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into it from a bottle labelled ‘Glenfiddich’, but which Aristides was quite certain the man kept topped
up with the cheapest whisky he could find on his weekly trips to the supermarkets in Chaniá. He had never, since he first walked into this bar, seen the bottle anything other than half-full,
and he had never seen Jakob open a new bottle of Scotch of any brand. There were two other permanently half-full bottles of whisky on the shelves behind the bar, one of them labelled ‘Johnnie
Walker’ and the other ‘Famous Grouse’, and the contents of all three tasted absolutely identical. Only their prices were different.
    Aristides drained the Scotch in two gulps, gestured for Jakob to refill his glass, then dropped some coins on the bar, picked up his drink, walked across the room and sat down at an unoccupied
table in the corner.
    He’d been sitting there for something over half an hour and three Scotches, when the bar’s door opened yet again. Like everyone else, Aristides looked up at the new arrival and, for
the first time since he’d walked in, he smiled. The man at the door smiled back and walked over to join him at the corner table.
    ‘I tried your house, but it was in darkness, so I guessed you’d be here.’
    ‘Sit down, Nico, sit down. A beer? Something stronger?’
    Nico Aristides, one of Spiros’s numerous extended family, pulled up a chair and sat down. He gestured to Jakob, and the swarthy unsmiling Cretan plopped a beer bottle and a chipped and
dirty glass down on the table in front of him. Nico took one look at the glass and decided to drink straight from the bottle.
    ‘You were out again today?’ Nico said, more of a statement than a question. ‘Anything?’
    Nico had never enjoyed diving but he had numerous clients on Crete, and scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean, who were always keen to purchase any interesting objects that his uncle
recovered from the bottom of the sea. And, whenever possible, Spiros obliged, hauling up ancient artefacts that the archaeologists, given the choice, would far rather were left in situ. Nico, in
effect, acted as his uncle’s fence.
    Spiros shook his head, deciding in that instant to say nothing, yet, about the flasks in the steel case.
    ‘Nothing, really. A wrecked plane, but nothing of value inside.’
    ‘A plane?’ Nico’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He was used to his uncle finding amphorae, statuary, pots and occasionally ancient jewellery, but he’d never expected him to
find a recent wreck, far less so an aircraft. ‘Where?’
    Aristides gestured vaguely to the south, but didn’t specify a location.
    ‘What sort of aircraft? Fighter? Bomber? From the war?’
    Spiros grinned at him, revealing a selection of yellowish teeth amid an almost equal number of gaps, then shook his head.
    ‘No, a modern one. Some kind of a small jet – a private jet, that kind of thing. But it had certainly been in the wars,’ he added enigmatically.
    Nico looked at him, then glanced around the tiny bar. Almost every seat was now occupied, and as he looked at the table a couple of feet to his left, he met the level stares of two Cretans who
had obviously overheard Spiros’s last remark. Under Nico’s gaze, the two men looked away and seemed to resume their conversation.
    ‘I don’t follow,’ Nico said, leaning closer, and gesturing to Aristides to do the same. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean,’ Aristides rasped in his gravelly voice, ‘that there were three bodies inside it, and another one lying on the bottom, all of them still strapped in their
seats.’ Nico’s eyes widened and he shivered involuntarily. ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Aristides added, more loudly now, settling down to tell his story and
oblivious of the interest still being shown by the occupants of the adjacent table. ‘That plane didn’t crash. Somebody shot it down.’
    Aeroporto di Brindisi, Papola-Casale, Puglia, Italy
    ‘Is that Lomas?’ Perini