Deadline in Athens (20 page)

"The police believe that your son murdered Yanna Karayoryi. What do you have to say about that?"

I leapt to my feet as if I'd just sat on a pin. When had we ever said that Kolakoglou had murdered Karayoryi? They were the ones who wanted to make him into a murderer and they were using us as a front. I suddenly saw a very different Kostarakou. She was trying to imitate Karayoryi but lacked her intelligence and innate audacity. All she succeeded in doing was to appear even more cruel and callous than her predecessor. The old woman began to cry. A mute kind of crying, like a ritual lament.

"My son never killed anyone. My Petros is no murderer. Isn't it enough that he rotted in prison for so many years, an innocent man? Are you trying to pin something else on him now?"

Kostarakou looked amazed. The birdbrain thought that she was on to something. "Are you implying, Mrs. Kolakoglou, that your son was wrongfully sent to prison?"

"Ask those who sent him there and who got their hands on his business. As for that woman who got him put away, I won't say I'm glad she was killed, but there's such a thing as divine retribution," she said, crossing herself, as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

Would Delopoulos and Petratos realize, I wondered, that they were playing Sotiropoulos's game? It was as if he'd foreseen the report by Kostarakou and had taken pains to emphasize the parents' unwillingness to talk so that they would appear guilty. I was wrong to think of him as a Robespierre. He was an out-and-out Rasputin.

"Is that how they think they'll find Kolakoglou?" quipped Thanassis, who was sitting beside me on the sofa.

"Don't you get it?" I said. "They don't want to find Kolakoglou. It suits them for him to remain at large so they can throw more fat on the fire."

He gazed at me as if I'd come out with a pearl of wisdom.

"Why are you still here?" I suddenly said. "Back to the office and on with the search. Check out the cafes, the bars, all the joints frequented by the lowlife. He may well be lying low during the day and only going out at night." He leapt up immediately, said good-bye, and rushed out. Sotiropoulos might have been right, but Ghikas was right too. Let's get him behind bars first, and then we'd see what was what.

The kitchen table had been laid for one. A saucepan was simmering on the stove. I took the lid off and found the spinach and rice from the previous day. I wasn't going to get away with it, it seemed. I put some on my plate and sat down to eat alone. As I was eating, I reflected that it was Petratos who had started the hunt for Kolakoglou. If he was the one who had killed Karayoryi, then he'd done it deliberately to turn our attention away from him so that he'd have nothing to worry about. This thought led me to leave my meal unfinished. What the hell, spinach and rice always made me want to gag.

CHAPTER 20

Thanassis swore on everything he held holy that he'd been coordinating the search till two in the morning. He'd put a further call out to the patrol cars to comb the cafes, the bars, and all the joints that the people Kolakoglou had knocked around with in prison now might frequent. He came up with nothing. No one recognized Kolakoglou from his photograph. A few who remembered him from the trial had never actually seen him. Or so they said. It was only to be expected. Prison is a kind of mutual aid society. Once you've been there, you'll always find someone to help you out. Just the fact that the police were after him was enough to enable him to find a place to lie low and friends to help him. I told Thanassis to carry on with his investigations and to send me Sotiris.

Sotiris immediately began reeling off his findings. The reporters had indeed seen Petratos leaving at ten. But no one had actually seen him leaving the newsroom. Of course, he may have taken his car from the parking lot and left. Because I'd told him to act discreetly, Sotiris didn't want to ask without my approval whether anyone had seen Petratos's car in the parking lot after ten. Half an hour after midnight, Petratos had made an appearance at a bar behind the Panathinaikos Stadium where reporters hang out. The barman clearly recalled when he'd come and when he'd left, just after two. Yet from ten o'clock until the time he'd gone to the bar, his whereabouts were unknown. No one had seen him either going into or out of his house. The most important thing he kept for last: Karayoryi had phoned the studio after the nine o'clock news and had told them to keep a slot for her on the late-night news.

"Who did she talk to? To Petratos?"

"No. To Kontaxi, a girl who works in the newsroom. She told her to notify Sperantzas that she wanted a minute on the late-night news."

"Sperantzas hadn't known anything about it. First, he heard it was from Karayoryi."

"Yes, because he still hadn't arrived at the studio. Kontaxi told Petratos so she wouldn't have to worry about it, and then went home."

"So Petratos knew that Karayoryi wanted to break some story on the late-night news, but he didn't know what the story was:' I said to Sotiris. And he said nothing about it to Sperantzas. He didn't even leave him a note. He just left. Why? Out of indifference, or did he have some ulterior motive? I'd begun to get excited over this new evidence that Sotiris had turned up when the phone rang and cut me short.

"Haritos."

"Come up to my office! Now!"

"Ghikas wants me. We'll carry on later." From Ghikas's tone, I realized that a storm was brewing and I was going to get the brunt of it.

His expression was gale force and it hit me head-on. "Who told you to send Vlassopoulos to investigate Petratos?"

Vlassopoulos was Sotiris. I should have known that some busybody would spill the beans to Petratos, no matter how discreetly he'd gone about it. I did my best to pass it off as routine.

"It wasn't an investigation. It was just a formality. We were checking the movements of all those connected with Karayoryi."

"You're not telling me the truth. The evening before last when you went to see Petratos about Kolakoglou, you told him that he was a suspect! You even asked him for a sample of his handwriting to see whether he was the one who'd sent the letters to Karayoryi!"

I began calculating how many points this was going to cost me, and I felt as if I were going through a whole month's salary at the Mount Parries Casino. "I told you that Petratos's first name was Nestor, like the N who signed the letters."

"Yes, you did! But you didn't mention anything about a handwriting sample!"

"I thought I'd told you about that too, but perhaps it slipped my memory." More lost points. "However, I have it on good authority that Delopoulos intended to get rid of Petratos and put Karayoryi in his place."

"And so you automatically assume that Petratos killed her to keep his job, is that it?" he demanded sarcastically.

"I don't assume anything. But as soon as there's a motive, and a triple one at that, an emotional one, a professional one, and the letters, then I'm obliged to investigate."

"So it wasn't the formality you were trying to pass it off as," he said, and I shut up, while he carried on even more caustically: "A short while ago, Delopoulos himself called and gave me the benefit of his displeasure, for a good half hour. He had plenty to say: how disgraceful it is that we should suspect a distinguished employee of Hellas Channel; that he intends to protest in person to the minister and condemn our outrageous methods; that from the evening of the murder when he first met you, he'd seen that you had a hostile attitude toward the channel and that you weren't at all cooperative; that in addition to Petratos, you also put Kostarakou in the dock, and that the aim of all this is to make criminals of the unfortunate victims. He demanded that I take you off the case and assign it to someone else."

He said it all in one breath and was panting, like when he went jogging with the FBI. As for me, I felt my blood rising.

"All right, we'll take it easy, no problem, but there's a strong indication that he may be the killer."

"We agreed that you'd look for Kolakoglou. Have you found him?"

"Not yet, he's vanished."

"That's what Delopoulos told me. He said that because you're unable to catch the real culprit, you're simply stirring things up to show that you're doing something."

"We've only been looking for him for twenty-four hours. How are we supposed to find him in a day? He'd have to be sitting drinking coffee in Kolonaki Square!"

He did not hurry to reply. He looked at me and said very slowly so that it would sink in: "You will go now and find Delopoulos. He's expecting you. He wants you to explain everything to him in person. Otherwise, he says, he'll speak to the minister. You understand what that means. I can only cover for you up to a point. Watch how you tread with him. And see that you get Kolakoglou behind bars. Then we might get some peace."

As soon as he'd finished, he picked up a document from his desk and pretended to study it. In other words: Get things sorted out and see that I am left in peace, because I've got more serious matters to deal with.

Throughout the journey to the Hellas Channel studios, I tried to calm down and decide how I would confront Delopoulos. The difference between Ghikas and me was that I knew him, I'd come face-toface with him, whereas Ghikas had only spoken to him on the phone and had no idea who he was dealing with. Delopoulos was playacting in order to blackmail me. At first he'd pretended to be friendly to win me over, but then he'd seen that I was investigating his own people, Kostarakou and Petratos, and he'd got cross. Besides, he was no fool. He knew that if Kolakoglou turned out not to be the murderer, then he'd be up the creek, because that would vindicate Sotiropoulos and Horizon, who were trying to make him out to be the victim in the piece. So he'd decided to lean on me, the last spoke in the wheel, the most vulnerable of all. If he did have clout with the minister, then Ghikas would make sure he saved his own ass and he'd leave me up the creek. Without doubt I had to swallow my pride. But I've never known how much to swallow-I might end up choking.

As soon as I gave my name to his secretary, she sprang up, opened the door, and bustled me into Delopoulos's spacious office. Petratos was with him. He was sitting in one of the two armchairs stuck in front of Delopoulos's desk and looked at me as might a spider at a fly caught in its web.

"Sit down," said Delopoulos coldly, and he pointed to the other armchair. Before my ass had even touched the leather, he launched into me.

"I'm delighted that you've seen fit to do us the honor of coming in person instead of sending your subordinate again." From behind his desk, he looked imposing, but his expression did not bother to be severe. It reminded me of Kostaras's ironic, scournful expression before the questioning began.

"I'm afraid that what was nothing more than a routine verification has been blown up into something bigger than it was, Mr. Delopoulos. Perhaps Sergeant Sotiris is to blame for that. Plainly we are obliged to check on the movements of anyone connected with the victim. You will understand, I'm sure, that I too have people over my head to whom I have to report. I don't want them telling me tomorrow that I haven't done my job properly."

"Superintendent Ghikas assured me that he had not instructed you to investigate Mr. Petratos. You did it on your own initiative."

"Superintendent Ghikas is chief of security and has hundreds of important matters to deal with every day. Heaven help him if we were to inform him of every routine investigation. He'd never be done. But if, tomorrow, there's some oversight in the process, you can be sure that he'll require me to answer for it."

I was cowering and playing the luckless cop, instrument of the law, doing everything according to the book, living in fear of his superiors. Apparently I didn't convince them because Petratos launched into me next.

"I don't believe a word you're saying, Inspector Haritos. You're the one who told me on the evening that you came to my office that you considered me a suspect. You even asked me for a sample of my handwriting."

"I never said that I saw you as a suspect. It's just that because you insisted that the only suspect is Kolakoglou, I wanted to show you that, theoretically, there are other suspects too, yourself included. You had an affair with Karayoryi and she dumped you as soon as she had secured a free hand for herself from Mr. Delopoulos. I only offered this as an example of a possible motive. You obviously took it to heart."

He was pretty much bowled over and didn't know how to respond. Delopoulos shot him an angry look, before turning to me.

"Who told you all that nonsense?" he said in a pompous tone. "Mr. Petratos had no problem at all with Karayoryi's free hand. In fact, he was the one who suggested to me that we give her all the freedom she wanted since she got better results that way."

He didn't appreciate that what he was saying put Petratos in an even worse position. Because if that were the case, it meant that Petratos had secured complete independence for her and she, as a token of her gratitude, had left him.

"Please understand, Mr. Delopoulos, Superintendent Ghikas advised me to tell you everything, to keep nothing back." This seemed to please him. He leaned back in his chair, knitted his fingers, and waited for my full capitulation. "Our work obliges us to investigate every piece of information, every piece of hearsay, no matter how implausible it may seem. Well, there are certain rumors circulating among the reporters that you intended to get rid of Mr. Petratos and to give his job to Karayoryi."

Petratos jumped to his feet. He was shaking from head to toe with anger and indignation. And Delopoulos looked furious too. He forgot his easygoing attitude, banged his hand on his desk, and shouted: "I categorically deny it. I have total confidence in Mr. Petratos and I can assure you that his position was never in any jeopardy on Karayoryi's account."

"All this is a cheap diversion," Petratos fumed, still shaking. "You're unable to find Kolakoglou, who's the murderer, and you're trying to throw dust in our eyes."

"What have you done about Kolakoglou?" Delopoulos wanted to know, looking as if he would gladly throw me out with the trash.