Petros Markaris - Deadline in Athens

"I'm sure that our cooperation will be of the best possible kind," he said, cordial once more and holding out his hand.

As I was shaking his hand, it occurred to me that I was at that moment inaugurating an agreement between the FBI and CNN and that we wouldn't catch the murderer in a month of Sundays, unless, that is, we bumped into a good fortune teller.

I left with my tail between my legs.

Sotiris was waiting for me in the entrance. Standing beside him was a young kid dressed like a security guard. Blue-eyed with closecropped hair, he held his arms and legs apart to make himself seem stockier. A chubby backstreet marine. And a lucky kid. If he'd been in a gang selling protection, we might very well have run him in. Whereas now he was working for a company, drawing a salary every month and eyeing me like a colleague.

"Did you know Karayoryi?" I asked him.

"Of course I knew her. I know them all, every one of them. My memory is like a computer."

"Forget the computers and tell me about Karayoryi. What time did she arrive tonight?"

"Eleven-fifteen. I always check."

He was playing with fire, this one. He'd no idea how close I was to the end of my tether. "Was she alone?"

"All alone'

"Perhaps she came with someone who left her at the gate."

"If someone dropped her outside on the road, that I wouldn't know, because you can't see it from here. She was alone when she got to the studio."

"Did you see anyone unfamiliar leaving the studio? Or someone you've never seen before?"

"No. No one."

"Did you leave your post at any time?"

He didn't answer this last question immediately. He appeared to be giving it some thought. Finally, he mumbled, "For two minutes only. Vangelis, my colleague, who was on duty in the boss's office, came and told me that Karayoryi had been found dead. I ran back upstairs with him, because I thought that most people are inexperienced in such matters-they might have made a mess of it."

"And you, with all your years of experience, what were you going to do? Bring her back to life?" I screamed, furiously. It seemed that this computer had crashed, because he didn't know how to answer and remained silent.

"Take his details and arrange for him to come to make a statement," I said to Sotiris.

As I went out to the street to retrieve my car, which I had left parked up on the curb, it began drizzling. That, at least, was something.

Karayoryi lived in Lycabettus, not far from the Doxiadis building. She woke up every morning, saw the wood from her window, and lived with the illusion of being in the countryside. Now, too, it was morning, nine o'clock, except that it was raining cats and dogs. The windshield wipers on my Mirafiori were working only at slow. By the time they'd swept one wave of water off and were ready to get to work in reverse, the windshield was awash again. I had to strain my eyes to maintain a steady distance from the car crawling in front of me. I missed the house. I'd almost gone past it when I saw the patrol car parked outside and I braked sharply. "Where did you learn to drive, moron?" shouted the driver of the car behind me. "Is that how you brake on a wet road? You'd have been better off sticking to a donkey!" And all this to the accompaniment of his horn. In the end, he held up the flat of his hand to me, end quotes. I pretended not to notice any of it. There was a space behind the patrol car. I backed into it.

The house was an old two-story building, yellow with orange shutters and a wrought-iron door with leaf patterns. It recalled the elegant houses on Akritas Street in the good days. I switched off the engine but stayed in the car. I'd slept for no more than two hours and had woken up with a fearful headache. The aspirin I'd taken before leaving home did nothing for me. My head was bursting and my temples felt as if they were clamped in a vise. I looked at the door to the house, which was half open. From the car to the front door was three strides, but in the rain it seemed enormous and I didn't dare move.

I must have looked suspicious to the two police officers in the patrol car because one of them got out and came over to me. I opened the door and sprang out. "Inspector Haritos," I barked as I hurried past him. By the time I got into the house I was soaking and my socks were squelching inside my shoes. God-awful weather.

The hall was small, marble-floored, and had two doors, one to the right and one to the left. At the far end was a narrow wooden staircase, with a polished handrail, leading to the second floor. I opened the door on the right and found myself in Karayoryi's study. Dimitris, from records, was standing in front of a small fitted bookcase, looking through some folders.

"Do we have anything?"

He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. "Computers," he said.

I looked at the computer screen facing the desk chair and I realized what he meant. They'd have to take the computer and all the disks to the lab to begin looking: to see what was stored, to do a first check, to print out whatever was there, and then send it all to us for evaluation. At the rate they worked in the lab, it would be three to four days at best. Long gone were the good old days when we had to deal with handwritten scripts, typed pages, notes on scraps of paper, on cigarette boxes, on the backs of old bills. We'd take them down to the station and find clues from the style of the handwriting or from a typewriter's a missing its tail. Nowadays, you don't know whether you're watching Ben Hur or reading a purchase agreement. You don't know where to start.

"Leave that to me and go and do something else," I said to Dimitris. He didn't need telling twice. He was off before I could change my mind.

The room was square, as in all the old houses. The desk was a wooden one, with carved legs. A solicitor's desk. She must have inherited it from her father or an uncle. When you sat at the desk, you could see the Lycabettus bypass through the window. The rain was coming down in torrents still, and the traffic poured on, nose to tail, horns honking like the devil. The window was small, and the room must have been dark even when the sun was out. Now, with the rain, if you didn't put the light on, you'd be feeling your way in the dark. On either side of the window were two old leather armchairs, which matched the desk.

The wall on the right was floor-to-ceiling shelves. In places the books were tightly packed, and in others they were sparse. They were arranged according to subject. I was more interested in the fitted bookcase on the left-hand wall because there were files on the top shelf, while on the rest were heaps of envelopes and papers, either loose or in plastic folders.

I'd be a real moron to waste my whole day going through that pile of paper. It was the job of the boys in records, after all, to sort it and bring me the findings. But, as if wanting to prove that I was a moron, I reached up and took down the first file. I flicked through it and put it down immediately. It was full of bills: electricity, telephone, and water bills. I took the second file down: her tax declarations. For the previous year, she'd declared twelve million drachmas net. The largest amount, 8,400,000, was her salary at the channel. I did a quick calculation. She earned six hundred thousand a month. Six hundred thousand for getting information from me and coming out with it on the screen. Whereas I, who handed it to her on a plate, had worked for twenty-five years to get to the point of earning half what she earned. Given the chasm that separated us, it was only natural that she should look down on me and that I should think she was a lesbian.

The rest of her income was from renting a two-room apartment she owned in Ambelokipi and from a book she'd published, entitled A Quiet Man. Attached to the declaration was a copy of the statement from the publishing company. I went over to the large bookcase, took it down from the third shelf, and saw that the book was based on her big success investigating the Kolakoglou affair.