CHRONIS HALKIDIS CANNOT FORGIVE HIMSELF
January 31
Saturday, 12:10 a.m.
I dropped Piertzovanis off at the statue of Kolokotronis, waited for him to take a piss on it and then lurch across Stadiou, his arm raised to deflect the oncoming traffic; drivers were drowning him in hoots, obscene gestures and abuse, but they spared his life. I stopped off at Syntagma for a pack of cigarettes, a plastic sandwich, and some chocolate, sat down at one of the tables outside McDonald’s and was soon joined by a stray dog. Eating and smoking, I managed to plan my next moves. If the bad guys find out that we kidnapped Agisilaos, they’re likely to suspect that my boss had something to do with it; that officer with the earring who had been keeping watch in intensive care could well have complained to Berios about how heavy-handed I had been. I had no idea how far the tentacles of this gang extended, which was why I had to keep my trump card safely locked up in the basement in Syngrou. I called Fotini.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, Sir; I was watching TV”
“I need a favor, Fotini. Have you still got that country house in Oropos? Is it empty at the moment?”
“Yes. Who’d want to go there in the winter?”
“Can I borrow it for the weekend?”
“Sure, but you’ll have to light the fire; there’s no heating.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
“Is something wrong, Sir?”
“No, nothing. I’ve got my son staying with me, and something unexpected has come up. You know.”
“Yes,” she said, sounding dubious. “I’ll be expecting you.”
I did not want to worry her by telling her what I was planning to do to her holiday home. The less she knew, the safer she would be. I bought another couple of sandwiches, spread them out in front of the dog, and went back to the car. Within the hour I had picked up the key, explained to the guard watching Agisilaos that he needed to forget everything he had seen recently, allowed fascist-face to relieve himself, handcuffed him, and bundled him into the back of the Golf. He didn’t say a word the entire journey, respectful of the duct tape placed strategically on the seat next to him. I decided to take the old National Road to avoid the cameras at the tollbooths. At about 1:00 we drew up outside Fotini’s dark, illegally built country house. Agisilaos showed no signs of cracking, but beyond an uncertain, “What do you want with me anyway?” he didn’t put up any resistance. I walked him to the bathroom, cuffed his ankles, and to make quite sure he could move no more than a few centimeters, I used a chain to bind the cuffs around his feet to the pipe leading to the immersion heater. I also ensured that the neighbors would get a good night’s sleep by slapping a piece of miracle-working duct tape across his mouth and promised him we could have a nice long chat about anything he liked in a few hours’ time. As I pulled the door to his cell shut behind me, it occurred to me that I was in danger of becoming just like him; but I had forgotten all about it by the time I had turned the key twice in the lock. I slid into a narrow sofa and punched out Dedes’s number on my cell. The subscriber I was trying to reach had turned off his phone. I assumed he had followed Berios onto some domestic flight and had complied with the guidelines regarding cells. We had spoken about two and a half hours earlier, he was bound to call any minute. I could hear the waves lashing against the rocks in the distance. I took off my coat and spread it across my chest.
“Why didn’t you let me swim?”
“It’s very dark, young man.”
“So?”
“The sea is dark.”
“But the moon is out.”
“It’s yellow.”
“Yes, but it is giving off some light.”
“The sea is black, stupid. It doesn’t want us right now. It’s sleeping.”
“I’m going in. Just for five minutes.”
“And I’ll be afraid for five minutes.”
“You’re always afraid, Sonia.”
“You’re mean.”
“Sorry.”
“Fine. Jump in, then. But don’t go too far out. I don’t want to lose sight of you.”
“I adore you too—provided I can see you.”
I woke up on the floor. A dim light was fighting its way through the crumbling shutters. I looked at my watch: 9:10. It was a struggle just to stand up. I splashed some water on my face, and drank water straight from the basin tap. Agisilaos was in exactly the same position I had left him in, but the look he gave me was not as terrified. as I would have liked. The stench of urine forced me to close the door. I tried Dedes; his phone was still off. I lit a cigarette, heated the powder, snorted a couple of lines, and tried to keep my sense of panic in check. It was not easy. I tried his official cell. That was switched off too. I tried his home number and hung up on the twentieth ring. I snatched my coat and rushed out of the house to the car, intending to drive to the airport. Next to the gear stick, my other phone sighed under the burden of six missed calls—all of them from the chief. My hands were shaking but I somehow managed to press the right keys.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“I was asleep. I didn’t hear it ring.”
“Come to Alexandras. Now!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Dedes has killed himself.”
*
I didn’t do more than seventy. I stuck to the right lane and did some thinking. Just outside Varibobi, I pulled over, rolled a joint, and smoked it quietly, trying to come to a decision about my future. It was not at all difficult.
“You’re late. Where have you been?”
“To hell,” I said, and sat down opposite him.
The chief coroner and the heads of Forensics and Criminology restricted themselves to simple shakes of the head.
“What’s going on?” I said, lighting up. In the circumstances, none of these four nonsmoking colleagues of mine felt able to protest.
Criminology assumed the task of narrating the events, trying to rise to the tragedy of the occasion, to the tragic loss of a policeman, especially one who had always exhibited the requisite seriousness and professionalism.
Dedes had been discovered in a parking lot off Marathonos Avenue by a truck driver who spotted him slumped over his steering wheel. He knocked on the window, got no response, opened the door, tried to shake him, and as soon as he saw the hole made by the bullet that had lodged itself into his right temple, he threw up. That was at 2:30 this morning. The coroner confirmed that the bullet had come from his duty gun, and put the time of death between 11:00 and 2:00. Forensics had found no evidence to point to anything other than suicide.
“He was a good lad,” I said as soon as they had finished filling me in.
“Chronis—were you aware of anything? Was he under a lot of pressure? Having problems?”
“No, he was absolutely fine, Chief.”
“What cases had he been on?”
“Our annual report to Parliament.”
“Did he have any enemies?”
“I don’t know. He was a policeman, wasn’t he?”
“Alcohol, drugs, debts, whores?” ventured Criminology’s answer to Hercule Poirot.
“My men are pure as the driven snow, Brigadier.”
The Chief declared the meeting over, stressing that in view of the forthcoming Olympics it was crucial to keep the matter quiet. He asked me to stay behind; I told him I would be back in two minutes and ran to catch up with Forensics at the elevator.
“I want you to bring me his cell right away.”
“He didn’t have it on him, Mr. Halkidis.”
“You’re joking.”
“We turned his car inside out. We didn’t find his phone.”
“Where is his car now?”
“In the garage. Feel free to take a look at it whenever you want.”
“Fax your report through to me at my office and e-mail me your photographs. Now. We’ll deal with his house.”
“The pictures might take a while.”
“Be as quick as you can,” I said, stressing the imperative. Not that it made any difference now.
I went to the men’s room and realized I had left my cut straw in the Golf, so I settled for rubbing the powder gently into my gums. When I got back to his office, the Chief was on the phone; I asked his secretary for an orange juice and waited, listening to him exhaust his impressive repertoire of “yes”s, “indeed”s, “of course”s, “certainly”s, and “absolutely”s. He hung up and looked across at me like a dog that had just been kicked.
“Chronis, I’ve had enough. The minister is interested in one thing and one thing only—do you know what that is? That news of our dear departed colleague is kept out of the papers. As for television news, forget it. He has already been on to the owners. He says we cannot expect to host the Olympics successfully while our police officers are running around blowing their brains out.”
I waited for his secretary to leave the juice and biscuits on the table and close the door behind her.
“Chief, Dedes phoned me last night at around 11:00. He was in my neighborhood and asked me if I wanted to go and have a souvlaki with him. I told him I had a more attractive offer than his, and he hung up, laughing. He did not sound like a man who would off himself within the hour.”
“Yes, I know, but we’ve seen stranger.”
“Yannis—his phone has disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? Do you really believe that he phoned me, got upset because I wouldn’t join him for a souvlaki, drove all the way to Mesogeia in the middle of the night, and killed himself after carefully disposing of his cell?”
The shock and then anger writ large across his face convinced me that the chief had absolutely nothing to do with Berios, or with Dedes’s murder. He went up to the window, threw it wide open, and left me staring at his back. I drank my juice and lit up.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he said without turning around.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said, innocence personified.
“What do you make of this? Personal differences? Terrorists? The Secret Services, the CIA, Al-Qaeda? Who the fuck did it?”
“No idea, Chief.”
He turned around and flopped heavily into his chair.
“I think I’m going mad,” he said.
Over the years, I had come to realize that if there was one thing he could not stomach, it was losing one of his men. My timing could not have been better.
“I’ll instruct Forensics to treat it as a homicide. I’m sure they’ll turn up something. There must have been more than one of them. If it does turn out to be murder and not suicide, what do you want me to do?”
“I want their heads on this desk,” he said quietly.
“I’ll need at least twelve men.”
“You can have twelve thousand.”
“And absolute secrecy.”
His mind was elsewhere. I took the crack of the pencil he broke in two with the fingers of his left hand as his scrawl on the dotted line.
I phoned Piertzovanis from the waiting room telephone.
“Buy yourself a new cell. Charge it and call me from a public phone booth. We have news.”
He did not argue.
*
By 4:00 the operation had been organized to the last detail. The prosecutor willingly cut all the red tape to secure the legality of our movements. Someone would be posted around the clock at Sonia’s bedside. We did not intend to let Berios out of our sight for one second and we were to bug everything: phones, car, house, and get everything, even the sound of his cistern flushing. A well-equipped team of five was on twenty-four-hour alert. Kourkouvelas, who had rushed back from Argos the minute he got the news, was to coordinate everything from Syngrou. Piertzovanis and I were to keep up the dirty work. He phoned. I broke the bad news, and told him to keep calm until we met.
At around 4:30 I got home, had a bath, changed my clothes, and sat down to my fifth coffee of the day at the kitchen table with a sketchpad and a black pencil. The time had come for me to draw my thoughts.
My only leads so far were Agisilaos and Berios. If only I could take the chief some solid evidence of Dedes’s murder—I was convinced it was Berios and his men—I would appeal to his conscience and persuade him to tell me who was putting pressure on him to cover up the arson. At least I would have serious reasons for persuading him. There was no doubt that at the top of the pyramid the activities of Berios and the neo-Nazis converged with those of the big guns who did not want me sniffing around the burned house. Both kidnapping Agisilaos and tailing Berios had prompted knee-jerk reactions and led to Dedes’s murder, to the fatal mistake that untied my hands and put me back in the game. There was nothing on the television news about it. The minister obviously had his means, his ways. Right now Kourkouvelas and our top psychologist would be accompanying Dedes’s parents to the morgue. He would be trying to sell them the ridiculous story about the suicide, while inwardly vowing that in a few days from now he would be able to tell them who had killed their son. The two of us had been out to the parking lot on Marathonos where he had been found, with a bunch of roses. Red, on Kourkouvelas’s insistence.
“We might not have seen eye to eye about politics, but he had a heart of gold. He used to give me films to watch, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. What kind of films?”
“Old films: Italian, Hungarian, German. Ones he had recorded from the television. What should I do with them now?”
“Keep them for your kids.”
“We’ll find them, won’t we?”
“Yes, Thomas, we’ll find them. You have my word.”
It wasn’t about revenge. It was about honor. At least that was what it suited me to think.
At 5:30 I pressed Piertzovanis’s doorbell. Rania opened.
“He’s been in the bath for the past hour, reading. He hasn’t had a drop,” she announced, anticipating my question.
“Does he read in the bath?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed three oranges for me, made coffee for herself and Simeon, and knocked on the bathroom door.
“Coming,” came a snarl from within.
“He told me you think you know who killed him.”
I nodded.
“So what are you going to do?”
“My best.”
“Simeon shouted at me earlier, but I don’t care. I’m here if you need me. I’ll do anything. I’m serious.”
I smiled and took a sip of my juice.
She went into the kitchen shouting to Simeon to get a move on. He appeared almost instantly, clean-shaven, neatly combed, and smelling of aftershave.
“What was our lawyer studying?”
He tossed the book he was holding at me. I snatched it out of the air; it almost came apart in my hands.
The Line of the Horizon. I opened it and my eye fell on the dedication:
To the man who almost became my friend, who almost became a lawyer, and who almost got lucky.
Respectfully yours,
C.
Underneath it somebody had written in pencil:
Do not stop praying as long as, by God’s grace, the fire and the water have not been exhausted, for it may happen that never again in your whole life will you have such a chance to ask for the forgiveness of your sins.
—John Climacus
“I glance through it every now and then when the going gets tough,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I find it very enlightening.”
“I’ve made some coffee,” said Rania.
Simeon was still standing up; his eyes fixed on me. I carefully put the book down on the table.
“Chronis, does it occur to you that we might be responsible for what’s happened?”
“I haven’t had time to think about it; I prefer to . . .”
“That’s a very aristocratic way of dealing with things.”
“Simeon, I will mourn the loss of my friend as soon as I’ve finished with the people who killed him.”
“As soon as you’ve finished with them, or as soon as you’ve finished them off?”
“As soon as I have taken them to the prosecutor. I’ve been doing everything by the book. Nobody’s going to stand in my way.”
He burst out laughing.
“What if the prosecutor says exactly what your Chief told you a few days ago: ‘Leave it to us—we’ll take it from here’?”
“In that case, I won’t bother you anymore, and you’ll read all about it in the papers.”
“‘Psycho cop takes law into own hands’?”
“Or ‘Mysterious deaths of prominent men,’” Rania suggested, trying to lighten the atmosphere. She was partially successful, which gave me an opening to bring out my diagram and put it on the table. I left them with it while I dashed to the toilet for essential refueling.
“So what do you want from me now?” Simeon said when I got back. I was now confident that I could talk him into coming on board with me if I wanted to.
“I want you to play the prosecutor one last time. You give Agisilaos some sort of spiel that will persuade him you’re not really after him at all but want the man who ordered him to burn down the house—most likely Berios. You promise him that if he testifies under oath we’ll only use him as a prosecution witness if the case goes to trial. You’ll let him think that it most probably never will because the powers that be don’t want their names dragged through the mud by having to prosecute police officers who get too carried away with noble yet extreme ideas. He’ll go along with it, we’ll take him over to Syngrou, and then you can slip out of role and let the real prosecutor step forward. Don’t worry about anything else. If I can manage to connect the arson with Berios, there’ll be no stopping me.”
“And after that someone will whisper in your ear that if you ever want to see your son grow up, you could do worse than take early retirement and discover the joys of amateur angling.”
“Not if I can get Agisilaos’s confession, and maybe Berios’s as well, into a serious paper first.”
“Oh dear! You obviously haven’t read your Kafka.” Simeon yawned and went into the kitchen. The sound of liquid cascading into a glass was heard.
“Leave off that fucking stuff, will you?” Rania shouted at him.
“You should forget about Pavese and turn to Bukowski, you know. At least he didn’t off himself,” the lawyer said, standing there caressing the glass holding his favorite liquid.
“Nice promises you make,” she said glumly.
“You can’t have everything.”
“Oh, please, shut up.”
“Blood thirsts, it seeks revenge,” he said, closing his eyes and draining the glass in three gulps.
I despised him. Rania, a grim look on her face, suddenly jumped up, grabbed the birdcage, and shut herself in the bedroom. Simeon wiped his eyes which had started to water and in a hoarse voice said to me, “That was the last one tonight. Let’s go, and what will be will be. But I want to see Sonia first.”
*
Piertzovanis’s voice was steady. “The good news is that there have been no complications. They are going to move her from intensive care. The consultant told me that he had received instructions from the hospital administrator to give her a private room. Apparently the Ministry of Health has taken an interest.”
“Yes—I told the chief to arrange it this morning.”
“The bad news is that she can’t speak.”
We were having a cigarette in the hospital cafeteria. On the bench next to ours, a teenage Gypsy girl was trying to soothe the sobs of her barefoot infant. Opposite us, Mt. Pendeli was smothered in a black cloud.
“What do you mean she can’t speak?”
“It might be shock. One of the nurses noticed this morning. She was changing her drip and Sonia tried to say something to her. She was very animated and appeared to be in touch with her surroundings. Her eyes flickered, but she could not say anything. Then she started weeping silently, and fell asleep. When I went to see her, she was still sleeping.”
“Will it come back? Will her voice come back?”
“Do you ever hear voices, young man?”
“What sort of voices? Like Joan of Arc?”
“Yes, why not?”
“Never.”
“Good. You’re healthy, then. I don’t hear them either.”
“So what made you think of it?”
“I went to my ENT this morning for my annual checkup on my vocal chords, my tool box, as he calls it. He said they were fine, despite the exertions of the summer. But then he suddenly started saying all sorts of dumb things. I forgot to tell you, he’s a great theater lover, and he treats all the big names in the business, TV presenters, opera singers too. What was I saying?”
“That your doctor was saying all sorts of dumb things.”
“That’s right. Just as I was paying my bill, he started saying that we artists have got two voices, one that’s audible to mere mortals, and another one that only we, the divine artists, can hear, and he advised me to take care of my second, secret voice.”
“That’s the second bell.”
“Okay, I’m ready. So I said to him, ‘That’s bullshit, doctor. I’ve been waiting to hear my first voice for the last thirty years, and haven’t heard it once, and you want to burden me with a second one?’ What’s so funny?”
“Didn’t we agree that there’d be no drinking in the morning?”
“I swear on my life, I’ve only had one miserable glass of milk.”
“Don’t swear on anything; in approximately two hours from now, the playwright will be killing you off.”
“And in three you’ll be lusting over my dead body?”
“Third bell.”
“Have we got a full house?”
The minute I had left Kifissia and these memories behind me and pulled out onto the motorway, I realized that I was being tailed by a green Polo.
“What the hell?” I said, slowing down.
“What is it now?” Piertzovanis was telling the worry beads on a string Rania had given him as a peace offering.
“Someone wants to know where we’re going.”
“Let’s pull up at a parking lot,” he said in a voice suggesting he’d been raised on dangerous missions in war zones, and turned around to take a look at our pursuers.
“It’s a green Polo,” I said. “Middle lane, five, six cars behind us.”
“Is that girl completely out of her mind?”
“What girl?”
“You’re quick, aren’t you? Rania, who do you think?”
I slowed down even more and let the Polo approach. The lawyer was right. Rania had tried to disguise herself with a pair of dark glasses and a cigar between her teeth.
“What do you want me to do? I don’t want to get involved in your personal life.”
“More to the point, what do you think I should do?”
“Looks like she’s in love with you.”
“She can’t be that stupid. It’s a game. She’s fooled herself into believing she’s in love and now she’s playing the part. Just pretend you haven’t seen her. I’ll get rid of her later.”
“What did you say her father did?”
“Piss off, Halkidis.”
I got to 120, and managed to lose her. Simeon tuned in to Radio Avlida: “What have you done to me? / What will I do to you? / Passion always leaves us unsatisfied.” I shot him a filthy look. He ignored it.
“Are you considering a serious relationship with her?” I said just outside Oropos.
“Does she really strike you as the sort of girl who longs to change bedpans for an old man?”
“No, but . . .”
“Just drive then. And make sure you change that exhaust tomorrow. I’m getting high sitting here.”
“I’d give it serious thought if I were you.”
He changed stations, turned up the volume to drown out my useless advice. The green Polo was back on my bumper. Rania was moving her head rhythmically, possibly in time to the same music we were listening to, vintage Bob Marley.
*
Agisilaos was in a semicomatose state. His eyes were bloodshot from crying, his lips cracked from thirst, his wrists purple where the handcuffs had cut into his flesh. Piertzovanis gave him a kick and relieved himself of the water he had drunk on the journey to the men’s room, at the same time criticizing me in no uncertain terms about the treatment of prisoners. We carried the young man into the sitting room, put him down in an armchair and sat opposite him. The “prosecutor” ordered me to remove the handcuffs and pulled the curtain back a fraction. He admired the landscape and turned to look at me.
“Right. This shouldn’t take long; after all it is Saturday night.”
Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik interrupted him. He searched his inside pocket for his cell, put his finger up to his lips to command silence, and said conspiratorially, “Hello, Mr. President.” He listened to the caller for a while, contributing the occasional “of course,” “there’s no question of that,” “no, we won’t be put in that position,” “we are in complete control of the witness” by way of reassurance. He wound up his call with a servile “I’ll definitely be following your speech in Komotini next Sunday.” I had my back to Agisilaos throughout the conversation so he couldn’t see my face. I knew it was Rania on the other end. She obviously thought that a call from “the president” would bolster our attempts to be convincing. We had told her to wait outside, which she did under protest, whining like a ten-year-old. She did not have much faith in our deranged-police-officer/alcoholic-lawyer combo, but Simeon managed to reassure her with the promise of a long weekend in Thrace. She was thrilled and I crossed myself: obviously I did not have a clue what appealed to young people these days.
Piertzovanis turned off his cell, sat down in a chair and watched me position a camera on a tripod opposite Agisilaos. I set the microphone up on its base, put it down on the table and after the necessary tests, watched over by the little fascist with a glazed look, sat down and declared everything ready to go.
Simeon once again played his part to perfection, finely balancing the formal stiffness of the lawyer and the lightness of someone who knows that they are holding all the cards. Agisilaos responded stoically to his questions, and after three quarters of an hour, we were confident that we knew as much as he did.
The gang had formed in 2002, after Agisilaos had been arrested at a football match. Apparently he had broken the arm of some stoned fan of the rival club, and Berios, who had questioned him, realized that it would be easy to manipulate this brainless pretty boy for his own ends. He let him go, gave him some pocket money (out of secret police funds) and helped him recruit the hard core of the gang. They called it the Order of the Black Wave and drew up a list of sickening rules that defined its strict nationalistic principles. From what the astrophysicist activist had told us, together with everything the blond had blurted out at the burned house, this was just one aspect of the Black Wave’s activities. Agisilaos mentioned about ten kiosk and mini-market break-ins, car thefts, small-time coke deals, pimping for the wealthy of all genders, and even selflessly aiding the police in their efforts to break up student demonstrations. It was always Berios who determined the targets and gave the orders. The siege of Simeon’s house had begun in the spring of 2003. They had given the job to some kids, as a kind of trial run, their qualifying exams before they could be admitted as full members of the gang. The Saturday before, Berios had called Agisilaos and told him to chuck a few Molotov cocktails into the garden, because the “fucking blacks” who lived in the house had had the nerve to go and complain to the police. He said that he would love to join the party, but had to go and supervise security arrangements at a match up in Thessaloniki. The young bloods carried out their mission and only discovered what had happened the following afternoon. Berios phoned Agisilaos and very calmly set out an escape plan for the four arsonists. The three kids who had helped their boss turn the house in to a blazing inferno, he could hide. Agisilaos would be taken care of by a trusted police friend of his who would drive him to the monastery.
I asked him to describe that officer: forty-five, strong Macedonian accent, well dressed with a white tuft in his black hair, drove a white Lexus. He had dropped him off with the abbot and vanished. Since then, Agisilaos had not had any communication with any of them. Two days ago, when the eccentric life of the monastery started to get to him, he made the fatal mistake of phoning the blond.
I switched off the camera and went to the toilet for a quick snort. When I got back, Simeon was standing over Agisilaos, who had hidden his face in his hands.
“I swear to you, I regret it now. We didn’t mean to harm anyone. I can’t understand how it happened. It was an accident.”
Piertzovanis kneeled down, leaned in toward the worm and said to him in a fatherly tone, “Look here, son. I’ll stick to my side of our agreement. You go along with the police brigadier so we can get the formalities out of the way, and tomorrow you’ll be a free man.”
Agisilaos took his hands from his face and looked at me in terror.
“I don’t want to die,” he sniveled.
Simeon laughed.
“Now listen and don’t interrupt me again. We might not be on the same side here, but unfortunately this is a delicate situation. It would be really easy to have you up on three counts of premeditated murder, which means that you’re talking thirty years, and that’s with a really nice judge. With a not so nice one: life. Now I know that it was an accident. I believe you, but the judge and jury, the jury mainly, are not going to be half so open-minded. Do we understand each other?”
Agisilaos nodded. Simeon drew everything to a close.
“Young man, I’d like to thank you for your cooperation. You can sort out everything else with the brigadier here.”
Simeon signaled that he would be waiting for me outside and swaggered out, full of pride. I put the camera away, put the cuffs back onto the penitent Magdalene, locked her in the bathroom after reminding her to be good, and walked out in to the freezing cold. Simeon was inside the Polo talking to Rania. I stuck the camera in the trunk of my car, lit a cigarette, and tried to listen to the waves. They sounded too remote to give me the least comfort. I carried on smoking, trying to think of a reason why I shouldn’t rid the world of the murderer sitting sniveling in the bathroom. I could not think of one—apart from my own tiredness. I stubbed out the cigarette in a pot with a dead plant in it and squeezed into the back seat of the Polo.
“Happy, boss?” Piertzovanis said.
“You believe him?”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes, I do. But that’s not reason enough not to kill him.”
Rania looked at me in the mirror, obviously alarmed.
“You don’t mean that, do you?”
“No,” I said and asked her for a cigarette. She lit one and passed it back to me.
“When are you going to nab Berios?” Piertzovanis asked.
“Monday. I’ll be in Crete tomorrow. I can’t possibly miss Dedes’s funeral.”
The windows had steamed up from all the smoke and breath. After a while, Rania wound her window halfway down and turned to me.
“From what little Simeon has told me, it seems this stupid gang hadn’t done their homework properly and burned those four people by mistake.”
“Something like that,” I said.
“So why do the big bosses want to hush the whole thing up?”
“Probably because they were aware of the existence of the Black Wave, and in fact found them to be rather useful. I find it hard to believe that Berios would have acted completely independently, without telling anyone. It’s very handy having some idiot thug at your disposal, who you can arm and control from the sidelines. It’s quite something. Have you any idea what it means to break up a demonstration just like that by sending in a dozen troublemakers in balaclavas to burn a couple of banks and a few cars? Or to cause havoc at a football match and let the public gawp at the destruction on the TV later?”
“Or publicly burn all the books you don’t approve of?” came the trembling voice of Simeon.
“Go easy on the sermons, will you?”
“And disposing of irritations like Dedes?” he went on, still buried in his overcoat. “It comes down to fear, Chronis. Being able to frighten the little people like us. That is what it is.”
“Well, I can’t believe that the chief of police is protecting gangs like that. I just don’t buy it,” Rania said stubbornly.
“Who told you he knows anything about it? There are cells, my dear girl. Whoever gave the order to cover up this crime might be the last person anyone would suspect.”
“Like a politician, you mean?”
“No, they’re too frightened of getting their hands dirty.”
“Unless money is involved,” Simeon said.
“No different from the rest of us, if you think about it.”
“I’m tired.”
“Tell me about it.”
*
I left a €10 note with a policeman to get the famished Agisilaos something to eat and told the guard in charge not to allow the prisoner to come into contact with anyone else at all. After locking myself in my office, I had a couple of lines before phoning Kourkouvelas. He told me that Berios had not left the house at all, but that he was on duty at the Aigaleo stadium the next day. I told him about Agisilaos’s confession, and was very happy to accept his offer of a lift to the airport in the morning. We were flying at 8:00; Dedes’s village was just outside Sitia and the funeral was at 3:00. We would return to Athens on the first flight out on Monday. I lit a cigarette and unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk. Why did I keep all these relics of Sonia hidden here instead of at home? Perhaps deep down I was scared that they might suddenly come to life at home and get out of control, sneak into my bed, dirty the walls, and break the windows, count the five floors separating the balcony from the street below. I picked up one of the notes she would leave me at the reception desks of the many hotels that we stayed in that long summer of ’97. It was a game she played. “When I’m a big Hollywood star, these little words will be worth a small fortune! Make sure you don’t throw them away—you’ll be ensuring a comfortable old age for yourself.”
Nineteen envelopes tied together with a thick purple hair ribbon she had chosen at the start of the Electra tour, at some dismal fair in Grevena, together with a clockwork hare, which she gave to a deejay at a seedy nightclub the same evening just to make me jealous. The envelope I chose bore the hotel stamp, Rhodes Beach, and the note inside was written on a tissue.
I’m giving an interview this morning to some big-shot local journalists. Then I’m planning a spectacular drowning in the filthy swimming pool. Are you going to be there to save me or are you going to take those washed-out little girls from the chorus down to the beach? Either way, if I haven’t seen you by noon, I’ll break into your room and I’ll sit there and wait for you, and then I’ll fire you! Understood?
Sonia
I pulled out a second note from the New Hotel, Sparta. And a third, the Filoxenia in Kalamata. I stopped at the ninth. That was what I was looking for. Hotel Akti in Siteia.
And what am I looking for?
What am I looking for?
A chance to get to heaven . . .
Please don’t come to my room tonight. I’ve got an anniversary I need to celebrate alone. I love you,
Me x
However hard I tried, I could not get her to tell me what that anniversary was.
I called Fotini and asked her to book me a single room at the Akti, locked the forbidden fruits back in the drawer, and left.
I got home at about the time most people are getting ready to leave for an expensive night out. I rolled a joint, put half a package of spaghetti into boiling water, had a warm shower, ate a plateful, rolled another joint, and smoked it lying on my back. I closed my eyes and soon came under attack from a kindergarten kid with brilliant white curly hair who was pointing my Beretta at me. I drifted off nursing the hope that he would not find the strength to pull the trigger.
Saturday, 11:35
Who’s that young man? A nurse? Most probably. What else could he be? What’s he been doing here all this time? Probably fell asleep. He’s—it’s funny; it’s as if he’s been covered up by the book. What’s he reading? Stolen Time. What an old-fashioned title. Probably sentimental. But the cover’s a bit strange for a sentimental book. When he wakes up I’ll ask him to read me the opening passage. You can get the sense of a book from the first words. Wrong. How am I supposed to ask him to read? With my voice? Right. Fuck it. I’d never realized before that the voice is like a breath. Don’t panic. Keep calm. Play the game. Let’s play our game now! We have to play our game now, the magic list now. Only the magic list will free us from the worst. Do you have breath? You still have a bit. Let’s go! Sonia, in position! The merciless enemy is waiting for you. He’s waiting for your first question.
At him!
SONIA: What’s the use of a voice? I, dear enemy, find it utterly useless.
ENEMY: For ordering drinks.
SONIA: You lose, enemy. You could just show the bottle to the barman.
ENEMY: True. You can use your voice to sing. There you go!
SONIA: Anyone can sing. Do you want me to be like everybody else? Do you?
ENEMY: To say, “I’ll love you forever!”
SONIA: It’s wrong to tell lies.
ENEMY: To sing a child to sleep.
SONIA: Children hate sleeping.
ENEMY: To make phone calls.
SONIA: You’re very stupid, enemy. Postage stamps are so cheap and cheerful.
ENEMY: To swear.
SONIA: Spitting’s better.
ENEMY: To ask for help.
SONIA: From whom?
ENEMY: To pray.
SONIA: To whom?
ENEMY: To act in the theater.
SONIA: Clowns that say nothing are the best of all.
ENEMY: . . .
SONIA: Do you give up, enemy?
ENEMY: To laugh and be told that you have an amazing laugh?
SONIA: . . .
ENEMY: So—you’ve got no answer to that. You got stuck on the laughter.
SONIA: You win, enemy. That’s a good reason for having a voice.
ENEMY: I can think of another one.
SONIA: Another one?
ENEMY: Yes. To tell someone what your name is. To be able to say, “My name’s Sonia. What’s yours?”