The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller) Page 6

  And then the poet’s defences crumbled. He remembered the scenes he had witnessed as a young man, witnessed and taken part in. In his lifetime savagery hadn’t only reigned in the Mani, it had taken over the whole of Greece. He knew it was time he described the terrors that had gripped the country, time he made a fitting memorial for his lost comrades.

  ‘The wind took one of the shutters from the top of the pyrgos,’ Savvas said, as they ground up the steep road beyond Limeni. ‘From the top bedroom.’ He glanced round. ‘Don’t worry, Kyrie Kosta. I fixed it.’

  ‘Watch the road, Savva,’ Laskaris shouted, grabbing the seat as a motorbike swerved round the corner and almost hit them. He felt the pain stab into his belly again. It would be beyond irony if he was killed in a traffic accident before the cancer did for him—before he had written his last poem.

  They reached the ridge. Ahead lay Areopolis, main town of the Deep Mani. Originally called Tzimova, it had been renamed after the war god Ares because of the local men’s bloodthirsty prowess in the fight for independence from the Turks. Laskaris gazed down the coast towards the promontory that lay beneath his tower, the sea moving around the base of the rock in an undulating petticoat. The war god Ares. He might have structured the poem around him since the horror was at its worst during times of conflict. But he had another protagonist in mind, the hero who had laboured in the Peloponnese and who symbolised all that was admirable and all that was awful about the region. He had been working on the ideas behind the poem for years, planning it and moulding it even though he had never written more than a few lines. And he had a title. ‘The Fire Shirt’. Everything was ready for his last major work. But would he have time to complete it?

  He took in the bleak hillsides and their thin layer of vegetation, the latter given a deceptively lush appearance by the light and by the blue of the water beyond. Soon the green would be burned away, soon he himself would be nothing more than the shadow of a departing cloud. His task, before he went, was to write a poem that would live for ever. Did he still have the power to accomplish that? He had to find it within himself. It was more than a duty, a task to be accomplished for the Party: it was an obligation of love.

  He closed his eyes as the pain grew worse, forcing himself to think about the poem. There had been many heroes over the centuries and many in his own time whom he would celebrate. There had also been many, like poor Spyros Mavros’s son Andonis, who disappeared into the limpid air.

  And greatest of them all was Iraklis.

  *

  Mavros glared at the Fat Man across the chill cabinet. ‘Have you any idea what you did, you idiot?’ he shouted. There was no one else in the café to witness the performance.

  The café owner was drying a glass in his thick-fingered hands. ‘Gave you a pleasant surprise first thing in the morning?’ he asked, with a tentative smile.

  ‘Oh, yes, a very pleasant surprise. The Third World War in my sitting room, a fist in my guts and that ringing noise in the ears you get when a relationship hits the ground without a parachute.’

  The Fat Man picked up another glass and applied his off-white cloth to it. ‘I was only trying to fix you up with some work,’ he said, his cheeks reddening. ‘You told me to give the American woman your number.’

  ‘I meant my phone number, you bucket of lard, not my flat. She walked out when Niki started putting the knife into her. So much for getting me a job. You lost me one, as well as terminally screwing up my relationship with Niki.’

  ‘Tragic,’ said Yiorgos Pandazopoulos, under his breath. ‘It’s about time you sorted out your love life. You said so yourself.’

  Mavros bent down and examined the contents of the cabinet. ‘Yes, well, I’d prefer to choose the time and place myself to do that, if you don’t mind.’ He glanced up. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  The Fat Man refused to catch his eye. ‘How do I know what you think it is, you smartarse?’

  Mavros raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Christ and the Mother of God, Yiorgo, don’t play the martyr. All right, I’m sorry I shouted at you. Now, is that a piece of your mother’s delectable baklava?’

  The Fat Man nodded solemnly, still playing hard to get.

  ‘Can I have it?’

  ‘Yes. But only if you promise never to be so rude to me again. Yiorgos Pandazopoulos paused, then burst out laughing. ‘I had you there, Alex. You really thought I was sulking.’

  Mavros went over to a table to wait for the honey-drenched pastry. He wasn’t sure about Niki—it was usually a good idea to let her cool down on her own for a few days after she’d blown her top—but he hadn’t yet written off Grace Helmer. The fact that her father had been assassinated by the Iraklis group intrigued him. He wanted to hear the rest of her story, and he wanted to find out what she required of him. It was about time he got himself an interesting job.

  After he’d finished the baklava and drunk a cup of the Fat Man’s coffee, he checked the hotel section in the Golden Guide. Grace had said that she could see the Acropolis from her room, though it wasn’t as close to the citadel as Mavros’s flat. There were several hotels that had such a view and he knew which one he was going to try first. He decided to walk up to it and try to see the woman in person. She would be more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt after Niki’s scene if he made the effort to meet her rather than telephone. And if she wasn’t there, it wouldn’t matter—he’d be in range of his mother’s flat and he wanted to drop in.

  ‘Go to the good, Yiorgo,’ Mavros called, on his way out.

  ‘You too,’ the Fat Man responded from the toilet, where he was carrying out the daily mopping-up operations that Kyra Fedhra had recently given up so she could devote more time to her baking. ‘And remember, never trust a capitalist.’

  Mavros laughed, and stepped into the cold sunlight.

  Grace Helmer was in the bar on the ground floor, a martini on the table in front of her. She had changed into a patterned skirt that ended above the knee and showed off her long legs to good effect. Her yellow blouse was a vivid patch of colour among the sober-suited businessmen who comprised the majority of the customers, and her blonde hair, now loose and brushed out, made her look even more like an exotic creature.

  ‘Hello,’ Mavros said, approaching her table from the side. His worn leather jacket had led to a raised eyebrow from the security man at the door, but he’d been granted admission. The guy would have been used to the gilded youth of Athens arriving in similar garb to salute their parents before going off to race each other in their sports cars on the central avenues.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the American woman, raising her glass and beckoning to him to sit down. ‘The intrepid private eye. How did you find me?’

  ‘You said it. I’m intrepid and I’m a private eye.’

  ‘No, really,’ Grace persisted. ‘Did you ring round all the hotels?’

  ‘I took a gamble. You said you could see the Acropolis. I’ll have a beer,’ he said to the waiter, who had materialised in front of them. ‘Amstel. How about you? Another of those?’

  ‘One’s enough during the day.’ She took a pack of Camels from her bag and offered him one.

  ‘No, thanks. I gave up last year.’ He took out his blue worry beads. ‘Now I amuse myself with these.’

  Blowing smoke away from him, Grace smiled. ‘If that was meant to be a demonstration of your skills, I’m impressed. I’m even more impressed that you had the nerve to show up after your girlfriend—I presume that’s who she was?—came to say good morning.’

  Mavros opened his hands. ‘What can I say? I’m really sorry about that. Niki’s…well, Niki’s got a Mediterranean temperament.’

  Grace was looking at him with an amused expression. ‘You could call it that. You know, I spend a lot of time in foreign parts and I’d say she wins the Oscar for most convincing tantrum anywhere in the world.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Are you all right? I mean, that was quite a hit you took down below.’

  ‘I’ve had
worse,’ Mavros said, aware how dysfunctional that made his love life sound. ‘Not from Niki. In the line of work.’ He poured Amstel into his glass and drank half of it.

  ‘Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I take it you want to hear the rest of the story I began to tell you.’

  ‘Very much. Though I can’t promise that I’ll be able to commit to whatever it is you want done.’

  Grace Helmer nodded. ‘That’s all right, Alex. I take it we’re on first-name terms if that’s what the client wants.’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, returning her smile. The American woman had an easy-going manner that was hard to resist.

  She looked around the bar—the nearest people were six men speaking Arabic some tables away—took a sip from her glass and slipped an envelope from her bag. She held the cream-coloured paper tightly between the thumb and fingers of her right hand. Mavros couldn’t see any writing on it.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘here we go. You already know about my father. I was five when he…when he was killed, and I can’t really remember much about him.’ She paused, the fingers of her left hand moving back to the cigarette packet, but she didn’t open it. ‘My mother—Laura was her name—was much more important to me when I was small. She didn’t go out to work, and although we had the usual domestic servants, she spent a lot of time with me.’ Grace gave a sad smile. ‘That soon changed. After the murder she went into herself and she was never the same again.’ She shrugged. ‘You see, she saw it happen. And they—they used a knife on him.’

  Mavros could remember the outrage that had caused. He bowed his head. ‘It was terrible,’ he said haltingly. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  Grace looked at him and nodded slowly. ‘Thanks.’ This time she opened the cigarette packet and took one out, striking a match with a deft movement of her hand. ‘Anyway, we moved back to the U.S. not long afterwards, back to the small town my mother had grown up in—Lawson in upstate New York. I went to local schools, but all that time she was drifting away into a world of her own. My grandmother mostly looked after me when I was younger. You see, my mother was an artist. Never a well-known one. She’d been to art college, but then she met my father and didn’t paint so much when she was with him. But when she got back to Lawson she devoted all her waking hours to her paintings. They were big canvases, full of brutal colours and tortured human figures. I always hated them.’ Grace smiled again. ‘She was sweet, she never yelled at me even when I messed up her palette out of spite. But she was distant, her eyes always moving, and she’d let herself go. She was heavy and she never washed her hair. And then… and then one day, when I was fifteen, she killed herself.’

  Grace fell silent and Mavros looked at her. The skin on her face was taut but there was no sign of tears on her delicate eyelashes. He was struck by how little emotion she was showing, though he knew how some people could shield their grief and make it a personal possession—he had done that himself.

  ‘Sorry. There are some things you can never get over, no matter how much you try.’

  ‘Maybe it’s better not to get over them,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s better to keep the memory alive.’ He was thinking of Andonis. He had always tried to keep him close, but it grew harder with every year that passed.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Sorry, Alex, I’m getting to the point, honest.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘Thanks. Anyway, she did it when I was away from home staying with a friend, so I never got to say goodbye to her properly. That’s been very difficult for me to live with. Even when I’m abroad she’ll come to me, often when I’m asleep.’

  Mavros was struck by the similarity to his brother’s frequent appearances in his thoughts and dreams. ‘You seem to be abroad a lot,’ he said, changing the subject. He was unwilling to get too close to a potential client’s pain in case his judgement was clouded. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work for an aid agency,’ Grace replied. ‘Meliorate, World Humanitarian Relief. Last month I was in the Philippines, last year I was in Liberia.’ She touched his arm again for a few seconds. ‘Anyway, Alex, you’ll need to know what I want from you. You see, my grandmother died back in October.’

  Mavros swallowed beer and put down his glass. The meeting was turning into an emotional obstacle course. ‘I’m sorry,’ he began.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Grace said, raising a hand. ‘She was old and she’d had enough pain—a cancer was eating into her colon. The thing was, after the funeral the lawyer handed me an envelope that she’d left for me.’ She lifted up the one she’d been holding throughout her narrative and took a deep breath. ‘It was from my mother, addressed to me and dated the day she killed herself—which was the tenth anniversary of my father’s murder. And that’s why I’ve come back to the country where it happened.’

  Mavros looked at her uncomprehendingly, as hooked by a client’s pitch as he’d ever been. Then he took the envelope Grace handed to him and slid out pages covered in a large, erratic script.

  19 December 1986

  My darling Grace,

  This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You know that words aren’t my medium. Maybe painting isn’t either—I know that my work repulses you—but at least I feel at home with oils. Writing has never been comfortable for me. Too much self-analysis, too many explanations. And, I suppose, too much opportunity for emotion to slip through. I know, I know, my sweet. I shut myself off from you, I didn’t give you the love you needed when you were growing. I did once. You probably don’t remember, but I loved you openly and unconditionally when you were small. Until you were five and your father was taken from us. But even then I was betraying you both.

  And now what can I say to you to make up for my failure to raise you as I should have? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. As I’ve watched you turn from a quiet little girl to a strong and independent teenager, I’ve often thought you were ready. You probably were. Ever since we came back from Greece you were in control of yourself, you only cried when you got hurt, and even then there weren’t many tears. When you took the skin off both your knees that time, riding your bicycle off the road, your Ganma cried more than you did, my little ice maiden. I admired your nerve, but it didn’t seem natural. Though I know why you were like that. I made you that way, it was my fault.

  Yes, there were plenty of times, especially in the last couple of years, when I thought you were ready and I could take my leave. But I saw the look in your Ganma’s eye, saw the way she watched over you, almost willing me not to do what she knew I was on the brink of doing. So I waited, thought long and hard about what legacy I should leave you. And now I have decided. I will tell you what happened in the months before your father’s death. You are his daughter as well as mine. You have the right to know.

  The truth is that your father and I weren’t well matched. Sure, I fell for him the minute he walked into the restaurant in New York where I was waiting tables. I was almost finished at art school and I didn’t have any firm plans. Suddenly I found myself in this whirlwind romance, flowers, champagne, the works. But he was about to be posted to Africa, his first embassy job, and I had to choose. The Bohemian grind—tips, scratching for the rent each month, never mind having enough for paint and canvas, cockroaches—or a pampered expatriate lifestyle with plenty of time for my work. It wasn’t a tough call. Except it didn’t turn out the way I thought. I didn’t fit in with the other wives: I was seen as a loudmouth with unreliable views on the war in Vietnam. And I never did much painting. You came along—to my great joy, Grace, you must believe that—and I lost interest in art for a while. You were the centre of my life, my comfort in the long, hot days and the interminable nights when I used to stay awake listening to your gentle breathing. It was almost enough for me. And then we were sent to Athens.

  Everything changed there. Soon you weren’t an infant any more, you were a toddler and then a lively, sparkling little girl. We inheri
ted a nanny from the previous resident. Youli was a friendly Filipina and you loved her. Your father was much more occupied with his work than in the Sudan. Whole days passed when I never saw him. There had been major American involvement in Greece since the Second World War, and he spent most of his free time with army commanders and businessmen. Wives were not required at those gatherings.

  I found things outside the apartment to fill my time. Even in the early seventies Athens was a big city, much bigger than Khartoum. Back then there was no need for caution. I used to walk around the dusty streets, staring up like a hick at the Acropolis when it suddenly sailed into view between the modern buildings. As for the museums, for an artist they were just inspiring. I found that I was beginning to get my touch back. I started sketching statues, those monumental figures of young men and women with their braided hair and arms by their sides. I was sitting in front of a kouros in the National Museum when the man who destroyed my life walked up.

  Grace, I’m telling you this because I want you to understand why I became the obsessive, selfish person whom even your Ganma, my own mother, dislikes and distrusts. I’m not telling you my story because I want you to act on it. In fact, for what these words are worth, I expressly forbid you to pass this information to anyone in authority. I was too much of a coward to tell anyone when it mattered. Anyway, as you will see, there is little that they could do with it.