Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

In the morning I still hadn’t found any answer to the question and I woke up with my head swimming. In the end, these kinds of dilemmas always come down to the more colloquial ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’, so I decided to have a shot at it, despite the limited chances of success, rather than allow Yanoutsos to get the better of me.

Koula phoned me while I was still having my coffee and started talking to me in coded phrases: ‘I’ll bring the package over tomorrow, Inspector Haritos. Unfortunately, I don’t have time today. I need to take care of some details.’ She reminded me of my late father, who used to talk in coded language when he wanted to say that there was some order from above and he didn’t want anyone else to understand. ‘There’s a personal order from his nibs.’ And he meant the Prime Minister. Anyhow, I understood that she would take up her new duties the next day. In the meantime I could start alone. It was a pity to let the day go wasted.

I drank the last of my coffee and got up to go. At the front door, I bumped into Adriani who was returning from the supermarket.

‘Are you going out?’

‘Yes. Don’t wait for me for lunch. I might be late.’

When I went to work normally, that remark was superfluous. I never came home at midday. Now that I was starting again, after a two-month lay-off, I was obliged to make it clear in order to emphasise that we were returning to the old routine.

‘I see. Old habits die hard,’ she said, going into the house.

Her vexation was understandable as I had told her nothing of the threat of Yanoutsos. If I were to tell her, she would have jumped for joy. For years she had been trying to persuade me to put in for a transfer to a quieter department with regular hours. ‘As they don’t promote you anyway, why kill yourself at work on top of everything?’ was her foolproof argument, which would have convinced every rational person.

I decided to make my first call of the day at Favieros’s residence. I was certain that none of my colleagues would have thought of bothering his family over the suicide, so it was only right I should begin from there. From the TV news reports that have become a kind of contemporary encyclopedia for us all, I found out that Favieros’s family lived in Porto Rafti, and so I set to thinking about the best route for getting there. I had no intention of paying for a taxi out of my own pocket and if I were to take the bus I’d get there in the afternoon just in time for tea and cake. In the end, I decided to combine all the forms of public transport that Athens has: I would take the trolley to Syntagma Square, from there take the underground to Ethniki Amyna and then get the intercity bus to Porto Rafti.

Half an hour later, I was going up the escalator in the underground, leaving behind the station’s marble mausoleum with its artificial shrubs growing out of granite, its grandiose announcements and its classical music that makes me feel like a European for ten minutes or so. Above, on my right, was the Ministry of Transport and, on my left, the Ministry of National Defence. In between, in the middle of the road, was a line of bus stops and a bustling crowd of people, everyone ready to elbow the other out of the way when the bus appeared so as to get on first and secure a seat. Back in Greece, I thought to myself, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

My own bus was half an hour in coming, but fortunately I didn’t have to start pushing and shoving, as it was an intercity bus and there were plenty of empty seats. The fat woman sitting beside me was balancing a plastic bag between her legs and in her arms she was clutching an enormous handbag, half the contents of which were spilling over into her lap. If we exclude some congestion from the Greek Broadcasting Company building as far as the junction at Stavros, the traffic was moving normally. As we approached Porto Rafti, I asked the fat woman whether she knew where Favieros’s house was located. Suddenly five or six people, men and women, leaned over to my window to show me what was evidently one of the area’s main attractions.

‘Get back, I’m the one he asked,’ said the fat woman, forcing them back and making them respect her priority. She waited for order to be restored and then turned to me. ‘You should get off at Gegos’s,’ she said.

‘Who’s Gegos?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘The supermarket. It’s the next stop. Then turn left towards St Spyridon’s. When you come to the bend in the road, you’ll see it on the slope, to the left. It’s a big house with a huge garden.’ She turned back and shouted to the driver: ‘Prodromos, stop outside Gegos’s so the gentleman can get off.’

All the people on the bus had turned round and were staring at me with a strange, inquisitive look on their faces. As I was getting off, the fat woman voiced the collective question:

‘Are you a reporter?’

‘If I were a reporter, would I be coming here by bus?’

My reply reduced her to silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, blushing, as though she had insulted me by thinking I was a reporter.

I turned left and after about half a kilometre I saw the house before me. It was just as the fat woman had described, except that she had been reserved about the size of the garden, which must have covered more than an acre and led up to a two-storey villa with balconies of various sizes and a patio in front with tables, chairs and awnings all in white, rather like a private cafeteria belonging to the Favieros family. The entire complex was protected by a wall mounted with closed-circuit TV cameras. The interior was visible only through the tall gate.

A gardener was watering the lawn.

‘Can I ask you something?’

He heard my voice, turned off the water and came over to me.

‘Inspector Haritos. I want to speak with Mrs Favieros or with one of the children.’

‘Not here,’ he replied abruptly.

‘When will they be back?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘They on boat somewhere.’

His accent showed him to be a foreigner, though he obviously wasn’t Albanian.

‘Russian-Pontian?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ When they’re not one, they’re the other.

‘When will your employers be back?’

‘Don’t know. Ask Mr Ba up in house.’

‘Open the gate for me.’

‘Can’t. Press button, open from house.’

I pressed the button as he told me.

‘Yes?’

‘Police,’ I said sharply

When you’re dealing with foreigners, the best thing is to use the magic word ‘Police’. They either open up for you straightaway or start shooting at you. As the latter was rather unlikely in Favieros’s house, the gate began to slowly open from the middle. I looked around for some sort of golf buggy that would take me up the acre of land to the house, but there wasn’t one to be seen anywhere and so I was obliged to climb the steps that were on the left side of the garden. Halfway up, I stopped to catch my breath because I had stiffened up with the sedentary life imposed on me by Adriani and my legs trembled at the slightest effort.

Smart chap that Favieros, I thought to myself as I climbed the steps. He didn’t go and build a villa in some expensive suburb like Ekali so he wouldn’t be accused of selling out to the system or of turning into a profiteer, but he built it in Porto Rafti so that he would preserve his progressive profile and at the same time get this huge plot of land for peanuts.

Up above, on the patio with the private cafeteria, I was met by a short, swarthy Asian.

‘What is it you want?’ he asked in a shrill voice.

‘Are you Ba?’

‘I am Mr Bawan, the butler,’ he replied in a formal tone. And again: ‘What is it you want?’

How about that? Favieros even had a steward though he went around unkempt, with a beard, crumpled jacket and jeans. Of course, this Thai might have given himself the title of butler just to increase his standing.