Deadline in Athens

by Petros Markaris

  "Do you mean to tell me that what she did to you was of no importance and you forgot it straightaway?" Like Kostaras, I was fishing blindly to see what I might come up with.

  "Did what? That she got me taken off crime reporting so she could take my place and had me put on the medical reports? To be honest, I was better off there. There was less work and I didn't have to run around all day. Not to mention that I was dealing with scientists and not muggers and murderers."

  "Who was behind her? From what I've heard, you're good at your job. So she must have had to pull a few strings to get you out of the way.

  She understood that I was playing up to her vanity and smiled, ironically this time.

  "Listen to me," I said, adopting a tougher tone. "You were responsible for the crime reporting. Karayoryi came along, took your place, and landed you with the medical reports. Don't tell me that it didn't bother you. You might not have said anything, but deep down you were furious with her. And suddenly, one evening, somebody murders Karayoryi. And the very next morning, you're back in your old job. You're the first to have something to gain from her death. Do you know what that means?"

  She got the message because she jumped up and shouted: "What are you trying to say? That I'm the one who killed her?"

  "No, I'm not saying that. At least not at the moment. Of course, I don't know what I'm going to come up with tomorrow if I start looking. But tongues will start wagging from today. And the longer it goes on, the more wagging there'll be. So the sooner we get to the bottom of it the better for you if you want to keep people's mouths shut tight. Tell me who was behind her. Was it Delopoulos?"

  She laughed, as though what I'd said seemed genuinely funny to her. "Is that what they told you? That she did as she pleased because she was sleeping with the boss?" Her laughter stopped abruptly. "You're quite wrong. Yanna was smart and methodical. When she came to the channel, she undertook the medical reporting, but she wasn't particularly interested in it because there was nothing sensational, no hard-hitting news. Just the occasional mention at the end of the news bulletin. Inside a month, she'd got herself involved with Petratos, the news editor. It took her another two weeks to get her hands on my job. But I have to be honest with you. She wasn't only ambitious, she was talented too, much more talented than me. She came up with exclusive reports, delved into cases, unmasked people. She latched on to the Kolakoglou case and forced Delopoulos to give her the freedom to explore as she wished. Once that happened, she gave Petratos the boot. Of course, he took it badly. He would have been happy to have been shut of her, but it was too late, he couldn't say anything to her anymore." She fell silent and once again let out a sigh, as if relieved to have got that much off her chest. "No, Yanna didn't need to sleep with Delopoulos in order to have clout. She managed it with her talent. She used Petratos to get her chance, but everything else she did on her own."

  I hadn't liked Karayoryi at all and I'd branded her a lesbian. Sotiropoulos, who also disliked her, and who in his Robespierre role defended all the people on society's fringes, preferred to call her a nympho and a slut. And now this half-baked girl had come along to put things in their proper place. I began to feel a certain respect for Kostarakou, but my instinct told me not to get carried away. What if her honesty was simply a front?

  "Where were you last night between ten and twelve?"

  "Alone at home, like every other night," she said calmly, almost sorrowfully. "First with a salad, then with a whiskey, and always with the TV on." She stopped, looked me in the eye, and added with barely perceptible emphasis: "Till eleven, when Yanna called me."

  "Karayoryi phoned you at eleven?"

  "Yes. To tell me that she had a report ready for the late-night news that would cause a sensation."

  Who else had she told apart from Kostarakou and Sperantzas? If I found that out, I'd be getting closer to finding her murderer.

  "She told me something else, too."

  "What was that?"

  "She told me to watch the bulletin, because if anything happened to her, I was to continue the investigation. To be honest, I didn't take what she said at face value. On the contrary, I thought it was spite, that she was saying it to provoke me, and I hung up on her. Perhaps because of the loneliness, perhaps because of my fury at what Yanna had said, I felt suffocated in the house. I got into the car and drove around aimlessly. It was about one o'clock when I got back home."

  "Didn't she tell you what the report was going to be about?"

  "No. All she told me was to watch the news."

  "All right." I called Thanassis and sent her with him to fill out a statement. "Wait, don't go" I said as she reached the door. I took out the photograph of Karayoryi and the man she'd scrawled over. "This man here, do you know him?"

  She looked at the photograph and laughed out loud.

  "Why are you laughing? Do you know him?"

  "Of course I know him!"

  "Who is it?"

  "It's Petratos, the news editor at Hellas Channel. My boss."

  CHAPTER 14

  Mina Antonakaki lived on Chryssippou Street in Zografou. I found myself stopping every ten meters on Olof Palme Street, with time enough for a coffee before moving forward again. Throughout the journey I kept seeing Karayoryi's sister before me, sitting on a sofa, with red eyes and a handkerchief in her hand, and I grew steadily more despondent. The headache that had eased a little with the two aspirins started to get worse again. The traffic was as bad on Papandreou Avenue. By the time I turned off on Gaiou Street, my luck changed. I found an empty parking space.

  The woman who opened the door was around forty-five and was wearing black. "Inspector Haritos? Come in. I'm Mina Antonakaki."

  It wasn't often I'd come across sisters so different. If she hadn't told me who she was, I'd have taken her for a friend who'd come to lend a hand. Yanna was tall, thin, and imposing. Mina was a short, plump, nondescript little woman. Yanna was a brunette. Her sister had dark hair but was going gray at the roots. Yanna always looked at you haughtily. This woman had the look of a calf on its way to slaughter, which made you think less of her, and instead of feeling pity, you wanted to shout at her.

  She led me into a small living room, had me sit on the sofa, and then sat opposite me. I hadn't been wrong. Her eyes were deep red and she was clutching her handkerchief, but was probably too lazy to use it, finding it less trouble to keep sniffing. Her living room was like mine, like my sister-in-law's, and like all the other living rooms I've seen in twenty-two years on the force: a sofa, two armchairs, a coffee table, two chairs, and a stand for the television.

  It seems she sensed my surprise because she said with a bitter smile: "Yanna and I are not at all alike, are we?" She corrected herself in a subdued voice: "Weren't alike, I mean." She paused as if trying to find strength and then continued. "Yanna took after my mother. I'm more like my father. Though we were very close. We saw each other almost every day. You see, I live pretty much alone with my daughter. My husband is a sailor and is always at sea."

  I could see her lips trembling, and I knew I'd have to be quick before she fell apart or I'd end up picking up the pieces. "We need some information about your sister, Mrs. Antonakaki. We have to complete the picture so that we'll know where to start looking for her murderer."

  There are some questions that you ask because you want to find out something, or to trap someone or to clarify a matter. And there are others of no particular importance that you ask just to keep someone's mind busy and help them to find their feet. Mina Antonakaki fell into the last category. She attached great importance to what I was about to ask her and braced herself.

  "Ask me," she said. Her voice was steady now.

  "When was the last time you saw your sister?"

  "The day before yesterday, in the evening. She was going to stop by last night, but she phoned to say something had come up and she couldn't make it."

  "What time did she plan to stop by?"

  "She usually came around nine and stayed
for a couple of hours."

  "And what time did she phone you?"

  "It must have been around six."

  So it was at about six o'clock that she decided to drop her bombshell on the late-night news. But if she'd already made the decision at six, why didn't she appear on the nine o'clock news, which is watched by many more people, instead of waiting for the late-night news?

  "Mrs. Antonakaki, what do you know about your sister's relationship with a Mr. Petratos?"

  "Petratos?" She seemed alarmed and repeated the name mechanically. "What should I know about it?"

  "Your sister had an affair with Petratos and left him. It's no secret. Everyone knows about it. Did Yanna ever talk to you about him?"

  She hesitated and said reluctantly, "All I know is that it wasn't an affair as you or I would understand it."

  "What exactly was it?" I said.

  "That's something only she could tell you." She said quickly. Then she applied the brakes and began searching for the right words. "She didn't have a very high opinion of him. She thought him ridiculous and made fun of him. He's an asshole, she'd say, if you'll pardon the expression. But those were her exact words. He didn't know if he was coming or going. And when I asked her how a big-time news editor for a TV channel could be an asshole, she simply laughed. He goes on because he's a panderer and a yes-man, she'd tell me. He runs after Delopoulos like a little puppy and agrees with everything he says." She stopped to take a breath; her words were now coming out with more difficulty. "And when she made love to him, she felt sick and was repelled by him. A forty-year-old lump, and he still doesn't know how to make love, she'd say. I have to take him by the hand and lead him along, like a kiddy in the park."

  "If she didn't want him, why did she stay with him?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

  "Because she was using him. There you have it, straight, just as she told me herself. She got involved with him and got into Hellas Channel on a good salary. She gritted her teeth and slept with him so he'd give her the position she wanted and so she'd have direct access to Delopoulos. And as soon as she had that, she dumped him. I remember it as if it were today. It was just after her success with Kolakoglou that Delopoulos said to her, `From today, Yanna, you have my permission to run whatever story you want on the news bulletin: She jumped with joy, and she told me that the very next day she was going to give Petratos his marching orders."

  My mind went to the scrawled-over face on the photograph. She'd take him out of her drawer, look at him, and feel pleased with herself, and she'd made him exactly as she'd seen him.

  "What is Mr. Petratos's first name? Do you know?"

  "Nestor, I think. Nestor Petratos."

  So, not Nikos, or Notis, or Nikitas, but Nestor. The unknown N on the letters. Lady Luck was smiling on me, but too readily. I restrained myself so as not to fall into her trap.

  "I've kept nothing from you," Antonakaki went on, "because Yanna kept nothing hidden either. She told me everything, bit by bit." She let out a sigh. "But it wasn't only Petratos. My sister was repelled by men in general, Inspector."

  "Why was that?"

  "What can I say? She said that we women have to put up with the worst things in the world because of men, and they always do what they want to us even though they're worthless cowards. And that you should only keep them as long as they're of use to you, then you should get rid of them. `Do you know why I'm sad?' she'd say to me. `Because being a lesbian isn't my style: My hair would stand on end."

  Yanna Karayoryi appeared before me with her arrogant smile, her haughty air, ready to show her scorn for me. You see, I was in the same category as Petratos and Delopoulos and all the others. Okay, she may not have been a lesbian, I may not have got it entirely right, but I'd been close.

  "For a time, she tried to get me away from myVassos,"Antonakaki went on. "She said he was worthless too, and she made my life a misery trying to get me to leave him. But my Vassos is nothing like her Petratos. He's a good husband, a good father, and works like a dog at sea to keep us, me and Anna. Don't worry, I'd tell her, one day you'll find a man who's right for you and then you'll see that things aren't as you think."

  At this last memory, she broke down and the weeping started again. This time, however, she remembered her handkerchief and wiped her nose instead of sniffing. I didn't even try to comfort her because my mind was fixed on Karayoryi's affair with Petratos. On Yanna and her defaced Nestor.

  "All right, that's enough. You've been crying all morning. You've even got the police coming to you, when you should be running about trying to find out what's gone on. As if crying's going to change anything."

  I turned and saw a girl in the doorway. She must have been about the same age as Katerina, possibly a little younger. I stared at her open-mouthed.

  "My daughter, Anna," I heard Antonakaki say.

  It was as if Yanna Karayoryi were there, twenty years younger, roughly the age in the photograph on her identity card. She was a tall, slender girl, with the same austere beauty and the same arrogant look that Yanna had. As if nature had taken all the features of the sister and given them to the niece. The girl wasn't wearing black. She was dressed simply in a T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. She stood there, cold and haughty, and turned her gaze toward me. I was overwhelmed by a desire to ignore her, just as I'd ignored her aunt. Not out of arrogance or antagonism, but because deep down I was afraid of getting into an argument with her. I preferred the mother, who wanted to talk in order to unburden herself.

  "Had your sister spoken to you about some big story that she was about to break last night?"

  "No. Yanna never spoke to me about her work."

  "Do you know if she was being threatened? If she was afraid for her life?"

  The girl got in first. "She was afraid," she said. "She was constantly afraid. She said that one day she'd come to a bad end. She laughed about it, but deep down she believed it. My aunt was a difficult person. When she got something into her head, she wouldn't rest, even if all hell broke loose around her."

  "Anna, what are you saying?" her mother cried, terrified.

  "The truth." She calmly turned back to me. "My aunt liked getting people's backs up. It amused her, but it also frightened her. Once, after I told her I wanted to become a reporter, she spent months browbeating me, trying to get me to change my mind. She listed all the disadvantages: how the profession had become degraded, how you now had to crawl or be cunning, and how everyone else was just waiting for you to slip up. And how she made so many compromises that what she ought to have done every morning was to spit at herself in the mirror. In the end, she convinced me, and I went to medical school."

  "Anna, please! I won't allow you to insult Yanna's memory like that!"

  The girl gave her mother a cold, angry look. I felt, however, that the look was simply a mask and that the person behind it was ready to burst into tears.

  My headache had returned. I could barely hold my head up. A terrible feeling of tiredness came over me, and I stood up. I couldn't think of anything else to ask.

  "Thank you. If we require any further information, we will call you."

  The mother nodded good-bye to me, as she'd begun to weep again. The daughter got up with a blank expression to show me out. I was reaching for the front door latch when she stopped me.

  "Inspector-"

  "Yes."

  "Nothing-," she said quickly, as if thinking better of it.

  "You were going to say something."

  "No. If I had wanted to say something, I would have said it."

  She clammed up and became aggressive in order to cut me short. I realized that I'd better not pursue it. Perhaps she'd been in too much of a hurry and needed time to think.

  "Anyway, if you want to reach me, your mother has my number," I said, giving her a friendly smile. She gave me an indifferent look and closed the door.

  From Chryssippou Street, I emerged once again onto Papandreou Avenue and turned down Olof Palme Street. My mind was on the
relationship between Karayoryi and Petratos. Antonakaki had told me that they'd broken up right after the Kolakoglou affair. But the letters from N began a year after the Kolakoglou case. If Petratos was the letter writer, then the relationship must have continued in some other form and ended in threats. I made a mental note to get hold of a sample of Petratos's handwriting to compare it with that of the unknown N. The other matter tormenting me was why Karayoryi had chosen to appear on the late-night news.

  From Hymettou Street, I turned onto Iphicratous Street and looked for a place to park somewhere between Protesilaou, Aroni, and Aristokleous Streets. Naturally, I didn't find one and I began the same old business, just like every other evening: going around and around the block till I came across someone leaving their space.

  Light rain was falling, fine like mist. My head was splitting and I was cursing when, all of a sudden, I spotted Thanassis at the corner of Tzavela and Aristokleous Streets pacing back and forth and glancing first down one street then down the other. I pulled up beside him and rolled down the window.

  "What's up? Has anything happened?" I asked him, alarmed. For him to have come all the way out there meant that something truly serious was going on. He opened the door and got into the car. He sat beside me in silence.

  "Why didn't you go to my house instead of standing outside and getting wet?"

  "I wanted to see you alone."

  He took a deep breath. Somebody else who was taking deep breaths. Everyone I'd come into contact with that day was either crying or sighing. I couldn't stay put on the corner. I drove away and once more began going around and around the block.

  "I was with her last night. That's why I wanted to see you alone. I didn't want to tell you in front of others."

  I froze. I stepped on the brake without thinking. The Mirafiori shook and came to a halt, while the driver behind me started sounding his horn, enraged. But I could hear nothing. My eyes were fixed on Thanassis. He avoided them and looked out through the windshield.