Che Committed Suicide by Petros Márkaris

and because all the good work that she had done for me in those previous two months, I would undo in two days, and … and …
    ‘You’re wanted!’
    The sound of her voice, sharp and authoritative, came from the front door. As if I were back to my first years in the Force, when I’d hear someone in one of the offices shout ‘Haritos!’ and I’d jump up and rush to find who it was that wanted me.
    ‘Your new assistant!’
    The front door was wide open. Parked outside was a van. Koula appeared at the side door with a computer monitor in her arms. She was followed by a young lad of around twenty-two who was carrying the computer.
    ‘Leave it, Spyros, and go and bring the table,’ Koula said to him.
    I found myself having to deal with two surprises at the same time and I didn’t know to which I should give precedence. First of all, I hadn’t been expecting Koula to turn up with a computer, and, secondly , it was quite a different Koula I saw before me. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, had tied her hair back into a ponytail and was no longer the model in uniform that greeted me in the entrance to Ghikas ’s office. She looked like a student or an assistant in a company.
    I recovered from the second surprise to return to the first. ‘What’s this, Koula? The Chief’s given you a computer as well?’
    She laughed. ‘Come on now, Inspector, you know him better than that! It belongs to my cousin Spyros, who’s studying computers . He had one spare and he’s given it to me.’
    The Spyros in question arrived carrying the little table. ‘Put it down there, I’ll take care of it, Spyros,’ she said to him sweetly. ‘This is Inspector Haritos.’
    The young lad shot me a quick look and mumbled a ‘Hello’. Then he went back to the van. It was quite clear that he had no liking for coppers. Koula looked behind her and burst out laughing.
    ‘He’s the son of my mother’s sister,’ she explained. ‘I had a hard job getting him to like me because I was on the Force.’ Then she pointed to the computer and table. ‘Is there somewhere we can put these?’
    ‘What do we need the computer for, Koula?’
    ‘Just think about it! We’re working under cover now. You won’t have any reports or statements or records. How are you going to remember everything you saw and heard from so many people?’
    She was right in what she said, but I didn’t know how I was going to persuade Adriani to find us a place for the computer. She’d quite likely put it in the loft without so much as a second thought.
    I found her in the kitchen washing the breakfast pots.
    ‘Where can we put a computer that we need for our work?’ I asked her.
    She dried her hands on the towel and stormed into the sitting room. Without uttering a word, she pushed the carved wooden armchair with the embroidered cushions inherited from her mother to the right; then she pushed the shelves with the vase that I had inherited from my mother to the left, leaving just enough room between them for the computer table. Then she turned to go back into the kitchen. But in the doorway to the sitting room, she bumped into Koula, who was waiting for her with a restrained smile.
    ‘Good morning, Mrs Haritos. I’m Koula,’ she said.
    ‘Good morning, my dear.’
    You can tell how much Adriani likes or dislikes someone from the shape of her lips. If she likes you, she smiles with her lips at their normal size. The more she dislikes you, the more she purses them. In Koula’s case, her lips had virtually disappeared.
    Koula went on smiling as though not having noticed her attitude. I, however, was ready to explode. After all, it wasn’t the girl’s fault if I had decided to clock in for work again. While Koula was connecting up the computer, I informed her about the previous day’s visits to Favieros’s house and construction site. When I told her that Favieros had been leaving later in the mornings because he had been working on his computer at home, she stopped