Che Committed Suicide

by Petros Markaris

  ‘So are you telling me that your interest is purely on a human level? That you’re desperate to learn why Favieros and Stefanakos committed suicide in such a tragic way?’

  ‘And Vakirtzis. The day before last, Vakirtzis also committed suicide in an even more tragic way.’

  ‘All right, Vakirtzis too.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Of course, along with ten million other Greeks. You couldn’t open a newspaper without coming across Vakirtzis, or turn on the radio without hearing his voice.’

  ‘But you didn’t have any connection or dealings with him?’

  She laughed. ‘You still think that the reasons behind the suicides of Jason and Stefanakos are to be found hidden somewhere in Favieros’s group of companies or in their joint companies or in their wives’ companies. But where does Vakirtzis, a journalist, fit into all that?’

  She waited for an answer from me, but she didn’t receive one because I didn’t have one. I didn’t have any answers, and the ones I did have were not all that convincing. Those who shared my suspicions did so simply because they had the same gut feeling that I had, like Ghikas for example, or because they were scared of some scandal, like the Minister.

  Yannelis saw from my silence that I was at a loss and continued: ‘I can assure you that Jason and Stefanakos, at least, did not commit suicide because of the prospect of bankruptcy. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is ask to see their companies’ balance sheets and give them to a specialist to examine. He’ll tell you that the companies are doing just fine.’ She paused for a moment and her tone suddenly became cold. ‘Three people have died by their own hand, Inspector, and before thousands of eyes. That’s tragic for their families and also for those who knew and loved them. But they weren’t murdered, so why do you care?’

  Her irony had turned into controlled indignation. They were dead anyway, I thought to myself. If they had been murdered instead of committing suicide, I would have come up with a lead far more easily. How was I to explain to Yannelis, without any evidence, that to my mind the three suicides were indirectly murders? And how was I to convince her that if we didn’t come up with the reasons behind them soon, it was very probable that the suicides would continue and we’d be faced with a suicide epidemic that we wouldn’t know how to stop? If I had been dealing with a murder, I would have been able to involve another three or four divisions. I would collect evidence, have bank accounts opened and, sooner or later, I’d get to the bottom of it. But now I had neither evidence nor arguments and I was going round in circles like a mouse on a wheel.

  ‘Do you think it a mere coincidence that three leading figures from the world of business, politics and journalism should commit suicide in succession?’

  She shrugged. ‘Some coincidences are inexplicable.’

  ‘And the biographies? The two were published within ten days of each suicide and the third was delivered to my door at the very moment that Vakirtzis was committing suicide.’

  This time, she didn’t answer straightaway. ‘Agreed. The biographies lend some weight to your argument. But who’s to say they weren’t already written and the author is simply cashing in on the events? All three of them were well-known personalities and lived action-packed lives. That’s a temptation for any biographer. After all, there’s the example of that nationalist organisation that wanted to take advantage of the suicides to draw attention to itself. Perhaps the biographer was doing the same thing.’

  ‘He had three biographies of three hundred pages each ready and waiting, Mrs Yannelis. Two of them were already in the hands of the publishers. He can’t have written three biographies expecting his three protagonists to eventually commit suicide. Not to mention that this Logaras didn’t give any address to his publishers, or even a bank account so they could pay him his royalties.’

  ‘He’s not going to lose them. He can turn up at any time and ask for them.’

  ‘Perhaps, but his actions suggest that he won’t.’

  She looked at me gravely this time and her question sounded sincere: ‘What are you looking for, Inspector?’

  ‘I told you. I want to find out why Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis committed suicide.’

  ‘And you think you’ll find out by investigating our companies?’ she said, again in an ironic tone of voice.

  I was about to reply, but Koula beat me to it: ‘Excuse me, Mrs Yannelis, but are you sure there won’t be any more suicides?’ she asked politely. ‘We’ve already had three that follow exactly the same pattern.’

  Yannelis turned and stared at her with a surprised look on her face, as though she had just noticed her for the first time. ‘How should I know, my dear girl?’ she said in the same disparaging tone used by taxi drivers when they talk to young women. ‘Let’s face it, not even you know.’

  ‘Precisely. And because neither you nor we know, you can try answering our questions so that we might get somewhere before we have more suicides on our conscience.’

  Yannelis stared at her even more surprised. ‘All right, I’ll tell you whatever I can,’ she said in a conciliatory tone. ‘And if you ever get fed up with the Police Force, come to me and I’ll hire you.’

  Koula blushed, which was an encouraging sign that she hadn’t lost her modesty. I took advantage of the window she had opened for me and I began my questioning.

  ‘Do you know whether Jason Favieros had any connections with Apostolos Vakirtzis?’

  ‘If you mean professional ones, no. Vakirtzis is neither a partner nor an associate in any of the companies in the group. I can tell you that with certainty.’

  ‘Do you know whether they had any personal connections?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I think they knew each other from the time of the Junta. From what I remember, Vakirtzis was also involved in the resistance. Jason mentioned his name now and again, but I can’t tell you whether they were still in contact.’

  ‘Would Mr Zamanis know?’

  She looked at me and smiled. ‘My advice to you would be not to ask him. You’re not one of Mr Zamanis’s favourite people at the moment.’

  I was about to tell her that I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, but I held back. The important thing was that there was another link between the three suicides apart from the public spectacle and the biographies: namely, the fact that the three of them knew each other from the time of the Junta and had all been involved in the resistance to the dictatorship. And what might that mean? Was something buried in their anti-Junta past and someone who knew about it was blackmailing them? Perhaps my conjecture was correct, but I’d have to find out first if there was any such secret and what it might be.

  I returned to the present to go on questioning Yannelis, but I saw her picking up the phone and I waited.

  ‘Hello, Xenophon. Tell me something because I’m curious. Did that Vakirtzis who committed suicide the other day know Jason?’ I didn’t expect her to call Zamanis on my behalf and I was astounded. Koula glanced at me with a hint of a smile on her lips. ‘No, no particular reason for asking,’ Yannelis went on. ‘It’s just something that’s stuck in my mind since yesterday and I thought you’d be able to satisfy my curiosity.’ She listened, nodding her head. ‘And were they still in contact?’ she asked cautiously, while turning her eyes to me. ‘They’d talk every so often over the phone, I see. So I was right when I thought I remembered Jason once talking about Vakirtzis.’

  She thanked him and hung up the receiver. Then she turned to me. ‘You heard. They’d talk every so often over the phone. The rest is as I told you. They were together during the Junta and did time together in the cells of the Military Police.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Yannelis.’

  She smiled. ‘You constantly make me change my feelings towards you, Inspector. One moment I find you a little irritating and the next I’m full of admiration for the way you continue to search in the dark.’

  ‘That offshore company that Favieros had with Mrs Stathatos …’
I said, getting back to my line of questioning because I didn’t want to be thrown off track by her civilities.

  ‘Balkan Inns?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  She looked at me once again with that same ironic smile on her face. ‘We’ve already had that conversation if I remember correctly.’

  ‘You don’t remember correctly. You had told me then that the person best able to tell me about it was Mrs Stathatos and that you only concerned yourself with Balkan Prospect. But Mrs Stathatos told me today that she knew very little about it and that it was you who managed Balkan Inns.’

  She realised that I had her with her back against the wall, but she didn’t lose her composure. ‘Anyhow, let’s not turn it into a sticking point.’

  ‘Does Balkan Inns have any connection with your other offshore company?’

  Without saying a word, she got up and walked out of the office. Koula turned and stared at me perplexed.

  ‘What’s suddenly got into her?’

  ‘Wait and we’ll find out.’

  We didn’t have to wait long. Yannelis returned more or less straightaway with two pamphlets in her hand. ‘This is the background to each company together with the most recent balance sheets. If you examine them, you’ll find all the answers you want.’ She remained on her feet and handed me the two pamphlets. ‘Unfortunately, the Balkan Inns pamphlet is in English, we’re out of the Greek ones,’ she added with a slight hint of irony.

  It was all the same to me. I’m equally a dunce when it comes to balance sheets whatever language they’re in. Koula had already got to her feet. I got up too and took the pamphlets. It was time for us to leave. We’d been handed our cards, as my dear departed mother used to say.

  37

  I had come to learn who the experienced reader was. Not the one who reads quickly or even the one who reads carefully, but the one who knows what to read and what to pass over. I was now in the third category thanks to the three biographies by Logaras. I’d read the first, about Favieros, word by word. I’d read the second, about Stefanakos, just by looking at the beginning of the sentence in many instances because I understood what Logaras wanted to say due to my experience from the previous biography and so I concentrated only on the main points. With Vakirtzis’s biography, which I’d started the previous night, I had arrived at the essence of what it meant to be a good reader: I skipped the first part, which was about his childhood and youth, as in the first two biographies, I also skipped the part with all the eulogies about what an important journalist he was, and I went straight to the third part of the book where, as usual, Logaras started with his innuendos.

  To my great satisfaction, I wasn’t wrong. With the last of the adulation and flattery came the first innnuendo:

  They say that in order to be a good journalist, you have to be ruthless. And Apostolos Vakirtzis was ruthless. He would terrify first one then blackmail the other till he got the information he wanted. Ministers, politicians, mayors, officials were all afraid of him and did whatever he asked of them so as not to have to come up against him. Apostolos Vakirtzis made use of all this to come out with accusations and revelations.

  So far there was nothing reprehensible. After all, a great many journalists used similar means even if they weren’t as aggressive as Vakirtzis. Logaras’s main dig came immediately afterwards.

  Rumour has it that Vakirtzis exploited these ‘special relations’ he cultivated on behalf of the companies in which he was either a visible or invisible shareholder. Apart from providing him with his journalistic revelations, these ‘special relations’ had secured preferential treatment for the companies. But all this is only rumour. There’s no proof or evidence of it.

  My first reaction was that Logaras was exaggerating. But then I reflected that everything he had said up until then had proved to be correct. Did Logaras have evidence of it, and if he had, why didn’t he come out with it? That was another question. Why didn’t he state outright the names of the shady companies that Vakirtzis was involved in, and Favieros and Stefanakos for that matter, instead of allowing all his innuendoes to poison the atmosphere? One possibility was that he had heard things here and there, but didn’t have any concrete evidence. Another possibility was that he had evidence but couldn’t reveal it because by doing so he would also reveal his identity. The third possibility was that he was keeping it secret so that he could go on blackmailing. Who? The families of the three men, of course. Favieros’s wife and children, Mrs Stathatos, and Vakirtzis’s relatives, who must have existed.

  The third possibility seemed the most probable but also the most alarming, because as long as the blackmailing continued, so would the suicides. We already had three and it was like the morning traffic report on the radio: jams everywhere and no sign of them clearing.

  The good thing about the experience I had acquired as a reader was that I didn’t have to stay up all night to finish Logaras’s biography. In fact, I finished reading it so quickly that I even managed to catch the late-night news bulletin, which was full of reports, interviews and clips concerning Apostolos Vakirtzis. I listened to it all, only to conclude that this mysterious Logaras knew far more.

  It was already ten in the morning and I sat down with Koula to make a plan for the day. I told her to rope in her cousin again and go to the records department at the Ministry of Trade and search through Vakirtzis’s companies.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ll find,’ I said. ‘Logaras spoke about companies in which Vakirtzis was either a visible or invisible shareholder. If we’re lucky, we might come across the companies where he appears as a shareholder.’

  ‘And what about the victims’ computers?’

  ‘Afterwards. First let’s find out what companies Vakirtzis was involved in. I can smell at rat, though it might be my nose that’s to blame what with all the pollution I’m breathing in constantly.’

  I left her to call her cousin so they could get down to work.

  Loukas Stefanakos was a Member of Parliament for a constituency in the suburbs of Athens and had his office at 22 Dardanelion Street, close to the park in Aigaleio. With the traffic, it was like going from Athens to Patras, a good three hours’ drive.

  The sky was full of rain clouds and the sun nowhere to be seen. That meant that we were in for a bout of unbearable humidity till we got our fifteen-minute downpour and the sky cleared. In Athens, the weather finds relief in the same way as the people: a sudden outburst that sweeps your legs from under you and then it’s as if nothing had happened.

  The traffic flowed normally, albeit slowly, as far as Peiraios Street. There was even less traffic in Peiraios Street and I got my hopes up, but the miracle was short-lived. At the lights at the junction with Iera Odos, I ran into an endless line of traffic dotted with patrol cars and ambulances. After ten minutes, I began cursing Stefanakos to high heaven for having opened his office in Aigaleio. What was wrong with Glyfada or Nea Smyrni? But Stefanakos, being a leftist, wanted to be in a traditional working-class district like Aigaleio, even though today the working-class district is hidden behind boutiques and fashion stores, rather like Stefanakos was hidden behind his wife’s businesses.

  After twenty minutes or so, I finally reached the lights and came upon a pile-up involving a coach and three cars. The coach had been left abandoned in the middle of the junction, facing in the direction of Kifissou Avenue, while a car coming from Iera Odos had evidently crashed into it and two other cars had crashed into the back of the first car. The road was almost completely blocked with only one car getting through every five minutes, and that thanks to a policeman who kept emptying his lungs into his whistle.

  Once past the point of the accident, Iera Odos opened up before me like the National Road on Easter Sunday and I sped along. It’s a fact that you always make up the time you lose. What you don’t get back is your health and peace of mind.

  Dardanelion Street was parallel to Thivon Street. Number 22 was a new block of the type put up overnight. This, too, was part of
the game of hide and seek played in the district: pulling down the old workers’ houses and putting up new blocks of flats overnight. Stefanakos’s office was on the second floor; a two-room flat with adjoining rooms – the one for the secretary, the other for the politician. Stella, Stefanakos’s secretary, had already been informed by Mrs Stathatos because she recognised my name. Before sitting down, I glanced around me. There was nothing that particularly attracted my attention, other than the flowers. The entire outer office was filled with flowers. There were vases everywhere: on the desk, on the coffee table, on the floor.

  ‘The constituents keep bringing them,’ she explained when she saw my surprise. ‘I’ve already thrown half of them away, but more keep coming. His door was always open to them, he did everything he could to deal with their problems and they worshipped him.’ She sat down at her desk and waited. ‘So what can I do for you.’

  ‘In the cases of Favieros and Vakirtzis, there were noticeable changes in their behaviour prior to their suicides. I wanted to ask you whether you’d noticed any changes in Stefanakos’s behaviour.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I thought that he was ill and that he was trying to hide it,’ she replied eventually.

  Her reply surprised me. ‘What do you mean?’

  She thought again. She was one of those people who think before they answer. Usually, you get good statements out of them.

  ‘He looked run-down and was in very low spirits, as though he had some serious illness. Whenever he was here at lunchtime, we would go to a taverna just down the street to eat. It had become a regular habit. But of late he never had any appetite. Either we didn’t go at all or, when we did go, he hardly touched his food.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask him what was wrong with him?’

  ‘Yes, when I found the tranquillizers on his desk.’

  ‘Tranquillizers?’

  ‘Yes. Loukas was a cheerful person, outgoing and with amazing self-confidence. He didn’t have any need of tranquillizers or antidepressants. When one day I opened his desk drawer, I found a box of tranquillizers. It surprised me and I asked him abut it.’