They looked at me in disappointment. A tiny, freckled woman wearing red stockings tried to get something more out of me, refusing to go down without a fight.
"Do you have any evidence that he's the murderer?" she said.
"I told you, we're still interrogating him," I said again, and to let them know that the interview was over, I picked up the croissant that Thanassis had brought me, removed the cellophane, and bit into it.
They began packing away their paraphernalia, and my office recovered its normal appearance, like the patient who, once out of danger, is unhooked from the machines.
Yanna Karayoryi was the last to leave. She hung back deliberately and allowed the others to go out. I disliked her even more than all the rest of them. For no particular reason. She couldn't have been more than thirty-five and was always dressed elegantly without being showy. Wide trousers, cardigan, with an expensive chain and cross around her neck. I don't know why, but I had got it into my head that she was a lesbian. She was a good-looking woman, but her short hair and her style of dressing gave her something of a masculine appearance. Now she was standing beside the door. She glanced outside to see that the others had gone, and then closed it. I went on eating my croissant as if I hadn't noticed that she was still in my office.
"Do you know whether the murdered couple had any children?" she said.
I turned, surprised. Her arrogant gaze was where it always was, and she was smiling at me ironically. That's what irritated me: those meaningless questions that she suddenly came out with and that she underlined with an ironic smile to make you think that she knew something more but wasn't going to tell you, just to annoy you. In fact, she knew nothing, she just liked to fish.
"Do you think there were children there and we didn't notice them?"
"Maybe they weren't there when you got there."
"What do you want me to say? If they sent them to study in America, we haven't located them, not yet at any rate," I said.
"I'm not talking about grown-up children. I'm talking about babies," she answered. "Two years old at most."
She did know something, and it was amusing her to play with me. I decided to go easy, be friendly, try to win her over. I pointed to the chair in front of my desk.
"Why don't you sit down and let's talk," I said.
"Can't. I have to get back to the studio. Another time." She was all of a sudden in a hurry. The bitch wanted to leave me wondering.
As she was opening the door to leave, she bumped into Thanassis, who was coming in at that moment with a document. They exchanged a look, and Karayoryi smiled at him. Thanassis averted his gaze, but Karayoryi kept hers fixed provocatively on him. She seemed fond of him. Truth to tell, she had every right to because Thanassis was a good-looking fellow. Tall, dark, well built. It occurred to me to get him to establish a relationship with her. That way he'd be able to answer both of my questions: whether she did, in fact, know anything about the Albanians and was hiding it from me, and whether she was a lesbian.
She waved to me, ostensibly saying good-bye, but actually it was as if she were saying, "Sit there and stew, you dummy." She closed the door behind her. Thanassis came over and handed me the document.
"The coroner's report on the two Albanians," he said. Karayoryi's smile had embarrassed him, and his hand was trembling as he handed me the paper. He didn't know if I'd noticed or how I'd react.
"Fine," I said. "Leave it and go." I was in no mood to read it. In any case, what could it tell me? Whatever the bodies had to reveal was obvious enough to the naked eye-apart from the time of the murder, but that was of no importance. It wasn't as if the Albanian was going to come up with a convincing alibi that we'd have to disprove. And Karayoryi didn't know anything. Like all reporters she was bluffing. She wanted to arouse my curiosity so that she would be the first I'd open up to and she'd be able to get more out of me. There were no children. If there were and we hadn't found them, the neighbors would have told us.
CHAPTER 3
Adriani was watching TV. She still hadn't noticed me, though I'd been in the living room for a good five minutes. Her hand was clutching the remote control; her forefinger was on the button, ready to switch channels as soon as the ads came on. On the screen, a wavy-haired policeman was yelling his head off at a redhead. He was on every evening, and he was either interrogating someone or he was suffering pangs of remorse. And in both cases, he was always yelling. If all police officers were like him, every one of us would be dead from a heart attack before forty.
"Why is he forever yelling, the moron?" I said. I added "moron" because I knew how cross she became when I showed contempt for the heroes in her favorite shows. I wanted to annoy her into giving me some attention, but it didn't work.
"Shhh!" she said curtly, while her gaze remained fixed on the wavy-haired actor in uniform. "What are you staring at, you fathead? Say something!" my father would shout at me, and give me a clip around the ear. I'd like to know what he'd do now that everyone stares instead of talking. Luckily for him, the old man's no longer around; he'd have a fit.
Every evening, I sought refuge in the bedroom and took Dimitrakos's Dictionary down from the bookcase. Bookcase? That was what we called it to make it sound grander than it was. In fact, it was only four shelves. On the upper shelf were all the dictionaries: Liddell & Scott's Greek Lexicon, Dimitrakos's Dictionary of Modern Greek, Vostantzoglou's Thesaurus, N. P. Andriotis's Dictionary of Koine Greek, and Tegopoulos-Fytrakis's Modern Greek Dictionary. It was my only hobby: dictionaries. No soccer, no do-it-yourself, nothing. If anyone else were to glance at the bookcase, they'd be shocked. The upper shelf was full of dictionaries. It was impressive. Then you moved down to the lower shelves and it was all Viper, Nora, Bell, Harlequin, and Bianca. In other words, I'd kept the penthouse for myself and left the three floors below for Adriani. On top, a veneer of knowledge, and underneath, degradation. A portrait of Greece in four shelves.
I lay on the bed with Dimitrakos. I opened it at "see." See = the power of sight. The mind sees and the mind hears, that is what my father used to say. Every night, half an hour before he'd come home, I'd open the books on the kitchen table and get down to studying to show him that I was doing my best. He'd come in wearing his sergeant's uniform, stand in the doorway, and stare at me. I'd make no sound. I was so immersed in my study that I failed to perceive his presence, as Dimitrakos might put it. He'd suddenly come up to me, take hold of me by the ear, and pull me from the chair.
"Only four again in math, you fathead," he'd say to me.
I'd have no idea. I'd find out the following day from the math teacher. He'd always know the day before.
"How do you know?" I'd ask, amazed.
Till one day I happened to be in his office in the gendarmerie, and then I understood that it wasn't that he was telepathic, but that, quite simply, the telephone rang. My father had once done the math teacher a favor, helping him to get a hunting license or some such thing, and the teacher, as a way of repaying the debt, would phone him as soon as he'd seen my exam sheet to tell him the mark. The strange thing is that most of the time I was sure that I'd done well, but all I ever got were fours and fives.
"Have you got your shoes on the bed again?" I heard Adriani's shrill voice and jumped up. That was the end of my daydreaming. What does a dream correspond to in terms of time? To a television show. The show ends and the dream with it.
"The moment you come home, you stick your head in that stupid book instead of talking to me, when I've been on my own all day. And if that's not enough, you dirty the bed with your filthy shoes."
"What do you want me to say to you when you're glued to the TV and you don't even say hello to me?"
"It had just reached a crucial moment. It wouldn't have hurt you to wait five minutes, would it? But you found an excuse to run to your creepy-crawlies! " "Creepycrawlies" is what she called the letters in the dictionary. "Aren't you tired of reading the same words over and over again for twenty years! I'd have learned them all by now!"