The heat returned with a vengeance. I had already felt the change in temperature during the night because at one point I woke up drenched in sweat and with the sheets burning hot. It was now ten in the morning and I was on my way to the offices of Europublishers in Omirou Street, between Skoufa Street and Solonos Street. I drove up Skoufa Street behind an old truck full of plastic balcony chairs. As if it wasn’t enough that it suffocated me with its exhaust fumes all the way, every time it set off at a green light it emitted a double dose.
‘Do something about your exhaust!’ I called to the driver as I overtook, trying to save myself. ‘You’ll suffocate us with your fumes.’
He looked down on me, literally and metaphorically. ‘Don’t tell me that old crock of yours is fitted with a catalytic converter,’ he shouted.
The offices of Europublishers were located at number 22, on the fourth floor. I walked in to find a showcase fixed on the wall, full of the company’s publications. Arranged in line was a guide to astrology, a two-volume medical guide, a cookery book, two volumes and a video cassette on major events in the twentieth century and a volume on health care. Between the medical guide and the cookery book was Stefanakos’s biography.
Sitting beneath the showcase behind one of those metal desks that you find everywhere and in front of it two chairs that you can also find everywhere was an auburn-haired woman of about thirty-five. She was made up to the nines and was wearing a strapless top revealing two youthful bronzed shoulders. She must have been a model in her youth and had been put there to create a favourable first impression, and probably at little cost given she was well past her prime.
What was a biography about a leftist activist and politician doing in that environment? Sarantidis with his beard and the chaos in his office would have been a thousand times more suitable. Unless he had already moved to the new flat he had been dreaming of and had become like all the rest.
‘Yes, what can I do for you?’ said the woman in a deep voice.
‘Inspector Haritos. I’d like to speak with whoever’s in charge.’
She didn’t deign to reply but instead picked up the receiver and dialed an internal extension. ‘There’s a Mr…’ Before she could say my name, she had forgotten it and turned back to me. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Haritos… Inspector Haritos…’
‘There’s a Mr Haritos here, a police inspector, and he wants to talk to Mr Yoldasis.’ He must have shouted at her from the other end of the line, because she said in a placatory tone: ‘All right… all right… I’ll send him in right away.’
She replaced the receiver casting a spiteful glance at it. Then she turned to me: ‘Third door on the right,’ she said, pointing to the far end of the corridor.
The office behind the third door on the right was exactly the same as the one in reception. The secretary leapt to her feet on seeing me.
‘Please go through, Inspector. Mr Yoldasis will see you straightaway.’
She opened the door for me to go in. The man sitting behind the desk was fiftyish, tall and thin, with a pointed nose that almost reached down to his lips. He was wearing an outfit of various shades of blue: a light blue jacket and dark blue trousers.
‘Come in, Inspector,’ he said very cordially. ‘Please. Have a seat.’
The room was air-conditioned, making the sweat on my back freeze. After going through the usual ritual: a routine offer of coffee on his part, a routine decline on mine, he came to the point and asked very politely:
‘How might I help you, Inspector?’
‘I’d like you to answer a few questions for me concerning Loukas Stefanakos’s biography.’ His expression suddenly changed and I hastened to reassure him: ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘I’m not worried,’ he replied quite calmly. ‘I simply don’t understand what connection there might be between the publication of his biography and his suicide.’ Suddenly, he had a moment of divine enlightenment and found the answer for himself. ‘Oh, I see. It’s because after the suicide of that… building contractor, his biography came out too and was by the same author.’
‘Precisely. What I want to know is how and when the biography came into your hands.’
‘It came by post, I’m certain of that. I don’t recall when, but I can call Iota, who dealt with the publication side of it.’
He lifted up the receiver and asked his secretary to get hold of Iota. Presently, a girl of around twenty-five entered the office. Everything about her was little: she was a little short, a little plump and a little cross-eyed.
‘Can you remember, Iota, when it was that the manuscript of Stefanakos’s biography came to us?’ Yoldasis asked her.
‘About three and a half months ago,’ the girl replied.
More or less the same time that Sarantidis had received Favieros’s biography.
‘Mr Yoldasis told me that you received it by post. Can you recall whether there was anything else in the envelope?’
‘Yes. There was a letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘I can bring it for you. I kept hold of it.’
‘Smart girl,’ Yoldasis said to me as she went out of the door. ‘I had completely forgotten about Stefanakos’s biography and it was Iota who reminded me of it.’
Iota soon came back with the letter and handed it to me. I took it in my fingertips and examined it. It was printed from a computer, with no address or phone number. Under the signature, simply, was the name ‘Minas Logaras’. It said roughly the same as the letter to Sarantidis: that if Europublishers were interested in the manuscript, Logaras would contact them concerning the terms of the contract and the publication date.
‘May I keep this?’ I asked Yoldasis. Not that we’d be able to get any fingerprints from it after such a length of time and it passing through so many hands, but sometimes miracles do happen.
‘Of course. All I would ask is that you return it to me. I don’t have any other proof that the text came into my possession legally. And if at some point this Logaras shows up… You understand, I’m sure…’
‘What do you mean? That there’s no contract?’ I asked surprised.
‘No. Logaras never got in touch with us again, and, as I told you, I had completely forgotten about the biography. Iota remembered it the day after his suicide. From then on, it was a race against time. I paid a fortune to the printers and bookbinders to get the book ready inside five days.’ He paused and smiled. ‘But it was worth it,’ he said with satisfaction.
‘And you published the biography without a contract?’
He shrugged. ‘Where was I to find Logaras given that he’d provided neither address nor phone number? If he shows up, I’ll pay him his legal rights. But he won’t,’ he added with certainty.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘After all the hullabaloo created by Stefanakos’s suicide, he would have already shown up to claim his percentage. As he hasn’t come already, he won’t. I recouped the high cost of production from the author’s rights and still some.’ He was overjoyed by his decision and made no effort to hide it.
‘And why in your opinion hasn’t he shown up? Why throw away so much money?’
I asked in case he had thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me. He simply shrugged.
‘I’ve no idea, though I can offer a guess. It’s almost certain that Logaras is a pseudonym.’
‘That much I’ve worked out for myself. Go on.’
‘Who’s to say that the man hasn’t died in the meantime, is six feet under, and no one has the slightest idea that he wrote two biographies that are selling like hot cakes?’
His explanation suited him to a tee because, in this way, he would never have to pay any author’s rights. If Adriani had set eyes on him, she would have immediately come to the conclusion: large, pointed nose equals skinflint and money-grabber.
I knew what he said was wrong since in Sarantidis’s case there was both a contract and a fake address, but I didn’t say anything. Why should I give him cause for concern, when in any case Logaras wasn’t going to show up? I was beginning to understand the way he thought, though I didn’t know how this might be of benefit to me. In the case of Favieros, it was the first biography and he wanted to make sure, albeit theoretically, that it would get published. That’s why he signed the contract and gave a false address. On the contrary, in the case of the Stefanakos biography, he did nothing because he was certain that Yoldasis’s eyes would light up after Sarantidis’s success and that he would publish the biography without delay in order to cash in on the suicide. That’s why he sent the second biography to Europublishers, who bring out anything so long as there’s profit in it.
Logaras couldn’t care a jot about the rights. For some reason, he simply wanted to be sure that the biographies would be published. I wish I knew why but I didn’t have the faintest idea.
‘Can I ask you one last thing?’ I said to Yoldasis. ‘No doubt you know that Sarantidis Publications brought out the biography of Jason Favieros following his suicide?’
‘Yes. Those highbrow publishers look down on us, but when they find themselves with a winner, they’re far more ruthless than we are when it comes to making the most of it. Compare our publication with Sarantidis’s and tell me which is the more attractive of the two.’
Whichever, I couldn’t have given a monkey’s. ‘All right, but given the other biography, didn’t you think to contact someone when, after Stefanakos’s suicide, you found yourself with a second biography in your hands?’
‘Contact who?’
‘How should I know? His family… The police.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m under no obligation to inform the family that I’m going to publish the biography of a well-known politician, even less so when it’s full of eulogies about the deceased. As for the police, the era of censorship has long gone, Inspector.’
I had no counter arguments so I got to my feet to leave. The goodbyes were much more formal than my welcome had been.
After the coolness of the office, the oven outside seemed unbearable. I arrived home, where Koula was waiting for me on tenterhooks.
‘Spyros and I have discovered another company,’ she said as soon as I walked in.
‘What company?’
‘An offshore one.’
‘Belonging to Favieros, his wife or Stathatos?’
‘Stathatos and Favieros. Hotel and tourist enterprises in Bulgaria, Romania and the Dalmatian coast.’
She handed me a piece of paper on which the name of the business was written: ‘Balkan Inns – Hotels and Cruises.’
So there it is, I thought to myself. Like father like daughter. Stathatos had only renounced her father inside Greece. Outside Greece, and in the area of the Balkans, she was carrying on in the same line of business. I suddenly found myself faced with a network of businesses both inside and outside Greece run by two families: one belonging to a businessman and the other to a politician. The common denominator in both cases was student activism, resistance to the Junta and the Military Police. How all this resulted in pan-Balkan enterprises and how it was linked to the suicides of the two heads of the families was a puzzle I had little hope of solving.
Nevertheless, because attack is the best form of defence, I decided to pay another call on Coralia Yannelis at Balkan Prospect, since she was an expert on Favieros’s offshore companies.
I was about to telephone her when the phone rang and it was Sotiropoulos: ‘A bummer. Andreadis won’t agree to talk.’
‘Why? What did he say?’
‘He didn’t say anything. He simply started yelling at me: how those who agree to appear on my show regard me as being trustworthy and that it’s not right for me to abuse their trust and talk to others, and if I go on like that, before long I won’t be able to find people who’ll agree to appear on my programme.’
‘All that?’
‘Yes. I sensed that he was scared, but it may have just been my imagination.’
Whatever the case, that door had closed for good and I would have to look for information elsewhere.’