Deadline in Athens

by Petros Markaris

  I put the book down as it came to me why I had gone there so early in the morning: to look for Karayoryi's Filofax. There were cupboard doors on each side of the desk, as on most old desks. You opened the cupboards and the drawers shot out, three on each side. In the first drawer on the right I found a Nikon camera, a very expensive one, with all the accessories, including a telescopic lens. I looked at how many exposures had been used: none. There probably wasn't any film inside, but, just to be sure, I left it on top of the desk for the records people. In the bottom drawer on the left, I found four color photographs of a couple sitting arm in arm on a sofa. The woman was Karayoryi, just as I'd known her. The man was unrecognizable because someone had marked up his face with a black felttip pen. They'd added a mustache and beard and had lengthened his nose to look like an eggplant. In one of the photographs, they'd even given him a hat.

  In the top drawer on the right, I saw a folder. There was nothing else in the drawer, and the folder was lying there, seemingly forgotten. Opening it, I discovered six letters, all addressed to Karayoryi. All written in the same handwriting, a scribble of the kind for which, had we done it at school, the teacher would have rapped our knuckles with the sharp edge of her ruler. The most recent one was dated two weeks before; the oldest was from 1992, eighteen months earlier. All began with the same plain form of address: "Yanna." In the first one, the writer described his surprise at meeting her by accident after so many years and asked her to "meet up for a chat." It seemed, however, that Karayoryi didn't do as he asked, because a month later he was back with another letter and asked her again. After the third one, the letters became more interesting. It was clear that the writer wanted something from Karayoryi, something that she had and wouldn't give him. He never said what it was exactly; he was always vague, as if it were something very familiar that they had discussed on innumerable occasions. At first, he implored and entreated. It sounded as though Karayoryi had simply played with him, because he became more and more demanding, until in the last letter, he threatened her straight out:

  For so long now I have been doing what you asked, believing that you would keep your word, but all you do is play with me. I now know that you have no intention of doing what I ask. You only want to keep me on a string so you can blackmail me and get what you want. But no more. This time I won't give way. Don't force my hand because you'll be sorry and you'll only have yourself to blame.

  There was no signature as such on the letters, just "N." I sat there staring at it. What name was hidden behind that N? Nikos, Nondas, Notis, Nikitas, Nikiforos? Whoever it was, this N was known to her and had threatened her. And Karayoryi had been talking to her murderer before he killed her.

  The other two drawers were empty. No sign of her Filofax. To be honest, I hadn't expected to find it. As it wasn't in her bag or in her desk, it was probably taken by the murderer. There was nothing else either; nothing about kids, other than the book about Kolakoglou. No file, no paper, nothing. So why, then, had she dropped me the bait in connection with the Albanians? Unless, of course, we were going to find something in her computer files.

  I took the folder with the letters, gathered up the photographs, and went out of the room. In that rain, I would need at least an hour, crawling along, to get to the office. I had all the time in the world to do my thinking.

  CHAPTER 13

  I found my croissant and my coffee on my desk and three urgent messages from Ghikas saying that he wanted to see me. The journey from Karayoryi's place to security headquarters had only made my headache worse. I opened my drawer, took out two aspirins, and swallowed them with the cold coffee, which turned my stomach. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, hoping that the pounding would go away. Hopeless. It was as if I were in dry dock and they were beating my keel with giant hammers. I gave up. I grabbed the file and the photographs and set off for Ghikas's office.

  As soon as I opened my door, I saw them. Sotiropoulos at their head. Now that Karayoryi was gone, no one was going to dispute his role as leader.

  "So what's going to happen, Inspector?" he asked, in a tone implying that he'd taken all he could from me and was about to set up the guillotine.

  "Don't go away. I want to see you."

  The way I said it, vaguely and unspecifically, I might have meant that I wanted to question them, or that I was going to make a statement. Because they didn't want to miss the chance of the latter, they were willing to risk the former. I left them wondering and made for the elevator. It must have intuited the state I was in and taken pity on me, because it came immediately.

  Koula had been waiting for me in the chief's outer office and launched straight in. "What a thing to happen to Karayoryi. I heard about it this morning."

  That gave me a boost without her knowing it. I reflected that Sperantzas's supposed bombshell had turned out in the end to be a damp squid, because most people at that time of night are getting ready for bed and are in no mood for hearing about murders, rapes, famines, earthquakes, and deluges.

  "A crime of passion, you mark my words," Koula rattled on confidently.

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Listen to me, I had her figured out. She knew how to drive men crazy. She didn't give a damn about them, and she had them all running after her like little puppies. In the end, one of them must have flipped and killed her. But doesn't it seem strange to you that they ran her through with a metal rod?"

  "No, why?"

  "It symbolizes the penis," she said triumphantly.

  "Is he in?" I asked quickly, before she began analyzing me too.

  "Yes, and he's expecting you."

  As I closed the door, Ghikas raised his head, leaned back into his chair, and folded his arms. His expression beckoned me to approach his desk, the better that he could give me a roasting. Before I'd got halfway there, he launched his attack.

  "I said I wanted you in my office at nine o'clock. I've been calling you all morning."

  I said nothing. I stood there with the file under my arm and stared at him.

  "We have a star reporter, the leading name in crime reporting, murdered. Newspapers, radio stations, TV channels are all going to descend on us. In cases like this, the FBI works on a twentyfour-hour basis."

  "I work on a twenty-hour basis. I need four hours to get myself back on form," I said calmly. "I left the channel at five in the morning, slept for less than three hours, and at nine o'clock I was at Karayoryi's house."

  "What were you doing at Karayoryi's. That's records' job. I want you here."

  Without a word, I put the file in front of him and opened it. I'd put the photographs on top.

  "Who's that?" he said, gesturing at the defaced photograph.

  "I don't know yet."

  "Why have you brought it to me. It's not carnival time, is it?"

  I left him wondering. It was dawning on him that the case was not one to be solved telegrammatically, in five lines, so he decided to read the letters. "Right," he mumbled when he'd finished. "Someone called N was threatening Karayoryi. It's a clue, agreed. But where are you going to find him? It means sifting half the male population of Greece."

  "Unless N is the man scrawled over in the photographs."

  "It's a possibility. Look into it!" he said, certain that he'd opened my eyes to something I myself would never have thought of. "Any other evidence? And don't tell me about the murder because I know how it happened. Sotiris told me."

  "Her Filofax is missing. It was most likely taken by the murderer."

  "Any connection with the Albanians?"

  I'd been waiting for him to ask that. It would have suited him if she'd been bumped off by an Albanian. The newspapers would have made it front-page news with huge headlines as black as a mourning veil; the TV channels would have organized roundtable discussions on imported crime and would have been wallowing in commercials. Three days later the mourning would have been over, and Karayoryi's time would have lapsed.

  "So far we've found nothing, but the
re is still her computer. Something might turn up there."

  "I want you to keep me informed on a daily basis. And when I say informed, I mean that you tell me everything. Not write half in your summary and bury the other half in your report like you did with the Albanians."

  "I write in the summary what I consider can be announced to the public. The rest goes in the report. That's why I send them to you together" I picked up the file and the photographs, and left feeling satisfied that I'd come out on top.

  They were still waiting for me outside my office. As soon as they saw me, they blocked my way. I stood confronting Sotiropoulos.

  "Let's start with you. You've been around longer than most and you knew her as well as anyone among you." Their question was answered. They realized that I'd kept them waiting there to be questioned and not to make a statement. Sotiropoulos glared at me. If I forced him to give in, the rest of the herd would follow.

  "Are you coming?" I asked coldly. "Or should I have a writ issued so you'll have to present yourself within twenty-four hours?"

  I opened the door and waited. He hesitated for a moment, then followed me into my office.

  "Sit down." I pointed to the chair opposite mine.

  "Shouldn't I remain standing, given that I'm a suspect?"

  "So you take Karayoryi's murder for a laughing matter, do you, Sotiropoulos? She was your colleague, damn it. You should be the first to come forward so that we might get somewhere. Instead of which, you make an issue of the fact that we want to ask you a few questions."

  My shot hit him right between the eyes. He may have hated Karayoryi, but he didn't want to show his delight that her job would go to some greenhorn who he'd have under his thumb. He sat down in the chair.

  "So then ... fire away," he said, serious now.

  "I'm not going to ask anything. You're the one who's going to do the talking. You're an experienced reporter. You know what might be of use to me."

  I'd learned this approach from Inspector Kostaras, during the dictatorship, when I'd been assigned for a time to security headquarters on Bouboulinas Street. Whenever he was sent someone new, he'd put him for a couple of days with the prisoners being tortured, to scare the living daylights out of him. On the third day, he'd sit him down and say to him: "I'm not going to ask you anything; you know what you have to say to me. If I like what I hear, I might just take pity on you." And the poor wretch coughed up everything, just to be sure. My job was to escort the prisoners for interrogation. I stood in one corner, observing Kostaras and admiring his technique. Now I knew that it was all bullshit; he had absolutely nothing to go on and was simply fishing blindly to see what he'd catch. Good luck to him.

  Sotiropoulos was staring at me thoughtfully. He was trying to decide what he should say to me. "There's nothing I can tell you," he said eventually.

  I saw red. "What do you think you're playing at? Don't invoke that journalistic crap about not being able to reveal your sources. We'll end up very seriously at loggerheads, you and I."

  "I don't intend to invoke anything," he said calmly. "I'm only telling you the truth. I can't tell you anything." He fell silent and was obviously thinking. It was as if he were trying to find an excuse, more for himself than anything. "Karayoryi kept to herself," he went on, slowly. "She never showed her cards to anyone, neither on a professional level nor on a personal one. Besides, none of us shows our cards in our professional lives. She lived on the Lycabettus bypass. Alone. And I emphasize the "alone," because I never saw her with anyone. Whenever a group of us went out for a drink, she was always on her own."

  What he said put the idea into my head again. "Was she a lesbian, do you know?"

  He burst out laughing, but his eyes, behind those little round Himmler-type glasses, fixed on me as if he wanted to send me to a concentration camp. "You police officers are all perverse, like all the petits bourgeois. As soon as you hear that a woman goes around alone, you call her a lesbian." Evidently, he was making a distinction between the police and himself, who wasn't a petit bourgeois. That much I understood. What I didn't know was where he placed himself, among the leftists or among the bourgeois proper, with their Armani shirts and Timberland footwear. Most probably, he was both. We used to get by with a little soup; now we feed ourselves on salads.

  "If I'm to judge from what various people said," Sotiropoulos said, "she was most likely the very opposite."

  "Meaning what, exactly?"

  "A nympho. A slut." Then he saw that his spite had escaped its leash and he hastened to get it back under control. "But I may be doing her an injustice, because I know nothing definite. It was all just rumors."

  "And what did the rumors say?"

  "That she never had any steady relationships. That she went from one to the other. But she always chose men with clout. Businessmen . . . politicians ... mixed business with pleasure, as we used to say. But let's be clear, I've heard all this from others."

  "Do you know if she was working on anything?"

  "I can tell you, generally speaking, that she was never not investigating something. She was a ruthless little ferret. She poked around everywhere and stopped at nothing. She had a thing about bursting out with a story, so she never confided in anyone. Not even Delopoulos, who worshipped her"

  "Was she a good reporter? I want your professional opinion, with no trimmings."

  "Everyone disliked her, so she must have been good," he said. "A reporter's job is to be disliked. The more disliked he is, the better he is."

  His definition applied as much to him as it did to Karayoryi. He succeeded in making me like him through what he'd said, which confirmed my opinion that he wasn't a good reporter. I kept staring at him in silence. He realized that I had nothing more to ask him and got to his feet.

  "So what's going to happen? Will you make a statement so that we'll have something to tell the public?"

  "What statement can I make when I don't have any evidence? All I know is what we found out last night. Be patient for a couple of days. Something will turn up."

  As he was going out, the telephone rang. "Haritos," I said, faithful as ever to FBI protocol.

  "This is Mina Antonakaki, Yanna Karayoryi's sister," said a broken voice. "When can I collect my sister's body for burial and from where?"

  "In a couple of days, Mrs. Antonakaki, from the mortuary. But we have to meet first."

  "Not now. I'm in no state to meet anyone."

  "Mrs. Antonakaki, yesterday someone murdered your sister. We're trying to find the murderer, and we need information. I understand the state you must be in, but we do have to see you. If you'd prefer, I can come to you. But we mustn't delay."

  She seemed to weigh this for a moment. "You'd better come around here. I'll be in," she said in a faint voice, and she gave me her address.

  I still hadn't received any information from records, or the coroner's report, and I decided to run through the rest of the reporters so no one would depart feeling left out. No one could tell me anything more useful than Sotiropoulos had told me already. They knew nothing. Karayoryi confided in no one; she never revealed her cards.

  When the last reporter had left, I tried to make sense of what I now knew. Outside, the rain was still torrential. The old woman opposite was standing at the balcony door saying something to the cat in her arms. I couldn't tell whether she was chatting with it or singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" to it, but the cat appeared to be enjoying it. I was so carried away by the cat's contentment that I didn't hear the door open. A discreet cough brought me back to my senses.

  Standing at the door was a thirty-year-old woman, neither tall nor short, neither pretty nor plain. She was wearing boots and a beige raincoat belted tightly around the waist, perhaps in an attempt to look more sexy, but the result was lukewarm.

  "Good morning, I'm Martha Kostarakou," she said with a smile.

  I suddenly saw her in a different light. Kostarakou was my one hope of learning something specific-that is, if Sperantzas had been tell
ing me the truth.

  "As of today, I'm taking over Yanna Karayoryi's job." She said it with some difficulty, still smiling embarrassedly. "Mr. Delopoulos told me to come and see you. He also told me that you would keep me personally informed concerning the investigation into Yanna's murder, and exclusively so." Unconsciously, she let out a sigh, as if a burden had been lifted from her. She was the polar opposite of Karayoryi. Neither aggressive nor arrogant, but rather a demure young thing, the kind you feel sorry for and toss a bone to. Like a third world country that you give aid to and that can't thank you enough-until, that is, it discovers oil and tells you into which orifice you can insert yourself.

  "Why did you dislike Karayoryi? What had she ever done to you?"

  Her smile faded, her hands clutched at her bag, squeezing it tightly, and she stared at me, speechless. Just when she'd thought everything was going smoothly, I'd suddenly turned the tables on her, and now she was the one who was going to have to talk, not me.

  "Who told you that?" she asked in a trembling voice. "Yanna and I were colleagues. We weren't exactly friends, but I didn't dislike her, and I certainly didn't wish her any harm."