Deadline in Athens (10 page)

"No," he said quickly, but then he began hemming and hawing again. "And then there's my girlfriend. If she finds out I was with another woman, I'll have real problems, and how am I going to explain things to her?"

"Send her to me and I'll give it to her in writing that you went on official business. Now get out of here and don't come back without the information."

He stood there and stared at me like a frightened pup. "Be off with you!" I shouted, and he took to his heels.

I didn't give a shit about the points.

CHAPTER 8

Before going home, I stopped by the bank to get the thirty-five thousand that Adriani had asked me for. I wasn't proposing to give it to her that particular day, but everything had worked out well for me and I was in a good mood. First of all, I was sure about the Albanian. With him, at least, I was in no danger of slipping up. And second, I'd adjusted the report without Ghikas getting wind of it. Of course, the business with Karayoryi was far from foolproof because Thanassis wasn't the smartest guy on two wheels and if he let it slip that it was me who'd sent him to fish for information, Karayoryi would make it front-page news and I'd have a hurricane on my hands. But you can't have all the hatches secured; you have to take the occasional risk.

I had a bank card. It was Adriani's idea. For her own selfish ends, but, anyway, it was convenient for me. At first, she pestered me to open a joint account, but that I wouldn't hear of. I'd have been witless to make her a partner to my money and end up tearing my hair out when there was nothing left in the account. Not that she was a spendthrift, but I decided to leave her on a diet before she could work up an appetite. When she saw that she wasn't getting anywhere, she changed her tune and persuaded me to get a bank card. She thought that she'd be able to discover the code and sneak off with the card to withdraw whatever she wanted, but it never happened. I gave her thirty thousand each week for the housekeeping, and whenever she asked me for more, I let her wait a few days before forking it over. I always gave in, but not before making her life difficult so she wouldn't get carried away. The only thing she'd succeeded in doing was to send me off shopping now and again, supposedly because she hadn't time, so she could put the money she saved to one side.

I put the card into the slot. "Touch here for Greek," the message came on the screen, to show that it was cosmopolitan and I was a peasant. I decided to put one over on it though and touched the second key, which said: "Touch here for English." Not that I. understood everything it said in English, but I knew the sequence of keys blindfolded and I didn't care. It was as though I was repeating the conversation with Thanassis here too, silently, through the eyes: "I'm a moron"-"I know you're a moron." Except that I was the moron now because the machine told me everything I had to do, spelling it out, just in case I didn't understand and flubbed.

I withdrew fifty thousand and went home. Adriani was sitting in her usual spot, in her armchair, with the remote control in her hand. Except that this time it wasn't the policeman she was watching, it was some other guy who'd married the mother and wanted to screw the daughter, but the daughter was having none of it. I stood over her, and, just as every other evening, she was either not aware of me or she simply ignored me. I took the thirty-five thousand, which I'd already counted, out of my pocket, and, without saying a word, I let it fall into her lap. It surprised her, totally absorbed as she was by the daughter and stepfather; the girl was swearing at him, and he, evidently a masochist, was sweet-talking her. Just for a moment Adriani moved her gaze from the screen and stared into her lap. Her left hand suddenly grabbed the five-thousand notes while her right let go of the remote control. She leapt up, and the control fell to the floor.

"Costas, dear!" she cried in delight, "Thank you, darling!" She held me to her and put her lips to my cheek.

On the screen, the daughter slapped her stepfather, and the scene was brusquely concluded. The policeman reappeared and at once began bellowing. But Adriani had forgotten all about this and was holding me tight in her arms as if she already had her hands on the boots. And when she let go of me, she stooped and picked up the control.

"To hell with it. I'm fed up with it. All the same stuff!" she said crossly and pressed the button while looking at me with a crafty smile, as if to say: "You see? If you bought me a pair of boots every day, I'd never watch TV again!"

For the rest of the evening, till it was time for the news bulletin, she hung on to me and her tongue never stopped wagging. She went on and on-about how life had become so much more expensive, and how five years before, a pair of shoes had cost only five or six thousand, whereas now you needed twenty thousand, about the expensive supermarket across the street and how she went to Sklaveni- tis's, which was three blocks away but was cheaper, and how glad she was that Katerina was coming because she missed her terribly. It was all bullshit, wool over my eyes, apart from the Katerina bit. Because she did miss her terribly, as I did. She'd literally wilted since the day Katerina left for Thessaloniki, and lived only for her coming home at Christmas, Easter, and during the summer holidays. The periods between were empty waiting periods that she filled with housework, television, and the little daily games of getting her own back on me.

At nine o'clock, I switched on the television to watch the news, and who should be on but Ghikas. He wasn't at all short, but sitting behind that enormous desk, he was barely visible, like a man drowning, struggling to stay above water. He seemed to be sinking under the microphones. He'd reeled off the summary by heart, without getting stuck anywhere. Kouvelos, our history teacher at high school, would have given him ten out of ten. He said nothing about the five hundred thousand or the van, a sign that he hadn't taken the trouble to read the full account. If the reporters discovered it later, he'd get around it by saying that the investigations were ongoing and he was unable to give any more details.

We lounged around for another two hours, first supper, then the ads with breaks for a film on TV, a bit of chat, and, by eleven, we'd had enough and went to bed. I was already tucked up and ready to prop Liddell & Scott on my stomach when Adriani came and lay down next to me. She was wearing a pale blue nightdress with embroidery on the chest. It was virtually transparent, because her white panties shone through underneath. She was ready to reach for her Viper on the bedside table when I put down Liddell & Scott and reached for her. I pulled her on top of me with one hand while I thrust the other under her nightdress and began caressing her left leg. I took her by surprise, and, at first, she froze, then she stretched out her arm and began caressing my back, giving me a back massage. It wasn't that I was desperate to make love, but somehow she had to pay me back for the thirty-five thousand and for my making things easy for her. My generosity deserved some reward. My hand moved higher, got as far as the elastic in her panties and tugged at it. She bent her knees slightly to help me, then straightened them again and held them tight together because she knew how I liked to shove my hand between her legs and part them.

About halfway through, I was already regretting it and wanted to get up and go, as if from a boring play at the intermission. Adriani's moaning and groaning made things worse. Half the time, the bitch faked orgasm and thought I wasn't aware of it. If every time it happened, I nabbed her and took her in, she'd have received a life sentence for repeated fraud. I'd look at Katerina and wonder how I'd produced a girl like that from a faked orgasm.

Adriani's groans ceased the instant I came. She leapt up and left the bedroom. She didn't realize that that was how I knew she was faking. When we come and she stays in bed counting her breaths, it means that she had a real orgasm. When she rushes to the bathroom to wash herself, as if I had gonorrhea, then she's faking.

I was holding Liddell & Scott and about to open it when I heard the phone ring in the living room. That was another one of Adriani's little quirks. She wouldn't agree to having a line in the bedroom because she didn't want it to wake her on those occasional nights when they needed to contact me, with the result that I had to spring in a panic from the bedroom to the living room, not to mention that I slept every night with the fear of not hearing the damn thing.

It had rung a dozen times or so before I lifted the receiver.

"Hello," I said, out of breath.

"Get over to Hellas Channel immediately," Ghikas said sharply at the other end of the line. "I want you to go yourself. Don't send anyone else."

"Is it something serious?" I asked like a moron, as it had to be serious or he wouldn't be sending me.

"Yanna Karayoryi's been murdered." I was thunderstruck, unable to utter a word. "I want you in my office at nine in the morning with all the details. Before you have your croissant." He stressed this last to demonstrate that he had his eyes everywhere and that nothing escaped him.

I heard him hang up, but I remained rooted to the spot, the receiver stuck to my hand.

CHAPTER 9

I found her sitting in front of the wall of mirrors. She wasn't looking into the mirror. She was leaning back in the chair, her head thrown back, and she was looking up at the ceiling. It was as if she'd been murdered while stretching. Her arms hung lifeless at her sides. She was wearing an olive green dress with gold buttons, and she had a scarf around her neck. It was the first time I'd seen her in a dress, and I stood there taking it all in. It made me wonder what suited her best, a dress or trousers-as if it mattered now. She was all made up: eyeliner, rouge, and a faded red lipstick, like the blood left by barbecued meat. There were no signs of violence on her face and the makeup was untouched. She'd been getting ready, it seemed, to appear on the late-night news. That was strange, because they usually have the live reports on the nine o'clock news and put the rehashed stuff on late at night.

The metal rod had gone through her left side, below the lung, and had come out slanting upward, pinning her to the chair. It reminded one somewhat of the jousting of medieval knights, who ran each other through: Ivanhoe or Richard the Lionhearted. Not that I'd ever read about them as such; I only read dictionaries, but my father once tried to educate me and bought me all the "Illustrated Classics." That's how I know them, from the printed form of TV, literature as cartoons.

"What sort of rod is that?" I asked Stellio from the records department, who was photographing the corpse so that they could remove the murder weapon and Markidis, the coroner, could get to work.

"A light stand," he said, and his camera flashed four times in quick succession. He altered the angle and there were four more flashes.

When I'd gone in, I'd had a quick look around, but I'd focused my attention on Karayoryi. Now I looked around again. It was a big room. Along the length of the wall beside the door they'd fixed a bench, just like those you find in government offices or doctors' waiting rooms, except that the officials' desks were missing. In their place was a long, rectangular mirror covering the whole wall. Three chairs had been placed in a row in front of the bench. Still sitting in the first one was Karayoryi, awaiting the coroner. The other two were empty. Karayoryi's was facing the mirror. The second, however, was turned toward Karayoryi. If it hadn't been moved by whoever discovered the body, then that might be a clue. Someone had been sitting beside Karayoryi, perhaps talking to her. If it was her murderer, this meant that she knew him and had had dealings with him.

Piled in the opposite corner of the room were projectors and spotlights and various lights still attached to their stands. Some spare stands were propped against the wall. He hadn't come to kill her, I thought; he'd come to talk to her. Something must have upset him; he'd picked up one of the stands and run her through with it. But what was it that had upset him? Passion? Professional jealousy? Revenge by someone she'd exposed? I reminded myself not to be in too much of a hurry, it was still early days. But at least I had something to go on. If it indeed turned out that the chair had been in that position.

"Are you done, here?" I asked Dimitris, the other technician from records.

"We're done, all right. We're packing up."

There was a closed cupboard on the adjoining wall. I opened it. Men's suits and women's dresses; the kind that fashion companies supply the newscasters with in order to get their names in the credits and so get some free advertising. I'd worn a tie for the first time when I'd entered the academy. It came with the uniform. And I'd acquired a suit when I graduated. From Kappa-Maroussis's "almost-ready-towear department." They brought me a brown suit, covered in stitching, that was big enough for a second Haritos. "Don't worry," the assistant had said. "That's why you choose it `almost-ready.' Once we tailor it precisely to your size it'll fit you like a glove." Two days later, the ready-to-wear was as baggy on me as the almost-ready-to-wear. "It's just your imagination," the assistant had snapped at me. "You've still not worn it in, that's why." Meanwhile, Kappa-Maroussis burned down, whereas I moved up in the world and started going to Vardas, which also makes its money on tailored suits.

I looked swiftly through the clothes, but found nothing. The women's dresses had no pockets, the men's suits had empty pockets.

I went back to the bench, beside Yanna Karayoryi, who'd had the rod removed from her. Markidis was bent over her, poking around. I picked up her handbag and emptied it out onto the bench. Lipstick, powder, eyeliner, exactly what she had on. No one was going to take it off now; she'd go to the grave with her makeup. A packet of Ro-1 cigarettes and a silver Dynon lighter, very expensive. A key ring with car keys and what must have been the keys to her house. And her purse. It contained three five-thousand notes, four one-thousand notes, a bank card, and a Diner's Club card. In the photograph on her identity card, she couldn't have been much more than fifteen, with long hair and a stern expression. I looked at the year of birth, 1953. So she was forty, and she hadn't looked it at all. I kept the keys and put everything else back in the bag for forensics.