‘Okay.’ He turned and glanced at Adriani. She had remained in the middle of the sitting room, at a complete loss.
‘I’m sorry we’ve ruined your evening, but it’s not our fault,’ he said to her tenderly.
‘Never mind, Fanis, dear. It’s not the first time.’ She didn’t say it with spite, but rather with a sigh of resignation that made me go over to her.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we’re not cancelling the trip to the island, just postponing it for a while. We still have the whole summer ahead of us. We’ll go for sure. I give you my word.’
‘All right, all right. Now go quickly so we won’t have another suicide on the screen.’
It was one of her good points. As soon as you acknowledged the sacrifice she was making, she stopped feeling sorry for herself and paid you back tenfold.
33
Fanis drove a Fiat Brava, a sort of great grandchild of the Mirafiori. I sat beside him in the front seat, holding his mobile phone in my open hand. I was waiting for Sotiropoulos to call and give us the exact address of Vakirtzis’s place in the country. But Sotiropoulos was delaying and I kept casting an impatient glance at the screen of the phone, which showed the time and simply increased my anxiety.
Fanis was of the opinion that we shouldn’t go via Stavros, but via Penteli, then drive down past the former pine forest and present-day charred forest of Dionysos to Nea Makri, from where we could continue on to Vranas. It had only been forty-five minutes since we had left the house and we were already driving up towards the forest at Dionysos. Fanis turned out to be right, because if we had followed the route Mesogheion Avenue-Aghia Paraskevi-Stavros, we would still have been stuck outside the ERT-TV building in Aghia Paraskevi because of the Olympic works underway at Stavros. Nevertheless, another idea began gnawing away inside me. Did Fanis know the way from Dionysos or would we get lost in the mountains and vales and Vakirtzis would commit suicide while we were still looking for someone to ask for directions? I saw him driving with great assuredness and that relieved me somewhat.
The phone rang just as we were starting our descent from the top of Dionysos.
‘No one has Vakirtzis’s exact address,’ Sotiropoulos said. ‘You’ll have to ask when you get to Vranas. Everyone knows his place.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.’ There was a short pause and then he asked, somewhat tensely: ‘Have you talked to anyone else?’
‘Like who, for instance?’
‘To some other reporter. Have you?’
‘Do you think I’ve time to engage in chit-chat with your lot, Sotiropoulos?’ I said furiously and I pressed the button that Fanis had shown me in order to hang up.
By the time we reached the straight road leading to Nea Makri, night had well and truly fallen. There was virtually no traffic as far as the coast road, but at Zouberi we came up against an endless line of cars crawling bumper to bumper.
‘That’s it,’ I said to Fanis. ‘We’ll be lucky if we get there tomorrow.’
‘We’ve done well to get this far. Imagine if we’d come via Rafina.’
He was right, but it was no consolation. While we were trying to escape from a line of at least a hundred cars, Vakirtzis might have already committed suicide and have been laid out. My one last hope was that among so many guests someone might have stopped him. However, I knew from experience that in such cases people become paralysed when faced with the unexpected and, instead of doing something to prevent it, simply watch like pillars of salt.
Beside me, Fanis suddenly exploded and began pounding the steering wheel with his hands. ‘In summer they all go for fish, in winter for souvlaki and in between just for the excursion,’ he shouted angrily. ‘How are you ever going to find an open road?’
For a moment I forgot about the prospective candidate for suicide and tried to calm the prospective candidate for dangerous driving, but to no avail. He suddenly twisted the wheel to the left, pulled out into the opposite lane, which was empty given that no one goes in the direction of Athens for fish, put his foot down and started speeding like a man possessed.
‘Stop, you’ll get us killed!’ I shouted, but he wouldn’t listen.
In the distance I saw an intercity bus coming straight for us at full speed. Fanis quickly turned the wheel to the right and began honking at the line of cars to open up and let him back in. He managed it just as the bus whisked past us.
‘Are you crazy, you numbskull?’ shouted a man of about sixty from one of the cars. ‘And a doctor too. You should know better!’
‘He must be looking for custom,’ shouted a forty-year-old redhead at the wheel of a Honda.
‘That’s why we have more victims every weekend than the Palestinians!’ replied the sixty-year-old.
‘He’s right,’ I said to Fanis. ‘Do you think if we get killed, we’ll stop the suicide more easily?’
‘I’m a doctor!’ he yelled. ‘Do you know what it means when someone’s dying and you don’t get there in time?’
‘No. I’m a policeman and I always arrive there after the death.’
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t even hear what I said. He was equally deaf to the comments and protests from the other drivers. It was the first time I had seen Fanis, who was always composed and conciliatory, beside himself. He went on with these guerrilla tactics for several more miles: swerving out into the opposite lane, overtaking three or four cars and then dodging back into the proper lane whenever something was coming in the opposite direction.
Despite the abuse we got, we at least managed to get away from Nea Makri and continue on the coast road towards Marathon, where the traffic was back to normal. When we eventually turned left towards Vranas, it was already almost ten o’clock. After the turn, the road was clear and Fanis stepped on the accelerator so the Fiat raced along.
‘It was my mistake,’ he said as he drove. ‘We should have come by Stamata.’
‘And how long would it have taken us to get to Stamata from Drosia?’
‘You’re right.’
At ten o’clock at night, Vranas is lit up with garlands of fairy lights. The taverns are all packed and instead of pine, the air smells of barbequed meat and burnt oil. We stopped at the first kiosk and asked directions to Vakirtzis’s house.
‘What, you too? What’s going on tonight that everyone’s headed for Vakirtzis’s house?’ the kiosk owner asked as he showed us where to turn.
‘We’re too late,’ said Fanis disappointed, as we set off again.
‘Don’t be too hasty. He’s celebrating tonight. All those asking the way may just have been guests.’
‘You’re right. I’d forgotten he had his name day.’
Fortunately, we didn’t have to search for very long. We found Vakirtzis’s house on our right, just off the road, as we left Vranas heading for Stamata. It was a huge farming estate that rose up and culminated in a white, three-storey house. Both the fields and the house were ablaze with light. Fanis turned right into a parallel track where the entrance to the estate was. The enormous iron gate was wide open. Inside and outside the estate were parked all the latest models of the world car industry: from jeeps to BMWs and from Toyotas to Mercedes convertibles. Fanis couldn’t find anywhere to park and had to leave the car at a distance.
It was only when we got closer to the estate that we saw the turmoil. As we had passed by to park the car, we had been impressed by all the cars and lights. Now we saw that the entrance was deserted and unguarded. I looked around and high up, close to the villa, I saw a crowd of people pushing and jostling, as though watching a parade. Except that instead of cheering and applause, there was the sound of screaming and yelling. Panic prevailed on the terrace running round the whole of the three-storey building. Some were gesticulating frantically, others running in and out of the house and others going up and down the steps leading from the terrace to the surrounding estate.
Fanis and I halted for a moment and stared. ‘You were right,
’ I said. ‘We’re too late.’
As though someone suddenly pushed us, we began running up to the place where the people were crowding. Halfway up, Fanis suddenly stopped and looked at me.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t come with you?’
‘Come on, no one’s going to ask who you are.’
We were still going up when, behind us, we heard the siren of an ambulance and its headlights lit our path. Behind the ambulance was a patrol car. I motioned to the driver of the ambulance to stop.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked him when he came up beside me.
He stared at me in surprise. ‘We were notified to come and take someone to the hospital.’
‘Who?’
He consulted his book. ‘Vakirtzis, the journalist.’
A sergeant got out of the patrol car and came up to me.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
I showed him my badge. ‘Inspector Haritos. Stay here, both of you, till I call for you.’
They both looked at me in surprise, but didn’t dare object. Fanis and I set off up the slope again.
‘If they sent for an ambulance, he may be still alive,’ he said.
I had the same thought and prayed he would be. I struggled to push through the crowd, constantly saying my name and rank. As I passed through the crowd, I heard frightened whispering, crying and sobbing. Many of the people were wearing wet clothes.
I eventually reached an open space with grass and a swimming pool in the middle. My gaze automatically fell to the swimming pool. Perhaps it was the result of noticing the wet clothes, but the swimming pool was empty and everything was calm. Sitting in a chair next to the pool was a woman. She was bent over the grass as if looking for something and her body was shaking from her sobbing. Her clothes were also wet.
I continued to cast my gaze this way and that, till at a distance of fifteen metres from the pool, beneath a trellised vine, I saw a white mound. The spot was poorly lit and I couldn’t quite make it out, but when I went nearer, I saw straightaway that it was a human body covered with a sheet.
I approached the mound and looked at it from above. Any hopes that had sprung up when we saw the ambulance dissolved at the sight of the covered body. I leaned over and lifted up the sheet. The sight of the charred face took me so much by surprise that I let the sheet fall from my hands and had to steady myself against the trunk of the vine. I was prepared to see a head blown apart by a bullet, or a throat cut by a knife, but not a charred body. I looked about me. The grass all around was yellowed in places and completely blackened in others.
I left the body and went back to the woman sitting in the chair. Her sobbing had abated. She was standing erect, motionless, and with her hands covering her face.
‘What happened?’ I asked her. She didn’t answer but simply continued standing there in the same position. ‘Inspector Haritos. Tell me what happened.’
She slowly took her hands from her face and looked at me. She took a deep breath and tried to find where to start. ‘We were playing, pushing each other into the pool,’ she said after a while. ‘You know the game at parties.’
I had seen it in some Hollywood films, but it was no time for games. ‘And then what?’
‘Apostolos suddenly appeared. He was wet and we thought that in all the hullabaloo he had dived in too. But he was wet with … paraffin …’ She began sobbing again and could barely whisper. ‘He went over there where he is now and waved to us as if saying goodbye. Then …’ She was unable to continue as she broke into sobs. ‘Then he took a lighter from his pocket and set fire to his clothes.’
I let her calm down a little from the sobbing. ‘Did no one think of dowsing him with water?’
‘No. We all froze. The flames engulfed him in less than a few seconds. We watched him leaping and screaming, but we didn’t dare approach him. When he finally collapsed on the grass, we came round and began looking for buckets and hosepipes. There was no hosepipe anywhere. Some people who ran into the house found a bucket. They filled it with water from the pool and threw it over him, but it was too late.’
‘Where’s his wife?’
‘He doesn’t have a wife, he’s divorced. Rena, the girl he lives … lived with, is in shock and they took her upstairs.’
People reacted as they always do in such cases. As soon as they see someone taking charge, they feel reassured and leave. I let her go to Fanis, who was standing beside the pool watching me.
‘He burnt like candle.’
At my words he was struck by awe. ‘All right, it’s one thing to commit suicide. But in such a horrible way? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Tell the ambulance to come and get him. And go into the house to find his girl. Her name’s Rena. See what state she’s in and do something to bring her round, because I need to talk to her.’
He turned and quickly walked away, while I looked around me. As I had lost the race with the inevitable, all I could do was investigate whether there were any similarities with the other two suicides. At first sight, Vakirtzis’s suicide differed on two counts. Firstly, the biography accompanying the suicide hadn’t been sent to a publisher but had come directly to me. That meant that whoever was hiding behind the pseudonym Logaras knew that I was investigating the suicides. Consequently, it was someone belonging to the circle of the three men and quite probably someone who knew me or knew who I had interrogated. Secondly, this was the only suicide that had taken place before an audience, but not on TV. Suddenly, Andreadis emerged from a group of people.
‘Terrible tragedy,’ he said on seeing me. ‘Terrible tragedy.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘Everyone saw it. It happened right before our eyes.’
‘Did you talk to him at all tonight?’
‘We exchanged a few words, that’s all. I greeted him when I arrived and wished him all the best for his name day, but then we didn’t bump into each other again.’
‘How did he seem to you?’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘As always, cordial and jocular. “You know how I feel about you, Kyriakos,” he said to me, “but I’m never going to see you in power.”’
Did he mean that he wouldn’t see him in power because his party would never win the elections or because he would commit suicide? Most probably the latter.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again under such unpleasant circumstances,’ Andreadis said to me.
‘It was these unpleasant circumstances that I was trying to prevent when I visited you.’
He looked at me astounded. ‘Do you think Vakirtzis’s suicide is in some way connected with the suicides of Favieros and Stefanakos?’
‘Of that I’m certain. What I don’t know is when the circle will close or whether there will be any more suicides.’
He looked at me worried, almost panic-stricken, but I had neither the means nor the time to reassure him.
At the other side of the pool I saw a TV crew and a redhead getting interviews from the guests with the cameraman behind her, rather like a pageboy holding the bride’s dress. So there’s TV coverage, I thought to myself. The crew belonged to the same channel that had broadcast live the two previous suicides. I found it strange that only its crew should be there. I took hold of her arm and pulled her to one side. She was surprised to see me before her.
‘Inspector, you’re better. Are you back on duty?’ she asked me.
I left her question unanswered for obvious reasons. ‘How did you come to be here? Is it usual for you to cover parties thrown by your colleagues?’
‘No, but we received a phone call to send a crew to Vakirtzis’s party because there would be surprises. At first, the director thought it was probably just the grapevine, but then he changed his mind and told me to get a crew together and come just in case.’
‘I want a cassette with the interviews you’ve taken.’
‘Of course, I’ll drop it in at your office tomorrow.’
‘No, not at my office. I don’t want it going astray. Send
it to the Superintendent’s office and I’ll pick it up from there.’
I left her to go and see Rena. I was hoping that Fanis had managed to bring her round so that I could question her. So, in the first two suicides, Logaras had arranged a TV spectacle. In the third, as he wanted to provide a spectacle in the countryside, he had ensured there would be TV coverage. But how did he know when Vakirtzis would commit suicide? How was he so sure about the day and time? I was thinking all this over as I climbed the steps to the terrace and I came to the conclusion that it was only in the present case that he had taken a risk. In the first two cases, he had taken care in advance to send the biographies to two different publishers and had relied on their astuteness to publish them immediately after the suicides, as had indeed happened. With the third case, however, he had taken a risk. Not with the TV channel. If Vakirtzis hadn’t committed suicide, they would simply have taken it to be a farce. But what would have happened if the biography had come into my hands and Vakirtzis hadn’t already committed suicide? Wouldn’t I have tried to prevent it? For him to have sent me the biography meant that he knew I was investigating the suicides, consequently I wouldn’t have sat with folded arms waiting for the inevitable to happen. So why, then, had he sent me the biography approximately an hour before the suicide with the certainty that I would fail to prevent it? How could he have been so sure? Unless he had agreed with Vakirtzis himself on the day and time. How did he have such a tight hold over them? What did he have on them? The question would remain pending until I could find out how and with what he was blackmailing them.
I asked one of the girls wandering around like a sleepwalker on the ground floor of the house where Rena’s room was. She pointed to a staircase leading from the vast ground-floor sitting room to the first floor. As I was going up, I bumped into Petroulakis, the Prime Minister’s adviser. We came face-to-face halfway up the stairs. The way he looked at me suggested he was expecting me to pay him my respects. However, I thought that following Vakirtzis’s suicide, he would most likely fall into disfavour and I decided not even to return the slight nod of the head he directed towards me. I turned my head away in time and continued climbing the stairs.
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