"Let's be off," I said to Sotiris in relief and dropped my side of the mattress. If we hadn't found anything, there was nothing to find.
"Just a minute. I need to use the toilet."
"Careful not to touch anywhere with your willy. You'll be asking me for sick leave when you end up with an infection."
I opened the door and went out. The chubby woman was standing there. "So you're still looking for something, huh?" she asked me in a familiar tone, ready to invite me in for a coffee to learn the rest.
"What business is it of yours, missus? Go back into your house," I said curtly, in part because I was irritated at the thought of having to drive back through the center of Athens. After the compliments and praise she'd received in my office for being so observant, this took her aback. She gave me a nasty look, turned, and began walking away with as much speed as an overloaded truck can muster.
Suddenly I had an idea. "One moment!" I called to her.
She pulled up, undecided, with her back still turned. Then she swung around and came back to me, still looking offended.
"Would you know whether the Albanians had any kids?"
"Kids?" she parroted, and the question seemed to make her forget the insult. "No… whenever they came here, I never saw them with any children."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I said. "Are you saying that they didn't live here all the time?"
"They'd be here for a couple of days, leave, and turn up again after a week or so. When I asked the girl, she told me once that she'd been to stay with her in-laws in Yannina, and another time she told me she'd gone back to Albania because her father was ill…"
That's why we hadn't found any other clothes, because sometimes they stayed here, sometimes elsewhere, exemplary vagrants. I was considering what might be behind all this when I heard Sotiris calling from inside the dwelling.
"Sir, can you come for a minute?"
I went back inside. Sotiris was standing in the middle of the room. As soon as he saw me, he went toward the toilet without saying a word. I found him standing in front of the lavatory. My nostrils suddenly started burning from the stench, and I began to sneeze. The bowl was bare, without any plastic seat. A pile of dried-up shit in the shape of a cone was stuck to it right in the middle. There were shoe prints all around the top of the bowl. Those who'd relieved themselves had climbed onto it and squatted there, Albanian style. The cistern was one of those cylindrical ones that look like a tiny boiler, with a button that you press upward.
"I went to flush it, but the button won't budge," Sotiris said.
"And what would you have me do, call a plumber?"
"Go on, you try," he insisted.
I was ready to give him hell, but something in his expression made me pause. I pressed the button, and it wouldn't budge. Something was stopping it. I tried again, using more force this time, but nothing happened.
"The mechanism has jammed."
Without answering, Sotiris removed the top of the cistern and put his hand inside. First he pulled out a big stone, then dipped his hand inside again. This time, his hand came out with a cellophane packet, in which were wrapped five-thousand-drachma notes. I stood there, staring at the notes with my mouth wide open.
"I told you we'd find money, but you didn't believe me." He was trying to put one over on me, and he made no effort to conceal his smugness.
"You didn't find anything because you didn't look properly. When I said you wouldn't find any money, I meant in the mattress, not in the whole house. If you'd been a bit more methodical, we'd have found it the first time."
The smile faded from his lips, and his exhilaration melted like a lollipop. Serves him right. He tried to make it seem like my fault, and now I'd shouldered him with the omission, whereas normally I'd have given him credit for finding it. He had to learn that mistakes are always the fault of subordinates. Superiors never make mistakes.
"Count it!"
He went on counting and counting. "Five hundred thousand."
Speechless, I gazed at the heap of notes and remembered the report I'd written. I tried to recall a point in it where I could fit this new evidence, albeit at the last minute, without Ghikas finding out and screaming that we hadn't done our job properly.
CHAPTER 6
The families on Karadimas Street were condemned to live both together and alone. Because the street itself was no more than three meters wide and the houses were arranged on either side of it. Whoever sat at the window saw into the opposite house, talked into the opposite house, lived in the opposite house, whether wanting to or not. The houses were arranged without rhyme or reason: Three houses were stuck close together, then there was an empty lot, then a house with a tiny garden beside two other houses stuck together like Siamese twins. On one side of the street was a haberdasher's and on the other a grocer's. Most of the houses were single story and only occasionally was there a two-story one. Some of the roofs had TV antennas, others had iron uprights sticking out of the concrete; some straight and others now bent, but anyway signs of hope that one day there would be a second floor added. For the time being, the hope had been abandoned, and many of the houses were so narrow that you didn't need a tape measure to calculate their width; you could do it with your arms. The poorest houses had nice wooden doors, painted blue, red, and green. The more imposing ones had wroughtiron doors with patterns recalling fossilized flowers or branches from a burnt forest.
The house where the Albanian couple lived was at the end of the street, next to an abandoned timber warehouse. Whereas almost all the houses looked into each other, no one could see into the Albanians' house. I stood outside with Sotiris, facing the empty lot across the way, and I cursed my bad luck. Back to the beginning with the questioning, the door-to-door inquiries, one person telling you one thing, another something different, and all you're left with is a headful of nothing, as my father used to say.
"You take one side, and I'll take the other," I said to Sotiris. He understood and headed toward the haberdasher's. I made for the grocers.
The grocer had a slab of Gruyere on his counter, and he was slicing it down the middle. He trimmed the edges, nibbling the bits. He looked up and remembered me immediately.
"About the Albanians again?" he said, as he placed half the slab of cheese inside the fridge.
"Do you know whether they lived here all the time? I was told that they came here for a while and then left" My mind was more on what the chubby woman had told me than on the five hundred thousand.
"All I know is that the woman came here twice to shop. The first time she bought a packet of spaghetti and a tub of margarine, the second time a packet of beans."
"That's some memory," I told him, mainly to flatter him so that he'd come out with more.
"Not memory, slack business. People here buy so little that you remember it like the national anthem."
"Presumably, if they lived here all the time, they'd shop more often"
"Pardon me for saying so, but you know nothing. They can get by for ten days on a packet of beans."
"Did you happen to see anyone strange going in and out of the house?"
"Strange?"
"Anyone not from around here."
He'd begun to grow impatient, I could see it in his look. "Listen, Inspector," he said, "far be it from me to tell you your job, but why all this fuss about two Albanians? You've got the one who murdered them, what more do you want? After all, with two fewer Albanians and another one in prison, Greece is a better place."
"If I'm asking, it means that I have my reasons. Do you think I'm doing it for fun?" I turned and was heading for the door when behind me I heard him say, "One evening, must be a month ago now, I saw a truck parked outside their door."
I stopped dead. "What kind of truck?"
"One of those hard-top ones. You know, what are they called? Vans… but it was dark, and I can't tell you what make it was"