by Leo Kanaris
‘Don’t move or I’ll shoot again!’
The injured man was clutching at his leg, the knife on the floor, blood-slicked.
His eyes darting from one to the other, George said, ‘Put that stick down or I’ll shoot you too.’
The second man did not budge.
George took a step forward and fired at the man’s right shoulder, jerking him forward onto Pezas, who disgustedly writhed away, dropping him to the ground. Pezas grabbed the man’s left arm and stuck a foot in his back.
Neighbours began opening doors above and below.
‘What’s going on?’
‘We have intruders in the building,’ said George. ‘They’re under control. I’m calling the police.’
He had blood trickling from his stomach.
Dimitri’s door opened. His tired, worried face peered out, taking in the scene with astonishment.
‘Are you OK, George?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re bleeding.’
‘It’s superficial.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you need a hand?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
George grabbed the right arm of the man close to him and twisted it back, forcing his head to the floor.
‘Get the helmet off,’ he said, ‘if you can.’
Dimitri wrenched at the helmet while George kept the arm pulled round hard. The head that emerged was flushed and sweating: a balding man in his thirties, with a black goatee beard, a powerful beak of a nose and angry green eyes.
‘Do the other one too,’ said George.
OK.’
As Dimitri put his hands on the helmet, the man inside it began to writhe like a scorched snake. Pezas kicked him in the side and he stopped. Dimitri eased the helmet off. They saw a round, puffy face, cropped red hair, dark with sweat.
‘Who are you?’ asked Pezas.
There was no answer.
Pezas repeated it, louder.
‘Do you think they understand?’ asked Dimitri.
‘We’ll find out,’ said Pezas. He placed his foot on the redhead’s wounded shoulder and pressed down. The man yelled with pain.
‘Who sent you?’
The man said nothing.
Pezas thrust his foot down again.
‘Who sent you?’
The man muttered something unpleasant in a language they did not recognise. He was weeping with pain, slobbering onto the floor.
‘They don’t speak Greek,’ said George.
He emptied their pockets. In one he found a pistol of a type he had never seen before, a star in a circle embossed on the handle. Ten rounds of ammunition, a few euros, cigarettes, a lighter, chewing gum, mobile phone. No identification papers. In the other he found a different brand of cigarettes, a lighter, a flick-knife and the keys to the bike.
‘We’ll take them inside,’ he said.
‘They need a doctor,’ said Dimitri.
‘That can wait.’
‘Tasia can take a look. She should look at you too.’
‘OK, but first let’s get them in and find out who the hell they are.’
George kept his Beretta trained on them while Pezas and Dimitri helped them into the flat.
‘In the kitchen,’ he said.
They sat the men on chairs. George gave the black-haired one his phone and said in English: ‘Call your boss.’
The man pointed to the spreading bloodstain on his thigh.
‘Later. First we talk to your boss.’
With a resentful look the man found a number and called it. He began to speak. His voice sounded tired. George took the phone from him.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve got your two bikers here and I’m not letting them go until I know who the hell I’m dealing with and what you want.’
‘Fuck you,’ said a voice. The line went dead.
‘Fuck you too,’ said George quietly and pocketed the phone.
‘Time to call the police,’ said Pezas. ‘They have interpreters, they’ll know what to do with them.’
‘I’ll get Tasia,’ said Dimitri.
Pezas held the gun on them while George called the police. He reported the incident as an armed assault. He could already foresee problems - shooting in self-defence would lay him open to serious counter-charges. He added that he was wounded, afraid, and needed help at once. He gave the address and asked how long it would be.
‘Is this an emergency?’ asked the policeman.
‘Of course it’s an emergency!’
‘Are the armed men still on the premises?’
‘They are. But we’ve managed to disarm them. They’re injured and they’ll need medical attention.’
‘So you’re not in immediate danger?’
‘I don’t know how much danger I’m in. I’ve been stabbed in the stomach. And these bastards may have back-up. I need you to come now!’
‘OK, fifteen minutes.’
When he returned to the kitchen Tasia was there, bathing and bandaging the men’s wounds.
‘They need to go to hospital,’ she said. ‘This one’s lost a lot of blood.’
She indicated the dark one, whose face was pale and drained of energy.
‘I’ve called the police and told them he needs a doctor,’ said George.
‘Who shot them?’ she asked.
‘I did.’
She did not ask why.
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘No. They don’t speak Greek. Maybe a few words of English.’
‘I don’t like these people,’ she said.
‘I didn’t invite them, I promise you.’
‘Let me see your wound.’
George lifted his shirt. She examined the cut with expert fingers, cleaned it with cotton wool soaked in alcohol, and laid a piece of gauze over it.
‘Hold that for me,’ she said, and cut four lengths of sticking plaster.
‘You were lucky this didn’t go any deeper,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘Change this dressing every 24 hours.’
She packed away her bottle of alcohol, cotton wool and spare bandages in a cloth bag.
‘Thank you, Tasia. I’m sorry about all these disturbances.’
‘It’s all right, George. I’m not completely useless yet.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I’ll go now. Stay as long as you like, Dimitri. As long as they need you.’
A few minutes later the police arrived. A young officer who introduced himself as Lieutenant Kassavitis, and a junior. Neither looked older than twenty-one.
George explained the situation. Kassavitis listened carefully, and became troubled at the mention of shooting.
‘Was that necessary?’ he asked.
‘Mr Pezas can witness that he was being attacked. Viciously. I warned the redhead to stop. More than once. When he ignored me I opened fire.’
‘Did they understand your warning?’
‘I have no idea. Things were moving too fast. I had to save my friend’s life.’
‘Do you have a licence for a gun?’
‘Licence and training.’
Kassavitis told his assistant to collect the men’s possessions. George thought of the phone in his pocket, and made a quick decision to hold on to it.
Kassavitis asked the men something in Russian. They recognised the language. A short conversation followed.
Kassavitis turned to George. ‘They say they were bringing you a message.’
‘With crash-helmets and weapons? Nice message!’
‘They don’t know why you shot them.’
‘They know damn nicely!’
‘They say they don’t.’
‘Ask them why they attacked my friend. And why this one pulled a knife on me.’
Kassavitis asked, then translated the reply. ‘Your friend attacked them first.’
‘They’re lying,’ said George.
The officer had another short conversation in R
ussian.
‘OK,’ he said finally. ‘I can see what we’re dealing with.’
‘I need to know who sent these men,’ said George. ‘And what they want from me.’
‘I’ll try to find out,’ said Kassavitis.
The ambulance arrived, and they moved out.
24
The next morning at eight, he had a call from the young lieutenant, asking him to present himself at Exarchia police station by midday.
He finished his interrupted breakfast, picked up his passport and phone, and walked the four hundred metres to Kallidromiou Street. He was conscious, as he approached the station, that this was the centre of trouble eighteen months ago when a policeman had shot a teenager during a demonstration. That in turn had set off a chain reaction of riots, looting, vandalism and arson. The streets had calmed down since then, but the underlying anger still burned.
Kassavitis sat at his regulation doll’s house desk with its regulation chaos of papers. He was tired and grim-faced.
‘What’s up? said George.
‘I have to arrest you.’
‘What for?’
‘Assault.’
‘On those bikers?’
‘Their lawyer is pressing charges.’
‘Their lawyer?’
‘They insisted on calling him. We’ve been up half the night.’
‘You heard what my colleague Mr Pezas said? They would have killed him!’
‘It’s their word against yours.’
‘How about exercising a little common sense?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Let’s think about it. Two armed Russians call on you at eleven p.m…’
‘And you shoot them.’
‘They’re about to do some serious damage to your friend’s skull. They have a stick the size of a baseball bat, a pistol and two knives, and they start using them.’
‘That’s your story.’
‘And my colleague’s!’
‘Two against two. I have to give equal weight to both sides.’
‘Two criminals against two decent citizens?’
‘They are not at this point known to be criminals.’
‘So what are they? Jehovah’s Witnesses?’
‘I have to do this by the book. I have no choice.’
‘They don’t even speak Greek! What are they? Russians?’
‘Georgians.’
‘Even worse!’
‘I must ask you to make a statement.’
‘I’m happy to do that.’
‘You have the right to call a lawyer.’
‘No need. I have nothing to hide.’
‘Right, let’s go to the interview room and start.’
In a locked, bare-walled room without windows, George made his statement. The lieutenant, sitting on the opposite side of a wooden desk, took it down, word by word, with a cassette recorder running. At one point he asked if George had taken a phone belonging to one of the men. George said he had not. The text was read back to him and he signed it. He undertook not to leave the country and surrendered his passport by way of guarantee. The lieutenant was unable to tell him when he would have it back.
George asked about the two bikers.
‘I’m not required to give you any information about them,’ said Kassavitis. He switched off the tape recorder. ‘They’ve been detained for unauthorised possession of firearms.’
‘Firearms?’ said George, surprised. ‘Plural?’
‘The redhead had a pistol in his boot.’
‘Shit, I missed that. He could have used it.’
‘The bullet in his shoulder made that unlikely,’ said Kassavitis.
George nodded. ‘How long will you hold them?’
‘It depends what comes up when we check the records.’
‘Can I press charges against them?’
‘I don’t see why not. But it might be more effective if Mr Pezas were to do it.’
‘Good idea,’ said George, ‘I’ll tell him to get onto it.’
The lieutenant ejected the cassette and slipped it into an envelope with the signed statement.
‘Do I have to stay?’ asked George.
‘No,’ said the lieutenant. ‘You’re free to go. But I’m keeping your passport as a temporary measure. And if you happen to find the phone, please bring it in.’
Kassavitis unlocked the interview room door.
He was home by ten, and on the telephone to Pezas. He gave him the news and asked if he would go down to Exarchia police station and make a statement.
‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ said Pezas. ‘Only I’m in Kefalari right now. I have to see some people about those deaths in the bank. I should be done by noon.’
‘Don’t leave it too late. I don’t want those bikers on the loose again. That young police lieutenant was OK, but he may decide to let them go if there’s nothing in the records. He’s a little too respectful of procedures for my liking.’
‘Do you want me to come down now?’
‘What about your other appointments?’
‘I’ll change them. Deal with the urgent stuff first.’
‘It would be a big help.’
‘OK, leave it to me.’
25
George cast his eye over his desk. For some reason it depressed him. The whole room depressed him. He had a sudden, overwhelming feeling of paralysis. He was stuck midway through a case, unpaid and getting nowhere. The police were arresting the wrong people, their investigations were logjammed, their staff overworked, the system riddled with corruption and abuse, their custody of evidence slapdash, and the only consistently applied rule was that the innocent should suffer while the guilty received every encouragement.
His usual approach at times like this was to plunge into action of some kind – it scarcely mattered what. Motivation would follow. All he could think of doing now, however, was calling his wife to see how she and Nick were getting along. He picked up the phone, but it rang before he could dial.
‘Good morning, George! Abbas calling! I have news from the colonel.’
‘Good news, I hope?’
‘He is prepared to pay you 250 euros a day.’
‘I told him my price.’
‘He wishes to point out that there’s an economic squeeze on. His pension has dropped by thirty percent. He suggests you play your part in the national sacrifice, and take a cut of a mere eighteen percent.’
‘Did he say all that?’
‘Effectively, yes. Although I ran the numbers for him.’
‘He must be having one of his better days.’
‘I suspect the arrest has concentrated his mind.’
‘All right, tell him I’ll accept his offer. But I need some money up front.’
‘How much?’
‘A thousand.’
‘I’m sure that will be fine.’
Abbas was about to ring off but George stopped him. ‘Have you had any luck with the gun?’ he asked.
‘No progress. I haven’t had a moment. But I’ve been thinking.’
‘Any results?’
‘Results would be the wrong word.’
‘What would be the right word?’
Abbas laughed. ‘I don’t care to encapsulate such a complex process in a single word.’
‘All right then, what have you been thinking?’
‘I believe we must stop following single threads and try to see the figure in the carpet.’
‘Sorry, which carpet is this?’
‘I’m speaking metaphorically. It’s an image from Henry James.’
‘Is that Henry James the jazz trumpeter?’
‘No, Henry James the novelist and critic.’
‘Listen, Abbas, I’m having a hard day. Suppose we talk in something other than riddles?’
‘I’m thinking in terms of the pattern in the story. The deeper plot.’
‘I’m still not with you. I studied economics. Not literature.’
‘Economists talk of marke
t cycles, correct?’
‘They do.’
‘That’s an example of a pattern, observable only at a distance and with special knowledge.’
‘And over time.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Where is this leading?’
‘I’m trying to see the deeper pattern in what’s happening now.’
‘Have you considered that it might just be chaos?’
‘Superficially it’s chaos,’ said Abbas.
‘It could be chaos all the way down,’ said George. ‘The colonel’s under arrest, the evidence has been tampered with, the police are lost in the jungle of their own bureaucracy, and no one can see a way out.’
‘You need to make sense of all that. Find the figure! You know what I would do? Meditate on the whole thing. Draw a diagram. Think about it. Let images come to mind. From your unconscious. Use parts of your brain that sense the wider reality.’
‘You’re confusing me again, Abbas. Am I supposed to think about this logically or intuitively?’
‘Both!’
‘Both at once?’
‘If you can!’
‘And how the hell do I do that?’
‘First one, then the other. Toss it from hand to hand. Logic, intuition. Back and forth. Maybe I’ll do the same. We’ll compare our findings.’
George put down the phone, thinking Abbas had gone mad.
All the same, after a little thought, he decided to try it. From the drawer in his desk he took a blank sheet of paper. Without thinking too much, he drew four small circles at the points of the compass. In three he wrote the names of people who had died: John Petrakis, Angelos Boiatzis, his wife’s niece Anastasia. In the fourth, after a moment’s superstitious hesitation, he wrote his own name. He didn’t care to be numbered among the dead, but he reminded himself that this was only a sketch, an experiment in thought. Every circle was a victim, or intended victim.
Next to each he added one or more triangles, representing aggressors. ‘Unknown anarchist’ next to Anastasia, ‘HK G3’ next to John Petrakis, ‘Russian bikers’ next to himself. He contemplated the result. There were important parts of the story missing. He made another circle next to himself for Pezas, and a sixth circle near Petrakis for Colonel Varzalis. Next to the colonel he drew two sharp triangles, which he labelled ‘Constantine Petrakis’ and ‘Simeon Yerakas’. This action put him in mind of another aggressor to add next to his own circle, ‘Byron Kakridis’.
