

“All clear, Sarge,” came the report. “It’s empty.”

Manolis rubbed his chin, felt the rough stubble. How could the surveillance team have been wrong? He was told they’d watched the place for two weeks.

“Search it,” Manolis said, voice strained. “Top to bottom. Gather everything you can. I want enough evidence to send the bastard away for a very long time. Shouldn’t be hard.”

He left the boys to do their work. Sparrow joined Manolis on the narrow walkway outside, a blank look on his face.

“So what now, eh, boss?” he asked.

Manolis felt the mugging cold prickle against his unslept face. The city was waking, the first aggressive snarl of traffic building up fourteen storeys below.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What are your tracking skills like?”

Sparrow flashed a glittering smile that illuminated the morning.

“Not bad actually. My uncles taught me.”

“On concrete?”

“Anywhere. They could track a hopping mouse in a dust storm. See, the secret is—”

Sparrow was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass. A young man had rounded the corner, seen Manolis and Sparrow, dropped his plastic shopping bag, and sprinted back down the stairs.

“Jesus,” said Manolis. “Was that . . . ?”

But Sparrow didn’t reply. He had already identified the individual as their quarry, back from an early-morning visit to the local convenience store, and was in hot pursuit. Manolis followed, his bulky vest bouncing as he ran.

He nearly twisted an ankle going down the steep stairs, three, four at a time, descending with a crash on every landing before going again. Manolis quickly lost sight of Sparrow and was instead following with his ears. He didn’t imagine that the chase would detour to a different floor of the high-rise; that would only corner the dealer and lead to his downfall. Unless, of course, he had an accomplice in whose flat he could seek refuge. With so many doors to choose from, Manolis wasn’t confident he could locate the fugitive without a positive identification from Sparrow. His hope was that he would turn a corner and find Sparrow reading the felon his rights, having pinned him to the concrete.

But no such luck. Finally reaching ground level, Manolis saw Sparrow standing by a doorway, pointing.

“In here, Sarge,” the young man panted.

The basement was murky and oppressive, the air stagnant, and a bank of industrial machines hummed in the background. The overhead strip lights were either not working or strobed erratically. It created an eerie environment where anything could happen.

“Which way?” Sparrow asked.

“You go left, I’ll go right,” Manolis said.

“We split up?” The constable sounded disappointed and a little anxious.

“No choice,” said Manolis. “You’ll be fine.”

A labyrinth of hallways and passages formed the narrow guts of the building. Manolis’s ears pricked as he pressed his back hard against the nearest wall and moved slowly forward, firearm cocked and ready. His breathing was ragged, his heartbeat staccato, the blood pounding in his wrists. All the while, Manolis listened for faint sounds of life amid the mechanical clamour.

Suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire. In such a restricted space, it was deafening, to the point of being physically painful. A spasm ran through Manolis so hard that it shook the room. Without thinking, he bolted for the source of the shooting, his body lit with terror.

In a few seconds, he was there. The flashing lights overhead made it hard to discern the size of the room, and the events unfolding were like photographic stills of an action sequence.

“Sparrow? Are you here?”

“Yes, boss! But my weapon’s jammed!”

Manolis thrust his pistol forward as the lights died once and for all. Had an unseen hand flicked a switch? The sudden darkness was remarkable, disorientating, and thick enough to touch.

“Police! Drop your weapon! Now!”

Manolis’s order was ignored as the shooting continued, bullets ricocheting off the walls like pinballs. Dropping to the floor, he tensed his muscles and squeezed the trigger around which his fingers were clasped. He had only one choice, there was no other. A few ear-splitting moments later, he landed the shot that mattered.

Manolis heard an agonised groan. The metallic hail stopped. Within seconds, the sound of fast-running footsteps disappeared down an unseen corridor.

Manolis had discharged his weapon in the line of duty before, but had never shot a man. The high tide of adrenaline coursing through his veins made him light-headed, his world blurring at the edges.

“Sparrow?” Manolis asked desperately. “Jesus, son, are you OK?”

There was no response.

“Andrew!”

“Yeah, boss,” came a slow reply. “I think so. My ears are ringing, but that tells me I’m still alive.”

Manolis couldn’t work it out. What had happened?

It took some time for his still-twitching fingers to find a light switch, and then the gruesome reality was revealed. The dealer was nowhere to be seen, he’d escaped on foot. Sparrow was unharmed, and so was Manolis. But bleeding from his abdomen – a major artery – and with his back shot up was a street kid who had made the basement his winter home.

Jesus, thought Manolis. The kid was even wearing a replica football shirt like the one little Christos had, the exact same European team. Only it was soaked with dark, copious blood, and the metallic smell of it filled the air. Manolis felt even dizzier now.

All the kid had wanted was to escape the bitter cold. He never imagined getting caught in a shoot-out between good and evil.

And now the good were left to bear the consequences.

2

The problem with air turbulence is that it’s invisible. A violent movement caused when chaotic eddies of air are disturbed from calmer states. Unseen by the human eye, yet capable of a fierce and sudden impact. And just as quickly as it can materialise, it can disappear. That is the nature of the invisible – you can never tell when it’s there and what it might do. That is its power.

Manolis was no fan of air turbulence. The last leg of his journey from Australia had been the worst of all. He sat deep in his economy airline seat, clutching its economy airline arms, his knuckles and face turning a deathly white as the plane was buffeted up and down. A paperback novel lay in his lap, bookmarked, half-read. Around him, children cried and lights flashed. Passengers stared silently into their glowing blue screens, dehydrated, swollen, sleep-deprived and mesmerised.

It wasn’t quite how Manolis had pictured his European summer break, his well-earned respite from traumatic police work. Paul Bloody Porter had looked at Manolis with his tired, bloodshot eyes.

“You have excess leave and need to take it now or else HR will stop sending me e-mails and pay a personal visit,” he told his senior detective. “Get the hell out of here and go somewhere far away, purge your system. The investigation cleared you of all wrongdoing. I know it was exhausting to have to relive what happened, and I know you’re still hurting. But I have a duty of care to look after you. Your family’s origin­ally from Greece, right? Christ, a Greek summer holiday away from the crims and scum and winter and death. Take me with you. Just what the doctor ordered . . .”

Going in search of an isolated rural cottage also wasn’t how Manolis had pictured his rehab. And yet, having swapped one form of air turbulence for another, there he sat, clinging to the passenger seat of Stavros’s speeding Bulgarian jalopy, winding through tight mountain roads and again fighting down nausea.

“You’ve got to see the house with your own eyes,” Stavros said.

“Uh-huh,” Manolis said numbly. Everything at the cottage was sup­posedly normal, which meant that everything was somehow abnormal.

“I’m telling you, Lefty wouldn’t just up and leave like that,” Stavros went on. “He’d at least tell me where he was going.”

“And the police in Florina?”

“Useless. You’ll see that soon enough.”

The road to the Prespes region was like a video game that Manolis used to play with Stavros when they were teenagers in Australia. They’d grown up as mates, young men who lived for the weekend, for beaches and discotheques and girls, before Stavros’s family returned to Greece. Stavros still drove like a rambunctious teenager, impulsively and offensively. They had so far swerved past a herd of wild donkeys, nearly cleaned up a tribe of goats, narrowly avoided freshly flattened roadkill, and spotted a big brown bear plodding by the roadside.

“You wouldn’t want to see one up close,” Stavros said, re-pocketing his phone. It had rung a minute earlier – his Albanian electrician with, apparently, more excuses. Blood boiling, Stavros had a harassed look. He spoke in between answering his mobile, playing with the radio and taking deep drags on his full-tar cigarette. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt but Manolis was, and it could not have been secured more tightly.

As the car lurched and swayed, coughed and sputtered, Manolis tried to keep down his lunchtime pita. So far on his trip, his two chauffeurs had driven with identical recklessness. Aggression and distraction seemed to be traits of all Greek drivers, along with a lack of self-preservation and an adherence to the principles of chaos theory. At least Manolis’s cab from the outdated airport of exhaust-blackened Thessaloniki to its crumbling train station had been along a smooth motorway. Positioned in a gorge, the small mountain town of Florina was at the end of the line.

Stavros came on strong with a smell of nicotine and cologne. As usual, he was over-groomed, with gelled hair and designer stubble. He wore a thick dress ring on each index finger set with a prominent slab of glistening stone. Having collected Manolis from the empty, forlorn station in Florina, Stavros was anxious to show him the state of Lefty’s house and ask his professional opinion as an investigator. It smacked of desperation. But that was Greece all over; at least, as Manolis saw it.

Lefty was well known to Manolis from previous visits to the region. Manolis’s parents, Maria and Con, had immigrated to Australia from Florina in northern Greece after the Second World War. Lefty had always treated Manolis as his special guest, picking up the tab for food and drinks and offering endless cigarettes.

“And a body hasn’t been found?” Manolis asked.

“No. Of course, there are many ways that Lefty could have died natur­ally. But a body would have been found after a week, don’t you think?”

Manolis nodded. “Sounds about right,” he said. In his experience, most dead bodies were found within the first seventy-two hours or not at all.

“Lefty vanishing like that without any explanation is completely out of character. I’m telling you, despite his past, his life is now incredibly routine. If he ever plans on going somewhere other than Florina, he always lets others know, especially me, and often weeks in advance so that we won’t worry about him. But this time he said nothing.”

Stavros spoke quickly, his words running into each other.

“He could have left in a hurry,” Manolis said, “if something urgent came up.”

“Maybe, but he would have somehow called me later to say where he’d gone. Nope, I’m not convinced. I’m telling you, his disappearance is suspicious. It’s no accident.”

Just as Stavros said “accident”, he was forced to slam on the brakes. There were five wild boar blocking the right half of his lane. He beeped angrily as he swerved past them and pointed out the ski resort of Vigla to his left, telling Manolis that it had a lodge from which the lakes were visible.

“Sorry, I’m in no mood today,” he admitted.

Manolis felt the same. After he’d travelled a day in the air and was feeling utterly depleted, his old friend had greeted him with bad news. It reminded him of every recent visit to Maria. Before even saying hello, his elderly mother would bombard Manolis with an endless list of new problems and old grievances. Her bathroom tap was dripping, her phone wasn’t working, the doctors misdiagnosed her diabetes thirty years earlier, her brother still owed her money. Every complaint was another tiny weight on Manolis’s slumping shoulders, and his soul.

“I haven’t been able to sleep much, I’ve been so worried about Lefty,” Stavros added.

“Worried?”

“I’m scared he’s been abducted. Or worse.”

They were driving in a westerly direction away from Florina and towards the tiny village of Glikonero. The name translated as “fresh water” in Greek because it was perched on the shores of Great Prespa Lake, one of two high-altitude freshwater lakes in the Prespes region. The lakes were distinctive because they straddled three national borders: Great Prespa Lake was shared by Greece, Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia, while Small Prespa Lake was shared by Greece and Albania. Manolis had visited the region only once before. He remembered lonely roads and forbidding ranges. But its seclusion meant that it was also pristine and beautiful with abundant wildlife.

“Lefty’s been abducted?” Manolis asked.

“Or worse.”

Manolis exhaled and shook his head lightly. “That’s a pretty big call, mate. It makes it something else altogether, something criminal. What makes you think there’s foul play involved?”

Stavros tossed the burnt remains of his smoke out the window and promptly lit another.

“I know Lefty too well, he’s like a brother, he wouldn’t just leave without telling me,” Stavros said. “Even though his past was unsettled, he’s a creature of habit now. Perhaps that’s come with age, with slowing down. But I’m convinced that something’s happened to him and that he’s not simply left because he wanted to.”

Stavros let Lefty live rent-free in his rural cottage on condition that he helped work on it from time to time, painting and repairs and the like. Having grown up as an orphan, Lefty had been introduced to Stavros’s family by a friend of Stavros’s father. Stavros now looked after Lefty like a little brother as a way of honouring his late dad. It was a close and enduring friendship that Manolis’s late father, Con, had always respected.

“There’s one other thing about Lefty,” Stavros added. “I had kind of suspected it, but it was confirmed when I visited the police.”

Manolis looked across at his driver with wide eyes, his face slack. “What’s that?”

Stavros went on to describe how Lefty was what Greeks called “an invisible” – someone who lived without a scrap of official paperwork. The Florina police didn’t have a single record of him in their system, even though he was someone with whom they often spoke, socialised and did business. No-one had any record. Not a government office or a hospital or a private corporation or a charity or even the local public library.

“People like Lefty can only exist in countries like Greece,” Stavros said. “So much that happens here happens off the books, off the grid.”

Stavros described Lefty as a walking embodiment of the f. . .