by Leo Kanaris
He reached a kiosk and bought a bottle of water. He drank it in the church garden, contemplating Kapodistria’s marble brow, wondering what the great man would have made of the monstrous system of government he had given birth to; whether, in the light of history, he might not feel grateful to have been shot dead by an angry warlord as he came out of church one October morning.
He drained the bottle, dropped it in a bin, and set off up the first of the lanes that led away from the shore. At Afeas Street he turned right, parallel to the coast, among butchers, grocers and ironmongers – useful shops, not the traders in luxury trivia, the nail salons and pet-product suppliers that clogged the streets of Athens. The weather was bright, the shadows deep and cool. At a fork in the road he came to the school, where children were shouting and hurling themselves around a basketball court shaded by a line of eucalyptus trees. He followed the trees towards the sea, letting his footsteps lead him.
He found himself in front of a bookshop. In the window, displayed among sentimental novels and books about astrology, money and alternative health, he spotted The Darkness of Ancient Greece by John Petrakis.
He asked to see a copy. It was a Greek translation, published last year. The photograph of the author showed a man in his fifties with a clear-eyed, ironic gaze; a man amused by life.
‘Have you sold many copies?’ he asked.
‘Around thirty,’ said the bookseller, a thin, pale, earnest man.
‘Since the murder or before?’
‘Mainly since.’
‘Is thirty a lot?’
‘For a serious book, it is.’
‘I’ve heard it’s shocking.’
‘I wouldn’t describe it as shocking.’
‘How would you describe it?’
‘Direct and powerful.’
‘You’ve read it?’
‘Of course.’
‘And recommend it?’
‘Totally.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s exceptionally well written, by an expert in the field. He says things we need to hear.’
‘Trashing the ancient Greeks?’
‘That’s not what he does. He acknowledges their genius, and their imperfections. He sees them accurately, as human beings. Not as heroes.’
‘We need heroes. Desperately.’
‘We do. Believable ones. Then, perhaps,’ the bookseller fixed him with melancholy eyes, ‘we can stop despising ourselves as a nation.’
‘If the book does all that,’ said George, ‘I’ll have it.’
He began to walk towards the port. There were only a few more things he could do in Aegina that day. Try the town hall for a register of residents. Maybe talk to Madame Corneille. Then head back to Athens.
He was not ready for another bureaucratic mauling, but decided to get it over with. The worst they could do was say no. By expecting the worst he could not be disappointed. But the clerk at the town hall surprised him. She handed him the register without hesitation.
His mood lifted by this gift of fate, George looked up the names of the property owners. Owners were not necessarily the same as residents, of course, but he had a sense at last of making progress, of existing in a rational world. There was no point taking down names now. Better to check the firearms register first – if he was ever allowed to see it.
He thanked the clerk and walked the short distance to Madame Corneille’s.
She came to the door in bare feet, jeans and white shirt, a necklace of amber beads around her neck. Her face lit up at the sight of him, although her eyes quickly shadowed with concern.
‘You don’t have the aura you had the other day,’ she said.
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. Literally nothing. That’s the problem.’
‘Come in and have some coffee.’
They sat in her kitchen among crystals and sacred images from Tibet. A different incense was burning today, rose-scented. She served Greek coffee flavoured with cardamom, in the Arab style.
‘So,’ he said, trying hard not to sound sceptical, ‘you can actually see the aura around a person, can you?’
‘I can.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘A coloured oval around the head and body.’
‘What is it? A mood indicator?’
‘It’s much more than that! It’s an energy field that reveals the entire condition of the mind, body and soul.’
‘Can you give me an example?’
‘I’ve just seen yours. It shows a mind in a restless, troubled state.’
‘How do you know that’s not just body language?’
‘Body language is significant, of course. But it’s ambiguous. You can slouch because of tiredness or a bad back, yet your spirit may be relatively strong. The aura is an X-ray of the soul.’
‘One colour or many?’
‘Rainbow-coloured.’
‘Can anyone see it?’
‘If they open their eyes, they can. But many of us have forgotten how to see it, or been conditioned out of it.’
‘And when you’ve seen it, what do you do?’
‘You can use it for therapy, for balancing, or just a friendly conversation.’
‘I noticed you spoke to Constantine Petrakis about his aura the first time I came here.’
‘Did I?’
She let him understand with a glance that this was not a subject to pursue. He decided to go on just the same.
‘I was hoping to ask you about him and Colonel Varzalis.’
‘What about them? ‘
‘There seems to have been a clash.’
Again the reluctance, a hesitation. Then quietly: ‘There was.’
‘Over what?’
‘A hotel.’
‘Can you tell me any more?’
‘I don’t know any more.’
‘How well do you know the colonel?’
‘Hardly at all. He’s not my type.’
‘I’m a little surprised that you find Constantine Petrakis your type.’
‘Did I say I find him my type?’
‘Perhaps not… And John? He was your type?’
‘Absolutely! You could only love him.’
‘Did you?’
‘Did I what? Love him?’
George said nothing. She knew what he meant.
‘I loved him as a friend,’ she said. ‘There was no question of anything else.’
He asked what had brought her to Aegina. She told him she had been a dancer in her youth, first in the French National Ballet, then at the Folies Bergères – ‘a necessary change of rhythm’, she said, ‘as well as of costume’. Later she joined a contemporary dance company in Bordeaux. After ten years of that she became interested in photography. Then, after two children, a difficult divorce and ‘a spiritual crisis in which I discovered my true powers’, she became a therapist and spiritual adviser.
‘Is that your job now?’
‘If you can call it a job.’
‘What do you call it?’
‘I call it a practice.’
‘Is Constantine one of your clients?’
She said nothing.
‘I see. I’m not supposed to ask.’
‘You can ask,’ she said, ‘but you won’t always get an answer.’
He finished his coffee. ‘I should get moving,’ he said.
‘You haven’t told me your story.’
‘You want to hear it?’
‘Naturally.’
‘It’s simple. I grew up in Athens, studied in London, worked as an economist at the National Bank. Ten years of office life, high-powered talk, fiscal theory. I earned good money, but it wasn’t for me. I lived in a one-dimensional universe of numbers, and I felt I was suffocating. So I took a job with an investigation agency.’
‘In England?’
‘No, Athens. With a man called Karakitsis – you may have heard of him.’
She shook her head.
‘He was the prince of investigators. Perfect mixture of rogue and gentleman. Switched from one to the other in a moment. In fact, he was both at the same time.’
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In changing your profession. Did you escape the one-dimensional universe of numbers?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Are you satisfied?’
‘When I reach the end of an investigation I’m satisfied. Until then I’m – how did you put it? – restless and troubled.’
‘It may be that you are engaged in a deeper spiritual search which no amount of criminal investigation will satisfy.’
‘You may very well be right.’
‘I sense it strongly.’
George bristled. This was getting bullshitty. ‘You could say that about every single human being on earth.’
‘Does that make it any less true?’
‘No. Just a bit less my particular problem.’
He finished his coffee. ‘I must get back to the city,’ he said.
‘Each of us needs to solve the problem in our own way,’ she said.
‘Agreed.’ George stood up. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’
11
Colonel Sotiriou’s office, in a back street behind Leoforos Alexandras, was a nightmare version of all the other police offices he had known in Greece. Grim metal furniture, walls unpainted for decades, grubby old computers trussed in their cables, a desk heaped like a builder’s yard with files. These were the standard features, but in this place the paperwork had multiplied insanely, with stacks knee-high all over the floor. The walls were lined with bookshelves, every inch crammed with ring binders, boxes, folders and bundles of documents tied with ribbon. The air smelt of dust and stale tobacco smoke. The light from the courtyard window, filtered through dirty panes, was yellow-brown.
The colonel was a gaunt man with a weary face, short, bald, grey-skinned. He crushed a cigarette into an ashtray as George came in. There was a single chair – tubular chrome, cracked green leatherette cushions. He was invited to sit down, finding room for his feet wherever he could among the documents.
Sotiriou asked after Takis Mitropoulos. George said he had seen him last month in Kalamata.
‘He’s a hard worker,’ said Sotiriou. ‘But he has his struggles.’
‘Because he’s honest.’
‘Maybe.’ Sotiriou smirked bitterly. ‘It’s no fun being a policeman any more. When I joined the force thirty years ago, there was no violent crime. Nothing to speak of. A few family quarrels, honour killings in the villages – remember them? Seems like the Stone Age now! But we had things under control. Today it’s war. A torrent of crime! Vicious stuff – against immigrants, by immigrants, the poor getting pushed ever more to the margins. We don’t have time to solve a quarter of what’s thrown at us.’
‘So what’s changed?’
‘Greed, consumer values, a decline in religion and family, immigrants from desperate countries…’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, plenty to choose from! First it was Albania, then Pakistan, Georgia, Russia… These are people who kill for a few euros. They’ve taught us their ways. Instead of us civilising them, we let them barbarise us.’ He reached for a fresh cigarette. ‘How can I help you?’
‘A murder in Aegina.’
‘Which one?’
‘Professor Petrakis.’
Sotiriou nodded. ‘Rifle shot through the head, March 25th. Very bizarre. What have you found?’
‘Nothing much. I’ve been obstructed by the local police. I want to get back to the main story, the main evidence.’
‘Which is what, as you see it?’
‘There are about twenty houses the shot could have been fired from. With the firearms register for Aegina you could narrow down the list of suspects to a handful of people. With the forensic report as well you’d find the killer.’
‘Only twenty houses, you say?’
‘At most.’
‘You’ve been there, had a look?’
‘Of course.’
‘Who’s paying you?’
‘The brother of the deceased.’
‘Name?’
‘Constantine Petrakis.’
Sotiriou did not react to the name.
‘Has he told you why he’s hired a private investigator?’
‘He says the police are doing nothing.’
‘Is that your impression too?’
‘I don’t know. The local chief, Bagatzounis, told me they’re overworked. Yet his duty sergeant sits at his desk playing poker on the internet.’
Sotiriou frowned. ‘That’s bad management. But standard for the provinces. What do you propose?’
‘I would be happy just to see those two documents. Firearms register and forensic report.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then it may well be possible to make an arrest.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Can you help?’
Sotiriou shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can try. There is a problem, however.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We don’t have sergeants playing poker in this building. We are genuinely overworked. Every office looks like this one, jammed with ongoing investigations. These are dealt with in strict chronological order.’
George attempted to make light of it. ‘Surely nothing is done chronologically in Greece!’
‘In this office it is.’
George said nothing. He gave Sotiriou a sceptical look.
‘You’re hoping to jump the queue,’ said Sotiriou.
‘If there was a queue,’ said George, ‘I would happily stand in it all day.’
‘In here, Mr Zafiris, there is a queue. No one jumps it. Minister, film star, ship-owner, they all wait their turn.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said George
‘Just watch!’
‘I don’t have time.’
‘Then you must find it, because time is what this is going to take.’
‘If it’s a question of money, a donation to the Police Benevolent Fund….’
‘It won’t help. In fact it’s a criminal suggestion, so we’ll forget you made it.’
‘All right. I’m asking you to let me do something which will take up none of your staff time. Just let me look at the firearms register for Aegina. That and the forensic report. It’ll take an hour or two, then I’ll hand them back. I can do it in this building. No disruption.’
Sotiriou seemed weary beyond endurance. ‘You don’t appreciate what your request means. I have to find those papers. That means putting someone onto it. I will then have to chase that person up, which will lead to further complications. If I’m seen to favour a particular case, it will create a precedent. I’ve been working for years to foster a culture of correctness in this department! The only way to achieve that is through self-discipline. I have to set an example, making no exceptions for anyone!’
George could hardly believe his ill luck. Another Bagatzounis! Clogging up the works with his ‘correctness’. In a different context it would be admirable, but here it was delusional. The system was blocked. He was offering to unblock it, and these idiots were refusing him.
‘Colonel, I understand your position. I wish every official in Greece had your honesty.’
‘Don’t try that on me. You don’t wish that at all! And I hate flattery.’
‘I’m not flattering you. I want you to see this from a different angle. You have a certain workload. It’s too much for you. I’m offering to do some of it. I might even solve the crime. Wouldn’t that be good?’
‘We don’t like outside help.’
‘Why not?’
‘If it’s incompetent it makes things worse. If it’s competent it makes us look bad.’
‘So you don’t want help?’
‘Information yes. “Help” no.’
‘OK,’ said George. ‘I’ll give you information.’
&n
bsp; ‘What information?’
‘Anything useful I come up with.’
‘Fine.’
‘In exchange for an hour with those documents.’
‘You’re a cunning man, Zafiris.’
‘I don’t like the word “cunning”.’
‘It serves its purpose. I’ll be cunning myself now. If you find the killer, I’m going to ask you to pass the name directly to us and no one else. Is that understood?’
George considered this. Before he could reply, Sotiriou went on: ‘This is a test of your sincerity. If you want to help, you’ll accept my conditions.’
‘There’s something I don’t like,’ said George.
‘Tell me.’
‘What happens if the information disappears into your system? If there’s no arrest? Then I’ll get the same story all over again.’
‘I guarantee that will not happen.’
‘How about a time limit?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If there’s no arrest within, say, two weeks, I can use the information in another way.’
‘Two weeks is tight. Make it a month.’
‘A month to make an arrest? That’s ridiculous.’
‘We have to check everything, prepare our case.’
‘That takes a month?’
‘It’s not the standard time. We can often move faster. But I need a margin. And a permanent exclusion of press and media.’
‘OK.’
‘Leave it with me. Give me a number where I can reach you.’
George handed him a business card.
‘Perhaps I could have a number for you, Colonel?’ he said. ‘A direct line?’
Sotirou considered this for a moment. ‘Do you have a pen?’
‘I do.’
George opened his notebook.