Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

‘What is it you want?’ he asked again, giving a sample of his Asian persistence.

‘Are your employers away?’

‘Yes. Mrs Favieros, Miss Favieros and Mr Favieros Junior left on the yacht immediately after the funeral.’

‘And when will they be back?’

‘I have no knowledge.’

He had a foreign accent, but he spoke Greek correctly, as though he were holding a grammar book and searching to find where to put the subject, verb and object. I thought of asking him where I could find Favieros’s wife, but I rejected the idea because it might alarm her and lead her to call the police, and my secret mission would go up in smoke. I decided to limit myself to the staff and take it from there.

‘I want to ask you a few questions.’

‘I am unable to answer. I have no permission.’

I ignored his objection and continued.

‘Did it seem to you that Mr Favieros had changed in any way of late? Was he worried or in low spirits?’

‘I am unable to answer. I have no permission.’

‘I’m not asking you to reveal any secrets. Only whether he seemed different, nervous, let’s say.’

‘I am unable to answer. I have no permission.’

I reached out, grabbed hold of him suddenly by the arm and started dragging him with me.

‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked in alarm. ‘I have a green card, work permit, health insurance. I am not illegitimate.’ He meant illegal. It was his first mistake in Greek. ‘I’m taking you to the station for questioning,’ I said to him calmly. ‘And if you don’t want to answer because you don’t have permission, you’ll stay locked up in the cells till your employers come along and give you permission.’

‘Mr Favieros didn’t change,’ he said with all the willingness in the world, as if nothing had happened previously. ‘He was as he always was.’

I kept hold of his arm so as not to lose physical contact with him. ‘Did anything else change? His routine, for example? Did he start coming home later?’

‘He always returned home between eleven and eleven thirty. Later? But…’ he added, suddenly stopping as though remembering something.

‘What?’

‘He left later in the morning. At around ten.’

‘What time did he usually leave?’

‘Half past eight… Nine…’

What might that mean? Who knows? He may simply have been tired and have needed more sleep. ‘Who else is in the house now?’

‘Two maids. Tania and Nina.’

‘Bring them here. I want to talk to them.’

He went to the patio door and shouted out the two names. In less than a minute two blonde girls appeared: the one extremely tall, the other of average height, both wearing light-blue overalls and white aprons. It was blatantly obvious that they were Ukrainians. If, in Favieros’s house, the staff represented half the United Nations, I thought to myself, who knows what was the case at his building sites.

I asked the Ukrainian girls the same questions I had asked the Thai and I got the same answers. That meant, at least at first sight, that nothing had changed about Favieros that the domestic staff had noticed.

‘What time did Mr Favieros leave home to go to work in recent weeks?’ I asked the maids.

‘I told you! At around ten,’ said the butler, intervening, seemingly annoyed that I might doubt him in front of his subordinates.

‘Work’d here,’ the one of average height replied.

‘And how do you know?’ asked the butler as though scolding her.

‘I sweep upper floor and see,’ answered the Ukranian. ‘He work computer.’

‘Show me,’ I said to her. Not that I was expecting to discover anything, but it was an opportunity for me to take a look around the rest of the house.

The Ukranian girl led me through a living room with expensive marble and with little and modern furniture. We went upstairs by way of an interior staircase and at the top she opened one of the doors facing us. The study was spacious, with a large window that looked on to the garden. Here too there was scant furniture: the desk with his chair and two other chairs in front of it. Two walls were lined with books. Looming on the desk was a huge computer screen that gaped pitch black. The desk’s surface was an exact replica of Ghikas’s desk: completely empty, without as much as a piece of paper on it. I glanced at the books on the shelves and saw that Favieros had remained somewhere between the Greek Communist Youth and Rhigas Ferraios. There were books on history, philosophy, a large edition of the collected works of Marx and Engels in English, histories of the labour and communist movements and many books on economics. There were no files or folders.

I went back down the interior staircase and found the Thai standing waiting for me at the bottom. The tall Ukranian maid had gone and the other one had remained upstairs. I headed towards the private cafeteria with the Thai at my heels. He saw me descending the garden steps and was at last convinced that I had decided to leave.

The gardener was still watering. ‘Didn’t Favieros have a driver?’ I asked as I got up to him.

‘No, he drove himself. A Bimmer convertible.’

‘Bimmer?’ I asked puzzled.

‘BMW,’ he answered, casting a contemptuous glance at me for my ignorance.

I arrived at the bus station in Porto Rafti at around noon. Since I wasn’t going home for lunch, I had time to go on a second little trip that day and visit Favieros’s construction site at the Olympic Village. I asked the station superintendent where the buses to Thrakomakedones stopped and he looked at me as though I’d asked him how to get to the Norwegian fjords.

‘Try Vathis Square,’ he told me. ‘All those Third World contraptions start from there.’

As I was walking down towards Vathis Square, I felt my stomach rumbling and I realised that I had gone from my convalescence back to work without celebrating my return. In Aristotelous Street I came across a souvlaki joint and I ordered two souvlakis with all the trimmings. I ate them standing up, leaning forward so they wouldn’t drip on me, and I felt myself at last getting back into the work routine. I couldn’t care less if I smelled of tzatziki to the builders.

The stop for Thrakomakedones was in the square, but the bus standing there had its doors and windows closed. The driver was chatting with the superintendent and neither paid the slightest attention to those waiting.

‘When does it leave?’ an elderly woman asked the driver.

‘You’ll have to wait, there’s another one coming,’ was the curt answer.

The other appeared after about twenty minutes and after the five passengers waiting had become fifty. I had to use what I still remember from the Police Academy concerning crowd dispersion in order to get on and secure a seat for myself.

The bus set off but stopped every twenty yards either because of traffic lights or because of the congestion. When it was neither of these, it was because someone wanted to get on or off. Somewhere around Kokkinos Mylos, my eyes closed and I dozed off. The voices around me merged into a low droning sound and I dreamt I was still in my sick bed, in the hospital, all wired up and wearing an oxygen mask. I opened my eyes and saw Adriani leaning over me. ‘What was I thinking of when I married you,’ she said in an angry tone. ‘I’ve known nothing but worry and disappointment since I’ve been with you! If you were a big shot I could understand it. But you’re a copper. Some jackpot!’

I was woken by the jerk of the bus stopping suddenly and I had no idea where I was. ‘Are we there?’ I asked the man beside me, as if he knew where I was going.

‘Next stop is the terminus,’ he replied. I breathed a sigh of relief.