cassettes. I made a note to have someone come to collect them and take them to the lab. I tried to open the third drawer but it was locked. I bent down and saw that it had a security lock. We would have to get hold of the key, though I wasn’t sure, even in a case of suicide, whether we had the right to investigate. If not, we would have to find a way to get permission from the legal heirs and I had no idea who they were. It certainly wasn’t Rena. She was one of those victims who live with much older men, spend a few great years with them and then end up left in the lurch and penniless.
As I was walking back down the terrace steps, I bumped into Sotiropoulos. ‘Nothing here for me,’ he said to me resentfully, as if I were to blame. ‘They’d already taken the body away and most of the guests were gone. Fotaki got here first and she got all the interviews. How did she find out?’ he looked at me suspiciously.
‘From an anonymous phone call. Someone said that there would be surprises at Vakirtzis’s party.’
He thought about it and whistled in amazement ‘So you mean that …’
‘Exactly. He sent the biography to me and informed the channel that had screened the previous suicides.’
I started to walk away towards Fanis, who was sitting in a chair waiting for me, but Sotiropoulos grabbed me by the arm.
‘There’s no way you’re going,’ he said. ‘I have to get something out of this story too.’
‘And you expect me to give you something?’ I was ready to explode but that didn’t daunt him at all.
‘Yes. I want you to tell me about the biography. How did you get hold of it and how did you get here so quickly? I’m not saying you’ll turn up trumps because I know what a crank you are and you might say no.’
I would turn up trumps, but not for the reason he imagined. If I talked, I would compromise Yanoutsos and those supporting him irrevocably. After all, I wasn’t there on duty. I was on sick leave and had been replaced by someone else. If I had to, I could say that I had phoned Security Headquarters, been unable to find Ghikas and so had rushed there myself to try to prevent the suicide.
‘All right. I’ll tell you,’ I said to Sotiropoulos. ‘But you won’t ask me if I was carrying out investigations here or what I came up with, because I’m obliged to report all that back at Headquarters.’
He stared at me, evidently thinking I was joking. He held the microphone to my mouth waiting for me to spill the beans. But I began to relate the whole story, from the moment that the envelope was delivered to my house to the time I arrived at Vakirtzis’s estate. With every word I added, his smile got bigger as though he were experiencing the crazy rise of the stock market minute by minute.
When I had finished, he shook my hand for the first time in his life. ‘Thanks. You’re a good sort,’ he said.
I made no comment and went over to Fanis, who had got to his feet.
‘Did you come up with anything?’ he asked me.
‘Same symptoms as Favieros. Lately, he’d taken to shutting himself in his study in front of his computer. I found a drawer in his desk with a security lock, but I couldn’t find the key.’
This time, we took the route that went through Stamata. It was after midnight and the traffic in Kifissias Avenue had thinned out.
‘So, that’s an end to your sick leave,’ Fanis said suddenly.
I stared at him in surprise. ‘Why? What makes you say that?’
‘Because all the silly nonsense about thugs and right-wing extremists has gone out of the window and things will start to get serious.’
I didn’t know whether things were starting to get serious. But, one thing was for sure, Petroulakos’s expression showed just how difficult it would be for them to pin this suicide too on the Philip of Macedon organisation.
‘The situation only improves as it worsens.’ That’s what one of our instructors at the Police Academy used to say. It was during the period following the fall of George Papandreou’s government with all the ensuing demonstrations, marches and daily clashes between the students and the police. The instructor would come into the lesson, rub his hands and say: ‘The situation only improves as it worsens.’ To his mind, this meant that although things were daily going from bad to worse, this was in fact an improvement because it brought the dictatorship all the closer. He would say it, expound on it and, in the end, it happened. Of course, with the Junta, things did anything but improve, but everyone has a different idea of what improvement means.
These were the thoughts running through my mind as I looked diagonally across at the Minister. With Vakirtzis’s suicide, the situation had most definitely worsened. Ghikas, who had returned by Flying Dolphin from Spetses, had phoned me because the Minister had called us to an urgent meeting. When I entered the Minister’s office and saw that Yanoutsos wasn’t there, I realised that ‘the situation improves as it worsens’. There were four of us in the office: the Minister, who was sitting in his ministerial chair, Ghikas and I at either side of him, and the Secretary General was in the chair facing him. In the case in question, the Secretary General’s chair was more like the dock, as the Minister was giving him a rollicking.
‘I honestly don’t understand you, Stathis,’ he said. ‘You give an order to the Head of Homicide to go and arrest those louts without bothering to inform the Superintendent? And when he’s not even the Head of the Division but merely a temporary replacement?’
‘When I asked the Secretary General to brief me, he replied that it was the job of those under my command to keep me informed,’ said Ghikas, adding one more nail to the Secretary’s coffin.
The Secretary avoided Ghikas’s gaze, preferring to retain eye contact with the Minister. ‘But I’ve explained to you. The order came from high up,’ he said.
‘If it was from so high up, shouldn’t I have been informed too? Are you trying to tell me that there are orders from high up that don’t go through me?’
He waited for an answer in vain. The Secretary General limited himself to giving the Minister a meaningful look.
‘And what are we to do now?’ The Minister continued with his questions, perhaps because like that he was constantly putting the Secretary in a difficult position. ‘If we release those three louts, we’ll look like idiots. And if we keep them in custody, we’ll have everyone on our backs.’
‘We can stall for a while,’ suggested the Secretary.
‘And what will we gain by that? In the meantime we’ll have become a laughing stock.’
The Secretary hesitated for a moment, but eventually spat it out. ‘Is it out of the question that this latest suicide has nothing to do with those right-wing extremists? After all, the three that we arrested are not the entire organisation.’
Ghikas was ready to explode and almost leapt up from his chair. The Minister saw his reaction, but kept his composure.
‘Completely out of the question, Stathis,’ he said to the Secretary with an ironic smile. ‘Vakirtzis was in favour of the enforced repatriation of the illegal immigrants. He had even done a series of programmes on the topic. Would the extremists kill someone who wanted to get rid of the illegal immigrants? You’d better pray that none of his colleagues remember the programmes, because then we really will look ridiculous.’ Suddenly, no longer in any mood for humour, he said to the Secretary coldly: ‘Thank you, Stathis. That will be all.’
The tone in which he said it sounded more like he was firing him. The Secretary left the office in silence without saying anything to anyone. As soon as the door had closed behind him, the Minister turned to us.
‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ he asked, looking at Ghikas.
‘Inspector Haritos will explain. He gave up his sick leave to carry out investigations at my request,’ he replied.
The Minister’s gaze fell on me. In such circumstances, the difficult thing is not to paint too pretty a picture and at the same time avoid sowing the seeds of panic. ‘I honestly still don’t know what’s going on, Minister, and why Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis committed suicide. I am certain, however, that someone made them do it.’
I told him about the biographies, about Logaras’s fake address, about the different publishers, and how Vakirtzis’s biography had been delivered to me at home by courier. He listened carefully and his expression grew increasingly worried.
