Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

Adriani looked around her and let out a sigh of contentment. ‘I’ve missed it, you know. It was nice when we used to come here every evening.’

I tried to recall whether it really was nice. I was so down in the dumps during that period, so irresolute and lackadaisical, that I couldn’t recall anything nice about it. But perhaps it was. Without doubt, they were tranquil days, but tranquillity for me means boredom as I don’t know how to fill it.

I kept my silence, which could have meant agreement, and I got stuck into Loukas Stefanakos’s biography. After the first few pages, I had the feeling that Minas Logaras had written the same book twice, simply changing the names. The two biographies bore such a close resemblance to each other. Favieros and Stefanakos had sprung from the same social class and had followed the same course. Favieros had attended Primary school, High school and Polytechnic School, Stefanakos Primary school, High school and Law school.

I was halfway through Stefanakos’s student activism when the cat appeared. It stopped between the two benches and stared at me in astonishment. Then it opened its mouth slowly. I was expecting it to express its anger at me for having abandoned it, but all that came out of its mouth was a magnificent yawn, as though my presence alone were enough to cause it unbearable tedium.

‘Look, it’s as though it recognises us. That’s instinct for you!’ marvelled Adriani, who had looked up from her embroidering.

The cat closed its mouth and, with its tail erect, leapt up and sat in its usual spot, while I went back to Stefanakos’s biography.

Logaras was equally generous in his adulation of Stefanakos as he was with Favieros. But now as I read it all for a second time, I had the impression that all the eulogies were somewhat forced – as though the praise was being heaped more out of obligation than conviction. I was sure I’d feel the same way if I were now to reread Favieros’s biography.

By the time I’d finished with Stefanakos’s student years, which took up half the book, just as Favieros’s had done, it was already growing dark. Adriani got to her feet half-heartedly, and I, too, would have preferred to continue my reading there in the park rather than in the stifling atmosphere of the house.

Anyhow, it was around ten when I got back down to reading the biography, after having listened to a boring news bulletin and having eaten a plate of Adriani’s beans. Adriani insisted that we avoided red meat in the summer, which meant that we almost always ate vegetables cooked in olive oil or, at most, oven-baked fish.

The similarities between Stefanakos and Favieros continued: years of resistance, struggles against the Junta and his arrest by the Military Police, not long after that of Favieros. As I was reading, it occurred to me that perhaps Favieros and Stefanakos had met in the cells of the Military Police, but I rejected the idea because the Military Police always kept their prisoners in isolated cells so they couldn’t have come into contact with each other.

Once I got onto Stefanakos’s parliamentary career and his rise as a politician, I was impatient to see just when Logaras would start tarnishing his image, and I didn’t have long to wait.

The first innuendo came immediately after the account of his marriage to Lilian Stathatos. Logaras described how hard Stathatos worked during the first years of their marriage in order to consolidate her husband’s political profile, while she herself took a back seat; perhaps because she didn’t want anyone to connect Stefanakos with her father, Argyris Stathatos. At the same time, however, she had become involved behind the scenes in numerous business activities.

These activities were initially focused on her advertising company Starad, and its rapid growth alongside the growth of TV. Things began to get a little strange where I wouldn’t have expected: namely, with the investment consultancy firm Union Consultants that Stathatos founded in partnership with Sotiria Markakis-Favieros. Logaras claimed, perhaps with some irony, that Stefanakos had helped his wife to set up the second firm in the same discreet manner that she had employed to create her husband’s profile. For a consultancy firm dealing with European investment programs, this opened up numerous questions.

This, however, was not the main innuendo. Half a page further down, Logaras revealed that Stathatos and Markakis-Favieros had opened offices in Skopje to deal with the Balkan countries seeking accession to the European Union. A large number of the programs intended for these countries were channelled through Greece together with the funds earmarked for the reconstruction of Bosnia and Kosovo.

I finished the biography at around twelve thirty. Adriani had already gone to bed. I got a pencil and some paper and set to work at the kitchen table. I tried to make an outline of the business interests linking Favieros and Stefanakos together with their wives:

FAVIEROS Domitis Construction Company Balkan Prospect: network of real-estate agencies Balkan Prospect: network of Balkan real-estate agencies

Balkan construction companies

STATHATOS Advertising Company

STATHATOS and

FAVIEROS’S wife Union Consultants Investment Consultancy Firm Offices of this firm in Skopje covering the entire Balkans and particularly Bosnia, Kosovo

STEFANAKOS Major politician and with good name throughout Balkans

I gazed at my notes and began making connections. Both Favieros and Stathatos owned companies that were completely above board: Favieros owned Domitis and Stathatos Starad. Behind these honest and reputable companies were others engaged in activities of a more shadowy nature. Both Balkan Prospect and Union Consultants were, on the face of it, entirely legal, but the way in which they earned money was questionable to say the least.

Even more shadowy were things in the Balkans. There, through his estate agencies, Favieros bought land and property for a mere snippet and developed them in various ways. As for the partnership between Stathatos and Favieros’s wife, it wasn’t at all inconceivable that they were getting a fat slice of the money from the programs intended for the various Balkan countries on the grounds that they were acting as mediators. In the old days, you paid a few drachmas to someone outside the Town Hall to fill out your application form for a birth certificate. Now the Greeks in the European Union were getting millions from Balkan countries for filling out applications for European funding.

And then there was Stefanakos. Activist in the resistance, outstanding politician, feared in Parliament and pro-Balkan. If he had intervened from backstage in order to help Union Consultants secure funds from European programs in Greece and the Balkans, who would have dared to expose him? These things rarely come out into the open because very few are aware of them and those who are keep their mouths shut.

I put the pencil down and tried to put my thoughts in some order. Could this have been the reason behind Stefanakos’s suicide? Someone unknown, hiding behind the pseudonym of Logaras, knew the truth and was blackmailing him. And so Stefanakos committed suicide in order to save himself and his wife from the scandal. It seemed that the theory of a scandal wasn’t to be thrown out after all.

Nevertheless, there remained the question: why did Favieros and Stefanakos commit suicide publicly? Anyone committing suicide to avoid a scandal doesn’t have to do it before the eyes of millions of TV viewers. I still didn’t have an answer to that one.

I got up and called Sotiropoulos on his mobile phone. ‘That politician who told you about the relationship between Favieros and Stathatos…’

‘You mean Andreadis… Is there one after all?’