Deadline in Athens

by Petros Markaris

  "My client is telling you the truth," the solicitor interrupted again. "He doesn't know."

  I stared at them and I felt something wasn't right. "How did you get the money?" I asked Hourdakis.

  "Let me go back to the beginning. One evening, when I came home from work, I found a package waiting for me. It was an ordinary box, like those used for packing glasses. When I opened it, I found 500,000 drachmas inside. I thought there had been some mistake, but the package had my name and address on it. I was racking my brain trying to think who might have sent it when the phone rang and a man asked me if I'd received the 500,000. I asked his name, of course, but he wouldn't tell me. All he told me was that on the following night a Transpilar refrigerator truck would be crossing the border. If I let it through without inspecting it, he'd send me another 500,000."

  "When did all this happen?"

  "I don't remember the date exactly, but it must have been sometime in May of 1991."

  "And so you let it through."

  "Yes. Three days later, I received the other 500,000. After that, he'd phone me and give me the number of the refrigerator truck, I'd let it through without any inspection, and he'd send me the million."

  It was that simple. The first refrigerator truck that had gone through in May'91 was almost certainly empty. If Hourdakis hadn't taken the bait and had inspected it, he wouldn't have found anything. What, after all, was Sovatzis risking in order to test him? A salary, perhaps not even. When he saw that Hourdakis had taken the bait, he began his operation.

  "How was the money sent to you?"

  "In a package, always. Brought by courier."

  "And who was the sender?"

  "It had a different name each time."

  "And why did you stop, given that everything was going like clockwork?"

  "The trucks always came at night. I had to change shifts in order to make sure I was there. At first it was easy, because no one wants to work at night. But eventually, they got suspicious because I kept asking to work nights. And then I got wind of the fact that someone had begun asking questions about the trucks."

  "Who was asking questions?"

  "Someone from Athens, I don't know who. I never found out."

  I knew. It was Karayoryi.

  "As I was eligible for early retirement, I applied and my application was accepted."

  Now someone else was getting money in a package. We'd find him too, but I still had nothing on Sovatzis. Only if we got our hands on Krenek, but he'd be in South America by now.

  I took out the famous photograph of the two of them, anyhow, and showed it to Hourdakis. "Do you recognize either of these men?"

  He looked at it and shook his head. Then we went, together with his solicitor, to the photography records. I showed him the photographs of Milionis, Papadopoulos, Dourou, and Seki. He immediately recognized the first two, but Dourou and Seki he said he did not know, had never met. I sent him to make a written statement and then to the cells.

  Sotiropoulos was waiting for me. "What happened with Hourdakis? Did he talk?"

  "The chief will make an official statement."

  "Oh, come off it."

  I motioned him into the office. I told him briefly what I'd learned from Hourdakis. I wasn't doing him any special favor because Ghikas would tell the others the same.

  "How involved is Sovatzis, Dourou's brother, in the business?" he asked me.

  "Do you think he's involved?"

  "He's involved, all right, but I'm afraid that you won't be able to prove anything," he said, puncturing my morale. "You've absolutely nothing on him. Your only hope is Pylarinos."

  "Why Pylarinos?"

  "Because Sovatzis is a pain in the ass for him. If he discovers anything whatsoever, he might just hand him over to you for the peace of mind."

  I liked that idea. "What did you do about Kolakoglou?" I said as he was leaving.

  "About Kolakoglou?" he turned and looked at me in surprise.

  "Weren't you going to prove that he'd been sent down unjustly?"

  It was no longer a priority; he'd virtually forgotten it. "I'd really like to, but it's not possible," he said and sighed. "Kolakoglou is no longer news. No one's interested in him. Even if I were to put together a report, the news editor would kill it."

  Robespierre, employee of Media Inc., with a lump sum on retiring and a pension. It was already four. I'd been on my feet for forty hours. I decided to close shop and go to sleep.

  Before leaving, I called Sotiris in and told him to leave no stone unturned until he had something on Sovatzis.

  CHAPTER 41

  They came one by one and handed me their reports. And with each report my hopes tumbled. In the end they were crushed completely. No one had been found who could recognize Sovatzis. Not at Hellas Channel, or on Karadimas Street, where the Albanians had been murdered, or in Kostarakou's neighborhood. No one knew him on Koumanoudi Street either. None of the building's residents or the neighbors knew him. The fox hadn't gone anywhere near The Foxes so as not to arouse suspicion.

  I was in a state of despondency because the doors were closing, one after the other. In the end, I'd have to take the plunge. I'd bring Sovatzis in and lean on him. I tried to work out what the best tactic would be: to use the evidence I had on him and Krenek, or to try and scare him with the twenty years his sister would get. But before I had come to any conclusion, the telephone rang.

  "Come up," Ghikas said in that curt manner he uses when he has someone with him and he wants to play the boss.

  I wasn't wrong. "Big-shot visitor," Koula said to me as I went through.

  "Who is it today?"

  "Pylarinos."

  My hopes were raised. For Pylarinos to have come back meant that he had something important to tell us. Could Sotiropoulos have been right after all, that he was going to sell out Sovatzis for his own peace of mind?

  He was sitting in the same chair he'd sat in during our last meeting. As soon as he saw me, however, he got to his feet and shook my hand warmly.

  "I've already congratulated Superintendent Ghikas, but I wanted to tell you personally, Inspector. You don't know how relieved I am that the case has been closed without any serious consequences for my businesses."

  "The case has been partially cleared up, but it's still open," I said, correcting him. "Whoever murdered Karayoryi and Kostarakou is still walking free."

  "I'm no police officer, of course, but in my mind the most likely murderer is one of the two drivers, or the customs official. The Albanians were killed to keep their mouths shut."

  "The most likely culprit is Sovatzis. The others have alibis. And Dourou couldn't possibly have killed them. The murders were committed by a man."

  He looked closely at me. "I have to admit that I thought of that too. That's why I phoned the superintendent and asked when the murders were committed. The first was on November 27 and the second on November 30. Mr. Sovatzis went abroad on November 25 and came back on December 2." He took a passport out of his pocket and handed it to me. "You can verify the dates from his passport."

  I took it and thumbed through it. It was true. It had a stamp in Czech on November 25, another in Czech and in German on November 29, and an exit stamp in German from Vienna airport on December 2. The bastard had arranged Karayoryi's murder and made sure he was abroad on the day of the murder. Then he had given instructions to the murderer to kill Kostarakou too.

  "The charge of accessory before the fact continues to weigh upon him," I said to Pylarinos. "Sovatzis is the only one who can lead us to the murderer."

  "I am persuaded that Mr. Sovatzis has no involvement in the matter, Inspector," he said in a tone of voice that brooked no objection. "And I'm ashamed for having suspected him at first. You've done a wonderful job, you've arrested the guilty parties, and the case is closed. However, in order for me to put my mind totally at rest, I had Demos transferred to another position, with no administrative responsibility."

  Ghikas couldn't restrain himself. "Where
did you transfer him?" he said.

  Pylarinos didn't answer immediately. "I made him vice president of the governing board," he said with some awkwardness, and immediately added, as if wanting to dispel an adverse impression: "It's a purely decorative position. The vice president has no executive involvement. He simply handles matters assigned to him by the chairman, and that's me. A bit like the vice president of America, who has the title, but effectively has no power." He laughed at his attempt at humor.

  We were speechless. He took advantage of our surprise and got up to leave. "Gentlemen, once again, I offer you my warmest congratulations." He turned to me. "You can keep the passport to check the dates."

  What was there for me to check? He'd made sure he was sitting pretty. "That won't be necessary," I said and handed it back to him.

  As soon as Pylarinos was gone, I leapt to my feet. "If either you or I had done a hundredth of what Sovatzis has done," I said angrily, "we'd have been suspended right now and we'd be preparing our defense. He got promotion and a raise."

  "Nothing would happen to us either if we had the minister in our hands," he said, smiling grimly.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Don't you see? Sovatzis knows about all the money that Pylarinos appropriated in order to become an independent businessman. He may even have concrete evidence. He threatened to reveal it and Pylarinos backed off."

  True. I'd forgotten about that in my rage.

  "The only thing," Ghikas went on, "is that, this way, they're pinning everything on Dourou."

  I rushed to the door, as if Dourou were getting away from me. On my way out, I told Koula to call down to the cells and tell them to have her brought to me immediately.

  I found her in the same seat at the end of the table. I went and sat next to her. "Eleni, I have bad news for you," I said in a friendly tone.

  "Why, when did you ever have good news?" she said.

  "Your little brother has sold you out, Elenitsa. He has proof that he was abroad when the murders took place. He says that you planned it all. He had no idea."

  "Of course he had no idea. He didn't have any idea and I didn't plan anything. All that is your own fabrications."

  "Wake up, dimwit! You've become as stupid as the Albanians you mix with! We've got the two drivers of the refrigerator trucks. We've got Hourdakis. We know that the drivers handed the kids over to Seki outside Kastoria and that he brought them in a van to your nursery. We know it all!"

  "How do you know that he brought the children to me? Did you actually see him?"

  "Your girl saw him and she has identified him."

  "Ah, yes, the photograph," she said. "Just try proving from the photograph that this Albanian was somehow linked to me."

  "We'll prove it, don't worry. Now that your little brother has made sure he's well out of it, it's you we'll settle for as an accessory to the fact for the murders of Karayoryi and Kostarakou. You'll go down for ten years at least. Your only hope is to cooperate with us. We know you didn't have anything to do with the murders. All you have to do is to tell me who your brother hired to kill the two reporters and I'll see to it that you only do half your time."

  She looked at me, and it was the first time that she wasn't able to find anything to say. That was a good sign. Most likely, she'd begun to waver. I leaned toward her. "I can see that they're trying to pin everything on you and I feel sorry for you. These kinds of jobs only last as long as they do, and when they go wrong, everyone tries to save their own skin. That's what your brother is doing. Why sacrifice yourself on his account?"

  She suddenly leapt up, like a wild animal. "Leave my brother out of it!" she screamed. "You don't know what he's been through! He was still in my mother's belly when she went to find my father up in the hills. She left me with my grandmother. I grew up scared stiff of policemen like you! They'd come to our house every so often and turn it upside down, terrorizing us! And when I wanted to enter the college for nursery carers, they made my grandmother sign a state ment. Can you imagine? A seventy-year-old woman! Do you know when I first saw Demos? In 1978. One day there was a knock at my door and I found myself looking at a man. `Are you Eleni?' he asked me. `I'm Demos, your brother.' I knew that my parents had been killed in an accident, about a year before Zachariadis had been deposed as secretary of the party. But I knew nothing about my brother's fate. Demos had been brought up by the party. And though I was older than him, I couldn't help him or even send a letter to him. And now you're asking me to sign a statement just to save my skin? Leave my brother out of it! He doesn't have anything to do with any of this! He's innocent!"

  I stared at her and my mind went to Zissis. I wondered what he'd have done if he'd heard all that. How he would have reacted. She had a triumphant smirk on her lips. She thought she'd cut the ground from under me.

  I opened the door and strode out.

  CHAPTER 42

  Impasse = 1. a situation in which progress is blocked. 2. an insurmountable difficulty. 3. stalemate. 4. deadlock.

  The meaning given by Dimitrakos suited me to a T. Liddell & Scott, however, gave further meaning: without outlet; unable to get out; the infinite (Aristotle Physics 3.5.2). So, according to Aristotle, impasse also meant "the infinite." In other words, I, who had reached an impasse, was spinning in infinity in my quest to nail Sovatzis. Put more plainly, I was looking for a needle in a haystack.

  It was six in the evening, the day after Christmas, and I was lying on my bed with my dictionaries. The previous day had passed fairly painlessly. I'd been invited for Christmas lunch by Michos, Adriani's cousin who worked for the telephone company. I hadn't wanted to go, but Adriani and Katerina had telephoned to insist. It would not have been right for me to have said no, they would have been offended, and, in any case, it had at least passed the day. We had eaten our turkey, had a jolly time, and, at around seven, Rena, Michos's wife, had taken it upon herself to teach me gin rummy. What I know about cards begins and ends with snap, but out of courtesy I decided to comply. At some point, I thought I'd mastered it and they cleaned me out. I got home after midnight and went out like a light. I hadn't had so much as five minutes to think about Sovatzis.

  This morning, however, he was on my mind from the first pee of the day. I racked my brain trying to find some opening, some way to trap him, but there was no ray of light anywhere. All right, we had put an end to a trade in children. I even knew who had taken Hourdakis's place at customs. Someone by the name of Anastassiou. We could send them all to the public prosecutor. The chances of the prosecutor charging Dourou as an accessory before the fact were fifty-fifty. The accessory before the fact wasn't Dourou, it was Sovatzis, and he was still at large, and so was whoever murdered the two reporters.

  Adriani had been right. I should have left everything, gone to Thessaloniki, and been with my daughter. By noon, I couldn't take it anymore. I got into the Mirafiori and started driving aimlessly. Without a conscious objective, I suddenly found myself in Rafina. I got out of the car and took a stroll along the waterfront. The sea air cleared my mind and I saw the situation as blacker still. Never mind Sovatzis, we were even in danger of Dourou being released if the statement by her assistant didn't convince the court. Given the organization they had, it was nothing for them to come up with a handful of Albanians who would claim that the kids at The Foxes were theirs. They might even bring the real parents from Albania. The more I thought about it, the lower my spirits sank. I went into a cafe to unwind. The noise, the buzz of the card players, the dice rolling on the backgammon boards made me forget my cares. I got home at around four and settled down to a long browse among my dictionaries.

  I was poised between sitting in front of the TV and going to see a film when the phone rang. It was Zissis.

  "How's the bachelor life?" he said.

  "Great. I'm having a ball."

  He laughed. "That's always how it is at first. You try to convince yourself that you're better off alone. You have your peace and quiet; you don't have to answer to an
yone. But before too long the loneliness gets to you and you slip into despondency. Ask me about it. I'm an expert after all these years."

  I said nothing because I didn't want to admit that he was right.

  "I made some roast goat in the oven yesterday, but I can't eat it all on my own. Do you feel like coming over and having a go at it with me?"

  He took me unawares and I didn't know what to say. Okay, we knew each other and we helped each other out every so often, but it wasn't as if we were eating and drinking companions. I was about to say no, when suddenly I thought how difficult it must have been for him to invite me, how difficult it would be for him to have a police officer at his table, even one that he liked.

  "I'11 come," I said.

  "When?"

  "I can be there in an hour."

  "I've got a surprise for you," he told me. "A kind of gift." And then he hung up.

  The roads were empty and I arrived in Ekavis Street a quarter of an hour earlier than I had anticipated. I found him waiting for me at the door. He didn't let me get out of the car, but came and sat next to me.

  "Where are we going?" I said. "To the baker's to get the roast goat?"

  "We're going for the surprise, but first I want you to promise me something."

  "What?"

  "We're going to meet someone, but I want you to promise me that once you've talked to him you'll let him go. I gave him my word that as long as he was with me, he would not come to any harm."

  "Who is it? Sovatzis?"

  "Sovatzis? What on earth made you think that? No, it's not Sovatzis."

  "And how do you know I'll keep my word?"

  "I know," he said with certainty. "Take Dekelias Street and then turn onto Attalias Street. We're going to the AEK stadium."

  It wasn't far and there didn't seem to be anything to say on the way. When we got to the stadium, he told me to wait.