pinch, a seven of spades. But he wasn't aware of it and he went on undeterred. 'So the calls from Thessaloniki must have been genuine.'
'And the one from Rhodes?' I said peaceably. 'From Thessaloniki he took the plane to Rhodes for a holiday?'
It was only then that it dawned on him that something wasn't right with his logic and he reassumed the profile of the moron.
'Did you find the ticket inspector from the bus?'
'None of the inspectors remembers seeing him, but that doesn't mean much. The inspectors don't look at the passengers, they only look at the tickets. If he hid his face behind a newspaper, the inspector wouldn't have seen him at all.'
'Did it occur to you that he might never have boarded the bus, that he might have bought the ticket to throw us off? Or that he might have got off at some other stop?'
'Do you think he's that smart?'
'Every lowlife that's ever been to prison learns half a dozen things in order to be able to survive. That's as smart as he needs to be. Does he have relatives or friends in Thessaloniki?'
My question put him in a difficult position. 'I don't know. We haven't looked into that yet.'
'You should have looked into that first. Because if he doesn't have people there he can trust, where's he going to hide? Wherever he goes, we'll find him. You want my opinion? He's still here, in Athens. He can lie low here better than anywhere else. And if those shitty reporters find him before we do, Ghikas will have something to say about it.'
I remembered that it was time for the news and I pressed the remote control. Nervous and anxious, Thanassis watched me. I really did hope that Sotiropoulos and his crew hadn't flushed him out. He could say whatever he liked, but I was sure that he was looking for him, too, if for no other reason than to put one over on Petratos. He was the only one who might find him. Kostarakou didn't inspire much confidence.
That was why I tuned first to Horizon, Sotiropoulos's channel. He was in an office, holding a microphone and talking to a woman with dark hair and well past her best. I didn't know who she was because I'd not been involved in the Kolakoglou case. From his questions, I gathered that she was the mother of one of the girls, one of the ones who had got their hands on the consultancy business. Sotiropoulos was trying to get her to explain how she and the father of the other girl had come to be co-owners of Kolakoglou's business. The woman was furious, refused to answer, told him to leave, but he stood there undeterred. In the end, the woman threatened to call the police. The poor woman didn't realize that this was precisely what Sotiropoulos was after: to show her angry, scared, and hostile.
The scene changed and Sotiropoulos next appeared in the corridor of an apartment block in front of a closed door. He was pointing to the door and talking to the camera.
'This is the house of the second family whose child was molested by Kolakoglou. Sadly, they refused to talk to us. It is, of course, understandable, ladies and gentlemen, that these people want to erase the past, to forget the tragic events that they and their children went through. On the other hand, there are some burning questions that remain to be answered. How, for example, did the victims find the emotional strength to buy the business owned by the culprit, the man who had molested their children? And how, if they want to forget the past, do they manage to live and work in a place that reminds them of that past every day? Questions that demand answers.'
Sotiropoulos was a crafty devil. He said nothing about his suspicions that Kolakoglou might have been innocent and that the parents of the two girls might have set him up in order to get their hands on his business. He simply engaged in a bit of mudslinging at the parents. But not too much. He'd started the poison dripping and was letting it do its work. When, the next day or the day after, he came out and said, as he was sure to, that Kolakoglou may have been the victim of a conspiracy, one section of the public would be ready to accept it, at least as a possibility.
As soon as I switched over to Hellas Channel, I knew I'd been right. Martha Kostarakou was badgering Mrs. Kolakoglou, who was standing in the doorway to her flat. She was asking the same questions I had and was getting the same answers. I thought of suggesting to her that we exchange jobs, given that we do the same work. Let her have my position and I'd go to Hellas Channel and make six hundred thousand a month.
'Do you know that your son is wanted by the police?'
'I do know. They came here this morning and turned everything upside down.' I congratulated myself. Things had turned out as I'd foreseen. 'What has he done?' Mrs. Kolakoglou wailed. 'Haven't we been through enough? Leave us in peace, can't you.' Her anger at us caught up Kostarakou too.
'The police believe that your son murdered Yanna Karayoryi. What do you have to say about that?'
I leapt to my feet as if I'd just sat on a pin. When had we ever said that Kolakoglou had murdered Karayoryi? They were the ones who wanted to make him into a murderer and they were using us as a front. I suddenly saw a very different Kostarakou. She was trying to imitate Karayoryi but lacked her intelligence and innate audacity. All she succeeded in doing was to appear even more cruel and callous than her predecessor. The old woman began to cry. A mute kind of crying, like a ritual lament.
'My son never killed anyone. My Petros is no murderer. Isn't it enough that he rotted in prison for so many years, an innocent man? Are you trying to pin something else on him now?'
Kostarakou looked amazed. The birdbrain thought that she was on to something. 'Are you implying, Mrs. Kolakoglou, that your son was wrongfully sent to prison?'
'Ask those who sent him there and who got their hands on his business. As for that woman who got him put away, I won't say I'm glad she was killed, but there's such a thing as divine retribution,' she said, crossing herself, as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
Would Delopoulos and Petratos realize, I wondered, that they were playing Sotiropoulos's game? It was as if he'd foreseen the report by Kostarakou and had taken pains to emphasize the parents' unwillingness to talk so that they would appear guilty. I was wrong to think of him as a Robespierre. He was an out-and-out Rasputin.
'Is that how they think they'll find Kolakoglou?' quipped Thanassis, who was sitting beside me on the sofa.
'Don't you get it?' I said. 'They don't want to find Kolakoglou. It suits them for him to remain at large so they can throw more fat on the fire.'
He gazed at me as if I'd come out with a pearl of wisdom.
'Why are you still here?' I suddenly said. 'Back to the office and on with the search. Check out the cafes, the bars, all the joints frequented by the lowlife. He may well be lying low during the day and only going out at night.' He leapt up immediately, said good-bye, and rushed out. Sotiropoulos might have been right, but Ghikas was right too. Let's get him behind bars first, and then we'd see what was what.
The kitchen table had been laid for one. A saucepan was simmering on the stove. I took the lid off and found the spinach and rice from the previous day. I wasn't going to get away with it, it seemed. I put some on my plate and sat down to eat alone. As I was eating, I reflected that it was Petratos who had started the hunt for Kolakoglou. If he was the one who had killed Karayoryi, then he'd done it deliberately to turn our attention away from him so that he'd have nothing to worry about. This thought led me to leave my meal unfinished. What the hell, spinach and rice always made me want to gag.
CHAPTER 20
Thanassis swore on everything he held holy that he'd been coordinating the search till two in the morning. He'd put a further call out to the patrol cars to comb the cafes, the bars, and all the joints that the people Kolakoglou had knocked around with in prison now might frequent. He came up with nothing. No one recognized Kolakoglou from his photograph. A few who remembered him from the trial had never actually seen him. Or so they said. It was only to be expected. Prison is a kind of mutual aid society. Once you've been there, you'll always find someone to help you out. Just the fact that the police were after him was enough to enable him to find a place to lie low and friends to help him. I told Thanassis to carry on with his investigations and to send me Sotiris.
Sotiris immediately began reeling off his findings. The reporters had indeed seen Petratos leaving at ten. But no one had actually seen him leaving the newsroom. Of course, he may have taken his car from the parking lot and left. Because I'd told him to act discreetly, Sotiris didn't want to ask without my approval whether anyone had seen Petratos's car in the parking lot after ten. Half an hour after midnight, Petratos had made an appearance at a bar
