Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

I didn’t know where the Olympic Village was exactly and I decided to take a taxi so as not to end up searching all over the place.

‘Where to?’ said the driver as I got in beside him.

‘The Olympic Village.’

He braked suddenly before we’d even set off and opened the door for me.

‘Not on your life,’ he said. ‘I’ve just come from there and I was lucky to get the car out in one piece with all the rubble and potholes. Find another taxi, I’ve been through that no-man’s-land once today.’

Eventually, the third one that passed left me at the border between the Olympic Village and the rest of the world. From close up, the picture was far less inviting than that in the brochure published by the Workers Residence Organisation, that encouraged us to put our names down for one of the flats that would house ten thousand Athenians after the Olympic Games. When Adriani had seen it, she had taken a shine to the idea, but I quashed it there and then. Firstly, because I wouldn’t have been able to stand the daily nightmare of commuting between Thrakomakedones and Ambelokipi and, secondly, because the Greek public sector had far more than ten thousand political favours to repay and consequently we would be left looking on. With hindsight, I understood the taxi driver’s reluctance. From close up, more than half the places seemed in an embryonic state and the roads were non-existent. Everywhere there were mounds of rubble, excavations and potholes.

I asked a truck driver where the building site of the Domitis Construction Company was. He pointed to some tricolour houses about a hundred yards away. Their corners were ochre, their walls pink and their balconies light blue.

The site’s offices were in a caravan behind the houses. I entered without knocking and saw two men: a young man of around thirty, who was sitting at one of the two desks, and another, around forty-five, standing up. They were talking heatedly and paid no attention to me. They evidently took me for a supplier come to sell them prefabricated concrete or bricks and so left me waiting.

‘Don’t load it on me,’ said the elder one heatedly. ‘I’m not the one who chooses the workers. That’s your job. I work with whoever you give me.’

‘Can’t you steal a couple of days for zone three?’ asked the other in a conciliatory tone.

The elder one shot me a glance that was full of contempt. ‘If I steal a couple of days, it will hold up the laying of the sewer system. They bring you straight from university to the site and you think it’s like you were taught in the classroom.’

Without another word, he turned round and walked out, leaving the door of the caravan open behind him. The younger man turned his attention to me.

‘Yes?’ he said in a somewhat bored fashion.

‘Inspector Haritos.’

He was taken aback, as he’d thought me a supplier and I’d turned out to be a copper. He got to his feet quickly and closed the door. Then he stood in front of his desk and looked at me.

‘About the Kurds?’

Inside I felt thankful that he was taking me where I wanted to go. ‘Had you previously received any threats from the nationalistic organisation that claimed responsibility for the murders? I mean, were you ever asked to get rid of the foreign workers you employ here?’

The reply was categorical: ‘Never. We heard the name of the organisation for the first time on the TV.’

‘Do you know whether your boss had received any threats? Did he seem nervous or frightened to you in recent weeks?’

He reflected. ‘Nervous or frightened, no…’ he replied, but it was clear that there was something else he wanted to add.

‘But?’

He reflected again. ‘Worried… Preoccupied perhaps…’

‘Did he have any reason to be worried?’

He shrugged. ‘What can I say… If he had any personal concerns I’m not aware of them. As for professional ones, what worries might he have? All his contracts were handed to him on a plate.’

‘So you wouldn’t have said that he was on the verge of suicide?’

‘On the contrary. He was as smiling and as friendly as always.’ He paused for a moment, then added: ‘Favieros was on very good terms with the staff. Not only with the engineers on the site, but with the ordinary workers too. Whoever had a problem went directly to him to find a solution. He was concerned about everyone and everyone liked him. Okay, he may have put it on a bit, but he did help where he could… That’s the truth of it…’

‘You didn’t notice any change in his behaviour?’

‘No, other than what I’ve already told you… That he was a little worried… A little preoccupied. Though why, I can’t tell you…’

‘Where did the two Kurds work?’

‘The sewer system. With Karanikas, the foreman who was here when you came in.’ He had a hard time hiding his anger with the elder man.

‘Where can I find him?’

‘He should be somewhere between the second and third row of houses as you leave the caravan.’

What I had been told by the staff in Porto Rafti had been confirmed. Nothing had changed outwardly in Favieros’s behaviour. And yet, for him to resort to suicide, either he must have been receiving threats from the Philip of Macedon National Front or he must have had personal problems.

Between the second and third row of houses I came across a group of workers who were talking to Karanikas.

‘Inspector Haritos,’ I said as I got nearer to him.

‘Do you people come in waves?’ he remarked caustically, while his eyes told me that he would have liked to have thrown me out on my ear.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Two of your colleagues were here the other day and we lost a whole day’s work because of them. Now you’re here and from what I see we’re going to lose another half day. Will there be any more of you coming?’

‘What’s it to you? I don’t have to explain myself to you.’ He realised he had gone too far and backed down. ‘Those two Kurds, what sort of people were they?’

‘How should I know? I learned their names from the TV.’

‘Didn’t they work here?’ I asked surprised.

‘Yes, this is where they worked. But they have such strange-sounding names that you forget them as soon as you hear them. That’s why it’s much easier to call them “Albanian, Bulgarian, Kurd” depending on where they’ve come from.’

‘Do you have a lot of foreigners on the site?’

His ironic tone returned. ‘That’s a good one… Me, I don’t know why we don’t build the Olympic facilities in Albania or Bulgaria or Kurdistan. It’d be much simpler as they’re the ones benefitting from the Olympic Games. It’s provided work for them.’

‘Come on now, you’re exaggerating. You come out with things like that and you give fuel to all kinds of screwballs!’

‘Do you know how many Greeks work on this site? Two engineers and four foremen, six in total. All the others are either from the Balkans or Third World countries.’ Then, suddenly getting riled: ‘We’re a worthless lot, and we’re being made proper fools of! Why don’t our unemployed do something about it… come here and smash the place up? The only ones to do something about it was that Macedonian lot.’

‘Do you mean the Philip of Macedon organisation?’

‘Yeah, them. The Macedons.’

‘So you agree with what the organisation wrote in its announcement about Favieros’s suicide?’

He looked at me cunningly and smiled. ‘Don’t go putting words into my mouth,’ he said, as though reading my thoughts and enjoying it all. ‘I don’t know what it says in the announcement. All I know is that I have to do with Albanians, Bulgarians, Kurds and Arabs. They’re the ones building the Olympic Village and they’re building it like their own homes. What do you expect from builders who all their lives have used straw and mud to build their huts?’