‘Who knows what goes on in people’s minds.’
I had recourse to this vague reply because if we started to discuss it, we would only end up talking nonsense.
‘Everything these days is done for show, even committing suicide.’
There are times when Adriani hits the nail on the head without being aware of it. What reason had a successful businessman like Jason Favieros to stage a public suicide? Unless he was after something else and changed his mind along the way and preferred suicide. But what else? Killing Komi? She needed killing, but Favieros certainly didn’t watch so much TV as to have his killer instincts aroused by that blonde Barbie, all covered in glitter like a Christmas tree.
The other alternative was that he had wanted to threaten his rivals. So what was he doing with the pistol? Would he threaten his rivals with a pistol pointing at the camera? I had been a long time out of training when it came to crime investigations and I was coming up with nonsense.
I spent another sleepless night. The insomnia was my worst torment. I dreaded the moment when I turned off the light. Fanis told me that this often happens during convalescence and recommended that I take half a sleeping pill before going to bed. I refused to take as much as a quarter, because if you get used to sleeping pills, you can never do without them. I spent half my nights with my eyes wide open, tossing and turning in bed.
The previous night’s insomnia, however, had none of the usual symptoms: neither exasperation nor counting backwards from a thousand nor the midnight itinerary of kitchen–sitting room–verandah. On the contrary, each time I felt sleep coming on, I threw some water over my face to stay awake. I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it was that had driven Jason Favieros to commit public suicide. I could have accepted his suicide in the office or at home. His business wasn’t going well, he had psychological problems, his wife was cheating on him, he was involved in some major scandal and he preferred suicide to the shame of it. It was the public part of it that I couldn’t understand. Why in public? Why would Jason Favieros want to make a spectacle of his death? The likes of Favieros hate fuss and move in places far from the public eye, in offices lined with thick carpets to stifle the sound. And suddenly, one of their kind causes the TV ratings to rocket through his death? The possibility that he may have simply flipped could be excluded. He had gone to the studio prepared, with the pistol next to his wallet. Consequently, the public suicide served some purpose; he wanted to reveal something.
Beside me, Adriani was sleeping with that constant, muted, snoring of hers, like a cistern filling all night long. I usually bite the pillow in exasperation, but that night I had hardly heard her. It was the first night of insomnia for months that I didn’t want to end and that I revelled in.
For the past month, getting out of bed in the mornings had been a veritable odyssey. I thought of the day before me, the strict programme, without any novelty or deviation, and my feet refused to touch the mat next to the bed. That day, however, I was snug in bed by choice, because I was enjoying it. I had spread my dictionaries around me and was skipping from one to the other. I found the best documented entry in Dimitrakos’s Lexicon.
‘Suicide: 1. By one’s own hand, perpetrator: Aesch.
‘Are you all right?’ She poked her head round the door and fixed her eyes on me in concern.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Why don’t you get up?’
‘I thought I’d have a bit of a lie-in.’
‘You don’t feel out of sorts, do you?’
‘No. Nor strain from too much work.’
She stared at me, surprised at my somewhat ironic tone, which of late had faded together with the post- operational symptoms. The truth was that I, too, wondered what was the cause of my unexpected recovery. Was it the brainwashing by Ouzounidis the previous evening? Was it Favieros’s suicide? Most likely the latter. Something wasn’t right about that suicide, something had been bothering me from the moment that I saw his brains sticking to the huge aquarium on the set, and it was this that had dragged up the policeman, half-drowned and gasping for breath, from the watery depths back to the surface. I told myself it was just bullshit every time my thoughts led nowhere. I was creating crossword puzzles to pass the time. But I knew deep down that there was more to it. Favieros’s suicide had something of a show about it that simply didn’t add up, and it was this that was bothering me.
I hate idling in bed. In the past I had feelings of guilt about it because I thought I was taking up valuable time from the Force. In the state I was in, it made me feel even more down. I got up and started to get dressed with my mind still on Favieros. When I had finished dressing, I realised that for the first time in months I had put on a suit and tie. I looked at myself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. In appearance, at least, I again saw a police inspector and the sight did me the world of good. The one jarring note was my unshaven face. Shaving is a kind of certification. It certifies that you are healthy and working. On the contrary, an unshaven face means that you’re ill, retired or unemployed. For the previous two months I had belonged to the second category and had only been shaving every third day. I took off my jacket and went into the bathroom. Shaving that day was my first brave attempt to move back into the first category. When I had finished, I put my jacket back on and left the dictionaries lying over the bed. It was one of the little privileges allowed me by Adriani following my being shot. Not having to tidy things up, not even my dictionaries, which she loathed and which infuriated her whenever I left them lying around. But now she didn’t say even a word, because in her opinion, I mustn’t tire myself during my convalescence. Nevertheless, I usually tidied them up myself because Adriani would arrange them higgledy-piggledy as if exacting revenge on them in this way.
She was sitting at the kitchen table and scraping courgettes. She lifted her head mechanically, certain that she would see me in my pyjamas. She remained with her knife in the air and her eyes bulging, staring at the well- groomed version of me, as though seeing a ghost from the past.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘To get the newspapers.’
‘And you’ve put your suit on to get the newspapers?’
‘Actually, I was going to wear my official parade uniform, but I didn’t want to overdo it.’
Adriani was nonplussed and tossed the courgette into the rubbish instead of into the bowl of water. I slammed the door behind me so that the noise would wake her up after I had gone.
On coming out of the lift, I bumped into Mrs Prelatis.
‘Now you’re a sight for sore eyes, Mr Haritos,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘At last, you’re back to being the Inspector that we all know.’
I could have kissed her. With all the foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences. I remembered, however, that Adriani and Mrs Prelatis had a mutual dislike of each other. So she might have been saying that as a dig at Adriani, who hadn’t let me out alone for such a long time.
My suspicions dissolved when the newsagent confirmed Prelatis’s enthusiasm. ‘Hale and hearty, Inspector, hale and hearty,’ he shouted. ‘First time for a long time that I’ve seen you looking so well. What can I give you?’
‘The papers.’
‘Which one will it be today?’
He asked me because each day I would get a different one, either for a change or simply to confirm that I found them all equally boring. I’m still not sure.
‘Give me all of them, except the sports papers.’
He stared at me in astonishment, but then his face lit up. ‘The suicide, right?’ he said, full of satisfaction that he had found the solution to the riddle.
