Che Committed Suicide

by Petros Markaris

  ‘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.

  18

  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.

  ‘I prefer to hear about it in the peace of my own home.’

  ‘I’ll go inside to pay because we won’t find a waiter to bring us the bill.’

  In contrast to the amount of traffic on the way there, there was virtually no traffic on the way back and we only occasionally encountered another car. Fanis was about to switch on the radio, but I stopped him. I wanted to see the scene on TV without having heard the descriptions on the radio.

  Outside the electrical shops in Dourou Square, a crowd had gathered to watch the TVs in the shop windows and was taking pleasure in watching the scene in multiple on some twenty different screens.

  ‘Do you think it’s connected to Favieros’s suicide?’ Fanis asked me.

  ‘I’ll want to find out how he committed suicide and what his last words were, but at first sight, it would seem so.’

  ‘What reason would such a successful politician as Stefanakos have for committing suicide?’

  ‘What reason did Favieros have?’

  ‘True,’ Fanis admitted. I was sitting beside him in the front, while Adriani was in the back. Fanis glanced at me while driving. ‘Haven’t you found out anything about Favieros?’

  ‘Nothing substantial.’

  ‘Not even from his biography?’

  ‘It hints at some shady aspects of his professional life, but it’s too early to know whether that had anything to do with his suicide.’

  ‘If you want my opinion,’ said Adriani suddenly butting in from the back seat, ‘the TV channel has a finger in all that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Fanis surprised.

  ‘Have you stopped to count how many advertisements are shown each time they play the scene with the suicide? And that’s without including all the ones shown during all the talk shows and discussions.’

  I turned and stared at her in wonder. ‘What are you trying to say? That the TV channel gets them to commit suicide to increase its ratings? Anyhow, how do you know that Stefanakos committed suicide on the same channel?’

  ‘Just wait and see,’ she replied with certainty.

  ‘And how does it manage to persuade them?’ Fanis asked her. ‘By offering them money? Neither of them had any need of money.’

  ‘I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing: plenty of people turn their noses up at money, but no one says no to fame,’ said Adriani, reducing us to silence.

  I didn’t go on with the conversation because I knew it was impossible for me to convince her otherwise. She was naturally suspicious. Whenever I got a raise, she was sure they had cheated me and given me less than they should. She read that the new metro would be finished on time and she had no doubt that the contractors had only managed it by cutting corners and in less than three months the whole thing would collapse. You tell her a solution’s been found to the Cyprus issue and she smiles knowingly, saying that if it has been solved, it means the Prime Minister must be getting a rake-off from the Turks. The one thing I don’t understand with all these rich veins of suspicion that we have in Greece is how the Force takes on men like Yanoutsos.

  Because of the heatwave everyone had gone out and
it was easy for Fanis to find a parking space outside the apartment block. Once we were inside the house, we all rushed to switch on the TV. We found the right channel at only the second attempt from all the interviews going on. It was the same channel that Favieros had chosen for his suicide.

  ‘What did I tell you? There you are!’ said Adriani triumphantly.

  I was ready to give her a mouthful, but the phone rang just at that moment. It was Ghikas.

  ‘Did you see it?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I was out and I came home as soon as I heard. I’m waiting for them to show it again.’

  ‘All right. Watch it and call me.’

  ‘I hung up and went back to the TV. Sitting at the bottom of the screen was the presenter together with two of Stefanakos’s colleagues: one from his own party and one from the opposition party. Various people kept appearing on the rest of the screen, some there permanently, others coming and going, and all of them singing Loukas Stefanakos’s praises. What a sharp and spirited parliamentary member he had been, but also what respect he had shown for the parliamentary ethos. How fanatically he had fought against bills that served political self-interest and what a great loss his death was to Parliament. The presenter then moved on to the recent campaign started by Stefanakos for the recognition of immigrants’ rights. He had proposed that lessons in their own language be introduced into the schools and that they be allowed to set up cultural associations to maintain their cultural identity. The praise and eulogies dried up and there began the yes-buts, because no one agreed with Stefanakos’s position on these issues. The opposition politician claimed that Stefanakos liked to provoke controversy, because he kept himself always in the limelight in that way. The member of his own party claimed that Stefanakos had been extremely disappointed of late with the general movement to the right across the whole political spectrum. The others all flared up at this and wondered whether, in fact, he had chosen that particular programme to make his heroic exit.

  ‘Let’s take a short break and then we’ll take a look again at the scene with the suicide, perhaps it will give us a clue,’ said the presenter, who was only waiting for an excuse to show the scene again.

  The discussion is interrupted for a commercial break that lasted a full quarter of an hour.

  ‘You see? There’s no end to the advertisements,’ said Adriani triumphantly once again.

  The director came out with his tricks and, instead of linking up again with the presenter, screened the interview again straight after the advertisements. The interview appeared to have taken place in Stefanakos’s office, which was very ordinary with the usual kind of office furniture that you find in any store. Stefanakos was sitting behind his desk. In contrast with Favieros, he was wearing a suit and tie. I don’t know if he was in fact as able a politician as his colleagues had made out, but to me he looked more like a bank manager than a politician.

  Yannis Kourtis, the reporter, with thick white hair and beard, was sitting facing him. They rarely sent him out on interviews, only in special cases, because, although he looked like Santa Claus, he was their heavy artillery.

  ‘But don’t you find all this perhaps too progressive for the situation in Greece?’ he asked Stefanakos.

  ‘What exactly, Mr Kourtis?’

  ‘Your wanting to introduce the language of Albanian refugees into the schools in the areas where Albanians live, or saying that they should set up cultural associations, funded by the state, so that they can maintain their cultural identity. You’ll not only have the church and the nationalists up in arms, but even ordinary citizens who aren’t necessarily hostile to the refugees but believe that there are certain limits to how far one should go.’

  ‘Unless we follow this twin course of incorporating the refugees into Greek society together with allowing them to maintain their national identity, unless the refugees become Greek citizens with Albanian, Bulgarian or Russo-Pontian descent, we will find ourselves facing much more serious problems in a few years’ time. We’re deluded if we think that we can solve the problem just by issuing them with green cards.’

  ‘May I remind you, Mr Stefanakos, that the same view was held by Jason Favieros, who employed numerous foreign workers on his construction sites. Following his suicide, a nationalistic organisation claimed that it had forced him into suicide. I’m not saying that the claim is true, but, at least officially, it hasn’t yet been disproved.’

  ‘Jason Favieros was right,’ replied Stefanakos without any hesitation. ‘One moment and I’ll prove it to you.’

  Kourtis remained alone, but the interview was being televised live and the voice of the news presenter was heard in the background.

  ‘Yannis, I want you to put a question to Mr Stefanakos when he returns. I want you to ask him what his opinion is concerning the murder of the two Kurds by the Philip of Macedon organisation and whether he thinks the policies he is proposing may lead to more murders of a similar kind.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll ask him, Panos,’ Kourtis replied.

  But the question was never put. As soon as the conversation between the reporter and the presenter had finished, the door opened and Stefanakos staggered in. Blood was running from three places on his body: from a wound in the area of his heart and two more in the area of his stomach. His suit was dyed red.

  Kourtis saw him and leapt to his feet, but instead of going up to him, he took two steps back. Steafanakos continued to stagger towards the centre of the office. He stopped there and opened his mouth in an attempt to say something, but he had no voice. After a great effort, he managed to whisper something.

  ‘I hope Favieros and I are not dying for nothing …’

  Without finishing his sentence, he collapsed to the ground. Kourtis found the courage to go over to him but didn’t touch him. He leaned over him and said his name: ‘Mr Stefanakos … Mr Stefanakos …’ as though trying to wake him up.

  ‘Yannis, leave Stefanakos and find out how he did it.’ The voice of the presenter was heard giving orders. ‘Sadly, the lot has once again fallen to us to have to describe this second suicide on air by a leading figure.’

  By the sound of his voice he seemed about to burst into tears. Kourtis moved away from Stefanakos and went towards the door of the office. He opened it wide. The camera zoomed in. Stuck in the back of the door were the blades from three sharp knives, at precisely the points where Stefanakos had been wounded. Two metal handles had been screwed on the two sides of the door.

  It was clear what had happened to Stefanakos. He had taken hold of the two handles and pushed his body with force onto the blades.

  The scene faded and the discussion was resumed. ‘As you know, our TV crew lost no time at all in calling for an ambulance,’ said the presenter, as though they had performed some kind of brave feat. ‘But the politician Loukas Stefanakos was already dead on arrival at the hospital.’

  I had no need either to see or hear any more and I switched off the TV. Fanis turned and looked at me.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Same style as Favieros. There’s no doubt about that.’

  Adriani thought it unnecessary to remind us for a third time of the fact that she had been right and she confined herself to a smug and triumphant smile. I got up and went to phone Ghikas.

  ‘I saw it,’ I said the moment I heard his voice and I repeated what I had said to Fanis: ‘Same style as Favieros’s suicide. There’s no doubt about that.’

  ‘I told you I could smell a rat. I was right!’ he said in a voice that rang out like Easter bells with satisfaction.

  This time his arrogance had no effect on me. After all, we were both treading on other people; he in order to prove himself right and I in order to save my job.

  19

  The kiosk owner hadn’t seen me since the day of Favieros’s suicide. He stuffed all the newspapers, apart from the sports papers, into a plastic bag and winked at me meaningfully.

  ‘That politician’s suicide, right?’

  He’d
also got smart with me after Favieros’s suicide and I felt the need to clarify matters:

  ‘Listen, I don’t only read the newspapers when someone’s committed suicide.’

  ‘Come on now, Inspector! You don’t have to justify yourself. I’ve got customers who only buy the sports papers when their team wins.’

  What did he mean? That I, too, only buy the papers when I’m winning? I decided not to give it any more thought and I headed back home. For the first time in who knows how many years, Adriani abandoned her kitchen before three in the afternoon and got stuck into the newspapers along with me.

  The climate had completely changed since the first suicide. Then, everyone wondered what reason Jason Favieros had to commit suicide and each newspaper came up with its own version. Now they were all linking Stefanakos’s execution with that of Favieros and were openly talking of some government scandal that had sent both of them to their graves. ‘Voluntary exit from scandal?’ asked one of the opposition newspapers. One politician, also from the opposition party, threatened to make a sensational revelation. ‘Olympic Projects’ Deadly Secret’ was the headline in another newspaper, while a fourth wrote in its leader: ‘Though there is no evidence to prove it, at least at present, it is safe to assume that behind the suicides of Favieros and Stefanakos is some scandal that, should it break, will more than likely lead to further victims.’

  Actually, the likelihood of a scandal was not at all to be excluded. When Favieros committed suicide, we were all completely in the dark. Now, following Stefanakos’s suicide, things were becoming a little clearer. A businessman and a politician committed suicide to avoid public disgrace as a result of a scandal that was about to break. Of course, there was still the matter of two public suicides. Why would people who wanted to avoid disgrace commit suicide publicly? Isn’t committing suicide in front of thousands of viewers a kind of public disgrace? Who knows, if we ever found out more, we might be able to explain the public suicide too. Anyhow, even with the facts we had, scandal was a reasonable enough motive, except that it was one I didn’t need to investigate. Whether it would come out into the open or not depended on others and I ran the risk of coming a cropper.