Deadline in Athens Read Online Free Page B

rankle her and get a bit of my own back. The first stage of family life is the joy of living together. The second is children. The third and longest stage is getting your own back at every opportunity. When you get to that stage, you know that you're secure and nothing is going to change. Your kids are off on their own, and you come home each evening knowing that waiting for you is your wife, your meal, and those little opportunities to get your own back.
    "Oh, come on, Costas. I haven't got any boots for going out in!"
    "We'll see!" I said sharply, putting an end to the conversation.
    In bed, she cuddled up to me. She put her arm around my waist and began kissing me on my ear and neck. I lay there motionless. She brought her leg up to my knee and began rhythmically sliding it up and down from my shin to my penis.
    "How much do you need for the boots?" I said.
    "I saw a really lovely pair, but they're a bit expensive. Thirty-five thousand drachmas. But they'll last me for years."
    "All right. I'll buy them for you."
    Her leg slid down for the last time, like the elevator from the third floor to the ground floor, and it stopped there. She removed her arm from around my waist. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and immediately withdrew into her own territorial waters.

    "'Night," she said, with relief in her voice.
    "'Night," I said, also with relief, and I opened my Liddell & Scott, which I'd taken down from the shelf before getting into bed.
    But it was impossible for me to concentrate. My mind was on Karayoryi and the matter of the child she kept going on about. She couldn't have simply invented it, out of thin air; she was keeping something from me. It suddenly came to me: Ask the Albanian. He might know something. I'd ask him first and then worry about Karayoryi. If nothing else, I could do what I'd thought of that morning. I'd tell Thanassis to get it on with her and see what he could discover.
    In my dream, I was in the home of the two Albanians. Except that their corpses were no longer there and the mattress was covered with a blanket. On the folding table was a bassinet. I leaned over and saw a baby. It was no more than three months old and was crying its eyes out. Standing by the gas stove, I saw Karayoryi warming the baby's bottle.
    "What are you doing here?" I said.
    "Babysitting," she said.

     

CHAPTER 4
I'd swallowed my first mouthful of croissant and was taking my first gulp of coffee when the door opened and in walked Thanassis. He looked at me and smiled. It was one of the rare occasions on which he didn't tell me that he was a moron. This happened once a year, twice at most.
    "This is for you;' he said, handing me a piece of paper.
    "Okay. Leave it there."
    Over the years I've developed a standard practice: never to take papers handed to me. Usually, they're orders, restrictions, cutbacks, something, at any rate, to get your goat. So I let them lie on my desk and psychologically prepare myself to read them. Thanassis, however, stood there holding it out to me and said, triumphantly: "It's the Albanian's confession."
    I froze. I reached out and took the statement. "How did you manage it?" I said, unable to conceal my incredulity.
    "Vlassis told me," he said with a smile.
    "Vlassis?"
    "He's the officer on cell duty. We were having a coffee in the canteen, and he told me that you wanted to convince the Albanian that he'd be better off in prison. So I sat down, typed out a statement, and took it to him. He signed it straight away."
    I looked at the third page. A couple of inches from the foot of the sheet was a scribble that looked like a child's drawing of Mount Hymettus. Apparently it was the Albanian's signature. I read swiftly through the statement, skimming the formal parts. Everything was there, exactly as he'd told it to me the previous day during the interrogation: how he'd met the girl in Albania and fallen for her, how he'd skulked around the house for days even though she'd sent him packing. He'd felt