I turned to the two photographs that were propped against the windscreen. Pylarinos was looking at me with his glass raised. He wasn't drinking to my health, of course, but to the success of his collaboration with Hacek.
'But there's a catch.' Zissis's voice brought me back to earth.
'What's that?'
'The other two. I told you that the party mechanism operated on the basis that everyone covered each other. Sovatzis watched Pylarinos, and the other man, the one sitting beside him, watched Hacek. It was these middle members who took the brunt of the state's collapse. No one needed them, and they ended up on the garbage heap. Except that with Sovatzis and the other, things weren't so simple because they knew. What could Pylarinos and Hacek do? They gave them a few crumbs to keep their mouths shut. But the other two weren't content. Their smiles say it all. Their whole working lives they'd done the legwork, and now other people were getting the tasty bits and leaving them with the bones. So they decided to set up their own operation. They met three days later to discuss it. That's what the second photograph is about.
'What kind of operation?'
'How should I know? That's your job to find out.'
I looked at the two seated side by side. The one with the plastereddown hair, the other with the fringe, both with the same sour smile. 'Two operations. The one operating inside the other,' I said to Zissis. 'The first one legal, the second illegal but making use of all the mechanisms of the first, along with the security it affords, because who would think of investigating Pylarinos's business for any dirty work?'
'That reporter woman did,' Zissis reminded me.
'Karayoryi ...'
'Karayoryi wasn't investigating Pylarinos-she was investigating Sovatzis.'
I remembered where I'd seen Sovatzis's face. In the newspaper clippings, behind Pylarinos. All the pieces were falling into place. The photographs, in all of which Sovatzis appears, the map, the lists, everything. From the beginning, something just didn't fit with regard to Pylarinos. I thought it highly improbable that a businessman of his stamp would be dealing in dirty money. But what didn't fit in the case of Pylarinos did fit in the case of Sovatzis. I felt a burden removed from me, because Pylarinos was outside it all and everything had thereby become easier.
'Do you happen to know Sovatzis's first name?'
'Demos.'
That was the only thing that didn't fit the puzzle: the letters from the unknown N. They couldn't have been from Sovatzis. But who was to say that the letters had to do with Karayoryi's investigation and not some other matter altogether?
'Does the name Eleni Dourou mean anything to you?'
'Dourou ... no.' He opened the door. 'Anyway, I've clued you in and now I'm going to get some sleep,' he said, pleased with himself.
'I'll take you.'
'No need for you to go out of your way. I'll get a taxi.'
'Why pay for a taxi? Come on, I'll drop you off.'
'Do you know how many times I've done it on foot because I was broke?' he said. 'At least I have the money to pay now.'
As he was about to get out, I reached over and took hold of his arm. 'Why do you help me, Lambros?' I asked him.
What was I expecting him to say? That he did it out of friendship? Out of love? Out of gratitude?
'When you don't have anything left to believe in, you believe in the police,' he said with a smile filled with bitterness. 'You're as low as it gets. I got that low and we found ourselves together. That's all.'
He started to get out, then he changed his mind. 'I also do it because you're all right,' he said.
'What have I done to be all right?' My mind immediately went to Bouboulinas Street.
'I heard on the radio about that Kolakoglou. You did more than all right.'
Through the windshield I watched him quickly walking away. A little farther on, he hailed a taxi and got in.
I shook my head. All the old-style leftists were the same. They think that the police are monsters who kill innocent folk and then live it up. And whenever they come upon someone who's different, they're surprised and happy, as if they'd discovered a new party member.
CHAPTER 33
'Eleni Dourou is nowhere to be found,' Sotiris said to me the next morning. 'The address on her identity card is Fourteen Skopelou Street in Kypseli, but she moved five or six years ago when her husband died. No one knows where she went. The phone in Kypseli was in her husband's name, and there's no phone now in her own name. I can't find a lead anywhere.'
'Keep looking. We have to find her.'
'I do have some answers from the customs people concerning the refrigeration trucks belonging to Transpilar.'
'Go on'
'They were carrying goods to Albania for companies belonging to Greeks and people from northern Epirus. They came back empty.'
'Empty?'
'Yes. But there's something about it that bugs me.'
'For God's sake, Sotiris. Out with it. What is bugging you?'
'All the entry documents from Albania into Greece were signed by the same customs officer. Name of Lefteris Hourdakis. Strange that all the trucks belonging to Transpilar should happen upon the same customs official.'
It wasn't just strange. It stank at one hundred kilometers. 'Get hold of the customs people at the border. I want to talk to this Hourdakis.'
'He's no longer there. He took early retirement.'
'Hand the airport over to Thanassis and start looking for Hourdakis. I want that man without fail.'
There was no question it was a con. Someone notified the drivers in Albania and they made sure they crossed the border when Hourdakis was on duty. I would bet good money that the drivers were the same ones each time too. I could have got their names from Transpi lar, but Pylarinos would have heard of it and would have started asking questions of his own. I preferred to wait, until I had questioned Hourdakis.
The telephone sprang me from my thoughts. It was Ghikas. 'Come up to my office.' The usual sharp tone.
The elevator started acting up again. It kept going up and down between the third and fourth floors just to get on my nerves. In the end, I got out on the fourth and took the stairs. It arrived at the fifth at the same time I did.
Koula wasn't there and the outer office was empty. I walked straight into Ghikas's office without knocking. He had summoned me himself, so there was no need to stand on ceremony.
Ghikas was at his desk. Facing him was Petratos with another man, all spruced up. Koula was sitting at the edge of the desk with a pad on her knees, poised to take notes.
'Get a chair and sit down,' Ghikas said to me. I took a chair from the conference table and put it at the other corner of the desk, opposite Koula. That way I'd have Petratos facing me.
'This is Mr. Sotiriou, Mr. Petratos's lawyer.' Ghikas gestured at the other man. 'Mr. Petratos has agreed to answer any questions we may have.'
Petratos shot a venomous glance at me.
'Before we go any further,' the lawyer said, 'I'd like you to tell us the results of the test carried out on the handwriting sample provided by my client.'
Ghikas turned and looked at me. Aha ... he was assuming the role of the good guy for himself, making me the bad guy and leaving me to take the initiative. Okay, if the shoe fits, wear it.
'The results were negative,' I said, as calmly as I could. Petratos's triumphant smile was worse than a slap across the face. 'But that, by itself, means nothing.'
'It means a great deal; otherwise you wouldn't have been so eager to get hold of it,' the lawyer
