folding table, two plastic chairs, a gas stove.
Two dead Albanians is of interest to no one but the TV channels, and then only if the murder is sensational enough to turn the stomachs of those watching the nine o'clock news before sitting down to dinner. In the old days it was biscuits and Greeks. Now it's croissants and Albanians.
It took us the better part of an hour to get through the initial stage of photographing the two corpses, looking for fingerprints, putting the few pieces of evidence in plastic bags, and sealing the door. The coroner didn't even bother to come. He preferred to have the corpses delivered to the mortuary. There was no need for any investigation. What was there to investigate? There wasn't so much as a cupboard in the house. The woman's few rags were hanging on a hook screwed into the wall. The man's were lying beside him on the concrete floor.
'Should we check if there's any money?' Sotiris asked. He was a lieutenant and always did things by the book.
'If you find any, it's yours, but you won't find a cent. Either they didn't have any, or the murderer took it. And that doesn't mean that he killed them for their money. He'd have taken the money even if it was revenge. His kind wouldn't find money and leave it.' Nevertheless, he poked around and found a hole in the mattress. No money.
None of the neighbors had seen anything. Or so they said. They may well have been hiding something for the cameras in order to make a little money for themselves. All that was left for us to do was to get back to the station for the second and final stage: a report that would go straight to the files, because looking for whoever killed them would be a waste of effort.
She popped up just as we were sealing off the house. Chubbyfaced, wearing a sparkling blouse that looked about to burst open and her breasts spring out of it, plus a tight skirt that was shorter at the back because her backside stopped it from hanging properly, and with mauve slippers. I was sitting in the patrol car when I saw her approaching the two men boarding up the door. After she said something to them and they pointed to where I was in the car, she turned and came over to me.
'Where can I talk to you?' she asked, as if expecting me to make her a private appointment.
'Here. What is it?'
'Over the past few days I've seen a man snooping around the house. Every time he knocked on the door the woman would slam it in his face. He was average height, fair-haired, and had a scar on his left cheek. He was wearing a blue anorak, jeans that were patched at the knees, and tennis shoes. The last time I saw him was the day before yesterday. It was in the evening, and he was knocking on the door.'
'And why didn't you tell all this to the officer who took your statement?'
'I needed time to think. The last thing I need is to be bundled off to police stations and courtrooms.'
How long did she sit and stare at the street, at the neighbors and passersby? Evidently, she made her bed in the morning, put the pan on the stove, and then took up her watch at the window.
'Okay. If we need you, we'll contact you.'
When I got back to the office, my first thought was to have the case put on file. What with terrorism, robberies, and drugs, who has time to worry about Albanians? If they'd killed a Greek, one of ours, one of the fast- food- and crepe-eating Greeks of today, that would be different. But they could do what they liked to each other. It was enough that we provided ambulances to take them away.
Who says we learn from our mistakes? I sure don't. At first, I always say I'm not going to do anything, and then something starts needling me. Either because the office gets to me and I feel bored, or because, despite the routine, I still have something of the policeman's instinct left in me, I'm overcome by an urge to take it a stage further. So I put out a call to all the other stations with the woman's description of the Albanian. To be honest, you don't need to carry out prolonged investigations. All you have to do is go around all the squares: Omonoia Square, Vathi Square, Kotzias Square, Koumoun- douros Square, the Station Square in Kifissia, all the squares.... The place has become an ass-backward zoo. They've shut up the people in cages, and the animals stroll around the squares staring at us. Even before I began, I knew that any efforts I made would come to nothing. Finding him was hopeless. And yet within three days, they'd sent him to me gift-wrapped from Loutsa.
The chubby woman came to see me wearing the same striking getup. Except that this time she was wearing shoes, old-fashioned ones with high heels that sagged under her weight so that the heels slid first inward, then outward, as if about to embrace each other, before changing their minds and going their separate ways. 'That's him!' she cried as soon as she saw the Albanian. I believed her at once and thanked God that she wasn't my neighbor watching me from morning to night. He was just as she'd described him to me. She'd missed nothing that mattered.
This was why the chief wanted to see me. To ask how the case was going. And Thanassis hadn't brought me my breakfast, because he was certain that once I heard that the chief wanted to see me, I'd drop everything and rush upstairs.
'Your job is to bring me my coffee and croissant. I'll decide when I see the chief,' I told him angrily and leaned back into my chair to show him that I had no intention of budging from my desk all morning.
The smile immediately vanished from his face. All his assuredness went out the window. 'Yes, sir,' he mumbled.
'Well-what are you waiting for?'
He turned on his heel and bolted. I waited a minute or two and then got up to go see the chief. I wouldn't have put it past Thanassis to let it be known that the chief wanted to see me and that I was playing the smart alec. And the chief knew every trick in the book; you had to watch your back with him. Not to mention that he was a bundle of neuroses.
CHAPTER 2
My office was on the third floor, number 321. The office of the chief of security was on the fifth. The elevator usually took five or ten minutes, depending on whether it had decided to get on your nerves. If you got irritated and started pressing the button continually, it could take up to fifteen minutes. You heard it on the second floor, thought it was coming up, and then, without warning, it changed direction and went back down. Or the other way around. It came down to the fourth floor and instead of coming on down, went back up again. Sometimes I'd decide 'To hell with it' and take the stairs two at a time, more to blow off steam than because I was in a hurry. At other times, I dug in my heels and reflected that since no one else was in any hurry, I'd have to be insane to rush. They'd even calibrated the elevator doors to open slowly, enough to drive you crazy.
All the big brains are on the fifth floor, either so they can think collectively or so they'll be isolated before they ruin our brains too. It depends on how you look at it. The office of the chief of security is number 504, but he's had the number removed from the door. He considered it demeaning to have a number on his door like in hospitals or hotels. He had a plaque put up in its place: NIKOLAOS GHIKAS-CHIEF OF SECURITY. 'In America, there are no numbers on the doors. Just names,' he went on saying crossly for a good three months. He said it again and again till he finally had the number removed and his name put in its place. And all because he'd spent six months on a training program with the FBI.
'Go straight in, he's expecting you,' said Koula, the policewoman who did the job of his secretary but looked more like a supermodel.
The office was large and bright with a carpeted floor and cur tained windows. They intended to give us all curtains, but the money ran out, so they limited them to the fifth floor. Just inside the door was an oblong conference table with six chairs. The chief was sitting with his back to the window, and his desk must have been all of three yards long. One of those modern ones with metal corners. If you want to get a document lying at either edge of the desk, you need a pair of tongs to reach it.
He looked up at me. 'What more on the Albanian?' he said.
'Nothing more, sir. We're still interrogating him.'
'Incriminating evidence?' Short sharp questions, short sharp answers; just the basics to show that he's (a) busy as hell, (b) efficient, and (c) direct and to the point. American tricks, we told ourselves.
'No, but we have an eyewitness who recognized him, like I said.'
'That's not necessarily going to get you a conviction. She saw him in the vicinity of the house. She didn't see him either entering or leaving. Fingerprints?'
'Lots. Most belonging to the couple. But none to the suspect. No trace of a murder weapon.' The ass had me speaking in shorthand, like him.
'I see. Tell the reporters that there'll be no statement for the time being.'
