'Go on.'
'When, years later, she approached me as a reporter, she didn't remember me of course, but I recognized her immediately. Apart from the pregnancy, she hadn't changed at all. `How's the child?' I asked her at some moment. She was shocked and looked at me in astonishment. `There's some mistake. I don't have any children,' she said. Then I told her I'd seen her at the office of the Seamen's Pension Fund and that she'd been pregnant at the time, but she insisted that she didn't have any children.'
'Are you sure that it was her?'
'No doubt whatsoever.'
'Maybe the child had died.'
'If it had died, she would have told me so. She wouldn't have said that she didn't have any children. That's what I meant when I threatened her. That I knew her secret and I'd make it public knowledge. I got my lawyer to investigate. When I got out of prison, the first thing I did was to investigate it again myself. I wanted to expose her, to get my revenge on her, but I found no trace of the child. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up. When she was murdered, I gave up on it.' He remained silent for a moment and looked at me. Then he added angrily: 'Do you understand how I felt? She had abandoned her child to some foster parents and she had me sent to prison because I loved children and caressed them.'
Suddenly, the letters I'd found in Karayoryi's desk came to my mind. The unknown N was not Nena Delopoulou. It was the father of the child. He wanted to see his child and she was keeping it hidden from him.
'All I want is to get my life into some kind of order and to live peacefully from now on,' I heard Kolakoglou telling me.
'There's no need for you not to go home, Mr. Kolakoglou. You're not wanted by the police and no one's going to bother you. If reporters start annoying you, shut the door in their faces. By now they will have found someone else to harass.' He was no longer news. Robespierre had said so.
He looked at me uncertainly. He was afraid to believe it.
'I told you that if you told Mr. Haritos everything you knew, everything would work out. Go on home now,' Zissis told him.
'Thanks,' he said to Zissis, clutching his arm. He said nothing to me. He thought that if he said anything to me, I might change my mind and take him in. He opened the door and got out, but he didn't go back into the trees. He went in the direction of Dekelias Street, toward a bus stop.
'How did you ferret him out?' I said.
We were sitting at the table in his house, eating roast goat in a lemon sauce, and drinking retsina.
'I was surprised that you let him go, that time at the hotel.'
'It was a big risk and it wasn't worth it.'
'I don't imagine you did it only because of the risk involved. Deep down, you believed he was innocent.'
It wasn't that I believed it. I knew it.
'Anyway, I know a lot of people in the area where you found him. They all know that for years the security police were after me too. That made it easy for me, because when I said that I wanted to help Kolakoglou, they believed me. Whoever knew anything told me. Eventually, I found out that he'd been taken in by a distant cousin of his, who lived between Petroupoli and Nea Liossia.'
'I can understand those people. But how did you convince Kolakoglou?'
'I showed him these.'
He put both hands inside his belt and lifted up his shirt and pullover. His back and chest were crisscrossed with scars from old wounds. I didn't need to ask him who had inflicted those wounds.
'I wanted to help him because I know what it means to be on the run,' he said, tucking in his shirt. 'After all, he'd paid for what he did. Why should he have to hide like a frightened hare?'
I watched him picking at the goat and eating it slowly the better to savor the taste. I remembered what he'd said to me a few days ago in the car: You're the bottom. I touched bottom and we met each other. Where? That first time in the security police headquarters on Bouboulinas Street, when we were chasing communists. Now with Kolakoglou, we were chasing pederasts. We were both sewer rats. That's why we'd met.
CHAPTER 43
It was after midnight when I reached home. Usually, I can't manage more than three glasses of wine, and Zissis had poured half a gallon down me. The moment I lay on the bed, I felt the room going around. I closed my eyes and tried to find a position in which I would feel less dizzy.
I woke up with a heavy head. I made a coffee and swallowed two aspirins. Then I phoned Thanassis. I asked him for Antonakaki's number. As I was dialing it, I prayed that she wouldn't have gone away for the holidays. Mercifully, she answered, and I told her that I needed to talk to her.
'Come around. I'll be here.'
'I'd prefer that we be alone.'
'We will be alone. Anna has gone away with some friends and will only be back tonight.'
Athens was empty still. Those who had gone away had not yet returned. Most people went away right through to the New Year. Within ten minutes I was on Chryssippou Street in Zografou. She opened the door for me and showed me through to the living room.
'Would you like me to make you coffee?'
'No, thanks, I've already had one. Some new evidence has come up and I need some additional information concerning your sister.'
'Ask me what you want.' She sat down opposite me.
'In 1974 you went to the offices of the Seamen's Pension Fund to take care of some contributions for your husband. Your sister was with you. Do you remember that visit?'
'I've been there countless times. How am I supposed to remember after twenty years?'
'You might remember because your sister was pregnant at the time.'
Her expression froze. She opened her mouth. To say something? To shout? I don't know, because she shut it again without a sound, without a word. And then at long last: 'There's some mistake. My sister was never pregnant.'
'Do you know who it was who dealt with your case at that time? Petros Kolakoglou. He was an employee at the SPF before he opened his own business. He told me that your sister looked ready to give birth in 'seventy-four' I remained silent and so did she. 'What happened to the child, Mrs. Antonakaki?'
She came up with the easiest explanation. 'The baby died.'
'If that is so, there must be a death certificate. Do you know where it is? Is it at the Athens Registry Office?'
'It died during childbirth.'
'All right. I shall need the name of the doctor and the maternity clinic so that I can verify the details.'
She had exhausted her imagination and stared at me in grim silence.
'The fact of the child may have a connection with your sister's murder.'
'No!' she screamed, terrified. 'There's no connection! I swear it! None!'
I adopted my friendly tone. 'Listen, Mrs. Antonakaki. The truth is always the least painful solution. If you don't tell me what happened to the child, we'll have to start investigating ourselves. We'll go through all the maternity clinics in Greece if necessary. And we will find what we're looking for, you can be sure of that. It will take time. Meanwhile, the gossip will start spreading. The reporters will hear of the investigation and say that Yanna Karayoryi had a child and abandoned it. Wouldn't it be easier for you to tell me the truth, instead of hearing your sister's name dragged through the mud?'
She still didn't reply, but this time she burst into tears.
'What happened to the child?' I repeated, still in a friendly tone. 'Where is it now?'
'Here.'
'Here? Where?'
'Here, in this house. It's my Anna.'
Once I was over my initial shock and I thought about it, I saw that the dates matched. When Kolakoglou saw them at the SPF, it should have been Mina who was pregnant, but it was Yanna.
'Vassos and I couldn't have any children,' she said through her tears. The doctors said that Vassos was to
