The Meaning of Friday

1 The view hadn’t changed since the age of Homer, but the killer paid it no attention. The uncultivated centre of the Cycladic island of Naxos was a playground only for goats and hikers. It was a beautiful but lonely landscape, shaped by the weather. The summer sun scorched the weather-enduring grass, and the tough scrub bent beneath the winter winds. The higher peaks were grey with rockfalls, while on the lower slopes the insects were now collecting the last nectar before the summer drought. The spring air smelled of wild herbs, but in a few weeks that rare softness would be overtaken by the dry scent of dead leaves. Things like this had been constant for millennia. Villages thrived in pockets of fertile land linked by serpentine country roads. In the countryside near one of these, the hill village of Melanes, where ancient peoples once quarried marble, a twentieth-century farmer had built a stone hut to shelter him when he followed his flock across the open land. No more than a square box, the hut was made from rough rocks like those used for dry stone walls, and was just big enough for a man to lie down in. It was far enough from the road to go unnoticed, and even from the footpath nearby it looked uninviting. Its flat concrete roof was littered with chunks of stone as if to hold it down, but it wasn’t going anywhere. By the entrance, a bit of rusty steel mesh lay discarded, grown through by weeds. The stone hut had no windows, the entrance had no door, and for many years it had served no purpose. Its state of decrepitude was a guarantee of loneliness and eventual collapse. The little shelter had an air of having given up hope. It was the perfect place to hide a body. The killer never expected anyone to venture inside.