Athenian Blues

by Pol Koutsakis

  “Dirty whore,” he said.

  Maria, next to me, started to sob uncontrollably. The look in Zois’ eyes told me he was ready to kill us, and although Drag was on the verge of eruption, there really was nothing we could do. Yet. I spoke quickly, keeping a check on Vassilis out of the corner of my eye, hoping that he was getting somewhere.

  “I have a couple of questions that confuse me,” I said to Zois.

  “Don’t strain yourself. For a man with your IQ, you’ve done brilliantly,” he replied.

  His anger had now turned into a smile, his face glowing with paranoia. When I first saw his smile I’d thought that it was familiar, but I’d never realized it was a carbon copy of Aliki’s. I noticed his eyes; the same as his aunt’s and yet so different. It was only when I saw the photograph of him as a child that I understood what Roula Siouti’s eyes reminded me of. So many similarities that took me too long to see. I had to keep talking.

  “Elsa had a fixation on you,” I said to Aliki. “She wanted more than anything to look like you, that’s why she kept on with the plastic surgery. So you took advantage of it. You gave her the car from time to time, so you could escape your husband’s surveillance. With a wig and the same clothes, from a distance you looked the same. Every now and then she played you while you and Thanos arranged your plan.”

  “In dim light no one could tell us apart, even if they were close. No one. Not even my dear husband. He came home plastered after a reception one night, and I got Elsa to join him in bed. She talked to him in the dark, mounted him and he couldn’t tell there was any difference at all… Elsa loved it. The sense of danger, the chance to play me… She thought it was also great practice for her acting… ‘How many people get the chance to play a role like this in their daily lives?’ she used to say.”

  “Role-playing is what most people do,” I said.

  “When you have such a woman… any woman, and you can’t tell the difference between her and another, drunk or sober, night or day, then you don’t deserve her,” Zois said, looking at Vassilis.

  He might have been crazy, but he sometimes made sense.

  “That was the night you took the black and white photo you have in your living room,” I said.

  Something had seemed strange about it from the beginning, something that I couldn’t pinpoint till I managed to fit together all the pieces. It was her fingers: those long, slender fingers that had caught my attention in La Luna had been replaced by Elsa’s much stubbier ones in the photograph.

  “Yes, Elsa took it, how did you know that?” Aliki said, smiling and showing the tip of her tongue.

  “I’m psychic,” I said.

  If she was sick in the head then so was I, who could still be turned on by her, regardless of all she had done.

  “How much did you promise her, apart from more sex?” I asked.

  “Ten per cent, as soon as Vassilis was out of the way. But really, she would have done it all for less. Not for the sex; she wasn’t very good at it and didn’t enjoy it much. What she dreamt of was money and a career – I had promised she would play me in the TV series based on my life. Plus, she hated Vassilis. She’d thrown herself at his feet, back when they were a couple, asking him to forgive her, but he wouldn’t hear of it. When he got the lowest scum let off lightly it didn’t bother his conscience. It was being cuckolded that made him all moral and principled.”

  “Funny to hear you say the word ‘scum’ without looking in the mirror first,” Drag told Aliki.

  Once again, the right thing to say at the right time. Make them angry while we’re still tied up. If anyone can aggravate me more than Drag, I’d like to meet him.

  Zois smiled.

  “You’re not scared, eh?”

  “Should I be?” Drag said.

  “Don’t worry. Before I’m finished with you you’ll cower. Do you know how many shit themselves when the first bullet hits them? Lose control of their sphincter muscles… Incredible filth.”

  “Couldn’t have described you better myself,” Drag said.

  Zois approached Drag and put his gun on Drag’s forehead.

  Maria and I exchanged glances. It was kind of romantic to die with my friends. But if we were eighty-five, not thirty-five. I played my last card.

  “You know why they chose us?” I asked Drag.

  Zois turned and looked at me. “You know that, as well? Please share.”

  “Stamatis Zafiriou,” I said to Drag. “Better known to us as Linesman.”

  “My rival,” Aliki said.

  “I have his photo in my jacket pocket,” I said quickly, trying to ride the wave of interest I’d caused. And to keep that gun away from Drag.

  “What?” Zois said.

  “Check my pocket.”

  He did. He got out the photo of Linesman, Elsa and Aliki at the bar and stared at his lover’s face.

  “Where did you get this?” Aliki said.

  “It’s on the web. You were with them that night, weren’t you?” I said to Zois.

  The slimeball who had taken the photograph would have done us a great favour if he had captured Zois with his lens in the first place, instead of just telling Drag that Elsa and Aliki were all but fucking each other and the guy who was with them in that bar.

  Zois was now caressing the photo.

  “Stamatis,” he murmured. “The only man I really loved. And you two…”

  He was crying. Zois was actually trembling and crying. He had lowered his gun from Drag’s forehead, but that didn’t mean much. Maybe this was the moment he’d been waiting for. Maybe he would shoot us there and then, in an outburst of madness, spurred on by the memory of his lover and the sound of his name. Luckily, Aliki approached him from behind, kissed him on the back of the neck and embraced him. That seemed to calm him down, temporarily.

  We hadn’t paid attention when we’d heard that Linesman’s lover was looking for us. And we hadn’t given a thought to the possibility that his lover could be a “he”. I made the connection when I found out about Zois’ homosexuality and saw his photo in Roula’s house, in Patras. Later, on the motorway, I called Angelino who confirmed in just a few minutes that Linesman was gay.

  “You decided to kill two birds with one stone. Get me to take care of Vassilis and then kill us. Probably fix things to look like we’re to blame for everything. I thought you said revenge is complicated and dirty,” I told Aliki.

  “Right. But oh so necessary, at times,” she said. “They’ll find a suitcase stuffed with money beside your bodies. Such disagreements are common among scum like you.”

  Eyes that reminded me of the sea. The sea that drowns you.

  “You know what a short memory this country has, Mr Dragas. All your successes will be discounted and you’ll be dismissed as just another rotten cop, not worth remembering. That’s the cherry on the cake. Stratos is a nobody. But you – we’ll destroy your entire legacy,” Zois said, in a matter-of-fact tone. He could have been describing how he took out the rubbish. Which, obviously, is how he thought of us.

  I glanced at Vassilis, then quickly away again, so that I wouldn’t draw attention to him. My eyes stopped at Maria’s terrified look. If there was even the slightest chance to get her out of there alive…

  I had to keep on talking.

  “It was you who appeared on the set as her second bodyguard, a few times,” I told Zois.

  “Yeah, my baby needed to come and see me,” Aliki replied on his behalf.

  Aliki had blurted to Takis that he was almost as good-looking as her brother. And Sam had told me about the very good-looking second bodyguard. It had taken me too long to put these two facts together.

  “And Elsa… you gave her the BMW, in one of your frequent switches and your brother murdered her in the middle of the street to cause a sensation. The more public the killing, the less suspicion is focused on you. If you wanted to kill Elsa, no one would have thought you’d do it in your own car in a public square.”

  “You can always count o
n the banality of people’s assumptions,” Zois said.

  That was their tactic all along. To do the counter-intuitive thing. Make everybody certain that Aliki couldn’t be behind it by the sheer extravagance of their actions. If she wanted to kidnap her husband and kill Makis, she surely wouldn’t have done it so violently in her own home, leaving the door open for the police. Add to that the assassination attempts against her, and me telling Drag about the danger she was in from her husband… They had fooled us completely.

  “Poor Elsa… She knew too much and we were tired of her hanging around. Getting rid of her was so easy it was pathetic… And she was pathetic in her loneliness. Apart from Regoudis, who had fallen for her – she only tolerated him to promote her career – there was absolutely nobody. Her family hated her; she had no friends,” Aliki said.

  “We did her a favour,” Zois tittered. “She was actually happy, till she saw my gun – happy she had followed my instructions and got rid of Vassilis’ surveillance guys.”

  “So everything made sense,” Drag said. “It seemed like another attempt was being made to murder Aliki, your husband thought that you were scared and hiding because you didn’t know who was hunting you, and we thought you were in hiding from your husband… And all the attempts against you, you faked from the start…”

  “Thanos is a genius. Vassilis swallowed it completely, got worried and wanted to hire half the men in Athens as my bodyguards… No way he could make head or tail of what was happening…”

  Vassilis, knowing they were talking about him, kept very still.

  “But you, Stratos… You gave us a hard time,” Aliki said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  “I knew from Thanos all about you and your research, but you went overboard. You wanted to discover why exactly I wanted to kill him, and I had to persuade you how necessary it was… I can’t think why a mere killer needs all these details.”

  Caretaker, I thought, but it wasn’t the moment to correct her.

  “But since you’re so intent on ensuring your employer is acting from the right motives, we made sure you would be persuaded.”

  “And your friend, Lena? She doesn’t have a clue, does she? You just used her friendship with Teri to approach me,” I said to Aliki.

  “Lovely Lena… Stupid people are always so useful, don’t you think? From the time I first kissed her, years ago, she became devoted to me forever, even if we didn’t go to bed again. When we saw her talking with your pal, Teri… bingo! And she really believes that Vassilis attacked me, that he was behind the murder attempts! As if that dull creature would hit me or get Kristo, the Bulgarian, to intimidate me! He might humiliate me in public and be crazily jealous but if he’d have lifted a hand against me I’d have cut it off… or maybe fallen in love with him.”

  Drag turned towards me.

  “I found Kristo’s family and got them to give me Mr Zois’ name – they said Kristo owed him big time. I came to tell Teri but Zois was already here. They gave me the same welcome they did you – with a gun pointed at the girls’ heads.”

  “Not very heroic,” I told Zois.

  “Do you know many heroes who finally come out on top?” Zois asked.

  “And all this for money. To be rich, together, with her husband’s money, and maybe save your sinking factory,” I said.

  “Times are tough, the country is going bankrupt, everybody wants to flee abroad… If you don’t have a rich benefactor or a big inheritance nowadays…” Zois said.

  “Rich is good. But the ‘together’ is what truly matters,” Aliki said, her eyes shining as the words left her lips.

  I wondered if she could see how different their responses were. I wondered if she ever thought about why he left her with their parents and disappeared for years, if he loved her so much. That might be a good inflammatory question, to gain us some more time. Or to make them finish us off immediately. I decided to say something else, hoping that Vassilis would soon make a move.

  “Did you kill Antonis Rizos just to convince Lena that Vassilis was behind it all? To get her to testify that Vassilis killed him because he was jealous?”

  “Partly, yes. But Thanos also wanted him dead because I’d fucked Antonis a couple of times. Purely out of charity: the poor man actually thought he was helping me get better! But my baby can be a little possessive at times,” she said, obviously liking him that way. She gave him another long kiss.

  “I want you to kill anybody who’s ever fucked me,” she said and kicked Vassilis in the ribs. Absolutely no reaction. He didn’t even blink. His famous tenacity, the quality that had allowed him to win the most difficult cases, continued to give me hope.

  “And at the fast-food joint? Why did you come to talk to me?” I asked Zois.

  “Ah, that,” he said, his smile widening. “That was one of my favourite moments. You need to have some fun from time to time. And to meet your adversaries up close. I saw you come back in and thought what a great opportunity to chat, with you having no idea what was going on! I almost had a hard-on, it was so exciting. Especially when I told you how I felt about your friend the freak.”

  He jerked his gun towards Teri. I was glad she was unconscious.

  “You ate that stuff up. And it was so easy to say. I was really talking about how I feel for Aliki.”

  He could easily be lying again. Words had no weight for him, other than helping him achieve what he wanted.

  “And you are an ignorant sociopath,” he told me. It takes one to know one. “What makes you think you can decide who deserves to live and die? It’s not as if you can distinguish the good from the bad.”

  “While you can?” I said.

  “Of course. I distinguish the good of the others from what’s good for me,” he said.

  “You and Aliki,” I said.

  “That’s what he means,” she said, quickly.

  It was hardly the moment to feel sorry for her, but I did. Repeatedly raped by her father, she was clinging to her brother to survive. That was her life story. Only her brother was crazier than the brigadier.

  “You can’t have done it all by yourself. Especially Makis. Aliki must have come with you to their house, to keep the Rottweiler quiet,” I told Zois.

  “Of course,” Aliki said. “With me by his side, there was no problem. And Makis came happily to meet me – he didn’t even have time to realize that he was about to die,” Aliki said.

  “But why did you sleep with Makis? To make sure he’d kill Vassilis, if you failed to get me to do it?” I asked her.

  “That’s life. You have to fuck a few more people than you want to, to get what you need.”

  “Only he became too attached, looking for you desperately when you disappeared. And those crazy hieroglyphics were just another red herring to keep the cops busy,” I said.

  “Mmm… Of course, the hanging on the chandelier did seem a bit over the top. But what can I say; Thanos has his own peculiar sense of artistry, sometimes,” said Aliki.

  “Vassilis tried to escape, but didn’t manage it. If he had it would have been the end for us,” Zois said.

  “But all’s well that ends well,” Aliki said.

  “The end for you. A fresh start for us.”

  I noticed that Vassilis had managed to untie his right hand. I needed to keep them occupied for just a few more seconds. Our only chance. “You know what I think?” I said.

  “Let me tell you what you’re thinking,” Zois answered. “You’re thinking that now Vassilis has untied himself…”

  He whipped round and shot Vassilis right in the chest. Maria screamed.

  “… you would have had a chance to escape,” he said.

  Vassilis was still writhing on the ground, with Zois standing over him to finish him off, when all hell broke loose.

  39

  You never turn your back on someone who has nothing to lose.

  This is what Zois did, to finish off Vassilis. And Drag, tied to the chair, attacked. With that head t
hat can smash concrete, dragging his chair with him, he hit Zois right in the middle of his back.

  Zois collapsed as if his legs had been cut from under him.

  Aliki turned her gun on Drag, ready to fire. She didn’t manage it.

  I hurled myself and my chair at Aliki and managed to knock her off balance. Her bullet went wide and she dropped the gun. Zois was trying to retrieve his gun while I tried to kick Aliki’s away. But before I got to it, a hand came up, holding the other gun.

  “Is this… what you’re looking for?” Vassilis said to Zois. And fired.

  “I believe you. Thank you,” Lena Hnara said to me when I phoned to tell her what had happened. I explained that everything Aliki had said to the psychiatrists had been true; all the cuts on her body she’d done herself. Right from her wedding day she had started to build her alibi. She’d told all the psychiatrists that she wanted to kill her husband during her bouts of madness, so that it wouldn’t look preplanned. The only therapist she’d told her made-up story about Vassilis torturing her was Rizos, the same story she told Lena, to convince her that Vassilis was the guilty party.

  Lena thanked me, but there was no need. I had promised to tell her what I would find out. Life is a very simple affair, if you want it to be. You look after your own. You keep your promises. You do your job as well as you can. And, at the end of the day, you turn off the switch.

  Of course, I only gave Lena the basics. There were many details that she didn’t need to know. Like the fact that when Teri came to and we managed to untie ourselves, she stood over Zois’ body and cried her heart out, saying again and again and again: “Worthless prick. I’d known from the beginning. I’d known from the beginning.” Drag took her in his arms and held her until she stopped sobbing. I didn’t tell Lena about the drawn-out howl that came from Aliki when she saw her brother dying from her husband’s bullet. Or about the way she rushed towards her husband, her nails outstretched like talons, wailing like a banshee. The second and last of Vassilis’ shots stopped her when she was right over him. They died at the same moment, their bodies entwined together for the last time. I knew she was the one right from the beginning, since her first breath beside me. Have you ever been in love like that, Mr Gazis?