Che Committed Suicide (16 page)

‘Why?’

‘Because they won’t believe you. Our people neither buy nor rent in those districts. The only way you’ll get them interested is if you tell them you have property to sell.’

I thanked him for his advice and left. I walked up Herodotou Street with mixed feelings. On the one hand I was pleased because my nose for things hadn’t let me down. When you set up an
offshore
company to buy up real-estate agencies in depressed areas, without changing their original names, then there’s certainly some kind of operation behind it. Favieros wasn’t the kind to throw his money away on foundering estate agencies in districts where Greek was a foreign language. On the other hand, my theory that Favieros had himself written his biography had been shaken. If there really was a scam, as I suspected, why would Favieros open our eyes to it and tarnish his name? Unless, of course, he considered it unlikely that anyone would go to the trouble of looking into his offshore company.

The place where I had parked the car was directly exposed to the sun. The seat was like that hot pan on which my mother made me sit to get over the gripes. As soon as I took hold of the wheel, my hands were scorched and I let go of it. The Mirafiori lurched into the Toyota parked in front of me. Blasted summer!

The Yorgos Iliakos Real Estate Agency, noted down for me by Horafas, was in Pantazopoulou Square, behind the Peloponnese Bus Station. I drove down Ioulianou Street with Koula in the passenger seat. I had taken her with me because perhaps we would have to carry out investigations in the area after speaking with the estate agent. The heatwave was doing its best to melt the asphalt, the
pollution
to send us all to hospital and the exhaust fumes to chafe my throat from the coughing.

As we turned into Diliyanni Street, Koula, who up until then had been silent, turned and asked me quite suddenly:

‘How shall we present ourselves to this estate agent, Inspector Haritos?’

‘As police officers. How do you want us to present ourselves? As fiancés?’

‘No, as father and daughter.’

She took me unawares and I braked suddenly. The driver behind started honking his horn furiously, then stepped on the gas and, while overtaking me, stuck up two fingers from behind the closed window, as his car was an immaculate air-conditioned Toyota.

‘What made you come out with that – we almost got ourselves killed?’ I asked her.

‘Can we stop for a moment and I’ll explain to you.’

I pulled over and parked between a coach from Novi Sad and another from Pristina.

‘Let’s hear it then …’

‘We’re going to this estate agent because you think that there’s something fishy going on, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So why would the estate agent open up to two coppers paying him a visit, and unofficially at that?’ She fell silent and waited for a response from me. She saw that I didn’t have one and went on. ‘But consider if we were father and daughter. You have a two-bedroom flat in the area and want to sell it, to chip in a bit and get me another in a better area. The guy sees the father, sees the daughter, smells a winner and opens up immediately.’

Her idea was simple, correct and most probably effective. ‘So we’re all right on ideas,’ I said laughing, ‘but where are we going to get the flat from?’

‘My aunt, my father’s sister, has a flat a little further down, near the Moni Arkadiou. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s become of it, but maybe the estate agent will know it?’

She had all the answers and all I could do was to agree. We turned from Syrrakou Street into Pantazopoulou Street and drove around the square. We found the estate agency just before we had gone all the way round, on the first floor of a small apartment block.

The office was in a small flat consisting of two adjoining rooms and a sliding door between them. Facing the entrance was a young girl, nondescript in appearance, who was chewing gum and
arranging
some papers in a file. At the desk beside her a thirty-five-year-old with T-shirt, linen trousers and shaved head was immersed in what was on his computer screen. In the past, they used to shave our heads when we went into the army. Now we shave our own heads after being discharged. The atmosphere was stifling in spite of the fans on the ceilings in both rooms.

‘What can I do for you?’ said the girl, stopping short her filing but not her chewing.

‘We’re here to see Mr Iliakos.’

‘Mr Iliakos is no longer with us,’ said the man with a smile. He got up from his desk and held out his hand. ‘My name’s Megaritis. How might I help you?’

‘It’s about a flat …’ I began.

‘Coffee?’ he interrupted me abruptly as if he had forgotten
something
very important. ‘We have Nescafe … Greek coffee. An iced coffee is just the job in this hot weather.’

I politely declined, but Koula accepted the offer. ‘I wouldn’t mind an iced coffee with a little sugar and milk,’ she said.

I shot a look at her. She sat down with her legs close together and an innocent smile on her face, rather like a modest maiden minding her manners in front of her father. The secretary got up with a bored expression and disappeared behind a door, which evidently led to a small kitchen.

‘It’s about a flat,’ I began again. ‘I want to sell it and buy
something
a little better for … Koula, and in another area.’

As soon as he heard the word ‘sell’, Megaritis resignedly nodded his head and let out a sigh as though it was a question of the fall of Byzantium rather than the demise of Sepolia.

‘Where is this flat exactly?’

‘Near to Moni Arkadiou,’ said Koula intervening, afraid I might have forgotten what she’d told me. ‘It’s a two-bedroom flat, around eighty-five square metres.’

Megaritis adopted the expression of someone about to say
something
unpleasant and who doesn’t know where to begin.

‘It’s a tragedy what’s happening in that particular area. Ordinary people, family-men, who’ve managed to build a little place or buy a flat after a lifetime of saving are watching their fortunes evaporate, are selling up and leaving, because the place has been taken over by foreign hordes.’

Just imagine, I thought to myself, on his construction sites,
Favieros
was the champion of foreigners and immigrants, while the employees in his estate agencies longed for the old neighbourhood with its narrow streets and cursed the immigrants for spoiling the idyll for us.

‘Yes, but if they’re selling their places, it means they find buyers for them,’ Koula observed.

‘At the price they’re selling them for, anyone can buy them.’

‘And what price are we talking about?’ asked Koula.

Megaritis heaved a sigh. ‘I’m ashamed to say … really I am.’

‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘It’s a shame for us not for you.’

‘Near Moni Arkadiou, you said? And is it a house or a flat?’

‘A flat?’

‘How big?’

‘Two bedrooms. Eighty-five square metres.’

‘Let’s see.’ He thought for a moment. Then he turned to me. ‘You’ll be lucky if you get twenty-six thousand euros for it,’ he said. ‘More likely, around twenty-three …’

‘What are you talking about?’ Koula jumped up almost spilling her iced coffee. ‘That’s what you pay just for altering the form factor!’

She was furious, as though she really were selling a flat. I nodded my head approvingly and tried to conceal my surprise at her
reaction
. Megaritis smiled sadly.

‘The good old days are over, miss. Now no one cares about
altering
the form factor in those neighbourhoods. That’s why people are trying to save something of their fortunes any way they can. He took a card from his desk and handed it to me with his fixed expression of sorrow. ‘What can I say … Think it over and we’ll still be here if you decide to go ahead … Give me a call so we can arrange for me to take a look at the flat and to get the keys …’

He saved the final shot for last, just as we were about to leave.

‘You shouldn’t lose any time if you want my opinion. Prices are falling day by day. Today it’s worth twenty-three to twenty-six
thousand
, tomorrow it might only fetch twenty.’

Koula didn’t even deign to turn round and look at him. I was slightly more conciliatory. ‘All right, we’ll think about it and if we decide we’ll contact you.’

‘Did you hear him, the crook!’ Koula screamed as soon as we were outside in the street. ‘Twenty-six thousand euros! You can’t buy a bedsit for that price!’

I was standing on the footpath staring at her. Now that we were outside, I openly expressed my surprise.

‘And what do you know about house prices and form factors?’

Suddenly, she looked at me with a feigned expression of sadness. ‘You’re not concerned at all about my personal life, are you? Have you forgotten that I was engaged to a building contractor?’

Of course, I’d completely forgotten about the contractor who had been building without a licence in Dionysos. As soon as he had become engaged to Koula, he had started using Ghikas’s name every time that he had problems with the police. Ghikas got wind of it, threatened to transfer Koula and she had sent the contractor packing.

‘So where do you propose we go from here given that you’re the expert,’ I asked her.

‘Why don’t you let me ask around a bit on my own and I’ll tell you what I find out tomorrow?’ she said sheepishly.

‘Why, what can you find out alone that we can’t find out together?’

‘At this time of day, the only people at home are women. And women open up more easily to other women.’

I wasn’t at all convinced that she would manage it better on her own, but I saw in her eyes how much she wanted to try, so I gave in. After all, if she didn’t manage it on her own, I would come back the next day without her finding out and complete the investigation.’

‘All right.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, glowing from head to toe.

She accompanied me as far as the Mirafiori to get her things. As she was about to go, she leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek.

‘All right, all right, we’re done! We’re no longer father and
daughter
,’ I said to tease her.

‘You’re the only male colleague on the Force who doesn’t think all I’m good for is filing and making coffee,’ she replied in all earnest.

I watched her quickly walking away and started up the Mirafiori.

That afternoon, in addition to the heatwave there was a rise in humidity that made your clothes stick to you like postage stamps. Fanis came at nine to pick us up so we could go off in search of a little respite from the heat and we ended up in a taverna in a little back street square, parallel to Pentelis Street. He’d discovered it a few days previously with a group of his friends and he’d found it something of an oasis from the heat. He was right because now and again you felt a few currents of cool air hitting you. And even better, it was an old-style Greek taverna with fresh greens, string beans and split peas.

Adriani found the beans ‘a little’ undercooked, the split peas ‘a little’ watery and the main course of meatballs ‘a little’ dry. She added the ‘little’ each time to modify her criticism, not wanting to offend Fanis, who had taken us there. However, he knew her by now and was amused by it.

‘I brought you here to escape the heat, Mrs Haritos. I know it’s no match for your cooking!’

‘You know, Fanis dear, compared with the junk we usually get served today, the food here is at least edible,’ said Adriani, who always becomes magnanimous once her primacy has been re-established.

‘Anyhow, it’s paradise here compared to the oven inside the house,’ I said, not being one to split hairs.

‘The sun hits the house all afternoon and the heat is unbearable,’ Adriani explained.

‘Why don’t you install air conditioning?’

‘I can’t stand it, Fanis dear. It dries the atmosphere and starts me coughing.’

‘You’re thinking of the old ones. The new ones don’t have those kind of problems.’

‘You tell her because she doesn’t believe me,’ I chipped in.

Adriani made a show of ignoring me and answered Fanis: ‘A waste of money, Fanis dear. I manage just fine with the fan. As for Costas, he’s back to his old ways, roaming the streets all day. Maybe we should install air conditioning in that old crock he drives.’

My nerves were on edge because of the heat and I was looking for any excuse to let off steam, but I was cut short by the stir that suddenly filled the taverna. People were leaving their meals and rushing inside. We looked around without understanding what was happening.

‘What’s going on?’ Fanis asked one of the waiters passing by at that moment with a tray. He bumped into our table because he, too, had his eyes turned towards the interior of the taverna.

‘Stefanakos has committed suicide.’

‘What, the politician?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Just now. On TV. While he was giving an interview. Like that contractor! What was his name?’

He had already forgotten Favieros’s name, but now, thanks to Stefanakos, he would be dragged up out of oblivion. Because Loukas Stefanakos also belonged to that generation of students who had resisted the Junta and had had his share of prison, the dungeons of the Military Police and torture. Except that he had remained
faithful
to politics and hadn’t gone over to the world of business, with the result that he had become one of the politicians with the highest popularity ratings. In the mornings he was on the radio, in the
evenings
on TV and in between in the sessions of Parliament, where he was feared by all the parties because he wasn’t one to mince his words, not even with his party colleagues. Even I knew that he was the main candidate for succeeding the present leader of the party.

The tables had more or less emptied and everyone was crowding inside the taverna, where there was a TV fixed high up on the wall.

‘Do you want to hear what happened?’ Fanis asked me.