Che Committed Suicide

by Petros Markaris

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That everyone has their ups and downs.’

  ‘How long before his suicide did all this take place?’

  ‘About two weeks before.’

  Suddenly, I thought of a question that I should have asked Favieros’s secretary, too.

  ‘Do you recall whether during that two-week period he received any phone calls that may have upset him?’

  ‘A Member of Parliament gets phone calls in his office from people he knows very well or people he doesn’t know at all, Inspector. So I can’t tell you with certainty whether some unknown caller had upset him. But I don’t remember anything of the sort.’

  ‘Did you happen to notice any other change in his behaviour?’

  I deliberately left my question vague, not wanting to mention the computer and perhaps influence her, but she replied categorically.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Mr Stefanakos have a computer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he spend a long time at his computer?’

  She laughed involuntarily. ‘Loukas spent countless hours at his computer, Inspector. That’s why he had a laptop so he could take it around with him. He wrote everything on his computer, from his speeches and the results of his research into various topics to the notes he kept concerning the various requests of his voters. Consequently, I can’t tell you whether he had been spending more time at his computer given that he always had it on in front of him.’

  That was encouraging. If Stefanakos recorded everything on his computer, we might possibly find some evidence that would give us a lead.

  ‘Where is his computer now?’

  ‘In the office.’ She gestured towards Stefanakos’s office.

  ‘May I take it with me?’ She looked at me hesitantly. ‘I’ve spoken to Mrs Stathatos.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘As soon as we’re done with it, I’ll have it returned to you.’

  She thought for a moment and then shrugged. ‘Why not? It can’t do any harm.’

  She went into Stefanakos’s office to fetch the computer and left the door open. I glanced inside the office and suddenly, flashing before my eyes, I saw the scene from the TV: the nails on the door on which Stefanakos had impaled himself. The TV presenter had said that the interview had taken place in Stefanakos’s office, but this door bore no resemblance to the other.

  ‘Excuse me, but did the interview Stefanakos gave on the night of his suicide take place in this office?’

  ‘Do you think I’d still be here if it had taken place here?’ She regained her composure immediately and added more calmly and politely: ‘No, Loukas had another office on the floor below the offices of Starad in Vikela Street.’

  I put the computer on the back seat of the Mirafiori and then sat for a moment behind the wheel to collect my thoughts. Favieros and Stefanakos had both exhibited the same two-sided behaviour. The foreign workers swore by Favieros, who helped them, but, as well as helping them, he made a pile of money on the side through the houses and flats that he sold them at bloated prices. As for Stefanakos, his voters sent flowers to his office to honour his memory, but he offered them only crumbs while using all the means at his disposal to make sure his wife’s businesses got preferential treatment.

  Suddenly an idea came into my mind, but instead of filling me with delight, it sent a shiver through me. What if the suicides had no connection with scandals? What if someone knew what Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis were up to behind the scenes and decided to punish them in order to render justice?

  38

  ‘Computer: n. mod.: 1. clerk subordinate to an accountant, assistant accountant. 2. esp. naval, title of finance officer corresponding to chief petty officer or warrant officer. 3. rec. intellectual, thinking person who computes or calculates.’

  Of course, I didn’t expect to find in Dimitrakos’s Lexicon, published in 1954, the contemporary sense of the word ‘computer’. Besides, the first ‘computers’ that circulated in Greece were actually calculators. When the real computers arrived, we didn’t call them computers but rather ‘calculators’. In other words, there was neither rhyme nor reason to it. Anyhow, it seemed to me that the first sense of the word given by Dimitrakos, ‘clerk subordinate to an accountant’, was closer to the modern computer. Nine times out of ten, I encountered it as an assistant accountant at the chemist, at the garage, at the service station and so on. ‘The computer is the cleverest moron you’ll ever meet,’ I’d once heard from one of the forensics experts. ‘It all depends how you use it.’ Because I knew how I’d use it, I kept it at a distance so as not to have a moron getting under my feet.

  In any case, Dimitrakos had provided me with a sense of the word that suited Vakirtzis, ‘intellectual, thinking person who computes or calculates’. At least so it seemed at first sight.

  Koula, with the help of her cousin, Spyros, had been trying to find the businesses owned or jointly owned by Vakirtzis in the Ministry of Trade records, but they still hadn’t come up with anything. I got them to stop because in the meantime I had brought home Stefanakos’s computer and I wanted them to search through that first.

  I was sitting in the kitchen on hot coals, trying to contain my impatience by thumbing through Dimitrakos while they were doing a first search of Stefanakos’s computer. The kitchen stank of vinegar because Adriani was cooking okra and she was of the opinion that if you first soaked them in vinegar, they didn’t turn ‘gooey’.

  I looked up from the dictionary at the sound of Koula’s footsteps as she came looking for me to inform me of the results of the search. Her cousin had pushed the screen belonging to Koula’s computer to one side and was bent over Stefanakos’s laptop.

  ‘You explain, Spyros. You’re better at it than I am.’

  Spyros didn’t even bother to look up from the screen. ‘Well, he had a cleaning program.’

  ‘What program?’

  ‘Cleaning.’

  All his answers were abrupt and he kept his eyes glued to the screen. I found it irritating, but I restrained myself because I didn’t want to upset Koula and also because he was helping on a voluntary basis.

  ‘Listen, when I hear the words cleaning program, my mind goes straight to the housecleaning,’ I said calmly. ‘Can you spell it out for me?’

  He lifted his head for the first time and stared at me with an expression somewhere between surprise and contempt. But he saw Koula standing beside me and bit his lip so as not to come out with anything rude.

  ‘When you delete something from the computer, it’s not permanently deleted,’ he explained to me slowly and patiently. ‘It remains on the hard disk and there are various ways that you can retrieve it. There are some programs, however, that clean the disk and permanently delete what’s written on it. You can run them when you want or you can programme them to start up on their own. When one of these programs is installed, you can retrieve what hasn’t been deleted on the disk before it starts up again.’

  ‘And Stefanakos had one of these programs on his computer?’

  ‘Yes, and it was set to clean the disk every three days.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that with the frequency that it ran, we won’t find anything?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Disappointed, I turned to Koula. ‘Zilch!’

  She didn’t appear to share my disappointment because she grinned. ‘Not exactly. We did come up with a few things that may be of interest.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The good thing about Stefanakos is that he kept notes on everything. Read for yourself.’

  She pressed a few keys and a series of squares with notes opened up before me. It reminded me in reverse of the boxes of Ethnos cigarettes, on which my father would note down what he had to do. Every so often, he’d bang his head and say, ‘Oh no, I’d written it on my cigarette box and I’ve thrown it away!’ Since then Ethnos had gone bust, cigarettes were now in packets and computers had become cigarette boxes. I w
as slowly starting to understand a little. I leaned over and read the notes one by one.

  What A is asking is absurd. L doesn’t even want to discuss it. He says he’s already paid M in gold. He’s right.

  The good thing was that they were all dated. This one was dated May 10th, when I was still in hospital. In another one, dated May 12th, he wrote:

  I spoke to M. He says one thing and A another. I have to speak to K.

  Another two or three followed that at first sight seemed irrelevant, then on May 20th:

  K won’t even discuss it. He says his position is at stake.

  And on May 22nd:

  I heard A’s programme last night. He’s blackmailing me openly. I’ll have to talk to his station and persuade some journalist to interview me so I can reply.

  Again, there were a few irrelevant notes followed by two successive ones on June 2nd and 3rd:

  Where did he sprout from? And what does he want? He says he has irrefutable evidence. It’s probably just hot air.

  And on June 3rd:

  He’ll send me the evidence and what he’s asking for is outrageous. The world’s gone mad. J told me that he can’t refuse to call M. A knows too much and he’s scared of him.

  I reread all the notes and tried to see what I could make of them. There was no doubt in my mind that ‘A’ was Vakirtzis. ‘L’ was most likely Lilian Stathatos, Stefanakos’s wife, and ‘J’ had to be Jason Favieros. I had no idea who ‘M’ and ‘K’ were. That said, there were more or less three main conclusions: first, Vakirtzis was putting pressure on Stefanakos to facilitate him with his businesses, and Stefanakos, in his turn, was putting pressure on his wife and on ‘K’, who was quite probably someone high up in the government, perhaps even a minister. Secondly, Jason Favieros was scared of Vakirtzis because he knew too much. Third, and more important, Vakirtzis was blackmailing Stefanakos on his radio programmes to force him to succumb. The only blank was the note of June 3rd. It was evidently referring to someone unknown who had irrefutable evidence. What evidence and about whom? About Vakirtzis? It wasn’t at all unlikely. Anyhow, from the way the note was written, it didn’t give the impression that Stefanakos was collecting information about Vakirtzis. Probably this unknown person was offering his services. And evidently at a price given that Stefanakos had noted that what he was asking for was outrageous.

  After so long, it was the first time that we had some clues and connections. At least, I was now certain that Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis not only knew each other, but also had dealings, and seemingly shady ones at that.

  ‘Print out two copies,’ I said to Koula. I intended to rush with it to Ghikas. Why shouldn’t he have a bone to lick, like me, to slake his hunger a little.

  ‘Well done, both of you. You’ve done a good job.’

  A smile spread over Koula’s face, but Spyros didn’t appear to be too impressed by the honourable mention.

  ‘Can we take a look at Vakirtzis’s computer soon?’ he said, still with his eyes fixed on the screen. Apparently, it was the only view that interested him.

  ‘You’ll get your chance, but why is it so urgent?’

  Once again he gave me the look that was somewhere between surprise and contempt. ‘Because you told Koula that he had a computer, but that he didn’t use it much. There’s a fifty-fifty chance that it had a cleaning program. Maybe sixty-forty. But even if it did, his suicide was just the other day and we might still find some data on the hard disk.’

  ‘All right. I’ll arrange it for tomorrow. In the meantime, go on searching through the records at the Ministry of Trade in case we turn up something on Vakirtzis.’

  While they were printing out the notes from the computer, I phoned Ghikas to tell him to expect me.

  It appeared that the police officer with the magazines had either been sent packing or had gone to find Ghikas’s wife at the hairdresser’s. Sitting in his place was a young man, who, if nothing else at least, had his computer switched on and asked me my name and what I wanted.

  Ghikas was so anxious that he didn’t even bother to greet me. ‘Give me something that I can pass on, because the Minister is phoning me every few hours.’

  Without a word, I spread out the notes from Stefanakos’s computer on the desk before him, as though I were laying out the cards for patience. He read them carefully, one by one, then lifted his eyes and looked at me. ‘Conclusions?’ he asked.

  ‘First of all, the most obvious. Vakirtzis wasn’t just a journalist, he was a businessman too. We’re trying to find out what businesses he had his hand in. It’s just a question of time. The second conclusion is that Vakirtzis was blackmailing Stefanakos, either because he wanted a share in his wife’s business or because he wanted to work with her. It seems, too, that Favieros was caught up in all this business.’ I paused for a moment and looked at him. ‘I don’t know how pleased the Minister will be about all this stuff on Vakirtzis.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t think he’ll lose any sleep over it. He’d become a pain in their necks of late. He never let up with his attacks and he’d really got on their nerves. If I’m to judge from what you’ve told me, his attacks were aimed elsewhere.’

  ‘I still don’t know who “M” and “K” are.’

  He shook his head and sighed. ‘I can’t imagine who “M” is either. But if “K” is who I think it is, then the Minister will have trouble swallowing it.’

  ‘Who do you think it is?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘Karanikas, the one who’s overseeing the Olympic building projects at the Ministry of Public Works.’

  Ghikas was thinking of the Minister, but I was imagining Petroulakis’s face when he learned where we’d got to.

  ‘Can you arrange for me to talk to Karanikas?’

  He stared at me with an expression of both anger and amazement. ‘Are you out of your mind? What evidence do you have to talk to Karanikas? Are you going to open up your hand to him? The next day, it’ll be all over the newspapers, the radio and the TV channels.’ He paused for a moment, then added slowly: ‘Old habits die hard, it seems. You’re back to your old ways.’

  I didn’t persist, because at bottom he was right. I really didn’t have enough evidence to get Karanikas to talk and, if the investigations leaked out, it wouldn’t only be Ghikas who hung me up by my fingernails, but also Sotiropoulos, who was banking on an exclusive scoop.

  ‘I want one more favour from you.’

  ‘Like the one with Karanikas?’

  ‘No. I want you to get me the cassette of Vakirtzis’s programme from May 21st, the one where Stefanakos says he was being blackmailed.’

  ‘If there is one, I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘Tomorrow, I’ll send Koula to take a look at Vakirtzis’s computer. If I have any problems, I’ll call you.’

  ‘Do that and I’ll sort it out.’

  The good climate was back again, but as I got up to go, he fired a warning shot at me: ‘Take care, Costas. We’re walking on a tightrope and if we put one foot wrong, there’ll be no one to save us. Did you see what happened with Petroulakis?’

  I preferred not to answer so as not to commit myself, though I knew he was right when he said that we were walking a tightrope.

  39

  The way things were going, the Green Park looked like becoming a regular haunt for my clandestine meetings with Sotiropoulos. If it had been winter, we would have gone to sit aside in some quiet booth. But it was summer and the previous day’s lousy weather was continuing with the humidity stultifying. So we chose a table at the back, among the trees, to avoid any indiscreet eyes.

  I’d asked to see him because the search done by Koula and her cousin, Spyros, had not revealed even one company owned or joint-owned by Vakirtzis. Spyros had even managed to get into the tax returns, but had found nothing. I began to have doubts about Logaras’s reliability, but then I reflected that he no doubt knew what he was saying; we were the ones who didn’t know where to look. And so I had decided once again to have r
ecourse to Sotiropoulos, who was after all a colleague of his and, as was usually the case, would know far more than the Ministry of Trade.

  This time, however, I was facing an uneasy Sotiropoulos. He took a sip of his iced coffee and stared at me with the look of someone in a tight corner.

  ‘You’re asking me to reveal the secrets of a colleague who died in a tragic manner. It’s not exactly easy for me.’

  ‘Secrets or skeletons? Because Logaras, who knows everything, seems to be talking more of skeletons.’

  He remained silent and took another sip of his iced coffee.

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ he said, even more tense. ‘Vakirtzis and I both came from the same ideological background.’

  ‘So what?’

  All that stuff concerning ideological background meant nothing to me and I was at pains to understand where he was leading. Apparently, however, he took my reaction as an expression of disparagement because it rankled him.

  ‘You’re quite right. It was my mistake to bring up ideology,’ he said sarcastically. ‘You coppers don’t have a clue about the meaning of comradeship and solidarity.’

  After several weeks, Sotiropoulos was back to his normal self. Except that, in the meantime, we had grown familiar and the relations between us had changed.

  ‘You know, Sotiropoulos, how I used to refer to you before we got to know each other better?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Robespierre in Armani. And with those little round glasses that you and your intellectual friends wear, like the ones that Nazi butcher Himmler used to wear.’

  He stared at me for a moment in astonishment and then burst out laughing. ‘You know, you’re not far wrong.’