The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  His name was Iason, Iason Kolettis. At least, that’s what he said he was called. At the time I had no reason to doubt him. I heard his voice before I set eyes on him because I was bent over my pad, engrossed in the sketch I was making. He said something in German. I suppose the blonde hair that you inherited from me made him think I was that nationality. I didn’t understand, but the softness, the gentleness of the way he addressed me, had an immediate effect. I looked up and was lost.

  Iason—I must call him that even though I’m sure it wasn’t his real name—was a stunning-looking man. He was tall and very slim. His hair was dark and down to his neck in the style of the mid-seventies and he had a heavy moustache. Most of the young Greeks did, I think it was some kind of macho thing. But he wasn’t macho at all. His face was beautiful in a weird, female way, his features delicate and his skin, though it was sallow, was very soft. He was like a boy who had grown up only a minute before I met him, a boy on the threshold of manhood, even though I later found out that he was over thirty. Apart from his gentle, loving voice, what struck me most about him were his eyes. They were dark, almost black, and although the skin around them was often creased in laughter, he had an intense stare that reminded me of the Mona Lisa. She projects an air of innocence, but it’s cut with an understanding of how much power over other people she has at her disposal. Iason was the same, but I only discovered the true nature of that power later.

  My first thought was that he was a ‘harpoonist’—that’s what they were known as, the young men who preyed on unaccompanied foreign women. I’d been told about them by the other embassy wives. I’d also been advised to be polite but firm with them. In fact, earlier that day in one of the central squares I’d told another guy where to put his harpoon. But Iason was different. To start with, he didn’t seem to want anything at all from me. He told me all sorts of esoteric stuff about the statues—how there was Egyptian influence in their style, how the arms were by their sides because the sculptors hadn’t worked out how to support outstretched limbs yet. He bought me coffee, hailed a taxi for me, said that he always came to the museum on Thursday mornings because he found the exhibits uplifting. But he didn’t try anything, didn’t even touch my hand. What he did, looking back, was cast a spell on me. I was a willing enough victim.

  I won’t embarrass you by describing what we eventually did on numerous afternoons in various seedy hotels. I’m sure you’ll discover the joys of unbridled passion for yourself soon enough. Maybe you already have. The fact was that it was glorious, full of joy and abandon, no guilt, no strings attached. I would return to the flat in the northern suburb, glowing, my appetite for life rekindled. And your father? He never noticed. He was so caught up in his work. The dictatorship had fallen a couple of years before and Americans were deeply resented because they had supported the Colonels. Trent saw it as his mission to rebuild ties between the U.S. and the Greek people, though how he hoped to achieve that by carousing with sleazy businessmen and cynical generals, I don’t know. Youli, the nanny, knew that I was up to something, but she didn’t seem to disapprove. She would greet me with a wide smile when I came back and took you from her for a while. Women understand these things, I guess.

  Believe me, Grace, being in love fills your life: it makes you feel that you are a goddess, capable of anything. But it blinds you too, it drives you to ignore the consequences of what you’re doing. I loved Iason with all my being. I loved everything about him, from the peasant family in the southern Peloponnese that he told me he’d worked his way up from to his work—he was a printer and I used to wash the ink from his hands before he ran them over me; once I let him touch me without cleaning them and I had a terrible job to get the stains from my body—to the flat he sometimes took me to in Neapolis, a residential area near the museum; to the burning idealism he sometimes showed without realising (I should have grasped earlier that he was a devoted Marxist); to the Greek songs he sang to me, the strange, almost Eastern rhythms steeped in a bittersweet melancholy; to the way he spoke English, faltering but with a surprisingly good accent. Maybe he’d attached himself to a British diplomat’s wife before me.

  Yes, it will be obvious to you that Iason Kolettis was a manipulator, an undercover operator, a liar. I think that, deep down, I knew it too, but I was powerless to resist. Such is the hateful strength of love. But the worst of it is this: I am convinced, I am a hundred per cent sure, that Iason loved me too. I refuse to accept that it is possible to dissemble so completely. When he was with me, Iason loved me as much as I loved him. It was just that he had another agenda when we were apart. I don’t know what he expected to learn from me. I suppose he would have gathered details about our home, about Trent’s routine and about the lack of any armed guard. People were naive back then. There were plenty of left-wing terrorist groups in Greece that had survived the Colonels, but they weren’t perceived to be a threat to Americans.

  You know what I’m leading up to, don’t you, Grace? You suspect, but I want you to be sure. The man who killed your father, the man who drew that knife across Trent’s throat, was my lover Iason Kolettis. He was wearing a balaclava, but I recognised him from his eyes, the dark, dominating eyes that had run over every inch of my body, that had looked deep into my own when he said, ‘s’agapo, Ilove you,’ atthe moment of our climax. He slaughtered your father like an animal, then disappeared into the night. And still I love him, still I live in his arms, his voice whispering in my ears the ‘s’agapo’. I tried to hate him too, please believe me, and I never set eyes on him again after that last terrible night outside our home. Not that he ever tried to contact me. Obviously I had served my purpose. His political beliefs, his mission, were more important to him than I was.

  Now I can’t stand it any more. Not just the emptiness of the years since Iason betrayed me, and the guilt that I never admitted my relationship with Trent’s killer. No, the worst thing of all is that I have never been able to summon up the courage to tell you about my part in your father’s death.

  I know you have no religion, my sweet, despite your Ganma’s best efforts, so I will not ask you to pray for me. But think of me from time to time and do not condemn me. I let myself be beguiled and others suffered for my foolishness—Trent, your Ganma, perhaps you most of all, for you changed from a trusting child to a bitter and unforgiving young woman. I don’t blame you for that, I blame myself. I know you won’t believe it but I always loved you deeply, my darling. Your mother, Laura.

  Mavros folded the letter carefully and put it back into the envelope.

  Grace Helmer leaned across and took it from him, keeping it in her hand. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  Mavros looked around the hotel bar. It was quieter now, most of the businessmen having departed while he’d been reading. The afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the plate-glass windows, cars moving up the wide avenue in a blur of colours. ‘What do I think?’ he repeated, fumbling for an appropriate description of his feelings. The letter had struck him as tragic beyond words, but he didn’t want to upset Grace. Besides, he needed to know more about its provenance. ‘So your mother wrote this to you before she…before she took her own life?’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘But I only got it recently, after my Ganma died. She left a note for me, explaining that she’d read my mother’s letter back in ’eighty-six before I came home and decided that I should be spared it. But she felt bad about that so she didn’t destroy it.’ Grace bit her lip. ‘You have to realise that my grandmother was a principled woman, Alex. She disapproved of extramarital affairs and she regarded suicide as an offence against God and the family. She never spoke to me again about my mother.’

  ‘I see.’ Mavros ran a hand through his hair. He could see where this was heading and he wanted to be clear about Grace’s motives. ‘You want me to find this Iason Kolettis, don’t you?’

  She looked straight at him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Grace Helmer held his eye for a few moment
s, then stared out at the traffic. ‘Look, this is difficult for me, Alex. I’ve been abroad for most of my adult life. I’m an independent woman. And I…I don’t handle emotion well.’ She glanced back at him. ‘Probably because of what happened to my father and how distant my mother was when I was a kid, I don’t know. I’ve devoted myself to caring for people who have nothing—their families killed in civil wars or by disease, their homes destroyed by floods, that kind of thing. And now I’ve realised that I’ve ignored my own family for too long.’ She took out a cigarette and lit it in the same practised movement. ‘My Ganma dying on her own brought it home to me. I only saw her for a few days each year and I think she took that hard. And my mother, I hated her for years after she’d killed herself, hated her for her selfishness and her absorption in those horrible paintings.’ She waved away the smoke between them. ‘And I hated her even more when I read the letter. But now… I don’t know… If I can get closer to her by meeting the man she loved and who loved her, I might be able to forgive her and finally get through this nightmare.’ She smiled weakly. ‘I might become more of a normal human being.’

  Mavros glanced down at his notes. The fact that this was turning into a therapy session didn’t make him feel at ease. ‘Right. Well, I haven’t got much to go on. Your father was murdered in 1976, wasn’t he? Twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘To the day,’ Grace said, inhaling deeply from her cigarette.

  ‘Really? What you might call a trail that’s gone stone cold,’ he said. ‘We also have to assume that Iason Kolettis was a false name. What else have we got? He was a printer—that seems credible because of what your mother said about the ink. And he lived in Neapolis.’

  Grace looked up from the butt she was crushing in the ashtray. ‘Do you know that place?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, and decided against mentioning that he’d once lived there himself. He wasn’t sure he wanted the job yet, and he didn’t want to get her hopes up. ‘And he might have come from a village in the Peloponnese, unless he made that up too.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a large area.’

  ‘Perhaps I can narrow it down a bit,’ Grace volunteered. She held out a colour photograph. ‘This is one of my mother’s paintings. See the bottom?’

  Mavros made out some writing in red beneath the sombre depiction of two writhing, blood-drenched human forms. ‘What is that? “Lament for Kitta”?’

  She nodded. ‘I looked Kitta up in the atlas. It’s on the middle prong of the Peloponnese, the one that’s called the Mani.’ She raised her voice at the end of the sentence. ‘Is that how you pronounce it?’

  ‘Maani,’ Mavros said, stressing the first syllable. ‘Interesting. You think your mother’s lover came from there?’

  Grace raised her shoulders. ‘Seems a reasonable chance. There were no other names on the paintings.’

  ‘I don’t suppose your mother kept a photo of Iason Kolettis?’

  ‘I didn’t find any in her things. Apart from one of me as a kid.’ Her eyes caught his. ‘There wasn’t a single one of my father.’

  Mavros looked away awkwardly. ‘Okay. Listen, can I think about this?’

  Grace’s face fell. ‘You don’t want the job. You think it’s a waste of time.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I’ll make some calls, see what I can turn up.’ At this stage he wasn’t going to tell her that he was interested—the timing of her appearance a few weeks after the killing of the investor Vernardhakis with its putative link to the terrorist group that had murdered her father disturbed him. ‘What did the people at the embassy say?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘I didn’t give them any details. Don’t you remember? My mother told me not to talk to anyone in authority.’

  Mavros wasn’t convinced that a self-confessed independent woman who hadn’t been close to her mother would have followed those instructions. ‘What did you say, then?’

  ‘Oh, I asked how I would go about finding a childhood friend in Greece.’ Grace’s eyes were still on him, her expression guileless.

  ‘Do they know who you are?’

  ‘I had to show my passport. I don’t know if anyone made the connection with my father.’ She gave a bitter smile. ‘I was told how to contact the policeman Kriaras and ushered out quickly enough.’

  Mavros got to his feet. ‘How long are you going to stay in Athens?’ he asked, putting down some banknotes to cover the drinks.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Grace handed back the money. ‘I’ll get these.’ She caught his eye again as she stood up. ‘I’m staying as long as it takes,’ she said, in a determined voice.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ Mavros said, shaking the hand she’d extended.

  He’d only gone a couple of paces when he stopped and turned round. ‘Sorry, there’s something else I need to know.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘How did your mother die?’

  For a few moments Grace Helmer was silent. ‘It was as if she wanted to copy what her lover did to my father. She took a carving knife and slashed her throat. When Ganma found her, she was covered in blood.’

  Mavros walked slowly away. He didn’t need to know how Laura Helmer committed suicide for investigative reasons alone. He’d wanted to see how her daughter reacted to the question. Grace hadn’t shown any hint of emotion. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to work for a person whose soul was colder than the permanent snow on the highest mountaintops.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MAVROS waited outside his mother’s door before he inserted the key. He could hear voices and he wanted to work out whose they were. Some of Dorothy’s friends were tedious elderly writers, who spent their lives complaining about their minimal pensions and the lack of respect they were afforded by succeeding generations of critics. After a few seconds he made out his sister’s habitually impatient tone, moderated by her husband Nondas’s more emollient baritone. He went in to join them.

  ‘Honestly, Mother,’ Anna was saying, ‘I can’t understand why you won’t come with us to Argolidha for Christmas. The Palaiologi have invited you, and it’s not as if you have anything pressing to do in Athens.’

  Dorothy turned as her son came into the sitting room and smiled at him. ‘Ah, there you are, Alex. Save me from this pair of seducers.’

  Mavros grinned at his sister and brother-in-law. ‘Interesting terminology. Have you ever been called one of those before, Nonda?’

  Anna gave a disapproving sniff, but there was a flicker of a smile on her lips. Nondas and she had a famously solid marriage.

  ‘Often, Alex,’ the well-built Cretan replied, his mouth occupied with gum as usual, ‘but by the people I do business with rather than my relatives.’ His English was fluent, with only the trace of an accent—the product of years at an expensive private school in Athens and university in the States. He beamed at his motherin-law. ‘But Anna is right, Dorothy. You really should come down with us to the Peloponnese. The kids would like it and the Palaiologi aren’t so bad.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, Nonda,’ Dorothy replied sharply. She had a soft spot for the indulgent Greek who had done much to soften her daughter’s domineering nature, but ingrained Scots reserve prevented her being open about that. ‘Contrary to what the pair of you think, I have plenty to do here. Both socially and professionally.’

  Nondas looked at Mavros in mock desperation. ‘Help us out here, Alex,’ he said. ‘Tell her it’ll do her good to leave the big city.’

  Mavros stood between the warring factions, his arms outstretched in a gesture of appeasement. ‘Why don’t you go for a few days, Mother? Nafplion is a lovely town.’

  ‘Don’t try to persuade me, Alex. Besides, that awful woman’s house is on the top of a hill miles from civilisation.’

  Mavros stepped back, aware that his sister’s temper was about to ignite.

  ‘Veta is not an “awful woman”,’ Anna said. ‘She’s a senior opposition spokeswoman and a future leader of her party.’ She shook Nondas’s hand off her arm. ‘For goodness’ sake!’

  Dorothy ne
ver allowed herself to lose control. Under attack she resorted to withering disdain. ‘Veta Palaiologou is nothing more than a right-wing hardliner disguised as a populist. And as for her husband…’ She deliberately left the sentence uncompleted.

  ‘Oh, come on, Dorothy,’ Nondas said, a trace of irritation in his voice, ‘Nikitas is one of the country’s major entrepreneurs.’

  ‘One of the country’s major sources of corruption, more like,’ Dorothy said, turning away. Although she had never been a Communist like her late husband, she had little time for Greece’s super-rich.

  Mavros watched as his sister and brother-in-law exchanged meaningful glances.

  ‘Time for us to go, I think,’ Anna said. She went over to her mother and pecked her on the cheek. ‘I’ll send the children their grandmother’s love, shall I?’

  ‘Of course, dear,’ Dorothy said, squeezing Anna’s arm. ‘You’ll pick up their presents before you go, won’t you?’

  Anna nodded and headed for the door.

  ‘Goodbye, Dorothy,’ Nondas said with a wry smile. ‘I’ll get her to call you later. When she’s calmed down.’

  Mavros watched as his brother-in-law followed Anna out, his bulky frame sheathed in a well-cut but crumpled Savile Row suit—the Cretan had little time for the clothes his business as a stockbroker required and would happily have gone to the office in cut-off jeans and flip-flops if he could have got away with it. ‘Well, that was enjoyable,’ he observed.

  ‘Sit down, Alex,’ his mother said, lowering herself cautiously into an armchair. She had fallen over a few times recently and Anna had read her the Riot Act about taking more care of herself. ‘Well, what did you expect me to say? I don’t want to spend time with those Palaiologi. Your father would never forgive me.’

  Mavros looked beyond her to the framed photographs of Spyros and Andonis. ‘Except,’ he said, ‘as you never stop reminding me, my father and brother are no longer here. What does it matter what one or other of them might think?’