‘You have my sympathies, sir; no one likes the cops in this town.’ He nodded. ‘So I will not insist that you erase these pictures you have taken on one condition.’
‘What is it?’
‘You’re training at Apilion, aren’t you? With Panathinaikos.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Have they told you what animals the people who support Olympiacos are? That they are all the bastards of Yankee sailors and whores.’
‘As a matter of fact they have.’
‘Then my condition is this, Mr Manson. That whatever happens next week, when you leave my country you don’t think too badly of my team. My name is Spiros Kapodistrias and all my life I support Olympiacos. But what Hristos Trikoupis said about you before the match was very shameful, sir. And the way he held up four fingers for four goals instead of shaking your hand? This was also very bad. Things are terrible in my country right now, it’s true; but Greece is the home of European civilisation and, in my opinion, this is not how the game should be played. Our team deserves better than this man. We’re not all like him.’
‘It’s a deal,’ I said. ‘And I’m grateful.’
He pointed at the body lying on the open steel drawer. She looked like she was waiting for someone to switch on a sun lamp.
‘Please, Mr Manson,’ he said. ‘Take as many pictures as you want.’
I turned on my iPhone again and clicked away for a whole minute. To my surprise there were no marks around her ankles, and I remarked on this.
‘Then it would seem she did not struggle very much,’ said Spiros. ‘Perhaps she was drugged, or intoxicated. Better for her if she was. Of course this is something that only Dr Pyromaglou will be able to determine.’
‘Who’s Dr Pyromaglou?’
‘She’s the senior pathologist here at Laiko; it’s her who’s been given this case by the Chief Medical Officer. It will be Pyromaglou who carries out the autopsy on this poor woman when—’
‘She stops being on strike.’ I pulled a face. ‘Whenever that might be.’
‘Pyromaglou does not want to be on strike, you understand. But it’s been many weeks since any of us were paid in this hospital.’
‘So why isn’t your union on strike, Spiros?’
‘Because it’s not our turn to be on strike. Anyway, someone has to be here to care for the bodies. There would be a risk to public health if there was nowhere to put them. As it is, all of the other bodies in here are sharing a mortuary drawer with someone else.’
‘That sounds cosy.’
‘On police orders, these two — your player and the girl — are the only ones in here who rate a drawer to themselves.’ Spiros nodded. ‘Are you finished looking at her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dr Pyromaglou,’ he said, as he covered the body, returned it to the darkness of her steel sepulchre. ‘I could give her your telephone number if you like.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Only that if she wanted to make a private arrangement with you, then that would be her choice.’
‘You mean to break the strike? To carry out an autopsy?’
Immediately, I took out my wallet and gave him my business card. I also gave him a card for the Grande Bretagne Hotel.
‘She can call me anytime,’ I said. ‘And obviously I could make it worth her while.’
‘The government could not ask such a thing, you understand,’ said Spiros. ‘That would be politically unwise for this particular coalition. And Pyromaglou certainly wouldn’t do such a thing for the police. She hates the police. Her son got his skull broken by one of those thugs in the MAT. But yes, it’s possible she might help you out.’ Spiros shrugged. ‘Besides, there are more ways to identify this girl and to say what might have happened to her than doing a full autopsy.’
29
Back at the Grande Bretagne Hotel I spent an uncomfortable hour with Chief Inspector Varouxis. He and a Russian-speaking woman sat in the royal suite’s capacious dining room examining Bekim’s laptop and iPhone at one end of the table while, like their unwilling chaperon, I sat at the other end reading my newspaper on my iPad and enjoying a medium-sweet Greek coffee. It was probably the only thing I’d enjoyed so far that day. Some people call it Turkish coffee but don’t expect anyone to bring you a Turkish coffee in Greece, or the other way around. Between two countries that hate each other even coffee has its politics.
Occasionally Varouxis called me over to explain something in the laptop’s mailbox, and I would find myself in uncomfortable proximity with his breath. After the last explanation, I breathed in the flower arrangement on the mahogany sideboard to get the smell of his breath out of my head.
‘Did you find anything useful?’ I asked after the translator had left.
‘No. You were right. However this girl contacted him, it wasn’t by email or cell phone. At least not on this computer or phone.’
‘Any leads yet on who she was?’
‘We think she must have been working at the expensive end of the escort business. Her dress was by Alexander McQueen and retails at about two thousand euros. Her brassiere was Stella McCartney. About a hundred and fifty euros. Both were made for Net-a-Porter so we’re hoping we can connect a garment number to a name. But these things take time. With any luck your reward will turn something up before then. There are signs all over Piraeus offering a reward for information so your lawyer, Dr Christodoulakis, will have her hands full. I expect there are a lot of people who would like to get their hands on ten thousand euros. Me, included.’
He probably knew that this was also the daily rate for the royal suite because he glanced around for a moment and then nodded. ‘Everything is all right for you? Here in Athens?’
‘It wouldn’t seem right to complain,’ I said. ‘Not in this suite.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘I’m just borrowing it. The club owner, Mr Sokolnikov, has taken it, to use as the team’s base here in Athens.’
‘You know, Mr Sokolnikov is worth almost twenty billion dollars. About a hundredth of the Greek government debt. It doesn’t seem right that one man has so much when everyone else has so little. What do you think, Mr Manson?’
‘So steal the soap if it makes you feel any better.’
‘I was only making an observation.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s been my own observation that I’m being followed.’
‘For your protection, it was thought best that some officers from the EKAM be assigned to you, Mr Manson.’
‘But why me in particular?’
‘Mr Sokolnikov already has several bodyguards, as you know. And your team stay safely out of trouble in their hotel on the peninsula at Vouliagmeni. It’s only you who are in circulation, so to speak. And of course you were on television the other night.’
‘It’s not because you suspect me of murder?’
Varouxis tugged at the little beard he wore under his bottom lip; it reminded me of the tuft of pubic hair I’d seen on the dead girl’s pussy earlier.
‘I’m a policeman, Mr Manson. I have a suspicious mind. But no, as it happens, I don’t suspect you of murder. One gets a feel for these things, the way you do about a player, perhaps. You’re a hard man, I think, but not a murderer. However, I do wonder if you might perhaps be trying to do here in Greece what the newspapers said you did in London, with João Zarco. If you’re planning to play detective again.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because you are here in Athens and not back at the hotel with your team. Because you are almost certainly frustrated by the pace of this investigation; and if you’re not, then Mr Sokolnikov will be: Russian oligarchs aren’t known for their patience. And you are half German, so you probably think all Greeks are feckless and lazy, that we couldn’t investigate our own arseholes. But in this case, I would strongly advise you to leave things to us, Mr Manson. Athens is a very different city from London. It’s full of unexpected hazards.’