Deadline in Athens (18 page)

"I know," he said. "We have the unknown N and his letters."

"Did you know that Petratos's name is Nestor ... ?"

He studied me in silence. He was trying to connect the man in the photograph with the Nestor of the letters, and the two seemed to him to fit, just as they seemed to me to fit. "Stay away from Petratos," he said. "You won't go near him unless you have enough incriminating evidence to convince me. I don't want to find myself at daggers drawn with the minister."

His look stopped me in my tracks and I didn't dare to tell him about the conversation I'd had with Petratos the previous evening. If he found out that I'd asked him for a sample of his handwriting, he'd have my ass.

"Find Kolakoglou quickly and get him behind bars."

This was a classic way for a superior to say to his subordinate: "All right, I've listened to your bullshit, now do what you have to." He wanted the tidy solution, just like Delopoulos, Petratos, the newscaster, and everybody else. No complications and no ministerial in terventions because of the involvement of upstanding citizens, etc. The reprobate was the easy solution. Always.

"The only incriminating evidence we have on Kolakoglou is that he threatened Karayoryi after the trial. What if he can prove that he was elsewhere at the time of the murder?"

"The alibi of a pederast with a criminal record doesn't hold water," he said. "When all's said and done, he should have spent six years in prison and he got away with three. It won't hurt him to spend another couple of weeks in jail. He's used to it."

There was no point in arguing. I collected my papers and turned to leave.

"You still don't get it, do you?" I looked at him surprised, and without hiding the fact that he was amused by my foolishnes. "Get Kolakoglou behind bars. Maybe he's the murderer, maybe not. We'll say that we're holding him for interrogation. Meanwhile, they'll publicize all the dirt on him. They'll rake up everything from the trial again and go knocking on the doors of the girls he raped to get interviews from them. If in the end Kolakoglou proves to be the murderer, then we come out and say that we owe our success to our valuable collaboration with the media and everybody will be happy. If it's not Kolakoglou, and we produce the real murderer, then they won't know where to turn first Either way, we come out smelling of roses.

You had to hand it to Ghikas! Now I know why he became chief and I remained a humble inspector. He rarely got a smile of admiration from me, but this time he deserved one. He saw it and laughed, obviously pleased with himself.

"As for Petratos, check him out, but at a distance. Discreetly," he said generously because I'd made his day. "And make sure you find out what profile means. In a few years' time, we'll all be using it."

The herd of reporters was massing in the corridor, outside Koula's office, waiting. They'd got nothing out of me the previous day, and so they were now knocking on my boss's door hoping to get something out of him. Among them was Kostarakou, but she didn't add her gaze to the collective, provocative look that the others gave me. She avoided my eyes.

I told Thanassis to come in. We hadn't spoken since the previous evening and he looked at me as though frightened. He thought I was going to start on about his meeting with Karayoryi. As soon as I told him that I wanted a large-scale hunt to find Kolakoglou, that I wanted his photograph circulated and a call put out to all patrol cars and so on, he looked relieved, as if he'd just emptied his bowels after ten days of constipation. He was good at organizing. I also told him to find out where Kolakoglou's mother lived and to get me a car and backup ready.

"Will you require a search warrant, too?"

"As if I needed a search warrant to get into a pederast's house. That would take the cake!"

The croissant was on my desk, in its cellophane. I opened it and took a bite. Souvlaki at night, croissant in the morning. I wondered when they'd serve souvlaki wrapped in croissant with tzatziki, tomato, and onion. I recalled some paintings depicting war chiefs in the court of King Otto, dressed in fustanellas with their dress coats over the top. The profile fitted, as Ghikas might say.

I bit into the croissant and addressed the pile of documents on my desk. I began with Markidis's report. Nothing new there, other than that Karayoryi had eaten approximately two hours before her death, which confirmed what Thanassis had said. The murder had taken place between eleven and twelve. I knew that too. I put the coroner's report aside and looked over the files from Karayoryi's computer. I didn't find anything of interest there either. Articles, interviews, and ideas for topics. There was nothing in them about Kolakoglou. Nothing among her papers either. How the hell could she be investigating something and not keep any notes? I reached the bottom of the pile as the telephone rang.

"Haritos."

"Haritou," I heard a girl's voice say, laughing. It was Katerina.

Katerina didn't have a phone in the house where she lived and so we weren't able to call her. When she called us, it was usually at night. It was very rare for her to call me at the office. Every time she did call me, I was immediately filled with worry that something had happened to her.

"How's things, Daddy?" She sounded happy, carefree.

"As always, love. Too much work. How come you're calling me in the morning? Is anything wrong?" I thought it better to make sure. "Nothing's wrong, I'm fine. I phoned Mum at home first and she told me you had had a scrap again."

If I'd had Adriani in front of me, I'd have given her what for. What did she mean by upsetting the girl? When you're a long way away, everything seems bigger than it is.

"Come on, Daddy. You know how she is. She's alone, I'm away, and she's always on edge. She flares up at the slightest thing."

"You don't have to tell me. But sometimes she gets my back up with her ingratitude."

"She's a bit touchy, but don't pay any attention to her. Make it up. I can't bear knowing that you've had a fight and you're not speaking."

"All right. I'll make an effort." I said it halfheartedly, because I'd made a whole strategic plan to find a little peace and now I was going to have to retreat in disarray. But I couldn't say no to Katerina.

"You're such a sweetie," she cried, overjoyed that she'd succeeded, and I simply melted. "And because you're the sweetest daddy in the world, I'll tell you something else. Sismanis, my criminal law tutor, suggested that I do a doctorate with him. He even told me that he'd manage to dig up some funds from somewhere so I could work in the department and get paid."

"Well done, my princess!" I wanted to shout, but my voice cracked with pride and emotion.

"I kept that for last to put you in a good mood. Anyway, I'm going to hang up now, otherwise I'll spend my whole lunch break on the phone. You have best wishes from Panos."

We'd never talked about it, but she knew I couldn't stomach that hulk that she dragged around with her. But she always gives me his best wishes. It's her way of telling me that she's still with him.

"Give him mine too," I said, politely but halfheartedly.

I heard her hang up and I put down the receiver. They'd all gone out of my mind, Karayoryi, Kolakoglou, Petratos, all of them, leaving only Katerina. Who was she after all? The daughter of a police inspector, who'd begun as a cop, who'd taken twenty-five years to get to be head of homicide and who'd never been able to learn the trick to make that big stride forward. It wasn't as if she had any background or had gone to the best schools; she'd attended the local high school and had had a few lessons on the side, and that only in the last year before the university entrance exams. Now look at her. They were telling her to go on to do a doctorate even before she'd taken her first degree. And look at me, I thought to myself. I'm running myself down, humbling myself in order to increase my happiness, to make myself feel even more proud of her.

I made an effort to come back down to earth, because I was ready to let the sleuth reporter, the defaced news editor, and the pederast tax consultant go to hell. I called Sotiris on the internal line. I told him to find out everything he could about Petratos. Who he mixed with at the studio, who he was at odds with, who his friends were, the places he frequented. And above all, what time he'd left the studio on the night of the murder, if anyone had seen him leaving, and where he'd gone after he left. And all that discreetly, without him getting wind of the inquiries.

When Sotiris had gone, I realized that I had to do everything in my life discreetly, and I began cursing my fate. I had to be discreet with Petratos so that Delopoulos wouldn't find out and make my life difficult. I had to be discreet with Adriani so as not to upset Katerina. I had to be discreet with Ghikas so as not to lose points. Fortunately, at that moment, Thanassis came in to say that the patrol car was ready and stopped me sinking any further into the pit.

CHAPTER 18

It wasn't raining now, but the sky and I had that popular song in common. Gray clouds and gray moods. Kolakoglou's mother lived in Kallithea, on Argonafton Street, which ran parallel to Davaki Street. I told the driver to switch the siren on; otherwise we'd have taken an hour to get from Vassileos Konstantinou Avenue to Amalias Avenue and then to Thiseos Street. Fortunately, the traffic wasn't too heavy on Thiseos Street and we switched off the siren because it gets on my nerves. We soon got to Davaki Street. It took us less than five minutes to get from there to Argonafton Street.

Mrs. Kolakoglou lived on the second floor of a four-story building. It was a cheap construction that had already begun decaying. The balconies had iron railings and geraniums. The builder skimped on the railings and the tenants on the geraniums. I told the sergeant who had come with me to ring one of the other bells. Not that Kolakoglou would have been there, but you never know. We didn't want to warn him and let him get away.

There were four flats on the second floor. Mrs. Kolakoglou's was next to the elevator. She opened the door as though she'd been expecting us. She was a shriveled, gray-haired old woman dressed in black. She may have been in mourning for her husband and for the calamity that had befallen her four years previously. She didn't know me, but as soon as she set eyes on the others in uniform, she froze. I pushed her aside and entered the flat.

"Search it!" I said to the others in a tough voice. "Turn everything upside down!" But what was there to turn upside down? A living room and two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, seventy square meters at most. The first bedroom was the mother's; the second was the son's. I went into the second one. The bed had a cover and embroidered pillows. On the bedside table was an alarm clock, a battery-operated radio, and a box of sleeping pills. I opened the fitted cupboards. Three suits, not tailored ones but ready-to-wear, and five shirts that Sotiropoulos would never have worn, because they weren't Armani, but had the air of a factory. They were all hanging in a row and with space between them so that they wouldn't get creased. The meticulousness of the housewife.

"He's not here, I swear it." I heard her whimpering voice behind me.

I spun around. "Where is he?" I snapped.

"I don't know."

"You do know and you're hiding him."

"No, I swear. I don't know and I'm worried."

"If you want what's best for him, tell him to come out of hiding because it'll end badly for him. He's looking at a life sentence."

"Why a life sentence? What has he done?"

I didn't answer because I didn't know the answer. "When did you see him last?"

"On the day they killed-" She couldn't get Karayoryi's name out. "On the day they killed her. He went out early that evening. I waited for him at night, but he didn't come back. He called me to say he was all right and told me not to worry."

"What time did he call?"

"About one in the morning. I'd gone to bed and he woke me."

He disappeared because he'd murdered Karayoryi or because he was scared when he saw it on the TV and so went into hiding?

"Where might he be hiding? Does he have any friends or relatives?"

"We don't have anyone. They all turned their backs on Petros and me. There's just the two of us now." Her shriveled body collapsed on the bed and she began weeping. "He wasn't even a month in his own home. I left the old neighborhood and came here, where no one knows him, to change surroundings and help him to forget. And in less than a month, he's on the run again like a wild animal."

"Where did you live before?"

"In Keratsini. But people kept pointing ine out, and I couldn't live there anymore."

The sergeant came in and indicated to me that they had found nothing. I didn't expect them to find anything. It was simply a ruse. If any reporter asked her, she'd say that we'd been around looking for him. I was shutting mouths, as Ghikas would say.

"Tell your son to come out of hiding. Sooner or later we'll find him. He's only making it worse for himself."

"If he calls me, I'll tell him," she said, between sobs. Even if she did tell him, he'd follow the first rule of prison, which teaches you to hide and stay there, whether you're guilty or not.

When I got back to the station, I found Sotiropoulos standing in front of my office door, waiting for me.

"What are you doing here at this time? Have you run out of stories?" Usually by one o'clock they'd all gone back to their studios to get their reports ready.

He smiled and followed me into the room. "It's my turn to make a little coup."

He sat down and stretched out his legs to his great pleasure. I pretended not to hear what he'd said and thumbed through the papers that I'd read that morning as though I was revising my lesson.

"Be quick about it, because I'm up to my neck."

"Just between us, honestly now, do you think it was Kolakoglou who killed her?"

"I don't know. We're trying to find him. When we do, we'll question him. I'll let you know."

He laughed again. "You're wasting your time. All that's bullshit thought up by Petratos. Only an idiot like Petratos would go on air with a red herring like that."