An Inch of Time (28 page)

I accelerated. ‘Shit, they're trying to ram us off the road.'

‘If this wasn't such a wreck, we could easily outrun them,' Annis said darkly.

‘He can't be carrying much of a load if he has this pace.'

‘You want me to jump out to lighten the car? They do it all the time in the movies and never hurt themselves.'

‘No, just hang on tight. Even a crap car must corner better than a lorry.'

‘But this is special French crap.'

‘My favourite kind.'

Annis's answer was drowned out in the noise from behind as the lorry shunted into the back of us just as the next corner rushed up. The car snaked first left, then wildly to the right as I overcompensated and the rear stepped out. I screeched sideways through the bend in wholly involuntary rally style, which probably helped to save us.

What really saved us was the gravelled entrance to an old stone quarry opening up to our left. I ran straight into it, then stood on the brakes, sending up clouds of dust and stones. Behind us, our pursuer overcooked the corner. His lorry bounced and bucked with some wheels on tarmac, some on gravel, careened adventurously from side to side, but thundered on without crashing. A blue plastic barrel bounced from under its flapping tarp, flying in our direction like a parting shot. It caromed around the quarry entrance and rolled to a stop near our stalled little Citroën.

‘You all right?' I spoke into the sudden silence.

‘Terrific.' She rubbed her forehead where she had knocked her head on the door frame. ‘I never had this much fun when I was last in Corfu.'

‘You went with the wrong crowd, I expect.'

‘Still, nice driving, hon. All considered.'

We both got out and had a look around. The lorry had disappeared and, after the rush and noise, everything seemed wonderfully quiet. I lit a cigarette, offered Annis one out of habit and absent-mindedly she accepted. We stood in the spring-fragranced air and smoked like idiots. The quarry behind us was a small effort and seemed to have been abandoned with all its machinery quite a while ago. Since then the locals had added a varied collection of car wrecks, some of them burnt out. I strolled over to the big blue barrel that had been the lorry's parting present and began kicking it towards the quarry mouth to add to the junk when I noticed some writing on the grimy vessel. I let it roll to a stop. Fortunately, the writing wasn't in Greek; it was Turkish, which uses more or less the same script as English.

‘Did you see a number plate on the monster truck? His cargo was Turkish; there's writing on this.'

‘I didn't see a thing. What's it say, then, you being an expert on all things Byzantine?'

It had been a while since I'd sipped cay in Turkish tea gardens. ‘Erm, oh yeah, it says, erm . . . “This way up”.'

‘
Really
?'

‘Give me a chance. There's . . . a lot of stuff about . . . something or other . . . and then it says “Walnut Oil”, no, wait,
findik,
it's “Hazelnut Oil”.'

‘I didn't even know they made hazelnut oil. What's it taste like, I wonder?'

‘I don't know but I can find out what it smells like. Hang on . . .' I righted the barrel and stuck my nose near the gummy two-inch hole in the top. ‘Hazelnut oil smells very strongly of absolutely nothing at all.' A theory about our villagers' excess leisure time began to dawn on me. I flipped the barrel on its side and dribbled it towards the quarry, then, with a toe-shattering kick, sent it rolling towards the other junk already there.

I hobbled back to the car, got it started and drove us back to Morva's place, distrusting every side-road and keeping more than an occasional eye on the rear-view mirror. Yet it appeared our adversaries had left the field. I sincerely hoped they were on their way back to Turkey.

‘I
seem to remember having seen a lorry with blue plastic barrels driving through Neo Makriá when I first got here.' I held out a cup of coffee to Annis who ignored it. She was hunting around our chaotic room for her stuff, throwing things into her suitcase and holdall. ‘We slept through breakfast again and there was no one around, so I made us feta cheese and cucumber sandwiches. And coffee.
This
coffee. What are you doing?'

‘Just put it down somewhere. I'm packing my bags. And I think you should do the same.'

‘Should I get excited? Are we going somewhere?'

‘Don't be daft. We should, of course, but, as you said, you can't just walk out. After yesterday's lorry-load of fun, though, I think we should at least be prepared to move at short notice. I have the feeling when we do want to leave we won't be in the mood for folding tee shirts. We'll just want to throw our stuff into the van and go.'

‘Ah.'

‘
Ah
?'

‘I must sort out the battery on the van. At least I think it's the battery.'

‘What makes you think it's the battery?'

‘Because it's the only car component I can actually name. If it's not the battery, then I'm lost.'

‘I'll have a look at it later.'

‘I'll get the sandwiches.'

‘Don't bother. I'm done, more or less.' She picked up her cup of coffee. ‘Let's go eat in the sun.'

We munched our breakfast sitting on the rim of the well in the courtyard. Derringer was asleep in the shade of the fig tree, creating a chicken-free zone around himself. One brown hen was scratching in the dust near our feet, keeping a calculating eye on the crumb potential of our sandwiches. Heat haze was already unfocusing the view of the ruins, but I thought I could glimpse what looked like Helen on the far side, moving about in front of a partially collapsed farmhouse.

‘A dollop of mayo would make these perfect,' I observed indelicately through a mouthful of sandwich.

‘Conventional wisdom has it that men think of sex every few minutes. How do you find the time, Honeysett? You're so busy thinking of food all day.'

‘It's tricky, but I usually manage to squeeze it in somewhere.'

‘Not sure I like the sound of that. Well, make space for thinking about this: I don't believe they were playing with us yesterday. I don't believe they were just warning us, either. I think they'd have been quite happy to see us run smack into a tree. And you know what that means?'

‘Enlighten me.'

‘Remember the Fiesta rolling down the hill and hitting Morva?'

‘It's fresh in my mind, thank you.'

‘I now think it's much more likely that it was aimed at you and only hit Morva by mistake. You said yourself the Italian bloke with the Merc gave you some kind of veiled warning. Sure, someone – perhaps even the whole village – wants Morva out of here, but I think someone wants
you
out of here even more. With Morva and her students, they're just trying to scare them away, but they seem quite happy to arrange a real accident for you. The highest number of road deaths in Europe, remember?'

I was slowly coming around to her way of thinking. ‘In other words, nobody would question it much if I wrapped an old Citroën round an olive tree.'

‘No one would bat an eyelid, especially with the police as corrupt as they're supposed to be round here.'

‘OK, I'll drive carefully.'

‘Going somewhere?'

I was. I had played down any worries about being targeted – much like Morva had, in fact – but secretly I had had enough. What I really wanted now was to wrap this Kyla thing up as soon as possible, so I drove back into town. On my useless tourist map I picked out a different route to Kerkyra, longer, more torturously twisted, but at least it would be unexpected, making it less likely that dirty great big lorries were lying in wait for me en route.

Of course, even once I had found Kyla, there'd still be Morva's spooks to take care of, but at least I'd feel a free agent again. It was pretty obvious to me that firing Margarita would solve many of Morva's sabotage problems, though there was always the chance that it would make the locals even more hostile. And then who would cook for the students who'd been promised an all-in Greek experience? I shuddered at the memory of Morva's evil curry. Where would she find a replacement willing to come to this forsaken place? So, keeping her enemies close, Morva kept Margarita on.

The narrow, twisting route forced me to go even more slowly than usual, allowing me to take in some of the sights and smells I had recently ignored due to obvious distractions. When the view opened up across a steep and narrow valley, I stopped and got out of the car. On the opposite side of the valley sat a red-roofed village. It consisted of no more than thirty-odd houses and seemed to float in a turbulent sea of trees. Looking from here, the continuous swell of green appeared to consist of only two types of tree: the ubiquitous olive and the exclamatory cypress. A strong west wind was today working this forest of olives, making the trees flash the silver underside of their leaves towards the sky, turning the vista into a restless, flickering image. Standing here by the side of the road looking across, I could see no people in the village. The smell of burning charcoal and wild oregano travelled on the wind. A sudden romantic impulse made me imagine this tiny hamlet as my home – past, present and future. I could also smell the sea, a sliver of which flickered not far beyond the roofs. Perhaps once the Kyla thing was sorted, Annis and I could visit the place, rent a room, try for a real holiday. I checked on the map in the car but, try as I might, I could not match what I saw to anything on the map. This could only mean two things: it wasn't marked on the map or else I had managed to get lost in the hills. As I stood by the car looking across, a flash of refracted sunlight caught my eye but was not repeated. It reminded me of the reflection of light from the birdwatcher's binoculars I had seen at Chlomós; it also reminded me that just because I couldn't see anybody didn't mean no one was watching me. I checked all around me and listened, but didn't see a soul and the only thing I heard was the crow of a distant cockerel. But the mood had changed; the romantic bubble had burst. I drove faster now on my way into town.

Corfu Town felt hot and dusty today and I was glad to escape into the coolness of the post office. I called Tim at work.

‘No, we don't have to pretend I'm talking about the cat. I came into town to take care of something else. Have you had a chance to check out the names I gave you?'

‘I have, with varying success.'

‘OK, start at the top.'

‘Morton? You can stop being paranoid, or perhaps not. He really is working for your supermarket group, but I can't find a job description for him. He zips all over the world. Sometimes he stays in the background and sometimes he appears as a spokesman. As he did when some baby food in the States had been contaminated with glass, or when a lot of cats and dogs died from their own-brand pet food. He's a sort of troubleshooter and spin doctor.'

‘Well, at least he's real. I never checked with anyone that he was who he said he was. I was just dazzled by the wad of fifties and the turbot on the menu. He could have been anyone.'

‘He seems to turn up whenever something happens that may taint the company image. I suppose all global brands have people like that.'

‘Whole departments of them, I should think. But one employee not returning from holiday . . . how's that going to harm a company like that?'

‘That depends what she's been up to, of course.'

‘I suspect that's what I'm here to find out.'

‘And?'

‘I know she's been here before; I found a picture of her in a taverna – a holiday pic. And in the same picture was the guy who ran the taverna having a drink with her. But he denied ever having seen her. The other person in the picture was Gloves.'

‘Toyota woman? Is she still following you?'

‘Not for a few days. I think she knows pretty well where to find me if she wants to, so perhaps she's packed it in. Got anything else for me?'

‘Hang on.' At the other end Tim shuffled paper. ‘You've got a joyous bunch of students up there. Your Rob character – Robert Oxley – he was tricky to find. Unremarkable, except for the fact that he lost every penny he had in the recent financial upheaval. He shouldn't have: he's a retired accountant.'

That explained his method of painting at least. Another mystery solved. ‘He must have taken his eye off the ball.'

‘His wife died of something or other around then too, and soon after that your Robert sold his house in Portsmouth and disappeared.'

‘And now he's found. I always find people I've not been looking for. There's no money in it.'

‘Says here “relatives are worried about his mental state”
.
'

‘They can stop worrying – he's fine. Though I'm not really sure it's our job to tell them that. If he wants to be disappeared, then that's his business. It doesn't say there he's a specialist in reptiles, does it?'

‘Reptiles? No. Why? Oh no, don't tell me you've got snakes out there . . . I
hate
snakes.'

‘Snakes? In Corfu? No, it's like Ireland here – no snakes at all.'

‘That's all right, then. I can't be having with snakes.'

‘What else have you got?'

‘OK, let's see . . . ah yes, another cheerful character – Sophie Little. Found loads on her. Quite a story. Her son died on a holiday down there and she's refused to leave the island ever since. Her husband stayed with her in Corfu for a while, but then decided enough was enough and went back to work in England. They're from Lincoln. I think she had some sort of breakdown and doesn't want to believe her son's dead.'

‘I heard. I know all that.'

‘Did you know her son had tried to kill himself before that?'

‘No one mentioned that. So it could have been suicide. He could have gone diving and stayed down there on purpose. While his mother was waiting for him in the boat.'