‘What areas is it interested in?’
‘In Sepolia, the area to the left of Acharnon after Aghios Nikolaos, in Liossia and Ano Liossia. And lately, in Oropos and Eleusis.’
I stared at him like a moron, but Horafas wasn’t at all surprised. ‘Do you find it strange? So do I,’ he said with a smile.
‘I don’t understand why Favieros would buy real-estate agencies in depressed areas like that. With the money he had, he could have easily set up a network in Psychiko or Kifissia or Ekali.’
‘What can I say? Perhaps one answer is that there’s plenty of work in those areas and no one has to sell his agency.’
‘He could have opened his own.’
‘But it seems he didn’t want to. He preferred to remain inconspicuous.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s something I don’t know.’
Maybe he did know and wasn’t telling me because he thought that he’d already said too much. ‘Could you give me the names of some of the real-estate agencies that belong to Balkan Prospect?’ He grew anxious again and looked at me hesitantly. ‘You have my word that I won’t use your name.’ He looked pensive and continued to hesitate. ‘Mr Sotiropoulos will no doubt assure you that I won’t compromise you in any way.’
Quite naturally, the client’s word was more reliable than the copper’s and he was persuaded. He took a thick catalogue out of one of his drawers and began flicking through it. He stopped at a couple of pages and noted down names and addresses on a piece of paper. He closed the catalogue and handed me the paper.
‘I’m a hundred per cent certain that these two belong to Favieros’s company. The one is in Sepolia, the other in Liossia.’
I thanked him and got up to leave. I didn’t have anything else to ask him and, if I had, he wouldn’t have answered. He had revealed as much as he was going to.
‘Inspector,’ he said as I was about to open the door to leave. ‘If you want my advice, don’t say anything to the estate agents about being interested in buying or renting a flat.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they won’t believe you. Our people neither buy nor rent in those districts. The only way you’ll get them interested is if you tell them you have property to sell.’
I thanked him for his advice and left. I walked up Herodotou Street with mixed feelings. On the one hand I was pleased because my nose for things hadn’t let me down. When you set up an offshore company to buy up real-estate agencies in depressed areas, without changing their original names, then there’s certainly some kind of operation behind it. Favieros wasn’t the kind to throw his money away on foundering estate agencies in districts where Greek was a foreign language. On the other hand, my theory that Favieros had himself written his biography had been shaken. If there really was a scam, as I suspected, why would Favieros open our eyes to it and tarnish his name? Unless, of course, he considered it unlikely that anyone would go to the trouble of looking into his offshore company.
The place where I had parked the car was directly exposed to the sun. The seat was like that hot pan on which my mother made me sit to get over the gripes. As soon as I took hold of the wheel, my hands were scorched and I let go of it. The Mirafiori lurched into the Toyota parked in front of me. Blasted summer!
17
The Yorgos Iliakos Real Estate Agency, noted down for me by Horafas, was in Pantazopoulou Square, behind the Peloponnese Bus Station. I drove down Ioulianou Street with Koula in the passenger seat. I had taken her with me because perhaps we would have to carry out investigations in the area after speaking with the estate agent. The heatwave was doing its best to melt the asphalt, the pollution to send us all to hospital and the exhaust fumes to chafe my throat from the coughing.
As we turned into Diliyanni Street, Koula, who up until then had been silent, turned and asked me quite suddenly:
‘How shall we present ourselves to this estate agent, Inspector Haritos?’
‘As police officers. How do you want us to present ourselves? As fiancés?’
‘No, as father and daughter.’
She took me unawares and I braked suddenly. The driver behind started honking his horn furiously, then stepped on the gas and, while overtaking me, stuck up two fingers from behind the closed window, as his car was an immaculate air-conditioned Toyota.
‘What made you come out with that – we almost got ourselves killed?’ I asked her.
‘Can we stop for a moment and I’ll explain to you.’
I pulled over and parked between a coach from Novi Sad and another from Pristina.
‘Let’s hear it then…’
‘We’re going to this estate agent because you think that there’s something fishy going on, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So why would the estate agent open up to two coppers paying him a visit, and unofficially at that?’ She fell silent and waited for a response from me. She saw that I didn’t have one and went on. ‘But consider if we were father and daughter. You have a two-bedroom flat in the area and want to sell it, to chip in a bit and get me another in a better area. The guy sees the father, sees the daughter, smells a winner and opens up immediately.’
Her idea was simple, correct and most probably effective. ‘So we’re all right on ideas,’ I said laughing, ‘but where are we going to get the flat from?’
‘My aunt, my father’s sister, has a flat a little further down, near the Moni Arkadiou. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s become of it, but maybe the estate agent will know it?’
She had all the answers and all I could do was to agree. We turned from Syrrakou Street into Pantazopoulou Street and drove around the square. We found the estate agency just before we had gone all the way round, on the first floor of a small apartment block.
The office was in a small flat consisting of two adjoining rooms and a sliding door between them. Facing the entrance was a young girl, nondescript in appearance, who was chewing gum and arranging some papers in a file. At the desk beside her a thirty-five-year-old with T-shirt, linen trousers and shaved head was immersed in what was on his computer screen. In the past, they used to shave our heads when we went into the army. Now we shave our own heads after being discharged. The atmosphere was stifling in spite of the fans on the ceilings in both rooms.
‘What can I do for you?’ said the girl, stopping short her filing but not her chewing.
‘We’re here to see Mr Iliakos.’
‘Mr Iliakos is no longer with us,’ said the man with a smile. He got up from his desk and held out his hand. ‘My name’s Megaritis. How might I help you?’
‘It’s about a flat…’ I began.
‘Coffee?’ he interrupted me abruptly as if he had forgotten something very important. ‘We have Nescafe… Greek coffee. An iced coffee is just the job in this hot weather.’
I politely declined, but Koula accepted the offer. ‘I wouldn’t mind an iced coffee with a little sugar and milk,’ she said.
I shot a look at her. She sat down with her legs close together and an innocent smile on her face, rather like a modest maiden minding her manners in front of her father. The secretary got up with a bored expression and disappeared behind a door, which evidently led to a small kitchen.
‘It’s about a flat,’ I began again. ‘I want to sell it and buy something a little better for… Koula, and in another area.’
As soon as he heard the word ‘sell’, Megaritis resignedly nodded his head and let out a sigh as though it was a question of the fall of Byzantium rather than the demise of Sepolia.
‘Where is this flat exactly?’
‘Near to Moni Arkadiou,’ said Koula intervening, afraid I might have forgotten what she’d told me. ‘It’s a two-bedroom flat, around eighty-five square metres.’
Megaritis adopted the expression of someone about to say something unpleasant and who doesn’t know where to begin.