I thought they were two separate buildings, but when I looked from the side, I discovered that there was a small bridge, rather like a glass tube, connecting the two buildings. The same social disguise employed by Favieros could be seen even in his business. At first sight, he didn’t want to live in the same neighbourhood with the moneybags in Ekali; his house in Porto Rafti, however, was the house of a moneybag. At first sight, he preferred neoclassical buildings to the modern office blocks; behind the neoclassical building, however, was the modern block. He wore Armani suits, but crumpled and without a tie. Of course, to blame for this might have been the prudishness that leftists feel about their wealth and so they cover it up with a fig leaf, not to stop other people seeing it, but so as not to see it themselves. But perhaps equally to blame is the outlaw syndrome that leftists suffer from and that makes them persist with the disguise, albeit pointlessly, out of an acquired momentum.
Dominating the spacious hallway, facing the entrance, was a portrait of Favieros, draped in black out of mourning. Beneath it was a pile of floral bouquets. The receptionist was a pleasant-looking fifty-year-old woman, simply dressed and without make-up.
‘Good morning. How might I help you?’ she asked us politely.
‘Inspector Haritos. This is Officer Koula …’ I suddenly realised that I didn’t know Koula’s surname and I got stuck. Fortunately, she understood and cut in.
‘… Kalafati. Koula Kalafati.’
‘We’d like to see whoever’s in charge,’ I added politely.
‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked worriedly. She had just been through one tragic event and now, fatalistically, she was waiting for the next one.
‘Nothing at all. It’s purely routine. I’m sure you can imagine that when such a well-known figure commits suicide, and publicly as well, the police are obliged to carry out a routine investigation so as not to be accused of not looking into it.’
Privately, I was hoping that she would go for my little spiel and not suddenly decide to phone the police to verify it.
‘Take a seat for just a moment,’ she said, picking up the phone.
We sat down in the two metal chairs facing her desk. The hallway had been meticulously renovated. Wooden panelling halfway up the wall, with the rest of the wall painted a light pink colour. The carvings on the ceiling had been restored to their original form and they made you nostalgic for the old light fittings with candles or bulbs. The furnishings were the usual design as in all offices: metal chairs, desks of metal and wood, computers. But it didn’t jar; perhaps because it was all so neutral and was absorbed by the neoclassical restoration, rendering it inconspicuous.
The woman put down the receiver. ‘Our General Manager, Mr Zamanis, will see you. Please follow Mr Aristopoulos,’ she said, motioning to a young man wearing a short-sleeved shirt and tie, who had come and was waiting for us.
We went up to the third floor, over the bridge of sighs and entered the modern block. Here, the decoration was minimalist, not at all recalling the period of the first Bavarian Kings of Greece. Chipboard cubicles, like a line of theatre sets. Sitting inside were men and women either typing away at the keys on their computers or talking on their mobile phones.
Aristopoulos led us to a door at the end, the only door on the whole floor. In olden times, the rich lived in neoclassical houses and the servants in hovels. Now only a door divides them. The actors up front and the impresario behind the door. That was all there was to it.
The second fifty-year-old woman that we encountered had her hair tied back, was wearing white linen slacks and blouse, but like the first woman had no make-up on. I suddenly realised that this was their way of showing they were in mourning for Favieros, and I quite liked it.
‘Do go in. Mr Zamanis is waiting for you,’ she said, immediately adding: ‘Can we get you anything?’
I politely declined and Koula was quick to comply.
Zamanis must have been around the same age as Favieros, but that’s where the similarities ended. Favieros was of average height and was ostentatiously unkempt; Zamanis was tall and wearing a smart suit. Favieros had thick hair and was always unshaven; Zamanis was clean-shaven and starting to go bald. He got to his feet to receive us and held out his hand. Then he also shook Koula’s hand, but mechanically, without looking at her, because his eyes were fixed on me.
‘I have to admit that your visit surprises me somewhat.’ He stressed the words one by one as if to underline them. ‘Why this sudden interest on the part of the police in the tragedy that’s befallen us?’
‘It’s hardly sudden,’ I replied. ‘We simply waited for the first few difficult days to pass before bothering you. Besides it’s not something urgent. It’s purely a formality.’
‘Let’s get on with the formality, then.’ He waited for us to sit down and then shooting his words out at us in a sharp, categorical tone: ‘So what do you want to know? Whether I expected Jason to commit suicide? The answer is “no”. Whether he had any reason to commit suicide? No, everything was going just fine for him. Whether he was forced into suicide by those fascist idiots? Again no, they simply used it as an opportunity to do their own thing. Whether I expected Jason to make a spectacle of his suicide? Again, the answer is “no” for a fourth time. And now that I’ve answered all your questions, please allow me to get back to my work. Time is pressing and all the work has fallen on my shoulders.’
Koula wasn’t sure whether she should get to her feet or remain seated and looked at me uncomfortably. She saw that I didn’t budge and went along with me.
‘Thank you for saving us the trouble of asking you the questions,’ I said politely and without the slightest irony. ‘But you haven’t answered the question as to why Jason Favieros committed suicide.’
He puts his hands in the air in a gesture of ignorance. ‘Because I can’t,’ he said in a sincere tone. ‘From the moment I became an eyewitness to that terrible spectacle on TV, I’ve been racking my brains trying to find an answer but I can’t.’
‘Is it at all possible that he was being blackmailed by that nationalist organisation?’
He burst into laughter. ‘Come now, Inspector. If that was the case, I would have been the first to know and he certainly wouldn’t have kept it a secret from the police. And, when all’s said and done, if they were going to blackmail us on account of our foreign workers, they would have blackmailed all the Greek construction companies.’
‘Did he have any enemies?’
‘Of course. All the other public works contractors. We’re living in a world where everyone is against everyone else. We all began with dreams of other things but we’ve all ended up here. I don’t see anyone unhappy about it, however.’
‘Just before Favieros committed suicide, the reporter had asked about his connections with the government.’
Again he burst into laughter. ‘So? Would he commit suicide just because he got preferential treatment? It’s the hard-done-by who commit suicide, Inspector.’
I felt like giving up. All his answers were the ones I had thought of and they were sound ones. ‘Did he have any psychological problems?’
I asked with the logic that says when you’ve exhausted everything else, try your luck with psychology. It was the first time that Zamanis’s glibness faltered.
‘I’ve been asking myself the same question since that day,’ he said pensively. ‘The very way that he committed suicide shows an individual who is mentally disturbed.’ He paused again and fixed his eyes on the pencil holder on his desk as though trying to focus his thoughts. ‘Jason had been through a great deal, Inspector. I don’t know whether you are aware of his background …’
‘No.’
‘You should, really,’ he said, looking me in the eye somewhat provocatively.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because he was one of the leading members of the resistance during the time of the Junta. He was subjected to terrible torture by the Military Police. Once they were afraid that he would die on them and they let him go because they didn’t want any trouble from abroad. All that left him with psychological traumas … Sudden changes of mood … affective disorders.’
‘Did he have any of these symptoms prior to his suicide?’
He reflected again. ‘If I were to interpret the signs with hindsight, yes. At the time, I didn’t pay much
