Che Committed Suicide (40 page)

‘Where’s Yanoutsos?’ I asked.

‘He got his marching orders the day after you came by,’
Vlassopoulos
said smiling. ‘The Chief called him upstairs and since then he’s never been seen again. It seems he collected his stuff while we were out.’

My desk was clean and tidy, just as I always left it when leaving work.

‘Seems he tidied up, too,’ I muttered.

‘Are you joking? We did that. So that you’d find it just as you’d left it.’

So that was what was behind the look they’d given each other. ‘Thank you. You’ve made my day.’

I walked in and sat down at my desk. The two of them left me alone, closing the door quietly behind them.

Sotiropoulos found me the following morning in the same place. Not that I had spent all night in the office; it was simply that it was no longer possible for me to work from the house and I had decided to return. I had said a prayer and then announced it to Adriani. She’d given me one of those icy looks of hers that she had been keeping in the freezer because of the summer.

‘Now you’re cancelling your sick leave, it’ll be our holidays next,’ was her only comment.

I almost told her to go and keep Mrs Ghikas company in Spetses, but I held my tongue, because it would have been at least a week before we were back on speaking terms. Then we’d have to go through the whole rigmarole of my having to wait for her to cook me my favourite stuffed tomatoes as a sign that she was ready to make up. Besides, I intended to keep my promise to her about the holidays.

‘It’s a good thing we didn’t leave. Ghikas had to cut his holidays short and come back. The Minister himself has taken a personal interest in the case so what can you do? When it’s all over, we’ll take off the day after, I promise.’

She didn’t reply, indicating that she had noted what I’d said though she wasn’t fully convinced. Anyhow, it softened her attitude.

My other problem was how to persuade Ghikas to let me have Koula till the end of the investigations. His face turned sour.

‘I don’t want her to get a taste for it because I won’t be able to keep her under control afterwards.’

‘Koula has been on the case from the beginning. She’s been keeping notes and she knows all the details. It’ll be even worse for you if I have to keep coming and disturbing her from her work every so often or if I’m obliged to keep asking her to come down.’

He saw that there was no other way and half uttered, ‘Okay’. My two assistants gawped when they heard that Koula was moving into their office for a time and that she would be assisting in the
investigation
. Dermitzakis was about to ask something, but I reminded him that I didn’t accept questions.

I don’t know how the press reporters found out that I was back, but they suddenly all burst into my office with Sotiropoulos at their head, as he was justifiably their leader. I had agreed with Ghikas to tell them that my sick leave was over and that I had returned to work. First we got the ‘welcome backs’ and the ‘thank yous’ over with.

‘You’ve become something of a legend,’ said one short brunette, who wore red tights in winter and a red skirt in summer.

I made a joke of it. ‘Don’t overdo it because it’ll go to my head and I’ll start seeing you by appointment one by one.’

‘Anyhow, you didn’t miss very much while you were away,’ said one conventional-looking young man with shiny hair and a
crocodile
printed on his T-shirt.

‘Apart from the Philip of Macedon business,’ added a well-
coiffured
blonde.

‘What happened in the end with those three?’ asked another woman. ‘I’ve been away on leave and I’ve missed a few episodes.’

‘From what I know, the file on them is being prepared and they are to be indicted for the murder of the two Kurds,’ I replied. I had no idea if that was the case, but I’d agreed with the Minister that this was what we would say.

‘And the suicides?’ asked the young man with the shiny hair.

‘Suicides are suicides and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘Inspector Yanoutsos thought differently.’

‘I don’t know what Inspector Yanoutsos thought. All I know is that when someone commits suicide, we can neither interrogate him nor arrest him. Consequently, the case closes automatically,’ I replied with some effrontery.

Fortunately, Sotiropoulos hastened to my rescue. ‘Come on now, let’s not bother the Inspector with nonsense on his first day back in the office,’ he said with the authority of a leader. ‘Whoever wants to know what Yanoutsos thinks can go and ask him.’

It appeared that the hint was taken, because all of them had heard in the meantime that Yanoutsos had been given his marching orders and there was the sound of ironic tittering. Then we once again went through the formalities of the ‘welcome backs’ and the ‘thank yous’ and they all left, apart from Sotiropoulos, who closed the door and came and stood in front of me.

‘Any news?’ he asked.

I didn’t want to tell him about the biography we’d found on Vakirtzis’s computer. After all, he was a journalist and I couldn’t keep subjecting him to temptation. Eventually, he’d succumb and I’d be left regretting it.

‘All we know with certainty is their common background.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All three of them mixed in the same circles, were involved in the struggle against the Junta and spent time in the cells of the Military Police. This Logaras must know something from their past that he was using to blackmail them.’

He thought about it. ‘That makes sense. It also explains the biographies.’

‘How? Enlighten me,’ I said, curious.

‘He brought out the biographies afterwards in order to muddy the waters.’

I might have had the same thought, if I hadn’t known that Logaras had sent the biographies to his victims first. On the other hand, it would suit me if he were to come out with his version, because he, too, would be muddying the waters and that would be to my advantage.

‘We can’t exclude the possibility.’ He gave me a wily look, pleased with himself. ‘Could you see what you can find out?’ I said to him.

‘Find out about what?’

‘Something from their past.’

‘If it’s a long way in the past, it’ll be difficult. Maybe the files kept during the Junta would be of more help.’

‘They were burned in Keratsini, have you forgotten?’

He laughed. ‘Come on now, Haritos. The only things that got burned in Keratsini were storeroom inventories and newspapers!’

‘No matter how unbelievable it may seem to you, they were burned,’ I insisted.

He went on laughing. ‘Okay, then search among the ashes. I’m sure that not everything was burned,’ he added meaningfully. ‘Anyhow, I’ll do what I can.’

He left and I called Koula in. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, no make-up and her hair in a ponytail, just as on the first day she had come to my house. Ghikas’s model in uniform was still not back on duty.

‘What happened with the computer in Favieros’s office?’

‘Just as you expected. Zilch.’

‘Not even a copy of the biography?’

‘No.’

‘And the papers with the cassettes that we found at Vakirtzis’s home?’ She placed an envelope she had been holding under her arm in front of me. ‘Did you send the cassettes to be transcribed?’

‘This morning, all apart from one. The one from May 12th that we needed urgently. I had Spyros transcribe it last night. If he wants to join the Force, he can afford to show a little eagerness. You’ll find it in the envelope,’ she said with a coy smile.

‘Well done. What else is there?’

‘Spyros and I thought of going and taking a look at the computer in Favieros’s home in Porto Rafti.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find anything, but take a look so we don’t leave any stones unturned.’

Koula left and I sat comfortably to read the transcription of Vakirtzis’s programme. My first reaction after reading the first few pages was that if Vakirtzis had wanted to incite the toughs belonging to the Philip of Macedon organisation to kill Stefanakos, he couldn’t have done it in a better way. The entire programme consisted of Vakirtzis ranting and raving about Stefanakos’s proposals for the recognition of immigrant culture and for the introduction of their languages into the state schools.

Vakirtzis wasn’t advocating nationalism, on the contrary, he attacked Stefanakos from the left. He set himself up as the voice of the unemployed. The reason, according to Vakirtzis, why
unemployment
was not falling even though the number of job
opportunities
was rising was because the new positions were going to the immigrants. The result was that Greek workers were being done out of their rights. The immigrants were preferred because they worked longer hours for below the minimum wage. If Stefanakos’s proposals prevailed, immigrants would become a permanent feature in Greece which would increase the prospect of unemployment for the Greeks. The parting shot crowned it all:

That question alone would have been more than enough to incite the Philip of Macedon nationalists to kill Stefanakos and all the members of the Greek Parliament along with him. The remainder of the programme confirmed this. The phone calls came one after the other from idlers of both sexes with streams of abuse about the foreigners who were stealing their jobs and ruining their wonderful country.

I was starting to lose interest from constantly reading the questions and answers between the listeners and Vakirtzis when, towards the end of the programme, Vakirtzis came out with another comment that I found intriguing:

That was the two-sided game that Vakirtzis was playing. On the one hand, he was making a scathing attack on Stefanakos that could only harm him politically, yet, at the same time, he was showing support for his wife, who secured EU funds and consequently jobs in the Balkan countries. So that was the message. He was making it clear to Stefanakos that he too was interested, using his brother as a front, in opening up in the Balkans.

Why didn’t Stefanakos take Vakirtzis to court? Given what he had said against him and, more particularly, the way he had said it, Stefanakos could have easily sued him for defamation of character. So why didn’t he? Out of a sense of hackneyed comradeship and belated solidarity, perhaps? I thought about it for a moment but rejected it. The answer was to be found in the envelope that Koula had left in front of me: in the photocopy of a cheque for three
thousand
euros drawn on a bank in Bucharest that Vakirtzis had had in his possession.

Stathatos had her eyes glued to the photocopy of the cheque drawn on the bank in Bucharest. Her problem wasn’t with the Romanian, but with how she might gain time while deciding how to confront its bearer, in other words, me.

‘Where did you find it?’ she asked me eventually.

‘In a drawer in Apostolos Vakirtzis’s desk. Together with other information he was safeguarding. Among which was a recording of a programme about your husband.’

‘Ah, the infamous programme,’ she commented.

An embarrassing silence followed. Stathatos didn’t know how to continue, nor I how to begin. I wondered whether I should come straight to the point or whether I should use a roundabout way. I decided upon the first approach.

‘Was Apostolos Vakirtzis blackmailing you?’

Almost mechanically, she adopted her self-confident and
condescending
expression. ‘Now, now, Inspector. You see conspiracies everywhere …’

‘I listened to the programme and the attack made by Vakirtzis on your husband. Were there any other motives behind it in your opinion?’

She shrugged. ‘No, that’s what he believed. Following the fall of the communist regimes, leftist nationalism became very fashionable.’

‘Perhaps, but towards the end of the programme, Vakirtzis came out with something rather interesting.’ I reached into my pocket and took out the sheet of paper where I had written Vakirtzis’s words and I read aloud: ‘“Who doesn’t want to see our neighbours in the Balkans progressing? But a much greater service is done both to them and to us by those who create jobs and make investments in their own countries.” That comment should make you sit up, Mrs Stathatos. He’s sending you a message that he regards what you are doing as something positive and he would like to be involved in it. If you take it in conjunction with the cheque we found among his papers, it says a lot.’

She was no longer in any mood to help me shed some light on the matter. She simply looked at me in silence.

‘I’ve said it several times, to you, to Mr Zamanis and to Mrs
Yannelis
, that we are not investigating your businesses or your dealings. All we are interested in is finding out the reasons behind the three suicides and for one reason alone: in order to prevent any others. This is our only concern.’

She continued to look at me pensively and let out a sigh. ‘You’re right. He was blackmailing us. Both Loukas and myself. And,
naturally
, we weren’t the only ones. Vakirtzis was blackmailing
politicians
, businessmen, publishers, not to get money out of them, but for favours and information that he then used against them.’