The Whispers of Nemesis (22 page)

Again, he turned to go; his back was to the fat man as the fat man spoke.

‘Was an identity card not vital in identifying the corpse of that poor poet, dead in Vrisi? I'm told there was some damage to the face. When a face can't be recognised, then we only have the paperwork to go on, don't we?'

The policeman turned back to face him. On the swing doors, a fly crawled.

The fat man smiled.

‘Something occurred to me, about that case,' he said, ‘though I wouldn't expect you to discuss it with a layman. And I'm sure there's a simple explanation; but what I found intriguing was, how could a man already dead be carrying his ID card? Anyway, I have plenty to occupy me, and so, no doubt, do you.
Yassas
.'

He reached the door; but as he put his hand on the glass, the inspector called him back.

‘Just a minute,' he said. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Well.' The fat man smiled, again. ‘Only that Santos Volakis, from what I've heard, is the very rarest of men, a man lucky – or unlucky – enough to die twice. And I couldn't help wondering, when I heard about this intriguing matter, why a dead man would be carrying the papers of a live one. Were his papers not handed in to the police, the first time he died? If not, where have they been, from that day to this? And I was wondering if the simplest explanation might be the obvious one – that the poet had been issued with two cards. In short, perhaps he applied for a replacement, as I am doing now. Perhaps he was issued with a replacement for a lost card, which was later found. To temporarily mislay an object is easily done. I myself am guilty of it, now.'

Inspector Pagounis frowned.

‘That's easily checked,' he said, and went behind the desk, where he opened one of its drawers and took out a leather-bound notebook. ‘We don't issue many replacements. Most people take good care of their official documents.'

The fat man ignored the intended reprimand, and the inspector turned the ruled pages of the notebook, running his finger down columns of names and dates. A fly landed on the back of his hand; the inspector brushed it away.

‘You seem to be troubled with flies,' said the fat man, looking up at several on the ceiling. ‘That's somewhat unusual, so early in the year. And if I am not mistaken, these are not common house flies, but carrion flies.'

‘They brought the body here,' said Inspector Pagounis, still running his finger down the columns of names. ‘In this warmer air, the damn things started to hatch. And venerated poet or not, he stank bad enough.'

The phone on the desk rang; the inspector seemed not to hear it.

‘You'll be thinking, I am sure, of spraying them with chemicals,' said the fat man. ‘But my father has an interesting way of catching flies. He uses a
drakondia
, a stink plant; he brings one into the house, and lets it draw the flies so he can catch them in a net.'

‘A net?' Inspector Pagounis looked puzzled. ‘Why would you want to catch flies in a net?'

‘They have their uses, believe it or not. Not least of which is their role in the decomposition of bodies.'

The phone became silent. A fly landed on the back of the wheeled chair. Pagounis closed the notebook.

‘No replacement was issued here, and that book goes back seven years. My guess is, since he wasn't dead, he kept his ID with him. That would be logical, wouldn't it?'

‘Perhaps,' said the fat man, thoughtfully. ‘If he wasn't smelling too sweet when they brought him in, he must have been dead at least a few days.'

‘Long enough. They don't stink like that when they're fresh.'

‘You found him under the snow, did you?'

‘When it melted, yes. The old woman who found him had rather a shock.'

The fat man retraced his steps to the desk, and leaning on the high counter, reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. He held the box out to Inspector Pagounis.

‘Smoke?' he said. The inspector looked at the packet with interest, and the fat man held it out for him to see. ‘You don't find these everywhere these days. They're Greek manufacture, but the tobacco's good. Try one.' The inspector accepted, and the fat man lit the cigarettes with his gold lighter. ‘I smoke too much,' he said. ‘I keep meaning to give up. When you smoke, it makes you unhealthy. And with all these hills, if I lived around here, my poor lungs would let me down. I assume our poet wasn't a smoker, if he was walking all the way to his house. Surely no smoker would volunteer for such a trek as that?'

‘For a layman, you've a lot of interest in
Kyrie
Volakis,' said Pagounis. He drew on the cigarette and studied the fat man. ‘Yet you don't strike me as a journalist. Them, I can smell at twenty paces. So come on, level with me. Why all the questions?'

‘To tell the truth, my interest is professional,' said the fat man. ‘The poet's agent, Attis Danas, hired me to look into Volakis's disappearance from his grave. But the puzzle has evolved, now, into something different, namely his mysterious reappearance at the roadside.'

‘Do you find his reappearance mysterious?'

‘Don't you? Don't you think his accident might have been convenient?'

Pagounis knocked ash from the tip of his cigarette.

‘What makes you think it was an accident?' he said.

‘That's what I was told,' said the fat man, with an air of naivety. ‘Is it not so?'

Pagounis smiled.

‘
Kyrie
Diaktoros,' he said. ‘Your acting will never get you a job on any stage. I think you have already deduced Volakis's death was probably no accident, and that fact will become public soon enough. So in your official capacity – if you have an official capacity – you can be told that we are treating this as a case of murder.'

‘Really? On what grounds, if I may ask?'

‘You may ask, and I will tell you, though this is information you should please keep to yourself. My reason for that request is simple: the family still believe the death was accidental. You'll say I should have been straight with them, and you're right, but I'm a man with a soft heart, and at the time I couldn't do it. When his daughter came to make the identification, I felt the situation she was in was grim enough, so I decided not to add to her distress by telling her that he'd died a violent death.'

‘Was she distraught, then?'

‘Heartbreakingly so. She's a lovely young woman, too young for such trauma as this. Plainly, she and her father were very close. To see her kiss his hand brought a tear to my own eye. The strain made her unwell whilst she was here, and I thought she should have a day or two to come to terms with the shock. So I told her he'd had a fall, a slip on the ice, or whatever. That's the story she and the old retainer took away.'

‘But it wasn't true?'

Pagounis stubbed out his cigarette.

‘I was born and raised in Polineri, but that doesn't make me some backward, backwater boy,' he said. ‘I've served my time on city beats, and one look was enough for me. Volakis took a blow to the head. Not just one, actually, but several. And I can go one better than that, now we've had the autopsy report. There were fragments of glass in the wounds.'

‘But I have just been at St Fanourios. I saw no broken glass.'

Pagounis raised his eyebrows, and smiled.

‘So you really are an investigator,
Kyrie
Diaktoros. You think, in some ways at least, like a policeman. No, there's no glass there. We noticed that, too.'

‘So with glass in the wounds, you might guess at the weapon?'

‘I might.'

‘And might you also guess at who used the weapon?'

‘I might guess at that too, yes,' said Pagounis. ‘I might guess at more than one name. But a guess is a long way from proof.'

‘Will you be attending the funeral?'

‘No, but I'll send a couple of men. The press are taking an interest, and it seems right to protect the family from their intrusiveness.'

The fat man stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and picked up his holdall.

‘Thank you for your time,' he said. ‘If your officers are going to be absent in the morning, I'll leave it till the evening to bring in my paperwork. Though as I said, it worries me to be without identification. Look at Santos Volakis. Whoever would have thought of the body being a man four years dead, if he'd carried no identification?'

As the fat man crossed the car park, Inspector Pagounis watched him go. The phone on the desk rang out again; but the inspector let it ring as he left the foyer and pushed through the swing doors, back to his office.

 

Behind her desk, the proprietress was reading a magazine, a church-published
Lives of the Saints
.

The fat man took out his wallet.

‘I couldn't supply you with my ID card earlier,' he said, ‘but as I was going through my pockets, I came across it. Not lost after all, I'm pleased to say.' He slipped the blue card from his wallet and placed it on the desk. ‘Please do take down whatever details you need. I should hate for you to get in trouble with the authorities.'

 

Dinner at the hotel was disappointing: fried chicken livers a little burned, chips cooked in oil a little rancid, a slice of chocolate cake which, though rich with cocoa, was a little dry. The fat man ate alone, silent and thoughtful, facing the dark street and a view of his own reflection in the glass.

At a neighbouring table sat a blind man, with green-lensed spectacles covering his eyes, and a long cane leaning against his thigh. He, too, seemed disinclined to talk. He was drinking ouzo and water, and each time he reached out, the fat man feared he would topple his glass; but infallibly, the blind man's hand closed easily on his drink.

As the fat man was eating his cake, the blind man at last spoke.

‘Don't feel obliged to clear your plate,' he said. ‘My daughter has many qualities, but she's never been much of a cook. She tries, God bless her, but the talent isn't there.'

The fat man laid down his fork. Behind his reflection, a woman hurried by on the dark street, clutching closed the neck of her coat.

‘On the contrary,' he said, ‘I've been fed very well.'

‘You're probably wondering how I do it,' said the blind man.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘You're wondering how I know how to find the glass, but it's simple. Once Elli has shown me where the glass stands on the table, I memorise the angle of my arm and the distance I need to extend it. Usually, I'm right. Which isn't to say we don't have accidents, from time to time. Will you have a drink with me, and keep me company? Elli!'

He called out to the proprietress, and in a moment she appeared behind the reception desk, drying her hands on a towel. From the doorway behind her came voices and music, the soundtrack of a TV cartoon.

‘What is it, Papa?'

‘An ouzo for the gentleman,
kori mou
. She takes good care of me,' he said to the fat man, ‘and I'm not easy. Though I'm learning a little more independence, day by day.'

‘Let me introduce myself,' said the fat man. ‘I am Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens.'

‘They call me Denes,' said the blind man, ‘but I won't shake your hand. If I move my hand from its spot, my trick with the glass'll be ruined.'

‘Forgive me for asking, but when did you lose your sight?'

Denes raised his left hand, and taking the spectacles from his face, looked directly at the fat man.

‘There's nothing to see in them, is there?' he asked, and his eyes did, in fact, appear healthy. ‘A degenerative disease, the doctors say. My problems began seven years ago, when full daylight began to look like evening, then evening gradually became night. I see a very small amount, still – movements, and large objects. And of course the human body is adaptable. My other senses have grown sharper, by way of compensation.'

Elli placed an ouzo before the fat man, and gathered up his plates. As she leaned over him, he caught a scent of mountain air in her hair.

‘Thank you,' said the fat man. ‘You have fed me very well.'

She smiled, grateful for the compliment. When she had left them, the blind man said, ‘You came with Hassan, this afternoon.'

‘I did,' said the fat man. ‘How do you know?'

‘I hear the traffic passing, and I know the sound of his engine. He still brings Elli customers when he can. He still thinks of her.'

‘Has there been then some connection between your daughter and Hassan?'

‘Hassan's my son-in-law.'

‘Ah.' The fat man recalled a conversation, on the road back to the city. ‘But as I understand, they're not together now?'

‘They separated,' said Denes. ‘There was some trouble, and he left. Hassan wasn't to blame. Any man would have done the same. But I worry about the children; it's hard on them. And I worry for my daughter. Her mother's gone, and I'm a burden. She struggles, by herself.'