Stathatos had her eyes glued to the photocopy of the cheque drawn on the bank in Bucharest. Her problem wasn’t with the Romanian, but with how she might gain time while deciding how to confront its bearer, in other words, me.
‘Where did you find it?’ she asked me eventually.
‘In a drawer in Apostolos Vakirtzis’s desk. Together with other information he was safeguarding. Among which was a recording of a programme about your husband.’
‘Ah, the infamous programme,’ she commented.
An embarrassing silence followed. Stathatos didn’t know how to continue, nor I how to begin. I wondered whether I should come straight to the point or whether I should use a roundabout way. I decided upon the first approach.
‘Was Apostolos Vakirtzis blackmailing you?’
Almost mechanically, she adopted her self-confident and condescending expression. ‘Now, now, Inspector. You see conspiracies everywhere…’
‘I listened to the programme and the attack made by Vakirtzis on your husband. Were there any other motives behind it in your opinion?’
She shrugged. ‘No, that’s what he believed. Following the fall of the communist regimes, leftist nationalism became very fashionable.’
‘Perhaps, but towards the end of the programme, Vakirtzis came out with something rather interesting.’ I reached into my pocket and took out the sheet of paper where I had written Vakirtzis’s words and I read aloud: ‘“Who doesn’t want to see our neighbours in the Balkans progressing? But a much greater service is done both to them and to us by those who create jobs and make investments in their own countries.” That comment should make you sit up, Mrs Stathatos. He’s sending you a message that he regards what you are doing as something positive and he would like to be involved in it. If you take it in conjunction with the cheque we found among his papers, it says a lot.’
She was no longer in any mood to help me shed some light on the matter. She simply looked at me in silence.
‘I’ve said it several times, to you, to Mr Zamanis and to Mrs Yannelis, that we are not investigating your businesses or your dealings. All we are interested in is finding out the reasons behind the three suicides and for one reason alone: in order to prevent any others. This is our only concern.’
She continued to look at me pensively and let out a sigh. ‘You’re right. He was blackmailing us. Both Loukas and myself. And, naturally, we weren’t the only ones. Vakirtzis was blackmailing politicians, businessmen, publishers, not to get money out of them, but for favours and information that he then used against them.’
‘And you… what favours were you doing him?’
‘Business people want their peace of mind, Inspector. Vakirtzis was well aware of that.’
‘And?’
‘I secured two large projects in the Balkans for his company Electrosys. Also…’ She stopped abruptly.
‘It would help me if you were to tell me more,’ I urged her gently.
She shrugged. ‘Anyhow, it’s no longer of any importance. I secured him a fee for promoting a Balkan country on his programme. I’m not going to tell you which country, but the fee didn’t come out of the country’s funds. I paid it out of my own pocket.’ She smiled quite unexpectedly. ‘At least I’ll save on that now. But I’m continuing to support the projects undertaken by Elecrosys because, if anything goes wrong, I’m the one who’ll be compromised.’
She had been extremely honest with me and I didn’t want to be any less with her. ‘I can’t see in what you’ve told me any motive for your husband’s suicide or that of Jason Favieros for that matter and certainly not of Vakirtzis.’
She smiled with satisfaction. ‘I knew that from the start, but you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Do you think they might have had some common secret from the past that could have led them to suicide? I’m asking because they knew each other, took part in the same struggles and had been locked up together in the cells of the Military Police.’
‘What can I tell you? I couldn’t say no with certainty. But I was studying in London then and I had no idea what was going on here. I met Loukas much later, after the fall of the Junta, when I returned to Greece.’
‘Would Mrs Favieros know?’
She let out a spontaneous laugh. ‘Good Lord, no. Ioanna kept out of all that and she got upset whenever Jason talked about the resistance.’ She reflected a moment. ‘The only person who might know something is Xenophon Zamanis, but even if he did, he wouldn’t tell you. He’s one of the old school and he still believes in the underground’s code of silence.’
I may have felt some satisfaction at finally having persuaded Stathatos to open up to me, but that was of little practical value, because she had told me nothing that would give me a lead.
I got up to take my leave of her, but her farewell was far from cordial. ‘I trust this will be the last time that we meet, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I find your presence distressful, as I don’t like talking either about my husband or about my businesses.’
‘I quite understand,’ I said in all sincerity.
As I turned into Vikelas Street, I toyed with the idea of paying a call on Zamanis. But I thought better of it, coming to agree with Stathatos’s opinion. Apart from his dedication to the ideals of conspiracy, Zamanis was even more fed up of seeing me than Stathatos and he would send me packing as soon as he heard my name. I would wait first to see what Vlassopoulos and Dermitzakis came up with. I very much doubted they would discover the common secret linking the three men, but they might discover something that would help me to break Zamanis’s silence.
It was six in the evening and I decided to go home. Before I’d left the office, Koula had phoned me to say that I would have to rule out getting anything from Favieros’s computer in Porto Rafti. So I wasn’t expecting any more earth-shattering news unless, of course, another new biography by Logaras was delivered to me. The thought made me shudder, but I tried to convince myself that no such thing would happen.
Everything was quiet when I got home and I heaved a sigh of relief. Adriani was sitting in her usual place of honour in front of the TV. The air conditioning was on and the room was cool. She had had it on regularly during the previous few days.
‘I see you’ve got used to the air conditioning,’ I said to tease her.
‘I put it on so the money we paid for it won’t go to waste,’ was her glib reply.
I sat down beside her to watch whatever was on till it was time for the news bulletin, but the only choice was between indifferent chat shows and game shows. After five minutes, I’d had enough. I was about to withdraw to my dictionaries, when I felt two hands covering my eyes.
‘Katerina!’ I shouted, because we had played that game when she was a little girl.
‘So you haven’t forgotten our game, eh?’ I heard her say, as she pulled her hands away from my eyes and wrapped them round my neck.
‘What time did you arrive?’
‘On the 12.10 from Thessaloniki. We were at Larissa Station just after six.’
‘And why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’
‘So I could see you as you are now,’ she said laughing.
‘How long are you staying?’ I asking, hugging her. From the moment she came home, I was always immediately gripped by the fear of her leaving.
‘I’m staying a week. Then Fanis and I are going on holiday and in August, when Athens is empty, I’ll be back here again.’
‘We’d better make plans for going in July, because I can’t see us leaving in August,’ said Adriani, cutting in.
‘We’ll go, don’t worry. Besides, I can’t see this case going on for much longer.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ asked Katerina.
‘It’s like this, dear. Either the investigation will stop or the suicides will.’
‘And what if the suicides don’t stop?’ asked Adriani. She had made a hobby of bringing bad luck.
‘Then we’ll go away so I won’t see them.’
I almost believed it when I said it. I would have found it unbearable to stay in a scorching Athens waiting for my daughter to get back from her holidays. Whereas being on a cool island counting the days till I would return to Athens and find my daughter waiting for me seemed a much better prospect, whichever way you looked at it.