Deadline in Athens (13 page)

The house was an old two-story building, yellow with orange shutters and a wrought-iron door with leaf patterns. It recalled the elegant houses on Akritas Street in the good days. I switched off the engine but stayed in the car. I'd slept for no more than two hours and had woken up with a fearful headache. The aspirin I'd taken before leaving home did nothing for me. My head was bursting and my temples felt as if they were clamped in a vise. I looked at the door to the house, which was half open. From the car to the front door was three strides, but in the rain it seemed enormous and I didn't dare move.

I must have looked suspicious to the two police officers in the patrol car because one of them got out and came over to me. I opened the door and sprang out. "Inspector Haritos," I barked as I hurried past him. By the time I got into the house I was soaking and my socks were squelching inside my shoes. God-awful weather.

The hall was small, marble-floored, and had two doors, one to the right and one to the left. At the far end was a narrow wooden staircase, with a polished handrail, leading to the second floor. I opened the door on the right and found myself in Karayoryi's study. Dimitris, from records, was standing in front of a small fitted bookcase, looking through some folders.

"Do we have anything?"

He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. "Computers," he said.

I looked at the computer screen facing the desk chair and I realized what he meant. They'd have to take the computer and all the disks to the lab to begin looking: to see what was stored, to do a first check, to print out whatever was there, and then send it all to us for evaluation. At the rate they worked in the lab, it would be three to four days at best. Long gone were the good old days when we had to deal with handwritten scripts, typed pages, notes on scraps of paper, on cigarette boxes, on the backs of old bills. We'd take them down to the station and find clues from the style of the handwriting or from a typewriter's a missing its tail. Nowadays, you don't know whether you're watching Ben Hur or reading a purchase agreement. You don't know where to start.

"Leave that to me and go and do something else," I said to Dimitris. He didn't need telling twice. He was off before I could change my mind.

The room was square, as in all the old houses. The desk was a wooden one, with carved legs. A solicitor's desk. She must have inherited it from her father or an uncle. When you sat at the desk, you could see the Lycabettus bypass through the window. The rain was coming down in torrents still, and the traffic poured on, nose to tail, horns honking like the devil. The window was small, and the room must have been dark even when the sun was out. Now, with the rain, if you didn't put the light on, you'd be feeling your way in the dark. On either side of the window were two old leather armchairs, which matched the desk.

The wall on the right was floor-to-ceiling shelves. In places the books were tightly packed, and in others they were sparse. They were arranged according to subject. I was more interested in the fitted bookcase on the left-hand wall because there were files on the top shelf, while on the rest were heaps of envelopes and papers, either loose or in plastic folders.

I'd be a real moron to waste my whole day going through that pile of paper. It was the job of the boys in records, after all, to sort it and bring me the findings. But, as if wanting to prove that I was a moron, I reached up and took down the first file. I flicked through it and put it down immediately. It was full of bills: electricity, telephone, and water bills. I took the second file down: her tax declarations. For the previous year, she'd declared twelve million drachmas net. The largest amount, 8,400,000, was her salary at the channel. I did a quick calculation. She earned six hundred thousand a month. Six hundred thousand for getting information from me and coming out with it on the screen. Whereas I, who handed it to her on a plate, had worked for twenty-five years to get to the point of earning half what she earned. Given the chasm that separated us, it was only natural that she should look down on me and that I should think she was a lesbian.

The rest of her income was from renting a two-room apartment she owned in Ambelokipi and from a book she'd published, entitled A Quiet Man. Attached to the declaration was a copy of the statement from the publishing company. I went over to the large bookcase, took it down from the third shelf, and saw that the book was based on her big success investigating the Kolakoglou affair.

Petros Kolakoglou was a tax consultant who had been convicted three years ago of the rape of two young girls. One was his goddaughter, who was only nine at the time. Kolakoglou had taken her out one afternoon to buy her clothes. The little girl had later told her mother that her godfather had taken her to his home. There, he'd undressed her, on the pretext that she try on the clothes, and had started caressing her. Straightaway the parents had gone to the local police station. It seems, however, that they came to some arrangement with Kolakoglou during the course of the initial investigations, because the girl suddenly retracted her statement, the parents withdrew their accusation, and the case was put on file. At precisely that point, Karayoryi came on the scene with one of her amazing revelations: There had been a second child, the daughter of Kolakoglou's assistant in his tax adviser business. The woman took her daughter to work with her during the school breaks, as she had nowhere to leave her. Kolakoglou showed a great fondness for the girl, bought her sweets and gifts, and she called him uncle. But, once again, there were some dark aspects, so it seems, that Karayoryi discovered, and she persuaded the mother to go to the police. The second case reignited the first. The goddaughter's parents gave way and brought the charge again. Kolakoglou got eight years, reduced to six in the appeals court. That series of startling revelations made Karayoryi famous. Her last had been the death of her.

I put the book down as it came to me why I had gone there so early in the morning: to look for Karayoryi's Filofax. There were cupboard doors on each side of the desk, as on most old desks. You opened the cupboards and the drawers shot out, three on each side. In the first drawer on the right I found a Nikon camera, a very expensive one, with all the accessories, including a telescopic lens. I looked at how many exposures had been used: none. There probably wasn't any film inside, but, just to be sure, I left it on top of the desk for the records people. In the bottom drawer on the left, I found four color photographs of a couple sitting arm in arm on a sofa. The woman was Karayoryi, just as I'd known her. The man was unrecognizable because someone had marked up his face with a black felttip pen. They'd added a mustache and beard and had lengthened his nose to look like an eggplant. In one of the photographs, they'd even given him a hat.

In the top drawer on the right, I saw a folder. There was nothing else in the drawer, and the folder was lying there, seemingly forgotten. Opening it, I discovered six letters, all addressed to Karayoryi. All written in the same handwriting, a scribble of the kind for which, had we done it at school, the teacher would have rapped our knuckles with the sharp edge of her ruler. The most recent one was dated two weeks before; the oldest was from 1992, eighteen months earlier. All began with the same plain form of address: "Yanna." In the first one, the writer described his surprise at meeting her by accident after so many years and asked her to "meet up for a chat." It seemed, however, that Karayoryi didn't do as he asked, because a month later he was back with another letter and asked her again. After the third one, the letters became more interesting. It was clear that the writer wanted something from Karayoryi, something that she had and wouldn't give him. He never said what it was exactly; he was always vague, as if it were something very familiar that they had discussed on innumerable occasions. At first, he implored and entreated. It sounded as though Karayoryi had simply played with him, because he became more and more demanding, until in the last letter, he threatened her straight out:

For so long now I have been doing what you asked, believing that you would keep your word, but all you do is play with me. I now know that you have no intention of doing what I ask. You only want to keep me on a string so you can blackmail me and get what you want. But no more. This time I won't give way. Don't force my hand because you'll be sorry and you'll only have yourself to blame.

There was no signature as such on the letters, just "N." I sat there staring at it. What name was hidden behind that N? Nikos, Nondas, Notis, Nikitas, Nikiforos? Whoever it was, this N was known to her and had threatened her. And Karayoryi had been talking to her murderer before he killed her.

The other two drawers were empty. No sign of her Filofax. To be honest, I hadn't expected to find it. As it wasn't in her bag or in her desk, it was probably taken by the murderer. There was nothing else either; nothing about kids, other than the book about Kolakoglou. No file, no paper, nothing. So why, then, had she dropped me the bait in connection with the Albanians? Unless, of course, we were going to find something in her computer files.

I took the folder with the letters, gathered up the photographs, and went out of the room. In that rain, I would need at least an hour, crawling along, to get to the office. I had all the time in the world to do my thinking.

CHAPTER 13

I found my croissant and my coffee on my desk and three urgent messages from Ghikas saying that he wanted to see me. The journey from Karayoryi's place to security headquarters had only made my headache worse. I opened my drawer, took out two aspirins, and swallowed them with the cold coffee, which turned my stomach. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, hoping that the pounding would go away. Hopeless. It was as if I were in dry dock and they were beating my keel with giant hammers. I gave up. I grabbed the file and the photographs and set off for Ghikas's office.

As soon as I opened my door, I saw them. Sotiropoulos at their head. Now that Karayoryi was gone, no one was going to dispute his role as leader.

"So what's going to happen, Inspector?" he asked, in a tone implying that he'd taken all he could from me and was about to set up the guillotine.

"Don't go away. I want to see you."

The way I said it, vaguely and unspecifically, I might have meant that I wanted to question them, or that I was going to make a statement. Because they didn't want to miss the chance of the latter, they were willing to risk the former. I left them wondering and made for the elevator. It must have intuited the state I was in and taken pity on me, because it came immediately.

Koula had been waiting for me in the chief's outer office and launched straight in. "What a thing to happen to Karayoryi. I heard about it this morning."

That gave me a boost without her knowing it. I reflected that Sperantzas's supposed bombshell had turned out in the end to be a damp squid, because most people at that time of night are getting ready for bed and are in no mood for hearing about murders, rapes, famines, earthquakes, and deluges.

"A crime of passion, you mark my words," Koula rattled on confidently.

"What makes you think that?"

"Listen to me, I had her figured out. She knew how to drive men crazy. She didn't give a damn about them, and she had them all running after her like little puppies. In the end, one of them must have flipped and killed her. But doesn't it seem strange to you that they ran her through with a metal rod?"

"No, why?"

"It symbolizes the penis," she said triumphantly.

"Is he in?" I asked quickly, before she began analyzing me too.

"Yes, and he's expecting you."

As I closed the door, Ghikas raised his head, leaned back into his chair, and folded his arms. His expression beckoned me to approach his desk, the better that he could give me a roasting. Before I'd got halfway there, he launched his attack.

"I said I wanted you in my office at nine o'clock. I've been calling you all morning."

I said nothing. I stood there with the file under my arm and stared at him.

"We have a star reporter, the leading name in crime reporting, murdered. Newspapers, radio stations, TV channels are all going to descend on us. In cases like this, the FBI works on a twentyfour-hour basis."

"I work on a twenty-hour basis. I need four hours to get myself back on form," I said calmly. "I left the channel at five in the morning, slept for less than three hours, and at nine o'clock I was at Karayoryi's house."

"What were you doing at Karayoryi's. That's records' job. I want you here."

Without a word, I put the file in front of him and opened it. I'd put the photographs on top.

"Who's that?" he said, gesturing at the defaced photograph.

"I don't know yet."

"Why have you brought it to me. It's not carnival time, is it?"

I left him wondering. It was dawning on him that the case was not one to be solved telegrammatically, in five lines, so he decided to read the letters. "Right," he mumbled when he'd finished. "Someone called N was threatening Karayoryi. It's a clue, agreed. But where are you going to find him? It means sifting half the male population of Greece."

"Unless N is the man scrawled over in the photographs."

"It's a possibility. Look into it!" he said, certain that he'd opened my eyes to something I myself would never have thought of. "Any other evidence? And don't tell me about the murder because I know how it happened. Sotiris told me."

"Her Filofax is missing. It was most likely taken by the murderer."

"Any connection with the Albanians?"

I'd been waiting for him to ask that. It would have suited him if she'd been bumped off by an Albanian. The newspapers would have made it front-page news with huge headlines as black as a mourning veil; the TV channels would have organized roundtable discussions on imported crime and would have been wallowing in commercials. Three days later the mourning would have been over, and Karayoryi's time would have lapsed.