Maniai Case File 1: The Girl And The Blood Slide

Chapter 8

I was sitting like a slump at a bench on Ktel station. It's the intercity bus service that gets you to other parts of Greece. It's generally dirty, noisy, but it gets you there.

I was waiting for my night express. Thessaloniki is the second-largest city in the country, so the transit is frequent. The bus-station is busy all day, and retains its business up to the night hours. It's what you would imagine a third-world airport to look like. Then replace planes with buses. People carrying luggage, chickens in cages, all nationalities coming and going, greeting their loved ones, announcements in Greek and repeated in murdered English. A banner ad right across my line of sight was proudly showing a computer error message. Nobody cared to fix it.

To my right I could see the line of taxi drivers waiting for a fare. Men talking, looking around to hook up a client. Yellow cars, pimped up with electronics and antennas. GPS equipment, old-style CB radio, a couple or three of app-based taxi services. In-car Wifi.

I could just hop in and get home. The scam was already done, I had the cash on me. I could sit at home for a few days and then go back to work pretending I learnt a lot from our investigation. No one would really care. And regarding the little girl, well... What's done is done.

I sipped the remains of my cold coffee.

I had already spent all day back at home, then I'd come here to get the overnight express. I would have a five hour drive, and then wait till morning for the regional bus to Kilkis. Then, find a hotel, freshen up, go straight to work cause you are on billable time. It would be tiresome.

I sighed.

I wanted to do this, I wanted to work, to be a CDI guy, whatever that was. Dunno if its exciting or whatever, it was a way to contribute. Not doing anything was the worst thing in the world. And now I had a job that would entail trips to the country and I'd try to cheat myself out of that? No way.

A honk startled me from my phase-out. There were other honks as well, but this one seemed to address me specifically.

Zoe had come up to the bus parking space and honking me. Two bus drivers and a guy that seemed to work there was yelling at her.

"Hey, you can't be in here! It's for bus and cargo only," a man said.

She rolled down the window and flipped a cigarette butt to the floor. "I'm picking up bipedal cargo, be out in a sec."

"Oh OK, quick as you can," the man said and resumed his duties.

She wasn't allowed to drive in here of course. It is accessible, and vans come in here all the time but civilian cars need to go to a side-road and pick up people from there. I couldn't contain a smile.

She gestured at me as if I was a monkey.

I didn't move a muscle. "How did you know you'd find me here?"

She shrugged. "The overnight bus is cheaper. I knew you'd wait all day."

"What changed your mind?"

She lit up another cigarette as if it was a fuse. "Poly, just refund that damn ticket and hop on."