The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  ‘That’s a bit of a long haul for tonight,’ he replied. ‘I think we should burn down the motorway to Tripolis. As far as I remember, the road from there to Sparta is pretty fast too.’

  ‘Yeah, it looks okay on here.’

  ‘Right. We can spend the night in Sparta and head on to the Mani in the morning.’

  ‘What? In a hotel? Shit!’ she exclaimed, as a car came out of the night behind them and swerved past with inches to spare. ‘Jesus, there are some boy racers in this country.’

  ‘Most of them middle-aged boys.’ Mavros laughed softly. ‘I, on the other hand, am a careful and considerate driver.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you haven’t got much choice, have you? This heap can hardly hold ninety kilometres an hour.’ Grace glanced at him. ‘Anyway, this business of staying in Sparta, what are you thinking? A hotel? Is that safe?’

  ‘I’m wondering about that. If we stay in a hotel, there’ll be a record of our presence in the register. Guest houses are less formal. But at this time of year there won’t be many places renting rooms.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Grace pulled a paperback book and a micro-torch from her bag.

  ‘You came prepared.’ Mavros took in a sign that gave the distance to the Nemea junction.

  ‘I always come prepared. Right, there are plenty of hotels open all year round in Sparta and…’ she brought the book closer to her eyes ‘…one establishment that rents rooms. Kyra Froso, Vrettakou twenty-three. “Clean, comfortable and welcoming”, it says here.’

  ‘Let’s aim for that, then.’

  ‘And let’s swap drivers at Tripolis,’ Grace said, her tone making it clear that she, the client, was laying down the law.

  They drove past the darkened slopes of the northern mountains of the Peloponnese, the motorway bisecting them with sinuous curves. There was a sign to Argos and Nafplion. That made Mavros think of his mother and sister—soon they would be on the same road, heading for the Palaiologos house. At least he hadn’t been invited, though if he’d expressed an interest in accompanying his family no doubt he would have been. Hobnobbing with politicians and tycoons wasn’t for him; even a quick stop on the way back wasn’t enticing. Maybe Grace would be his get-out clause.

  They changed over in a lay-by outside Tripolis. The air around Arkadhia’s main city was bitterly cold, the height of seven hundred metres plus above sea level giving the street-lamps frosty haloes. The traffic shooting around the bypass faded quickly after they took the road south and Mavros sat back in the uncomfortable seat as Grace handled the car smoothly. They climbed to an even higher plateau, then descended through a long defile towards Sparta, a slab of roughly hewn rock caught in the headlights marking one of the many memorials to wartime massacres in the area.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you witnessed your father’s killing?’ Mavros asked as they wound down the final hill. The vast wall of Mount Taygetos rose behind the cupola of light that marked the capital of Lakonia, the mountain’s crown of snow glinting in the moonlight.

  Grace didn’t answer immediately. She manoeuvred the car dextrously round a petrol tanker that had been parked at the roadside, then glanced at him. ‘Sorry about that. It’s something I find difficult to talk about.’

  ‘Except when you need to tighten the screw on someone who’s holding out on you, like Randos was.’

  She raised her shoulders. ‘Sometimes you have to be brutal.’ Her face hardened. ‘Grow up, Alex. You’re angry that I didn’t tell you about it, but you’re even more angry that I was the one who got the composer to talk.’

  Mavros felt the sting of the words. He turned to her. ‘No, I’m not, Grace,’ he said untruthfully. ‘But you need to be careful. Randos saw how driven you are. He might have passed that on to people who are less guilt-scarred than he is.’

  ‘You’re right. I’ll watch my tongue in future.’ She looked ahead. ‘We’re almost there. How do we find the guest house?’

  ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘Pull up at that periptero over there.’

  ‘That what?’

  ‘Sorry, the kiosk that’s covered in newspapers.’ He got out when she stopped, and returned almost immediately. ‘First left, third right.’

  Grace followed the directions without speaking, parking in a tight space beyond number twenty-three.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Did you used to work as a chauffeur?’

  ‘Wise guy. Why shouldn’t women be able to drive better than men?’

  They got out and walked towards a detached two-storey house, the balconies swathed in plants. There were lights on inside.

  Mavros rang the bell. ‘I’ll do the talking, all right? It’ll be better for our profile if you don’t come across as a foreigner. Just nod if I address you in Greek.’

  Grace seemed unfazed by the instruction.

  The door was opened by a plump middle-aged woman dressed in black, her sombre appearance immediately lightened by a wide smile. ‘Good evening, good evening,’ she said, gazing at them both warmly. ‘You want a room?’

  ‘Two rooms, please,’ Mavros said. ‘You’re Kyra Froso?’

  The woman nodded in assent, the smile fading. ‘But I have only one room, my boy. There’s a big meeting in the town, a lot of politicians and businessmen pretending to work, so I am almost full. Not that they have returned from the tavernas yet.’

  Mavros kept his eyes off Grace. ‘You have only one room? How many beds?’

  Kyra Froso gave him an encouraging look. ‘One double.’ Then she laughed. ‘But there is a single one as well, if you need two.’ She stepped closer. ‘The lady is your sister?’

  ‘One room will be all right, won’t it?’ he said to Grace in Greek.

  She nodded, giving him a suspicious look.

  Kyra Froso watched them with undisguised curiosity. ‘Well, then, I will give you the room and may you have joy of it.’ She ushered them in, nudging Mavros as he passed. ‘My husband died last year, my boy. We used to sleep in that room. It saw many happy times.’ She pointed to the end of the corridor and handed him a key-ring. ‘The right-hand door. You’ll find the bathroom straight ahead. The other key is to the front door. Eight thousand drachmas is my price. One night?’

  ‘One night,’ he confirmed.

  ‘May it be a good one,’ Kyra Froso said, her smile now tinged with melancholy.

  Mavros led Grace to the room.

  ‘I take it this is all she had,’ she said, as he closed the door behind them. ‘Because if I find out you set me up you’ll be sorry, Alex.’

  Mavros raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Honestly, this was her only free room. You’ll hear a bunch of drunken conference delegates roll in later.’

  Grace was looking around the large bedroom, taking in the two beds and the surprisingly tasteful décor. ‘Since you’ve been making all the decisions, now it’s my turn. I’ll have the small bed. Just to make sure you aren’t tempted to join me.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Mavros asked, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘There are probably still some places open.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea for us to be seen on the streets?’

  ‘As sure as I feel like being. I’m starving.’

  ‘Okay. Show me the hot spots.’ She leaned forward and examined the embroidered panel on the wall above the single bed. ‘Who’s she?’

  Mavros read the inscription. ‘“I oraia Eleni”. La belle Hélène.’

  ‘Isn’t that a dessert?’

  ‘You’re thinking of Poire Belle Hélène.’

  ‘Right. And she is?’

  ‘The fair Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, mistress of Trojan Paris—the face that launched a thousand ships.’

  Grace took a lipstick from her bag. ‘Oh, her. Just the person to have above my bed.’ She added a layer of colour to her lips. ‘Let’s go, lover-boy.’

  They walked out into the city beneath the snow-capped mountain.

  The politician Veta Palaiologou beckoned to Loudhovikos, her butler.
‘Some more brandy, Geoff?’ Her English was fluent and unaccented, although her voice was slightly higher than it was when she spoke Greek. ‘Flora?’

  The white-jacketed servant went round with the decanter, his face impassive. Flora Petraki-Dearfield declined with a murmur, but her husband allowed his glass to be refilled. Nikitas Palaiologos was drinking whisky, the beads of sweat on his bald pate attesting to the amount he had put away, while Veta was confining herself to water on doctor’s orders.

  ‘That was an excellent dinner,’ the old soldier Dearfield said, raising his glass to the hostess. Although he had studied ancient Greek at school and university before the war, he had never made the transition to idiomatic modern Greek and felt uncomfortable in the language. ‘In the tradition of this house.’

  ‘My father always employed the best chefs.’ Nikitas glanced at his wife. ‘As did yours. We have maintained the traditions of our families.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘We are conservatives, after all.’

  Veta was unimpressed by his flippancy.

  ‘You have done wonders with this old place,’ Flora said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. It had been oppressive all evening, her three companions tense and conversation forced. ‘I can remember when it seemed like a spartan blockhouse, more of an army base than a family home.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it was,’ Nikitas muttered in Greek.

  Veta gave him a frosty look, then turned to Flora. ‘It certainly needed a lot of work. Central heating, interior improvements, the annexes. And the garden, well, it was nothing more than a wasteland of trampled earth.’

  Geoffrey Dearfield emptied his glass and signalled for another refill, his face pale.

  ‘It was a prison camp, for God’s sake,’ Nikitas said, keeping his eyes off his wife. ‘It was a place of—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Veta said, with the assertiveness she had acquired in Parliament. She pulled herself to her feet and moved towards Nikitas’s armchair. ‘People aren’t interested in the war any more.’ He raised his hands in surrender and concentrated on his whisky.

  ‘I would like to tour around Argolidha now we are here,’ Flora said. ‘That’s the curse of being a historian. Trips away from home always turn into research projects.’ She looked across at her husband and blinked. ‘Geoff has been so caught up in his book.’

  Nikitas shot the old man in the tweed suit a glance, but remained silent.

  ‘Yes, what is this great work you have been devoting yourself to, Geoff?’ Veta asked, lifting a finger to keep the butler away from the clearly maudlin Englishman.

  Dearfield remained silent for a while, swallowing the anger provoked by his wife’s mention of the book—sometimes she was like that, sometimes she did what she wanted without regard to his wishes. He looked up at her, his eyes rheumy and opaque, then turned to the others. ‘I… I have decided to tell the truth about what happened in the Peloponnese during the Second World War.’

  ‘The truth?’ Veta repeated, a nervous smile flitting across her lips. ‘I presume you mean the truth as we understand it, we who love freedom and justice.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Dearfield weakly. But the élite families loved enriching themselves more than freedom and justice, he thought. Although all the friends he had made in Greece throughout his long association with the country were on the right politically, he sometimes found himself repulsed by their full-blooded commitment to personal gain—or, rather, familial gain. As a serving politician Veta Palaiologou was less involved in financial pursuits than most, but her husband? Nikitas was a former playboy whose only consolation now he was too old for that role was the acquisition of even more wealth than his grasping father had left him. And the two fathers? Prokopis Palaiologos and Sokratis Dhragoumis had been among his closest friends since the night he first parachuted into the Peloponnese in 1942. Until that terrible day outside this very house. He should have cut off all contact with them after that, but he hadn’t the stomach to do it. His memoir would set the record straight, even though it went no further than 1945. His activities behind the scenes with the Americans from the late forties to the early seventies needed another book. He doubted he had the strength for it.

  ‘Well?’ Veta was saying. ‘I do hope you are not—what is the expression?—dishing the dirt?’

  Dearfield didn’t answer. He had suddenly found himself back in this building, as it had been during the last year of the Nazi occupation—the rooms bare, the windows barricaded, the doors guarded by gendarmes and members of the local Security Battalions. Hard faces surrounded him, burning eyes and mouths that issued clipped commands in harsh tones; commands that consigned the men held in cages outside to torture or summary execution. He’d had no doubt about the rectitude of his complicity in those deeds. His superiors had given him clear instructions to restrict Communist influence by any and all means in his power. But events had got out of hand and, though he had blocked them out for decades, the truncated cries of defiance, the contempt and determination in the eyes of the prisoners had come back to him in recent years. That was why he had written the memoir, his own words leaping up from the page to clutch at him every day. The man on the cross, the unconscious woman who was dragged away—when would they leave him in peace?

  ‘…often drops off in the evenings,’ Flora was saying in Greek. ‘He’s into his eighties now and he tires easily.’

  ‘Have you seen what he has written?’ Nikitas asked, his brow furrowed. ‘Do you think there’s any chance of it being published?’

  Flora looked at him, concealing her emotions. She had never liked the Palaiologos son, though he had become less irritating in recent years. He’d made a pass at her that she had instantly rejected in the seventies and she hadn’t forgotten it. ‘No, he has not shown it to me,’ she replied coolly. ‘Why should he? As for publication, you will be able to ask the person who is considering it tomorrow.’

  Veta glanced at her husband. ‘So he has sent the book to Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou, has he?’ She had told the Dearfields earlier that Dorothy and her family would be joining the party. ‘An odd choice, considering her dead husband’s politics.’

  ‘Shit,’ Nikitas exclaimed. ‘What the hell’s Geoff playing at? There are things that our families don’t want in the public domain.’

  Veta raised her hand. ‘That’s enough. I don’t imagine our families will be to the fore of the narrative.’

  Later, her husband snoring by her side, Flora went over the conversation. Nikitas Palaiologos had seemed concerned about the memoir and that interested her. What she had said about Geoff’s book was true—he had never shown it to her. He had been secretive with the text that he had pounded out on his old Olivetti typewriter. His desk was often covered with photocopied documents that he had obtained from the Imperial War Museum and other archives.

  She turned over and took in the lines of light from the enclosed garden that were shining through the slats of the shutters. She had been a child during the war, spending the occupation comfortably in her father’s well-stocked house in the northern suburbs of Athens. Until that blood-soaked day when her family life had changed irrevocably. She had met her husband when she was still a student and he had provided a way out—as well as other advantages he had never suspected. But he had never given her children. If he had, perhaps she would not have gone so far down the path she had been on since her early twenties. And Geoffrey had also allowed her to pursue her academic career. Greek history, from the ancient heroes to the turmoil of her own century, had always engaged her imagination.

  The ancient heroes, they had stayed with her—especially one of them. Flora found herself thinking about Iraklis. He was the beating heart of the Peloponnese, the country of her early childhood. He had slain the lion of Nemea and the Lernaean Hydra, he had cleansed the Augean stables, he had captured the Ceryneian hind and the Erymanthian boar—all creatures and locations of the peninsula. She looked into the lines of light. Below the Palaiologos house were the great walls of Tiryns, the hero’s bi
rthplace. But the southern tip of the Peloponnese was the scene of his greatest labour. From Tainaron at the end of the middle finger, the hero had descended to the underworld—and conquered death by dragging Hades’ hound Cerberus to the surface of the earth.

  Sleep finally washed over Flora Petraki-Dearfield as she thought of the barren headland and the old church that lay above the shaded entrance to hell. It was in the Mani, land of her birth and forefathers. The long struggle to make history of her own life had started there.

  Mavros woke to the sound of voices outside the room. He opened his eyes and saw the light streaming in at the edges of Kyra Froso’s lace-trimmed curtains. His watch told him it was a little after nine. As the conversation in the hall continued, a gruff male voice followed by the soothing tones of a woman, he glanced across and saw that Grace’s bed was empty. Sitting up, he listened to the voices and recognised the landlady’s. She was assuring the man that the bathroom would soon be free—as soon as the foreign lady had finished. So much for the scam to keep his client’s nationality under wraps. It was fair to say that she didn’t look much like a Greek.

  Mavros sat on the edge of the double bed and scratched the stubble on his face. He hadn’t slept well, the mattress uneven after the efforts of Kyra Froso and her dear departed. Last night, after visiting an unimpressive taverna and a bar that had delusions of grandeur regarding its prices, they had walked back through the streets with their lines of orange trees, the provincial town’s citizens long since tucked up in bed. In their shared room, Grace had whipped off her sweatshirt and trousers without giving Mavros a second glance, and got into her bed. As far as he could tell, she had fallen straight into a deep, silent sleep. The glimpse he had caught of her lithe body and matching black underwear had kept him awake for a time.

  The door opened and she came in, fully dressed with a towel round her head. ‘Good morning,’ she said, casting an eye over him. ‘You’ve missed your turn in the bathroom. There was a sour-looking guy waiting for me to finish.’