Advertising Company STATHATOS and
FAVIEROS’S wife Union Consultants Investment Consultancy Firm
Offices of this firm in Skopje covering the entire
Balkans and particularly Bosnia, Kosovo STEFANAKOS Major politician and with good name throughout
Balkans
I gazed at my notes and began making connections. Both Favieros and Stathatos owned companies that were completely above board: Favieros owned Domitis and Stathatos Starad. Behind these honest and reputable companies were others engaged in activities of a more shadowy nature. Both Balkan Prospect and Union Consultants were, on the face of it, entirely legal, but the way in which they earned money was questionable to say the least.
Even more shadowy were things in the Balkans. There, through his estate agencies, Favieros bought land and property for a mere snippet and developed them in various ways. As for the partnership between Stathatos and Favieros’s wife, it wasn’t at all inconceivable that they were getting a fat slice of the money from the programs intended for the various Balkan countries on the grounds that they were acting as mediators. In the old days, you paid a few drachmas to someone outside the Town Hall to fill out your application form for a birth certificate. Now the Greeks in the European Union were getting millions from Balkan countries for filling out applications for European funding.
And then there was Stefanakos. Activist in the resistance, outstanding politician, feared in Parliament and pro-Balkan. If he had intervened from backstage in order to help Union Consultants secure funds from European programs in Greece and the Balkans, who would have dared to expose him? These things rarely come out into the open because very few are aware of them and those who are keep their mouths shut.
I put the pencil down and tried to put my thoughts in some order. Could this have been the reason behind Stefanakos’s suicide? Someone unknown, hiding behind the pseudonym of Logaras, knew the truth and was blackmailing him. And so Stefanakos committed suicide in order to save himself and his wife from the scandal. It seemed that the theory of a scandal wasn’t to be thrown out after all.
Nevertheless, there remained the question: why did Favieros and Stefanakos commit suicide publicly? Anyone committing suicide to avoid a scandal doesn’t have to do it before the eyes of millions of TV viewers. I still didn’t have an answer to that one.
I got up and called Sotiropoulos on his mobile phone. ‘That politician who told you about the relationship between Favieros and Stathatos …’
‘You mean Andreadis … Is there one after all?’
‘So it seems. Not with Favieros directly, but with his wife.’ He whistled in exclamation. ‘Can you arrange a meeting for me with Andreadis, so I can ask him a few things?’
There was a momentary pause. ‘Now things are starting to get difficult,’ he said and he wasn’t joking. He paused again and then added: ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
The heat returned with a vengeance. I had already felt the change in temperature during the night because at one point I woke up drenched in sweat and with the sheets burning hot. It was now ten in the morning and I was on my way to the offices of Europublishers in Omirou Street, between Skoufa Street and Solonos Street. I drove up Skoufa Street behind an old truck full of plastic balcony chairs. As if it wasn’t enough that it suffocated me with its exhaust fumes all the way, every time it set off at a green light it emitted a double dose.
‘Do something about your exhaust!’ I called to the driver as I overtook, trying to save myself. ‘You’ll suffocate us with your fumes.’
He looked down on me, literally and metaphorically. ‘Don’t tell me that old crock of yours is fitted with a catalytic converter,’ he shouted.
The offices of Europublishers were located at number 22, on the fourth floor. I walked in to find a showcase fixed on the wall, full of the company’s publications. Arranged in line was a guide to astrology, a two-volume medical guide, a cookery book, two volumes and a video cassette on major events in the twentieth century and a volume on health care. Between the medical guide and the cookery book was Stefanakos’s biography.
Sitting beneath the showcase behind one of those metal desks that you find everywhere and in front of it two chairs that you can also find everywhere was an auburn-haired woman of about thirty-five. She was made up to the nines and was wearing a strapless top revealing two youthful bronzed shoulders. She must have been a model in her youth and had been put there to create a favourable first impression, and probably at little cost given she was well past her prime.
What was a biography about a leftist activist and politician doing in that environment? Sarantidis with his beard and the chaos in his office would have been a thousand times more suitable. Unless he had already moved to the new flat he had been dreaming of and had become like all the rest.
‘Yes, what can I do for you?’ said the woman in a deep voice.
‘Inspector Haritos. I’d like to speak with whoever’s in charge.’
She didn’t deign to reply but instead picked up the receiver and dialed an internal extension. ‘There’s a Mr …’ Before she could say my name, she had forgotten it and turned back to me. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Haritos … Inspector Haritos …’
‘There’s a Mr Haritos here, a police inspector, and he wants to talk to Mr Yoldasis.’ He must have shouted at her from the other end of the line, because she said in a placatory tone: ‘All right … all right … I’ll send him in right away.’
She replaced the receiver casting a spiteful glance at it. Then she turned to me: ‘Third door on the right,’ she said, pointing to the far end of the corridor.
The office behind the third door on the right was exactly the same as the one in reception. The secretary leapt to her feet on seeing me.
‘Please go through, Inspector. Mr Yoldasis will see you straightaway.’
She opened the door for me to go in. The man sitting behind the desk was fiftyish, tall and thin, with a pointed nose that almost reached down to his lips. He was wearing an outfit of various shades of blue: a light blue jacket and dark blue trousers.
‘Come in, Inspector,’ he said very cordially. ‘Please. Have a seat.’
The room was air-conditioned, making the sweat on my back freeze. After going through the usual ritual: a routine offer of coffee on his part, a routine decline on mine, he came to the point and asked very politely:
‘How might I help you, Inspector?’
‘I’d like you to answer a few questions for me concerning Loukas Stefanakos’s biography.’ His expression suddenly changed and I hastened to reassure him: ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘I’m not worried,’ he replied quite calmly. ‘I simply don’t understand what connection there might be between the publication of his biography and his suicide.’ Suddenly, he had a moment of divine enlightenment and found the answer for himself. ‘Oh, I see. It’s because after the suicide of that … building contractor, his biography came out too and was by the same author.’
‘Precisely. What I want to know is how and when the biography came into your hands.’
‘It came by post, I’m certain of that. I don’t recall when, but I can call Iota, who dealt with the publication side of it.’
He lifted up the receiver and asked his secretary to get hold of Iota. Presently, a girl of around twenty-five entered the office. Everything about her was little: she was a little short, a little plump and a little cross-eyed.
‘Can you remember, Iota, when it was that the manuscript of Stefanakos’s biography came to us?’ Yoldasis asked her.
‘About three and a half months ago,’ the girl replied.
