The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  ‘Shift my what?’ Mavros said, squaring up to the rider. Given that there was a team of policemen a few metres away, he wasn’t taking too much of a risk.

  The courier looked round and bowed his head. ‘Go to the devil, wanker,’ he muttered, as he busied himself with his pannier.

  ‘Want to take that kiddie’s protector off and look me in the eye?’ Mavros asked. ‘Wanker.’ He repeated the term of abuse with more volume than the biker had given it, knowing that his ironic reference to the helmet that the country’s hotheaded motorcyclists hugely resented would have stung him.

  ‘Another time,’ the courier said, moving across the street, ‘I’ll eat you alive.’

  Mavros would have considered doing something to the tyres if the policemen opposite hadn’t been scrutinising him. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d taken revenge on the scumbags who rode like maniacs and parked as if they owned the pavements. He headed on, his mood suddenly lighter. There was nothing like a bit of brainless repartee to kick-start the day.

  The feeling didn’t last. He knew he needed to get a grip on himself. His apartment on the slopes of the Acropolis wasn’t cheap and he was running short of cash, but he wasn’t sure that he could face taking on a high-intensity, high-reward case yet. It was sometimes like that: his work depressed him till he came across a client who piqued his curiosity. That hadn’t happened for some time now. Passing the neoclassical portico of the university with the incongruous statue of William Gladstone, representative of the Great Powers who’d controlled the country’s destiny in the past, he turned right on to Solonos. There were numerous bookshops in the area but he resisted the temptation to browse. He could lose himself for hours and that would not impress his mother, even though she still ran her own successful publishing house. He considered asking her for money—she’d offered to help him often enough when he’d started his business ten years back—but he dismissed the thought immediately. He was too old for hand-outs from parents.

  Climbing the lower slopes of Mount Lykavittos, Mavros felt the chill in the December air increase. As he turned on to his mother’s street, the sea’s bright blue caught his eye. He looked back between the apartment buildings towards the blurred flanks of the nearest islands, then shivered and walked on. A familiar figure was getting out of a Mercedes.

  ‘Ela, Alex. Ti kaneis?’

  ‘Hello, Anna.’ Mavros leaned forward to kiss his sister’s cheek. Although as kids they’d always spoken English at home in Athens on the insistence of their Scottish mother, Anna had got used to speaking Greek with her Cretan husband and their teenagers. ‘You’ve been summoned too?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Anna slammed the car door and straightened her pale green designer skirt. ‘Here, hold this for a second.’ She handed her brother a bag bearing the logo of a well-known music store and took a small mirror from her purse.

  ‘You haven’t turned into a groupie, have you?’

  Anna stared at him as she put away her lipstick. ‘What? Oh, very funny. These are for the kids. They want the CDs autographed.’

  Mavros laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.’ He took out his key and ushered her into the building.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ his sister said over her shoulder. ‘Though I must say I do like some of the lyrics.’

  ‘Bit left-wing for you, aren’t they?’ he said, pressing the lift button.

  Anna’s expression darkened. ‘Do you mind? I haven’t completely forgotten that our father was a Communist.’

  ‘Even if your husband supports the forces of conservatism?’ Mavros smiled. His brother-in-law, Nondas Chaniotakis, was a bubble-gum-chewing Cretan stockbroker who inevitably had links to the party of big business.

  Anna jabbed her elbow into his side and took the bag from him. ‘Lay off, Alex. I’m not rising to it.’ She stepped out of the lift briskly when it reached the sixth floor.

  Mavros watched her walk purposefully down the marble corridor, heels clicking and jet-black hair swaying from its clasp. She was forty-four, five years older than he was, but there was still no sign of grey. Obviously, working as a columnist for several high-circulation glossy magazines arrested the ageing process. Unlike pounding the streets as a private eye.

  ‘Ah, there you both are.’ Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou came to the door as soon as the key was turned. ‘I was beginning to wonder what—’

  ‘We’re early, Mother,’ Anna said crisply. ‘How are you?’ She kissed her and moved into the main room without waiting for an answer.

  ‘Alex.’ His mother put her hands on his shoulders and ran her eyes over him. ‘You look tired. Have you been eating properly?’

  Mavros bent into the embrace, his nostrils filled with the scent of the talc and the understated perfume he’d known since he was a boy. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, stepping back and returning her gaze. ‘Never mind me. You look radiant.’ And she did. Although she was in her mid-seventies and her naturally wavy hair was pure white, Dorothy seemed to gain more vitality as she aged. Maybe that’s the way it was, Mavros thought. On the female side of the family, at least—they go on for ever, while the men fall by the wayside.

  ‘He’s here,’ his mother said, in a stage whisper.

  ‘Right.’ Mavros took her arm and steered her into the large saloni with the view to the Acropolis.

  The figure at the glass balcony door turned slowly from Anna as they approached. He was dressed in an old grey corduroy suit, a red cravat round his neck. Mavros knew his profile from photographs, but in the flesh he was even more striking. The full mouth and perfectly straight nose were surmounted by unusually large eyes, the brows thick and dark, as was the hair. Like Anna’s it was untouched by grey, though the man must have been almost eighty. Mavros wondered if he dyed it, but dismissed the thought as unworthy.

  Anna had evidently introduced herself already. ‘Mr Laskaris,’ she said in Greek, her tone formal, ‘this is my brother Alex.’

  ‘Please,’ the old man said, ‘my name is Kostas.’ He extended a hand that wavered slightly. The grip was weak and the skin clammy. Although the famous poet was standing straight his troubled expression suggested he had been acquainted with pain, mental or physical, for many years.

  ‘How do you do?’ Mavros said.

  ‘I do as well as I can,’ the old man said, with a restrained smile. ‘So you’re the investigator.’ He ran his eye over Mavros’s leather jacket and faded jeans. ‘You look more like a revolutionary student with that outfit and all that hair.’

  Mavros smiled back at him, remembering the reputation the poet had for forthright speaking. ‘Revolutionary, no. I missed that gene. Student? Well, I suppose in my business it pays to be a student of human nature.’ He was expecting to be given a hard time by the former leading Communist for his choice of what many saw as a profession that gave support to the establishment, but Laskaris only nodded, his expression sombre.

  ‘No doubt you follow your father and brother in your own way, young man.’ He glanced over at the black-and-white photographs of Spyros and Andonis Mavros in the plain wooden frames that sat on one of Dorothy’s many bookcases. Spyros had died in 1967, worn out before his time. ‘You have your father’s eyes,’ the old man said, looking back at Mavros. ‘Except…’ He turned towards Dorothy, then nodded again. ‘Ah, I see.’ He gave a wider smile. ‘How interesting. A poet less decrepit than I am could make much of the symbolism.’

  There was a pause as the others considered that observation. Alex Mavros certainly had his male relatives’ blue eyes, though they were not as brightly coloured as Spyros’s or Andonis’s. But he also had flecks of Dorothy’s brown in the left iris, a flaw that threw some people and attracted others. Trust a poet to see it in metaphorical terms.

  ‘Would you sign these recordings for my children?’ Anna asked, fumbling in the bag and shooting Mavros a warning glance. ‘They love the songs so much.’

  ‘Ah, my dear Anna,’ said Laskaris wistfully, ‘how I wish I shared their enthusiasm for th
e music. But in truth this is hack work, no matter how many people it reaches.’ He took one of the CDs. ‘Really, my friend Randos should concentrate on composing symphonies. Here all he has done is steal the rhythms of folk tradition and the rembetika.’

  Mavros inclined his head and took in the photograph on the cover of the wild-haired musician notorious for his left-wing views and, in the past, his associations with female singers of the bouzouki-driven music that had originated in the 1920s criminal underworld. ‘Surely you don’t dislike “The Voyage of the Argo”,’ Mavros said. ‘That’s a beautiful song.’ He smiled. ‘And not only because of your lyrics.’

  Kostas Laskaris shrugged. ‘It’s a pretty tune. The verses mean more than the musical composition suggests.’

  Anna handed a pen to the old man and watched as he inscribed his name in a flowing script on the inner sleeves of the CDs. ‘I loved that song when I was young,’ she said. ‘You must be so proud of it.’

  The poet finished signing and looked up at her. ‘What I feel about it doesn’t matter, Anna,’ he said apologetically. ‘After the verses are written, they take on their own life. The meaning is what you, the listener or the reader, bring to them.’

  Dorothy stepped forward and took the old man’s arm. ‘Come, Kosta,’ she said. ‘It’s time to eat.’ She led him to the dining room.

  The meal passed pleasantly enough. Dorothy had gone to the trouble of cooking several Greek specialities for her guest. Laskaris expressed delight at the vine leaves stuffed with rice and dill, and the psari plaki, fish baked with tomatoes and onions, but it was noticeable that he didn’t eat much of any dish. Mavros had the impression that his mood had been affected by his question about the song that had inspired a generation of student activists in the sixties. Although, like Mavros’s father, Laskaris had been a resistance fighter during the Axis occupation in the forties and a Communist official from the fifties after the Party had been driven underground, Mavros had the feeling that a rift had developed latterly between his father and the poet. Still, his mother was being friendly to him, so things obviously hadn’t come to a head. Dorothy started trying to talk Laskaris into agreeing to an English translation of his selected works, one that her company would be happy to arrange. Mavros swallowed a laugh. His mother’s business acumen, dormant for decades when she was married to a committed Marxist, never failed to impress him. It would be quite a coup if she succeeded. Kostas Laskaris might have spent part of his career writing popular song lyrics, but his more serious poetry had a European reputation and he had even been talked of as a Nobel candidate.

  Laskaris stalled Dorothy effectively and looked across the table at Mavros. ‘So, Alex,’ he said seriously, ‘you work for the forces of law and order.’

  Mavros had thought earlier that he’d got away with it, but he should have known better. People on the Left never forgot the repressive police regimes that most governments had applied in Greece during the twentieth century. He opened his mouth to mount a half-hearted defence, but stopped when he saw the poet raise his hand.

  ‘It’s all right. Your mother told me that you look for missing people. Good for you. It’s hardly the same as beating up students on peaceful demonstrations, is it? God knows, the authorities need all the help they can get.’ He gave a smile of encouragement. ‘What do you think about the shooting of that businessman earlier in the month? Can it really be that Iraklis is back after all this time?’

  Mavros lowered his head, wishing he’d read the papers more carefully. Now he was going to look like a fool in front of his mother and sister, never mind one of the country’s leading writers.

  Fortunately Anna saved his skin. ‘Iraklis?’ she said scathingly. ‘Anyone can pretend to be Iraklis. All they need to do is murder someone and drop a piece of carved olivewood on the body. There’s been no sign of those terrorist lunatics for at least ten years and there was no proclamation claiming responsibility like there always used to be. No, the talk in the media is that the super-rich investor Vernardhakis was killed because he got in the way of the Russian Mafia bosses who are setting up in the country.’ She put down the knife she’d been using to peel an apple. ‘Nondas—my husband,’ she clarified to Laskaris, ‘—Nondas told me he had some very dubious friends.’

  ‘He certainly does,’ Mavros put in.

  Anna gave him a pained look. ‘Vernardhakis, you idiot, not Nondas.’

  The poet smiled at the domestic scene, then froze, his face white.

  ‘Are you all right, Kosta?’ Dorothy said anxiously, getting to her feet and moving round to the old man’s side. ‘Some water, Anna.’

  Mavros was there first, the carafe in his hand. He watched as Laskaris drank deeply, his free hand gripping the table edge so tightly that the veins stood up like the lines of earth raised by a plough. Then the colour gradually came back into his face and he released his hold on the wooden surface.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Excuse me. Sometimes I…sometimes I have a pain.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’ Anna asked. ‘I know some very good ones.’

  ‘And so do I, my dear,’ the old man said, smiling weakly. ‘And so do I.’

  Soon afterwards the lunch party broke up.

  The poet Kostas Laskaris, face gaunt and hands clenched, was lying on the bed in his hotel room above Syndagma Square. Until a few minutes ago, he’d been looking at the illuminated yellow walls of the former royal palace that now housed the Greek parliament, watching the soldiers in their ridiculous kilts and nailed boots adorned with pompoms mount guard in front of the memorial to the unknown soldier. Then the pain had knifed into his belly again and he’d been forced to lie flat. It had been coming more and more frequently in recent months. He’d consulted specialists. The results of the tests that morning hadn’t surprised him; neither had they frightened him. He had gone to lunch as arranged with Spyros Mavros’s widow after the hospital appointment, and he was sure no one there would have guessed the weight he was carrying if the cursed cancer hadn’t decided to exert itself at the table. At least he’d managed to control it and make a respectable exit.

  But he shouldn’t have gone. It was bad enough being away from his beloved tower in the Mani at the country’s southernmost extremity, it was bad enough looking down at the memorial—how many fighters had he known whose names were now forgotten? A hundred? Five hundred? The memory of his old comrades had been oppressing him recently. Was that why he had telephoned Spyros’s widow after all the years that had passed? If he’d thought seeing his old friend’s family would make him feel better, he’d been badly mistaken. Dorothy was as understanding as ever, despite her unwanted attempts to get hold of his poetry rights. But the children, Anna and that long-haired son with the blemish in his eye, they had brought back the guilt to him with the force of a glacier that had started to move after centuries of immobility. Anna and Alex. At least they were still alive, at least they had gained some pleasure from his writing, even if the full import of ‘The Voyage of the Argo’ was beyond them. They were the lucky ones. What about their brother Andonis?

  Laskaris clenched his hands as another wrench of pain seized him. What about Andonis Mavros? And what about the murdered businessman Vernardhakis? The killings were starting again, the wheel of violence was turning like it had when he was young, crushing the country’s children beneath its unrelenting edge. It shouldn’t be happening. The struggle was over, the world had moved on.

  The old poet felt himself slip into another dimension, an underground realm where shadowy figures ran screaming before a monstrous form wearing a lion skin and wielding a huge club hewn from an olive tree. Then he recognised the face. It was one he had known from childhood.

  It was Iraklis.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MAVROS spent the early evening at a central cinema. The American cop movie was cliché-ridden and turgid, its constant action sequences a pain to eye and ear—his own fault for not bothering to read the reviews. Coming out with the depressingly enthusiastic crowd, m
any of whom seemed to be Albanian and Russian immigrants, he turned on his mobile phone to check for messages. There weren’t any. It was eight-thirty. If he jumped into a taxi he could make it to Niki’s flat by nine. He stood at the edge of the bustling street for a few moments, then made up his mind. To hell with it. He’d take a chance on her temper. He switched off his phone and strode towards Omonia Square, ducking his head into the icy wind that was blasting up the wide avenue.

  The shops and stalls in the city’s main commercial area were bedecked with Christmas decorations, carols thundering out from speakers that had been stationed on the pavements. Even the periptera, the ubiquitous kiosks where Athenians bought newspapers, cigarettes and everything else they needed to sustain their daily lives, were strung with flashing lights and plastic holly. It was all a huge con, Mavros thought sourly. He remembered the decorations and lights in Edinburgh when he was a student. They were gross enough, but at least the seasonal celebrations had some claim to be traditional there. In Greece, New Year had been celebrated more than Christmas—until businessmen and shopkeepers realised what they were missing.

  ‘Kleftes kai malakes,’ Mavros mumbled—thieves and wankers. He reached the wide circular expanse that acted as a hub for several of the city’s main streets. Vehicles were careering round as relentlessly as ever, the whistles of the traffic police in their tall white hats almost drowned by the crash of gears and the gratuitous sounding of horns. The central part of Omonia was obscured by building equipment; the underground railway was being upgraded in advance of the Olympic Games, reducing this and many other intersections in Athens to permanent construction sites.

  There was a group of people arguing at the top of their voices next to a periptero that sold soft-core porn magazines openly and tripleX material if you winked at the trader. Mavros listened for a while, then moved on when he realised they were discussing the financial probity of a well-known tycoon who owned a major football club. He wasn’t interested in the debate. You didn’t have to be a Communist to know that people who bought football teams were ruthlessly on the make. The shouting was interspersed with virulent abuse. Mavros smiled. So much for Omonia, he thought—the square had been named in honour of ‘concord’, which presumably included harmony and reasoned agreement.