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CHAPTER 1
Every morning at nine, we stared at each other. He stood in front of my desk with his gaze fixed on me, not exactly at eye-level, but a fraction higher, somewhere between the forehead and the eyebrows. 'I'm an asshole,' he said.
He said it, but not in words; he said it with his eyes. I sat behind my desk and stared him straight in the eye, neither any higher nor any lower. Because I was his boss and could look him in the eye, whereas he couldn't do the same with me. 'I know you're an asshole,' I'd tell him. Not a word left my mouth either; it was my eyes that spoke. We had this conversation ten months a year, if you excluded the two months that we were both on leave, and five days a week. From Monday to Friday, without our saying as much as a word, just through our eyes. 'I'm an asshole — I know you're an asshole."
Every division has its share of losers. You can't have just the high-flyers; you'll get stuck with a few dimwits. Thanassis belonged to that category. He entered the Police Officer Cadet School, but gave it up halfway through. With a lot of effort, he managed to get to the rank of sergeant and stopped there. He had no aspirations to anything higher. From his first day in the division, he made it clear to me that he was an asshole. And I showed due appreciation. Because his honesty saved him from difficult assignments, night duties, roadblocks and car chases. I kept him in the office. An easy interrogation, filing, liaison with the coroner's office and the ministry. But because we had a chronic shortage of men on the Force and we simply couldn't deal with all the work, he made sure he reminded me every day that he was an asshole, so that I wouldn't forget and assign him by mistake to a patrol car.
I glanced at my desk and saw that the coffee and croissant were missing. Bringing me my coffee and croissant every morning was his only regular assignment. I looked up at him questioningly.
"So, where's my breakfast today, Thanassis? Have you forgotten about it?' When I first entered the Force, we used to eat biscuits. We'd wipe the crumbs from the desk with our hand while, sitting opposite us, was some murderer or robber or common pickpocket by the name of Demos or Lambros or Menios.
Thanassis smiled. 'The chief phoned to say he wants to see you right away, so I thought I'd bring it you afterwards."
He wanted me in connection with that Albanian. He'd been seen lurking around the home of the couple we'd found murdered on Tuesday afternoon. The front door of the house had been open all morning but no one had entered. Who'd enter a decrepit hovel with the one window missing and the other boarded over? Even burglars would turn their noses up. Eventually, around noon, a neighbour who'd noticed that the door had been open all morning with apparently no one around went to take a look. It was an hour before she contacted us as she'd fainted. When we arrived on the scene, two women were still trying to bring her round by sprinkling water over her face like they do with fish to make them look fresh.
The bare mattress was spread out on the concrete floor. The woman was sprawled on her back on top of it. She must have been around twenty-five. Her throat had been slashed wide open with a knife, as if someone had given her a second mouth below the regular one in order to facilitate the blood. Her right hand was clutching at the mattress. I didn't know what colour her nightdress had been, but now it was dark red. The man beside her must have been about five years older than her. He was sprawled face down and was hanging over the edge of the mattress. His eyes appeared to be fixed on a cockroach that was passing before them at that moment as proud as you please. He had five stab wounds in the back; three in a horizontal line from the level of the heart to his right shoulder and the other two beneath the middle stab wound, one after the other, as if the murderer had been trying to inscribe a 'T' on his back. The rest of the house resembled the houses of all those who leave one hell to go to the next, with a folding table, two plastic chairs and a gas stove.
Two dead Albanians is of interest to no one but the TV channels, and then again only if the murder is sensational and sickens the stomachs of those watching the nine o' clock news before they sit down to their supper. In the past we had biscuits and Greeks. Now we have croissants and Albanians.
It took us the best part of an hour to get through the initial stage, which meant photographing the two corpses, looking for fingerprints, putting the few pieces of evidence in plastic bags and sealing the door. The coroner didn't even bother coming. He preferred to have the corpses delivered to the mortuary. There was no need for any investigation. What was there to investigate? There wasn't so much as a cupboard in the house. The woman's few rags were hanging on a hook on the wall. The man's were lying next to him on the concrete floor.
"Should we look to see if there's any money?' Sotiris asked. He was a lieutenant and made sure he always did everything by the book.
"If you find any it's yours, but you won't find a penny. Either they didn't have any or it was taken by the murderer. And that doesn't mean that he killed them for their money. Even if it was for revenge, he'd have taken the money anyway. There's no way that his kind would find money and leave it.' He looked around and found a hole in the mattress. There was no money.
None of the neighbours had seen anything. At least so they said. They may well have been keeping something back for the cameras in order to make a bob or two for themselves. All that was left for us was to get back to the station for the second stage — a report that would go straight into the files. Because looking for whoever killed them would be a waste of effort.
She popped up just as we were sealing off the house. Chubby-faced, with a sparkling blouse which her breasts looked about to tear open and pop out of, with a tight skirt that was shorter at the back because her backside stopped it from hanging down properly, and with mauve slippers. I was sitting in the patrol car when I saw her going up to the two men sealing the door. She muttered something to them and they pointed to me. She turned and came up to me.
"Where can I talk to you?' she asked me, as if she were expecting me to make her an appointment.
"Here. What is it?"
"Over the past few days I've seen a man lurking around the house. He'd knock on the door, but each time the woman would slam it in his face. He was average height, fair-haired, and had a scar on his left cheek. He was wearing a blue anorak, jeans that were patched at the knees and trainers. The last time I saw him was the day before yesterday. It was in the evening and he was knocking on the door."
"And why didn't you tell all this to the officer who questioned you?"
"I needed time to think. The last thing I want is to be bundled off to police stations and courtrooms."
How long did she sit and stare at the street, at the neighbours and passers-by? Evidently, she made her bed in the morning, put the pan on the stove and then took up her watch at the window.
"Okay. If we need you, we'll contact you."
When I got back to the office, my first reaction was to have the case put on file. With terrorists, robberies and drugs, who has time to worry about Albanians? If they'd killed a Greek, one of ours, one of the fast-food and crepe-eating Greeks of today, that would be different. But they could do what they liked to each other. It was enough that we provided ambulances for them.
Who says we learn from our mistakes? I, for one, never learn. At first I always say I'm not going to do anything and then something starts needling me. Either because the office gets to me and I feel bored, or because, despite the routine, I still have something of the cop's instinct left inside me, I was overcome by a desire to do something. So I put a call out to all the other stations with the description of the Albanian given me by the woman. To be honest, you don't need to carry out prolonged investigations. All you have to do is go round all the squares: Omonoia Square, Vathi Square, Kotzias Square, Koumoundouros Square, the Station Square in Kifissia, all the squares ... The place has become a zoo in reverse. They've shut up the people in cages and the animals stroll round the squares staring at us. Even before I began, I knew that any efforts on my part would come to nothing. I had no hope whatsoever of finding him. And yet, inside three days, they'd sent him to me gift-wrapped from Loutsa.
The chubby woman came to see me in the same get-up. Except that this time she was wearing shoes, old-fashioned ones and with high heels that sagged under her weight so that the heels slid first inwards then outwards as if about to embrace each other before changing their minds and going their separate ways. 'That's him!' she screamed as soon as she saw the Albanian. I immediately believed her and thanked God that I didn't have her as a neighbour to have me under surveillance from morning to night. He was just as she'd described him to me. She'd missed nothing.
This was why the chief wanted to see me. To ask how the case was going. And Thanassis hadn't brought me my breakfast, because he was certain that once I heard that the chief wanted to see me, I'd drop everything and rush upstairs.
"Your job is to bring me my coffee and croissant. I'll decide when I see the chief,' I told him angrily and leaned back into my chair to show him that I had no intention of budging from my desk all morning.
The smile immediately vanished from his face. All his assuredness went out of the window. 'Yes, sir' he mumbled.
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
He turned on his heels and hurtled out of the office. I waited a minute or two and then got up to go to see the chief. I wouldn't have put it past Thanassis to let it be known that the chief wanted to see me and I was playing the smart aleck. And the chief knew every trick in the book; you had to watch your back with him. Not to mention that he had no end of complexes.
CHAPTER 2
My office was on the third floor, number 321. The office of the chief of security was on the fifth. The average waiting time for the lift is between five and ten minutes, depending on whether it wanted to play with your nerves. If you got irritated and started pressing the button continuously, it could take up to fifteen minutes. You heard it on the second floor, thought it was coming up, and then, suddenly, it changed direction and went back down. Or the opposite. It came down to the fourth floor and instead of continuing, went back up again. Sometimes I'd think to hell with it and I'd begin climbing the stairs two at a time, more to let off steam than because I was in a hurry. At other times, I dug my heels in and reflected that since no one else was in any hurry, why should I rush, I'd have to be insane. They'd even regulated the lift doors so that they opened particularly slowly and drove you crazy.
All the big brains are on the fifth. They've put them all there either so that they can all think collectively or to isolate them collectively so they don't turn our brains too. It all depends on how you look at it. The office of the chief of security is number 504, but there's no number on the door, because he had it removed. He considered it demeaning to have a number on his door like in hospitals or hotels. He had a plaque put in its place: Nikolaos Ghikas — Chief of Security. 'In America, there are no numbers on the doors. Just names,' he kept saying irately for a good three months. He said it again and again till in the end he had the number removed and his name put in its place. And all this was simply because he'd spent six months on a training programme with the FBI.
"Go straight in, he's expecting you,' said Koula, the police-woman who acted as his secretary and who played the part of a top-model in uniform.
The office was large and bright with a carpeted floor and curtains at the windows. At first, they intended to give us all curtains, but the money ran out and so they limited them to the fifth floor. Next to the door was an oblong conference table with six chairs. The chief was sitting with his back to the window and his desk must have been all of three metres long. One of those modern ones with metal surrounds at the corners. If you want to get a document lying at one end of the desk, you need a pair of tongs because it's out of arm's reach.
He looked up at me. 'What more on the Albanian?' he asked me.
"Nothing more, sir. We're still interrogating him."
"Incriminating evidence?' Short sharp questions, short sharp answers; just the basics to show that he's, one, up to the ears, two, efficient and, three, direct and to the point. American tricks, as we said.
'No, but we have an eye-witness who recognized him, as I told you."
"That's not necessarily incriminating evidence. She saw him lurking around the house. She didn't see him either entering or leaving. Fingerprints?"
"Lots. Most belonging to the couple. But not to the suspect. No trace of murder weapon.' The twerp had got me speaking telegraphically like him.
"I see. Tell the reporters that there'll be no statement for the time-being."
He didn't have to tell me that. If there was any statement to make, he would have made it himself. And not only that, but he would have got me to write it all down for him so he could learn it by heart. I'm not saying this by way of complaint; it doesn't bother me in the slightest. The reporters get up my back. It's just like the biscuits and croissants. Once it was journalists and newspapers, now it's reporters and cameras.
Using the secretary's phone, I ordered the Albanian to be brought to me for interrogation. The interrogations take place in an office with bare walls, a table and three chairs. When I entered, the Albanian was sitting handcuffed in one of the chairs.
"Shall I remove the handcuffs?' asked the officer who'd brought him.
"Leave him as he is and we'll see. Depending on whether he turns out to be cooperative or whether he wants to play the tough customer."
I stared at the Albanian. His hands were resting on the table. Two calloused hands, with thick fingers and long nails, black round the edges; misery's mark of mourning. His gaze was fixed on them. He was staring at them as if seeing them for the first time, as if surprised. Surprised at what? That he'd killed with them? Or that they were rough and dirty? Or that God created him with hands?
"Are you going to tell me why you killed them?' I asked him.
He slowly raised his eyes from his hands. 'Got cigarette?"
"Give him one of yours,' I said to the officer.
He looked at me in surprise. He thought I was cadging from him; that's how sharp he was. He smoked Marlboro whereas I'd stayed with the old Greek Karelia. I was giving the Albanian a Marlboro to win him over. The officer put it in his mouth and I lit it for him. He took a couple of drags, beaming with satisfaction. He held the smoke inside him, as if wanting to imprison it, and then let it out as sparingly as possible as if not wishing to waste any of it needlessly. He raised both hands together and squeezed the cigarette between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
"I no kill,' he said and, at the same moment, his two hands moved like lightning and wedged the cigarette between his lips, while his chest heaved to make room for the smoke. His instinct told him that I might take the cigarette away from him now that he hadn't told me what I'd wanted and he rushed to inhale as much as he could.
"Don't play with me, you bloody lousy Albanian!' I screamed furiously. 'I'll have you for every unsolved murder of Albanian lowlife on our files for the last three years and you'll go down for life, damn your country and its leaders!"
'I not here three years. I come –' he stopped as he didn't know how to say 'the year before last' and he tried to say it in other words. 'I come ninety-two,' he added, pleased with himself for having solved his language problem. Now his hands were hidden under the table, presumably so I wouldn't see the cigarette and so forget about it.
"And how do you intend to prove it, dickhead? From your passport?"
I lunged at him suddenly, grabbed hold of him and dragged him to his feet. He wasn't expecting my move; his hands banged hard on the underside of the table and the cigarette dropped to the floor. He cast a quick glance, full of concern, at the fallen cigarette and then turned his anxious gaze back to me. The officer stretched out his leg and trod on the cigarette, while grinning at the Albanian. Smart lad, catches on immediately.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Deadline In Athens"
by .
Copyright © 2000 Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
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