Free Che Committed Suicide by Petros Márkaris Page B

was too much for her to stomach.
    ‘I won’t be driving it. Koula can drive,’ I said to appease her.
    ‘It’s out of the question,’ she yelled again. ‘No one can drive that old banger apart from you.’
    ‘She’s right about that,’ chipped in Fanis, who was thoroughly enjoying it all. ‘Why don’t you get a new car? With all the easy instalments that they offer today, you won’t have to start paying it off for at least a year.’
    ‘I’m not parting with my Mirafiori. It’s still roadworthy.’ I said it with assurance though I wasn’t at all sure that it would start up again after two months of sitting in front of the house.
    ‘Fine,’ said Adriani. ‘But if anything happens to you, I’ll be straight off to Thessaloniki to stay with my daughter and you can get Koula to take care of you!’ In a temper she diced the meat on her plate into tiny pieces as though she were going to feed the grandchild that she didn’t have.

9
     
     
    ‘Continuation: mod. & demotic, Uninterrupted process or succession, sequel, resumption: Arist. H.A . 515b, 6 continuation of the nerves. Sor . 1/71 continuation to the embryo’s navel .’
     
     
‘Beginning: med., mod. & demotic, commencement, start. Plato Rep . 377 A the beginning is the most important part of every task ; 2. place where or from something starts. Thucyd. 1, 128 of the whole thing this was the start . Prov. What starts badly will end badly .’
     
    The same question had been going round and round in my head all night: was the mission that Ghikas had assigned me to be regarded as a new beginning or as a continuation of my old situation? Officially , I was still the Head of the Homicide Division on sick leave. Ghikas’s assignment meant neither change nor conversion. It was simply the continuation towards the embryo’s navel as Dimitrakos put it. As though I were a tax official who took care of a few friends’ books on the sly each evening in order to make a bit extra for my holidays.
    On the other hand, however, it wasn’t at all certain that I would remain Head of the Homicide Division. Firstly, because suicide is an act, the success of which is enjoyed in full by the one committing the act and consequently there would be nothing for me to cash in on. Secondly, even if I were to manage to make black appear white and squeeze some mileage out of Favieros’s suicide, Yanoutsos in the meantime would have got a firm grip on my position and would pull every string not to have to give up my chair, with its worn leather armrests from which the foam rubber was bursting out. Looking at it this way, the mission assigned to me by Ghikas was a new beginning, which had all the ingredients needed to prove the saying ‘a bad beginning betokens a worse end’.
    In the morning I still hadn’t found any answer to the question and I woke up with my head swimming. In the end, these kinds of dilemmas always come down to the more colloquial ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’, so I decided to have a shot at it, despite the limited chances of success, rather than allow Yanoutsos to get the better of me.
    Koula phoned me while I was still having my coffee and started talking to me in coded phrases: ‘I’ll bring the package over tomorrow , Inspector Haritos. Unfortunately, I don’t have time today. I need to take care of some details.’ She reminded me of my late father, who used to talk in coded language when he wanted to say that there was some order from above and he didn’t want anyone else to understand. ‘There’s a personal order from his nibs.’ And he meant the Prime Minister. Anyhow, I understood that she would take up her new duties the next day. In the meantime I could start alone. It was a pity to let the day go wasted.
    I drank the last of my coffee and got up to go. At the front door, I bumped into Adriani who was returning from the supermarket.
    ‘Are you going out?’
    ‘Yes. Don’t wait for me for lunch. I might be late.’
    When