Deadline in Athens (15 page)

She looked at the photograph and laughed out loud.

"Why are you laughing? Do you know him?"

"Of course I know him!"

"Who is it?"

"It's Petratos, the news editor at Hellas Channel. My boss."

CHAPTER 14

Mina Antonakaki lived on Chryssippou Street in Zografou. I found myself stopping every ten meters on Olof Palme Street, with time enough for a coffee before moving forward again. Throughout the journey I kept seeing Karayoryi's sister before me, sitting on a sofa, with red eyes and a handkerchief in her hand, and I grew steadily more despondent. The headache that had eased a little with the two aspirins started to get worse again. The traffic was as bad on Papandreou Avenue. By the time I turned off on Gaiou Street, my luck changed. I found an empty parking space.

The woman who opened the door was around forty-five and was wearing black. "Inspector Haritos? Come in. I'm Mina Antonakaki."

It wasn't often I'd come across sisters so different. If she hadn't told me who she was, I'd have taken her for a friend who'd come to lend a hand. Yanna was tall, thin, and imposing. Mina was a short, plump, nondescript little woman. Yanna was a brunette. Her sister had dark hair but was going gray at the roots. Yanna always looked at you haughtily. This woman had the look of a calf on its way to slaughter, which made you think less of her, and instead of feeling pity, you wanted to shout at her.

She led me into a small living room, had me sit on the sofa, and then sat opposite me. I hadn't been wrong. Her eyes were deep red and she was clutching her handkerchief, but was probably too lazy to use it, finding it less trouble to keep sniffing. Her living room was like mine, like my sister-in-law's, and like all the other living rooms I've seen in twenty-two years on the force: a sofa, two armchairs, a coffee table, two chairs, and a stand for the television.

It seems she sensed my surprise because she said with a bitter smile: "Yanna and I are not at all alike, are we?" She corrected herself in a subdued voice: "Weren't alike, I mean." She paused as if trying to find strength and then continued. "Yanna took after my mother. I'm more like my father. Though we were very close. We saw each other almost every day. You see, I live pretty much alone with my daughter. My husband is a sailor and is always at sea."

I could see her lips trembling, and I knew I'd have to be quick before she fell apart or I'd end up picking up the pieces. "We need some information about your sister, Mrs. Antonakaki. We have to complete the picture so that we'll know where to start looking for her murderer."

There are some questions that you ask because you want to find out something, or to trap someone or to clarify a matter. And there are others of no particular importance that you ask just to keep someone's mind busy and help them to find their feet. Mina Antonakaki fell into the last category. She attached great importance to what I was about to ask her and braced herself.

"Ask me," she said. Her voice was steady now.

"When was the last time you saw your sister?"

"The day before yesterday, in the evening. She was going to stop by last night, but she phoned to say something had come up and she couldn't make it."

"What time did she plan to stop by?"

"She usually came around nine and stayed for a couple of hours."

"And what time did she phone you?"

"It must have been around six."

So it was at about six o'clock that she decided to drop her bombshell on the late-night news. But if she'd already made the decision at six, why didn't she appear on the nine o'clock news, which is watched by many more people, instead of waiting for the late-night news?

"Mrs. Antonakaki, what do you know about your sister's relationship with a Mr. Petratos?"

"Petratos?" She seemed alarmed and repeated the name mechanically. "What should I know about it?"

"Your sister had an affair with Petratos and left him. It's no secret. Everyone knows about it. Did Yanna ever talk to you about him?"

She hesitated and said reluctantly, "All I know is that it wasn't an affair as you or I would understand it."

"What exactly was it?" I said.

"That's something only she could tell you." She said quickly. Then she applied the brakes and began searching for the right words. "She didn't have a very high opinion of him. She thought him ridiculous and made fun of him. He's an asshole, she'd say, if you'll pardon the expression. But those were her exact words. He didn't know if he was coming or going. And when I asked her how a big-time news editor for a TV channel could be an asshole, she simply laughed. He goes on because he's a panderer and a yes-man, she'd tell me. He runs after Delopoulos like a little puppy and agrees with everything he says." She stopped to take a breath; her words were now coming out with more difficulty. "And when she made love to him, she felt sick and was repelled by him. A forty-year-old lump, and he still doesn't know how to make love, she'd say. I have to take him by the hand and lead him along, like a kiddy in the park."

"If she didn't want him, why did she stay with him?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

"Because she was using him. There you have it, straight, just as she told me herself. She got involved with him and got into Hellas Channel on a good salary. She gritted her teeth and slept with him so he'd give her the position she wanted and so she'd have direct access to Delopoulos. And as soon as she had that, she dumped him. I remember it as if it were today. It was just after her success with Kolakoglou that Delopoulos said to her, `From today, Yanna, you have my permission to run whatever story you want on the news bulletin: She jumped with joy, and she told me that the very next day she was going to give Petratos his marching orders."

My mind went to the scrawled-over face on the photograph. She'd take him out of her drawer, look at him, and feel pleased with herself, and she'd made him exactly as she'd seen him.

"What is Mr. Petratos's first name? Do you know?"

"Nestor, I think. Nestor Petratos."

So, not Nikos, or Notis, or Nikitas, but Nestor. The unknown N on the letters. Lady Luck was smiling on me, but too readily. I restrained myself so as not to fall into her trap.

"I've kept nothing from you," Antonakaki went on, "because Yanna kept nothing hidden either. She told me everything, bit by bit." She let out a sigh. "But it wasn't only Petratos. My sister was repelled by men in general, Inspector."

"Why was that?"

"What can I say? She said that we women have to put up with the worst things in the world because of men, and they always do what they want to us even though they're worthless cowards. And that you should only keep them as long as they're of use to you, then you should get rid of them. `Do you know why I'm sad?' she'd say to me. `Because being a lesbian isn't my style: My hair would stand on end."

Yanna Karayoryi appeared before me with her arrogant smile, her haughty air, ready to show her scorn for me. You see, I was in the same category as Petratos and Delopoulos and all the others. Okay, she may not have been a lesbian, I may not have got it entirely right, but I'd been close.

"For a time, she tried to get me away from myVassos,"Antonakaki went on. "She said he was worthless too, and she made my life a misery trying to get me to leave him. But my Vassos is nothing like her Petratos. He's a good husband, a good father, and works like a dog at sea to keep us, me and Anna. Don't worry, I'd tell her, one day you'll find a man who's right for you and then you'll see that things aren't as you think."

At this last memory, she broke down and the weeping started again. This time, however, she remembered her handkerchief and wiped her nose instead of sniffing. I didn't even try to comfort her because my mind was fixed on Karayoryi's affair with Petratos. On Yanna and her defaced Nestor.

"All right, that's enough. You've been crying all morning. You've even got the police coming to you, when you should be running about trying to find out what's gone on. As if crying's going to change anything."

I turned and saw a girl in the doorway. She must have been about the same age as Katerina, possibly a little younger. I stared at her open-mouthed.

"My daughter, Anna," I heard Antonakaki say.

It was as if Yanna Karayoryi were there, twenty years younger, roughly the age in the photograph on her identity card. She was a tall, slender girl, with the same austere beauty and the same arrogant look that Yanna had. As if nature had taken all the features of the sister and given them to the niece. The girl wasn't wearing black. She was dressed simply in a T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. She stood there, cold and haughty, and turned her gaze toward me. I was overwhelmed by a desire to ignore her, just as I'd ignored her aunt. Not out of arrogance or antagonism, but because deep down I was afraid of getting into an argument with her. I preferred the mother, who wanted to talk in order to unburden herself.

"Had your sister spoken to you about some big story that she was about to break last night?"

"No. Yanna never spoke to me about her work."

"Do you know if she was being threatened? If she was afraid for her life?"

The girl got in first. "She was afraid," she said. "She was constantly afraid. She said that one day she'd come to a bad end. She laughed about it, but deep down she believed it. My aunt was a difficult person. When she got something into her head, she wouldn't rest, even if all hell broke loose around her."

"Anna, what are you saying?" her mother cried, terrified.

"The truth." She calmly turned back to me. "My aunt liked getting people's backs up. It amused her, but it also frightened her. Once, after I told her I wanted to become a reporter, she spent months browbeating me, trying to get me to change my mind. She listed all the disadvantages: how the profession had become degraded, how you now had to crawl or be cunning, and how everyone else was just waiting for you to slip up. And how she made so many compromises that what she ought to have done every morning was to spit at herself in the mirror. In the end, she convinced me, and I went to medical school."

"Anna, please! I won't allow you to insult Yanna's memory like that!"

The girl gave her mother a cold, angry look. I felt, however, that the look was simply a mask and that the person behind it was ready to burst into tears.

My headache had returned. I could barely hold my head up. A terrible feeling of tiredness came over me, and I stood up. I couldn't think of anything else to ask.

"Thank you. If we require any further information, we will call you."

The mother nodded good-bye to me, as she'd begun to weep again. The daughter got up with a blank expression to show me out. I was reaching for the front door latch when she stopped me.

"Inspector-"

"Yes."

"Nothing-," she said quickly, as if thinking better of it.

"You were going to say something."

"No. If I had wanted to say something, I would have said it."

She clammed up and became aggressive in order to cut me short. I realized that I'd better not pursue it. Perhaps she'd been in too much of a hurry and needed time to think.

"Anyway, if you want to reach me, your mother has my number," I said, giving her a friendly smile. She gave me an indifferent look and closed the door.

From Chryssippou Street, I emerged once again onto Papandreou Avenue and turned down Olof Palme Street. My mind was on the relationship between Karayoryi and Petratos. Antonakaki had told me that they'd broken up right after the Kolakoglou affair. But the letters from N began a year after the Kolakoglou case. If Petratos was the letter writer, then the relationship must have continued in some other form and ended in threats. I made a mental note to get hold of a sample of Petratos's handwriting to compare it with that of the unknown N. The other matter tormenting me was why Karayoryi had chosen to appear on the late-night news.

From Hymettou Street, I turned onto Iphicratous Street and looked for a place to park somewhere between Protesilaou, Aroni, and Aristokleous Streets. Naturally, I didn't find one and I began the same old business, just like every other evening: going around and around the block till I came across someone leaving their space.

Light rain was falling, fine like mist. My head was splitting and I was cursing when, all of a sudden, I spotted Thanassis at the corner of Tzavela and Aristokleous Streets pacing back and forth and glancing first down one street then down the other. I pulled up beside him and rolled down the window.

"What's up? Has anything happened?" I asked him, alarmed. For him to have come all the way out there meant that something truly serious was going on. He opened the door and got into the car. He sat beside me in silence.

"Why didn't you go to my house instead of standing outside and getting wet?"

"I wanted to see you alone."

He took a deep breath. Somebody else who was taking deep breaths. Everyone I'd come into contact with that day was either crying or sighing. I couldn't stay put on the corner. I drove away and once more began going around and around the block.

"I was with her last night. That's why I wanted to see you alone. I didn't want to tell you in front of others."

I froze. I stepped on the brake without thinking. The Mirafiori shook and came to a halt, while the driver behind me started sounding his horn, enraged. But I could hear nothing. My eyes were fixed on Thanassis. He avoided them and looked out through the windshield.

"Why did you send me?" he said. "I didn't want to go. You were the one who forced me to go."

I knew where he was leading. If the next day it got around that he was with Karayoryi just before she was murdered, he'd say that I'd sent him, that he was carrying out my orders. Of course, I'd made it clear to him from the very first that I'd take full responsibility, but he was reminding me just in case, so that he wouldn't have to worry his head. He might tell me every morning at nine that he was a moron, but as soon as things got rough, he used that to duck all responsibility. I didn't hold it against him. In his position I would have done the same. If Thanassis were found to be mixed up in Karayoryi's murder, there'd be such a scandal that Ghikas would undoubtedly have me suspended. The thought made me shudder. "Where did you go with her?" I asked, to get some idea of who might have seen them together.