Large drops of perspiration glistened on his forehead. He pulled out a tissue to wipe them away. And then, to break the intensity, he changed the subject to something completely unrelated.
"I'm sorry. I haven't offered you anything. Can I make you a coffee?" he said.
"No. I don't want anything. Go on."
He realized that he couldn't escape and submitted to his fate. "I didn't leave right away. I waited awhile so as to recover from the shock and to be able to think more calmly. It was then that I saw that the whole thing had been a lie. She never had any intention of allowing me to meet my daughter or of letting me share in her success. I got into my car and followed after her. Her car was parked outside the studios. I don't know whether I'd already decided to kill her, but perhaps I must have decided already, because I waited for the security guard to leave before sneaking inside. I knew my way around. She'd told me herself. I found her putting on her makeup in front of a mirror. She was angry when she saw me there. I told her that she hadn't kept her side of the bargain and either she tell me there and then where my daughter was or she would have to give me back all the information I'd handed her." He stopped and smiled. "Cometh the hour, cometh the words. I must have been completely out of my mind to talk about bargains… She told me that she had given our daughter to some couple without children and that she certainly wouldn't take me to her or tell me where she was…"
He paused, then began to laugh. An insane laughter, paranoid. "I didn't have a gun with me. Which is why she wasn't afraid. How could she imagine that I'd run her through with the stand from the spotlight?" The laughter stopped. "I snatched her papers from her bag, together with her Filofax, just in case. I got into the elevator and went down to the basement. I hid among the cars and nipped out behind the first car that left."
She'd been afraid, but not of him. She was afraid of Sovatzis and Dourou and all their people. That's why she'd phoned Kostarakou.
He got up and went over to a cupboard on which his TV was sitting. As he opened it, it dawned on me that I wasn't carrying any weapon myself, and that if he were to take out a gun, I'd be in a fix. But he took out a brown envelope and a Filofax, and he handed them to me.
"Here, take these," he said.
I left them on the table in front of me, without opening them.
"You cannot know what a shock it was when you introduced me to her niece," I heard him say. "From the first glance I knew that she was my daughter, but it was far too late by then. What could I have said to her? That I was her father and that I had killed her mother?"
"And why did you murder Kostarakou?"
"It was you again who pushed me to do it. You told me that Yanna had telephoned Kostarakou to tell her to go on with the investigation. I was afraid that she might have given copies of the evidence to Kostarakou. And what if it contained my name somewhere? I couldn't risk it. I told her who I was and that I had something for her from Yanna. She opened the door to me immediately. I did in fact have the envelope with me. As she was going through it, I put the wire around her throat and strangled her."
He paused once more and again burst into that appalling laughter. "Then I came straight to you to report on Kolakoglou," he said. "You were my alibi. You were looking everywhere for the murderer and the murderer was sitting in your living room."
He stared at me and I reflected that this would be the last time. From the next day we would no longer be staring at each other, and so I wouldn't have the opportunity to reverse the rules of the game: to look him in the eye and tell him that I was a moron, and for him to answer: "I know you're a moron."
Then he became serious, "Now everything will come out, right?" he said, and heaved a sigh under the weight of his thoughts. "I'll be ruined and my daughter will find herself with a father who's a murderer."
"There's no other solution," I said.
"Are you going to arrest me?"
"That depends on you. I came alone to talk to you. If you prefer, I can have you arrested tomorrow."
"Tonight, tomorrow, what difference does it make? In any case, I'm done for. Let's go tonight and get it over with. Just wait a moment, if you don't mind, so I can get a few things to take with me."
"All right, I'm in no rush."
I opened Karayoryi's envelope. In it was another role of film, a pack of papers from a printer, and four photographs. One photograph was of Dourou. The other three were taken at night on Koumanoudi Street. Each one showed a different person taking a child out of the van. I recognized Seki. The other two must have been the Albanian couple, but it wasn't easy to make them out in the dark. I looked at them and felt like tearing up the prints. If we'd had this evidence from the beginning, we would have wrapped up the case within two days. And both Karayoryi and Kostarakou would still be alive. It's stupid, I know, but it's not at all pleasant to be told that you were the cause of two people dying, albeit unwittingly. Whatever, there was no way Dourou would get off now.
The sound of the shot came from the other room, shattering the silence. I rushed into the hall. The papers flew to the floor. The bedroom was at the back. Through the open door, I could see Thanassis's legs on the bed. When I went in, I found his head on the pillow. His left arm was hanging down, dangling loosely. His right hand, which was holding his service revolver, was on the mattress beside him. The bed was unmade and the blood slowly spread everywhere, dyeing the pillow.
CHAPTER 46
By the time the coroner and forensics boys were done, it was past three in the morning. I sent Thanassis to the mortuary in an ambulance and went home. I didn't want to go to the station because there would probably be reporters waiting and I didn't think I would know what to tell them.
I telephoned Ghikas as soon as I got home. He'd gone to spend Christmas at his wife's family home in Karavomylos. It rang for about ten minutes and then I heard a woman's frightened voice: "Hello?"
"Inspector Haritos. I'd like to speak to the superintendent, please… Yes, it's very urgent."
I had to wait another five minutes before I heard Ghikas's worried voice: "What are you phoning me for at this time? What's going on?"
By the time I'd told him the whole story, he was wide awake, as if he'd drunk three coffees.
"And what are we going to do now?" he said. "What are we going to say to the press?"
I had a solution, but I didn't know if he would like it. "Crime of passion. Sergeant Vlastos had a love affair with Karayoryi. From the evidence we have, we suspect that Karayoryi started the affair with him in order to get information from him. Eventually, she decided to break it off. Vlastos took it badly. On the night of the murder, he had dinner with her and begged her to take him back, but she refused. He followed her to the studios. He made his way covertly into the offices, found her, and continued to plead with her. When he saw that she was adamant, he killed her in a moment of fury. Because everyone knows that Karayoryi had also dumped Petratos, they will fall for it."