Baby Blue Read online

  Time passed. I took in the people, pigeons, blocks of flats, the pneumatic drill, a couple of trees, some lights left on in someone’s living room, pollution, fresh cooking smells, parallel and perpendicular streets but none bearing any names as great as Seferis, as my street did. I was already beginning to feel territorial. The shops that would never feel the effects of the crisis and others which never saw a customer; two ten-year-old boys coming out of school, one chasing the other mercilessly; gestures; faces; cars; motorbikes; flyers dumped in the street; “for rent” signs plastered on the walls of buildings. A violinist busking looked at me arrogantly but decided against taking me on once he realized I was twice his size. He started to walk away. It occurred to me that I had unintentionally stolen his spot. I got to my feet with considerable difficulty and whistled across to him. I gestured to him to come back, and he responded with a bow indicating his gratitude and returned. I had nothing to say to him and left. I had no idea where I was going. And I didn’t really care.

  11

  I hadn’t walked further than a block before I found myself outside a gym advertising Pilates classes and a shop selling designer handbags that was too expensive to show the prices in the window. I looked up; my head was heavy, but I did see that I was no longer in Seferis Street. That was encouraging; it meant that I was not so drunk that I was going round in circles without realizing it. I looked at the gym and at the handbags. They looked back at me haughtily. This wasn’t déjà vu but old-fashioned competition: capitalism in action on a local scale. It was like going back in time to 2008, as though the crisis had happened elsewhere. Neo Psychiko: another country. My phone rang and, faster than I’d ever drawn a pistol, I pulled it out of my pocket. It wasn’t Maria’s name on the screen. It was Drag’s. I thought twice before answering it.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said, not waiting for me to speak first. He was almost excited.

  “Unusual and therefore interesting,” I answered.

  “Are you all right? You sound a bit strange – like you’re mixing up your words or something.”

  “It must be your signal. What idea?” I asked, rubbing my face with my hand, trying to keep my head from drooping under the weight.

  “I’m up to my eyeballs here. Spending all my time supposedly securing the safety of the rest of those paedos on that show.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “I use them as bait, set up traps for the Avenger. If he wants to kill them, let him – I’ll bring him in later. But we haven’t got time to lose. I want to check every detail of this case. So I was thinking, since you’re the second most competent investigator in the city …”

  “Who’s the most competent?”

  Instead of answering, he sighed.

  “Are you in pain?” I asked.

  “… and because you’re going to be investigating the Raptas case anyway, I was thinking perhaps you could look into the connection between his murder and these paedophile murders.”

  “You’re asking me to help the Hellenic police?”

  “The Hellenic police never need help. I’m asking you to help me.”

  “Or maybe you’re asking me for another reason – apart from the fact that I’m the best investigator in town?”

  “Second best. What other reason?”

  “To see if the similarities between the murders are a coincidence. You don’t want to waste police resources trying to find out. If they’re not just a coincidence, you don’t want it to be known inside the force that you’ve worked it out. Because if one of your lot tells the press, the Avenger will run scared before you’ve had a chance to bring him in.”

  “After all these years, you’re beginning to learn.”

  “If it makes you happy, I can call you ‘Teacher’ too.”

  “Just not in public, please. I’m just a shy, working-class kid.”

  “I can tell by the way you dress.”

  “Any information you need, just say the word. Smart arse,” he said before hanging up.

  The trick is to always focus on something else. And that something else for me was to make myself useful, which is why exercise didn’t help.

  When I was a child, whenever my mother used to disappear from home, there was no job around the house I wouldn’t turn my hand to. Dusting, mopping, washing the dishes, washing clothes, drying clothes: making myself useful. That way everything would be perfect for when she got back. Give her a reason not to leave again. And that’s what my job does for me too. It gives me the sense that I am helping people take a tiny step towards the light. Some people have enough talent to create extra light; I just lift some of the darkness. Of course, I can’t defeat the seven-headed Hydra, but I can frustrate it by chopping off its heads as quickly as I can.

  It was time to head home.

  I fell asleep for about an hour and was woken up by the alarm on my mobile. I had to get ready for my next meeting with Angelino. I started thinking about how happy our childhoods had been, when you could shut off an alarm with a single swat; now you have to fiddle around on your phone looking for the snooze button. Part of me didn’t want to wake up at all. Another part of me was determined never to get up again. Fortunately, I was in so many pieces that some of the other ones prevailed. I staggered to the bathroom, took a couple of painkillers, had a warm shower and towelled myself not quite dry, the way Maria likes me.

  I looked in the fridge and saw I was out of fruit so had to make do with half a litre of supermarket orange juice, the kind that delivers strength, vitality and plenty of sugar. Two cups of black filter coffee later and I was feeling borderline functional. It was getting on for 8.30. Maria was nowhere to be seen. No. Don’t think about her. Concentrate on something else: the computer, the case. The similarities between Raptas’ murder and the way the paedophiles from the TV show were murdered. Too much of a coincidence – surely? But what did that mean? The mistakes in Raptas’ murder had to be deliberate, didn’t they? I was getting all my thoughts down on paper as they came to me. I always did that. I write down all the questions I have. If you’re not methodical, you won’t get anywhere. But you can’t get anywhere without evidence, and I had nothing to go on. So instead of speculating about what could be going on, I needed to find something that would lead me to something else, and from there to God knows where. The computer was ready and waiting. I typed “Raptas” into Google Images. Nothing. YouTube: nothing. None of the work he had done while he was working for HighTV. Not a trace. I searched all the other sites I could think of with video content. Same story. In the end all I managed to unearth was a report he’d done for the Democratic Press covering a meeting between the then PM and representatives from industry and agriculture, which didn’t yield any interesting information. The tone of the report was completely flat. Hadn’t Emma said that he had wanted to change the world? It didn’t look like he’d done much in that direction. Anyway, how could he change the world? Not with reporting like that. Perhaps that was it; perhaps the reason I couldn’t turn anything up on him was that there was nothing on him out there, good or bad.

  Then again, it had been eight years since he’d given up his job – but eight years for the Internet is nothing. A recent report on the enormous volume of information in circulation explained that one week these days spawns as much information as the whole of 2002. How could all that information fail to contain even one essential piece of information about the life and work of Raptas? He had worked in the media, after all. Was it really possible that his disappearance, sudden as it was, hadn’t moved at least one of those idle online commentators to ask what had happened to him, and that his former colleagues were either completely unaware that he’d been murdered three years ago or, if they had been, had never written about it anywhere?

  This was beginning to look less like murder and more like vaporization.

  I clicked through the pages with the irrelevant results and then found a video on a news site which included the name Raptas in the credits – but there was nothing by him i
n the piece. A female war correspondent was narrating. It was about Afghanistan and had attracted seven likes and an avalanche of comments underneath from soccer fans who would chip in now and then with comments on Olympiacos and Panathinaikos, and exchanged insults. There was another comment from someone claiming the report was fixed, everything the reporter was saying was lies invented by enemies of the fatherland, but the truth would out, the nation would triumph, and Smyrna would be Greek again.

  In the twenty-seventh page of results I found a number of sites all containing the same statement going back to 2009, the year that Raptas had decided to quit HighTV and move onto the streets with Emma. It was published on a lifestyle site, a piece about journalists under the title “Transfers”. It stated that Themis Raptas was ending his long association with HighTV and moving to another channel to take on the role of chief editor. Then two months later there was a follow-up announcement on the same page explaining that Raptas was leaving HighTV to go into business and would resume his journalistic career once he had got his business off the ground, details of which were to follow. Some business, waiting for people to toss their spare change into an upturned hat. I added it to my notes, this time underlining: “Long association with the channel”. How is it possible to have a “long association” with a channel and yet leave no trace behind?

  In any event, something had clearly happened to Raptas in 2009. Something that forced him to abandon his old life and everything in it – apart from Emma. But five years had elapsed between 2009 and his murder, so perhaps the murder had nothing to do with his old job. I made a note there on the page to probe in that direction too.

  Another hour had passed. It was time to get going.

  I strapped on the leg holster for my trusty Smith & Wesson 642. It had got me out of some very tricky situations in the past, maybe more even than my favourite Sig Sauer P226.40 S&W, which I usually carried on me in a shoulder holster. I threw on yesterday’s jeans, my black boots, a thick blue shirt and my brown leather jacket, not just to conceal my weapon but because the forecast was warning of a sudden drop in temperature and the chill air coming through the only window in the flat confirmed this. For the time being, it was keeping me awake and was the best thing that had happened to me all day.

  This time I got to Angelino’s house at 11 a.m. and this time instead of Jimmy letting me in, there were two blokes standing guard who looked just like Jimmy, but judging by the look in their eyes were probably more intelligent – not that it would take much. Angelino’s security team seemed to be growing by the day. I remembered how even down in Omonia where danger could be lurking anywhere, Angelino was always alone with maybe just one of his people keeping an eye on things at a discreet distance. I couldn’t work out why he needed to be so careful here at the house. Why had he suddenly started carrying a gun? It was possible that this had nothing to do with Emma. After all, he did have his fingers in a lot of cases, so it could easily be about something completely unconnected, and simply a coincidence that Emma was in the house. That also might explain why Angelino hadn’t mentioned any problems he was having to me. Maybe.

  Jimmy then made an appearance from behind the other bodyguards. “See if he’s got anything on him,” he ordered. The one on the left, a thickhead with long, curly, glossy hair, came up to me.

  “Angelino invited me,” I said, taking a step back.

  “Did he?” said Jimmy with a sly smile, giving the sign to the bodyguard to go ahead with the search.

  Technically he was right to do so. That was his job – to disarm anyone who might be dangerous, whether or not they had turned up with an invitation. Only I wasn’t a threat to Angelino, and Jimmy knew it. He just wanted to piss me off. And he chose his moment now when he had the numerical advantage.

  I had slept, started my investigation and just about regained my equilibrium. I didn’t feel that I was angry when I arrived at the house. But I was. And I realized I was the minute I picked up on Jimmy’s smirk.

  I took one step towards him. “OK. Take it,” I said, pretending I was about to reach into the left pocket of my leather jacket.

  While his eyes moved instinctively to my left hand, I threw out my right, grabbed him from the base of his enormous nose and lifted him off the ground. He was heavy. I was angry enough not to care. His nose snapped in a violent crack which I felt deep inside my fingers. The other two had already drawn, but with Jimmy’s back shielding me in such a confined space, they were never going to shoot. Jimmy was helpless, screeching with pain, flapping his arms around comically.

  “Not only don’t you have any scruples, you don’t have any brains.” I stole that line from Detour, but didn’t expect Jimmy to know much about 1940s cinema. “Calm down. I’ll let him go now,” I said to the other two. I dropped him on the floor, like a sack. The other two then came to take my gun off me. Jimmy was on the floor making noises. I think he was crying. “Please tell Angelino that his next appointment is here,” I said.

  Emma’s performance was over. The only people left in the house were the girl, Angelino and the bodyguards. I gathered from what they were saying to each other that one of them was called Zissis. Zissis was filling Angelino in through the intercom on Jimmy’s little accident. He then took me up to Angelino’s office on the first floor, knocked discreetly on the door and, hearing Angelino tell him to leave me there and go, left with something approaching a smile on his face. Perhaps he didn’t think much of his boss.

  Angelino was in his office drinking brandy. “Office” was a bit of a misnomer. There wasn’t any office furniture in the room; instead there was a bar heaving with drinks, a few files sitting on the edge, and absolutely nothing else. It felt as though the owner had simply run out of cash before they got to this room. Angelino was sitting down on the wooden floor, his eyes half closed, looking like something halfway between a guru meditating and a guru who couldn’t be bothered to meditate because he had already worked out all the answers. His glass was already down to the last third. He had changed back into his famous blue sweatshirt and his fatigues. You can take the homeless man off the streets, but you can’t take the streets out of the homeless man. Even if the man is homeless out of choice. He motioned to me to sit down opposite him and offered me a drink. The thought of it made my stomach turn. It had been through enough for one day. I said no.

  “How’s your friend in the hospital getting on?”

  “Oh, yeah. Fine. Great.”

  From his tone, it wasn’t clear whether he was telling the truth, but it was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “What about Jimmy?” he asked, sounding almost bored.

  “He was forgetting his manners. Again – and for no reason.”

  “I do pay him, you know. And thanks to you I’ll be paying him to recover while he’s no use to me at all.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “Did Emma tell you all that nonsense about how she’ll pay you out of her own money?” he asked, bringing the conversation round to where he wanted it.

  I nodded.

  “That’s rubbish. Whatever you need, you can get it from me. Money and any other kind of help.”

  “Why are you so interested in Emma?” I asked.

  “I’ve been taking care of her for a while now.”

  “So she tells me. My question is ‘why?’”

  “Your question isn’t ‘why?’.” Your question is: am I taking care of her because she’s going to bring me in a lot of cash when she gets famous, or I am looking after her because I think she needs looking after?”

  “Right. Yes. That is my question.”

  He tilted his head back a little. I thought I saw a smile form, but Angelino had very thin lips and it was hard to tell when he was smiling and when he was simply pursing them.

  “Stratos – we’ve known each other for years. What’s your opinion of me?”

  Interesting question. I thought about my mother, and all the times Angelino would help me track her down when she’d
get lost in the city and in her mind, and all those times he would sit with her, for hours on end, playing cards with her in the square till I arrived to take her home. I thought about Jordanis, the young Albanian kid he took under his wing when the boy’s parents were deported, and who was now thirteen years old and in America on a scholarship. I thought about the information Angelino got for us last year and passed on for free about the contract the Bulgarian mafia had on Drag for 200,000 euros. And it was a rare thing for Angelino to give out information free of charge, and the fact that it was Drag who needed the information made it even more remarkable when you consider that Drag had told Angelino that when he caught him mixed up in anything dirty, he’d have him thrown into Korydallos prison at the first opportunity. Not if he caught him – when he caught him. And then I started thinking about all those people who had ended up with a bullet in their heads because Angelino had sold the addresses of their hideouts at the right price. A lot of them were innocent – or more or less innocent – with wives and children. I remembered his complete indifference when I asked him about it. He just said, “I sell information. Information is like technology; it’s neutral. What people decide to do with the information is their business.”

  Angelino reminded me of Sophocles Street a decade ago when it was home to the stock exchange, where fortunes would be made and lost in the course of a single day, and when nobody knew what the future held. Like the stock market, Angelino could make or break you within a matter of the few seconds it took him to decide whether or not he would pass on a particular piece of information to you – one that could save your life or take it. But despite everything, because of what he’d done for my mother, I looked on him like a brother. And I owed him, something Emma was quick to stress the previous night.