‘Give me his name so I can note it down with the others.’
‘Thanos Yannelis’
I clutched at my notebook to stop it falling from my hands. What connection might there have been between Thanos Yannelis and Coralia Yannelis? Was it simply a coincidence? If Yannelis had still been alive, he would have been over seventy-five. So Coralia couldn’t be his sister. Perhaps she was his daughter?
‘Do you know whether Yannelis had a daughter?’
‘You never stop, do you!’ he shouted, indignantly. ‘You’re not satisfied with the information I give you, now you want his family tree. No, I’ve no idea whether he had any kids, or any pets for that matter!’
I suddenly remembered all the women in their fifties who worked at Favieros’s companies and something that I’d said to Koula: that Favieros had known them all from his years in the resistance and that’s why he had hired them. If Coralia Yannelis belonged to that category, then it was certain that she was related in some way to Thanos Yannelis.
As I was getting up to leave, he threw the T-shirt to me. ‘Take it, I don’t want it,’ he said. ‘But is it all right if I keep the song?’
‘Keep it, if you want.’ Besides, it wasn’t as if it were evidence in a murder enquiry.
‘Thanks, Lambros,’ I said, while putting the T-shirt back into the plastic bag. ‘I know you can’t stomach coppers, but you’re always a big help to me and I’m grateful.’
He avoided having to answer by lighting up a cigarette. When I was out on the balcony, however, I heard him say behind me: ‘Ah, you coppers. We used to despise all your people when they had money to burn. Now our people have turned the revolution into T-shirts. And everybody’s profited.’
47
My first thought was to go straight to the offices of Balkan Prospect and speak with Coralia Yannelis. That thought, coupled with my impatience, filled me with momentum till I turned into Alexandras Avenue. From there, however, I began to have my doubts, which increased in direct proportion to the uphill slope. What would I gain by going to Yannelis unprepared? First of all, I wasn’t sure whether she was at all related to Thanos. It could simply be a coincidence. Secondly, even if they were related, I didn’t know how closely. They may have been cousins three times removed who hadn’t seen each other for twenty-five years.
And, apart from Thanos Yannelis, what would happen with the other three? There may even have been other members of the group that Zissis didn’t know about. The correct thing would be for me to investigate, to collect information on Thanos Yannelis and the others and then to confront Coralia. If the other three were alive and living in Greece, they might very well be in danger from Logaras’s suicide mania. And if he’d already been in contact with some of them, we might manage to avert the worst and get some new information on Logaras.
I had got as far as the High Court building when another thought suddenly came to me. Zissis had told me that Thanos Yannelis was dead, but that he didn’t know exactly when he had died. What if Logaras’s first victim wasn’t Favieros but Yannelis? If he, too, had committed suicide, for his own worse luck and ours, then we would have to start looking for a biography. Whatever the case, all this convinced me that I should leave Coralia Yannelis for the time being and collect information on Thanos Yannelis, the other three and any others in the group, if they existed.
These thoughts were still running through my head as I reached the third floor of Security Headquarters and made a beeline for the office of my assistants. I found all three of them working feverishly. I didn’t know whether they really had work to do or whether they were pretending to be occupied because of Koula, afraid that she might snitch on them because she was Ghikas’s private secretary.
‘Come into my office,’ I shouted to them.
When I walked in, I got a surprise, because waiting for me on my desk was a coffee and croissant, my breakfast every day at the office. A croissant wrapped in cellophane and a so-called Greek coffee made with an espresso machine. I usually got them myself from the cafeteria. I attributed their willingness to bring them for me to my recent return from sick leave and I felt moved.
‘Who brought my coffee and croissant?’ I asked when they came into my office.
‘I did,’ replied Koula, overjoyed. ‘My colleagues here told me that’s what you have for breakfast.’
I immediately understood what was going on. Vlassopoulos and Dermitzakis had decided to demote her to filing and bringing coffee in order to keep her out of their way.
‘I didn’t assign you to bring me my breakfast,’ I said to her sternly. ‘I assigned you other work and that’s what I expect you to be doing. I can get the coffee and croissant myself.’
It was the first time I had asserted my authority. She turned pale and I saw that she was ready to burst into tears. I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t want the other two having her run errands.
‘We still haven’t managed to discover any secret from their past,’ said Vlassopoulos in an attempt to change the subject.
‘Forget the past for the time being. There’s something more pressing.’ I tossed the red Che T-shirt to Vlassopoulos, who caught it in the air. ‘I want you to find out who manufactures those T-shirts.’
He looked at the T-shirt and shook his head. ‘It won’t be easy! It’s shoddy work and there must be at least ten different factories that could have made it.’
‘Find out which ones. It’s urgent.’ I reached into my pocket and took out my notebook with the names that Zissis had given me. I looked at Dermitzakis. ‘Stellios Dimou, Anestis Telopoulos and Vassos Zikas. I want you to find out everything you can about them. And if they’re dead, how they died and when. If they’re alive, where they live and what they do for a living. And I want the information quickly, today if possible.’
I turned to Koula. ‘Does the name Yannelis mean anything to you?’
She hadn’t recovered from the scolding and still had tears in her eyes. ‘Coralia Yannelis at Balkan Prospect,’ she mumbled with some difficulty.
‘Exactly. Now I want you to search for a certain Athanassios or Thanos Yannelis. He’s probably dead, but, if he were alive, he’d be over seventy-five now. I want you to find out his particulars and check them against those of Coralia Yannelis. I want to know if they’re related and how closely. You’ve met Coralia Yannelis, you’ve talked to her and you know exactly what to look for.’
I stressed this last sentence to make it clear to the other two that Koula was more in the know concerning the case than they were and that they should stop treating her as though she were the errand girl. It seemed that Koula understood because I saw a smile appearing on her face.
‘And one more thing. Go up to the fifth floor and tell the Chief that I’d like to see him and Stellas from Anti-terrorism concerning the suicides as soon as possible. Tell him it’s urgent.’
They left, with Koula leading the way, while I removed the cellophane and began eating my croissant. I may have had to scold Koula for preventative reasons, but the coffee and croissant testified beyond any doubt to my longed-for return to routine. I took a sip from the coffee that, meanwhile, had gone cold. I got up to go down to the cafeteria and get another one, but then I immediately sat down again. Never mind, I thought, Adriani has spoiled me. At work, I almost always end up drinking my coffee cold.
As I was taking the last sip, Koula phoned to say that Ghikas was ready to see me. The lift kept me waiting a good ten minutes, evidently to take the wind out of my sails so I wouldn’t have any illusions about its workings.
I arrived at Ghikas’s office and saw Koula sitting at her desk outside, tidying up a mass of papers.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked her.
‘He told me to spend an hour or so putting his papers in order because he was getting buried under them and didn’t know where to find anything.’ She took a deep breath and added: ‘It’s difficult to know where to begin.’
‘Don’t get yourself worked up about it. Till we’
re through with this case, he’s not going to get you back. I made that clear to him.’
‘No, you don’t understand. I’m talking about afterwards. From what I see, it’ll take me at least two months to put everything back in order.’
‘Go and find out what you can about Yannelis and leave the rest to me. I’ll sort it out with him.’
The old Ghikas. Never missing an opportunity. But now we were in a hurry and there was no time for luxuries of that sort.
I found him poring over the brochure of the Worker’s Housing Organisation concerning the houses in the Olympic Village that would be allotted to the lucky few after the Olympic Games. I didn’t know whether he met the requirements, but if he were to enter the draw, no doubt he’d come out with one of the first-choice houses.
‘What’s happened all of a sudden?’ he asked, as he folded up the brochure and stuffed it in one of his drawers. ‘Have there been some developments? And why Stellas?’
I gave him a full and detailed report: about the T-shirt and the song and about all I’d learned from Zissis, without, of course, referring to his name or to the names he’d given me.’
‘In other words, we’re making progress,’ he said with satisfaction when I had finished my report.
‘It depends. Maybe yes, maybe no.’
We’d known each other for years and he could read my reactions. ‘What’s bothering you?’ he asked.
‘It’s not so much that we are making progress as that Logaras is leading us by the hand. That’s what troubles me. I’m not sure whether he’s leading me or setting traps for me that I keep falling into.’
‘When we were with the Minister, you said you wanted him to play cat and mouse with you.’
‘Yes. In the hope that while following his trail I’ll come up with something unexpected, something he hasn’t foreseen, and that I’ll get a lead from there. That’s what I’m counting on.’
Our conversation was interrupted as Stellas, deputy head of the Anti-terrorist Squad walked in. He took a seat opposite me and then looked at us in hierarchical order: first Ghikas then me.
‘So, what is it?’ he asked.
Ghikas glanced at me and left it to me to take the initiative.
‘Tell me, Nikos, have you heard of any resistance organisation from the time of the Junta called the Che Independent Resistance Organisation?’
He reflected for a moment. ‘You mean Yannelis?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Not personally. But I know what my older colleagues used to say about him.
‘What did they say?’
‘They did everything but get to their feet when they mentioned his name. Seems Yannelis was one of those few that you fight against and respect at the same time.’
‘Do you know who else was in the organisation?’
‘No, that’s all I know. It was the Military Police who dealt with them and their records were all burned in Keratsini. I’d know them only if they’d continued their activities after the fall of the Junta.’
‘And didn’t they?’
‘Not under that name, at least. We’d have known.’
‘And what if they used another name?’
He shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you anything more for certain. The business of anti-terrorism is still an impenetrable tangle, you know that. All I can tell you is that Yannelis vanished from the scene after the fall of the Junta and cut all ties with his former comrades. We don’t know why, but it seems he decided to retire. I can’t tell you if the others in the group continued their activities, because we don’t know who was in the group during the Junta.’
So Zissis’s records were more up-to-date than those of the Anti-terrorist Squad, I thought to myself. Pity that we couldn’t incorporate the illegal workings of the Greek Communist Party into the Security Forces. We’d be sitting pretty now.
There was nothing more to be said and I got to my feet. Stellas said his goodbyes and left first. I halted in the doorway and turned to Ghikas.
‘I almost forgot. Let the tidying up of your office wait till we’ve finished with this case. Then you can have Koula back.’
He gazed at me with the expression of a wounded deer. ‘You’ve come back from your sick leave a changed man,’ he said. ‘Without any compassion.’
I don’t know why, but I liked what I heard.
48
It’s something of a delight to see a journalist pounding his head with his hands. Sotiropoulos was doing it to punish himself for his stupidity.
‘Why didn’t I think of it?’ he cried. ‘Why didn’t I think of it? With all that drivel I come out with every night on the box I’ve gone gaga!’
‘Did you know about the group?’
‘Come off it! We knew all the groups, big and small. We could recite them off by heart, like the National Anthem.’
‘And did you know that Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis were all members of “Che”?’
‘Okay. No one knew anything about anyone for sure. But there were plenty of rumours going around. You know how it is: so-and-so belongs there, so-and-so belongs somewhere else, so-and-so fell out with the one group and went over to the other. They themselves said nothing and you didn’t ask them. You always found out from the circle. Some of it was true, some of it was made up.’
I told him the other three names and he reflected for a moment. ‘The name Dimou sounds familiar,’ he said. ‘The other two names mean nothing to me. Of course, it all depended on who you knocked around with. Secretiveness was the rule so you might know some from one group close to your own circle and not know others who weren’t.’
‘Do you know when Yannelis died?’
‘I can’t tell you the exact year, but it must have been a decade ago.’
‘How did he die?’
He stared at me before answering. ‘Wait for it,’ he said. ‘He committed suicide.’
So, then, my fears of the previous day when I had learned that Yannelis was dead turned out to be justified. I had guessed right that there was some common secret from the past linking everything together. The question was whether the secret had anything to do with Yannelis’s suicide.
It seemed that Sotiropoulos read my thoughts, because he elucidated: ‘Anyway, Yannelis didn’t commit suicide in public. He hanged himself from the light fitting in his house. He was hanging there for three days till the building started to stink and the neighbours called the police, who broke down the door and found him.’
All right, but that didn’t overturn my hypothesis in any radical way. Everything may have started with Yannelis’s private suicide before the rules of the game were changed and the others continued with public suicides. There was something to this explanation if you consider that the other three were well-known public figures, whereas Yannelis was known to only a handful of those in the resistance.
‘Do you know whether Yannelis had any children?’
‘No idea.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘How much of all this can I use?’
I didn’t take the wind out of his sails. On the contrary, I thought about what he’d said. What gain would there be for us if he were to come out with anything I’d discovered so far? For example, the connection with Thanos Yannelis and with his suicide? It might alert Logaras to the fact that I saw Yannelis’s suicide as the starting point for the case, forcing his hand, making him reveal something more or go on playing cat and mouse with me until he tripped up.
‘If you want, you can talk about the “Che” organisation and question the connection between Yannelis’s suicide and the recent suicides.’
His face lit up. ‘At last, a start! I’m on my way!’ he called enthusiastically as he rushed out of my office.
I didn’t share his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility that something may come of the ruse. I called my three assistants in to find out whether there’d been any new developments in the investigation. The indirect scolding of the previous day had worked because Vlassopoulos an
d Dermitzakis had begun to acquire chivalrous habits. They opened the door for Koula and let her come in first. All three sat down in front of me and waited in expectation.
‘Do we have anything new?’
‘Nothing on the Che T-shirts yet.’ Vlassopoulos was the first to speak. ‘It’s crude work, but nevertheless. In a couple of days at most, we’ll know who’s manufacturing them.’
I decided to leave Koula till last, because I’m something of a masochist and I wanted to prolong my agony, so I turned next to Dermitzakis.
‘Did you find out anything about the three names I gave you?’
‘Nothing about Stellios Dimou yet. Anestis Tellopoulos went abroad to study after the Junta and settled in Canada, where he’s a university lecturer. I got the information from his mother, who lives in Sparta. Vassos Zikas died two years ago.’
‘How?’
They saw my alarm and stared at me in surprise. Koula was the only one not perplexed because she knew the reason behind it.
‘Of a heart attack, while at the wheel,’ Dermitzakis said.
‘Right. Make sure you find out about Dimou.’ I turned to look at Koula.
She was holding a large desk diary, which she opened. ‘The name of Coralia Yannelis’s father is Athanassios. Her mother’s name is Vassiliki.’
Could that, too, have been a coincidence? It was highly unlikely. ‘Anything else?’
‘She was born in 1955 in Bogotá, Columbia. Athanassios Yannelis lived in Columbia from 1953 to 1965 and then moved to La Paz in Bolivia. He returned home in 1967.’
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