Petros Markaris - Deadline in Athens

I watched Dourou and the girl get into the back of the van, and we set off for the station.

"Come on, woman! I have all night, but let's get to the truth of the matter: How did you come by those children?"

"Where do the nurseries find the kids? Is it the parents who bring them?"

"And where are the parents?"

"This is the third time I've told you. They're abroad."

"Names, addresses, and phone numbers, please, so we can contact them."

"I've just told you they're abroad. You won't find any of them."

We were in the interrogation room. Eleni Dourou was sitting up straight on a chair at the end of the table. Her arms were crossed, resting on the wooden top, and she was staring at us calmly, almost provocatively. I was sitting on her right and Ghikas was opposite me. It was one of the rare occasions when he left his office to be present at an interrogation, no doubt to underline the importance of it.

"Do you take us for fools, Mrs. Dourou?" Ghikas said, in a moderate tone of voice. "Let's say that the parents left their children with you and went on their respective journeys. Who would you get in touch with if any of the children needed something? Who would you inform if one of them got sick?"

"I would have a pediatrician come to examine them. And if it was anything more serious, I'd take them to the hospital. I take care of everything and the parents have nothing to worry about."

"And how is it that they are all Albanian children, not even one Greek child among them? Stop trying to take us for a ride, Dourou! Those kids were brought into Greece illegally!" As usual, I was playing Officer Bad.

She shrugged as if it was no concern of hers. "I have no idea how every Albanian or Bulgarian enters Greece, and I'm not the slightest bit interested. What I know is that they are brought to me by their parents."

"All right, Mrs. Dourou," Ghikas said, intervening once again in a soft voice. "Give us those parents' addresses so that we can verify what you've told us and you will be free to go."

Inside, I had to give credit to Ghikas. He was telling her indirectly that if she didn't provide us with the information, she wouldn't be free to go anywhere. Dourou seemed to get the message.

"I don't have the addresses, but I can give you a phone number."

"Only one phone number?" I said, with some sarcasm. "Why is that? Do all the kids belong to the same parents, or perhaps to a society?"

She was beginning to feel the pressure and was taking pains not to make a false step. "Listen… the number I'll give you is in Tirane. The parents are Albanians who can't raise their children properly in Albania. There are no doctors, medicines, proper food, nothing. So they bring them to Greece and give them to me to be looked after. The parents come every few months, see them, and then go back to Albania."

I got angry again. "Ah, another lie. One more and you're going to find yourself in really deep trouble. I'll tell you what you're up to. You buy the kids from their parents, bring them illegally into Greece, and sell them for adoption. You've set up a business in the selling of children."

"What are you talking about?" she cried indignantly. "I'm a qualified child carer. My nursery operates legally, with a license from the Ministry of Social Services. And you come and tell me that I'm engaged in selling children? What is your sick mind going to come up with next?"

"If you are a qualified child carer, what business do you have being mixed up in kidney transplants?" Ghikas said.

She had to have been expecting the question. She shrugged impressively and answered without hesitation: "I have acquaintances who are doctors, and they proposed that I send them patients from Greece for transplants."

"Who are these doctors?"

"Foreigners… Czechs… Polish… Hungarians… I know people in those countries. Is there any law preventing patients from going abroad for treatment?" She knew there wasn't. Nor were we going to be able to prove that the organs had been bought from some down-at-heels in the Balkans.

I took up from where Ghikas had left off. "What connection do you have with Ramiz Seki?"

This was the only reliable piece of information that I'd been able to get out of the girl assistant. The murdered Albanian couple were not known to her. But I'd shown her a picture of Seki and she recognized him immediately. He had never come to the nursery while she had been there, but one afternoon, when she had been given time off, she had forgotten her keys. She had gone back for them and had found him talking to Dourou. She had also told me that someone called Ramiz had called on a number of occasions, asking for Dourou.

"Who's he?" she said, but without the usual assuredness.

"He is an Albanian who killed two of his countrymen. The day before yesterday he himself was killed by another Albanian who was imprisoned with him in Korydallos."

I showed her the photograph from forensics. She glanced at it and pushed it away.

"I've never set eyes on him."

"You have set eyes on him. Your assistant saw him in your flat and recognized him."

"How did she recognize him if he's dead?"

"From the photograph. Shall I show you her statement?"

"There's no need. I have never set eyes on him."

"It's not only the photograph. We found your address among his possessions. Can you explain how Ramiz Seki came to have your address?"

"How should I know? One of the parents might have given it to him so he could tell me something or give me something, and he never got around to it."

"And they trusted a murderer?"

"All Albanians turn into murderers eventually," she answered with scorn.

We went on like that for another half an hour, getting nowhere. When we went outside, Ghikas looked at me perplexed.

"What shall we do now?" I asked him. I was trying to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, I was asking for his opinion in order to get him to commit himself. If, the next day, something went wrong with Pylarinos, I didn't want to get it in the neck again, as had happened with Delopoulos. I couldn't count on my luck every day of the week. And on the other hand, he was more adept than me at handling situations and I wanted to let him take the initiative.

"How did they get the kids to the nursery?" he asked me.

"The girl had a day off once a week. Not always the same day. It was Dourou who arranged it. When the girl came back, she always found new kids there. Every so often, Dourou would take one of the kids to hand it over to his parents, so she told her."

Ghikas laughed. "She wasn't lying. She was handing them over to their adoptive parents." He became serious. "See what you can get out of Hourdakis. In the meantime, we'll let it be known that we've arrested Dourou, but we won't say anything about Sovatzis, or about Pylarinos's businesses. Let's wait and see what Sovatzis does. Then we'll decide whether to bring him in or talk first to Pylarinos."

From my office, I phoned the Ministry of Social Services and asked for the department responsible for overseeing nurseries. The director assured me that "The Foxes" had been issued a license two years previously and was operating legally. The file was clean. I asked whether the inspector had noted anything strange about the nursery.

"In what way strange?"

"That all the children were Albanian. That there wasn't a single Greek child."

"If there's anything strange, Inspector, it's that half of Greece is inhabited by Albanians."

There was no answer to that and I hung up. It seems that the news of Dourou's arrest had already got around, because Sotiris came bounding into the office.

"At last, we're getting somewhere, eh?"

"I don't know. We'll see."

"If not, we're up the creek, because Hourdakis seems to be another dead end."