Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

He stared at me pensively. What I had told him had caught him off guard and had lessened his composure. ‘Even if there’s some logic behind all this, what I don’t understand is why you believe that the cause is to be found somewhere in our companies. There are no deadly secrets hidden here, believe me.’

He said this with a degree of irony, perhaps in an attempt to regain his aplomb. I decided to be honest with him because, in that way, he would be more likely to open up to me.

‘There are two elements common to Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis. One is their past. All three had met during their student years, had been involved in anti-Junta activities and had spent time in the cells of the Military Police. In other words, they knew each other very well.’

‘And what’s the other common element?’

‘Their businesses. Apart from the businesses belonging to Jason Favieros and Stefanakos’s wife, Lilian Stathatos, there were also businesses owned jointly by Lilian Stathatos and Sotiria Favieros and by Lilian Stathatos and Jason Favieros.’

‘There’s no secret about all those. But where does Vakirtzis fit in to the businesses?’

‘He doesn’t, but his brother, Menelaos Vakirtzis, does.’ I remained silent to see his reaction. He looked at me, waiting for me to continue. ‘Apostolos Vakirtzis was a journalist and didn’t want to expose himself as a businessman for two reasons: first, because he would lose his credibility, and, second, because by remaining inconspicuous he could help his brother much more effectively. Menelaos Vakirtzis had a mechanical and electrical installations company and a security systems company.’ Again I waited to see whether he would say anything, but he remained quiet. ‘What was the nature of your cooperation with the companies owned by Menelaos Vakirtzis?’

He shrugged and answered indifferently: ‘We worked together on the same construction sites at the Olympic Village. We were responsible for the construction, and Menelaos Vakirtzis’s company, Electrosys, took care of the electrical installations.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, that’s all.’

Without a word, I reached into my pocket and took out a photocopy of Stefanakos’s notes and put it down before him. He read it, then slowly lifted his head and looked at me.

‘What is it?’

‘They’re some notes that we found on Stefanakos’s laptop. It says that Jason Favieros couldn’t refuse Menelaos Vakirtzis because his brother knew too much and Favieros was scared of him. So there are two questions. What couldn’t Favieros refuse Menelaos Vakirtzis and why was he scared of Apostolos Vakirtzis?’

He sighed. ‘Menelaos Vakirtzis had become a pain in the neck,’ he said slowly. ‘To start with, he forced us, through his brother, to enter into a consortium with him. We would take care of the construction works and his company, Electrosys, the electrical work. Jason didn’t want to even hear about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’re incompetent and do slapdash work. They’re always behind schedule and we end up rushing around to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Or the work they do is so shoddy that half the things don’t work and we have to put them right.’

‘Yes, but these notes are much more recent, they can’t be referring to the consortium.’

‘No. They’re referring to the security systems at the Olympic complex.’

His reply took me by surprise. ‘Do you also do security systems?’

He laughed involuntarily. ‘No, but in order to get a letter of guarantee from the bank to tender for such a big contract, you need to have a high credit limit. And Menelaos Vakirtzis owes a great deal. So he was putting pressure on us to intercede in some way so he could secure the letter of guarantee.’

‘Does that “in some way” mean that he wanted you to cover him?’

‘More or less.’

‘And you accepted, because his brother was putting pressure on you.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And why was Apostolos Vakirtzis putting pressure on you and not anyone else in order to help his brother? The banks, for instance?’

‘Because he couldn’t touch them. He could put pressure on various government circles, but they had grown tired of him and even more so of his brother.’

‘That brings me to my second question. What did Jason Favieros have to fear from Apostolos Vakirtzis?’

He didn’t answer immediately and I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to order his words or restrain his accumulated anger.

‘The real owner of the businesses was not Menelaos but his brother. Apostolos Vakirtzis collected information on everyone and everything. When the genuine information he had was not sufficient, he fabricated information himself and used this to exert pressure and to blackmail people till he got what he wanted. I’m sure that he had nothing on Jason. But how would we have been able to stop him if he began to defame us or sully our reputation on his programme or in his newspaper? We’re businessmen, Inspector. And any defamation of our good name is detrimental to us.’

‘At any rate, Jason Favieros, Loukas Stefanakos and Apostolos Vakirtzis knew each other from the time of the Junta.’

Zamanis shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but of what significance is that? If you’re looking to their common past and common struggles, forget it. After a certain point, each of them went their own way and, if it ever happened that they had a conflict of interest, you can be sure that solidarity and common struggles would have counted for nothing. Each of them would have looked to his own interests.’

Two irrational scenarios unfolded before me: three friends and comrades with a common past. The two of them – Favieros and Stefanakos – remained associates, while the third was blackmailing them in various ways in order to exploit them. The public life of the first two could explain their suicides. The third had gone a step further than just blackmail and had coerced them into committing suicide. That might have held up if the third hadn’t committed suicide too. If it was murder, it might be the case that the first two had come to the end of their tether and had killed or had had someone else kill the third. But it wasn’t murder, it was suicide. And the first two had committed suicide before the third. I couldn’t work it out, and there was no point in my thinking about all that in Zamanis’s office, so I got up to leave. This time he held out his hand.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. ‘If it’s as you say, then I hope with all my heart that you find the person who forced Jason into suicide. However, without wanting to disappoint you, I doubt very much that you’ll succeed.’

I shook his hand, without saying anything. I didn’t need his doubt too. My own was more than enough. As I was crossing the bridge of sighs, my pager, that I had started carrying around again, beeped. It was Ghikas’s number. I called him from the phone in reception.

‘Koula phoned me. Go straightaway to Vakirtzis’s house in Vranas. She’s found something that she thinks may be important.’

Koula and Spyros had gone that morning to take a look at Vakirtzis’s computer, after Ghikas had arranged it. I glanced at my watch. It was almost noon. I reflected that with the heat and the traffic I’d be well and truly sizzled by the time I got to Vranas, but I didn’t have the luxury to wait till the sun went down.

To go from the First Cemetery to Vranas at midday is not the easiest thing in the world. I racked my brains trying to decide which was the shortest way, but there was only one: from Kifissias Avenue to the new Athens ring road. It’s easy to say, but not at all easy to do, because the journey from Vassileos Konstantinou Avenue to Kifissias Avenue is an ordeal in the sweltering heat. At the section in Psychiko where the new flyover was being built, I ran into an endless traffic jam. While crawling along I passed the time reading the billboards: Maroussi-Metamorphossi in three minutes via the Athens ring road; Yerakas-Koropi in four minutes via the Athens ring road . Athens was, due to circumstances, truly the most Christian city in the world: you had to pass through fire and brimstone before entering paradise. You have to spit blood on the roads of Athens, which are either being dug up, are blocked off or are full of potholes, before attaining the paradise of the Athens ring road. I stepped on the accelerator and let rip, which as far as the Mirafiori was concerned meant fifty miles per hour maximum. The wind hit my face, but the freshness it brought was more psychological than anything, because the air was scorching.