Authors: Philip Kerr
‘She stops being on strike.’ I pulled a face. ‘Whenever that might be.’
‘Pyromaglou does not want to be on strike, you understand. But it’s been many weeks since any of us were paid in this hospital.’
‘So why isn’t your union on strike, Spiros?’
‘Because it’s not our turn to be on strike. Anyway, someone has to be here to care for the bodies. There would be a risk to public health if there was nowhere to put them. As it is, all of the other bodies in here are sharing a mortuary drawer with someone else.’
‘That sounds cosy.’
‘On police orders, these two – your player and the girl – are the only ones in here who rate a drawer to themselves.’ Spiros nodded. ‘Are you finished looking at her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dr Pyromaglou,’ he said, as he covered the body, returned it to the darkness of her steel sepulchre. ‘I could give her your telephone number if you like.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Only that if she wanted to make a private arrangement with you, then that would be her choice.’
‘You mean to break the strike? To carry out an autopsy?’
Immediately, I took out my wallet and gave him my business card. I also gave him a card for the Grande Bretagne Hotel.
‘She can call me anytime,’ I said. ‘And obviously I could make it worth her while.’
‘The government could not ask such a thing, you understand,’ said Spiros. ‘That would be politically unwise for this particular coalition. And Pyromaglou certainly wouldn’t do such a thing for the police. She hates the police. Her son got his skull broken by one of those thugs in the MAT. But yes, it’s possible she might help you out.’ Spiros shrugged. ‘Besides, there are more ways to identify this girl and to say what might have happened to her than doing a full autopsy.’
Back at the Grande Bretagne Hotel I spent an uncomfortable hour with Chief Inspector Varouxis. He and a Russian-speaking woman sat in the royal suite’s capacious dining room examining Bekim’s laptop and iPhone at one end of the table while, like their unwilling chaperon, I sat at the other end reading my newspaper on my iPad and enjoying a medium-sweet Greek coffee. It was probably the only thing I’d enjoyed so far that day. Some people call it Turkish coffee but don’t expect anyone to bring you a Turkish coffee in Greece, or the other way around. Between two countries that hate each other even coffee has its politics.
Occasionally Varouxis called me over to explain something in the laptop’s mailbox, and I would find myself in uncomfortable proximity with his breath. After the last explanation, I breathed in the flower arrangement on the mahogany sideboard to get the smell of his breath out of my head.
‘Did you find anything useful?’ I asked after the translator had left.
‘No. You were right. However this girl contacted him, it wasn’t by email or cell phone. At least not on this computer or phone.’
‘Any leads yet on who she was?’
‘We think she must have been working at the expensive end of the escort business. Her dress was by Alexander McQueen and retails at about two thousand euros. Her brassiere was Stella McCartney. About a hundred and fifty euros. Both were made for Net-a-Porter so we’re hoping we can connect a garment number to a name. But these things take time. With any luck your reward will turn something up before then. There are signs all over Piraeus offering a reward for information so your lawyer, Dr Christodoulakis, will have her hands full. I expect there are a lot of people who would like to get their hands on ten thousand euros. Me, included.’
He probably knew that this was also the daily rate for the royal suite because he glanced around for a moment and then nodded. ‘Everything is all right for you? Here in Athens?’
‘It wouldn’t seem right to complain,’ I said. ‘Not in this suite.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘I’m just borrowing it. The club owner, Mr Sokolnikov, has taken it, to use as the team’s base here in Athens.’
‘You know, Mr Sokolnikov is worth almost twenty billion dollars. About a hundredth of the Greek government debt. It doesn’t seem right that one man has so much when everyone else has so little. What do you think, Mr Manson?’
‘So steal the soap if it makes you feel any better.’
‘I was only making an observation.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s been my own observation that I’m being followed.’
‘For your protection, it was thought best that some officers from the EKAM be assigned to you, Mr Manson.’
‘But why me in particular?’
‘Mr Sokolnikov already has several bodyguards, as you know. And your team stay safely out of trouble in their hotel on the peninsula at Vouliagmeni. It’s only you who are in circulation, so to speak. And of course you were on television the other night.’
‘It’s not because you suspect me of murder?’
Varouxis tugged at the little beard he wore under his bottom lip; it reminded me of the tuft of pubic hair I’d seen on the dead girl’s pussy earlier.
‘I’m a policeman, Mr Manson. I have a suspicious mind. But no, as it happens, I don’t suspect you of murder. One gets a feel for these things, the way you do about a player, perhaps. You’re a hard man, I think, but not a murderer. However, I do wonder if you might perhaps be trying to do here in Greece what the newspapers said you did in London, with João Zarco. If you’re planning to play detective again.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because you are here in Athens and not back at the hotel with your team. Because you are almost certainly frustrated by the pace of this investigation; and if you’re not, then Mr Sokolnikov will be: Russian oligarchs aren’t known for their patience. And you are half German, so you probably think all Greeks are feckless and lazy, that we couldn’t investigate our own arseholes. But in this case, I would strongly advise you to leave things to us, Mr Manson. Athens is a very different city from London. It’s full of unexpected hazards.’
‘Thanks, Chief Inspector, I’ll bear that in mind. But right now, I’m planning to be a spy, not a detective.’
Varouxis frowned.
‘I thought I’d take a drive over to the Rentis Training Centre,’ I explained, ‘to see what the opposition are up to, ahead of our return match next week.’
‘They won’t let you in,’ said Varouxis. ‘And there’s a screen to stop nosy parkers. Besides, I happen to know that Olympiacos finish training at one on a Friday, after which Trikoupis always goes to the same restaurant for lunch with his wife, Melina.’
‘Oh well, thanks for the tip.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Perhaps I’ll go and have some lunch myself. What’s the name of this place Trikoupis goes to, so I can avoid it?’
‘It’s an old family place called Dourambeis. But don’t avoid it altogether. It’s probably the best fish restaurant in the city.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
He wasn’t a bad guy, I decided, and I already regretted suggesting he steal the soap.
‘What are you doing tomorrow afternoon, Chief Inspector? Only I have some spare tickets for the match. Panathinaikos versus OFI. Whoever they are.’
‘Heraklion. A good team. This will be an excellent match. And I’d really love to go. But I regret I cannot. If my general found out I was going to a football match instead of investigating this murder he would be angry, I think.’
‘Well, if you change your mind, give me a call. Most of my team are going to the game. You never know. One of them might say something useful. You know that’s why football was invented, don’t you? So men could talk to each other? Women had to invent book groups to do that. Talk, I mean.’
This time, when I went outside the hotel, I saw them – two guys in their thirties leaning nonchalantly on the bonnet of a silver Skoda Octavia, smoking cigarettes and getting a little early afternoon sun on their unshaven faces.
‘Where are we going now, sir?’ asked Charlie.
‘A restaurant in Piraeus called Dourambeis.’
‘I know it.’
‘Only see if you can get us there without our police escort,’ I told him. ‘For what I want to do this afternoon, I’d rather I didn’t have any cops watching. Besides, I don’t like being followed. It makes me feel like I’m being man-marked. I get antsy when I’ve got someone on my tail.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Sure, sir. No problem.’
He started the engine and drove slowly away from the front of the hotel.
‘
Can
you lose them?’
‘This is Athens, sir. We have the worst traffic in Europe. In this city I could lose Sebastian Vettel.’
Charlie accelerated hard and, at the bottom of Syntagma Square, he turned sharply right and sped along a narrow shady street before making a swift left up a hill and then reversing into a small car park. Charlie made the big Range Rover feel like a Mini and it was immediately clear to me he was a professional driver. That shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose. Nearly all of the guys who drove for Vik had been on evasive driving courses; Vik took evasion in all its forms very seriously indeed: drivers, his wife, tax lawyers, not to mention a whole host of electronic countermeasures rumoured to have been installed on his private jet.
Charlie waited long enough to see the Skoda speed by in a futile attempt to catch us up – and then, when they were past, accelerated forward across the street and down another hill.
‘We won’t see them again for a while,’ said Charlie.
‘Neatly done,’ I said.
At the top of the street he turned left, and drove south on the main road to Piraeus.
‘Dourambeis is one of the best restaurants in Attica,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s an old family place. Usually they’re on holiday until the end of August. So I hope you checked that it’s open.’
‘You mean they close for the summer? When all the tourists are here in Athens?’
‘Only for part of the month of August, sir.’
‘But that’s just crazy. Surely winter would be the time to close.’
‘They close then, as well.’
‘No wonder you’ve got a fucking recession. You’re supposed to stay open during the tourist season, not bugger off on holiday. That’s like a restaurant closing for lunch.’
Charlie grinned. ‘It’s Greece, sir. In this country people do things not because they make sense, but because they’ve always been done that way. Anyway, at Dourambeis I think you should have the scorpion fish. Off the fish counter inside the restaurant. It’s the best in the city.’
‘I’m not actually planning on eating,’ I said.
‘That’s a pity.’
‘At least not today. Hristos Trikoupis is having lunch there. I want to find out who he’s with and perhaps follow him when he leaves. You see, I need to have a talk with him, in private.’
Charlie grinned. ‘I like driving for you, sir. It’s quite like the old days for me.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Before I went into private security, I used to be a cop.’
‘What was your patch? Your speciality?’
‘Low-level detective work. Nothing special. Burglaries, theft.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘The money. In Greece it’s always about the money. For everything.’
‘I don’t suppose you know Chief Inspector Varouxis.’
‘Everyone knows Ioannis Varouxis,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s the most famous detective in Athens. He was the cop who caught Thanos Leventis, a local bus driver who murdered three prostitutes in Piraeus, and attempted to kill at least three others. Apparently he cut off their nipples, fried them in salt and then ate them. The Greek newspapers called him Hannibal Leventis.’
‘I wonder why Varouxis never mentioned this.’
‘He’s a very modest man, that Varouxis.’
‘No, I meant I wonder why, when Varouxis is investigating the murder of a prostitute who probably had sex with Bekim Develi, that he never mentioned the deaths of those other prostitutes. It seems kind of relevant. Have the newspapers mentioned it?’
‘No, sir. And they probably won’t. At least not until – God forbid – another woman should be killed. You see, one of the women Leventis attacked was an English tourist, sir. It’s not the sort of the thing that the Ministry of Tourism likes to remind people about. Especially at this time of year. It would be very damaging to the Greek economic recovery. Which is very fragile at the best of times. Tourism is one of the few industries we have got left.’
‘Tell me, Charlie, this Hannibal Leventis – I suppose there’s no chance they could have caught the wrong guy?’
‘He admitted it, sir. In court. Although there was some talk of an accomplice who was never caught. The English woman who was attacked, she said there were two men who abducted her. One did the driving and the other one raped her. But none of the three victims who survived mentioned a second man, so her allegations were dismissed.’
‘See if you can find out her name, Charlie, will you?’
‘Sure. No problem, sir. I make a call when we stop the car.’
He drove in silence for a while; and then he said: ‘A couple more things about Leventis, I just remembered.’
‘Yes?’
‘Sometimes he drove the Panathinaikos team bus. Sometimes.’
‘And he used that bus?’
‘Not that particular bus, sir. But another quite like it. That’s why the girls got on in the first place. They thought it was a regular city bus.’
‘And the other thing?’
‘You have to remember about Panathinaikos and Olympiacos – they are the eternal enemies. This is a typical story for Athens and Piraeus since the Peloponnesian War, in four hundred
BC
. So then. On the Reds’ website, they have a fan forum called the Shoutbox. And many Reds fans say the same thing: that the Athens police protected someone who was also involved in these murders because they support the Greens. That Hannibal’s accomplice was allowed to go free.’ Charlie shook his head. ‘Of course, that’s a load of crap. Varouxis would never have done such a thing. I know this man. He is honest. Very honest.’
A few minutes later we pulled up outside a fairly unremarkable if large restaurant a stone’s throw from the Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus. Several cars were parked outside, including a black Maserati Quattroporte, which, I presumed, belonged to Hristos Trikoupis.
‘Is that it?’
‘That is Dourambeis,’ said Charlie. ‘So, what now?’