Free Che Committed Suicide by Petros Márkaris Page A

of absence in my time on the Force and this is an opportunity for me to make up for it.’ I added this with a smile in order to strengthen my position while waiting for him to go on trying to persuade me so that I might give in little by little.
    He stared at me as though wanting to draw up a profile of me, as he’d learned during the six months he’d spent idling his time away with the FBI. I persisted with my smile.
    ‘Yanoutsos is here to stay,’ he said suddenly.
    His words took me aback and I lost my composure. ‘Stay where?’ I asked like a twerp.
    ‘They transferred him to Homicide to get rid of him. And on the pretext that you were gravely wounded and you’re returning from convalescence, you’ll be transferred to a section with less stress and Yanoutsos will get your position.’
    I suddenly saw vividly before me the look of my two assistants at the Kurds’ flat. That’s why they were keeping their distance from me. It had already got around that Yanoutsos was being primed for my job and they were playing it safe so they wouldn’t find themselves in hot water.
    ‘I told you, he has friends in high places and there’s nothing I can do,’ Ghikas went on. ‘But if you get somewhere with the Favieros case, I’ll be able to say “Look, Haritos has come up trumps again. We won’t get anywhere without him” and they won’t dare give him your position.’
    What was I thinking of to act like a prima donna? Now he would want to be paid back twice over for the favour he was doing me. ‘And if I don’t get anywhere with the case?’ I said and my voice betrayed my fear and anxiety.
    ‘You will.’ The reply was categorical, without any trace of doubt. ‘There’s something not right about this case and you’re the only one who can find out what it is.’
    ‘Why only me?’
    ‘Because you’re a stickler and stubborn with it.’ His frankness was disarming. He paused for a moment and then went on somewhat uneasily: ‘Except that I can’t give you any of your assistants or anyone else from the department. If I do, everyone will find out what we’re up to and I’ll be out on a limb.’
    He was right, but how would I manage on my own?
    ‘I can send you Koula. She’s the only person I trust blindly. We’ll say that her father is on his death bed and I’ll give her leave to take care of him.’
    ‘And what about you?’ I asked astonished. ‘Koula is your right hand.’
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘I’ll make do with the left one for a while,’ he replied vaguely.
    ‘All right,’ I said, though my initial delight had been poisoned by the worry of failure, because my job was in jeopardy.
    Now that he had secured my consent, relieved and with a big smile on his face, he got to his feet. I looked at him wondering which of us would come out on top in our future confrontation. Would it be him because he would tell me that he’d saved me my job or would it be me for ridding him of Yanoutsos?
    We were at the front door when, suddenly, in an outburst of unprecedented cordiality, he gave me a friendly pat on the back instead of his usual formal handshake. ‘I’ve missed you, Costas,’ he said, ‘I’ve really missed you.’
    I wanted to tell him that I’d missed him too, but it didn’t mean very much, because in my case I’d missed everything apart from my own home. So that included him too, but not him personally, he was just a part of the whole.
    ‘It’s out of the question!’ shouted Adriani, when later we were sitting with Fanis at the table eating our oven-roasted suckling pig with potatoes in a lemon sauce. ‘It’s out of the question for you to drive that old crock in your weak state.’
    The old crock was my faithful Mirafiori that had so far managed to avoid the scrapheap and was about to celebrate, humbly and without any fanfares, its thirtieth year on the road. Adriani had digested the fact that she would have Koula round her feet all day long, but the Mirafiori for dessert