Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

I smiled without meaning to. ‘You don’t seem to have much faith in him.’

‘I don’t have any faith at all,’ was the curt reply. ‘The other day when I saw you, an idea suddenly passed through my mind. Am I right in thinking you have another two months of sick leave?’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

He paused for a moment and looked at me. Then he began to speak slowly, as if searching for the words. ‘What would you say to making some discreet investigations into the Favieros case? Find out what it was that drove him to suicide?’ He paused again and then added: ‘After all, it’ll pass your time for you.’

I needed quite a bit of time to digest what it was he had just said to me. Who would have believed that Ghikas would turn out to be my saviour, the one who would free me from the boredom of convalescence and put me back into the game? I tried to conceal my delight and at the same time not to seem to be grabbing hold of the lifebelt he was throwing me because if he realised anything of the sort, he would expect me to repay him for at least the next ten years.

‘What can I say?’ I replied, as if feeling aggrieved that he was asking a chore of me. ‘The truth is that this sick leave came just at the right time. As you know, I’ve never taken many leaves of absence in my time on the Force and this is an opportunity for me to make up for it.’ I added this with a smile in order to strengthen my position while waiting for him to go on trying to persuade me so that I might give in little by little.

He stared at me as though wanting to draw up a profile of me, as he’d learned during the six months he’d spent idling his time away with the FBI. I persisted with my smile.

‘Yanoutsos is here to stay,’ he said suddenly.

His words took me aback and I lost my composure. ‘Stay where?’ I asked like a twerp.

‘They transferred him to Homicide to get rid of him. And on the pretext that you were gravely wounded and you’re returning from convalescence, you’ll be transferred to a section with less stress and Yanoutsos will get your position.’

I suddenly saw vividly before me the look of my two assistants at the Kurds’ flat. That’s why they were keeping their distance from me. It had already got around that Yanoutsos was being primed for my job and they were playing it safe so they wouldn’t find themselves in hot water.

‘I told you, he has friends in high places and there’s nothing I can do,’ Ghikas went on. ‘But if you get somewhere with the Favieros case, I’ll be able to say “Look, Haritos has come up trumps again. We won’t get anywhere without him” and they won’t dare give him your position.’

What was I thinking of to act like a prima donna? Now he would want to be paid back twice over for the favour he was doing me. ‘And if I don’t get anywhere with the case?’ I said and my voice betrayed my fear and anxiety.

‘You will.’ The reply was categorical, without any trace of doubt. ‘There’s something not right about this case and you’re the only one who can find out what it is.’

‘Why only me?’

‘Because you’re a stickler and stubborn with it.’ His frankness was disarming. He paused for a moment and then went on somewhat uneasily: ‘Except that I can’t give you any of your assistants or anyone else from the department. If I do, everyone will find out what we’re up to and I’ll be out on a limb.’

He was right, but how would I manage on my own?

‘I can send you Koula. She’s the only person I trust blindly. We’ll say that her father is on his death bed and I’ll give her leave to take care of him.’

‘And what about you?’ I asked astonished. ‘Koula is your right hand.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’ll make do with the left one for a while,’ he replied vaguely.

‘All right,’ I said, though my initial delight had been poisoned by the worry of failure, because my job was in jeopardy.

Now that he had secured my consent, relieved and with a big smile on his face, he got to his feet. I looked at him wondering which of us would come out on top in our future confrontation. Would it be him because he would tell me that he’d saved me my job or would it be me for ridding him of Yanoutsos?

We were at the front door when, suddenly, in an outburst of unprecedented cordiality, he gave me a friendly pat on the back instead of his usual formal handshake. ‘I’ve missed you, Costas,’ he said, ‘I’ve really missed you.’

I wanted to tell him that I’d missed him too, but it didn’t mean very much, because in my case I’d missed everything apart from my own home. So that included him too, but not him personally, he was just a part of the whole.

‘It’s out of the question!’ shouted Adriani, when later we were sitting with Fanis at the table eating our oven-roasted suckling pig with potatoes in a lemon sauce. ‘It’s out of the question for you to drive that old crock in your weak state.’

The old crock was my faithful Mirafiori that had so far managed to avoid the scrapheap and was about to celebrate, humbly and without any fanfares, its thirtieth year on the road. Adriani had digested the fact that she would have Koula round her feet all day long, but the Mirafiori for dessert was too much for her to stomach.

‘I won’t be driving it. Koula can drive,’ I said to appease her.

‘It’s out of the question,’ she yelled again. ‘No one can drive that old banger apart from you.’

‘She’s right about that,’ chipped in Fanis, who was thoroughly enjoying it all. ‘Why don’t you get a new car? With all the easy instalments that they offer today, you won’t have to start paying it off for at least a year.’

‘I’m not parting with my Mirafiori. It’s still roadworthy.’ I said it with assurance though I wasn’t at all sure that it would start up again after two months of sitting in front of the house.

‘Fine,’ said Adriani. ‘But if anything happens to you, I’ll be straight off to Thessaloniki to stay with my daughter and you can get Koula to take care of you!’ In a temper she diced the meat on her plate into tiny pieces as though she were going to feed the grandchild that she didn’t have.

‘Continuation: mod. & demotic, Uninterrupted process or succession, sequel, resumption: Arist. H.A . 515b, 6 continuation of the nerves. Sor . 1/71 continuation to the embryo’s navel .’

‘Beginning: med., mod. & demotic, commencement, start. Plato Rep . 377 A the beginning is the most important part of every task ; 2. place where or from something starts. Thucyd. 1, 128 of the whole thing this was the start . Prov. What starts badly will end badly .’

The same question had been going round and round in my head all night: was the mission that Ghikas had assigned me to be regarded as a new beginning or as a continuation of my old situation? Officially, I was still the Head of the Homicide Division on sick leave. Ghikas’s assignment meant neither change nor conversion. It was simply the continuation towards the embryo’s navel as Dimitrakos put it. As though I were a tax official who took care of a few friends’ books on the sly each evening in order to make a bit extra for my holidays.

On the other hand, however, it wasn’t at all certain that I would remain Head of the Homicide Division. Firstly, because suicide is an act, the success of which is enjoyed in full by the one committing the act and consequently there would be nothing for me to cash in on. Secondly, even if I were to manage to make black appear white and squeeze some mileage out of Favieros’s suicide, Yanoutsos in the meantime would have got a firm grip on my position and would pull every string not to have to give up my chair, with its worn leather armrests from which the foam rubber was bursting out. Looking at it this way, the mission assigned to me by Ghikas was a new beginning, which had all the ingredients needed to prove the saying ‘a bad beginning betokens a worse end’.