Koula wasn’t sure whether she should get to her feet or remain seated and looked at me uncomfortably. She saw that I didn’t budge and went along with me.
‘Thank you for saving us the trouble of asking you the questions,’ I said politely and without the slightest irony. ‘But you haven’t answered the question as to why Jason Favieros committed suicide.’
He puts his hands in the air in a gesture of ignorance. ‘Because I can’t,’ he said in a sincere tone. ‘From the moment I became an eyewitness to that terrible spectacle on TV, I’ve been racking my brains trying to find an answer but I can’t.’
‘Is it at all possible that he was being blackmailed by that nationalist organisation?’
He burst into laughter. ‘Come now, Inspector. If that was the case, I would have been the first to know and he certainly wouldn’t have kept it a secret from the police. And, when all’s said and done, if they were going to blackmail us on account of our foreign workers, they would have blackmailed all the Greek construction companies.’
‘Did he have any enemies?’
‘Of course. All the other public works contractors. We’re living in a world where everyone is against everyone else. We all began with dreams of other things but we’ve all ended up here. I don’t see anyone unhappy about it, however.’
‘Just before Favieros committed suicide, the reporter had asked about his connections with the government.’
Again he burst into laughter. ‘So? Would he commit suicide just because he got preferential treatment? It’s the hard-done-by who commit suicide, Inspector.’
I felt like giving up. All his answers were the ones I had thought of and they were sound ones. ‘Did he have any psychological problems?’
I asked with the logic that says when you’ve exhausted everything else, try your luck with psychology. It was the first time that Zamanis’s glibness faltered.
‘I’ve been asking myself the same question since that day,’ he said pensively. ‘The very way that he committed suicide shows an individual who is mentally disturbed.’ He paused again and fixed his eyes on the pencil holder on his desk as though trying to focus his thoughts. ‘Jason had been through a great deal, Inspector. I don’t know whether you are aware of his background…’
‘No.’
‘You should, really,’ he said, looking me in the eye somewhat provocatively.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because he was one of the leading members of the resistance during the time of the Junta. He was subjected to terrible torture by the Military Police. Once they were afraid that he would die on them and they let him go because they didn’t want any trouble from abroad. All that left him with psychological traumas… Sudden changes of mood… affective disorders.’
‘Did he have any of these symptoms prior to his suicide?’
He reflected again. ‘If I were to interpret the signs with hindsight, yes. At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was – how shall I put it? – somewhat distant, as though his mind was elsewhere. He had turned everything over to me and shut himself up alone in his office. Once or twice when I went in, I found him playing games on his computer…’
‘How long was this before his suicide?’
‘A week or so… ten days at most…’
‘Can we take a look at his computer,’ Koula asked rather timidly.
I had told her that morning that Favieros had been doing the same at home. I was impressed that she had linked the two, but Zamanis gave her an ironic look.
‘Why? Do you think his playing on the computer is the reason behind his suicide?’
I could have stepped in to take him down a peg or two, but I decided to let Koula deal with it herself, to see how she would react. She blushed bright red, but didn’t swallow her tongue.
‘You never know what you might find on a computer. The most improbable things sometimes.’
Zamanis shrugged. He didn’t appear to be convinced by her argument, but he didn’t have any objection.
‘Jason’s office is on the same floor, but in the old building. It was in there that he had founded the company and he didn’t want to leave it. I’ll inform my secretary Mrs Lefaki.’
‘Between you and me, just what do you expect to find on the computer, Koula?’ I said to her once we were outside in the corridor. ‘You heard it from Zamanis. The fellow was playing patience.’
She stood in the middle of the corridor and stared at me with a look full of pity. ‘Do you know what I do when I have a classified document open on my computer? I open a game of patience as well. Whenever anyone comes into the office unannounced, I maximise the patience and cover the document. Everyone thinks I’m killing time playing patience, but that’s how I hide the classified documents from prying eyes.’
She had floored me, though personally I had never seen her playing patience. Perhaps because it didn’t matter to her if I appeared unannounced; the most likely explanation, however, was that quite simply I never looked to see what was on her computer screen.
We headed back the way we came, without an escort this time. The decor in the neoclassical building was at the other extreme. Rather like entering a company at the start of the previous century that traded in comestibles and colonial wares. The centre was dominated by a large drawing room, of the kind where bals masqués were held in the old mansions, with white doors all around. The doors had no plaques like the one Ghikas had fixed to the door of his office. Evidently so as not to spoil the aesthetics of the place, but that meant that we had to try all of them until we found Favieros’s office.
We came across a third fifty-year-old woman. This one was tall, blonde, impeccably dressed, and, naturally, without any make-up.
‘Come in, Inspector,’ she said as soon as we opened the door. She didn’t seem to notice Koula either, and this was starting to annoy me because I had the impression that they all saw us rather like a tow truck with its load.
Lefaki opened a door to her right and ushered us into Favieros’s office. Koula stopped in the doorway, turned round and looked at me speechless. My surprise was no less, because suddenly we found ourselves in a lawyer’s office from the fifties, with its black leather couch, black leather armchairs, heavy curtains and an enormous walnut desk. The only modern items were a computer screen and keyboard on the desk. Just look at that, I thought to myself, totally different decor from that in his house. And a totally different decor from that in the offices of his associates. In the end, you were totally confused, because you simply couldn’t tell who the real Favieros was.
Lefaki noticed our bewilderment and smiled slightly. ‘You’ve guessed right,’ she said. ‘He had his father’s law office moved here just as it was.’
Koula headed straight for the computer. Before switching it on, she glanced at Lefaki, as though asking her permission.
‘There’s no problem,’ she said, ‘Mr Zamanis notified me.’
I left Koula tinkering with the machine and went outside with Lefaki. She was the one who saw Favieros more than anyone and perhaps she could verify what I had been told by the Thai butler and Zamanis.
‘Had you noticed any change of late in Jason Favieros?’ I asked her.
Her answer came spontaneously, as with those people who have no doubt about what they say: ‘Yes, he had changed of late.’