Petros Markaris - Deadline in Athens

About halfway through, I was already regretting it and wanted to get up and go, as if from a boring play at the intermission. Adriani's moaning and groaning made things worse. Half the time, the bitch faked orgasm and thought I wasn't aware of it. If every time it happened, I nabbed her and took her in, she'd have received a life sentence for repeated fraud. I'd look at Katerina and wonder how I'd produced a girl like that from a faked orgasm.

Adriani's groans ceased the instant I came. She leapt up and left the bedroom. She didn't realize that that was how I knew she was faking. When we come and she stays in bed counting her breaths, it means that she had a real orgasm. When she rushes to the bathroom to wash herself, as if I had gonorrhea, then she's faking.

I was holding Liddell amp; Scott and about to open it when I heard the phone ring in the living room. That was another one of Adriani's little quirks. She wouldn't agree to having a line in the bedroom because she didn't want it to wake her on those occasional nights when they needed to contact me, with the result that I had to spring in a panic from the bedroom to the living room, not to mention that I slept every night with the fear of not hearing the damn thing.

It had rung a dozen times or so before I lifted the receiver.

"Hello," I said, out of breath.

"Get over to Hellas Channel immediately," Ghikas said sharply at the other end of the line. "I want you to go yourself. Don't send anyone else."

"Is it something serious?" I asked like a moron, as it had to be serious or he wouldn't be sending me.

"Yanna Karayoryi's been murdered." I was thunderstruck, unable to utter a word. "I want you in my office at nine in the morning with all the details. Before you have your croissant." He stressed this last to demonstrate that he had his eyes everywhere and that nothing escaped him.

I heard him hang up, but I remained rooted to the spot, the receiver stuck to my hand.

I found her sitting in front of the wall of mirrors. She wasn't looking into the mirror. She was leaning back in the chair, her head thrown back, and she was looking up at the ceiling. It was as if she'd been murdered while stretching. Her arms hung lifeless at her sides. She was wearing an olive green dress with gold buttons, and she had a scarf around her neck. It was the first time I'd seen her in a dress, and I stood there taking it all in. It made me wonder what suited her best, a dress or trousers-as if it mattered now. She was all made up: eyeliner, rouge, and a faded red lipstick, like the blood left by barbecued meat. There were no signs of violence on her face and the makeup was untouched. She'd been getting ready, it seemed, to appear on the late-night news. That was strange, because they usually have the live reports on the nine o'clock news and put the rehashed stuff on late at night.

The metal rod had gone through her left side, below the lung, and had come out slanting upward, pinning her to the chair. It reminded one somewhat of the jousting of medieval knights, who ran each other through: Ivanhoe or Richard the Lionhearted. Not that I'd ever read about them as such; I only read dictionaries, but my father once tried to educate me and bought me all the "Illustrated Classics." That's how I know them, from the printed form of TV, literature as cartoons.

"What sort of rod is that?" I asked Stellio from the records department, who was photographing the corpse so that they could remove the murder weapon and Markidis, the coroner, could get to work.

"A light stand," he said, and his camera flashed four times in quick succession. He altered the angle and there were four more flashes.

When I'd gone in, I'd had a quick look around, but I'd focused my attention on Karayoryi. Now I looked around again. It was a big room. Along the length of the wall beside the door they'd fixed a bench, just like those you find in government offices or doctors' waiting rooms, except that the officials' desks were missing. In their place was a long, rectangular mirror covering the whole wall. Three chairs had been placed in a row in front of the bench. Still sitting in the first one was Karayoryi, awaiting the coroner. The other two were empty. Karayoryi's was facing the mirror. The second, however, was turned toward Karayoryi. If it hadn't been moved by whoever discovered the body, then that might be a clue. Someone had been sitting beside Karayoryi, perhaps talking to her. If it was her murderer, this meant that she knew him and had had dealings with him.

Piled in the opposite corner of the room were projectors and spotlights and various lights still attached to their stands. Some spare stands were propped against the wall. He hadn't come to kill her, I thought; he'd come to talk to her. Something must have upset him; he'd picked up one of the stands and run her through with it. But what was it that had upset him? Passion? Professional jealousy? Revenge by someone she'd exposed? I reminded myself not to be in too much of a hurry, it was still early days. But at least I had something to go on. If it indeed turned out that the chair had been in that position.

"Are you done, here?" I asked Dimitris, the other technician from records.

"We're done, all right. We're packing up."

There was a closed cupboard on the adjoining wall. I opened it. Men's suits and women's dresses; the kind that fashion companies supply the newscasters with in order to get their names in the credits and so get some free advertising. I'd worn a tie for the first time when I'd entered the academy. It came with the uniform. And I'd acquired a suit when I graduated. From Kappa-Maroussis's "almost-ready-towear department." They brought me a brown suit, covered in stitching, that was big enough for a second Haritos. "Don't worry," the assistant had said. "That's why you choose it `almost-ready.' Once we tailor it precisely to your size it'll fit you like a glove." Two days later, the ready-to-wear was as baggy on me as the almost-ready-to-wear. "It's just your imagination," the assistant had snapped at me. "You've still not worn it in, that's why." Meanwhile, Kappa-Maroussis burned down, whereas I moved up in the world and started going to Vardas, which also makes its money on tailored suits.

I looked swiftly through the clothes, but found nothing. The women's dresses had no pockets, the men's suits had empty pockets.

I went back to the bench, beside Yanna Karayoryi, who'd had the rod removed from her. Markidis was bent over her, poking around. I picked up her handbag and emptied it out onto the bench. Lipstick, powder, eyeliner, exactly what she had on. No one was going to take it off now; she'd go to the grave with her makeup. A packet of Ro-1 cigarettes and a silver Dynon lighter, very expensive. A key ring with car keys and what must have been the keys to her house. And her purse. It contained three five-thousand notes, four one-thousand notes, a bank card, and a Diner's Club card. In the photograph on her identity card, she couldn't have been much more than fifteen, with long hair and a stern expression. I looked at the year of birth, 1953. So she was forty, and she hadn't looked it at all. I kept the keys and put everything else back in the bag for forensics.

Markidis was done and came up to me. He was short, bald, with thick-rimmed glasses, and had been wearing the same suit for two decades. Either it never got dirty or he'd found a way of sending it to the dry cleaners on Sundays. He invariably had the expression of a whipped dog, whether as a result of the force or of his wife, I can't say. Anyway, it always got on my nerves.

"I'm fed up with seeing corpses," he said. "There are days when I see as many as three and four. I knew I should have become a microbiologist."

"It's not my fault that you chose corpses instead of urine," I said. "Come on, let's have it quick. I might still get an hour's sleep."