It had been months since I had experienced the delight of the family breakfast in the kitchen. I certainly hadn’t felt it since returning from the hospital. It was nine in the morning and the three of us were sitting round the table: Adriani with her cup of tea, Katerina with her iced coffee and me with my sweet Greek coffee. We were all sipping at our beverages, with Adriani casting a sideways glance at Katerina every so often. I attributed it to the fact that she had missed her and couldn’t get enough of looking at her, but, as usual, I was wrong.
‘So, Pop, do you have any objections to meeting Fanis’s folks?’ Katerina suddenly asked me.
I immediately understood Adriani’s sideways glances. She had been waiting impatiently for her daughter to broach the topic. I must have been expecting it too, because it didn’t surprise me.
‘Is there an engagement in the air, or am I mistaken?’ I asked calmly.
‘Call it what you like, but Fanis knows you both and I know Fanis’s parents, and only our parents haven’t met each other. So we decided to get you together before we go off on holiday.’ She paused momentarily and then added somewhat restrainedly: ‘Fanis’s parents are quite keen on the idea.’
‘The question is whether it’s something you and Fanis want.’
‘It is,’ she answered without hesitation.
‘So arrange it for whenever you want.’ She got up and planted a kiss on my cheek.
‘Anyhow, my opinion is that if we’re going to meet, we should exchange the rings too,’ Adriani cut in.
‘Mum, don’t start rushing things. Everything in its own good time.’
‘Katerina dear, your father is a police officer, and when the bonds aren’t tied officially, the rumours start to fly.’
‘And when did the police start arresting couples not wearing engagement rings?’ I asked her.
She was about to have a go at me when the doorbell rang and Katerina got up to see who it was. Adriani took a time-out and waited for her daughter to return before continuing.
‘Dad, it’s for you!’ Katerina shouted from outside.
I suddenly feared the worst. I left my coffee and rushed to the front door. I encountered a young lad wearing a helmet and carrying a shoulder bag, the classic attire of a courier.
‘Sign here!’ he said and thrust the envelope together with the receipt into my face.
It was exactly the same kind of envelope as the one containing Vakirtzis’s biography. Instead of taking hold of the envelope, I grabbed hold of the lad and pulled him into the house.
‘Tell me who gave you this envelope and where! I want the exact address and a full description!’
‘What’s got into you, Dad?’ I heard Katerina’s voice but it was no time for explanations.
The young lad looked terrified and didn’t know whether he was dealing with a policeman or a madman. ‘12 Nisaias Street,’ he murmured. ‘It’s written there.’
It was the deserted ramshackle house that Logaras always gave as his address.
‘An old house?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where were they waiting for you? Inside or out?’
‘Outside, on the pavement.’
‘And who gave you the envelope? I want you to describe him to me in every detail.’
He reflected for a moment. ‘An Asian girl. Thai, Filipino, I couldn’t say. Small, a little chubby, wearing jeans and a brown T-shirt.’
The simplest thing in the world. You send your Filipino maid to hand over the envelope in front of a deserted house so the police would have no chance of ever finding her.
‘Where did the order to pick up the envelope come from?’
‘I don’t know. The orders are taken by the people at the central office. They notify the courier for that area to go and pick it up.’
I scribbled my initials on the receipt and took the envelope. The lad ran through the door and jumped into the lift before I changed my mind.
‘What’s got into you?’ Katerina asked again, staring at me strangely.
‘Vakirtzis’s biography was sent to me by courier and in exactly the same kind of envelope!’
She realised what that meant and stood over me to see what was in the envelope. The biography wasn’t as thick as the previous ones because, as I held the envelope, I could tell that whatever was in it was thin and light. I ripped it open, but, instead of finding paper, I found a piece of red material folded into four. I opened it up and it turned out to be a T-shirt imprinted with the face of Che Guevara.
Something fell out of the T-shirt. Katerina bent down and picked it up. It was a CD in its case.
I stared at the T-shirt with the Che Guevara face and at the CD and I didn’t know what to make of them.
‘What does it mean? Is he sending you the Che Guevara T-shirt as a gift?’ asked Katerina, who was equally puzzled.
‘He wants to tell me something. It’s a message, but I don’t understand it.’
Before going any further, I decided to finish with the formalities. I looked at the shipping document attached to the envelope to find the number of the agency and I phoned straightaway.
‘Inspector Haritos, Homicide Division. I’ve just received an envelope from you and I want to find out some details.’
‘Could you give me the number of the shipping document, please?’ came the sound of a woman’s voice.
I gave it to her, waited just a few seconds and heard her voice again.
‘Yes, Inspector. What is it you want to know exactly?’
‘I want to know how you were contacted to pick up the envelope.’
‘By phone, from what I can see.’
‘Did you by any chance keep a phone number?’
‘No, Inspector. Just the address. 12 Nisaias Street, behind the Attiki Station.’
‘All right, thank you.’
Katerina was standing in front of me and staring at me with that inquisitive look of hers.
‘Nothing. They didn’t leave a phone number, just an address. The derelict house.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know. I need to think a little.’
‘So you’ve managed to infect your daughter now,’ said Adriani, always coming out with her opinion at the most inappropriate times. ‘Come on, Katerina dear, come and tell me what you want me to cook for Fanis’s parents.’
Katerina winked at me and went off with her mother without brooking any objections. Evidently, in order to leave me in peace to think, though in the meantime I had decided that it would be better if I got my things together and went to the office. Perhaps Vlassopoulos and Dermitzakis would have come up with something. I stared again at the T-shirt and the CD I was holding in my hands, but they still meant nothing to me. So what? A Che Guevara T-shirt that you can find in any wastebin or hanging in any number of shops that sell boots and imitation army uniforms. As for the CD, I was unable to listen to it because I didn’t have a CD player. Our audiovisual needs were met by the TV and occasionally by a radio-cassette player, of which only the radio had ever been used.
I put the T-shirt and the CD in a plastic bag and went out of the house. Halfway to the corner of the street, where the Mirafiori was parked, I suddenly stopped in my tracks. Why the office? If there was a message behind these two objects, the most suitable person to decode it for me was Zissis. I’d go to see him instead.