Baby Blue

by Pol Koutsakis

  After my conversation with Hara, I badly needed some good news, and Angelino’s recovery was a welcome injection of optimism. She had told me the whole story of the passionate but destructive love affair between Nefeli Grigoriou, Emma’s mother, and Raptas in great detail. Nefeli was a director at a big advertising company. She had risen quickly in the ranks through sheer determination and hard work. She was impatient with Themis’ idealism, not just because he wanted to change the world but because he believed he would. As for children, Nefeli didn’t even want to think about it, let alone discuss it. But Themis put a lot of pressure on her, arguing that this would complete their relationship. All she wanted was a glittering career with Themis by her side. That was it.

  “Nefeli and I used to talk a lot towards the end – she didn’t have any friends and I was the only one who would listen – and I didn’t even like her. She’d say, ‘Why wasn’t I ever enough for him? Why weren’t we ever enough for him, the two of us?’”

  “So what did Themis have to say about all this?”

  “He felt terrible. He thought that it was all his fault.”

  When Nefeli gave him an ultimatum, saying that she never wanted to have children and that he would have to make a choice between a relationship on her terms or none at all, Themis took off. To make things worse, he started sleeping with her best friend. And about a month later, Nefeli discovered she was pregnant.

  “They say that a woman scorned will turn into a monster of one sort or another, but Nefeli was in a class of her own. Even years later, when I met her, she only had to hear his name and her face would change. You felt that she was capable of doing anything, even to you. She told me that it was back then, when they had just split up and she saw him going out with her best friend, that the idea of revenge first occurred to her. Initially she considered having an abortion and only telling him about it afterwards. But as the days went by, and the more she thought about it, this seemed like a very mild form of revenge. So she decided to do the opposite. She’d have the child without telling him. And then she’d leave it in an orphanage, and put down ‘father unknown’ on the birth certificate. She wouldn’t say a word until the child was older, a teenager, whether she was still in the orphanage or had been adopted. The fact that Emma was born functionally blind and the doctors warned that her condition would only deteriorate with time, filled her with joy. She thought about Themis and his instinct to help the disabled, finding out after all those years that he had a daughter with a disability and that he hadn’t been around to help her. Stratos, I know how all this must sound, but I did warn you. I told you – she was a monster. A monster created by his betrayal, though.”

  “How come Themis found out when he did?”

  “They’d started sleeping together again. They hooked up at a big party about three years later. They’d both been drinking and ended up leaving together, and spent the next two days in bed. You need to understand that Nefeli was crazy about him. She hated him, of course, but had never stopped wanting him. And she was the love of his life. She just came out with it, there in bed. Themis completely lost it with her. He beat her up badly. She ended up in hospital for a week. He headed straight for the orphanage, on the pretext of some story or other he was working on. I happened to be working there at the time. We knew each other from before, from another story he’d done when he had used me as a source. I was flattered by the trust he showed me and by how honest he was with me. I felt sorry for him too, of course. So I did everything I could to help him get Emma out of there. After he took her away from the orphanage, he didn’t know how to tell her that he was her biological father: how do you explain to a child that her parents abandoned her for three years, all alone in utter darkness? Her sight by then had already gone. If he told her the truth he would have to tell her about her mother too, and however furious he was with Nefeli, he couldn’t do that. Like I said, he felt very much to blame for everything.”

  I’m only responsible for one child. Themis’ words to Loukas Sofianos. He had meant his own child.

  “Themis deeply regretted the way he had dealt with Nefeli. What he really wanted was for the three of them to live together as a family. But whenever he tried to discuss it with her, Nefeli would just shut down. In the end she sent him a message telling him and his blind daughter to leave her in peace.”

  Listening to her talk about Nefeli reminded me of Robert Enke, the German goalie who lost the daughter he loved so much to a rare illness at the age of two.

  “What Themis did not know and what I only found out many years later was that Nefeli hadn’t been upset by his reaction so much but by the fact that it was confirmation that she would always come second to the child in his eyes. This stoked her fury even more. Finding out that Themis was raising Emma alone, and then that the two of them had disappeared together, made things worse. And then there were all the messages from Themis, saying that he still loved her and that they should try to work things out for the sake of the child. She just couldn’t stomach the ‘for the sake of the child’ part.”

  “You mean she felt she was in competition with her own child?”

  “With the whole world. She wanted Themis completely to herself and she wanted him to feel the same way about her. The two of them against the world. The child was an obstacle. I did ask her once if she felt anything at all towards Emma. She answered, ‘Why should I? There are so many children in this world. Too many. I just happened to give birth to that one myself.’”

  I thought about Robert Enke again, standing there in front of that train. He didn’t just want to die. He wanted his body to resemble his heart – shattered. And nothing to be left of him.

  “After that, when Themis and Emma were missing all that time and she had no news of them, Nefeli couldn’t find peace. What she was feeling was completely sick: she was longing to have him and Emma back – simply so that she could reject them both. She even hired a private detective to hunt them down.”

  “Did she know why they’d gone underground?”

  “No. I didn’t know either. I still don’t.”

  I promised that I would tell her everything once she told me her whole story.

  “Then one day she got a phone call. It must have been roughly two years after they went missing. It was Themis. He said they had to meet because there was something really important he needed to talk to her about. She agreed to see him on condition that he didn’t bring Emma, at which point he hung up. And never called again.”

  “But weren’t you his friend?”

  “Yes, I was. That’s why I stole Emma’s file. He didn’t want her to ever find out that her own mother hated her so much. I didn’t know Nefeli until about three years ago, when she phoned me and said she wanted to see me. She didn’t say why. I went along anyway, out of curiosity more than anything. She told me they’d found Themis’ body and that a friend of hers in the police who knew that they had once been together informed her that Themis had been robbed and killed. She was deathly pale, devastated, but a monster nevertheless. She knew all about my father’s gambling problem and his debts; there was nothing she hadn’t found out about my family. And she had a proposition for me: if Emma ever turned up at the orphanage again, I was to send her away, back onto the streets. In return, she’d clear my father’s debts. That, she said, would be her final revenge on Themis. To destroy the child who had torn them apart.”

  Up to that moment, all the time Hara was telling this story, it was as though she was repeating something she had heard before, or perhaps the plot of a film she had seen. Something she had no personal involvement in. Even Nefeli’s death from an aggressive cancer that had finished her off in the space of only six months was something she covered without the slightest hint of emotion, despite the fact that she was the only person who’d stuck by Nefeli to the last.

  There was a long pause.

  “To destroy a child. And so help me God, I did,” she said, and buried her face in her hands.

  28


  There were no accounts in the name Raptas, no bank transfers. But there was a safe-deposit box in the name Emmanuela Grigoriou. Themis had opened the account for his daughter using the surname of the mother who never wanted her. With Emma’s file carefully hidden away at Hara’s house, no one would be able to make the connection that would lead to the box. Themis Raptas had been a sharp character; I wish I had met him.

  Emma, Drag and I walked into the head office of the Bank of America. Vasilissis Sofias Avenue. America, the continent he’d wanted to send Emma to. Themis’ weakness for symbolism had outlived him. We had told Emma that Grigoriou was simply a fake surname that Themis used for her and we had tracked down the account through Themis’ name as the depositor. The truth about her mother was one truth she could live without, and I was quite prepared to kill anyone who ever tried to share it with her.

  Emma was wearing a black polo neck, a pair of jeans and the elegant black velvet jacket I’d bought her for the occasion. She walked in on my arm. I was in an olive-green suit and white shirt while Drag was wearing a chaotic assortment of the first clothes that had stared back at him when he opened his wardrobe that morning.

  The clerk serving us greeted Drag enthusiastically; it doesn’t hurt to hang around with a TV star. He greeted me and Emma politely and asked Emma for her ID – “just a formality” – but all the while looked to me to deal with this side of things in view of her condition. Emma reached into her jacket pocket and produced her ID card, which Drag had managed to have processed in just one day, and showed it to him.

  “Ahh! Thank you,” he said, in that patronizing tone people reserve for children with special needs. Drag shot him a look and I hoped it wasn’t about to be followed by one of his classic lines.

  “Ahh? What do you mean ‘ahh’? She can do everything twice as fast as the rest of us.” The world according to Drag. A world in which nothing is said inwardly.

  “Yes. Of course,” he replied, probably thinking that these TV stars can be really hard on ordinary mortals. And then he just stood there, looking at us.

  “Why don’t we go and open the box?” I suggested.

  “I’m afraid there’s a small problem. We only discovered it after Mr Dragas phoned to let us know you were coming.”

  “What problem is that, big guy?” asked Drag.

  He was quite short and a bit of a wimp, so the description “big guy” must have come across as deliberately ironic. This did nothing to improve the atmosphere.

  “Mr Themistocles Raptas opened the account on behalf of Miss Grigoriou but he put a condition on it: whoever comes to open the box with Miss Grigoriou has to know the five-digit alphanumeric combination that opens the box. In other words, we cannot open it for you,” said the big guy, with a touch of justifiable hostility.

  “I can get a court order,” Drag said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think that I can get one?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can get one. But if you can’t prove that the contents constitute a terrorist threat, I am afraid that the court order will not be applicable This bank is under American jurisdiction and as such the express written wishes of our client must be respected.”

  The big guy’s expression had changed; he was talking to us through a polite but calm smile, trying not to allow it to turn into a smug little smirk at the man who had insulted him. “However, you are allowed three attempts in case you make a mistake or have trouble remembering.”

  “What if we can’t remember? What then?” I asked.

  “I am not authorized to answer that question. If there is anything else I can do for you, please let me know,” he said and opened the vault with all the boxes inside. He left us there in our ignorance and closed the heavy steel doors behind us.

  Drag and I looked at each other.

  “I reckon a nice court order should be enough to get them to open it,” he said.

  “I’m not so sure. Let’s give it a go first and if we don’t get anywhere, we won’t have any choice. Emma,” I said, “any ideas?”

  “I don’t know. This is all really weird. Dad never mentioned any safe-deposit box.”

  Maybe he thought he would make it. That he had untangled himself from the past enough not to be in any danger. Or that if he wasn’t going to, he would have enough time to explain things to Emma.

  “Any favourite numbers you can think of? A date, maybe?” I asked.

  “No. Not that I can think of.”

  “Your birthday? His birthday? Did you celebrate them?”

  “His? No, never. Mine – yes.”

  Emma was born on 6 September 2003. If you cut out the zeros, that made 6903.

  “But there are five numbers,” added Drag.

  I shot a look at him. “Thank you for your contribution. Let’s try ‘E’ for Emma – 6903.” Drag typed it in. That wasn’t it. Two attempts left.

  “Great,” he whispered.

  “We can leave, and come back with this guy I know who can open up any safe in five minutes. As long as you shoot all the cameras they have inside here. You’re a star, they’ll forgive you,” I told him.

  Emma was quiet all this time. She was thinking. We decided to follow her example. The only problem was that we had nothing to work on.

  “Let’s try 91006. 9 October 2006. That’s when he took me home from the orphanage. It was a really important day for both of us. We often talked about it.”

  Drag tried once more. Nothing.

  The box was supposed to contain the blackmail money from Paraschos and the evidence against Paraschos and Vayenas. This was our last chance to prove that I was right. If we failed, bureaucracy and the courts would hold us back for months without us even knowing if it was worth the effort, or if the box even contained what we thought it did. If we failed, Emma would have to wait even longer to discover why her young life had been caught up in so much violence. She would have to wait even longer to find out what it was that her father had wanted to leave her. As for me, not only would I have failed to find Raptas’ murderer, but I would also be responsible for the end of my friend’s career. Drag’s career was his life.

  Drag and Emma said nothing for at least five minutes. I hoped they were thinking something more intelligent than I was. All this time I had been walking in the tracks left by a dead man. Now I would have to become him, and get into his head. But how was I supposed to get into the head of a man I’d never met? A man I’d only come to know through the accounts of the people who had known him? Themis Raptas had dreamed of changing the world. But the world doesn’t generally encourage those who try to change it. I remembered that film from the 1950s, Slightly Scarlet, when the Chief of Police is talking to the main character, Ben Grace, and says, “You’re a dreamer, Ben,” and Ben replies, “A man’s only as big as his dream.” The Chief warns him, “They’re gonna pull you out of the river some day.” And Ben answers, “That’s not part of the dream.” Themis wound up just like Ben, except Themis’ death was much more violent. Noir cinema is about as close as you can get to real life – but it often pales in comparison to the filth and the stench of real life.

  Themis dreamed of changing the world, believed in symbolism, adored Emma, was in a fix with his ex, was obsessed with The Kid, in which the professionally fulfilled mother agrees to take back her child in the end. Hadn’t Hara said, What he really wanted was for the three of them to live together as a family?

  “One second,” I said.

  “Why? What’s the hurry? Relax,” replied Drag.

  I checked my phone for a signal and went onto YouTube, found The Kid and pressed Play. I knew the film more or less off by heart and jumped to a point near the end, and then a bit further to the forty-fifth minute. The forty-first second. I hit Pause.

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “It had better be good; this is our last chance.”

  “It is good.”

  “Go on.”

  “G6791.”

  “Are you going
to tell us what that is?”

  “Some other time,” I said motioning towards Emma with a slight incline of my head. To my surprise, Drag seemed to understand.

  He took a deep breath.

  “G … 6 … 7 … 9 … 1 … – And Houdini is your middle name!” he added.

  The box opened.

  While Drag was examining the evidence, Emma and I went to find the big guy to ask what would have happened if we had failed to open it. It then became clear to me why Raptas had chosen such a complex code. He was trying to cover all eventualities. If Emma had gone to the bank with him or with someone he trusted, they would have known the code. If something happened to him and Emma turned up at the bank with strangers, they wouldn’t be able to get into the box, in which event the next condition would have to be met: Emma would be taken to a room to answer a series of questions on her own, things that only she could know the answer to. That was Themis’ way of ensuring that whoever turned up at the bank claiming to be Emma really was Emma. If she answered the questions, the bank would be required to call Themis’ lawyer so that the box would be opened in his presence and he would then help her manage the money. The same lawyer who had betrayed Themis to Paraschos. I could not have imagined when I told Drag the code just how bad things would have got if I had been wrong.

  I didn’t want to tell Emma what the code meant, but I had to concoct some sort of explanation. I came up with something that was close enough to the truth. I told her that I was thinking about Themis’ obsession with The Kid and remembered that there was only one number in the entire film, the number plate of the car that the Tramp chases when it’s driving off with the child inside it.

  The truth is that G6791 is the number plate of the car in which the mother, craving to be reunited with her child, goes to bring the “Kid” back home.

  Symbolism – everywhere – right to the end.

  29

  The problem was that I had believed them all: Fotis Paraschos, Vayenas and Nefeli Grigoriou via Hara. They all had reason to hate Themis – Paraschos because he was worried that his black-market activities would come to light; Vayenas because he too feared exposure and all his attempts to find him had failed; Grigoriou because she loved him in her own sick little way. But none of them had killed him, let alone tortured him to death. This all left me without a suspect. Maybe his death was what everyone had been saying it was all along: a random act – a robbery that had led to murder, and nothing more.