I said nothing because I didn't want to admit that he was right.
"I made some roast goat in the oven yesterday, but I can't eat it all on my own. Do you feel like coming over and having a go at it with me?"
He took me unawares and I didn't know what to say. Okay, we knew each other and we helped each other out every so often, but it wasn't as if we were eating and drinking companions. I was about to say no, when suddenly I thought how difficult it must have been for him to invite me, how difficult it would be for him to have a police officer at his table, even one that he liked.
"I'11 come," I said.
"When?"
"I can be there in an hour."
"I've got a surprise for you," he told me. "A kind of gift." And then he hung up.
The roads were empty and I arrived in Ekavis Street a quarter of an hour earlier than I had anticipated. I found him waiting for me at the door. He didn't let me get out of the car, but came and sat next to me.
"Where are we going?" I said. "To the baker's to get the roast goat?"
"We're going for the surprise, but first I want you to promise me something."
"What?"
"We're going to meet someone, but I want you to promise me that once you've talked to him you'll let him go. I gave him my word that as long as he was with me, he would not come to any harm."
"Who is it? Sovatzis?"
"Sovatzis? What on earth made you think that? No, it's not Sovatzis."
"And how do you know I'll keep my word?"
"I know," he said with certainty. "Take Dekelias Street and then turn onto Attalias Street. We're going to the AEK stadium."
It wasn't far and there didn't seem to be anything to say on the way. When we got to the stadium, he told me to wait.
"I won't be long." He got out and disappeared into the trees.
I tried to guess who he might be bringing to me, but my store of ideas had dried up. Presently he came back with a man, but I couldn't make him out in the darkness. As he got closer he began to look familiar. Then I recognized him: It was Kolakoglou.
They opened the doors and got into the car. Zissis in front, Kolakoglou in the back. He wasn't wearing any overcoat and was rubbing his sides to warm himself. He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing when he was perched on the roof of the hotel with the gun to his head. He looked at me, suspicious and frightened.
"It's okay, Petros. There is no need to be frightened," Zissis said. "Mr. Haritos gave me his word. You'll say what you have to say and then you are free to go."
"Why are you hiding?" I asked him.
"Because I'm afraid," he said. "I'm afraid that if I fall into your hands, you'll send me back to prison, and this time for murder."
"Why should you go to prison? Did you kill Karayoryi?"
He laughed despite his fear. "Do I look like a murderer to you?"
"That's beside the point. Most murderers don't look like murderers. The point is that after the trial you threatened her. You told her she'd pay for what she did to you."
"That's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
He fell silent. He wasn't sure he was doing the right thing by opening up to me, and he hesitated.
"Come on, say it and let's get it over with," Zissis encouraged him. "That's why you came"
"Karayoryi had a bastard child," he said.
I don't know what I'd been trying to imagine while Zissis was gone, but that was one thing I'd never have thought of. I quickly tried to work out what new paths this bit of information opened up. "Are you sure?" I asked him.
"I am."
"And how did you find out about it?"
"Before I opened my own tax consultancy firm, I worked as an accountant for the Seamen's Pension Fund. One day, it must have been April 'seventy-four, a woman came wanting to take care of some contributions. She was accompanied by Karayoryi, who had a huge belly. She must have been ready to give birth."
Without doubt, the woman must have been Antonakaki, her sister. She'd gone to take care of her contributions paid by her husband, who was a seaman, and Karayoryi had gone with her.
"Go on."
"When, years later, she approached me as a reporter, she didn't remember me of course, but I recognized her immediately. Apart from the pregnancy, she hadn't changed at all. `How's the child?' I asked her at some moment. She was shocked and looked at me in astonishment. `There's some mistake. I don't have any children,' she said. Then I told her I'd seen her at the office of the Seamen's Pension Fund and that she'd been pregnant at the time, but she insisted that she didn't have any children."
"Are you sure that it was her?"
"No doubt whatsoever."
"Maybe the child had died."
"If it had died, she would have told me so. She wouldn't have said that she didn't have any children. That's what I meant when I threatened her. That I knew her secret and I'd make it public knowledge. I got my lawyer to investigate. When I got out of prison, the first thing I did was to investigate it again myself. I wanted to expose her, to get my revenge on her, but I found no trace of the child. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up. When she was murdered, I gave up on it." He remained silent for a moment and looked at me. Then he added angrily: "Do you understand how I felt? She had abandoned her child to some foster parents and she had me sent to prison because I loved children and caressed them."
Suddenly, the letters I'd found in Karayoryi's desk came to my mind. The unknown N was not Nena Delopoulou. It was the father of the child. He wanted to see his child and she was keeping it hidden from him.
"All I want is to get my life into some kind of order and to live peacefully from now on," I heard Kolakoglou telling me.
"There's no need for you not to go home, Mr. Kolakoglou. You're not wanted by the police and no one's going to bother you. If reporters start annoying you, shut the door in their faces. By now they will have found someone else to harass." He was no longer news. Robespierre had said so.
He looked at me uncertainly. He was afraid to believe it.
"I told you that if you told Mr. Haritos everything you knew, everything would work out. Go on home now," Zissis told him.
"Thanks," he said to Zissis, clutching his arm. He said nothing to me. He thought that if he said anything to me, I might change my mind and take him in. He opened the door and got out, but he didn't go back into the trees. He went in the direction of Dekelias Street, toward a bus stop.
"How did you ferret him out?" I said.
We were sitting at the table in his house, eating roast goat in a lemon sauce, and drinking retsina.
"I was surprised that you let him go, that time at the hotel."
"It was a big risk and it wasn't worth it."
"I don't imagine you did it only because of the risk involved. Deep down, you believed he was innocent."
It wasn't that I believed it. I knew it.
"Anyway, I know a lot of people in the area where you found him. They all know that for years the security police were after me too. That made it easy for me, because when I said that I wanted to help Kolakoglou, they believed me. Whoever knew anything told me. Eventually, I found out that he'd been taken in by a distant cousin of his, who lived between Petroupoli and Nea Liossia."
"I can understand those people. But how did you convince Kolakoglou?"
"I showed him these."
He put both hands inside his belt and lifted up his shirt and pullover. His back and chest were crisscrossed with scars from old wounds. I didn't need to ask him who had inflicted those wounds.
"I wanted to help him because I know what it means to be on the run," he said, tucking in his shirt. "After all, he'd paid for what he did. Why should he have to hide like a frightened hare?"
I watched him picking at the goat and eating it slowly the better to savor the taste. I remembered what he'd said to me a few days ago in the car: You're the bottom. I touched bottom and we met each other. Where? That first time in the security police headquarters on Bouboulinas Street, when we were chasing communists. Now with Kolakoglou, we were chasing pederasts. We were both sewer rats. That's why we'd met.