‘Perhaps.’
‘Sure it does. It’ll give you a chance to focus on what’s happening on the pitch. So you can do your real job. Not to mention my job.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
‘By the way, how’s doing my job coming along?’
‘A true detective, I am not.’
‘No one is. At least not the way it works on TV. You know? With clues and everything that comes with them: it takes time to find stuff out.’
‘Actually, Louise, I’ve found out quite a lot. But you were right what you said earlier, when I’d just got off the chopper. There is something I really wish I didn’t know.’ I told Louise all that I’d learned. ‘Now all I have to do is piece it all together.’
‘It sounds like you’ve had a very productive long weekend. Most coppers rest on the seventh day. Even the ones on duty. But you seem to be almost on the point of solving the case. I’m impressed.’
‘There’s a lot I still don’t know,’ I said.
‘Get used to it,’ she said. ‘Even when a case goes to court you’ll find you still don’t know everything. You never can. The trick is to know just enough to secure a conviction. More often than not it happens that we send a bloke down knowing only half the story.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ I said.
Louise winced apologetically.
‘I suppose the question is, did Nataliya really commit suicide, or did someone make her write that email? After all, it does seem rather extreme to tie a weight around your ankles and drop it into the harbour just because you were depressed about having played a part in his death.’
‘All suicide is sui generis extreme.’
‘If I knew what that meant, I might agree with you.’
‘Unique in its own characteristics. Besides, you said Nataliya was given to depression. And her hands weren’t tied. And she did nick his pens. She betrayed him. So she felt guilty. That doesn’t strike me as wholly improbable. Just sad. The real question is, who put her up to the theft? And by the way, I think before you go and see that Greek copper you should get someone to translate the email properly. Getting Vik to translate it is a bit like asking the fox to mind the chickens.’
‘You mean just because he and she were both Ukrainian?’
Louise shrugged. ‘You said it. And after all, it’s not like he’s a stranger to rentals. Those girls on the boat tonight. They didn’t come from the Greek Red Cross, you know. You don’t think he’s just a tiny bit suspicious?
‘I don’t know what to think about him. But I do know I’m never doing this again: trying to solve a crime while managing a team. It’s not like anyone seems at all grateful for what I’ve done. On the contrary, it was like I was the one who’d brought them a fucking problem.’
‘I told you: get used to that. As a policeman, sometimes your only reward for trying to do your job is to be treated like a criminal. Just look at the way Hillsborough got reported; seriously, you’d think that it was the Yorkshire police who killed all those poor fans. Sure, they fucked up. Yes, they were stupid. But they’re not murderers.’
‘You don’t suppose I could end up in a Greek nick for anything I’ve done, do you?’
‘It’s a bit late to start thinking about that now, darling.’ She shrugged. ‘Conducting an illegal search, suborning a witness, withholding evidence — which is what you’ve done — that’s a serious business, Scott. They might even argue that doing what you did has obstructed their own inquiry. And they might just be right about that, too.’
‘Jesus. Help me out here, Louise. You’re a copper. Give me some advice. What am I going to tell this Greek detective?’
‘You mean how are you to avoid the possibility of making him feel like a complete dick?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I think less “it seemed to me that you guys really weren’t doing anything very much to solve this case, so I decided that I should step in and help you poor idiots out”, and a little more “I’m sorry but I seem to have stumbled across some information that I think might just be relevant to your inquiry and I thought I should tell you about this as soon as possible”. Something like that could work. You’ve got a Greek lawyer, haven’t you? So take her with you. Get her to say it in Greek.’
‘No. I don’t think that’s a good idea. She doesn’t much like the police.’
‘Nobody does. Or had you forgotten?’
‘Yes, but she’s a lawyer. They’re supposed to be on the same side.’
‘I’m afraid that’s true only half the time.’
‘My biggest problem is this: there doesn’t seem to be any way of telling Chief Inspector Varouxis that Nataliya committed suicide without also revealing that Bekim Develi was probably murdered. I mean, he’s just as likely to continue the team’s detention in Greece for his murder as for hers. So I’m providing an alternative narrative that really doesn’t seem to help us in the long run. It fucks us in the mouth instead of the arse. But either way we’re still fucked.’
‘That’s a bit legalese, but I think it puts it very well.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Look, I could come with you if you like. I don’t speak Greek but I could show him my warrant card. One professional talking to another. I could even offer to suck his cock if he gets heavy with you.’
‘That might work.’
‘He’s Greek. Of course it will work. These people invented arse fucking and cock sucking.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
I yawned and she leaned across me, dropped a breast onto my mouth and let me suck her nipple for a while. It was odd how I’d forgotten just how comforting that can be in moments of real stress.
‘Here’s some good advice,’ she said, ‘from one detective to another. It’s something that always works for me when I’m working a case. Get some sleep. Things will seem a lot clearer in the morning.’
51
Nataliya’s bag and all its contents, including Bekim Develi’s EpiPens lay in evidence on the table in front of me next to an ashtray that contained my still-smoking cigarette. I’d needed a couple of hits off it while I’d been telling Chief Inspector Varouxis my story and the smoke was now drifting towards him. I reached forward and stubbed it out.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ said Varouxis. ‘You say that a Romanian gypsy found a lady’s handbag on the harbour quay at Marina Zea and, recognising that it might have belonged to the girl who was drowned there, he handed it in to your lawyer, Dr Christodoulakis, for the ten-thousand-euro reward.’
‘That’s correct,’ I said. ‘His name is Mircea Stojka and he lives in the Roma encampment at Chalandri.’ I pushed a piece of paper across the long table on which was written the man’s address.
Varouxis regarded the address at arm’s length as if he had forgotten his glasses.
‘I know it. The camp is by the Mint. Where we make the money, ironically enough. You should take your boss there sometime. To see how some people live in this country since the recession bit.’
I was in the top floor conference room of the GADA on Alexandras Street, with Varouxis, Louise and a junior detective I hadn’t met before who was also the shortest person in the room. His name was Kaolos Tsipras and he was examining Nataliya’s purse from which I had previously removed the banknotes; it was impossible to imagine that anyone would have handed in a thousand euros in cash, even for a substantial reward. Since I’d last seen him Varouxis had shaved off the ridiculous little tuft of a beard underneath his bottom lip revealing a Harry Potter sort of scar on his chin. He was leaning on the windowsill, smoking a cigarette of his own, arms folded, his blue shirtsleeves rolled up and his top button undone; he looked as if he’d been working all night. His iPad lay on the windowsill beside him. From time to time he glanced out of the grimy window at the Apostolis Nikolaidis stadium where City were soon to be playing Olympiacos, as if wishing that he could have banished me to sit in the dilapidated stand.