already almost ten o’clock. After the turn, the road was clear and Fanis stepped on the accelerator so the Fiat raced along.
‘It was my mistake,’ he said as he drove. ‘We should have come by Stamata.’
‘And how long would it have taken us to get to Stamata from Drosia?’
‘You’re right.’
At ten o’clock at night, Vranas is lit up with garlands of fairy lights. The taverns are all packed and instead of pine, the air smells of barbequed meat and burnt oil. We stopped at the first kiosk and asked directions to Vakirtzis’s house.
‘What, you too? What’s going on tonight that everyone’s headed for Vakirtzis’s house?’ the kiosk owner asked as he showed us where to turn.
‘We’re too late,’ said Fanis disappointed, as we set off again.
‘Don’t be too hasty. He’s celebrating tonight. All those asking the way may just have been guests.’
‘You’re right. I’d forgotten he had his name day.’
Fortunately, we didn’t have to search for very long. We found Vakirtzis’s house on our right, just off the road, as we left Vranas heading for Stamata. It was a huge farming estate that rose up and culminated in a white, three-storey house. Both the fields and the house were ablaze with light. Fanis turned right into a parallel track where the entrance to the estate was. The enormous iron gate was wide open. Inside and outside the estate were parked all the latest models of the world car industry: from jeeps to BMWs and from Toyotas to Mercedes convertibles. Fanis couldn’t find anywhere to park and had to leave the car at a distance.
It was only when we got closer to the estate that we saw the turmoil. As we had passed by to park the car, we had been impressed by all the cars and lights. Now we saw that the entrance was deserted and unguarded. I looked around and high up, close to the villa, I saw a crowd of people pushing and jostling, as though watching a parade. Except that instead of cheering and applause, there was the sound of screaming and yelling. Panic prevailed on the terrace running round the whole of the three-storey building. Some were gesticulating frantically, others running in and out of the house and others going up and down the steps leading from the terrace to the surrounding estate.
Fanis and I halted for a moment and stared. ‘You were right,’ I said. ‘We’re too late.’
As though someone suddenly pushed us, we began running up to the place where the people were crowding. Halfway up, Fanis suddenly stopped and looked at me.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t come with you?’
‘Come on, no one’s going to ask who you are.’
We were still going up when, behind us, we heard the siren of an ambulance and its headlights lit our path. Behind the ambulance was a patrol car. I motioned to the driver of the ambulance to stop.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked him when he came up beside me.
He stared at me in surprise. ‘We were notified to come and take someone to the hospital.’
‘Who?’
He consulted his book. ‘Vakirtzis, the journalist.’
A sergeant got out of the patrol car and came up to me.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
I showed him my badge. ‘Inspector Haritos. Stay here, both of you, till I call for you.’
They both looked at me in surprise, but didn’t dare object. Fanis and I set off up the slope again.
‘If they sent for an ambulance, he may be still alive,’ he said.
I had the same thought and prayed he would be. I struggled to push through the crowd, constantly saying my name and rank. As I passed through the crowd, I heard frightened whispering, crying and sobbing. Many of the people were wearing wet clothes.
I eventually reached an open space with grass and a swimming pool in the middle. My gaze automatically fell to the swimming pool. Perhaps it was the result of noticing the wet clothes, but the swimming pool was empty and everything was calm. Sitting in a chair next to the pool was a woman. She was bent over the grass as if looking for something and her body was shaking from her sobbing. Her clothes were also wet.
I continued to cast my gaze this way and that, till at a distance of fifteen metres from the pool, beneath a trellised vine, I saw a white mound. The spot was poorly lit and I couldn’t quite make it out, but when I went nearer, I saw straightaway that it was a human body covered with a sheet.
I approached the mound and looked at it from above. Any hopes that had sprung up when we saw the ambulance dissolved at the sight of the covered body. I leaned over and lifted up the sheet. The sight of the charred face took me so much by surprise that I let the sheet fall from my hands and had to steady myself against the trunk of the vine. I was prepared to see a head blown apart by a bullet, or a throat cut by a knife, but not a charred body. I looked about me. The grass all around was yellowed in places and completely blackened in others.
I left the body and went back to the woman sitting in the chair. Her sobbing had abated. She was standing erect, motionless, and with her hands covering her face.
‘What happened?’ I asked her. She didn’t answer but simply continued standing there in the same position. ‘Inspector Haritos. Tell me what happened.’
She slowly took her hands from her face and looked at me. She took a deep breath and tried to find where to start. ‘We were playing, pushing each other into the pool,’ she said after a while. ‘You know the game at parties.’
I had seen it in some Hollywood films, but it was no time for games. ‘And then what?’
‘Apostolos suddenly appeared. He was wet and we thought that in all the hullabaloo he had dived in too. But he was wet with … paraffin …’ She began sobbing again and could barely whisper. ‘He went over there where he is now and waved to us as if saying goodbye. Then …’ She was unable to continue as she broke into sobs. ‘Then he took a lighter from his pocket and set fire to his clothes.’
I let her calm down a little from the sobbing. ‘Did no one think of dowsing him with water?’
‘No. We all froze. The flames engulfed him in less than a few seconds. We watched him leaping and screaming, but we didn’t dare approach him. When he finally collapsed on the grass, we came round and began looking for buckets and hosepipes. There was no hosepipe anywhere. Some people who ran into the house found a bucket. They filled it with water from the pool and threw it over him, but it was too late.’
‘Where’s his wife?’
‘He doesn’t have a wife, he’s divorced. Rena, the girl he lives … lived with, is in shock and they took her upstairs.’
People reacted as they always do in such cases. As soon as they see someone taking charge, they feel reassured and leave. I let her go to Fanis, who was standing beside the pool watching me.
‘He burnt like candle.’
At my words he was struck by awe. ‘All right, it’s one thing to commit suicide. But in such a horrible way? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Tell the ambulance to come and get him. And go into the house to find his girl. Her name’s Rena. See what state she’s in and do something to bring her round, because I need to talk to her.’
He turned and quickly walked away, while I looked around me. As I had lost the race with the inevitable, all I could do was investigate whether there were any similarities with the other two suicides. At first sight, Vakirtzis’s suicide differed on two counts. Firstly, the biography accompanying the suicide hadn’t been sent to a publisher but had come directly to me. That meant that whoever was hiding behind the pseudonym Logaras knew that I was investigating the suicides. Consequently, it was someone belonging to the circle of the three men and quite probably someone who knew me or knew who I had interrogated. Secondly, this was the only suicide that had taken place before an audience, but not on TV. Suddenly, Andreadis emerged from a group of people.
‘Terrible tragedy,’ he said on seeing me. ‘Terrible tragedy.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘Everyone saw it. It happened right before our eyes.’
‘Did you talk to him at all tonight?’
‘We exchanged a few words, that’s all. I greeted him when I arrived and wished him all the best for his name day, but then we didn’t bump into each other again.’
‘How did he seem to you?’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘As always, cordial and jocular. “You know how I feel about you, Kyriakos,”
