remained somewhere between the Greek Communist Youth and Rhigas Ferraios. There were books on history, philosophy, a large edition of the collected works of Marx and Engels in English, histories of the labour and communist movements and many books on economics. There were no files or folders.
I went back down the interior staircase and found the Thai standing waiting for me at the bottom. The tall Ukranian maid had gone and the other one had remained upstairs. I headed towards the private cafeteria with the Thai at my heels. He saw me descending the garden steps and was at last convinced that I had decided to leave.
The gardener was still watering. ‘Didn’t Favieros have a driver?’ I asked as I got up to him.
‘No, he drove himself. A Bimmer convertible.’
‘Bimmer?’ I asked puzzled.
‘BMW,’ he answered, casting a contemptuous glance at me for my ignorance.
I arrived at the bus station in Porto Rafti at around noon. Since I wasn’t going home for lunch, I had time to go on a second little trip that day and visit Favieros’s construction site at the Olympic Village. I asked the station superintendent where the buses to Thrakomakedones stopped and he looked at me as though I’d asked him how to get to the Norwegian fjords.
‘Try Vathis Square,’ he told me. ‘All those Third World contraptions start from there.’
As I was walking down towards Vathis Square, I felt my stomach rumbling and I realised that I had gone from my convalescence back to work without celebrating my return. In Aristotelous Street I came across a souvlaki joint and I ordered two souvlakis with all the trimmings. I ate them standing up, leaning forward so they wouldn’t drip on me, and I felt myself at last getting back into the work routine. I couldn’t care less if I smelled of tzatziki to the builders.
The stop for Thrakomakedones was in the square, but the bus standing there had its doors and windows closed. The driver was chatting with the superintendent and neither paid the slightest attention to those waiting.
‘When does it leave?’ an elderly woman asked the driver.
‘You’ll have to wait, there’s another one coming,’ was the curt answer.
The other appeared after about twenty minutes and after the five passengers waiting had become fifty. I had to use what I still remember from the Police Academy concerning crowd dispersion in order to get on and secure a seat for myself.
The bus set off but stopped every twenty yards either because of traffic lights or because of the congestion. When it was neither of these, it was because someone wanted to get on or off. Somewhere around Kokkinos Mylos, my eyes closed and I dozed off. The voices around me merged into a low droning sound and I dreamt I was still in my sick bed, in the hospital, all wired up and wearing an oxygen mask. I opened my eyes and saw Adriani leaning over me. ‘What was I thinking of when I married you,’ she said in an angry tone. ‘I’ve known nothing but worry and disappointment since I’ve been with you! If you were a big shot I could understand it. But you’re a copper. Some jackpot!’
I was woken by the jerk of the bus stopping suddenly and I had no idea where I was. ‘Are we there?’ I asked the man beside me, as if he knew where I was going.
‘Next stop is the terminus,’ he replied. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I didn’t know where the Olympic Village was exactly and I decided to take a taxi so as not to end up searching all over the place.
‘Where to?’ said the driver as I got in beside him.
‘The Olympic Village.’
He braked suddenly before we’d even set off and opened the door for me.
‘Not on your life,’ he said. ‘I’ve just come from there and I was lucky to get the car out in one piece with all the rubble and potholes. Find another taxi, I’ve been through that no-man’s-land once today.’
Eventually, the third one that passed left me at the border between the Olympic Village and the rest of the world. From close up, the picture was far less inviting than that in the brochure published by the Workers Residence Organisation, that encouraged us to put our names down for one of the flats that would house ten thousand Athenians after the Olympic Games. When Adriani had seen it, she had taken a shine to the idea, but I quashed it there and then. Firstly, because I wouldn’t have been able to stand the daily nightmare of commuting between Thrakomakedones and Ambelokipi and, secondly, because the Greek public sector had far more than ten thousand political favours to repay and consequently we would be left looking on. With hindsight, I understood the taxi driver’s reluctance. From close up, more than half the places seemed in an embryonic state and the roads were non-existent. Everywhere there were mounds of rubble, excavations and potholes.
I asked a truck driver where the building site of the Domitis Construction Company was. He pointed to some tricolour houses about a hundred yards away. Their corners were ochre, their walls pink and their balconies light blue.
The site’s offices were in a caravan behind the houses. I entered without knocking and saw two men: a young man of around thirty, who was sitting at one of the two desks, and another, around forty-five, standing up. They were talking heatedly and paid no attention to me. They evidently took me for a supplier come to sell them prefabricated concrete or bricks and so left me waiting.
‘Don’t load it on me,’ said the elder one heatedly. ‘I’m not the one who chooses the workers. That’s your job. I work with whoever you give me.’
‘Can’t you steal a couple of days for zone three?’ asked the other in a conciliatory tone.
The elder one shot me a glance that was full of contempt. ‘If I steal a couple of days, it will hold up the laying of the sewer system. They bring you straight from university to the site and you think it’s like you were taught in the classroom.’
Without another word, he turned round and walked out, leaving the door of the caravan open behind him. The younger man turned his attention to me.
‘Yes?’ he said in a somewhat bored fashion.
‘Inspector Haritos.’
He was taken aback, as he’d thought me a supplier and I’d turned out to be a copper. He got to his feet quickly and closed the door. Then he stood in front of his desk and looked at me.
‘About the Kurds?’
Inside I felt thankful that he was taking me where I wanted to go. ‘Had you previously received any threats from the nationalistic organisation that claimed responsibility for the murders? I mean, were you ever asked to get rid of the foreign workers you employ here?’
The reply was categorical: ‘Never. We heard the name of the organisation for the first time on the TV.’
‘Do you know whether your boss had received any threats? Did he seem nervous or frightened to you in recent weeks?’
He reflected. ‘Nervous or frightened, no …’ he replied, but it was clear that there was something else he wanted to add.
‘But?’
He reflected again. ‘Worried … Preoccupied perhaps …’
‘Did he have any reason to be worried?’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say … If he had any personal concerns I’m not aware of them. As for professional ones, what worries might he have? All his contracts were handed to him on a plate.’
‘So you wouldn’t have said that he was on the verge of suicide?’
‘On the contrary. He was as smiling and as friendly as always.’ He paused for a moment, then added: ‘Favieros was on very good terms with the staff. Not only with the engineers on the site, but with the ordinary workers too. Whoever had a problem went directly to him to find a solution. He was concerned about everyone and everyone liked him. Okay, he may have put it on a bit, but he did help where he could … That’s the truth of it …’
‘You didn’t notice any change in his behaviour?’
