'She made out a work program, she said, and saw that she won't have time to finish everything before June if she takes a holiday now'
I lost my appetite on the spot. I pushed my plate away. If I'd eaten the stuffed tomato, it would have sat on my stomach. Adriani made an effort to smile.
'I'll tell you something,' she said with difficulty, 'but I want you to promise me that you won't breathe a word to her. She's staying there on account of Panos.'
'Panos?'
'Yes. He has to hand in an assignment after the break, and she's staying with him to keep him company. She promised me that she would definitely come for Easter.'
As soon as I was over the initial shock, I thought of that hulk with his T-shirts and gym shoes, and I began to fume.
'What kind of assignment can a student greengrocer be doing? Investigating how apples fall from apple trees or the best way to prune nettles?'
'He's not a greengrocer. The boy's studying to be an agriculturalist.'
'And is he such a blockhead that he needs someone beside him to hold his hand?' If I'd been able to get my hands on him at that moment, I'd have given it to him, though he'd probably have made mincemeat of me with all those muscles of his.
'I know it's hard for us to swallow, but when you love someone, you want to be with them. There comes a time when parents have to take a back seat.'
Usually, whenever she trots out that kind of armchair philosophy that she's picked up from one of her soaps, I hit the roof. But now I couldn't bear to start shouting at her, because I knew how much she was suffering.
'Do you want to go and spend Christmas up there with her?'
I don't know how it came to me, maybe because I saw the tears in her eyes again. She wasn't expecting it, and for a moment I saw her eyes shine through the tears. But then she immediately resumed her severe expression, more to restrain herself than me.
'And leave you on your own at Christmas? Out of the question!'
'Forget about me. This Karayoryi business has become so complicated that it's touch and go whether we'll even be able to eat together on Christmas Day. And I'll be up to the ears in it. And you'll be sitting alone at home with a heavy heart.'
'It'll cost a pile of money and there's no reason for it.'
'How much will it cost? The train ticket, Katerina's present that we were going to get anyway, and something for your expenses each day. Eighty thousand would be more than enough.'
What I had left in the bank, together with my Christmas bonus, would just about enable me to cover her expenses and Katerina's allowance for January. Of course, I'd be left without a penny, but what the hell, I'd get by somehow. Now that I was making it easy for her, Adriani began to waver.
'Do you think I should go?' she asked me hesitantly, as though afraid that if she showed how happy she was, I'd change my mind.
'Just think how thrilled Katerina will be. She may want to please that bulldog of hers, but she won't like it at all that she's leaving us on our own.
Of course, I was doing it for Adriani and for Katerina. At least they would have a good time over Christmas. But there was something else that made me feel good about it: that I was turning the tables on that shirker. He'd succeeded in keeping Katerina in Thessaloniki, but now that Adriani was going to go up there, he wouldn't just have her as his personal handmaid. Not to mention that he wouldn't be able to get her on her own, because he'd have to drag his prospective mother-in-law along too. Adriani threw her arms around my neck and her lips stuck to my cheek like a lollipop.
'You're a real treasure,' she whispered, when she'd finished kissing me. 'I know you fly off the handle sometimes and you don't know what you're saying, but deep down you're a little lamb.'
Was that a compliment or not? I didn't know. But at any rate she pushed the plate of stuffed tomatoes back in front of me. 'C'mon, eat now,' she said, becoming bossy. 'I'll take it personally if you leave it. I made it specially.'
And she made me eat it. She'd outdone herself, and my appetite came back. She just nibbled and watched me, pleased with herself.
'Is that why they put you on the spot last night?' she said suddenly. 'Because it's a difficult case?'
'Never mind, they've only got themselves to blame.'
'If they had any sense, they'd let you get on with your work and get them out of the mess, instead of playing the big shots.'
She'd changed her tune. Now I was right about everything. Not that it bothers me when I'm on the receiving end of compliments, even if I'd paid for it in part. It's not at all unpleasant to be fawned upon. But, actually, I wasn't pleased because of this but because I'd managed to lift her spirits.
CHAPTER 29
The stuffed tomatoes did give me indigestion and I had nightmares all night long. At first, they were about Ghikas, who'd suspended me because I'd put Kolakoglou behind bars. I'd done it, he said, to throw the investigations off course because I was on the take from Pylarinos. He was the one who'd raped the girls and not Kolakoglou. I tried to convince him that I had evidence and proposed to interrogate Kolakoglou in his presence. But when they brought him, it wasn't Kolakoglou; it was Petratos. They sat him down in a chair in front of me and I began shouting at him: 'Tell me who gave you the duplicator so you could print the leaflets, otherwise I'll rip your heart out, you commie bastard! You'll go out of here in a coffin!' And Ghikas had taken the place of Kostaras. 'That's it. You're doing fine, you're learning,' he said with satisfaction. But Petratos kept his mouth shut. Then I began hitting him furiously and at that moment I woke up in a sweat.
Still sleepy, I was sitting at the wheel of the Mirafiori. The indigestion hadn't gone and I kept belching. I was trying to put the information I'd gathered up to now in some kind of order. I still didn't know if I was dealing with one case or two. If the murders of Karayoryi and Kostarakou had any connection with the file Anna Antonakaki had given me, then the murderer was Pylarinos, or someone paid by him. If they weren't connected, then Petratos was still the prime suspect. But one thing kept bugging me: Why did the murderer ransack Kostarakou's apartment when he hadn't touched Karayoryi's? If he was looking for something, shouldn't he have looked there first? Unless he didn't know about this thing when he killed her. Maybe when he heard on the news that Karayoryi had phoned Kostarakou, he'd got a flea in his ear and had gone to see her. The other question was the letter from the unknown N. That pointed to Petratos; it didn't point at all to Pylarinos, whose given name was Christos. If Petratos's handwriting didn't match that of the letter writer, then we had a third candidate on our hands. And we didn't have a shred of evidence to point to any third person. A real mess.
From a distance I caught sight of Thanassis waiting for me in the entrance. As soon as he saw me, he came charging up.
'I called you at home but you'd already left.'
'What's going on?'
'We've found Kolakoglou.'
From his expression, I guessed that something wasn't right. Normally, he would have swelled up like a peacock. But he seemed worried and scared.
'Where did you find him?'
'He's been staying under another name at the City, a hotel on Nirvana Street, between Acharnon Street and Ionias Avenue.' His words came out like blood out of a stone. 'He's on the roof of the hotel, holding a gun to his head, and he's threatening to blow his brains out.'
'Get a patrol car,' I said abruptly.
'I've got one ready. It's waiting for you.'
The car's siren moved all the other vehicles aside. We raced down Alexandras Avenue without stopping at any red lights and turned onto Ioulianou Street. That's where it got difficult, because the road was narrow and we kept getting stuck in the traffic.
'Who let us know?' I asked Thanassis, who was sitting next to the driver.
'The crew from Hellas Channel.'
