Deadline in Athens kj-1

by Petros Markaris

  And Karayoryi, where had she got all this from? Perhaps I'd never know, but I could guess. During the trip she took with her sister and her niece, she'd found out about the transplants by chance and had begun looking into it. She'd found Dourou and had come across the nursery with the Albanian kids. She'd realized that she was on to something and had started delving.

  Sotiris woke me from my thoughts. "Mrs. Hourdakis is here with her son."

  "Show them in."

  Mrs. Hourdakis must have been in her early fifties. She was fat and was wearing a pistachio-colored coat that made her seem even fatter. She was dressed to the nines. Gold necklace, gold bracelets, gold earrings, and a layer of gold rings on her fingers. Whatever she'd been deprived of in her youth, she was wearing now to get even. Her son dressed at the other end of the scale. Whereas you might have expected a smart employee with suit and tie, he had a beard and was wearing a thick anorak, jeans, and casual shoes.

  "Where is your husband?" I asked Mrs. Hourdakis abruptly.

  "He went on a journey yesterday. I've already told the lieutenant." She appeared frightened, worried. I couldn't read her son's expression behind his beard.

  "Had he planned this journey for some time or did he leave suddenly?"

  "No, he'd had it planned for days."

  "And where has he gone?"

  "Macedonia ... Thrace. . . He didn't tell me exactly."

  "How do you communicate with him?"

  "He phones me because he's always on the move."

  The son listened to the conversation without interrupting. Only his eyes moved back and forth from his mother to me.

  "He's continually on the move, yet didn't take his car with him?"

  "He never takes it when he goes away. He doesn't like driving."

  Who was she trying to fool? He didn't take the car because we'd be able to find him immediately. Public transport made it more difficult for us.

  The son decided to break into the conversation. "I don't understand, Inspector. It can't be against the law for my father to go on a trip?"

  I picked up the photocopy of his bank statement and handed it to him. "Can you tell me where all these deposits of 200,000 and 300,000 came from?"

  I don't know whether he heard me because he was poring over the statement. "Where did you get this?" he asked after a while, as if not believing that it was his.

  "Don't worry about that. We looked into your account quite legally, with permission from the public prosecutor. I want you to tell me about the amounts."

  He turned and looked at his mother, but she was busy admiring her rings. He saw that he wasn't going to get any help from there and so was forced to answer himself. "The 250,000 is my salary. The rest is-extra."

  "Extra?"

  "Jobs I do on the side."

  I picked up Mrs. Hourdakis's statement and handed it to her. "And where are these amounts from? From a fashion house?"

  "My mother gives them to me," she answered immediately. "She lives with us and pays her share of the housekeeping."

  "Your mother also has deposits of 200,000 and 300,000 in her account, but I don't see any regular withdrawals or transfers to your account."

  As soon as they saw that I also had the statement belonging to Hourdakis's mother-in-law, they didn't know what to say and clammed up. I started to get tougher with them. "Take a look at your husband's statement. Put it beside the others!" I said to Mrs. Hourdakis. "The amounts went into the four accounts with only a few days' difference. If you add them up, they come to a million drachmas each time. How did your husband, a customs officer on a reduced pension, earn all that money? I'm waiting!"

  "We don't live on his pension alone. Lefteris does other jobs, too," she mumbled.

  "And does he get so much from all those jobs that you're able to put millions in the bank and have a huge house in Milessi? Tell me the truth or I'll have the whole lot of you locked up!" I turned back to the son. "You'll be discredited and you'll lose your job. Your parents will lose their house and you will all, most certainly, end up in prison!"

  At which, the son turned to his mother. "I told him so!" he screamed. "I told him I didn't want him putting money in my account, but he's stubborn, he never listens to anyone!"

  "Quiet," his mother whispered, terrified.

  But the son wasn't willing to sacrifice his life and his career for his father's sake. He preferred to talk and come clean. "I don't know where my father got the money from, inspector. All he told me was that he wanted to put some amounts in my account and that I could give it back to him bit by bit. You can see that I withdrew small amounts of fifty thousand regularly. That's the money I paid back. He did the same with my mother and grandmother."

  I took back the statements and examined them. That much was true. After two or three months, they all showed withdrawals of sums of fifty thousand or sixty thousand.

  "And you never thought to ask your father where all this money was coming from?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I was afraid to ask," he said.

  I couldn't hold them with no more than the evidence I had. I told the woman to tell her husband that I wanted to see him in Athens immediately and I let them go.

  "Take out an arrest warrant for Hourdakis," I said to Sotiris, when we were alone. He nodded and made for the door. "Didn't you catch on to the trick with the accounts?" I asked him just as he was going through the door.

  "No, I didn't think to compare them."

  I called down to the cells and told them to bring Dourou to me. She was in a state of some disarray. Her dress was wrinkled, her hair out of place, and she seemed to have had a bad night. Only her expression hadn't changed. It was calm and provocative.

  "I asked to see you to inform you," I said, "that you had visitors at the nursery."

  A ripple of concern clouded her expression, but she kept her eyes fixed steadily on me and asked skeptically, "What visitors?"

  "A couple. We told them you weren't in, and they showed great interest in one of the children in the playpen. They picked him up, made a fuss of him, and played with him."

  She tried to read some kind of guidance in my face, to see where I was leading, but I remained expressionless. In the end, she decided to smile. "They must have been his parents," she said. "Which is what I've been telling you. They must have come to see him."

  "They must have been Albanians who'd studied in Oxford. From what I was told, you could have mistaken them for English."

  "They were Albanians," she insisted. "Because your people only know pidgin English, they took them for English. Simple as that."

  She didn't know that she'd insulted me personally with what she'd said. "My dear Eleni," I said, insulting her in my turn, "the puppet show is over. Why don't you tell us the truth, so we can start getting somewhere? As long as you tell us nothing, we'll keep looking, and in the end, we'll hang a lot more on you."

  "They were Albanians and they were the child's parents. You probably scared them and they took off. Do you understand what you're doing to me? You're ruining my business!"

  Obviously it had been arranged that the couple should talk only to her and she knew they wouldn't come back. That's why she was so cocksure.

  "Did you speak to your lawyer?"

  "Yes.

  "Didn't he tell you that it was in your own best interests to tell us the truth?"

  "The truth is what I keep telling you. I told the same thing to him."

  "And what did you have to tell him about your friend Gustav Krenek?"

  "He's not my friend. He's a friend of my brother's. I saw him once, that's all. When he was in Athens."

  Her confidence was back. I stood up.

  "Do you want me to send someone to bring you a change of clothes?"

  "Why would I want that?" she asked, alarmed.

  "Because I can see you being in here a long time," I said and walked out.

  I could have rounded up all the foreign couples from the hotels and had the
m brought in for questioning, but I knew that Ghikas wouldn't give his approval. He'd only tell me that we were searching in the dark without any concrete evidence. We'd have all the foreign embassies on our backs and do damage to our tourism.

  CHAPTER 38

  We were both sitting facing Ghikas's desk. Pylarinos was poring over Karayoryi's two lists: the one with the patients wanting transplants and the other with the refrigerator trucks and the arrivals. He was holding them side by side even though there was no connection between them and was examining them. His hair was white and thinning; he was wearing a striped suit, light gray shirt, and a dark tie. I was sitting beside him with Karayoryi's file open on my lap and observing his reaction.

  Ghikas had arranged the meeting the previous day. He'd phoned me at home at nine-thirty, while I was trying to kill time watching a comedy on TV, one of those that gets you laughing for a week. I usually give them a wide berth, but it was the first night that I'd been alone in the house. It was one thing to have quarreled with your wife and not be speaking, and another to be all alone. The former was a game, a counter-lull, "calm, tranquility, serenity," according to Dimitrakos. The latter was a killer, particularly when you've been married for twenty years and you have no life of your own. Not to mention that I'd been thinking how Adriani would be chatting away with Katerina, which had plunged me even deeper into despair. Such despair that I hadn't even felt like opening a dictionary. I'd sat there watching the box. Half of the female prosecutor, who was now all lovey-dovey with her husband, the businessman. Mercifully, I missed the second half because Adriani and Katerina had phoned. Then I watched the nine o'clock news with the rerun of the report concerning Dourou's arrest and, further down, the news that Hourdakis was wanted by the police. And finally, I'd watched the comedy. It was toward the end of this program that Ghikas had phoned to tell me that the meeting with Pylarinos was at eleven the next morning.

  Pylarinos looked up slowly from the lists. "Do you have the evidence to back up your accusations, Superintendent?" he said. Ghikas glanced at me. Here, he couldn't sum it up in five lines as he did when making statements to the press. He left the explanation to me.

  "Let me take things one by one. First of all, we have the Albanian who murdered the couple. Then he is himself murdered in prison. The girl who worked in the nursery recognized him from the photograph taken at the hospital. Among his possessions we found the address of Eleni Dourou, the sister of Demos Sovatzis. We know, too, that all the checks carried out on your refrigerator trucks returning to Greece from Albania were carried out by the same customs officer, by the name of Hourdakis. When we wanted to question him, he disappeared. We have Eleni Dourou's nursery, where we found only Albanian children. We have the English couple that visited the nursery and were evidently interested in one particular child. And finally, we have this."

  I took the photograph of Sovatzis with the Czech out of the file and handed it to him. He examined it.

  "One of them is Sovatzis, of course. Do you know the other man?"

  He hesitated slightly. Then he answered categorically: "No, I've never met the man."

  Bastard, I thought to myself. I'd like to see your ugly face after I show you the photograph of the four of you at the nightclub. "He's a Czech by the name of Gustav Krenek, who claims to be a businessman, though we have grounds to believe that he works with Sovatzis. Look at the date."

  He noticed it for the first time. "November 17, 1990," he muttered.

  You took them to a nightclub, and three days later they were plotting behind your back.

  "Does that jog your memory?"

  "No," he said again, but without the initial self-confidence.

  Ghikas shot a glance at me and then turned to Pylarinos. "We have no doubt whatsoever, Mr. Pylarinos, that Demos Sovatzis uses his position in your business to carry out illegal activities."

  "You understand, of course, that I know nothing about this."

  "We know that you have no involvement. That's why we thought it proper to inform you before we speak to Sovatzis. We do not wish to put anything in motion without your knowing about it."

  I'd known him for three years, yet every time I saw him perform, I couldn't help admiring him. With all that sucking up to Pylarinos, it was certain the minister would hear of how effectively and how discreetly he had handled the matter. That's how the points added up, Haritos!

  "Is it possible that he's the murderer of the two reporters?" Pylarinos asked Ghikas.

  "We're still not sure, but there is no doubt that he is somehow involved."

  Pylarinos looked at the photograph again. He clutched it between his fingers and jumped up, furious. "The bastard!" he said. "I pay him a substantial salary, he gets a cut of the profits, and all that's still not enough for him! Ungrateful swine!"

  "We need your help, Mr. Pylarinos," Ghikas said. "It's to your own advantage that we clear this matter up quickly and discreetly."

  He stressed the word discreetly and Pylarinos liked that. "Tell me what you want me to do."

  Ghikas turned again to me, as I was the one who'd gotten my hands dirty. "We want the names and addresses of the drivers of the refrigerator trucks that are on the list. Also, a list of the refrigerator trucks that made trips to Albania during the last six months, together with the drivers' names. We want the names of the passengers on the charters and package tours referred to in the second list."

  "You'll have all that information before the day is out, Superintendent."

  "I would also ask you not to say anything to Sovatzis about all this," Ghikas added. "Give us time to collect the rest of the evidence first. We can't exclude the possibility of him being party to the murders."

  "That will be difficult, but you have my word on it.

  He handed me the photograph. I put it back into the file and closed it. Pylarinos turned to Ghikas. He spoke to him, but he was addressing both of us.

  "Gentlemen, I'm most grateful to you that you had the kindness to inform me of this melancholy business."

  At least he was more polite than Petratos and Delopoulos, I thought to myself, as I watched him to the door.

  Ghikas leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh of relief. "That's over with," he said.

  He had every reason to be pleased. But I would have liked to bring Pylarinos in, too, even if I fell flat on my face.

  CHAPTER 39

  I was sitting in front of the TV with a plastic bag on my lap. The bag contained a souviaki with all the trimmings, a bifteki with all the trimmings, a kebab with all the trimmings, and a portion of chips that had been hot when they went into the bag and had now become mush. I separated them mouthful by mouthful and ate them. I didn't use a plate, because I enjoyed eating the souvlaki like a gypsy. If Adriani had seen me then, she would have punished me with a weeklong suspension of contact between us.

  The news featured a full report on Hourdakis. Where he was from, when he entered the army, where he served, everything. They had discovered his house, but his wife and mother-in-law had locked themselves inside and wouldn't come out. So they had to limit themselves to showing the tower from the Mani that had been transplanted in Milessi and to expressing the surprise that I felt when I'd first seen it: Where had a customs officer found the money for a house like that? The son, whom they tracked down in the street, was uncommunicative. Yes, he'd been called by the police to tell them where his father was. All he knew was that he was away. The reporters told him that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. "My father will answer any questions the police may have as soon as he gets back," he said with a conviction that he hadn't shown when I'd questioned him. Dourou had been relegated to the end, as there was nothing new in her case. They only stated that she was still being held. As for Kolakoglou, he had slipped out of the news altogether. No one was interested in him anymore, not even Sotiropoulos, the man who wanted to bring to light the miscarriage of justice and restore his name.

  I finished the souvlaki along with the news. I was deciding be
tween watching TV or taking refuge in my dictionaries, when the phone rang. It was Thanassis.

  "We've found them," he said triumphantly. "Evangelos Milionis is here and is waiting for you. Christos Papadopoulos is arriving tonight in Patras, on board the ferry from Ancona."

  "All right, I'm on my way. Send a message to the police in Patras to detain Papadopoulos without fail and to send him to us."

  Pylarinos had turned out to be reliable. By five in the afternoon, he had provided us with the information I'd asked for. Milionis and Papadopoulos were the drivers of the refrigerator trucks that Karayoryi had noted. As for the lists of passengers, things were a little more complicated. Those who were from EU countries got in simply by showing their identity cards. I'd sent the lists of passengers from America and Canada to the airport, but the chances of their being able to locate which of them had come using a family passport or had declared children as traveling with them were slim. Following the appearance of the couple at Dourou's nursery, I was now sure of the way the operation worked, but without the English couple it was going to be extremely difficult to prove it. My only hope was that Dourou or Hourdakis or one of the drivers would crack.

  Waiting at the station was a spare man with a mustache and a threeday-old beard-Evangelos Milionis. His criminal record was clean. No convictions, no arrests, no accidents. He was thirty, unmarried, and lived with his parents. He sat with his arms folded over his chest, a tough truck driver, a man who wasn't going to be easily intimidated.

  "Are you a driver for Transpilar?"

  "Yes."

  "And you drive a refrigerator truck?"

  "Refrigerator truck, lorry, whatever they give me."

  "And do you do runs to Albania?"

  "Not only there. I go to Bulgaria and Italy and Germany too."

  "When you go to Albania, what do you carry?"

  "When I'm driving a refrigerator truck, frozen meat, frozen fish, or cured meats. When I'm driving a lorry, anything from canned foods to clothes, whatever you can imagine."