Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

‘And now he’s making Che T-shirts?’

‘Exactly!’

A military policeman, a former torturer for the Junta, who was manufacturing Che Guevara T-shirts. Could it be that the suicides had been an act of revenge because the three men had testified as prosecution witnesses and Kalafatis had been put away for ten years? If that was the case, then he most certainly would have been blackmailing them with something from their past. And the secret must have been from the period of their incarceration in the cells of the Military Police. Otherwise, how would Kalafatis have known about it?

‘Do you have an address?’

‘Yes. His factory is at 8 Liakou Street, near the Aghiou Nikolaou Station, between Ionias Avenue and Acharnon Street.’

‘If Ghikas asks for me, tell him I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Well done, you did a good job.’

‘Eh, we can’t be having the Chief’s secretary running rings round us!’ he said ironically and hung up.

The shortest route in the Mirafiori was by way of Patission Street, then down Agathoupoleos Street and into Ionias Avenue. On second thoughts, it occurred to me that the next suicide victim would be me. So I decided to leave the Mirafiori in the Security Headquarters garage and take the metro. Changing twice, at Syntagma and Omonia, I would be at the Aghiou Nikolaou Station in no more than twenty minutes. Liakou Street was more or less opposite.

Number 8 was an old warehouse, built of stone and concrete, with small windows and a double iron door that was half-open. I pushed it open. The area inside wasn’t particularly spacious. It was just big enough for the three machines that made the T-shirts, a machine for stamping the design on them, an ironing board and a packaging machine. The T-shirts were piled all around the walls. Six women, all foreign, were operating the machines. The floor was covered with boxes, cardboard and rags, as though the place hadn’t been cleaned up for months. At the back, sitting behind a desk, was a tall, brawny man of around forty-five, with a beard and thinning hair. His build told me that he might very well have been a military policeman in his youth and I approached him. He looked up and saw me.

‘Yes?’

‘Inspector Costas Haritos.’

Nothing changed in his expression. He continued to gaze at me with the same questioning look.

‘May I sit down?’

‘Why? Is it necessary?’ he asked ironically.

I made no reply, but simply drew up a chair and sat on it. ‘You were in the Military Police at the time of the Junta, were you not?’

‘And now you’ve found out?’ It seemed that he was becoming annoyed, but I tried not to lose my temper. ‘Listen, all that business is over with. I was tried, I became famous. I went away for ten years and everybody forgot about me. I was released after six and a half years for good behaviour and I put all that behind me.’

‘It has nothing to do with you. It’s something else I’m interested in. Have you heard about the suicides of the businessman, Jason Favieros, the politician, Loukas Stefanakos and the journalist, Apostolos Vakirtzis?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it.’

‘All three were political prisoners in the cells of the Military Police when you were there.’

‘Perhaps. I don’t remember. People came, people went, how am I supposed to remember them all?’

‘You’re sure to remember them because they testified as prosecution witnesses at your trial.’

He was taken aback by the fact that I knew and, to hide his shock, he became aggressive. ‘So what? Do you know how many testified to get me put away for ten years of my life? Why do you think I’ve grown a beard? So I won’t be recognised on the street. I can’t stand being stared at.’

‘Is that why? I thought you’d grown it to look like Che Guevara,’ I said ironically.

‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked, surprised.

‘What do I mean? During the Junta, you fought against the commies and all their kind. And because of them you were put away for ten years. And now you’re selling Che Guevara T-shirts?’

I persisted in the hope that I would provoke him into opening up, but he just stared at me as though I were from another planet.

‘Open your eyes. Today’s not for commies, today’s for T-shirts,’ was his reply. ‘We no longer fight, we feather our nests. Do you remember what Pattakos used to say?’

‘The dictator? What’s Pattakos got to do with anything?’

‘Do you remember what he used to say?’ he repeated.

‘He said a lot of things. How should I remember everything?’

‘Let me remind you of one thing he said that turned out to be prophetic: Greece is an enormous construction site.’

‘And why was it prophetic? Because of the Olympic Games?’

‘No. Because, today, it’s an enormous stock exchange. From an enormous construction site to an enormous stock exchange. Prophetic words. Pattakos was right and, together with him, we were too. In this enormous stock exchange, Che is just another face that sells. Tomorrow, it might be the other dictator, Papadopoulos, or the day after, that other commie Mao with his little cap. It’s not important. Everything today is just a stamp. So says Christos Kalafatis, the right-hand man of Major Skouloudis.’

‘Skouloudis? The torturer?’

For the first time, he got angry and his eyes bulged in their sockets. ‘The Military Police interrogator,’ he said angrily, correcting me. ‘But, naturally, all you coppers looked down their noses at us MPs.’

‘Was he the one who interrogated the three who committed suicide?’

‘Yes, and they were all milksops,’ he said with contempt. ‘And I’m not saying that because they testified against me. They were miserable wimps who squealed like little pigs as soon as you laid a hand on them. Only one of them had any backbone and he was a good twenty years older than the rest.’

‘Who?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.

‘Yannelis. He was the only one with any balls. Whatever you did to him, you always had to take your hat off to him in the end.’

‘He committed suicide, too, only much earlier. At the beginning of the nineties.’

‘It’s a wonder that he survived that long.’

What did he mean? Something told me that concealed in this simple sentence was the secret I’d been looking for, but I tried to keep my composure and not show any excitement in case I scared him and he shut up shop.

‘What makes you say that?’ I asked, as calmly as I could.

‘Because he paid more dearly than all the others. Maybe the stronger end up paying more, it’s one way of looking at it. At any rate, it was a huge blow to him and it’s a miracle he survived till the nineties.’

‘What huge blow?’

‘His daughter married Major Skouloudis.’

He looked at me, pleased with himself that he’d succeeded in shocking me. And he had succeeded in shocking me, but for other reasons. Coralia Yannelis was the wife of Major Skouloudis, her father’s torturer? Was this the secret? Was this the start of the thread that would unravel the whole case?

‘A real rosebud!’ said Kalafatis with old-fashioned admiration. ‘She was no more than eighteen and would come to the Major for news of her father, to plead with him to tell her when he would be released. And Skouloudis could be very charming. When he talked to you, you’d never imagine that this same man could torture anybody. That’s how it was with the girl. In less than a month, she was totally smitten with him.’

‘Did Skouloudis say anything to Yannelis about his relationship with his daughter?’

‘Are you kidding? It would have been like killing him. And as I told you, the major respected Yannelis.’