Deadline in Athens (35 page)

"Call me tonight to let me know you've arrived safely."

The Mirafiori was waiting for me, squeezed into a little space on Philadelphia Street. It was already ten by the time I finally arrived at the station. Before going into my office, I called in on Sotiris.

"What did you do about Hourdakis?"

"We delayed and we lost him. He's gone away on a trip."

I was dumbfounded. "Trip? Where to?"

"To Macedonia and Thrace. So his wife said."

"By car?"

"No, by train or bus, she doesn't know exactly."

"Have his wife brought in." He looked at me in surprise. "Don't stand there gaping. Off with you. I want her in my office in an hour, together with her son. And find Hourdakis. Send a message to the Greek-Albanian border posts. He might be on his way to get rid of evidence that we don't know about."

A thought flashed through my mind, transfixing me. How come Hourdakis had vanished like that? Was it a coincidence? Like the murder of the Albanian before we'd been able to question him further? Hourdakis hadn't known we were on to him, so someone had tipped him off. Who? Someone from the bank? I'd have believed that if the business with the Albanian hadn't come before. The previous night, I'd left Sotiris a note to bring him in for questioning. Today he was gone.

I decided to tell Ghikas about it in order to be on the safe side. I was the one who'd asked him to delay the official investigation. I didn't want to pick up the pieces of some bombshell.

I was on my way out of my office when I found two men blocking the doorway. I recognized the first of them immediately. It was Demos Sovatzis. He was wearing a gray suit, made of English cashmere, a dark blue shirt, and a light-colored tie. His hair was swept back, like in the photograph. I wondered whether he combed it with brilliantine every morning or whether he had stuck it down to his head with fishglue, once and for all. The other man was fat and balding, older, also impeccably dressed. Thanassis was standing behind them.

I tried to guess the purpose of Sovatzis's visit. Up until now, we hadn't been anywhere near either him or Pylarinos. So he couldn't have known that we were after him. Could someone have told him that we'd picked up Dourou? Who? The one who was distributing information all around? The same one who had tipped off Hourdakis? And then again, why would he come out in full view instead of lying low and pretending indifference? I would have been glad of an answer to all of those questions, the better to know how to handle him, but I didn't have one.

"Mr. Sovatzis would like a word with you," I heard Thanassis say.

I stood aside and allowed them into my office. They sat in the two chairs and I went straight to my desk without offering them my hand.

"This is Mr. Starakis, my lawyer," Sovatzis said. "Just this morning, Inspector, I heard that you had arrested my sister."

So this was the answer to my questions. Dourou was Sovatzis's sister. It was the only answer that would never have occurred to me. I swallowed it slowly, like children do ice cream, the more to savor its taste.

"We are holding Mrs. Dourou for questioning."

"On what charge?" said the lawyer.

"We haven't charged her. Yet." I didn't want to show my hand, so I added vaguely: "We had a tip-off that her nursery cares for Albanian children who have been brought into the country illegally and who are there to be sold."

"Who gave you the tip-off?" said Sovatzis.

"I can't possibly tell you that."

"And you arrest a qualified child carer who runs a perfectly legitimate nursery on the strength of a tip-off?" The lawyer intervened again. "There may be other motives behind the tip-off. It may have been for competitive reasons or professional envy or mischief on the part of one of the parents. Any number of explanations."

"We asked Mrs. Dourou to provide us with the names and addresses of the parents who had handed the children into her care. Up to now, she hasn't given us even one name. She says that the parents came to Greece, left their children, and returned to Albania."

"And do you find that strange in this day and age?" Sovatzis said.

"I find it strange to the point of highly unlikely. No parent hands over their child into care without leaving so much as a telephone number in case of emergency."

"Telephones in Albania, Inspector?" Sovatzis found the idea amusing and smiled. "In Albania, not even the government ministries have telephones that work."

Now the lawyer started laughing. I opened my drawer and took out Karayoryi's photograph. The one with Sovatsis and his friend talking in the cafe. "Do you know this man?" I asked as I handed him the photograph.

The smile froze on Sovatzis's lips. "Where did you find this photograph?" he said, when he had recovered somewhat from his astonishment.

"It's not important where I found it. What about the man? Do you know him?"

"If I'm photographed with him, it means I know him." His composure was restored. "It's Gustav Krenek, a very good friend of mine from Prague. I grew up and studied in Czechoslovakia. I have many friends there."

"Did your sister know this Krenek?"

"Yes. She met him when Gustav came to Greece."

"We have good reason to believe that this man is behind the trade in children and that your sister was working with him."

"You can't be serious," he said, handing the photograph back to me. "Gustav Krenek is a most reputable businessman."

"A lot of reputable businesses are fronts for other activities. Both in Greece and abroad."

"You cannot accuse someone on the basis of generalities and vagaries, having no concrete evidence. I demand that you set my sister free."

"We'll let her go free once we are sure that we have no reason to hold her."

"When can I see my client?" interrupted the lawyer. He'd realized, it seems, from my tone, that I wasn't going to give way.

"Now." I called Thanassis on the internal line and told him to bring Dourou to the interrogation room.

"Can I see her, too?" Sovatzis said.

"I'm sorry, but while the preliminary investigations are still taking place ... only her lawyer." I turned to Starakis. "If I were you, I would advise her to talk to us. It would certainly improve her situation."

As soon as they were gone, I got my breath back in Ghikas's outer office.

"He's on the phone," Koula said.

"He can just hang up," I told her succinctly and stormed in.

Ghikas had the receiver in his hand. He motioned to me to sit down. When he saw me pacing back and forth, he grasped that I was on hot bricks and hung up.

"What is it?" he said.

First I told him about Sovatzis and then about Hourdakis disappearing from under our noses.

"It's good news about Sovatzis. Now we know that Dourou is his sister and that he knew that-what was his name?"

"Krenek."

"Krenek, yes. It's not so good about Hourdakis. I would have preferred to have had his statement before talking to Pylarinos, but we can't put it off any longer. Leave it to me, I'll take care of it." He said it as if I'd put a huge burden on him.

"There's something else."

"What?"

"First the murder of the Albanian before Petridi had time to question him and now the disappearance of Hourdakis. Someone is getting hold of all this from inside the station and passing out information."

"Do you want me to order the official investigation right away? You were the one who asked me to wait."

I thought about it. "Let's wait another couple of days. Something tells me that everything will become clear. I'm just telling you so that you know."

He smiled. "You're finally learning," he said and picked up the phone again.

Waiting for me outside my office was the policewoman I'd sent the previous day to Dourou's nursery.

"I came to report to you something that happened yesterday."

Her expression made me curious. "What happened?"

"At around six there was a knock at the door and a foreign couple appeared. They spoke to me in English and asked for Dourou. I told them she wasn't there, and they asked me when she'd be back. I didn't know what to say so I told them tomorrow-to give me time to warn you about it. Then they went into the room with the playpen and the woman lifted one of the toddlers into her arms. She played with him and talked to him. From what I understood, with my basic English, she was telling the toddler how cute he was. I asked them if they had a phone number to leave me, but they said no and that they'd come again to the apartment."

"When they come, make sure you keep them there and inform me immediately."

"Yes, sir."

"Well done," I told her. "You'll get on." She went out with a smile from ear to ear.

When the policewoman had gone, I began thinking to myself, and gradually my mood improved. I took the list of arrivals from Karayoryi's file. Arrival of a refrigerator truck from Tirane on June 20, 1991, arrival of a charter from London on June 22, 1991. Arrival of a refrigerator truck on August 25, 1991, another arrival of a charter on August 30, 1991. Another arrival of a refrigerator truck on October 30, 1991. This was followed by the arrival of a group from New York on November 5,1991. The same pattern could be observed all the way through the list, with a difference of two to five days between the arrival of the refrigerator truck and the arrival of the charter or group.

I phoned the switchboard and asked them to connect me with the head of customs for the Greek-Albanian border. I asked him to give me a list of the most recent arrivals of Transpilar refrigerator trucks from Albania to Greece. The last one had crossed the border just four days previously; the one before that a week previously. One of them must have been carrying a load of children, which would explain why the English couple had turned up at Dourou's nursery. The kids would arrive first, and a few days later the couples inter ested in adoption would arrive by charter or in package groups. They obviously had a child stamped on their passports and when they came here, someone from Prespes Travel would take care of the formalities. Because they were charters and package groups, the paperwork was taken care of all together and no one was interested in whether there was a child when they were leaving. They'd take the child from here and leave at their convenience. This is what Karayoryi had discovered and confirmed with her list. I couldn't but admire Sovatzis's organizational genius. He'd set up two illegal operations: exporting patients for transplants and importing kids for adoption, both of which were sheltered by Pylarinos's perfectly legal businesses. International operations on the part of Pylarinos; international on the part of Sovatzis, too. Perfect.

And Karayoryi, where had she got all this from? Perhaps I'd never know, but I could guess. During the trip she took with her sister and her niece, she'd found out about the transplants by chance and had begun looking into it. She'd found Dourou and had come across the nursery with the Albanian kids. She'd realized that she was on to something and had started delving.

Sotiris woke me from my thoughts. "Mrs. Hourdakis is here with her son."

"Show them in."

Mrs. Hourdakis must have been in her early fifties. She was fat and was wearing a pistachio-colored coat that made her seem even fatter. She was dressed to the nines. Gold necklace, gold bracelets, gold earrings, and a layer of gold rings on her fingers. Whatever she'd been deprived of in her youth, she was wearing now to get even. Her son dressed at the other end of the scale. Whereas you might have expected a smart employee with suit and tie, he had a beard and was wearing a thick anorak, jeans, and casual shoes.

"Where is your husband?" I asked Mrs. Hourdakis abruptly.

"He went on a journey yesterday. I've already told the lieutenant." She appeared frightened, worried. I couldn't read her son's expression behind his beard.

"Had he planned this journey for some time or did he leave suddenly?"

"No, he'd had it planned for days."

"And where has he gone?"

"Macedonia ... Thrace. . . He didn't tell me exactly."

"How do you communicate with him?"

"He phones me because he's always on the move."

The son listened to the conversation without interrupting. Only his eyes moved back and forth from his mother to me.

"He's continually on the move, yet didn't take his car with him?"

"He never takes it when he goes away. He doesn't like driving."

Who was she trying to fool? He didn't take the car because we'd be able to find him immediately. Public transport made it more difficult for us.

The son decided to break into the conversation. "I don't understand, Inspector. It can't be against the law for my father to go on a trip?"

I picked up the photocopy of his bank statement and handed it to him. "Can you tell me where all these deposits of 200,000 and 300,000 came from?"

I don't know whether he heard me because he was poring over the statement. "Where did you get this?" he asked after a while, as if not believing that it was his.

"Don't worry about that. We looked into your account quite legally, with permission from the public prosecutor. I want you to tell me about the amounts."

He turned and looked at his mother, but she was busy admiring her rings. He saw that he wasn't going to get any help from there and so was forced to answer himself. "The 250,000 is my salary. The rest is-extra."

"Extra?"

"Jobs I do on the side."

I picked up Mrs. Hourdakis's statement and handed it to her. "And where are these amounts from? From a fashion house?"

"My mother gives them to me," she answered immediately. "She lives with us and pays her share of the housekeeping."

"Your mother also has deposits of 200,000 and 300,000 in her account, but I don't see any regular withdrawals or transfers to your account."

As soon as they saw that I also had the statement belonging to Hourdakis's mother-in-law, they didn't know what to say and clammed up. I started to get tougher with them. "Take a look at your husband's statement. Put it beside the others!" I said to Mrs. Hourdakis. "The amounts went into the four accounts with only a few days' difference. If you add them up, they come to a million drachmas each time. How did your husband, a customs officer on a reduced pension, earn all that money? I'm waiting!"