“Stratos,” I replied, allowing her to squeeze my hand.
She had a firm grip, assertive, which didn’t quite square with her thin, almost weak voice. As soon as she let go of my hand she took a step back so she could get a better look at me. I looked back at her. She had dark hair, a dark complexion, bright if slightly devious eyes, a tiny dimple on her left cheek and a nose that if it had been even a little bit smaller would have failed to give her face its air of strength. She was in good shape and neither her sweater nor her tight trousers did anything to hide the fact. I was beginning to wonder whether this was standard issue for the women who worked here.
“You’ve got some questions for me, I hear.” It felt as though every last pore on her body was flirting with me. And I wasn’t sure that I didn’t like it.
“That’s right.”
“Teri mentioned you were good-looking, but not that you were … this!” she said with her eyes glinting playfully.
“This … what?”
“You know – impressive.”
“Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself,” I said in an attempt to seem more sociable than I really am.
“Do me a favour? Let’s get out of here and talk over lunch at that fast-food place across the road.”
She led the way without really waiting for me to answer. I followed her, watching her sway her body with ease despite the four-inch heels she was wearing.
“You not taking a coat? It’s pretty cold outside and it might rain,” I said.
“They’ve been saying that for days. And if I do get cold, I’ll have to call on you to warm me up in those big arms of yours – looks like there’s plenty of room there!” she said, giving me a big smile which emphasized her dimples. I walked behind her, slowly, waiting to see if she would turn round again to see if I was watching her. She didn’t. She was very sure of herself.
“Sorry about this place,” she said when we sat down.
“Why did you choose it?”
The fast-food place was sandwiched between a glitzy restaurant and the best crêperie this side of town – maybe in the whole of Athens.
“The pancake guy next door is my ex. In theory we’ve got an amazing relationship, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel comfortable going in there.”
“What, with somebody else?”
“No. In general. Trop compliqué – you see.”
Up to that point, I did see. If she threw any more French at me, though, I would probably need subtitles.
“I understand,” I said, sensing she was waiting for an answer to what had not been a question.
“I do miss his Kinder Bueno pancake, a lot, but …”
“Trop compliqué?” I said, helpfully.
“Yeah. And the restaurant on the other side? Forget it. What a rip-off! Forty euros a head without wine. Only the bosses can afford to go there. Anyway, we plebs are only given twenty minutes’ break in the afternoon.”
We were sitting upstairs in the smoking section. There were three groups of teenagers there with us as well as a young couple who were a bit older and who were kissing like there was no tomorrow. I thought of Drag telling me once in a similar situation that the only other species that kisses with tongues is the white-fronted Amazon parrot. But as soon as the male makes contact with the female’s tongue, the male vomits into her mouth.
“There’s nothing much wrong with this place; it’s just that we’re really pushing up the average age.”
“Yes, but as long as I can have a cigarette, I don’t mind who’s with me. Could be aliens for all I care,” she said.
Most teenagers smoke with a definite air about them. None of the ones up there could have been more than fifteen. They all had weird haircuts, eyebrow piercings, nose piercings. Two of the girls had neck tattoos, one boy had green hair and another of the girls had such swollen lips that you could bet she’d been injecting them with something. Dora was obviously right. If you wanted to smoke these days, you’d have to be prepared to share the space with aliens.
“Don’t you smoke at work?”
“The new laws. It’s not allowed any more. Whoever wants to has to nip out onto the balcony. That’s fine, but if you’re scared of heights like I am you have to go all the way down to the street and go through the security check and all that. Too much hassle. The bastards. The news desk editor smokes like a chimney – but does anyone say anything to him?”
“So far it doesn’t sound like you’re too happy at the new place?”
“No, I’m not. It’s like a military prison in there – but with attractive cells.”
I knew better than to trust online news stories. It might seem hard to believe, but most of them do achieve the impossible and are even more unreliable than print journalism.
“So what is it that you want to know?” she asked, playing distractedly with the wrapper of the cheeseburger she had ordered but had not touched.
I had told Teri not to give any details about why I wanted to see her and just say that we were friends, that I was an Internet journalist doing research for a piece I was writing about the big TV channels in the city. I wanted to take her by surprise because those first seconds after you tell someone something they’re not expecting to hear are the most crucial. You can read a lot into their reaction.
“You’ve been at HighTV for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Wow – yes. More than ten years. I got a job there as soon as I finished my course. The number of faces I’ve painted …”
“What do you remember about Themis Raptas?”
Her big eyes opened even wider for a moment, her mouth too, enough to reveal a set of perfectly whitened teeth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, as though trying to gain time.
“You heard me.”
“Themis Raptas! That’s a blast from the past.”
“I’ll explain later. For now just tell me what you know.”
“I’d prefer to know why you’re asking first.”
I noticed that her hand was quite unsteady as she took a long drag on the Marlboro she was smoking. She then crossed her arms like a primary school teacher waiting for one of her pupils to answer her, a teacher worried that she wasn’t going to like the answer she’d be given. I also noticed that the skin on her right cheek was showing through under the make-up and was cracked in two or three places. This only made her more sexy.
“Yes, but if I tell you that, it will affect what you tell me.”
“Now look, big boy – you might be exactly my type, and if you asked me on a date, say to the expensive restaurant next door, I’d say yes – to everything. But when you go asking me questions about a sensitive topic, I’ll answer you if and only if I feel like it, and on my terms. And I want to know why you’re asking.”
I was impressed. To be able to balance shameless flirting with playing hardball at the same time required talent. And she had plenty of talent.
“I’m doing some research into high-profile individuals who at some point in their lives vanish without trace for no apparent reason.”
“In that case, don’t waste your time on Themis,” she said, almost aggressively.
“Why not?”
“Forget about Themis. From what I’ve heard, he had his reasons.”
“What reasons?”
She turned, looked around and pushed her cheeseburger to one side, drawing deeply on her cigarette. “Themis was charismatic. The word’s overused, but in his case it was true. One look from Themis and you felt yourself growing. He wasn’t just handsome; he also had depth. Do you know how rare that is in the world of television?”
“Sounds like you were in love with him.”
“Who around here wasn’t? If he snapped his fingers, they would all fall at his feet. We would all fall at his feet. But he never did.”
“Was he seeing someone?”
“That was the problem. We didn’t know if he was. We tried to find out, really tried … We heard something about a model from a while back, a
nd someone in advertising, but we never saw him with anyone. Some of the presenters thought he was a closet gay and others said that he was married to the job and worked night and day. Then he went and adopted that little girl and we saw even less of him. That was when he started to cut back his hours after he had been such a workaholic. Before the adoption, when everyone else on his team dropped dead with exhaustion, Themis would keep going. It was around then that the rumours started.” She drew on her cigarette again. Her performance came across as quite staged due to her apparent need to pause at regular intervals, but she seemed genuine.
“If the rumours were true, it was just as well he disappeared. If you had asked me back then, I would have sworn under oath that he was innocent – I’d seen him with his daughter. He was so gentle and affectionate with her. The few times that he brought her over to the station, it seemed that she was his world. But then, as I said, the rumours started and he went AWOL and I started to think maybe he was too affectionate with her? God – I can’t even bear to think about it.”
“Do you mean…?”
“That’s right. You say the word; I can’t bring myself to.”
“That his relationship with his daughter was sexual?”
“I didn’t hear anything specifically about his own child. But people said that he liked little children. They were the kind of rumours that people are very careful with. The kind of rumours you make people promise not to repeat but in the end everyone seems to know. And if the rumours were true, where did that leave his own kid?”
“What about evidence?”
“Did anyone have any proof, you mean? No. How would we have got hold of anything like that? I told you – they were rumours. I don’t know where they started, but everyone said that there wasn’t any doubt. And then of course he disappeared almost immediately after they started. The ground opened and swallowed him up. It might have been a coincidence. I hope it was, because … Anyway. I hope it was. If I could find out that it was all lies, a great weight would be taken off my shoulders. You know, if something like that is happening under your nose, you feel dirty yourself. You do know that …”
He was murdered, she wanted to say.
“That’s what I’m investigating,” I told her.
She shook her head, as though she understood.
“Loukas might know more.”
“Who’s he?”
“Loukas Sofianos. Journalist. He was one of the people closest to Themis at the station back then.”
“They were friends?”
“You could call them that. Themis was always surrounded by people, but he gave the impression of someone who was very much alone, regardless. So I can’t really say whether they were friends in the normal way. I know that they used to talk quite a lot and Loukas was Themis’ right-hand man.”
I asked her to give me Loukas’ number, and after telling me a few more things about him she did. She then looked at her watch, and seeing how late it was took a sharp intake of breath, popped her cheeseburger back into its bag, picked it up and got to her feet.
“Have I helped at all?”
“Quite a lot.”
“Enough to have earned myself a meal at a nice restaurant?”
“You’re a very attractive woman,” I said.
“Why does that sound like a ‘no’?”
“And I am grateful for your help.”
She opened her mouth and passed her tongue lightly over her lips as if to clean them. She did it very quickly but not so quickly that she couldn’t be certain that I had seen it. She tilted her head and smiled, as if to say “fine”.
“Shall we?” she said.
I followed her to the exit. Two teenagers at the next table, momentarily distracted from their phones, were staring at her. Perhaps they weren’t real aliens after all.
We were standing outside the TV building saying goodbye when a giant limousine pulled up outside. It wasn’t the Prime Minister who emerged from it, but a blonde woman, a very attractive blonde woman, attractive in that same boring way that most models are attractive.
“Oh no, that’s all we need,” said Dora, watching her hurry towards the entrance door.
“Who is that?”
“My alter ego. A younger, blonder, sluttier version of me.”
“Sorry?”
“She’s living the life I never got to live. She’s the big boss’s girlfriend.”
“Vayenas?”
“Who else? You think that limo belongs to her? She’s come to see him. He might be planning to use her in more adverts – it’s obviously not enough for her that she already presents all the home shopping programmes.”
“And you want to be her?”
“If I had really wanted to, I would have been. He suggested it to me a while ago. Said he would put me on anything I wanted: underwear, blinds, herbal slimming teas.”
“So why did you pass up such a fantastic opportunity?”
“Going to bed with someone you really like is a big deal,” she answered abruptly.
I said nothing.
“Are you with someone?” she asked.
“You could put it like that,” I answered.
“OK. But if you ever decide not to put it like that, you know where to find me. You’ve got my phone number. See you around, green eyes.” And with that she walked back into the building with the same sexy wiggle.
21
As the day went on, Peiraios Street seemed to be willing the night to fall and conceal all the filth covering it, all those catering trailers that remind you of 1950s slums, the strip clubs which had once been goldmines and were now closing down one after the other, leaving dingy, dilapidated buildings behind them.
Loukas Sofianos lived on the ground floor of a small block between two of the area’s successful theatres. When I phoned and told him I wanted to talk to him about Themis, he said he was happy to see me. Sofianos was a veteran journalist. I had to be straight with him – if I tried to sell him some vague bullshit that I was a journalist who published online, or how I was just starting out, he could easily check my credentials, so I told him I was a private detective. When you can’t sell people vague cover stories you have to be a bit more creative. He opened the door just as readily as he had agreed to see me. He was pretty much as I had expected him to be, going on what Dora had told me. He was in a wheelchair. His face was lined, his silver hair thin and he looked like he’d had a hard life, especially considering he couldn’t have been more than fifty-five.
“Stratos?” His gruff voice didn’t sound particularly friendly, but it wasn’t hostile either. Professional was probably the right word.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me so quickly.”
“It’s not as if I’ve got anything else to do. Come in.”
I went inside. It was a small flat, not more than a couple of rooms. The smell of takeaways hung in the air. The sitting room we were in was divided into a kitchen area and a sitting area and through the open door at the back I could see the rest of the flat, a bathroom and a bedroom. A bachelor pad. He offered me a drink. I said no. I didn’t even take off my leather jacket because I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was intending to stay long. Sofianos was fiddling with his wheelchair. He started drinking from a thermos. Judging by his ruddy complexion, I suspected that it was something alcoholic and that this was far from the first thermos of the day. He wasn’t very tall, but he was very thin. Too thin, which would make him seem taller if he could stand up. His dark eyes were bright and intelligent, his mouth thin; you could hardly make out his lips.
“Motorbike accident,” he said, pointing to the wheelchair.
“How long?”
“Nine years. In my prime.”
“There’s no operation…?”
“Why do you think I’m sitting in this thing?” He was right, of course. I nodded.
“You said on the phone that you wanted to talk about Themis.”
“Yes. I’d just been talking to Dora Landrou in Make-Up
and she said that you and Raptas were friends. She gave me your phone number.”
“Friends, yes … We were.”
His mind began to wander.
“What did you think of Dora?” he asked me.
“Attractive.”
“A man of few words.”
“OK. Very attractive.”
“She likes sex. Loves it.”
“I didn’t have the chance to confirm that.”
“I did. You know, when I could. Still do, once in a blue moon. Before the accident I was a strong bloke. Now it’s just out of pity. Maybe she wants to prove that she can raise the dead. What has your investigation got to do with Themis?”
There was no reason to waste time here, so I came straight to the point.
“I’m looking into a case of child abuse.” He didn’t react. He knew.
“Is this an old case? Themis has been dead for three years now.”
“Old. New. All mixed up.”
“And what have you heard about Themis?”
“A lot of rumours. Like the ones Dora told me about. I need something more solid.”
“You’ve come to the right place, then.”
I said nothing and waited while he took a sip from the thermos.
“The first accusation was from an immigrant. An Iranian. He was the father of an eight-year-old girl. Themis was doing a piece on how our schools were coping with the children of immigrants and he interviewed the girl. Her father then showed up at the station, claiming that Themis had arranged to see her again, for an additional interview, and had raped her. It was me he spoke to. I didn’t believe him, not even for a second. My first thought was that this was a set-up.
“We’d worked together for years; he was my idol. When I had the accident, nobody was there for me like Themis was. And that little girl he had adopted.” He was on the verge of tears.
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