“I said, one of my aunts left a message for me earlier on this evening,” repeated Garlopis. “It’s about the house at 11 Pritaniou. In Acropolis Old Town. Remember when we went there and found Herr Witzel’s body and Lieutenant Leventis?”
“Maybe I can remember if I try very hard.”
“He said a witness who was cleaning the Glebe Holy Sepulchre Church around the corner had reported seeing two men at the house. That witness was my aunt Aspasia, who lives not very far away from there. She’s been cleaning the Holy Sepulchre church for thirty years. I didn’t say so at the time because I didn’t want to cause her any problems with the cops that might have been occasioned by my being related to her. They might have thought there was something fishy about that.”
“How many goddamn relations have you got, Garlopis? I never knew a man with so many cousins.”
“If you take a minute to think about this, sir, you’ll realize that every one of my cousins must have a mother. And every one of those mothers is an aunt to Achilles Garlopis. Aunt Aspasia is the mother of my cousin Poulios, who works at Lefteris Makrinos car hire, on Tziraion Street, the same people from whom we hired the Rover. I have six aunts and uncles on my mother’s side and seven on my father’s. And for the record I have twenty-eight cousins. This is normal in Greece. But listen, sir, my aunt Aspasia, she left a message that there is someone in the house in Pritaniou again. Now. That’s why I’m calling you so late. And she is sure it’s not the police or the Gendarmerie.”
“How is she sure?”
“Because she doesn’t like the police, sir. Not since the civil war. She thinks they’re all thieves. And because she doesn’t trust them she keeps a careful eye on them, too. She only reported hearing the shots that killed Witzel because she felt she had to. Since then, when the police were at the house in Pritaniou they had a uniformed man guarding the front door. And now there’s no one. Also, there’s a motorcycle parked in front—a red Triumph with a burst saddle that she thinks might belong to the owner.”
“Is that so?” I sat up, wide awake now, and looked at my watch. “Can you pick me up outside the hotel?”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, sir.”
I went into the bathroom, ran my head under a cold shower, drank a glass of water, and dressed hurriedly. I was just on my way out the door when the telephone rang again and I answered it, thinking it was Garlopis to say he’d arrived a bit early. But it wasn’t Garlopis. It was Elli Panatoniou and her voice felt like ambrosia in my ear.
“Hey, I thought we’d arranged to go dancing.”
I looked at my watch again. It was still almost midnight. Suddenly I felt very old indeed. “We did? At this time?”
“This is Athens. Nothing happens in Athens before eleven o’clock. Still, you’re right. It wasn’t a firm arrangement. But I thought I’d drop by anyway. I just wanted to see you.”
“I’ll be down in two minutes.”
“I could come up to your room if you like. But you’ll have to call the front desk and tell them.”
I cursed my fortune. It’s not every night that a beautiful young Greek woman offers to come up to an old German’s hotel bedroom. Suddenly things felt a lot like the two jars that Homer says Zeus kept by his office door, one containing good things and the other bad; he gave a mixture to some men and to others only evil, but to some he gave good that felt like it had been simultaneously snatched away in the course of the same beguiling late-night telephone call. For now I would have to deal with it as best I could, which gave me a new understanding of the concept of the heroic outlook. Suddenly I wanted to stick a javelin between a Trojan’s ribs.
“No, I can’t do that. As a matter of fact I just got a telephone call from Achilles Garlopis, and I have to go out, but now that you’re here maybe you could come along with us. And perhaps we could do something afterwards.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Look, I’m
