Petros Markaris - Deadline in Athens

"We have a star reporter, the leading name in crime reporting, murdered. Newspapers, radio stations, TV channels are all going to descend on us. In cases like this, the FBI works on a twentyfour-hour basis."

"I work on a twenty-hour basis. I need four hours to get myself back on form," I said calmly. "I left the channel at five in the morning, slept for less than three hours, and at nine o'clock I was at Karayoryi's house."

"What were you doing at Karayoryi's. That's records' job. I want you here."

Without a word, I put the file in front of him and opened it. I'd put the photographs on top.

"Who's that?" he said, gesturing at the defaced photograph.

"I don't know yet."

"Why have you brought it to me. It's not carnival time, is it?"

I left him wondering. It was dawning on him that the case was not one to be solved telegrammatically, in five lines, so he decided to read the letters. "Right," he mumbled when he'd finished. "Someone called N was threatening Karayoryi. It's a clue, agreed. But where are you going to find him? It means sifting half the male population of Greece."

"Unless N is the man scrawled over in the photographs."

"It's a possibility. Look into it!" he said, certain that he'd opened my eyes to something I myself would never have thought of. "Any other evidence? And don't tell me about the murder because I know how it happened. Sotiris told me."

"Her Filofax is missing. It was most likely taken by the murderer."

"Any connection with the Albanians?"

I'd been waiting for him to ask that. It would have suited him if she'd been bumped off by an Albanian. The newspapers would have made it front-page news with huge headlines as black as a mourning veil; the TV channels would have organized roundtable discussions on imported crime and would have been wallowing in commercials. Three days later the mourning would have been over, and Karayoryi's time would have lapsed.

"So far we've found nothing, but there is still her computer. Something might turn up there."

"I want you to keep me informed on a daily basis. And when I say informed, I mean that you tell me everything. Not write half in your summary and bury the other half in your report like you did with the Albanians."

"I write in the summary what I consider can be announced to the public. The rest goes in the report. That's why I send them to you together" I picked up the file and the photographs, and left feeling satisfied that I'd come out on top.

They were still waiting for me outside my office. As soon as they saw me, they blocked my way. I stood confronting Sotiropoulos.

"Let's start with you. You've been around longer than most and you knew her as well as anyone among you." Their question was answered. They realized that I'd kept them waiting there to be questioned and not to make a statement. Sotiropoulos glared at me. If I forced him to give in, the rest of the herd would follow.

"Are you coming?" I asked coldly. "Or should I have a writ issued so you'll have to present yourself within twenty-four hours?"

I opened the door and waited. He hesitated for a moment, then followed me into my office.

"Sit down." I pointed to the chair opposite mine.

"Shouldn't I remain standing, given that I'm a suspect?"

"So you take Karayoryi's murder for a laughing matter, do you, Sotiropoulos? She was your colleague, damn it. You should be the first to come forward so that we might get somewhere. Instead of which, you make an issue of the fact that we want to ask you a few questions."

My shot hit him right between the eyes. He may have hated Karayoryi, but he didn't want to show his delight that her job would go to some greenhorn who he'd have under his thumb. He sat down in the chair.

"So then… fire away," he said, serious now.

"I'm not going to ask anything. You're the one who's going to do the talking. You're an experienced reporter. You know what might be of use to me."

I'd learned this approach from Inspector Kostaras, during the dictatorship, when I'd been assigned for a time to security headquarters on Bouboulinas Street. Whenever he was sent someone new, he'd put him for a couple of days with the prisoners being tortured, to scare the living daylights out of him. On the third day, he'd sit him down and say to him: "I'm not going to ask you anything; you know what you have to say to me. If I like what I hear, I might just take pity on you." And the poor wretch coughed up everything, just to be sure. My job was to escort the prisoners for interrogation. I stood in one corner, observing Kostaras and admiring his technique. Now I knew that it was all bullshit; he had absolutely nothing to go on and was simply fishing blindly to see what he'd catch. Good luck to him.

Sotiropoulos was staring at me thoughtfully. He was trying to decide what he should say to me. "There's nothing I can tell you," he said eventually.

I saw red. "What do you think you're playing at? Don't invoke that journalistic crap about not being able to reveal your sources. We'll end up very seriously at loggerheads, you and I."

"I don't intend to invoke anything," he said calmly. "I'm only telling you the truth. I can't tell you anything." He fell silent and was obviously thinking. It was as if he were trying to find an excuse, more for himself than anything. "Karayoryi kept to herself," he went on, slowly. "She never showed her cards to anyone, neither on a professional level nor on a personal one. Besides, none of us shows our cards in our professional lives. She lived on the Lycabettus bypass. Alone. And I emphasize the "alone," because I never saw her with anyone. Whenever a group of us went out for a drink, she was always on her own."

What he said put the idea into my head again. "Was she a lesbian, do you know?"

He burst out laughing, but his eyes, behind those little round Himmler-type glasses, fixed on me as if he wanted to send me to a concentration camp. "You police officers are all perverse, like all the petits bourgeois. As soon as you hear that a woman goes around alone, you call her a lesbian." Evidently, he was making a distinction between the police and himself, who wasn't a petit bourgeois. That much I understood. What I didn't know was where he placed himself, among the leftists or among the bourgeois proper, with their Armani shirts and Timberland footwear. Most probably, he was both. We used to get by with a little soup; now we feed ourselves on salads.

"If I'm to judge from what various people said," Sotiropoulos said, "she was most likely the very opposite."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"A nympho. A slut." Then he saw that his spite had escaped its leash and he hastened to get it back under control. "But I may be doing her an injustice, because I know nothing definite. It was all just rumors."

"And what did the rumors say?"

"That she never had any steady relationships. That she went from one to the other. But she always chose men with clout. Businessmen.. politicians… mixed business with pleasure, as we used to say. But let's be clear, I've heard all this from others."

"Do you know if she was working on anything?"

"I can tell you, generally speaking, that she was never not investigating something. She was a ruthless little ferret. She poked around everywhere and stopped at nothing. She had a thing about bursting out with a story, so she never confided in anyone. Not even Delopoulos, who worshipped her"

"Was she a good reporter? I want your professional opinion, with no trimmings."

"Everyone disliked her, so she must have been good," he said. "A reporter's job is to be disliked. The more disliked he is, the better he is."

His definition applied as much to him as it did to Karayoryi. He succeeded in making me like him through what he'd said, which confirmed my opinion that he wasn't a good reporter. I kept staring at him in silence. He realized that I had nothing more to ask him and got to his feet.