We were speechless. He took advantage of our surprise and got up to leave. "Gentlemen, once again, I offer you my warmest congratulations." He turned to me. "You can keep the passport to check the dates."
What was there for me to check? He'd made sure he was sitting pretty. "That won't be necessary," I said and handed it back to him.
As soon as Pylarinos was gone, I leapt to my feet. "If either you or I had done a hundredth of what Sovatzis has done," I said angrily, "we'd have been suspended right now and we'd be preparing our defense. He got promotion and a raise."
"Nothing would happen to us either if we had the minister in our hands," he said, smiling grimly.
"What does that mean?"
"Don't you see? Sovatzis knows about all the money that Pylarinos appropriated in order to become an independent businessman. He may even have concrete evidence. He threatened to reveal it and Pylarinos backed off."
True. I'd forgotten about that in my rage.
"The only thing," Ghikas went on, "is that, this way, they're pinning everything on Dourou."
I rushed to the door, as if Dourou were getting away from me. On my way out, I told Koula to call down to the cells and tell them to have her brought to me immediately.
I found her in the same seat at the end of the table. I went and sat next to her. "Eleni, I have bad news for you," I said in a friendly tone.
"Why, when did you ever have good news?" she said.
"Your little brother has sold you out, Elenitsa. He has proof that he was abroad when the murders took place. He says that you planned it all. He had no idea."
"Of course he had no idea. He didn't have any idea and I didn't plan anything. All that is your own fabrications."
"Wake up, dimwit! You've become as stupid as the Albanians you mix with! We've got the two drivers of the refrigerator trucks. We've got Hourdakis. We know that the drivers handed the kids over to Seki outside Kastoria and that he brought them in a van to your nursery. We know it all!"
"How do you know that he brought the children to me? Did you actually see him?"
"Your girl saw him and she has identified him."
"Ah, yes, the photograph," she said. "Just try proving from the photograph that this Albanian was somehow linked to me."
"We'll prove it, don't worry. Now that your little brother has made sure he's well out of it, it's you we'll settle for as an accessory to the fact for the murders of Karayoryi and Kostarakou. You'll go down for ten years at least. Your only hope is to cooperate with us. We know you didn't have anything to do with the murders. All you have to do is to tell me who your brother hired to kill the two reporters and I'll see to it that you only do half your time."
She looked at me, and it was the first time that she wasn't able to find anything to say. That was a good sign. Most likely, she'd begun to waver. I leaned toward her. "I can see that they're trying to pin everything on you and I feel sorry for you. These kinds of jobs only last as long as they do, and when they go wrong, everyone tries to save their own skin. That's what your brother is doing. Why sacrifice yourself on his account?"
She suddenly leapt up, like a wild animal. "Leave my brother out of it!" she screamed. "You don't know what he's been through! He was still in my mother's belly when she went to find my father up in the hills. She left me with my grandmother. I grew up scared stiff of policemen like you! They'd come to our house every so often and turn it upside down, terrorizing us! And when I wanted to enter the college for nursery carers, they made my grandmother sign a state ment. Can you imagine? A seventy-year-old woman! Do you know when I first saw Demos? In 1978. One day there was a knock at my door and I found myself looking at a man. `Are you Eleni?' he asked me. `I'm Demos, your brother.' I knew that my parents had been killed in an accident, about a year before Zachariadis had been deposed as secretary of the party. But I knew nothing about my brother's fate. Demos had been brought up by the party. And though I was older than him, I couldn't help him or even send a letter to him. And now you're asking me to sign a statement just to save my skin? Leave my brother out of it! He doesn't have anything to do with any of this! He's innocent!"
I stared at her and my mind went to Zissis. I wondered what he'd have done if he'd heard all that. How he would have reacted. She had a triumphant smirk on her lips. She thought she'd cut the ground from under me.
I opened the door and strode out.
CHAPTER 42
Impasse = 1. a situation in which progress is blocked. 2. an insurmountable difficulty. 3. stalemate. 4. deadlock.
The meaning given by Dimitrakos suited me to a T. Liddell & Scott, however, gave further meaning: without outlet; unable to get out; the infinite (Aristotle Physics 3.5.2). So, according to Aristotle, impasse also meant "the infinite." In other words, I, who had reached an impasse, was spinning in infinity in my quest to nail Sovatzis. Put more plainly, I was looking for a needle in a haystack.
It was six in the evening, the day after Christmas, and I was lying on my bed with my dictionaries. The previous day had passed fairly painlessly. I'd been invited for Christmas lunch by Michos, Adriani's cousin who worked for the telephone company. I hadn't wanted to go, but Adriani and Katerina had telephoned to insist. It would not have been right for me to have said no, they would have been offended, and, in any case, it had at least passed the day. We had eaten our turkey, had a jolly time, and, at around seven, Rena, Michos's wife, had taken it upon herself to teach me gin rummy. What I know about cards begins and ends with snap, but out of courtesy I decided to comply. At some point, I thought I'd mastered it and they cleaned me out. I got home after midnight and went out like a light. I hadn't had so much as five minutes to think about Sovatzis.
This morning, however, he was on my mind from the first pee of the day. I racked my brain trying to find some opening, some way to trap him, but there was no ray of light anywhere. All right, we had put an end to a trade in children. I even knew who had taken Hourdakis's place at customs. Someone by the name of Anastassiou. We could send them all to the public prosecutor. The chances of the prosecutor charging Dourou as an accessory before the fact were fifty-fifty. The accessory before the fact wasn't Dourou, it was Sovatzis, and he was still at large, and so was whoever murdered the two reporters.
Adriani had been right. I should have left everything, gone to Thessaloniki, and been with my daughter. By noon, I couldn't take it anymore. I got into the Mirafiori and started driving aimlessly. Without a conscious objective, I suddenly found myself in Rafina. I got out of the car and took a stroll along the waterfront. The sea air cleared my mind and I saw the situation as blacker still. Never mind Sovatzis, we were even in danger of Dourou being released if the statement by her assistant didn't convince the court. Given the organization they had, it was nothing for them to come up with a handful of Albanians who would claim that the kids at The Foxes were theirs. They might even bring the real parents from Albania. The more I thought about it, the lower my spirits sank. I went into a cafe to unwind. The noise, the buzz of the card players, the dice rolling on the backgammon boards made me forget my cares. I got home at around four and settled down to a long browse among my dictionaries.
I was poised between sitting in front of the TV and going to see a film when the phone rang. It was Zissis.
"How's the bachelor life?" he said.
"Great. I'm having a ball."
He laughed. "That's always how it is at first. You try to convince yourself that you're better off alone. You have your peace and quiet; you don't have to answer to anyone. But before too long the loneliness gets to you and you slip into despondency. Ask me about it. I'm an expert after all these years."