‘No, no, Inspector. It’s just that …’
‘Just what?’
‘Just that we’d lost all hope of you coming back, Inspector,’ said Vlassopoulos, who was always more forward because he’d been with me longer. ‘We’re the ones who’ve been contemplating retirement with that idiot over our heads.’ And he pointed to the door of my office. ‘Anyway. I don’t want to get started. Even the walls in this place have ears, as my old mum always says.’
They wanted to buy me a coffee for changing the terms of their retirement plan, but I used the excuse that I had jobs to do and that I was in a hurry. I had no wish to bump into Yanoutsos. I wasn’t out for revenge and seeing him with his tail between his legs would have ruined my good mood.
‘If I need your help before I’m back officially, I’ll let you know, but you’ll do what I want without asking for details,’ I told them.
They stared at me without having understood a word, but such was their delight that I was returning that they didn’t even try to fathom it out.
‘Anything you want, Inspector.’
I told them to arrange for a patrol car to take me home. I had no intention of roasting in the midday heat. In less than three minutes, the car was at the entrance waiting for me.
As we said, the situation only improves as it worsens.
The offices of Starad were in Vikela Street, opposite the Hygeia Clinic. Mrs Stathatos must have spent a small fortune on decorating her advertising company. As soon as you walked in, your feet sank into a thick carpet that deadened the sound of your footsteps. You sat down and the armchairs wrapped themselves around you lest you had any thoughts of getting up and leaving them. The paintings on the walls in their white frames depicted straight lines, cubes and circles in a variety of colours, but always with a dash of red as a trimming.
Stathatos’s office was different from the others because she had two expensive rugs on top of the carpet and on the wall behind her, where in our offices we usually put a picture of Christ wearing a crown of thorns, she had a painting of a tiny harbour, with fishing boats and a woman with a door opening in her back.
Stathatos was a well-preserved woman in her fifties, who, with make-up, would have looked much younger. That day, she was without make-up, wearing a dark blue outfit with some discreet white additions round the collar and she looked at me with a somewhat haughty expression that she had no doubt inherited from her father. Sitting at the side of Stathatos’s desk was Sotiria Markakis-Favieros. She, too, was without make-up, and wrinkled as she was and with short-cropped hair, it made her sex and age difficult to tell. When I had visited their home in Porto Rafti after Favieros’s suicide, I had been told that his family had gone away on their yacht. She must have shut herself up in the cabin all day because she was as white as white. She was sitting with her ankles glued together and was looking at us with a suspicious and frightened expression. When you saw them side by side, you understood from the first which of the two ran the business and which was there as a stand-in for her husband.
They had banished Koula and myself to the couch with its glass coffee table in front, at a distance of some ten yards from Stathatos’s desk. Koula was the one who had her work cut out for her as she tried to take notes with her notepad balanced on her knees. She had returned that morning from holidays in Aigina, suntanned and wearing linen slacks and sandals. And because she was smart and knew which way the wind blew in our house, she didn’t come to me to express her delight that we were starting the investigation again but went straight to Adriani to express her sorrow. ‘I’m so sorry you had to postpone your holidays, Mrs Haritos!’ Then she looked up to heaven and added: ‘Heaven forbid that I should marry a police officer.’ And instead of telling her that police officers are honest and sincere and, on the whole, good family men, Adriani stoically shook her head and replied: ‘Unfortunately, Koula dear, heaven has its own way of working!’
We were sitting facing the two women and trying to discover whether there was anything strange in the behaviour or actions of their husbands prior to their suicides, particularly with regard to Stefanakos, as we already had plenty of information on Favieros. The portents, however, were not good because the two widows were tight- lipped and made no attempt to hide their displeasure.
‘Why are you digging, Inspector?’ asked Stathatos. ‘Our husbands chose to kill themselves. Will your investigations bring them back?’
‘No, but we may be able to prevent others. That’s why we’re asking for your help. Up until now, we’ve had three suicides that all conform to the same model. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?’
‘The police may find it suspicious,’ she replied almost with contempt. ‘But as there’s no murder, I don’t understand what you’re looking for.’
‘Did your husband have any reason to commit suicide, Mrs Stathatos?’
‘As far as I know … no.’
‘Then why did he?’
She shrugged in a manner indicating resignation. ‘Why do people kill themselves, Inspector? Because their lives didn’t turn out the way they expected … Because they don’t like the world around them … Because they’re tired of life and can’t take any more …’
‘Do any of those reasons fit your husband’s case?’
‘No. Loukas had everything he wanted and he was a person full of life.’
‘So?’
‘He went mad,’ she replied abruptly. ‘It happens sometimes that people suddenly go mad for no good reason. That’s what happened to Loukas. He went mad. It’s the only explanation.’
‘Do you think it was madness that drove him to commit suicide in public?’
‘If you’d met him, you’d know that Loukas liked grandiose gestures. He wanted to be in the limelight, he wanted his every word and action to create an impression. That in combination with madness can lead to extreme situations.’
If Stefanakos’s had been the only suicide, I might have believed it. But three people don’t go mad in quick succession, nor does anyone foresee that they’ll go mad and write their biographies. On the other hand, Greece is a country in which everything is explained away as madness. I turned to Mrs Favieros in the hope that she might have a different answer.
‘What about you, Mrs Favieros? Do you have any explanation?’
Panic-stricken, she looked first at Stathatos, then at me, at the same time crossing and uncrossing her legs.
‘What can I say? I don’t know. All I know is that I was living with a man who was in his office from morning to night, even at weekends; who arranged to go to the cinema with you and then called you at the last minute to say that something had come up and he couldn’t make it, or who, while you were ready and dressed up to go out for dinner, told you that someone had phoned and he had to go to meet him.’ And suddenly, without any warning, she erupted: ‘Leave me alone, I don’t even want to think about it!’ she cried hysterically. ‘Jason’s dead! Why he killed himself, what got into him, I don’t know! All I know is that he’s left me with his businesses, the inheritance, the houses and yachts to sort out and with two children that are in a world of their own and are going on as though their father were still alive!’
She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing. Stathatos rushed over to her and took hold of her by the shoulders. ‘It’s all right, dear,’ she said reassuringly. ‘It’s all right. I know what you’re going through, but be brave. It’s a bad time, it’ll pass, you’ll see.’ She lifted her head and looked at Koula. ‘Tell the secretary outside to give you a glass of water,’ she said to her commandingly as though talking to an office girl.
Koula put down her notepad and went out of the office. Stathatos then turned her gaze to me.
‘You see where all this pointless questioning leads, Inspector? You’re upsetting us unnecessarily and only making things harder, while we’re trying to put it all behind us and get on with our lives.’
I tried to keep my temper because it was not in my best interests to get into an argument. ‘I’m sorry for causing you any upset, Mrs Stathatos. However, we find it difficult to believe that three people suddenly went mad and committed suicide. And even if we were to accept that, there’s the question of the biographies that followed, all written by the same author and all written before the suicides.’
