Petros Markaris - Deadline in Athens

And Karayoryi, where had she got all this from? Perhaps I'd never know, but I could guess. During the trip she took with her sister and her niece, she'd found out about the transplants by chance and had begun looking into it. She'd found Dourou and had come across the nursery with the Albanian kids. She'd realized that she was on to something and had started delving.

Sotiris woke me from my thoughts. "Mrs. Hourdakis is here with her son."

"Show them in."

Mrs. Hourdakis must have been in her early fifties. She was fat and was wearing a pistachio-colored coat that made her seem even fatter. She was dressed to the nines. Gold necklace, gold bracelets, gold earrings, and a layer of gold rings on her fingers. Whatever she'd been deprived of in her youth, she was wearing now to get even. Her son dressed at the other end of the scale. Whereas you might have expected a smart employee with suit and tie, he had a beard and was wearing a thick anorak, jeans, and casual shoes.

"Where is your husband?" I asked Mrs. Hourdakis abruptly.

"He went on a journey yesterday. I've already told the lieutenant." She appeared frightened, worried. I couldn't read her son's expression behind his beard.

"Had he planned this journey for some time or did he leave suddenly?"

"No, he'd had it planned for days."

"And where has he gone?"

"Macedonia… Thrace… He didn't tell me exactly."

"How do you communicate with him?"

"He phones me because he's always on the move."

The son listened to the conversation without interrupting. Only his eyes moved back and forth from his mother to me.

"He's continually on the move, yet didn't take his car with him?"

"He never takes it when he goes away. He doesn't like driving."

Who was she trying to fool? He didn't take the car because we'd be able to find him immediately. Public transport made it more difficult for us.

The son decided to break into the conversation. "I don't understand, Inspector. It can't be against the law for my father to go on a trip?"

I picked up the photocopy of his bank statement and handed it to him. "Can you tell me where all these deposits of 200,000 and 300,000 came from?"

I don't know whether he heard me because he was poring over the statement. "Where did you get this?" he asked after a while, as if not believing that it was his.

"Don't worry about that. We looked into your account quite legally, with permission from the public prosecutor. I want you to tell me about the amounts."

He turned and looked at his mother, but she was busy admiring her rings. He saw that he wasn't going to get any help from there and so was forced to answer himself. "The 250,000 is my salary. The rest is-extra."

"Extra?"

"Jobs I do on the side."

I picked up Mrs. Hourdakis's statement and handed it to her. "And where are these amounts from? From a fashion house?"

"My mother gives them to me," she answered immediately. "She lives with us and pays her share of the housekeeping."

"Your mother also has deposits of 200,000 and 300,000 in her account, but I don't see any regular withdrawals or transfers to your account."

As soon as they saw that I also had the statement belonging to Hourdakis's mother-in-law, they didn't know what to say and clammed up. I started to get tougher with them. "Take a look at your husband's statement. Put it beside the others!" I said to Mrs. Hourdakis. "The amounts went into the four accounts with only a few days' difference. If you add them up, they come to a million drachmas each time. How did your husband, a customs officer on a reduced pension, earn all that money? I'm waiting!"

"We don't live on his pension alone. Lefteris does other jobs, too," she mumbled.

"And does he get so much from all those jobs that you're able to put millions in the bank and have a huge house in Milessi? Tell me the truth or I'll have the whole lot of you locked up!" I turned back to the son. "You'll be discredited and you'll lose your job. Your parents will lose their house and you will all, most certainly, end up in prison!"

At which, the son turned to his mother. "I told him so!" he screamed. "I told him I didn't want him putting money in my account, but he's stubborn, he never listens to anyone!"

"Quiet," his mother whispered, terrified.

But the son wasn't willing to sacrifice his life and his career for his father's sake. He preferred to talk and come clean. "I don't know where my father got the money from, inspector. All he told me was that he wanted to put some amounts in my account and that I could give it back to him bit by bit. You can see that I withdrew small amounts of fifty thousand regularly. That's the money I paid back. He did the same with my mother and grandmother."

I took back the statements and examined them. That much was true. After two or three months, they all showed withdrawals of sums of fifty thousand or sixty thousand.

"And you never thought to ask your father where all this money was coming from?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I was afraid to ask," he said.

I couldn't hold them with no more than the evidence I had. I told the woman to tell her husband that I wanted to see him in Athens immediately and I let them go.

"Take out an arrest warrant for Hourdakis," I said to Sotiris, when we were alone. He nodded and made for the door. "Didn't you catch on to the trick with the accounts?" I asked him just as he was going through the door.

"No, I didn't think to compare them."

I called down to the cells and told them to bring Dourou to me. She was in a state of some disarray. Her dress was wrinkled, her hair out of place, and she seemed to have had a bad night. Only her expression hadn't changed. It was calm and provocative.

"I asked to see you to inform you," I said, "that you had visitors at the nursery."

A ripple of concern clouded her expression, but she kept her eyes fixed steadily on me and asked skeptically, "What visitors?"

"A couple. We told them you weren't in, and they showed great interest in one of the children in the playpen. They picked him up, made a fuss of him, and played with him."

She tried to read some kind of guidance in my face, to see where I was leading, but I remained expressionless. In the end, she decided to smile. "They must have been his parents," she said. "Which is what I've been telling you. They must have come to see him."

"They must have been Albanians who'd studied in Oxford. From what I was told, you could have mistaken them for English."

"They were Albanians," she insisted. "Because your people only know pidgin English, they took them for English. Simple as that."

She didn't know that she'd insulted me personally with what she'd said. "My dear Eleni," I said, insulting her in my turn, "the puppet show is over. Why don't you tell us the truth, so we can start getting somewhere? As long as you tell us nothing, we'll keep looking, and in the end, we'll hang a lot more on you."

"They were Albanians and they were the child's parents. You probably scared them and they took off. Do you understand what you're doing to me? You're ruining my business!"

Obviously it had been arranged that the couple should talk only to her and she knew they wouldn't come back. That's why she was so cocksure.

"Did you speak to your lawyer?"

"Yes.

"Didn't he tell you that it was in your own best interests to tell us the truth?"

"The truth is what I keep telling you. I told the same thing to him."

"And what did you have to tell him about your friend Gustav Krenek?"

"He's not my friend. He's a friend of my brother's. I saw him once, that's all. When he was in Athens."

Her confidence was back. I stood up.

"Do you want me to send someone to bring you a change of clothes?"

"Why would I want that?" she asked, alarmed.