‘Like who, for instance?’
‘To some other reporter. Have you?’
‘Do you think I’ve time to engage in chit-chat with your lot, Sotiropoulos?’ I said furiously and I pressed the button that Fanis had shown me in order to hang up.
By the time we reached the straight road leading to Nea Makri, night had well and truly fallen. There was virtually no traffic as far as the coast road, but at Zouberi we came up against an endless line of cars crawling bumper to bumper.
‘That’s it,’ I said to Fanis. ‘We’ll be lucky if we get there tomorrow.’
‘We’ve done well to get this far. Imagine if we’d come via Rafina.’
He was right, but it was no consolation. While we were trying to escape from a line of at least a hundred cars, Vakirtzis might have already committed suicide and have been laid out. My one last hope was that among so many guests someone might have stopped him. However, I knew from experience that in such cases people become paralysed when faced with the unexpected and, instead of doing something to prevent it, simply watch like pillars of salt.
Beside me, Fanis suddenly exploded and began pounding the steering wheel with his hands. ‘In summer they all go for fish, in winter for souvlaki and in between just for the excursion,’ he shouted angrily. ‘How are you ever going to find an open road?’
For a moment I forgot about the prospective candidate for suicide and tried to calm the prospective candidate for dangerous driving, but to no avail. He suddenly twisted the wheel to the left, pulled out into the opposite lane, which was empty given that no one goes in the direction of Athens for fish, put his foot down and started speeding like a man possessed.
‘Stop, you’ll get us killed!’ I shouted, but he wouldn’t listen.
In the distance I saw an intercity bus coming straight for us at full speed. Fanis quickly turned the wheel to the right and began honking at the line of cars to open up and let him back in. He managed it just as the bus whisked past us.
‘Are you crazy, you numbskull?’ shouted a man of about sixty from one of the cars. ‘And a doctor too. You should know better!’
‘He must be looking for custom,’ shouted a forty-year-old redhead at the wheel of a Honda.
‘That’s why we have more victims every weekend than the Palestinians!’ replied the sixty-year-old.
‘He’s right,’ I said to Fanis. ‘Do you think if we get killed, we’ll stop the suicide more easily?’
‘I’m a doctor!’ he yelled. ‘Do you know what it means when someone’s dying and you don’t get there in time?’
‘No. I’m a policeman and I always arrive there after the death.’
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t even hear what I said. He was equally deaf to the comments and protests from the other drivers. It was the first time I had seen Fanis, who was always composed and conciliatory, beside himself. He went on with these guerrilla tactics for several more miles: swerving out into the opposite lane, overtaking three or four cars and then dodging back into the proper lane whenever something was coming in the opposite direction.
Despite the abuse we got, we at least managed to get away from Nea Makri and continue on the coast road towards Marathon, where the traffic was back to normal. When we eventually turned left towards Vranas, it was already almost ten o’clock. After the turn, the road was clear and Fanis stepped on the accelerator so the Fiat raced along.
‘It was my mistake,’ he said as he drove. ‘We should have come by Stamata.’
‘And how long would it have taken us to get to Stamata from Drosia?’
‘You’re right.’
At ten o’clock at night, Vranas is lit up with garlands of fairy lights. The taverns are all packed and instead of pine, the air smells of barbequed meat and burnt oil. We stopped at the first kiosk and asked directions to Vakirtzis’s house.
‘What, you too? What’s going on tonight that everyone’s headed for Vakirtzis’s house?’ the kiosk owner asked as he showed us where to turn.
‘We’re too late,’ said Fanis disappointed, as we set off again.
‘Don’t be too hasty. He’s celebrating tonight. All those asking the way may just have been guests.’
‘You’re right. I’d forgotten he had his name day.’
Fortunately, we didn’t have to search for very long. We found Vakirtzis’s house on our right, just off the road, as we left Vranas heading for Stamata. It was a huge farming estate that rose up and culminated in a white, three-storey house. Both the fields and the house were ablaze with light. Fanis turned right into a parallel track where the entrance to the estate was. The enormous iron gate was wide open. Inside and outside the estate were parked all the latest models of the world car industry: from jeeps to BMWs and from Toyotas to Mercedes convertibles. Fanis couldn’t find anywhere to park and had to leave the car at a distance.
It was only when we got closer to the estate that we saw the turmoil. As we had passed by to park the car, we had been impressed by all the cars and lights. Now we saw that the entrance was deserted and unguarded. I looked around and high up, close to the villa, I saw a crowd of people pushing and jostling, as though watching a parade. Except that instead of cheering and applause, there was the sound of screaming and yelling. Panic prevailed on the terrace running round the whole of the three-storey building. Some were gesticulating frantically, others running in and out of the house and others going up and down the steps leading from the terrace to the surrounding estate.
Fanis and I halted for a moment and stared. ‘You were right,’ I said. ‘We’re too late.’
As though someone suddenly pushed us, we began running up to the place where the people were crowding. Halfway up, Fanis suddenly stopped and looked at me.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t come with you?’
‘Come on, no one’s going to ask who you are.’
We were still going up when, behind us, we heard the siren of an ambulance and its headlights lit our path. Behind the ambulance was a patrol car. I motioned to the driver of the ambulance to stop.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked him when he came up beside me.
He stared at me in surprise. ‘We were notified to come and take someone to the hospital.’
‘Who?’
He consulted his book. ‘Vakirtzis, the journalist.’
A sergeant got out of the patrol car and came up to me.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
I showed him my badge. ‘Inspector Haritos. Stay here, both of you, till I call for you.’
They both looked at me in surprise, but didn’t dare object. Fanis and I set off up the slope again.
‘If they sent for an ambulance, he may be still alive,’ he said.
I had the same thought and prayed he would be. I struggled to push through the crowd, constantly saying my name and rank. As I passed through the crowd, I heard frightened whispering, crying and sobbing. Many of the people were wearing wet clothes.
I eventually reached an open space with grass and a swimming pool in the middle. My gaze automatically fell to the swimming pool. Perhaps it was the result of noticing the wet clothes, but the swimming pool was empty and everything was calm. Sitting in a chair next to the pool was a woman. She was bent over the grass as if looking for something and her body was shaking from her sobbing. Her clothes were also wet.
I continued to cast my gaze this way and that, till at a distance of fifteen metres from the pool, beneath a trellised vine, I saw a white mound. The spot was poorly lit and I couldn’t quite make it out, but when I went nearer, I saw straightaway that it was a human body covered with a sheet.
I approached the mound and looked at it from above. Any hopes that had sprung up when we saw the ambulance dissolved at the sight of the covered body. I leaned over and lifted up the sheet. The sight of the charred face took me so much by surprise that I let the sheet fall from my hands and had to steady myself against the trunk of the vine. I was prepared to see a head blown apart by a bullet, or a throat cut by a knife, but not a charred body. I looked about me. The grass all around was yellowed in places and completely blackened in others.