Deadline in Athens (5 page)

"Well-what are you waiting for?"

He turned on his heel and bolted. I waited a minute or two and then got up to go see the chief. I wouldn't have put it past Thanassis to let it be known that the chief wanted to see me and that I was playing the smart alec. And the chief knew every trick in the book; you had to watch your back with him. Not to mention that he was a bundle of neuroses.

CHAPTER 2

My office was on the third floor, number 321. The office of the chief of security was on the fifth. The elevator usually took five or ten minutes, depending on whether it had decided to get on your nerves. If you got irritated and started pressing the button continually, it could take up to fifteen minutes. You heard it on the second floor, thought it was coming up, and then, without warning, it changed direction and went back down. Or the other way around. It came down to the fourth floor and instead of coming on down, went back up again. Sometimes I'd decide "To hell with it" and take the stairs two at a time, more to blow off steam than because I was in a hurry. At other times, I dug in my heels and reflected that since no one else was in any hurry, I'd have to be insane to rush. They'd even calibrated the elevator doors to open slowly, enough to drive you crazy.

All the big brains are on the fifth floor, either so they can think collectively or so they'll be isolated before they ruin our brains too. It depends on how you look at it. The office of the chief of security is number 504, but he's had the number removed from the door. He considered it demeaning to have a number on his door like in hospitals or hotels. He had a plaque put up in its place: NIKOLAOS GHIKAS-CHIEF OF SECURITY. "In America, there are no numbers on the doors. Just names," he went on saying crossly for a good three months. He said it again and again till he finally had the number removed and his name put in its place. And all because he'd spent six months on a training program with the FBI.

"Go straight in, he's expecting you," said Koula, the policewoman who did the job of his secretary but looked more like a supermodel.

The office was large and bright with a carpeted floor and cur tained windows. They intended to give us all curtains, but the money ran out, so they limited them to the fifth floor. Just inside the door was an oblong conference table with six chairs. The chief was sitting with his back to the window, and his desk must have been all of three yards long. One of those modern ones with metal corners. If you want to get a document lying at either edge of the desk, you need a pair of tongs to reach it.

He looked up at me. "What more on the Albanian?" he said.

"Nothing more, sir. We're still interrogating him."

"Incriminating evidence?" Short sharp questions, short sharp answers; just the basics to show that he's (a) busy as hell, (b) efficient, and (c) direct and to the point. American tricks, we told ourselves.

"No, but we have an eyewitness who recognized him, like I said."

"That's not necessarily going to get you a conviction. She saw him in the vicinity of the house. She didn't see him either entering or leaving. Fingerprints?"

"Lots. Most belonging to the couple. But none to the suspect. No trace of a murder weapon." The ass had me speaking in shorthand, like him.

"I see. Tell the reporters that there'll be no statement for the time being."

He didn't have to tell me that. If there was a statement to make, he would have made it himself. And not only that, but he would have got me to write it all down for him so he could learn it by heart. I'm not complaining; it doesn't bother me in the least. Reporters are always on my back. It's just like the biscuits and croissants. Once it was newspapermen and newspapers; now it's reporters and cameras.

Using the secretary's telephone, I sent word for the Albanian to be brought to me for questioning. Interrogations take place in an office with bare walls, a table, and three chairs. When I entered, the Albanian was sitting handcuffed in one of the chairs.

"Should I remove the handcuffs?" asked the officer who'd brought him.

"Leave him and let's see whether he's cooperative or wants to play tough."

I looked at the Albanian. His hands were resting on the table. Two calloused hands, with thick fingers and long nails, black around the edges; misery's mark of mourning. He was staring at them as if seeing them for the first time, as if surprised. Surprised at what? That he'd killed with them? Or that they were rough and dirty? Or that God created him with hands?

"Are you going to tell me why you killed them?" I said to him.

He slowly raised his eyes from his hands. "Got cigarette?"

"Give him one of yours," I said to the officer.

He looked at me in shock. He thought I was messing with him. That's how sharp he was. He smoked Marlboros, whereas I'd stayed with the old Greek Karelia. I was giving the Albanian a Marlboros, to win him over. The officer put it in the suspect's mouth and I lit it for him. He took a couple of drags, beaming with satisfaction. He held the smoke as if to imprison it, and then let it out as sparingly as possible, not wanting to waste any of it. He raised his hands and squeezed the cigarette between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

"I no kill," he said, and, at the same moment, his two hands moved like one lizard and wedged the cigarette between his lips, while his chest heaved to make space for the smoke. His instinct told him that I might take the cigarette away now that he hadn't told me what I'd wanted to hear, and he hastened to inhale what he could.

"Don't play with me, you lousy Albanian!" I yelled at him. "I'll have you for every unsolved murder of Albanian lowlife on our files for the last three years, and you'll go down for life times ten, damn your country and damn its leaders!"

"I not here three years. I come-" he stopped to search for a way to say "last year." "I come 'ninety-two," he said, pleased with himself for having solved his vocabulary problem. Now his hands were stowed under the table, presumably so that I would forget about the cigarette.

"And how do you intend to prove that, dickhead? From your passport?"

I lunged at him, grabbing him and dragging him to his feet. He wasn't expecting it; his hands banged hard on the underside of the table and the cigarette dropped to the floor. He cast a quick glance, full of concern, at the fallen cigarette and then looked at me anxiously. The officer stretched out his foot and stepped on the cigarette, while grinning at the Albanian. Smart kid, catches on very nicely.

"You entered Greece illegally. There's no record of you anywhere, no visa, no stamp, nothing. I could dispose of you and no one would ever ask what happened to you. I've never seen you or heard of you, because you don't exist. Are you listening? You don't exist!"

"I go for woman," he said in fear, as I shook him.

"Fancied her?" I let him sink back onto the chair.

"Yes."

"That's why you were creeping around the house all day. You wanted to go in and do her, and she wouldn't open the door for you.

"Yes," he said again and smiled this time, enjoying the psychoanalysis.

"And when she didn't open the door, you went crazy and broke in at night and murdered them!"

"No!" he shouted in alarm.

I sat in the chair facing him and stared into his eyes. I let some time pass. He grew anxious. Luckily he didn't realize that I'd come to a dead end. What else could I do to him? Let him go hungry? He wouldn't give a rat's ass. He was used to eating one day in three and then only if he was lucky. Get two strong-armed boys from upstairs to give him a going-over? He'd had so many goings-over in his life that he wouldn't think twice about it.

"Listen," I said to him in a calm and friendly voice, "I'll write down everything we say on a piece of paper, you'll sign it, and you'll have nothing more to worry about."

He said nothing. He just looked at me with indecision and doubt. It wasn't that he was afraid of going to prison; he'd simply learned to be suspicious. He did not have it in his experience to believe that suffering comes to an end somewhere and you find relief. He was afraid that if you accept one thing, you'll have to face a second and third, because that had always been his fate. The poor wretch needed some gentle persuasion.

"After all, it won't be so bad in prison," I said to him in a conversational way. "You'll have your own bed, three meals a day, all courtesy of the state. You won't have to do anything, and you'll be taken care of, just like it was in your own country back then. And if you have any brains, after a couple of months you'll join one of the gangs, and you'll make a bit on the side as well. Prison is the only place where there's no unemployment. If you have your wits about you, you'll come out with a nice little nest egg"

He went on staring at me, except that now his eyes were glinting, as if he liked the idea, but he continued to say nothing. I knew he wanted to think about it, and I got up. "You don't have to give me an answer now," I said. "Think about it, and we'll talk again tomorrow"

As I was going toward the door, I saw the officer taking out his pack of Marlboros and offering him one. I made a mental note to get the kid transferred and have him work with me.

I found them all milling around in front of my office. Some were holding microphones, others pocket recorders. All of them with that greedy and impatient look: a pack of wolves hungry for a statement, soldiers waiting for their rations. The cameramen saw me coming and hoisted the cameras to their shoulders.

"Step inside, all of you. I opened the door to my office, muttering under my breath, "Go to hell, you bastards, and leave me in peace." They burst through the door behind me and planted their microphones with the logo of their TV channels, their cables, and their pocket recorders all over my desk. In less than a minute, it had come to resemble the stall of an immigrant vendor in Athinas Street.

"Do you have anything more to tell us about the Albanian, Inspector?" It was Sotiropoulos, with his Armani checked shirt, his English raincoat, his Timberland moccasins, and his spectacles with their round metallic frames, the kind once worn by poor old Himmler and now worn by intellectuals. He'd stopped calling me by name some time before and now just addressed me as "Inspector." And he always began with "Do you have anything to tell us" or "What can you tell us," in order to make you feel that you were being examined and graded. He believed, you see, that he represented the conscience of the people, and the conscience of the people treated everyone equally: no name or sign of respect, courtesies that only lead to distinctions between citizens. And his eyes were always fixed on you, wary and ready to denounce you at any moment. A modern-day Robespierre with a camera and a microphone.

I ignored him and addressed myself to them all as a body. If he wanted equality, he'd have it. "I have nothing to tell you," I said genially. "We're still interrogating the suspect."

They looked at me in disappointment. A tiny, freckled woman wearing red stockings tried to get something more out of me, refusing to go down without a fight.

"Do you have any evidence that he's the murderer?" she said.

"I told you, we're still interrogating him," I said again, and to let them know that the interview was over, I picked up the croissant that Thanassis had brought me, removed the cellophane, and bit into it.

They began packing away their paraphernalia, and my office recovered its normal appearance, like the patient who, once out of danger, is unhooked from the machines.

Yanna Karayoryi was the last to leave. She hung back deliberately and allowed the others to go out. I disliked her even more than all the rest of them. For no particular reason. She couldn't have been more than thirty-five and was always dressed elegantly without being showy. Wide trousers, cardigan, with an expensive chain and cross around her neck. I don't know why, but I had got it into my head that she was a lesbian. She was a good-looking woman, but her short hair and her style of dressing gave her something of a masculine appearance. Now she was standing beside the door. She glanced outside to see that the others had gone, and then closed it. I went on eating my croissant as if I hadn't noticed that she was still in my office.

"Do you know whether the murdered couple had any children?" she said.

I turned, surprised. Her arrogant gaze was where it always was, and she was smiling at me ironically. That's what irritated me: those meaningless questions that she suddenly came out with and that she underlined with an ironic smile to make you think that she knew something more but wasn't going to tell you, just to annoy you. In fact, she knew nothing, she just liked to fish.

"Do you think there were children there and we didn't notice them?"

"Maybe they weren't there when you got there."

"What do you want me to say? If they sent them to study in America, we haven't located them, not yet at any rate," I said.

"I'm not talking about grown-up children. I'm talking about babies," she answered. "Two years old at most."

She did know something, and it was amusing her to play with me. I decided to go easy, be friendly, try to win her over. I pointed to the chair in front of my desk.

"Why don't you sit down and let's talk," I said.

"Can't. I have to get back to the studio. Another time." She was all of a sudden in a hurry. The bitch wanted to leave me wondering.

As she was opening the door to leave, she bumped into Thanassis, who was coming in at that moment with a document. They exchanged a look, and Karayoryi smiled at him. Thanassis averted his gaze, but Karayoryi kept hers fixed provocatively on him. She seemed fond of him. Truth to tell, she had every right to because Thanassis was a good-looking fellow. Tall, dark, well built. It occurred to me to get him to establish a relationship with her. That way he'd be able to answer both of my questions: whether she did, in fact, know anything about the Albanians and was hiding it from me, and whether she was a lesbian.

She waved to me, ostensibly saying good-bye, but actually it was as if she were saying, "Sit there and stew, you dummy." She closed the door behind her. Thanassis came over and handed me the document.