On the first floor, I found myself facing three closed doors. The first one opened onto a cold, impersonal room with a double bed, an armchair with a low back and a shelf with books. It was evidently the guest room. The next door revealed a gymnasium complete with bars, bicycle and running machine. I tried my luck at the third door and found Fanis holding a girl’s wrist and taking her pulse. The girl heard the door opening and turned towards me. She was dark-haired with dark mauve lipstick and dark mauve nails. She was wearing a red top with shoulder straps, which left her shoulders and navel bare, and beige slacks. From what I knew, Vakirtzis was fifty-five, so there must have been a good twenty-five years between them as she couldn’t have been over thirty.
Fanis came up to me and whispered in my ear. ‘She’s come round a bit, but don’t overdo it.’ And he left the two of us alone.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. The girl followed me with her gaze as though hypnotised. ‘I’m Inspector Haritos,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to tire you, but I need to ask you a few questions.’
She made no reply, but continued to follow me with that same gaze. I assumed she understood what I was saying and went on:
‘Had you noticed anything unusual in Vakirtzis’s behaviour lately?’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know … was he irritable … did he suddenly lose his temper … was he prone to shouting?’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t unusual … he was always abrupt and prone to shouting … then he would quickly forget everything and be all lovey-dovey.’
‘Was anything worrying him … some trouble perhaps?’
A faint smile came to her lips. ‘Apostolos never had any worries. Other people had worries because of him.’
I wasn’t certain whether she meant the people he savaged on his shows or herself. Probably she meant both.
‘So he didn’t give you the impression that he was about to commit suicide.’
‘Apostolos?’ The faint smile turned into a bitter laugh. ‘What can I say?’
I concluded that things weren’t too good between them, but that was of little interest to me. ‘So you hadn’t noticed anything unusual in his behaviour lately?’
‘None whatsoever.’ She paused momentarily as though reflecting. ‘Unless …’
‘What?’
‘During recent weeks, he would spend hours on end shut up in his study in front of his computer.’
Just like Favieros. The same scenario was repeating itself and I was a real twerp for not investigating the case of Stefanakos to find out whether perhaps he had done the same. That was one of the difficult aspects of carrying out unofficial investigations while on sick leave: you don’t dare turn up to see whomever you want, whenever you want.
‘Didn’t he spend much time in his study normally?’
‘He didn’t spend even one hour. Apostolos had everything. A study that covered the entire top floor with computers, printers, scanners, internet connection, everything. But he didn’t use any of it. He only had it because his friends and colleagues had it. He couldn’t bear for others to have something that he didn’t. He was envious. Until lately, when he really did shut himself up there in front of his computer.’
‘Didn’t you ask him what he was doing?’
‘Whenever I asked him, he always replied that he was working, regardless of whether at that moment he was watering the garden or watching a match on TV and swearing at the referee.’
I realised that I wasn’t going to learn anything more so I left her to recover. I went out of the room and made my way up to the third floor. There were no doors at all there. It was an open space with a desk, a TV with a huge screen and various other machines. Scattered all around were loudspeakers of different sizes and a couch with a coffee table facing the TV.
On top of his desk was all of the equipment that the girl had listed for me just previously. What surprised me was that there was not a single book to be seen anywhere in the study, just a few magazines piled on the coffee table in front of the couch. Even I had four bookshelves on the wall, albeit in the bedroom. Vakirtzis didn’t have one.
There were three drawers on the left-hand side of the desk. I opened them one by one. The first was full of empty notepads and a variety of ballpoint pens. The second was of more interest because it was crammed with cassettes. I made a note to have someone come to collect them and take them to the lab. I tried to open the third drawer but it was locked. I bent down and saw that it had a security lock. We would have to get hold of the key, though I wasn’t sure, even in a case of suicide, whether we had the right to investigate. If not, we would have to find a way to get permission from the legal heirs and I had no idea who they were. It certainly wasn’t Rena. She was one of those victims who live with much older men, spend a few great years with them and then end up left in the lurch and penniless.
As I was walking back down the terrace steps, I bumped into Sotiropoulos. ‘Nothing here for me,’ he said to me resentfully, as if I were to blame. ‘They’d already taken the body away and most of the guests were gone. Fotaki got here first and she got all the interviews. How did she find out?’ he looked at me suspiciously.
‘From an anonymous phone call. Someone said that there would be surprises at Vakirtzis’s party.’
He thought about it and whistled in amazement ‘So you mean that …’
‘Exactly. He sent the biography to me and informed the channel that had screened the previous suicides.’
I started to walk away towards Fanis, who was sitting in a chair waiting for me, but Sotiropoulos grabbed me by the arm.
‘There’s no way you’re going,’ he said. ‘I have to get something out of this story too.’
‘And you expect me to give you something?’ I was ready to explode but that didn’t daunt him at all.
‘Yes. I want you to tell me about the biography. How did you get hold of it and how did you get here so quickly? I’m not saying you’ll turn up trumps because I know what a crank you are and you might say no.’
I would turn up trumps, but not for the reason he imagined. If I talked, I would compromise Yanoutsos and those supporting him irrevocably. After all, I wasn’t there on duty. I was on sick leave and had been replaced by someone else. If I had to, I could say that I had phoned Security Headquarters, been unable to find Ghikas and so had rushed there myself to try to prevent the suicide.
‘All right. I’ll tell you,’ I said to Sotiropoulos. ‘But you won’t ask me if I was carrying out investigations here or what I came up with, because I’m obliged to report all that back at Headquarters.’
He stared at me, evidently thinking I was joking. He held the microphone to my mouth waiting for me to spill the beans. But I began to relate the whole story, from the moment that the envelope was delivered to my house to the time I arrived at Vakirtzis’s estate. With every word I added, his smile got bigger as though he were experiencing the crazy rise of the stock market minute by minute.
When I had finished, he shook my hand for the first time in his life. ‘Thanks. You’re a good sort,’ he said.
I made no comment and went over to Fanis, who had got to his feet.
‘Did you come up with anything?’ he asked me.
‘Same symptoms as Favieros. Lately, he’d taken to shutting himself in his study in front of his computer. I found a drawer in his desk with a security lock, but I couldn’t find the key.’
This time, we took the route that went through Stamata. It was after midnight and the traffic in Kifissias Avenue had thinned out.
‘So, that’s an end to your sick leave,’ Fanis said suddenly.
I stared at him in surprise. ‘Why? What makes you say that?’
‘Because all the silly nonsense about thugs and right-wing extremists has gone out of the window and things will start to get serious.’
I didn’t know whether things were starting to get serious. But, one thing was for sure, Petroulakos’s expression showed just how difficult it would be for them
to pin this suicide too on the Philip of Macedon organisation.
34
‘The situation only improves as it worsens.’ That’s what one of our instructors at the Police Academy used to say. It was during the period following the fall of George Papandreou’s government with all the ensuing demonstrations, marches and daily clashes between the students and the police. The instructor would come into the lesson, rub his hands and say: ‘The situation only improves as it worsens.’ To his mind, this meant that although things were daily going from bad to worse, this was in fact an improvement because it brought the dictatorship all the closer. He would say it, expound on it and, in the end, it happened. Of course, with the Junta, things did anything but improve, but everyone has a different idea of what improvement means.
These were the thoughts running through my mind as I looked diagonally across at the Minister. With Vakirtzis’s suicide, the situation had most definitely worsened. Ghikas, who had returned by Flying Dolphin from Spetses, had phoned me because the Minister had called us to an urgent meeting. When I entered the Minister’s office and saw that Yanoutsos wasn’t there, I realised that ‘the situation improves as it worsens’. There were four of us in the office: the Minister, who was sitting in his ministerial chair, Ghikas and I at either side of him, and the Secretary General was in the chair facing him. In the case in question, the Secretary General’s chair was more like the dock, as the Minister was giving him a rollicking.
‘I honestly don’t understand you, Stathis,’ he said. ‘You give an order to the Head of Homicide to go and arrest those louts without bothering to inform the Superintendent? And when he’s not even the Head of the Division but merely a temporary replacement?’
‘When I asked the Secretary General to brief me, he replied that it was the job of those under my command to keep me informed,’ said Ghikas, adding one more nail to the Secretary’s coffin.
The Secretary avoided Ghikas’s gaze, preferring to retain eye contact with the Minister. ‘But I’ve explained to you. The order came from high up,’ he said.
‘If it was from so high up, shouldn’t I have been informed too? Are you trying to tell me that there are orders from high up that don’t go through me?’
He waited for an answer in vain. The Secretary General limited himself to giving the Minister a meaningful look.
‘And what are we to do now?’ The Minister continued with his questions, perhaps because like that he was constantly putting the Secretary in a difficult position. ‘If we release those three louts, we’ll look like idiots. And if we keep them in custody, we’ll have everyone on our backs.’
‘We can stall for a while,’ suggested the Secretary.
‘And what will we gain by that? In the meantime we’ll have become a laughing stock.’
The Secretary hesitated for a moment, but eventually spat it out. ‘Is it out of the question that this latest suicide has nothing to do with those right-wing extremists? After all, the three that we arrested are not the entire organisation.’
Ghikas was ready to explode and almost leapt up from his chair. The Minister saw his reaction, but kept his composure.
‘Completely out of the question, Stathis,’ he said to the Secretary with an ironic smile. ‘Vakirtzis was in favour of the enforced repatriation of the illegal immigrants. He had even done a series of programmes on the topic. Would the extremists kill someone who wanted to get rid of the illegal immigrants? You’d better pray that none of his colleagues remember the programmes, because then we really will look ridiculous.’ Suddenly, no longer in any mood for humour, he said to the Secretary coldly: ‘Thank you, Stathis. That will be all.’
The tone in which he said it sounded more like he was firing him. The Secretary left the office in silence without saying anything to anyone. As soon as the door had closed behind him, the Minister turned to us.
‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ he asked, looking at Ghikas.
‘Inspector Haritos will explain. He gave up his sick leave to carry out investigations at my request,’ he replied.
The Minister’s gaze fell on me. In such circumstances, the difficult thing is not to paint too pretty a picture and at the same time avoid sowing the seeds of panic. ‘I honestly still don’t know what’s going on, Minister, and why Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis committed suicide. I am certain, however, that someone made them do it.’
I told him about the biographies, about Logaras’s fake address, about the different publishers, and how Vakirtzis’s biography had been delivered to me at home by courier. He listened carefully and his expression grew increasingly worried.
‘What was it that aroused your curiosity?’ he asked me when I’d finished.
‘Two things. The fact that the suicides took place publicly. Figures like Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis would never make a spectacle of their suicides by choice.’
‘And the second thing?’
‘That although the biographies were, on the whole, eulogies to the deceased, nevertheless there were allusions to shady activities.’
He looked at me gravely and said very calmly: ‘In other words, we’re not going to avoid a scandal?’
‘What can I say? It’s certain that Logaras, whoever he is, knows what he’s writing, at least in the cases of Favieros and Stefanakos. I haven’t had time yet to read Vakirtzis’s biography.’
‘Who else knew about all this?’
I had been wondering when this question would come up. Ghikas and I were the only ones who knew about it all. To arrive at the arrests of the three toughs meant that one of us had spoken to someone else. I turned and stared at Ghikas. He avoided my gaze and spoke directly to the Minister.
‘Mr Petroulakis, the Prime Minister’s adviser, asked me personally for certain information. The Inspector visited him and told him what we knew.’
What he couldn’t tell him was that we both had something to gain from talking to Petroulakis: Ghikas because he was looking to his promotion and I because I was fighting for my job.
‘And why didn’t you tell me all this?’
‘Because we didn’t have any tangible evidence whatsoever,’ Ghikas replied immediately, obviously having anticipated the question. ‘First of all, these were not murders but suicides, therefore, officially speaking, we couldn’t carry out any investigation. And what emerged from the Inspector’s investigations naturally gave rise to certain questions, but without any evidence. It was only after Vakirtzis’s suicide and after Logaras had sent the biography to the Inspector that we had grounds for suspecting that this was instigation to commit suicide.’
‘And because you had no tangible evidence, you preferred to talk to an ignoramus, who immediately tried to hush the matter up in the most puerile of ways.’
The comment was warranted and we kept our mouths shut. He took it as a silent admission of our guilt and sugared the pill for us.
‘I wouldn’t want you to think I’m trying to ascribe blame for the handling of the case, I’m aware that everything happened behind your back,’ he said to Ghikas. ‘The truth is that we’re stuck with a very unpleasant business, whereas we could have done what every good politician in Greece does: we could simply have ignored it. Now we don’t know how to get ourselves out of it.’ He again looked at Ghikas. ‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘Yes. We won’t release the three extremists just yet. We’ll announce that we’re still questioning them concerning the murder of the two Kurds. In the meantime, we’ll let it leak that the successive suicides have given grounds for suspicion and that we are investigating the reasons behind them. As for the latter, we won’t escape some ironic comments from the press, but at least no one will be able to accuse us of holding the three youths as scapegoats.’
The Minister reflected for a moment. ‘All right. That’s how we’ll proceed. We don’t have any options.’ He reflected a little more and then turned to me. ‘Do you think we’ll have more suicides, Inspector?’
‘I wish I kne
w, Minister. Perhaps Vakirtzis’s was the last, perhaps not. Unfortunately, we don’t know why they’re committing suicide and we don’t know who Logaras is, because evidently he’s the one who’s pulling the strings.’
‘The idea that there may be more terrifies me.’
‘Me too. But there is one ray of light after yesterday.’
Ghikas and the Minister both turned and stared at me in surprise. ‘And what’s that?’ asked the Minister.
‘The biography that Logaras sent me. He sent it because he wanted to open a channel of communication with me. And I believe he’ll continue.’
‘Why did he do that?’ asked Ghikas.
I shrugged. ‘Perhaps because he thinks he’s smart and he wants to play with me. Then again, perhaps he’s getting ready to reveal why he forced them into suicide. The one sure thing is that he knows that I’m the one dealing with the suicides. And for him to know that means that he must be one of the circle of people I’ve questioned.’
Just as I said it, the thought flashed through my mind that Logaras may have found out from Sotiropoulos. I had told Sotiropoulos almost all the details of my investigations. It wasn’t unthinkable that he had discussed it with a colleague and that it had leaked out that way. I didn’t dare reveal to the Minister and to Ghikas that I had had dealings with Sotiropoulos and let him in on my investigations. The former would have given me a dressing down and the latter would have thought I’d lost my wits during my sick leave because he knew how I detested reporters of all kinds.
It wasn’t often that Ghikas did me the honour of giving me a lift in his limousine, but that day he made an exception. Perhaps because that case was an exception to the rule. When you’re dealing with the murders of locals and foreigners, underground bosses and Russian Mafiosi, the patrol car is more than enough. But when you’re moving in the big league where business tycoons, politicians and hotshot journalists commit suicide, you acquire a different air and find yourself now and again stepping into a limousine.
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