Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

An idea suddenly came to me and I called Sarantidis, the publisher of Favieros’s biography.

‘Do you by any chance have in your hands a biography of Loukas Stefanakos?’

‘No, Inspector.’

‘Are you telling me the truth?’

‘Why would I lie to you? Besides, you couldn’t stop me publishing it.’

His disappointment at the other end of the line reached all the way to me. If thanks to Favieros’s biography and suicide he had been overjoyed at the thought of having a bigger office and his own secretary, now he was bewailing the villa he wouldn’t have in Sifnos.

The lack of a second biography left the field wide open for speculation. The most probable hypothesis was that Favieros had written his autobiography under the pseudonym Minas Logaras, whereas Stefanakos hadn’t given any thought whatsoever to his posthumous reputation.

Koula came at nine thirty. She too was carrying a plastic bag with all the day’s newspapers. ‘I thought you’d want to read them.’

‘Thanks, but I already have. You hang onto them.’

‘What, read all those pages? No way!’ she replied. ‘I’ll dump them on the way out.’

Adriani, who had heard her come in, put down her newspaper and went into the kitchen. ‘Morning, Koula dear,’ she said, as she walked past her.

From ‘Morning, miss’ to ‘Morning, Koula dear,’ with a warm voice and lips their natural size. The progress was more than impressive. It was only a question of days before the kissing on both cheeks would begin.

‘Such a coincidence!’ she said when we went into the sitting room. ‘First Favieros, then Stefanakos…’ And suddenly, as if wanting to erase the scene, she covered her face with her hands. ‘What a horrid spectacle, heavens!’

‘Highly unlikely it’s a coincidence. Most probably it’s what the newspapers are all saying: some scandal about to break drove them to suicide.’

‘And what are we going to do?’

‘We’ll carry on from where we left off.’

She stared at me in surprise. ‘And Stefanakos?’

‘Do you want a little advice? The worst mistake you can make is to leave an investigation in the middle and go off on another. The only sure thing is that both of them will go up in smoke. We’re going to continue with our investigation into the Favieros case, and if it’s in any way linked with Stefanakos, no doubt we’ll find out as we make progress. Unless we are blinded and fail to see it. So tell me, what did you find out yesterday?’

She looked at me. ‘Some rather strange things,’ she said.

‘For instance?’

‘I found three people who had bought houses in the area. Two Albanians, one in Vizyis Street, just up from Pantazopoulou Square, and the other in Aiyeiras Street, a cul-de-sac between Konstantinoupoleos Street and Aghias Sofias Street. And a Russo-Pontian, who had bought a place in Larymnis, which is the second parallel to Monis Arkadiou Street.’

‘Prices?’

‘The Albanian in Vizyis Street bought it for thirty thousand euros, but it’s a one-bedroom flat, around sixty square metres. The second Albanian didn’t want to tell me the exact price; he kept mincing his words, but from what I could understand, he must have paid about the same as the first. Besides, they usually ask one another and then buy. The Russo-Pontian is a bit more interesting because the place he bought is near Moni Arkadiou Street and it’s a two-bedroom flat around eighty square metres.’

‘How much?’

She looked at me and articulated slowly, so I’d have time to digest it. ‘Forty-five thousand euros.’

So that’s why Favieros bought real-estate agencies in depressed areas. He paid a pittance to the locals, who sold up at any price in order to get out, and asked forty per cent more from the refugees. The difference went into the coffers of Balkan Prospect, most likely as undeclared earnings.

‘And they all paid in cash,’ Koula added. ‘No cheques, no bills, no nothing.’

How else would they pay? They knew nothing of banks or accounts. They hid whatever money they earned under their mattresses.

‘It’s downright theft, Inspector.’

‘Except that we can’t prove it. We have to know how much each one sold the flats for, how much the others paid and then look at the contracts to compare the sums. Perhaps you could get him like that for tax evasion or open the buyers’ eyes so the estate agencies would end up in court for fraud. Did you find out the name of the public notary?’

‘I tried, but I didn’t get anywhere. The people don’t speak Greek. They put some documents in front of them and get them to sign. They have no idea who the notary is or what’s in the documents, nothing.’

A proper pig in a poke. They were so happy to buy a place of their own that they asked nothing out of fear that the seller might change his mind and not go through with the deal. That’s what they were used to in their own countries: if you open your mouth, you lose everything, and they didn’t know that in Greece whatever little you gain, it’s by shouting and demanding your rights.

‘There’s something else,’ Koula said.

‘What?’

‘One of the Albanians works at Favieros’s construction site at the Olympic Village.’

I hadn’t imagined the extent of the scam and I was flabbergasted. So this was the system that Favieros, the champion of the immigrants, had set up. On the one hand, he gave them work, and on the other he took back a sizeable part of the wages he paid them through the houses he sold them. If you consider that he had real-estate agencies throughout the country, he must have been making a lot of money. In Greece, he was selling them property at inflated prices, while in their countries, the real-estate agencies were doing exactly the opposite: they were buying up their houses for a pittance. And all this without Favieros appearing anywhere.

‘Well done, Koula,’ I said to her genuinely impressed, because I couldn’t believe that an inexperienced police officer could come up with all that information in the space of a few hours.

‘Did I do well?’ she asked and her face lit up.

‘Exceptionally. If I’d come with you, we might not have done so well.’

I didn’t tell her that I would have liked to have her working with me on the Force, partly because I had no idea whether I would be returning to the department and partly because I had no idea whether Ghikas would let her.

What I had to find out was whether the other foreign workers at Favieros’s construction sites also bought flats from his estate agencies. The problem was that I couldn’t go to Balkan Prospect, not because they would conceal that information from me, but because they wouldn’t know since all the deals were done by the local estate agencies. I would have to go to the offices of Domitis Construction to get a list of the foreign employees and then do the rounds of all the estate agencies and make enquiries. It would take me at least two weeks, even if the estate agents agreed to talk, because without incriminating evidence they couldn’t be made to talk. I decided, therefore, to take the shorter route that meant crossing enemy territory, in keeping with the saying that my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

The other thing I had to find out was the name of the public notary, because he was the only one who knew the names of both the buyers and the sellers as well as the actual price, since it was he who took the cash from the buyer, paid the seller and kept the difference. A real-estate scam is not possible without a trustworthy notary.

‘Koula, do you have the names of the Albanians and the Russo-Pontian who bought the flats from Favieros’s agency?’

‘Yes, I still have them.’

‘Good. I want you to go to the land registry office and find the name of the public notary who prepared the contracts. I’m going to pay a visit to Favieros’s construction site at the Olympic Village.’