Then he came out with the same question that had passed through my mind: ‘And why has Logaras sent the biography to you?’
‘He’s warning me,’ I said. ‘He’s warning me that Apostolos Vakirtzis is going to commit suicide.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said with a troubled expression. ‘Why would Logaras warn you? So that you’ll prevent him from doing it?’
His bewilderment suddenly opened my eyes for me. Correct, why would he warn me? He knew that I would immediately move heaven and earth to prevent Vakirtzis committing suicide. I tried to imagine what Logaras had in mind, but I was flustered and my mind was working at half speed.
Adriani walked into the sitting room all dressed and spruced up. ‘I’m ready,’ she said with a smile of satisfaction.
I grabbed Fanis by the arm and began shaking him. ‘He’s playing with me!’ I shouted angrily. ‘He’s playing with me! He’s not warning me that Vakirtzis is going to commit suicide. He’s telling me that he’s doing it at this very moment and there’s nothing I can do about it!’
Adriani stared in amazement, first at me, then at Fanis. ‘What’s wrong with you both?’ she asked.
‘We’re not going. It’s off!’ I shouted.
‘But didn’t we say we’d eat out?’
‘Not that! The holiday is off! There’s been a third suicide!’
She remained speechless for a moment, then she raised her eyes to the chandelier and began crossing herself. ‘Holy Mother of God, enough of all these ups and downs. Let my husband have a normal job, let him go to work at nine and come back at five, and I’ll light a candle to you that’s as big as I am.’
She had no idea just how close she was to having God fulfil her wish. I rushed to the phone to call Ghikas at his home. No one answered. I searched for his mobile number. He only allowed us to use it in extreme circumstances, but this was as extreme as they came. I heard some old mother hen saying that my call would be forwarded. I called the exchange at Security Headquarters in the hope that he might still be in his office or that they might be able to tell me where he was.
‘Turn on the TV and find the channel where Favieros and Stefanakos committed suicide!’ I called to Adriani, while I waited for them to answer. If Vakirtzis had already committed suicide, they would lose no time in announcing it. If not, perhaps there would still be some hope, but every moment that passed counted in favour of Logaras.
‘Inspector Haritos! I want to speak to the Head of Security, Superintendent Ghikas! It is extremely important!’
‘Just a moment, Inspector!’ I waited, at the same time trying to bridle my impatience and my nerves. ‘The Superintendent will be away for a few days, Inspector. Would you like to speak to someone else?’
The ‘someone else’ would be Yanoutsos. ‘No,’ I said and hung up.
Ghikas had obviously moved in the same direction as I had, but more quickly. He had turned his back on it all and gone on holiday. I cast a quick glance at the TV, but there was nothing that looked like a special news bulletin. I grabbed hold of the remote control and began switching channels at random. All the channels were much of a muchness. That relieved me somewhat though it didn’t bring me any nearer to preventing Vakirtzis’s suicide.
‘What if it’s just a farce?’ asked Adriani, not believing it herself, but simply saying it to calm me down.
‘And what if it’s not?’ Fanis asked her.
‘It’s not,’ I answered categorically. ‘No one sits down and writes a three-hundred page biography as a farce.’
As I was replying to Adriani, I had a sudden flash of inspiration and I remembered Sotiropoulos. I called him on his mobile, praying that he would answer it. God left Adriani’s wish in abeyance and fulfilled mine. At the second ring, I heard his voice.
‘Sotiropoulos, listen to me and don’t interrupt.’ I told him the whole story with the biography. ‘Do you know where Vakirtzis might be now and how we might notify his family?’
‘Give me a minute to think.’ Silence followed. Then I heard his voice again, this time with a much more anxious tone. ‘It’s his name day today and he’s throwing a party at his place in the country. He invited me, but I have a TV programme and I couldn’t go.’
That’s it, I thought to myself on hearing this. He’s going to commit suicide at the party in front of his guests. There’d no doubt be at least one TV crew there that would record the scene and broadcast it as an exclusive on the news bulletin. For nothing to have been broadcast yet meant that he was still alive.
‘Can you inform anyone in his family?’ I asked Sotiropoulos.
‘I’ve got Vakirtzis’s mobile number, but I doubt if he’s going to answer.’
‘Don’t call him! If he’s made his mind up that he’s going to go through with it, he’ll only speed it up and we won’t be able to prevent him.’
‘I’ve no idea who else will be there.’
‘Where is his place?’
‘Somewhere near Vranas.’
‘Exact address?’
‘I don’t know, but I can find out.’ Suddenly, he changed his tone and shouted angrily. ‘And how the hell am I going to communicate with you when you don’t have a mobile phone?’
‘I’ll give you another number.’ I gave him Fanis’s mobile number.
‘You get going and I’ll be right behind you.’
That meant he would set off after first securing a TV crew. ‘You drive, please,’ I said to Fanis. ‘I don’t want to take the wheel. I feel too shaken.’
‘Okay.’ He turned and glanced at Adriani. She had remained in the middle of the sitting room, at a complete loss.
‘I’m sorry we’ve ruined your evening, but it’s not our fault,’ he said to her tenderly.
‘Never mind, Fanis, dear. It’s not the first time.’ She didn’t say it with spite, but rather with a sigh of resignation that made me go over to her.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we’re not cancelling the trip to the island, just postponing it for a while. We still have the whole summer ahead of us. We’ll go for sure. I give you my word.’
‘All right, all right. Now go quickly so we won’t have another suicide on the screen.’
It was one of her good points. As soon as you acknowledged the sacrifice she was making, she stopped feeling sorry for herself and paid you back tenfold.
33
Fanis drove a Fiat Brava, a sort of great grandchild of the Mirafiori. I sat beside him in the front seat, holding his mobile phone in my open hand. I was waiting for Sotiropoulos to call and give us the exact address of Vakirtzis’s place in the country. But Sotiropoulos was delaying and I kept casting an impatient glance at the screen of the phone, which showed the time and simply increased my anxiety.
Fanis was of the opinion that we shouldn’t go via Stavros, but via Penteli, then drive down past the former pine forest and present-day charred forest of Dionysos to Nea Makri, from where we could continue on to Vranas. It had only been forty-five minutes since we had left the house and we were already driving up towards the forest at Dionysos. Fanis turned out to be right, because if we had followed the route Mesogheion Avenue-Aghia Paraskevi-Stavros, we would still have been stuck outside the ERT-TV building in Aghia Paraskevi because of the Olympic works underway at Stavros. Nevertheless, another idea began gnawing away inside me. Did Fanis know the way from Dionysos or would we get lost in the mountains and vales and Vakirtzis would commit suicide while we were still looking for someone to ask for directions? I saw him driving with great assuredness and that relieved me somewhat.
The phone rang just as we were starting our descent from the top of Dionysos.
‘No one has Vakirtzis’s exact address,’ Sotiropoulos said. ‘You’ll have to ask when you get to Vranas. Everyone knows his place.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.’ There was a short pause and then he asked, somewhat tensely: ‘Have you talked to anyone else?’