“It doesn’t work unless you pull the trigger.”
“That was your second stupid mistake. The first was leaving it lying around where someone could come along and unload it.”
He looked at the gun, then at me. “So if it’s not loaded then why am I sitting here and listening to you? What’s to stop me throwing you out of here right now?”
“Me. That’s what. Look, your nose is already broken. Be a shame if I had to break your arm as well.”
“Maybe I’ll risk it.”
“If you do I’d advise you to take out lots of insurance first. You’re still drunk and already in quite a bit of pain. That gives me all the edge I need.”
Reppas nodded. “So what else do you advise?”
“Only that you give me a short history lesson. Recent history. There’s no need to relive the glory that was Greece. Just everything that happened since Max Merten showed up in Attica. You see, there’s this cop called Lieutenant Leventis at the Megaron Pappoudof on Constitution Square, here in Athens. He’s the one who found your boss dead in this house, probably murdered by Alois Brunner, also known as Georg Fischer. A tenacious sort, he’s been very anxious to speak to anyone regarding Brunner’s present whereabouts. So anxious that he’s been strong-arming me to do some of his investigative work for him. Working a murder case is a little outside my current terms of employment but what could I do? The lieutenant can be a very persuasive fellow. He’s holding my passport as collateral. I guess he concluded that since Siegfried Witzel was a fellow German and a client of my company in Munich, I could help him clear up this whole damn mess. I imagine this might be your job now. Then he can ask you all the awkward pain-in-the-ass questions he’s been asking me. So one possibility is for me to call him up and have him come here to arrest you. Because let’s face it, you know more than I do what this is all about. I’m just a claims adjustor from Germany who wishes he’d stayed home.
“All of that is on one side of the actuarial balance sheet. Maybe you’re a talker and perhaps you can gab your way out of trouble. I won’t argue about it. I’ll leave that to you and Lieutenant Leventis. He likes to talk, and to argue. For hours. But on the other side is that I have a small claim of my own against Max Merten. But for him I wouldn’t be in this mess. So I was thinking I might be persuaded to let you walk out of this house without involving cops. I might even return your wallet and pretend you’d never been here. You could take off on that motorcycle and disappear for a few weeks, while I go and visit Max Merten. Only you’d have to tell me where I can find him. And then, when all this is over, you can come back here and pick up the pieces of your life.”
I shifted some of the shards of glass under my feet as if to make a metaphorical point.
“If I might interrupt you, sir.” Garlopis was holding up an identity card. “According to his ID this man—Spiros Reppas—he lives on Spetses. That’s a small island just a few kilometers south of Kosta, which is where the taxi from Ermioni went after the Doris sank. Mpotasi Street, number 22.”
Garlopis continued to search the wallet.
“That fits. Anything else?”
“Just some money. A ferry ticket. A driving license. A business card that describes a scuba diving business, also on Spetses.”
“Spetses. Is that where Max Merten is hiding, Captain?”
“Maybe,” said Reppas. “Maybe not. Maybe you just want to kill him, too.”
“From what I’ve heard concerning what he did to the Jews of Salonika, he needs killing, badly. Only that’s not up to me. I’m an insurance man, not an assassin. Frankly I’d much prefer to make a gift of Merten to the Greek people. Lieutenant Leventis tells me that he would dearly like to arrest Alois Brunner and put him on trial for war crimes. But I’m guessing that Leventis will probably settle for getting Max Merten in his place. The way I see it, if I can deliver Merten to him on a plate then it will be a big feather in his cap; he’ll give me my passport back and I can go home again. Simple as that.”
“You’d do that? For me?” Reppas grinned a sarcastic sort of grin that almost made me want to break his nose again.
“No, not for you. But for the people of Greece, yes, I would. Only you’d better hurry up and spill your guts before my friend over there finds any more useful information in your wallet. Now that I have an address your own currency is shrinking faster than a wad of wet drachmas, Spiros.”
“All right, all right. But first just tell me exactly what happened to Siegfried Witzel. Please. He was my friend for twenty years. A good friend, too. For a German.”
“Exactly, I don’t know. Like I said, I’m just the fellow from the insurance company. We came to this house to make Witzel an interim payment, pending final settlement, and found him dead on this floor. He’d been shot through both eyes. There was a cop here, too. Since when that cop’s been inclined to pretend that we had something to do with it, as a means of catching the real culprit. Plugging his victims through the eyes is the signature of Alois Brunner, the Nazi war criminal. I think Brunner used me to lead him to this house because he was after Witzel. That’s as much as we know about what happened here.”
“What happened to the body?”
“The body?”
“Is Siegfried buried yet? Cremated, or what?”
“I have no idea.”
Reppas nodded somberly. “That’s a pity. He was a good friend to me.”
“So far this is me patiently answering your questions, Captain Reppas. What’s more I’ve a cut
