The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller) Page 4

  The shiny magazine covers with their empty-eyed, pneumatic blondes had given him an idea of what to do next. It didn’t involve his genitalia. His professional pride had been stung when the old poet had asked him about the killing of the investor Vernardhakis. He intended to rectify that by picking the brains of the country’s leading crime reporter. Lambis Bitsos had a weakness for three things: pornography, alcohol and food. Unless he was working a hot story, he’d have completed his round of the wank-mag suppliers by now and would be refuelling in his favourite ouzo house.

  Mavros pushed through the crowds of shoppers who were heading for the underground station weighed down by plastic bags. The rent-boys and hookers leaning against the walls regarded them with blatant disdain, resentful that wages were being spent on family and friends rather than the pleasures of the flesh. The odour of burnt meat from the souvlaki joints was permeating the wind-blown side streets, cut by exhaust fumes and the railway’s unmistakable blend of sweat, sewage and electrical equipment worked to the limit. He opened the door of To Kazani, the Cauldron, with relief, letting the wave of warm, smoky air dash over him. He hadn’t touched a cigarette for over a year, but other people’s smoke was more acceptable than the poison gases that made up the nefos, the Athens pollution cloud.

  ‘Lambis Bitsos?’ Mavros said sternly. ‘You’re under arrest.’

  The reporter’s head shot up from the plate of imam bayildi he was devouring. In his shock, he dropped a piece of bread into the oil-drenched baked aubergines. ‘Fuck it, Alex,’ he said with a groan. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack.’ He picked up the bread and stuffed it into his mouth.

  ‘Got a guilty conscience, Lambi?’ Mavros asked, as he sat down opposite the bald, middle-aged man. Bitsos was very thin, the skin on his face taut and sallow. If Mavros hadn’t seen him eating so frequently and substantially, he’d have put him down as anorexic. ‘What have you picked up tonight?’ He stretched round and lifted a brown-paper bag from the seat at the side of the table. ‘Asian Housewives Go to the Zoo? Christ and the Holy Mother, you don’t care, do you? What would your daughters think?’

  The journalist was divorced, his three girls grown up. ‘They’d probably show it to their boyfriends to spice up their sex lives. The young of today…’ Although Bitsos was a staff writer on the country’s most liberal daily, like most crime reporters he was a social conservative.

  ‘Give it a rest, Lambi,’ Mavros said, beckoning to a waiter. He ordered another carafe of ouzo and some courgette fritters. ‘You’re getting to be as bad as that idiot who runs the Justice Ministry.’ He assumed a strait-laced tone. ‘Strenuous action is needed if the traditional values of our society are not to be washed away in a torrent of filth and—’

  ‘Very funny,’ Bitsos interrupted. ‘And how many kids have you got?’

  Mavros raised his hands in surrender. ‘All right, my friend, calm down. What’s chewing your balls?’

  The journalist pushed away his plate and tipped ouzo into his glass. ‘Nothing in particular, Alex. You know how it is. Sometimes you get sick of being called out to crime scenes in the middle of the night. You can only see so many scab-covered junkie corpses in one week.’ Bitsos narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you after, anyway?’

  Mavros poured a dash of water into his ouzo and raised his glass. ‘Our health,’ he said, waiting for the reporter to repeat the toast. ‘What am I after? That’s nice. We’ve known each other for years and your first thought is that I’ve come to pump you for information.’

  ‘Well, you have, haven’t you?’ Bitsos said, with a weary smile. ‘Where have you been recently, Alex? On another sensational case in the islands?’

  Mavros ignored the jibe. ‘Keeping my head down. In fact, that’s why I wanted to see you, Lambi.’

  The journalist gave a hollow laugh, then speared a kolokytho keftedhakia with his fork. ‘I knew it. I hope you’ve got something to trade.’

  ‘Screw you,’ Mavros said, his eyes catching the other’s. ‘I gave you an exclusive on the Trigono case. You owe me for years after that.’

  Bitsos nodded slowly. ‘I owe you, true enough. But not for years, my friend.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Mavros raised the carafe and refilled the reporter’s glass. ‘I don’t want anything too sensitive. Like I said, I’ve been out of circulation over the last few weeks. I just wanted the low-down on the Vernardhakis murder.’

  Bitsos waved to the waiter and asked for a portion of grilled prawns. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said, with his hallmark hollow laugh.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Because there isn’t a low-down on the Vernardhakis murder.’

  Mavros raised an eyebrow. ‘Pithy but incomprehensible, Lambi. Explain.’

  The reporter took another sip of ouzo and let out a long sigh. Then he began to speak, his voice low and monotonous.

  4 December 2001

  Take them when they least expect it. Take them when their guard is down. That had been the experts’ refrain at the training camp and the hit man had never forgotten it.

  Sitting in the unlit fore cabin of the yacht in the small harbour of Tourkolimano on the eastern side of Piraeus, he kept his eyes on the restaurant across the asphalt. For most of the year tables were laid on the quayside, even during winter at lunchtime, but in the evening people had to dine inside. That suited Vernardhakis—it meant that he was safe from prying eyes and gave his bodyguard an easy job. The investor had taken over the Poseidon’s Trident for the celebration of his latest financial coup. There was a line of Mercedes and BMWs down the curved coastal road, as well as a police car to reassure the VIPs that the forces of law and order were watching over them, a pair of bored cops periodically winding down their windows and dropping their cigarette butts on to the ground. It was far too cold to patrol on foot.

  The countdown was well advanced. The man in the yacht had been there since early morning. He had checked out of the Athens Ledra Marriott at 3:00 a.m., having ordered a taxi for the airport. He changed the destination as they approached the columns of the old temple at the top of the avenue, giving the driver ten thousand drachmas to keep him sweet. Getting out at Omonia Square downtown, he had taken another cab, criss-crossing the city centre until he was sure there was no tail on him. Then he had changed again, directing the last taxi to the ferry-port of Piraeus, and walked through the backstreets to the picturesque harbour on the eastern edge of the peninsula where the rich men kept their toys. It was still dark when he slipped on to the yacht and fitted the key he’d been given into the lock on the main hatch, his hands sheathed in thin leather gloves. He entered the numerical code to disable the alarm system and settled down to wait.

  In the old days he hadn’t been troubled by nerves. Even in the beginning when he wasn’t much more than a soft-faced kid he had always slept well before operations. And even during the act itself, the dispatch of the targets, he had been able to remain in control, his heartbeat regular and his senses unblurred. Nothing had changed with the passage of time. He had learned so well when he was young and he had kept himself in good condition.

  The sounds from the maintenance workers on the neighbouring boats had died away in the afternoon, and as darkness fell again, the cold began to bite. He was unaffected by it, the thermal vest and leggings he wore under his blazer and slacks enabling him to avoid starting up the yacht’s generator. Long experience meant that he didn’t need much to keep himself together. He took only occasional sips of water from a bottle in his coat pocket and chewed carefully separated squares of chocolate to stop his stomach rumbling. He didn’t intend to leave any trace of his presence, not a solitary crumb. That was what he’d been taught and that was the system he’d always followed. It had served him well.

  Around nine o’clock the cars began to pull up, men in expensive suits and women in evening dresses getting out and entering the restaurant with distant nods to the white-shirted waiters. He watched through a pair of compact Zeiss binoculars, paying more attention to
the security personnel than to the guests. As he’d expected, most of the businessmen, despite their wealth, employed drivers who doubled as bodyguards. None of the muscle-bound individuals gave him any cause for concern.

  The host Vernardhakis arrived last, displaying the lack of respect for conventional modes of behaviour that was typical of him. The killer had put a cross next to that characteristic in the target’s file the first time he read it. Greece’s most successful investor of 2000 was the son of a tobacco farmer from the province of Macedonia rather than the scion of a wealthy family like most of his competitors. After school he had done five years’ service in the élite Marines, leaving under a cloud when it was discovered that he had been running a gambling syndicate with funds obtained by threats from fellow squad members. In under a decade he had made a fortune on the newly deregulated Stock Exchange, treating leading businessmen like shop assistants, and regularly giving bankers and politicians the edge of his uncontrolled tongue in the newspaper he part-owned. He was openly gay and had provided the Athens gossip columnists with a succession of field days involving acne-pitted schoolboys and unrepentant sailors. There was no shortage of people who would be overjoyed when Vernardhakis got what was coming to him.

  It was 21.36—under five hours to go—when the investor’s vintage bottle-green Bentley pulled up, the bodyguard hitting the pavement and checking out the vicinity with a practised eye before the wheels had stopped rolling. Then the rear door on the restaurant side opened and Vernardhakis stood up. In magnification the man on the yacht clearly saw the investor’s green and yellow zigzag shirt—no sober suit for him—and his straggly dyed hair. The target turned to his muscleman for a moment, his fleshy, unshaven cheek and badly broken nose filling the lens in profile. It was said that Vernardhakis had successfully taken on the Marines’ most vicious sergeant, and had left his nose unset after the fight as a statement of intent.

  By two o’clock most of the guests had left. It was a Tuesday night and they wanted at least some sleep before making more money in the morning. The watcher knew that Vernardhakis wouldn’t be on his way yet—he was famous for hitting the bottle till very late, then going straight to his office. But there was always the chance that a target might behave unpredictably, especially one like Vernardhakis.

  It was time. The hit man took a deep breath, then picked up the mobile phone he had bought from a shifty street trader in the Flea Market the day before and pressed out the investor’s private number. It was one that had been given only to a small circle of confidants, but it was always possible to find such information if you had the right contacts—and his people had all the contacts.

  ‘Speak to me,’ came Vernardhakis’s rough tones. ‘Fast.’

  ‘I’ll say this only once,’ the man on the yacht replied quietly, in unaccented Greek, his voice deliberately unhurried. ‘I work for Fyodor.’

  There was a brief pause.

  ‘He gave you my private number, I suppose,’ the investor replied, suddenly compliant. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The Kangouro Burano deal is in jeopardy.’

  ‘What? What’s gone wrong?’

  Through the binoculars the killer saw that Vernardhakis was on his feet in the restaurant, his head flung back in a dramatic pose. ‘We think we can control it,’ he said, ‘but I need to go through the details with you immediately. In person and alone.’

  The investor was nodding avidly. ‘Yes, yes, of course. Where?’

  ‘I know exactly where you are. Walk across the road to the quayside. You’ll see a boat called the Axione. Come on board. And tell that gorilla of yours to keep his distance. I can’t afford to be seen by anybody else. You know how much this business is worth to all of us.’

  ‘No problem. Stand by.’

  The hit man closed the connection and put the phone in his pocket. Soon it would be on its way to the bottom of Faliro Bay. Stand by. The idiot fancied himself as some kind of undercover agent. And he was coming like a dog after a bitch on heat. There had never been any doubt that greed was his weak point, as the file had pointed out frequently. The background to the hit had been researched immaculately. Mentioning the Russian gangster and the latest deal he was working on had been the boss’s masterstroke.

  He went to the hatch and slid it open, then rearmed the alarm system. Outside, after closing the padlock, he loosened the line on the Zodiac inflatable with the powerful outboard engine that was bobbing at the stern of the yacht. Everything was prepared for his exit. Now all he had to do was carry out the hit. He breathed in and let a loose smile spread across his lips.

  Vernardhakis’s figure appeared at the restaurant door. He put his hand on his bodyguard’s chest. For a few seconds it looked like the heavily built man was going to make trouble, then he stepped back without argument, obviously used to following orders no matter how foolish they seemed. Vernardhakis came out and crossed the street with his arms round his chest. The fool hadn’t brought a jacket and his patterned shirt was doing nothing to keep out the cold. When he reached the bow of the yacht he bent down to check the name, then clambered on, his patent-leather shoes giving limited purchase on the fibreglass hull.

  ‘Are you there?’ came a loud whisper. ‘Fyodor’s man?’

  ‘Back here. Keep quiet.’

  The investor came towards the stern, his hands grasping the shrouds. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, ignoring the instruction. ‘Who the fuck are you, exactly?’

  The killer waited until his target had stepped down into the seating area behind the wheel. His heart was beating no more rapidly than normal and his breathing was regular. ‘Who the fuck am I?’ he said, raising the silenced Glock. ‘I’m Iraklis.’ He squeezed the trigger.

  A single bullet to the heart finished the investor, the spit of the shot and the almost contemporaneous slap of its impact no more audible than the traffic noise from the dual carriageway to the north.

  After delicately placing the piece of whittled olivewood he’d taken from his pocket on the victim’s blood-soaked chest, the hit man freed the hawser, stepped on to the Zodiac and activated the electric starter. Keeping the engine revs down, he motored towards the gap between the arms of the harbour walls, the lights from the far side shining brightly in the moonless night. He glanced back as he reached the open water. Vernardhakis’s bodyguard was inside the restaurant, concentrating on a newspaper, and there was no sign that anyone else had noticed his departure. Ahead, the smooth carpet of the bay beckoned him home.

  The first labour of the new cycle had been completed.

  Mavros was shaking his head, as much in despair at the execrable singing that was coming from the ouzeri’s sound system as from his companion’s words.

  The reporter Bitsos had been right: there wasn’t much of a low-down to pass on. After more than two weeks the police had turned up no productive leads. Although a couple of waiters, as well as the disgraced bodyguard, had seen Vernardhakis board the yacht, no one had noticed the inflatable until it neared the outer harbour wall, its occupant or occupants indistinguishable. The Piraeus businessman who owned the Axione had been hauled in for extended questioning, but the alibi his associates gave him and his repeated protestations of ignorance eventually convinced the investigating officials. As for the Zodiac, it had never been located among the hundreds of similar craft that filled the marinas on the coast of Attiki. There were no fingerprints on the yacht and no sign of the murder weapon, nor had anyone been seen boarding the yacht in the twenty-four hours leading up to the killing. The relevant telecommunications company identified the number that had been used to call Vernardhakis, but the fact that the handset in question had been stolen and never used subsequently meant that that was a dead end too.

  ‘So has the group led by the mysterious Iraklis started operations again after all this time?’ Mavros asked Lambis Bitsos. ‘Their trademark miniature olive club was found on the body, but there was no—’

  ‘Proclamation,’ completed the journalist. ‘That’s r
ight. In the past, there were always interminable letters sent to newspapers claiming responsibility and justifying the murders in extreme Marxist-Leninist terms.’

  Mavros had cast his mind back to the terrorist unit’s early assassinations. ‘They used to execute their victims with a knife, didn’t they?’

  ‘In the beginning, yes. I think the idea was a symbolic slaughtering of the class enemy, like sheep. Remember the atrocities on both sides back in the forties? But they gave that up after the first three murders. Too messy. A pair of terrorists on a motorbike were almost caught near the old Fix brewery when drivers saw blood all over their clothes.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Mavros said, dredging his memory. He’d been a schoolboy in Athens and then at university in Scotland when the Iraklis group had carried out most of their attacks. ‘They started using handguns and explosives, didn’t they?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Bitsos took a sip of ouzo. ‘And before you ask, there was no ballistic data linking the murder weapon to any previous shooting. It was a 9 mm Glock with a hollow-point bullet. Vernardhakis’s heart was turned to mush.’ He snorted. ‘At least the thieving bastard didn’t feel anything.’

  ‘Steady, Lambi,’ Mavros said, surprised by the reporter’s vehemence. ‘No one deserves to die like that. Even if he was up to his neck with the Russians who are muscling into every dirty trade they can.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘That’s what the word is, isn’t it?’ he asked, remembering what his sister had said earlier. ‘That Vernardhakis was taken out by them for business reasons.’