So Zissis’s records were more up-to-date than those of the Anti-terrorist Squad, I thought to myself. Pity that we couldn’t incorporate the illegal workings of the Greek Communist Party into the Security Forces. We’d be sitting pretty now.
There was nothing more to be said and I got to my feet. Stellas said his goodbyes and left first. I halted in the doorway and turned to Ghikas.
‘I almost forgot. Let the tidying up of your office wait till we’ve finished with this case. Then you can have Koula back.’
He gazed at me with the expression of a wounded deer. ‘You’ve come back from your sick leave a changed man,’ he said. ‘Without any compassion.’
I don’t know why, but I liked what I heard.
It’s something of a delight to see a journalist pounding his head with his hands. Sotiropoulos was doing it to punish himself for his stupidity.
‘Why didn’t I think of it?’ he cried. ‘Why didn’t I think of it? With all that drivel I come out with every night on the box I’ve gone gaga!’
‘Did you know about the group?’
‘Come off it! We knew all the groups, big and small. We could recite them off by heart, like the National Anthem.’
‘And did you know that Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis were all members of “Che”?’
‘Okay. No one knew anything about anyone for sure. But there were plenty of rumours going around. You know how it is: so-and-so belongs there, so-and-so belongs somewhere else, so-and-so fell out with the one group and went over to the other. They themselves said nothing and you didn’t ask them. You always found out from the circle. Some of it was true, some of it was made up.’
I told him the other three names and he reflected for a moment. ‘The name Dimou sounds familiar,’ he said. ‘The other two names mean nothing to me. Of course, it all depended on who you knocked around with. Secretiveness was the rule so you might know some from one group close to your own circle and not know others who weren’t.’
‘Do you know when Yannelis died?’
‘I can’t tell you the exact year, but it must have been a decade ago.’
‘How did he die?’
He stared at me before answering. ‘Wait for it,’ he said. ‘He committed suicide.’
So, then, my fears of the previous day when I had learned that Yannelis was dead turned out to be justified. I had guessed right that there was some common secret from the past linking everything together. The question was whether the secret had anything to do with Yannelis’s suicide.
It seemed that Sotiropoulos read my thoughts, because he elucidated: ‘Anyway, Yannelis didn’t commit suicide in public. He hanged himself from the light fitting in his house. He was hanging there for three days till the building started to stink and the neighbours called the police, who broke down the door and found him.’
All right, but that didn’t overturn my hypothesis in any radical way. Everything may have started with Yannelis’s private suicide before the rules of the game were changed and the others continued with public suicides. There was something to this explanation if you consider that the other three were well-known public figures, whereas Yannelis was known to only a handful of those in the resistance.
‘Do you know whether Yannelis had any children?’
‘No idea.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘How much of all this can I use?’
I didn’t take the wind out of his sails. On the contrary, I thought about what he’d said. What gain would there be for us if he were to come out with anything I’d discovered so far? For example, the connection with Thanos Yannelis and with his suicide? It might alert Logaras to the fact that I saw Yannelis’s suicide as the starting point for the case, forcing his hand, making him reveal something more or go on playing cat and mouse with me until he tripped up.
‘If you want, you can talk about the “Che” organisation and question the connection between Yannelis’s suicide and the recent suicides.’
His face lit up. ‘At last, a start! I’m on my way!’ he called enthusiastically as he rushed out of my office.
I didn’t share his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility that something may come of the ruse. I called my three assistants in to find out whether there’d been any new developments in the investigation. The indirect scolding of the previous day had worked because Vlassopoulos and Dermitzakis had begun to acquire chivalrous habits. They opened the door for Koula and let her come in first. All three sat down in front of me and waited in expectation.
‘Do we have anything new?’
‘Nothing on the Che T-shirts yet.’ Vlassopoulos was the first to speak. ‘It’s crude work, but nevertheless. In a couple of days at most, we’ll know who’s manufacturing them.’
I decided to leave Koula till last, because I’m something of a masochist and I wanted to prolong my agony, so I turned next to Dermitzakis.
‘Did you find out anything about the three names I gave you?’
‘Nothing about Stellios Dimou yet. Anestis Tellopoulos went abroad to study after the Junta and settled in Canada, where he’s a university lecturer. I got the information from his mother, who lives in Sparta. Vassos Zikas died two years ago.’
‘How?’
They saw my alarm and stared at me in surprise. Koula was the only one not perplexed because she knew the reason behind it.
‘Of a heart attack, while at the wheel,’ Dermitzakis said.
‘Right. Make sure you find out about Dimou.’ I turned to look at Koula.
She was holding a large desk diary, which she opened. ‘The name of Coralia Yannelis’s father is Athanassios. Her mother’s name is Vassiliki.’
Could that, too, have been a coincidence? It was highly unlikely. ‘Anything else?’
‘She was born in 1955 in Bogota, Columbia. Athanassios Yannelis lived in Columbia from 1953 to 1965 and then moved to La Paz in Bolivia. He returned home in 1967.’
So that’s it, I thought to myself. There was no doubt that Coralia Yannelis was the daughter of Thanos Yannelis.
‘There’s a son, too,’ Koula added. ‘Kimon Yannelis was born in 1958, in Bogota. He left Greece in 1978 and never came back. His whereabouts are unknown.’
‘And the mother?’
‘Vassiliki Yannelis, nee Papayannidis, from Nigrita, Serres. Born in 1935 and died in 1970.’
‘Find out if there’s any biography of Thanos Yannelis or any other book about him.’ I turned to Vlassopoulos. ‘I want you to find me the manufacturer of the T-shirt, at all costs. And I want to know what happened to Stellios Dimou,’ I added, looking at Dermitzakis.
When they had left, I phoned Ghikas to inform him that we had established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Coralia Yannelis was the daughter of Thanos Yannelis and that there was also a brother whose whereabouts were unknown.
He asked me the classic question: ‘What do you propose to do?’ From the tone of his voice, however, I could tell that he was pleased.
‘First, I’ll talk to Coralia Yannelis, and take it from there.’
He agreed. In less than ten minutes I was down in the Security Headquarters garage. I didn’t take Alexandras Avenue, but went along Alpheiou Street into Panormou Street and turned into Kifissias Avenue at the lights by the Red Cross building in order to avoid all the traffic. Fortunately, it was almost the start of July. The school exam period was over and the traffic was moving at an acceptable pace. It took me just fifteen minutes to reach Aigialeias Street and I parked outside number 54.
