Che Committed Suicide (43 page)

‘Exactly. Now I want you to search for a certain Athanassios or Thanos Yannelis. He’s probably dead, but, if he were alive, he’d be over seventy-five now. I want you to find out his particulars and check them against those of Coralia Yannelis. I want to know if they’re related and how closely. You’ve met Coralia Yannelis, you’ve talked to her and you know exactly what to look for.’

I stressed this last sentence to make it clear to the other two that Koula was more in the know concerning the case than they were and that they should stop treating her as though she were the errand girl. It seemed that Koula understood because I saw a smile appearing on her face.

‘And one more thing. Go up to the fifth floor and tell the Chief that I’d like to see him and Stellas from Anti-terrorism concerning the suicides as soon as possible. Tell him it’s urgent.’

They left, with Koula leading the way, while I removed the
cellophane
and began eating my croissant. I may have had to scold Koula for preventative reasons, but the coffee and croissant
testified
beyond any doubt to my longed-for return to routine. I took a sip from the coffee that, meanwhile, had gone cold. I got up to go down to the cafeteria and get another one, but then I immediately sat down again. Never mind, I thought, Adriani has spoiled me. At work, I almost always end up drinking my coffee cold.

As I was taking the last sip, Koula phoned to say that Ghikas was ready to see me. The lift kept me waiting a good ten minutes, evidently to take the wind out of my sails so I wouldn’t have any illusions about its workings.

I arrived at Ghikas’s office and saw Koula sitting at her desk outside, tidying up a mass of papers.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked her.

‘He told me to spend an hour or so putting his papers in order because he was getting buried under them and didn’t know where to find anything.’ She took a deep breath and added: ‘It’s difficult to know where to begin.’

‘Don’t get yourself worked up about it. Till we’re through with this case, he’s not going to get you back. I made that clear to him.’

‘No, you don’t understand. I’m talking about afterwards. From what I see, it’ll take me at least two months to put everything back in order.’

‘Go and find out what you can about Yannelis and leave the rest to me. I’ll sort it out with him.’

The old Ghikas. Never missing an opportunity. But now we were in a hurry and there was no time for luxuries of that sort.

I found him poring over the brochure of the Worker’s Housing Organisation concerning the houses in the Olympic Village that would be allotted to the lucky few after the Olympic Games. I didn’t know whether he met the requirements, but if he were to enter the draw, no doubt he’d come out with one of the first-choice houses.

‘What’s happened all of a sudden?’ he asked, as he folded up the brochure and stuffed it in one of his drawers. ‘Have there been some developments? And why Stellas?’

I gave him a full and detailed report: about the T-shirt and the song and about all I’d learned from Zissis, without, of course,
referring
to his name or to the names he’d given me.’

‘In other words, we’re making progress,’ he said with satisfaction when I had finished my report.

‘It depends. Maybe yes, maybe no.’

We’d known each other for years and he could read my reactions. ‘What’s bothering you?’ he asked.

‘It’s not so much that we are making progress as that Logaras is leading us by the hand. That’s what troubles me. I’m not sure whether he’s leading me or setting traps for me that I keep falling into.’

‘When we were with the Minister, you said you wanted him to play cat and mouse with you.’

‘Yes. In the hope that while following his trail I’ll come up with something unexpected, something he hasn’t foreseen, and that I’ll get a lead from there. That’s what I’m counting on.’

Our conversation was interrupted as Stellas, deputy head of the Anti-terrorist Squad walked in. He took a seat opposite me and then looked at us in hierarchical order: first Ghikas then me.

‘So, what is it?’ he asked.

Ghikas glanced at me and left it to me to take the initiative.

‘Tell me, Nikos, have you heard of any resistance organisation from the time of the Junta called the Che Independent Resistance Organisation?’

He reflected for a moment. ‘You mean Yannelis?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘Not personally. But I know what my older colleagues used to say about him.

‘What did they say?’

‘They did everything but get to their feet when they mentioned his name. Seems Yannelis was one of those few that you fight against and respect at the same time.’

‘Do you know who else was in the organisation?’

‘No, that’s all I know. It was the Military Police who dealt with them and their records were all burned in Keratsini. I’d know them only if they’d continued their activities after the fall of the Junta.’

‘And didn’t they?’

‘Not under that name, at least. We’d have known.’

‘And what if they used another name?’

He shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you anything more for certain. The
business
of anti-terrorism is still an impenetrable tangle, you know that. All I can tell you is that Yannelis vanished from the scene after the fall of the Junta and cut all ties with his former comrades. We don’t know why, but it seems he decided to retire. I can’t tell you if the others in the group continued their activities, because we don’t know who was in the group during the Junta.’

So Zissis’s records were more up-to-date than those of the
Anti-terrorist
Squad, I thought to myself. Pity that we couldn’t
incorporate
the illegal workings of the Greek Communist Party into the Security Forces. We’d be sitting pretty now.

There was nothing more to be said and I got to my feet. Stellas said his goodbyes and left first. I halted in the doorway and turned to Ghikas.

‘I almost forgot. Let the tidying up of your office wait till we’ve finished with this case. Then you can have Koula back.’

He gazed at me with the expression of a wounded deer. ‘You’ve come back from your sick leave a changed man,’ he said. ‘Without any compassion.’

I don’t know why, but I liked what I heard.

It’s something of a delight to see a journalist pounding his head with his hands. Sotiropoulos was doing it to punish himself for his stupidity.

‘Why didn’t I think of it?’ he cried. ‘Why didn’t I think of it? With all that drivel I come out with every night on the box I’ve gone gaga!’

‘Did you know about the group?’

‘Come off it! We knew all the groups, big and small. We could recite them off by heart, like the National Anthem.’

‘And did you know that Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis were all members of “Che”?’

‘Okay. No one knew anything about anyone for sure. But there were plenty of rumours going around. You know how it is: so-and-so belongs there, so-and-so belongs somewhere else, so-and-so fell out with the one group and went over to the other. They themselves said nothing and you didn’t ask them. You always found out from the circle. Some of it was true, some of it was made up.’

I told him the other three names and he reflected for a moment. ‘The name Dimou sounds familiar,’ he said. ‘The other two names mean nothing to me. Of course, it all depended on who you knocked around with. Secretiveness was the rule so you might know some from one group close to your own circle and not know others who weren’t.’

‘Do you know when Yannelis died?’

‘I can’t tell you the exact year, but it must have been a decade ago.’

‘How did he die?’

He stared at me before answering. ‘Wait for it,’ he said. ‘He
committed
suicide.’

So, then, my fears of the previous day when I had learned that Yannelis was dead turned out to be justified. I had guessed right that there was some common secret from the past linking everything together. The question was whether the secret had anything to do with Yannelis’s suicide.

It seemed that Sotiropoulos read my thoughts, because he
elucidated
: ‘Anyway, Yannelis didn’t commit suicide in public. He hanged himself from the light fitting in his house. He was hanging there for three days till the building started to stink and the neighbours called the police, who broke down the door and found him.’

All right, but that didn’t overturn my hypothesis in any radical way. Everything may have started with Yannelis’s private suicide before the rules of the game were changed and the others continued with public suicides. There was something to this explanation if you consider that the other three were well-known public figures, whereas Yannelis was known to only a handful of those in the resistance.

‘Do you know whether Yannelis had any children?’

‘No idea.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘How much of all this can I use?’

I didn’t take the wind out of his sails. On the contrary, I thought about what he’d said. What gain would there be for us if he were to come out with anything I’d discovered so far? For example, the connection with Thanos Yannelis and with his suicide? It might alert Logaras to the fact that I saw Yannelis’s suicide as the starting point for the case, forcing his hand, making him reveal something more or go on playing cat and mouse with me until he tripped up.

‘If you want, you can talk about the “Che” organisation and question the connection between Yannelis’s suicide and the recent suicides.’

His face lit up. ‘At last, a start! I’m on my way!’ he called
enthusiastically
as he rushed out of my office.

I didn’t share his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t rule out the
possibility
that something may come of the ruse. I called my three assistants in to find out whether there’d been any new developments in the investigation. The indirect scolding of the previous day had worked because Vlassopoulos and Dermitzakis had begun to acquire
chivalrous
habits. They opened the door for Koula and let her come in first. All three sat down in front of me and waited in expectation.

‘Do we have anything new?’

‘Nothing on the Che T-shirts yet.’ Vlassopoulos was the first to speak. ‘It’s crude work, but nevertheless. In a couple of days at most, we’ll know who’s manufacturing them.’

I decided to leave Koula till last, because I’m something of a masochist and I wanted to prolong my agony, so I turned next to Dermitzakis.

‘Did you find out anything about the three names I gave you?’

‘Nothing about Stellios Dimou yet. Anestis Tellopoulos went abroad to study after the Junta and settled in Canada, where he’s a university lecturer. I got the information from his mother, who lives in Sparta. Vassos Zikas died two years ago.’

‘How?’

They saw my alarm and stared at me in surprise. Koula was the only one not perplexed because she knew the reason behind it.

‘Of a heart attack, while at the wheel,’ Dermitzakis said.

‘Right. Make sure you find out about Dimou.’ I turned to look at Koula.

She was holding a large desk diary, which she opened. ‘The name of Coralia Yannelis’s father is Athanassios. Her mother’s name is Vassiliki.’

Could that, too, have been a coincidence? It was highly unlikely. ‘Anything else?’

‘She was born in 1955 in Bogotá, Columbia. Athanassios Yannelis lived in Columbia from 1953 to 1965 and then moved to La Paz in Bolivia. He returned home in 1967.’

So that’s it, I thought to myself. There was no doubt that Coralia Yannelis was the daughter of Thanos Yannelis.

‘There’s a son, too,’ Koula added. ‘Kimon Yannelis was born in 1958, in Bogotá. He left Greece in 1978 and never came back. His whereabouts are unknown.’

‘And the mother?’

‘Vassiliki Yannelis, née Papayannidis, from Nigrita, Serres. Born in 1935 and died in 1970.’

‘Find out if there’s any biography of Thanos Yannelis or any other book about him.’ I turned to Vlassopoulos. ‘I want you to find me the manufacturer of the T-shirt, at all costs. And I want to know what happened to Stellios Dimou,’ I added, looking at Dermitzakis.

When they had left, I phoned Ghikas to inform him that we had established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Coralia Yannelis was the daughter of Thanos Yannelis and that there was also a brother whose whereabouts were unknown.

He asked me the classic question: ‘What do you propose to do?’ From the tone of his voice, however, I could tell that he was pleased.

‘First, I’ll talk to Coralia Yannelis, and take it from there.’

He agreed. In less than ten minutes I was down in the Security Headquarters garage. I didn’t take Alexandras Avenue, but went along Alpheiou Street into Panormou Street and turned into
Kifissias
Avenue at the lights by the Red Cross building in order to avoid all the traffic. Fortunately, it was almost the start of July. The school exam period was over and the traffic was moving at an acceptable pace. It took me just fifteen minutes to reach Aigialeias Street and I parked outside number 54.

Coralia Yannelis made me wait. Her excuse was that I had come without an appointment and that she had to deal with a serious professional matter. I was over half an hour in reception, like a patient waiting to see his GP or a voter waiting to see the MP for his constituency. I felt uneasy and I shared this feeling with
Yannelis
’s secretary, who didn’t much like having a copper hanging around her office. I could have left and called her down to Headquarters, but my kid-glove tactics had proved effective so far and I didn’t want to change them now that there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

She received me after about an hour, but she didn’t ask me to sit down. ‘This business has got to come to and end, Inspector,’ she said in a cold and annoyed tone. ‘You’ve visited me on numerous occasions, you’ve asked me the most irrelevant questions about the companies in our group and without any authority whatsoever. I answered your questions because we’ve nothing to hide and because I’m a law-abiding citizen. Whichever you prefer. But I’ve no
intention
of going on with this game. Next time you want to question me, send an official request and I’ll come with my lawyer.’