An Inch of Time (15 page)

I was glad to rejoin Morva outside the crumbling churchyard wall. ‘So where is this private little beach you promised?' I still hadn't set foot on a beach and had seen the sea mostly through the windscreen of a car or in paranoid glimpses in the rear-view mirror.

‘Don't expect too much, Chris. It's one hell of a climb unless you're a goat, and when you get there, it's a tiny cove with a pebbly beach. In winter it completely disappears under the waves. But I'll show you where you can get down without breaking your neck. It's just off the track to Neo Makriá.'

We walked on past the last blackened patch of grass near where the broken cobble path stopped and the drivable track started. We both stared at the fire damage, but neither of us spoke. Morva now seemed eager to have the children's pranks theory accepted for everything that happened in the village, yet she was clearly tense and uneasy. Thinking back now to the welcome she gave me, carrying a murderously sharp billhook, made me wonder whether perhaps she had moved here for reasons other than those she had given. But from time to time I tried to remind myself that not everything had ulterior motives or needed investigating.

We passed Matilda and the Fiesta which I had parked at the top of the track and walked downhill in the baking sun. Now and then we heard small startled sounds in the growth along the verges. ‘Snakes and lizards,' Morva explained. ‘Here it is.' The ground between two olive trees on the seaward side, eroded through hundreds of years of use, showed where the descent to the cove began, though from up here only a glimpse of the sea was to be had. Much of the path and the cove itself were hidden from view.

Boyish excitement bubbled up as I stood at the top of it. ‘You sure you don't want to come?'

‘No thanks. As I said, I hope you won't be disappointed. Have you got some water? It's a thirsty climb.' I patted my shoulder bag in answer and started the descent.

Climbing down is as tiring as climbing up. My muscles started protesting instantly as the uneven path, no more than two feet wide, first zigged and then zagged steeply down. ‘Don't break your neck now,' Morva called from above.

‘Are you still there?' I grabbed hold of a tuft of dry grass to steady myself and looked up. Morva was standing at the edge above, waving. I waved too and prepared to turn back to my path when a movement in the corner of my eye made me look up again. All I could see from my low vantage point was the rust-red roof, but it was clear that the Fiesta was on the move, coming fast down the hill on the narrow track. ‘Look out!' was all I got out, but Morva too had seen or heard it. She turned and moved rapidly out of my sight. There was a thud and a low cry, then the whole car bounced into view through the verge above me, tilted and crashed into a stunted pine tree growing out of the very edge of the cliff. The back of the car bucked and slid towards me. I ducked away from the shower of stones kicked up by the impact, then looked up. The Fiesta had come to a precarious rest against the tree, right next to where the goat track began. I was sure that if I sneezed it would come tumbling towards me. There was no sign of a driver. ‘Morva? Are you alive up there?'

Her voice was shaky. ‘Yeah. Kind of. Get up here, will you?'

The goat track would lead me right under the gravity-defying car, so I decided to find an alternative route to the right, then straight up. Hand over fist, I pulled myself up on the sharp, tufty vegetation and baking hot rock, sending crumbling soil and stones seaward every time one of my feet slipped. Did I mention I'm no good with heights?

As I crawled over the edge on all fours, I could see straight away that Morva was in trouble. She was lying on her side, clutching her legs and looking pale. ‘The bastard car ran me over. There was no one driving the damn thing. You must have forgotten to put the bloody handbrake on. I think I broke my ankles; the tiniest movement makes me want to scream. At you, mostly.'

‘Shit, that's terrible. I can't tell you how sorry I am. We'll need to get an ambulance up here. I'll call one from the village.'

‘I don't want a bloody ambulance. At least not until I know they're really broken. There's a doctor in Neo Makriá; he'll come out. You'll have to get me back to the house. But first give me some of your water. Ow!'

Morva sat up a little to accept the bottle and more apologies from me, with one or two qualifications. ‘I'm truly sorry, Morv. Only I seem to remember not only putting the handbrake on but leaving the car in gear as well. I always drive ancient vehicles; it's second nature to leave it in gear.'

She gave me a hard stare for a few seconds, her lips pressed tightly together in pain and disapproval, then inhaled noisily. ‘Damn, and I believe you, too. Bloody hell. I wanted it to be your fault.'

‘I can imagine. Doubly sorry. Someone around here really doesn't like you, Morv.' We both looked at the Fiesta, hanging precariously against the tree, one rear wheel off the ground. ‘I'll go and get the others; we'll carry you back to the house.'

I sprinted up the hill. Rob was painting in the churchyard, but it took me a moment longer to find Helen at her easel. There was no sign of Sophie. Morva, it turned out, couldn't stand up at all, the car having bashed her knees and run over her ankles. Together, the three of us managed to carry her back in a woollen blanket. It was a stupid way of doing it and caused her considerable pain. She swore all the way back to the house, mostly in Greek, some of which she refused to translate. When Sophie turned up, just as we deposited Morva on the sofa in the living room, it was clear she had polished off the two-litre bottle of wine. ‘Oh, I'll fetch the doctor on my bike; take two mins that.'

All four of us protested immediately and loudly. ‘All right, no need to shout, I was only trying to be helpful. Bike's quicker than your old van, that's for sure.'

‘You've got a point. Can I borrow it?'

‘Don't see why not.' She tossed me the keys. ‘Don't crash it.'

There were enough scrapes and dents on the little red Honda to show that Sophie was used to crashing. All levers were bent and had the ends snapped off, and the tank was so dented I doubted it could hold much petrol, but the engine started straight away and I hassled the bike downhill. I managed not to drop it and zipped into Neo Makriá only to realize I had no idea who and where the doctor might be. Dimitris started his chiding straight away. ‘Living in that place is trouble. Someone will get killed because there is no help near. You are in luck; the doctor is just crossing the square.' He pumped up his lungs and shouted, ‘
Yatré!
' A slightly built man in a dark suit carrying a newspaper and a carton of cigarettes looked across. Dimitris waved him over and talked rapidly at him in Greek, pointing at me, the bike, the direction of Ano Makriá and the heavens. The doctor, who was probably not even forty yet but seemed to cultivate a middle-aged style, looked at me through old-fashioned gold spectacles and sighed. He stretched out a well-manicured hand for me to shake. ‘I'm Spiros Kalogeropoulos. Just call me “Doctor” if you find it a mouthful.' Doc Kalogeropoulos spoke good English with only a hint of a Greek accent behind a definite American twang. ‘I'll come right away. I'll just get my bag.'

‘I can take you on the bike,' I offered.

‘No
thanks
. You know what they call bikers at the hospital?'

‘Organ donors?'

‘So you heard that joke. Anyway, I'll use my car, if you don't mind. I know the way.' He walked off briskly.

I kick-started the Honda. Dimitris laid a hand on my arm. ‘One moment.' He dashed inside the darkness of his cafe and emerged a minute later with a small stoppered bottle filled with an amber liquid. ‘For the painting lady,' he said, ‘for the pains.'

I pulled the cork and sniffed. ‘Metaxa?'

He waggled his head and shrugged his shoulders lightly. ‘Nearly. Maybe one star only. My uncle makes a barrel every year.'

The doctor drove past in a white Citroën that had seen better days and many bad roads. I followed him at a distance, avoiding the dust cloud his wheels chucked back at me as he negotiated the broken road at breakneck speed. He didn't wait for me at the end of the track. When I parked up the bike, he was halfway to the house, lugging his black leather bag and a blue plastic carrier. It occurred to me that anybody who had grown up around here had to know their way around the deserted village with their eyes shut simply from playing Cowboys and Indians, if that was what Greek children played. I uncorked Dimitris's bottle of brandy and took a fortifying swig that left me hissing several bad words until the burning stopped; it was easily the strangest stuff I had ever tasted.

I heard Morva's scream even before I got across the courtyard. When I got inside, the doctor was bending over her legs. ‘I am sorry but I have to see if they are broken. I think you may have been lucky with this one. Now the other one. Please.'

‘Lucky, was I?' Beads of sweat were gathering on Morva's forehead.

I held out the bottle. ‘Take some medicine first. Dimitris sends it.'

‘The stuff his uncle makes?'

‘The very stuff.'

She snatched it from my hand. ‘Give it here. It's eighty per cent alcohol and twenty per cent weirdness.' She pulled the cork with her teeth like a gunslinger, spat it away and took a large gulp. ‘
Now
, Doc,' she croaked, ‘while my throat hurts more than my foot . . .'

Five minutes later Morva's ankles were packed in the ice the doctor's foresight had provided and I was walking the man to his car. He let his eyes travel over the ruined village and shook his head sadly. ‘You see the problem with living here: that sort of thing can be nasty, even life-threatening for someone by herself. If no one had been there to call me, she would still be lying over there. Accidents can happen any time. I don't know what Miss Morva paid for the place, but it could turn out to be too expensive. Anyway, she'll need looking after now.'

‘For how long, do you think?'

‘She won't be walking for ten days, and perhaps shouldn't for a couple of weeks.'

‘A couple of weeks?'

‘Yes, a sprain can be worse in that respect than a break. At least with a broken leg you can move about with it in plaster, but she won't be able to put any weight on either ankle for a long time. If you had iced the injury immediately . . . but, of course, there is no ice here, either.' He dropped his bag on the rear seat and got into his car. ‘Can you not persuade her to move away from here? You must see it's not a healthy place to be. For a foreigner.'

‘Yes, I'm beginning to see that. I get the feeling there are those who don't want Morva up here.'

The doctor shrugged. ‘Cars don't suddenly run amok by themselves. Not even around here. None of my business, though.' He closed the door and started the engine. I wondered if the doctor could tell me anything about the strange girl Morva had hired. I knocked on the window.

He let it slide down. ‘Yes?'

‘Morva has some help, for cooking and such – a girl from the village called Margarita.'

‘What about her?'

‘It's just that she seems a little strange, especially with me, ever since Morva told her that I'm a private detective.'

‘You are? That's definitely something I'd have kept to myself. Too late now, everyone will know. It can only make matters worse.'

He was turning the car round now, but I kept up, walking alongside. ‘What matters? What's going on here?'

‘I'm not sure and I don't want to get involved. I only moved back here recently to support my mother who is frail and I am not getting . . . entangled. Understand me well, now. I am a doctor and treat patients. Sprained ankles are easily treated. I don't want to treat worse. Much worse.' He held my eyes for a moment. There was no menace in his look, only concern – helpless concern – and it made me more uneasy than open threats could ever have done. I watched him slowly roll downhill. At the site of the crashed Fiesta, he briefly stopped, stuck his head out of the window and looked back at me. He opened his mouth as if to call something, but changed his mind. He simply shook his head and drove on.

It was while I sat next to Morva, who was self-medicating from Dimitris's bottle at regular intervals, that it sank in.
Two weeks.

Morva dismissed it. ‘Two weeks? Rubbish. What does he know?'

‘True. A mere doctor at that.'

‘Exactly. But until I'm up and about again, it may mean . . .'

‘Yeah, no problem. I'll look after you, don't worry.'

‘Do some of the shopping? Drinks and so on, anything we'll need from town . . .'

‘That won't be a problem, either. I'll be whizzing about the island every day anyway to find that Kyla character.'

‘Any materials the students might need . . .'

‘Sure.'

‘And then there's the teaching, of course.'

‘
Teaching
? What do you mean,
teaching
?'

Morva looked about her to check that none of her students were within earshot. ‘Well, don't you see? They came here to be taught painting, out in the field at their easels. Not to watch me lie on the sofa. They can sit in the sun and paint for free anywhere. Painting holidays are about having a tutor by their side, pointing things out to them while they work, lots of encouragement. They'll want their money back if they get no tuition out there, and I'm sunk if that happens.'

‘You want me to teach them?' Things were looking bleak.

‘You've done it before, haven't you?'

‘Yes, but . . .' There was a good reason why I had given it up: I'd hated it. That and having been fired.

‘There you go. You'll be good at it. And it's only for a few days . . .
Please
?'

I didn't know why I was hesitating. I knew I was going to do it anyway, because even though I was sure I wasn't responsible for the accident, I still somehow managed to feel guilty. And Morva had a strange, casual persuasiveness I had always found hard to resist.