Che Committed Suicide

by Petros Markaris

  I got up and headed home in the hope that the preparations for the meal would have been completed and that the temperature would have returned to its normal level for the time of year. It was, indeed, quiet in the house, with Katerina setting the table.

  ‘All prepared for the meal?’ I asked her.

  ‘As you can see. I’m setting the table.’ She finished arranging the glasses and took the empty tray to bring the knives and forks. ‘Do you know where Fanis and I went wrong?’ she asked me, as she went to the door.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘We should have taken you all and sat you down together round a table at a taverna.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that now.’

  ‘I know, but it’s my being away in Thessaloniki that’s to blame. I’d forgotten what Mum’s like.’

  The prospective in-laws together with the prospective groom, as Andreadis would have collectively called them, arrived promptly at eight thirty. A couple, Prodromos and Sevasti Ouzounidis, both of average height and both of a portly build, were standing between an embarrassed doctor and an embarrassed prospective magistrate, waiting to hear our ‘welcome’ so that they could respond with their ‘nice of you to invite us’, before we all moved on to the quadraphonic ‘so we meet at last’.

  Once in the sitting room, we proceeded from our introductions to our professions. Prodromos Ouzounidis already knew that I was a police officer. I learned there and then that he was a classic Greek jack-of-all-trades: part farmer, part self-employed businessman. He had some land on which he grew tobacco and a neighbourhood corner shop in Veria. When he was working on the land, Sevasti Ouzounidis kept the shop, and when Prodromos was keeping the shop, Sevasti kept home.

  Most of the information was supplied by Sevasti Ouzounidis. Prodromos stayed quiet most of the time and kept wiping the sweat on his face with his handkerchief, because he had thought it only proper to wear his best suit, which was a thick, woollen one. I was about to switch on the air conditioning to help him out, but his wife beat me to it.

  ‘Prodromos, why don’t you take your jacket off? Look, the inspector isn’t wearing his.’

  I didn’t know whether that was a simple observation or a chiding remark aimed at me for not being appropriately dressed, wearing as I was a short-sleeved shirt. Whatever the case, the offer was a godsend for Prodromos, who took off his jacket and his tie, heaving a sigh of relief. On the contrary, I came out the worse for it as I received a reproachful look from Adriani. The only one to find it amusing was Fanis. He had caught sight of his father and Adriani and looked at me, ready to burst out laughing.

  I followed Katerina with my gaze. I didn’t know how she was when she was sitting exams at the university, but it was the first time I had ever seen her so ill-at-ease and quiet. She was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the chair and smiling at everyone in turn. She was simply dressed, but her clothes seemed too tight for her; she was wearing sandals, but they were pinching her feet. I suddenly thought how much more relaxed Koula would be if she were in Katerina’s place. She would have taken part in conversation, she would have had something to say to everyone and it wouldn’t have taken ten minutes before she was liked by all. My daughter was educated, knew what she wanted, no doubt she would have a brilliant career, but I was obliged to admit that in circumstances like those, Koula could leave her standing.

  Adriani got up to start getting the meal ready. Katerina jumped up, too, probably because Adriani had forewarned her that when she got up, that would be the signal for Katerina to go with her into the kitchen.

  ‘You sit with the men, Katerina dear,’ said Sevasti. ‘I’ll go and help Mrs Haritos.’

  Adriani was about to protest, but Sevasti wouldn’t hear of it. ‘But I insist, Mrs Haritos!’ she said. ‘If you were in my house, wouldn’t you want to help? Don’t even mention it!’

  Katerina was stuck in the middle and didn’t know whether she should obey her mother and go into the kitchen or her future mother-in-law and stay in the sitting room. Fortunately, Fanis got her out of her dilemma.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said, smiling. ‘Didn’t you know that the kitchen is where housewives get to know each other better?’

  Adriani and Sevasti went off, Katerina remained, and the atmosphere became more relaxed. Ouzounidis père began talking about tobacco: how they only grow Virginia tobacco now and how this had increased the competition and drastically reduced the income. I listened to him patiently, without feeling at all irritated. My own father may have been a police sergeant, but both his brothers had land that they struggled with all through the year and so I understood his plight.

  However, perhaps I would have been somewhat less understanding had I known that once he’d finished his report, I would have to begin mine. He reminded me with a ‘And what do you do in your line of work?’

  The easiest thing would have been for me to tell him that all my life I’d been dealing with corpses, murders and, of late, suicides, but I was afraid that it might be too much for him. So I endeavoured to be as vague as possible, but it seemed that Mr Ouzounidis had seen what the cameras show on the news bulletins countless times and he was keen to learn in every detail what they didn’t show. He demanded that I recount everything from the moment the Flying Squad took the call to the moment they opened the plastic bag with its contents.

  I did it to please him, answering all his questions one by one. Fanis was about to intervene and restrain his father, but he saw how I was dealing with the questions willingly and in detail, in a way that Ghikas would no doubt have envied, so he suspected that perhaps I was enjoying myself and remained silent.

  I wasn’t enjoying it at all, however, and I was relieved when I saw Adriani coming in with the dish of stuffed vegetables and Sevasti behind her with the veal à la jardinière. We sat down at the table and the praise for the food began. Adriani was flattered and the Police Force was forgotten. The rest of the evening passed with idle chatter till around eleven. Fanis’s parents got up to go, but, before leaving, they insisted on making us promise that we would visit them in Veria.

  ‘You’re certain to like it,’ Sevasti said warmly. ‘It’s a quiet place with clean air. And besides, when you go to see Katerina in Thessaloniki, Veria is on your way.’

  Adriani agreed without a second thought, while I reflected that they would only have to cater for half the family, Adriani that is, because in all the years that Katerina had been in Thessaloniki, I couldn’t have gone there more than a couple of times.

  As soon as she had closed the front door, Katerina flung her arms round my neck and kissed me on both cheeks.

  ‘Thanks, you’re the best,’ she said, full of enthusiasm.

  ‘Come on. You must have had a dim view of me. Your grandfather was from a farming family too.’

  ‘That’s not why I kissed you, but because of your patience in answering all the questions about the police. I know how much you hate it.’

  ‘I did it for Fanis,’ I said completely spontaneously.

  ‘I know. And he knows it too. That’s why you’re so fond of each other.’

  When Katerina had taken up with Fanis, I had been afraid she would give up her PhD studies to marry him. Now that I was convinced she would finish it, it seemed I was starting to hear the sound of wedding bells.

  51

  The telephone rang early on Monday morning while I was in the bathroom shaving. Sunday had passed quietly with that pleasant languor that follows on from the previous night’s festivities. Adriani was pleased because everyone had commented on her cooking and she had every reason to be happy, Katerina because a weight had been taken off her shoulders and she felt relieved and, finally, I was pleased because I had managed not to let the suicides affect me and had been smiling and affable to the point that Fanis’s parents must have been wondering whether they had had a mistaken view of coppers, who weren’t all sour and sullen, as perhaps they had thought.

  I heard Adriani’s voice from the hallway: ‘Vlassopoulos!’<
br />
  I wiped my face and rushed to the phone. I must have had a look of terror in my eyes because I was filled with panic that perhaps there had been another suicide. Thankfully, I heard Vlassopoulos full of enthusiasm and that reassured me.

  ‘I’ve found him!’ he shouted.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who makes the T-shirts. Do you know who it is?’ I half expected to hear the name Minas Logaras. ‘Christos Kalafatis.’

  The name meant absolutely nothing to me and I tried to place it. Vlassopoulos realised from my silence.

  ‘Doesn’t the name remind you of anything?’ he asked surprised.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Christos Kalafatis … That big strapping military policeman, who was tried for torture and got ten years. The prosecution witnesses at his trial were Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis. It’s all documented. I looked into it.’

  ‘And now he’s making Che T-shirts?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  A military policeman, a former torturer for the Junta, who was manufacturing Che Guevara T-shirts. Could it be that the suicides had been an act of revenge because the three men had testified as prosecution witnesses and Kalafatis had been put away for ten years? If that was the case, then he most certainly would have been blackmailing them with something from their past. And the secret must have been from the period of their incarceration in the cells of the Military Police. Otherwise, how would Kalafatis have known about it?

  ‘Do you have an address?’

  ‘Yes. His factory is at 8 Liakou Street, near the Aghiou Nikolaou Station, between Ionias Avenue and Acharnon Street.’

  ‘If Ghikas asks for me, tell him I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Well done, you did a good job.’

  ‘Eh, we can’t be having the Chief’s secretary running rings round us!’ he said ironically and hung up.

  The shortest route in the Mirafiori was by way of Patission Street, then down Agathoupoleos Street and into Ionias Avenue. On second thoughts, it occurred to me that the next suicide victim would be me. So I decided to leave the Mirafiori in the Security Headquarters garage and take the metro. Changing twice, at Syntagma and Omonia, I would be at the Aghiou Nikolaou Station in no more than twenty minutes. Liakou Street was more or less opposite.

  Number 8 was an old warehouse, built of stone and concrete, with small windows and a double iron door that was half-open. I pushed it open. The area inside wasn’t particularly spacious. It was just big enough for the three machines that made the T-shirts, a machine for stamping the design on them, an ironing board and a packaging machine. The T-shirts were piled all around the walls. Six women, all foreign, were operating the machines. The floor was covered with boxes, cardboard and rags, as though the place hadn’t been cleaned up for months. At the back, sitting behind a desk, was a tall, brawny man of around forty-five, with a beard and thinning hair. His build told me that he might very well have been a military policeman in his youth and I approached him. He looked up and saw me.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Inspector Costas Haritos.’

  Nothing changed in his expression. He continued to gaze at me with the same questioning look.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Why? Is it necessary?’ he asked ironically.

  I made no reply, but simply drew up a chair and sat on it. ‘You were in the Military Police at the time of the Junta, were you not?’

  ‘And now you’ve found out?’ It seemed that he was becoming annoyed, but I tried not to lose my temper. ‘Listen, all that business is over with. I was tried, I became famous. I went away for ten years and everybody forgot about me. I was released after six and a half years for good behaviour and I put all that behind me.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you. It’s something else I’m interested in. Have you heard about the suicides of the businessman, Jason Favieros, the politician, Loukas Stefanakos and the journalist, Apostolos Vakirtzis?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it.’

  ‘All three were political prisoners in the cells of the Military Police when you were there.’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t remember. People came, people went, how am I supposed to remember them all?’

  ‘You’re sure to remember them because they testified as prosecution witnesses at your trial.’

  He was taken aback by the fact that I knew and, to hide his shock, he became aggressive. ‘So what? Do you know how many testified to get me put away for ten years of my life? Why do you think I’ve grown a beard? So I won’t be recognised on the street. I can’t stand being stared at.’

  ‘Is that why? I thought you’d grown it to look like Che Guevara,’ I said ironically.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘What do I mean? During the Junta, you fought against the commies and all their kind. And because of them you were put away for ten years. And now you’re selling Che Guevara T-shirts?’

  I persisted in the hope that I would provoke him into opening up, but he just stared at me as though I were from another planet.

  ‘Open your eyes. Today’s not for commies, today’s for T-shirts,’ was his reply. ‘We no longer fight, we feather our nests. Do you remember what Pattakos used to say?’

  ‘The dictator? What’s Pattakos got to do with anything?’

  ‘Do you remember what he used to say?’ he repeated.

  ‘He said a lot of things. How should I remember everything?’

  ‘Let me remind you of one thing he said that turned out to be prophetic: Greece is an enormous construction site.’

  ‘And why was it prophetic? Because of the Olympic Games?’

  ‘No. Because, today, it’s an enormous stock exchange. From an enormous construction site to an enormous stock exchange. Prophetic words. Pattakos was right and, together with him, we were too. In this enormous stock exchange, Che is just another face that sells. Tomorrow, it might be the other dictator, Papadopoulos, or the day after, that other commie Mao with his little cap. It’s not important. Everything today is just a stamp. So says Christos Kalafatis, the right-hand man of Major Skouloudis.’

  ‘Skouloudis? The torturer?’

  For the first time, he got angry and his eyes bulged in their sockets. ‘The Military Police interrogator,’ he said angrily, correcting me. ‘But, naturally, all you coppers looked down their noses at us MPs.’

  ‘Was he the one who interrogated the three who committed suicide?’

  ‘Yes, and they were all milksops,’ he said with contempt. ‘And I’m not saying that because they testified against me. They were miserable wimps who squealed like little pigs as soon as you laid a hand on them. Only one of them had any backbone and he was a good twenty years older than the rest.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  ‘Yannelis. He was the only one with any balls. Whatever you did to him, you always had to take your hat off to him in the end.’

  ‘He committed suicide, too, only much earlier. At the beginning of the nineties.’

  ‘It’s a wonder that he survived that long.’

  What did he mean? Something told me that concealed in this simple sentence was the secret I’d been looking for, but I tried to keep my composure and not show any excitement in case I scared him and he shut up shop.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I asked, as calmly as I could.

  ‘Because he paid more dearly than all the others. Maybe the stronger end up paying more, it’s one way of looking at it. At any rate, it was a huge blow to him and it’s a miracle he survived till the nineties.’

  ‘What huge blow?’

  ‘His daughter married Major Skouloudis.’

  He looked at me, pleased with himself that he’d succeeded in shocking me. And he had succeeded in shocking me, but for other reasons. Coralia Yannelis was the wife of Major Skouloudis, her father’s torturer? Was this the secret? Was this the start of the thread that would unravel the whole case?

  ‘A real ro
sebud!’ said Kalafatis with old-fashioned admiration. ‘She was no more than eighteen and would come to the Major for news of her father, to plead with him to tell her when he would be released. And Skouloudis could be very charming. When he talked to you, you’d never imagine that this same man could torture anybody. That’s how it was with the girl. In less than a month, she was totally smitten with him.’

  ‘Did Skouloudis say anything to Yannelis about his relationship with his daughter?’

  ‘Are you kidding? It would have been like killing him. And as I told you, the major respected Yannelis.’

  ‘I thought he might have let him go,’ I said provocatively. ‘After all, he was the father of his girlfriend.’

  ‘He couldn’t. He would have found himself in deep trouble. Yannelis and his group had been accused of bombings. He did stop interrogating him, however. He closed the file on him and sent him before a military tribunal. Yannelis was still in prison when they got married. He found out about it from his son.’

  I could now, with hindsight, understand why Coralia Yannelis had been so tense and uneasy when talking about her father and her brother. She’d meant it when she said it was less painful for her to answer questions about Favieros’s companies. Evidently, she had fallen out with her brother over her marriage. But if she had fallen out with her brother, she must also have fallen out with her father. Yet, again, I had uncovered a secret that might lead to murder, but not to the suicides of three people. If someone had murdered Skouloudis, his marriage to Coralia Yannelis would have provided the perfect motive. But what connection could this marriage possibly have with the suicides of Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis? The only ones who could answer this question were Coralia Yannelis and Minas Logaras, whoever he might be.