An Inch of Time (10 page)

‘I couldn't tell.'

The vegetation and rubble didn't make an ideal sprinting track, but Morva skipped through it like a mountain goat. I followed closely in her tracks and even so cracked my ankle twice on rocks hidden in the grass. As we tore into the yard, we could hear agitated voices from inside the house, all female.

We found Sophie, Helen and Margarita at the foot of the stairs, all talking at once, Margarita in a full flood of Greek with enough hand gestures for the three of them. Helen, wearing only snow-white bra and knickers, looked palest.

‘Who . . . screamed?' I asked, out of breath.

‘Me,' said Helen, raising a hand as though in class. ‘So would you if you found a snake sharing your bed.'

‘Quite possibly,' I admitted. ‘Where is it now?'

‘Up there,' said Helen and Sophie in unison and pointing unnecessarily at the only
up
there was: the narrow wooden stairs.

‘Where's Rob?' Morva wanted to know.

‘He must be out,' Sophie said, ‘unless he's one hell of a deep sleeper.'

Morva called loudly for him without result. ‘Well, someone will have to go and deal with it,' she said, not moving. I looked at her. ‘Don't look at me,' she said. ‘I can't do snakes. Absolutely not.'

‘I'm not going up there until that snake's gone,' agreed Sophie.

‘Me neither,' vowed Helen.

Margarita disappeared towards the kitchen, muttering to herself.

‘You go,' Morva decided, giving me an encouraging push. ‘I really,
really
can't do snakes, Chris,' she added firmly. ‘Spiders and lizards, yes. Not snakes.'

Great
. I climbed the stairs full of doubt. Could I do snakes? And since when? I turned round at the top and looked back. Three women looked up at me, making my-hero faces. ‘What did it look like?' I asked, stalling.

‘Like a snake. You'll recognize it when you see it,' Helen promised. ‘My room's the second along.'

The door was open. There was a bed sheet and clothing strewn on the floor and a couple of pill containers and a glass, unbroken, swept off the bedside table in a panic. What did I know about snakes? Not a lot. They didn't jump – I was grateful for that; I never liked things that jumped. Snakes don't jump
. They strike.
I couldn't hear any slithering or hissing, which was nice. What else did I know? Snakes curled up neatly in folds of bed sheet just by the pillow and went to sleep. I knew that because that's what this one had done. It had stripes all along its body and was probably forty or fifty inches long. Now what? In my limited experience of legless reptiles, gleaned long ago in Turkey and from a more comfortable distance, snakes, when startled, slithered off to hide somewhere. This was fine outside, but just what I was trying to avoid in here, since I'd end up chasing it all over the house. While wishing for a net or at least a pair of leather gloves, I slowly crept up on it, sending up little prayers to whatever Greek Orthodox saint was in charge of creaking floorboards. When I reached the bed, the floorboard under my left foot creaked. I held my breath. No reaction. I had seen crazy wildlife people on telly handle poisonous snakes and saying how lovely they were; only just now I thought this one looked rather uncuddly. Well, it was no use standing there until the thing woke up. I'd just have to be quick. I'd simply grab it behind the head and get a firm grip. On the count of three: one . . . two . . . three . . .

Four . . . five.
Don't be such a coward
. I reached forward, saw my hand tremble, took a deep breath and grabbed the snake. It came alive with all its writhing and wriggling powers intact. Its mouth gaped open, its curved, glistening fangs mesmerizing. The snake's body writhed and curled up my forearm.

‘I've got it – get out of the way!' I carried the struggling reptile downstairs past the ‘well dones' and ‘yuks' of the three women and out into the forecourt. My next worry was how to disengage myself from the disgruntled beastie without it biting me in revenge.

Morva and Sophie followed me outside. ‘Don't let it go here; it might come straight back in,' Morva warned.

‘Oh, OK, you want me to take it for a walk, do you?'

‘Well, chuck it somewhere under that clump of olive trees over there.'

Just then Rob appeared from the afternoon shadows under that very clump of trees. ‘What have you got there?' he asked as he walked up.

‘Snake,' I said. ‘Found it in Helen's bed.'

Rob's eyebrows shot up.

‘I mean Helen did. Not sure how to let it go now.'

‘Ah yes, a four-lined snake. Just put it down and it'll disappear into the grass.'

‘Is it dangerous?'

‘What? No. Totally harmless. I'm parched. Any chance of a cup of tea, Morva?'

I put the snake down and let go. The treacherous thing disappeared into the shadows, taking my new-found hero status with it.

That evening I learnt some more of what living in the eighteenth century entailed. Water had to be drawn for cooking and washing. There was a well with a wooden cover in the courtyard for drinking water, and a dark and ancient cistern fifty yards away at the back of the shuttered ruin of a farmhouse which yielded water for washing and laundry. After three trips to the cistern, each time lugging back a big yellow container of water, eighteenth-century Greece was in danger of losing some of its romance.

Yet in the courtyard at dusk, as Margarita served supper, with paraffin lamps, candle lanterns and mosquito coils lit and the wine flowing once more, it all began to make sense again, feeding some deep-rooted yearning for a simpler life that never was. The enthusiasm of Morva's three students for talking about the afternoon's work, of artists they admired and paintings they had seen seemed inexhaustible. After a few glasses of rough local red and a meal of pot-roast lamb, I felt that the past was perhaps not such a bad place to be.

I had withdrawn to my monkish cell just after midnight and fallen asleep the moment I dropped on to the bed. What woke me in the middle of the night I couldn't tell; my brain was too busy trying to work out where it was. I was glad when I remembered. Unfortunately, as I sat up in the dark, my brain also remembered all the wine I had drunk. Sensing more than seeing them, I found the matches and lit the paraffin lamp by the bed, then opened the door to the night. In the courtyard, I found nothing but starlight and the clean fragrance of the night.

I was about to turn back when I saw it, on the far side of the ghostly hamlet: a light. For less than a second it illuminated the side of a ruined building, then vanished, leaving nothing but a doubtful trace on my retina. Behind me the house stood dark apart from the light falling from my door. For a few minutes I stood at the entrance of the courtyard, staring into the darkness, listening. All I heard was the call of a distant owl, and when no more light appeared, I began to think I had imagined it.

I turned around to go back to bed and stopped in my tracks. Through the half-open door of my room I saw a distorted shadow move across the wall. I had a visitor. Walking carefully beside the narrow shaft of light that fell across the ground, I managed to get to the house without making too much noise. Breathing as quietly as I could, I stopped by the door and listened. All I could see through the narrow opening were my bags against the bare wall opposite the bed, but I thought I could hear tiny noises. I swung the door wide and stepped inside. Briefly, Derringer looked up from the patch of the bed I had vacated, sighed and closed his eyes again. It took me a long while to get back to sleep.

I
was glad to see that Derringer ignored Morva's chickens, since I was enjoying my breakfast eggs and didn't want the supply interrupted. The chickens in turn seemed to have delegated a black hen to keep an eye on him while the rest scratched in the yard. The students had trooped off to their easels, leaving Morva and me alone at the long table.

‘Am I making more coffee?' she offered.

‘No, it's time I started to work for my money.'
Before it runs out completely
, I added mentally.

‘How are you planning to go about it?'

I shrugged. ‘The usual way. I'll stick my nose in where it isn't wanted, ask a lot of questions and make a nuisance of myself. Except I've never had to do it in a foreign language before.'

I could hear the laboured prattle of a moped engine in the distance. A couple of minutes later Margarita arrived, carrying more shopping bags. Morva exchanged a few words with her, among which I recognized my name. For a long second Margarita looked at me with something like horror, an expression Morva missed as just then Derringer jumped on her lap. Margarita muttered a few words, lifted her shopping bags off the table and disappeared inside.

‘What did you just tell her?' I asked Morva who had turned her attention to the cat.

‘Mm? Oh, I told her you weren't just a painter but a private detective as well. She'll be chuffed; she watches all the cop shows on telly.'

Chuffed was not how I would have described Margarita's expression. ‘She gave me a very strange look. What's private detective in Greek, then?'

‘
Astinomikós idiotikós
.'

‘Really?' It didn't sound all that clever.

A minute later Margarita reappeared, rushing past us, calling something over her shoulder.

Morva shrugged. ‘Says she forgot the garlic; she's popping back to the village. I could have sworn we had strings of the stuff. But Margarita is so superstitious, I don't think she'd feel quite
safe
without a crate of the stuff.'

‘Vampires?'

‘Vampires. Also water spirits by the wells, imps in the kitchen, goblins in the groves, ghosts in the churchyard and the evil eye. The list is endless. Her moped is encrusted with amulets for protection. But, of course, she wouldn't dream of wearing a helmet.'

Eventually, Morva walked me to her car, which she had offered to lend me. A rust-red Ford Fiesta from the last century, it looked only marginally better appointed than the van but would be a lot easier to drive around the island's twisting roads. Not to mention cheaper. On closer inspection, the colour of the thing had been an inspired choice. I stuck my finger through a rusted hole in the door.

‘You've no idea how wet Corfu gets in winter,' she said guiltily. ‘Now, a word of warning, Mr Shamus: be discreet. And stay away from the police.'

‘I usually try to. But I was hoping they might be able to tell me at least what the timescale was. And perhaps they've found out by now where she stayed.'

‘Read my lips, Chris. Stay away from them. In fact, if you see one, scram. They don't like competition from PIs anyway, that's well known, but if they find a foreigner asking people questions, they can get downright nasty.'

‘I'll bear that in mind.'

‘The police here are famous for being corrupt. Unless you have a lot of money to spend on bribes, don't get into a situation where you might have to. You'd better have some kind of cover story, just in case.'

‘I'm just looking for a friend, that's all.' Who could possibly object to that?

‘I hope you're a good liar.' Morva waved me off with a doubtful look on her face. ‘Drive carefully – the roads are crap.'

I had noticed. Though a crap road would have been a definite improvement on the track connecting old and new Makriá. In the village I parked as before by the palm tree. The grill that had been so busy before was shut. Dimitris's
kafénion
was open, however, and I was being keenly eyed by the three characters sitting with their backs against the wall at the little tables outside. They watched my every move as though they were expected to sit an exam on the subject. I made a mental note to ask Morva if there was some arcane rule in Corfu that all
kafénions
had to have three old geezers sitting with their backs against the wall.

It was the yellow kiosk at the edge of the square I was after. I had noticed these in town. Fulfilling the functions of a corner shop combined with post office and telephone exchange, they seemed to cram an extraordinary variety of goods into the tiny space, leaving just enough room for one surly proprietor to sit on a stool in the centre and mop his cabin-fevered brow. Whatever didn't fit inside the hut hung from the outside: scarves, hats, sunglasses, kitchen utensils, plastic toys. A fridge and an ice cream freezer completed the set-up.

As I walked towards it, I noticed just how quiet the village was. My footsteps on the hard ground seemed the noisiest event around. It wasn't that there was nothing happening here – two boys were straining to load half a pig into the back of a van, a woman was sweeping her doorstep, an old man was checking a burden of sacks on a donkey – only it was all happening very quietly. The pace also appeared wrong, like a film run on slightly reduced speed, or as though everyone in the village had his mind on other things.

The man inside the kiosk looked soft-skinned and pale against a backdrop of cigarette packets and Greek paperbacks. I butchered sufficient Greek to make myself understood and was told to go round the side, where, on a waist-high shelf, sat a large red telephone from which I called Annis at Mill House.

‘Rubbish, you're in a lay-by off the A2 – admit it.' Her voice sounded very far away.

‘No, I'm actually standing in the square of a . . .' I nearly said ‘strange Greek village', but since I wanted her to join me here, left it at ‘Greek village'.

‘You haven't found her yet?'

‘Kyla Biggs? Give me a break, I only got here yesterday. I found Morva, though; it's where I'm staying.' I gave her a quick description of the place. ‘Did the cheque arrive?'

‘Yesterday. I banked it. That's the good news. I have some rather bad news, though.'

‘Out with it, then.'