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button, and it wouldn't budge. Something was stopping it. I tried again, using more force this time, but nothing happened.
    "The mechanism has jammed."

    Without answering, Sotiris removed the top of the cistern and put his hand inside. First he pulled out a big stone, then dipped his hand inside again. This time, his hand came out with a cellophane packet, in which were wrapped five-thousand-drachma notes. I stood there, staring at the notes with my mouth wide open.
    "I told you we'd find money, but you didn't believe me." He was trying to put one over on me, and he made no effort to conceal his smugness.
    "You didn't find anything because you didn't look properly. When I said you wouldn't find any money, I meant in the mattress, not in the whole house. If you'd been a bit more methodical, we'd have found it the first time."
    The smile faded from his lips, and his exhilaration melted like a lollipop. Serves him right. He tried to make it seem like my fault, and now I'd shouldered him with the omission, whereas normally I'd have given him credit for finding it. He had to learn that mistakes are always the fault of subordinates. Superiors never make mistakes.
    "Count it!"
    He went on counting and counting. "Five hundred thousand."
    Speechless, I gazed at the heap of notes and remembered the report I'd written. I tried to recall a point in it where I could fit this new evidence, albeit at the last minute, without Ghikas finding out and screaming that we hadn't done our job properly.

     

CHAPTER 6
The families on Karadimas Street were condemned to live both together and alone. Because the street itself was no more than three meters wide and the houses were arranged on either side of it. Whoever sat at the window saw into the opposite house, talked into the opposite house, lived in the opposite house, whether wanting to or not. The houses were arranged without rhyme or reason: Three houses were stuck close together, then there was an empty lot, then a house with a tiny garden beside two other houses stuck together like Siamese twins. On one side of the street was a haberdasher's and on the other a grocer's. Most of the houses were single story and only occasionally was there a two-story one. Some of the roofs had TV antennas, others had iron uprights sticking out of the concrete; some straight and others now bent, but anyway signs of hope that one day there would be a second floor added. For the time being, the hope had been abandoned, and many of the houses were so narrow that you didn't need a tape measure to calculate their width; you could do it with your arms. The poorest houses had nice wooden doors, painted blue, red, and green. The more imposing ones had wroughtiron doors with patterns recalling fossilized flowers or branches from a burnt forest.
    The house where the Albanian couple lived was at the end of the street, next to an abandoned timber warehouse. Whereas almost all the houses looked into each other, no one could see into the Albanians' house. I stood outside with Sotiris, facing the empty lot across the way, and I cursed my bad luck. Back to the beginning with the questioning, the door-to-door inquiries, one person telling you one thing, another something different, and all you're left with is a headful of nothing, as my father used to say.

    "You take one side, and I'll take the other," I said to Sotiris. He understood and headed toward the haberdasher's. I made for the grocers.
    The grocer had a slab of Gruyere on his counter, and he was slicing it down the middle. He trimmed the edges, nibbling the bits. He looked up and remembered me immediately.
    "About the Albanians again?" he said, as he placed half the slab of cheese inside the fridge.
    "Do you know whether they lived here all the time? I was told that they came here for a while and then left" My mind was more on what the chubby woman had told me than on the five hundred thousand.
    "All I know is that the woman came here twice to shop. The first time