Medusa

by Hammond Innes

  ‘No. I ask him, but he don’t answer me. Instead, he speak of making Seóor Wilkins an offer. I have not seen him since that day.’

  He couldn’t tell me anything else and I drove off after confirming that I’d get my lawyer to draw up something we could both sign. A bank of cloud was spreading across the sky, and as I approached the main Mahon-Fornells road the sun went in. The still beauty of the morning was gone and I gave up any thought of sailing. Instead, I headed westward through the pines to Fornells.

  Ever since Lloyd Jones had given me the address where he was staying I had been puzzled as to why he had chosen the place. Fornells is a little fishing port almost halfway along the north coast. It has the second largest inlet, five of the best fish restaurants on the island and is the Menorquins’ favourite place for Sunday lunch. Who had told him about it? I wondered. Since he wasn’t staying at a hotel, and had clearly never been to Menorca before, Phil or Wade, somebody, must have told him about the private lodgings where he was staying in the Calle des Moli.

  I kept to the main street through Fornells and asked my way of a waiter I knew who was leaning against the door of the restaurant that stands back from the harbour. The Calle des Moli proved to be a narrow little back street leading nowhere, except to the remains of a windmill and a bare hill topped by one of those stone round towers that dominate several of the island’s headlands. The houses were small and stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their doors opening straight on to the street.

  I left my car in the Plaza de Pedro M. Cardona. The address he had given me was near the top end, the door standing open and a little girl sitting on the step nursing a rag doll. The woman who answered my knock was big and florid. ‘El señor Inglés?’ She shook her head. I had just missed him. He had been out all morning, had returned about half an hour ago and had then gone out again almost immediately, leaving his car parked in the street. She indicated the small red Fiat parked a few doors up.

  I glanced at my watch and was surprised to find the morning had gone. It was already past noon and since she said she didn’t provide meals for her visitors, and he had left his car, I presumed he was lunching at one of the restaurants in the port. I asked her how long he had been staying at her house and she said he had arrived the previous afternoon about five-thirty. No, he hadn’t booked in advance. There was no necessity since it was early in the year for visitors.

  I produced the photograph then, but she shook her head. She had never seen the man, and she didn’t know how long her visitor would be staying, so I left her and drove back to the harbour where I found him at a table outside the better of the two waterfront restaurants. He was alone, bent over one of the charts I had sold him, which was neatly folded and propped against the carafe of wine in front of him. He looked up quickly at my greeting, then half rose to his feet. I pulled up a chair and sat down, enquiring whether he had had a rewarding morning.

  He nodded vaguely, telling me that since I had last seen him he had driven round Villa Carlos, then on to the little inlet of St Esteve immediately to the south, had had a look at the tunnelled redoubt known as Marlborough’s Fort, and finally, before coming back to Fornells for lunch, he had been all round the small fishing port of Es Grau to the north of Mahon. He spoke quickly, giving me a very precise inventory of his morning’s tour as though he were making a report, and all the time he was staring past me, out towards the light at the end of the eastern arm of the harbour. There was a girl in a wet suit board-sailing across the entrance, a glistening, statuesque figure, the orange sail bright in the sun. But I don’t think he saw her. I had a strange feeling he was talking for the sake of talking, as though he sensed what I had come to tell him and was putting it off.

  The waiter appeared with a plate of four large mussels cooked with herbs and garlic. ‘Will you join me?’ The clouds were gone now and it was quite warm again sitting there in the sun, the town and the hill behind it sheltering us from the wind. I nodded and he said, ‘Dos,’ holding up two fingers in case he had not made his meaning clear. After that he didn’t say anything, the silence hanging heavy in the air as the waiter filled a glass for me. When he was gone I produced the photograph. ‘When was that taken?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘Several years ago, I imagine.’

  ‘Is he a seaman? He certainly looks like one with that peaked cap.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘What’s he do for a living then?’

  He gave a little shrug, his head turned towards the harbour entrance again.

  ‘But you do know him?’

  ‘Of course.’ He hesitated, then he added, ‘We were at school together, you see.’

  ‘You know him quite well then?’

  ‘Well enough.’ The words seemed forced out of him. ‘He saved my life – not once, but twice.’ His eyes were blank, his mind turned inwards.

  ‘He hasn’t got a beard now,’ I said.

  He turned his head then, a quick movement, his eyes staring straight at me, hard now and grey in the sunshine. ‘You’ve seen him.’ It wasn’t a question. He knew, and suddenly he seemed a different man, no longer hesitant, his voice sharper, a note of authority in it. ‘When? Recently? Within the last few days?’

  ‘No. Several months ago.’ And I told him about the three men Soo and I had seen that filthy wet day when we had gone into the bar-restaurant at Es Grau, and how Miguel had seen him more recently.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On Punta Codolar.’ And I told him about the villa Miguel was working on.

  ‘Punta Codolar. Where’s that? Show me.’ He turned the chart towards me, but I pushed it away.

  ‘It’s only a few miles from here, the next headland to the east.’

  ‘And he was at this villa. How long ago, did your builder friend say?’

  ‘About a month.’

  ‘He made an offer for it, for a half-finished villa?’

  ‘So Miguel said.’

  He opened the chart up, his stubby finger stabbing at the irregular shape of Punta Codolar. ‘Why? Did he say why?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer, shaking his head – ‘No. No of course not, he wouldn’t tell you that. But the headland there is the western arm of Macaret and Port d’Addaia.’ After that he didn’t say anything. He seemed quite stunned, his eyes staring past me, seeing nothing.

  ‘Better eat those while they’re hot,’ I said, indicating the mejillones in the little dish in front of him. ‘They’re very good, but it’s important they should be piping hot.’

  He nodded, picking up the small spoon and digging a mussel out of its shell, the movement quite automatic, his mind still far away. ‘And you haven’t seen him since the autumn?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But the builder fellow saw him about a month ago. Has he seen him at all since then?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Miguel would have said if he had.’

  ‘A month ago.’ He repeated it slowly, chewing over a mussel, his eyes screwed up against the sun. ‘And he was clean-shaven.’ He gave a long sigh as though I had saddled him with some impossible burden. ‘And when you and your wife saw him in that bar, who were the two men he was with – you said something about their being politically motivated. What exactly did you mean?’

  I explained then about Ismail Fuxa, that he was supposed to be one of the leaders of the separatist movement.

  ‘An activist?’

  ‘I think so. But he keeps in the background.’

  ‘And the other man?’

  ‘I can’t be certain,’ I said, ‘but he looked very much like a man I had surprised paint-spraying a slogan on the living-room wall of a villa we look after.’ I started to explain how I’d only caught a glimpse of him, but he interrupted me.

  ‘Where was this? Where’s the villa he daubed?’

  ‘Between Binicalaf and Binicalaf Nou.’

  ‘Those names mean nothing to me.’ He opened the chart out. ‘Could you show me please.’ I pointed to the position of the villa and he said, ‘T
hat’s on the south side of the island, the opposite coast to Macaret. There’s an inlet there.’ He turned the map sideways so that he could read the name. ‘Cales Coves. Do you know it?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ve sailed in there quite a few times. There are two inlets in fact, that’s why Cales is plural. Coves refers to the caves.’

  ‘I suppose you know just about all the inlets round Menorca.’

  ‘Well, not quite all. There are over a hundred and fifty of them and not all are suitable for a deep-draught boat.’ He enquired what sort of boat I had and when I said it was an old fishing boat, he asked me whether I hired it out to visitors.

  ‘In the summer, yes,’ I told him. ‘The Santa Maria is not the ideal craft for charter work, but the sort of yacht I need to make that part of the business pay calls for far more money than we can afford. It’s a risky game, a lot of competition.’ He seemed more relaxed now, as though he had got used to the idea that the man he was trying to catch up with had been seen on the island. More mussels arrived and another carafe of wine, and he began asking me about other inlets to the south, particularly those closest to Mahon. Except for St Esteve he had only looked at the inlets to the north.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Two days.’

  The first day he had spent taking over his hire car and having a look at the peninsula that forms the northern arm of Port Mahon, the land that provided the view from our office window.

  ‘What about the megalithic remains,’ I asked him – ‘the taulas, talayots and navetas?’

  But he hadn’t seen any of that, and I don’t think he took it in when I told him the whole of Menorca was more or less an open-air archaeological museum. All he wanted me to talk about was the little ports and coves. For a man who hadn’t got a boat, and who wasn’t involved in sailing, it struck me as odd. I got to my feet, telling him I was going to phone my wife. ‘I’ll join you for lunch if I may, it’s too late to go back home.’

  When I got through to Soo she said she had Petra with her. ‘She’s waiting for the boat, and, Mike – she wants to take you into a cave over by Cales Coves.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Lennie told me. Said she was very excited about something. Has she told you what it is?’

  ‘No. She can’t explain it, you’ve got to see it, she says.’

  I offered to return to Binicalaf and meet her there after lunch, but she said Petra had to get back to camp to get herself organised for the evening. ‘You haven’t forgotten we asked her to the Red Cross do tonight, have you?’ There was the sound of muffled voices, then Soo added, ‘She says she’ll try and explain it to us this evening.’ And then she was asking me about my meeting with Miguel.

  When I got back to the table Lloyd Jones had refilled my glass and was sitting with his head in his hands staring fixedly out to sea. He didn’t look up as I sat down. The girl was still balanced on her sailboard, gliding effortlessly in towards the steps. Even then he didn’t see her, while I was thinking how nice it would have been to have had her as a pupil when I was running my sailboard courses. ‘Have you ordered?’ I asked. The mejillones were merely an appetiser.

  He shook his head. ‘You know the place. Whatever you advise.’ He didn’t seem to care what he had, his mind far away, lost in his own thoughts.

  I ordered zarzuella for us both, and because he didn’t seem inclined to conversation, I began telling him a little about the megalithic remains and the hypostilic chamber Petra Callis was excavating by the fallen dolmen on Bloody Island.

  The food arrived almost immediately, and because zarzuella is roughly a stew of mixed fish in a piquant sauce, we were too busy dealing with the bones to do much talking. He wasn’t interested in Bronze Age remains anyway, and as soon as he had finished he pushed his plate aside and spread the chart out again. He thought he would have a look at the other side of the island after lunch. Somebody had told him about the Xorai caves above Cala en Porter.

  ‘They’re strictly for the tourists,’ I told him. ‘Anyway, they’re not open at this time of year. If you want to see caves, you’d much better look into Cales Coves.’ And because the track down to the first inlet isn’t easy to find I gave him instructions how to get there.

  He thought about that, concentrating on the chart. And then suddenly he asked me which of all the inlets on Menorca I would choose if I had to land something secretly from a boat, something to be delivered to Mahon.

  It was so unexpected that I stared at him, wondering what the hell he had in mind. ‘Are we talking about contraband?’

  He hesitated. ‘Yes, I suppose we are.’ And he added, ‘If you were going to land something secretly –’ His eyes were looking directly at me then. ‘You ever run anything like that?’

  I didn’t say anything, suddenly wary. It was a long time ago, before I was married.

  ‘If you had, I mean,’ he said quickly, ‘where would you have landed the stuff?’ The tone of his voice had sharpened, so that it crossed my mind he could be a customs man attached to Interpol or something like that, his manner so abruptly changed to one of alertness, those grey eyes of his catching the sun again as hard as glass as they stared into mine. ‘Well, where? I need to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That man you saw at Es Grau–’ He stopped there. ‘Well, where would you land it?’

  By then I’d decided this was getting a little dangerous and I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘I’m talking hypothetically, of course,’ he went on. ‘Let’s say it’s TV sets, something like that – something fairly heavy, fairly bulky … What about Cales Coves? You mentioned cave dwellings.’

  I shook my head. ‘Those caves are in the cliffs, at least all those that look directly out on to the water, so you’d have to haul everything up. And then you wouldn’t be able to get the stuff ashore – I don’t think any of them have a landward entrance. They’re just holes in the cliff face or up in the sides of the ravine that leads down into the twin coves.’

  ‘So where would you land it?’

  He went on questioning me like that, claiming it was all hypothetical and the motivation nothing but his curiosity. At least it made for conversation. He no longer sat in silence brooding over whatever it was that filled his mind, and as he questioned me about the sparsely inhabited north coast to the west of Fornells, he made entries on the chart against each of the coves I mentioned, his writing small and very neat. In the end he shook his head, it would have to be closer to Mahon, wouldn’t it – a short drive on a good road.’ His pen shifted eastward across the great headland opposite where we were sitting. ‘What about Arenal d’en Castell?’ And when I told him it was overlooked by three large hotels, he asked about the two big bays south of Faváritx.

  ‘Too rocky,’ I told him. ‘But Addaia – you go in there, almost to the end, and there’s a new quay not yet finished, the place still quite wild and more or less deserted.’

  ‘Not overlooked?’

  ‘Two or three fishermen’s houses converted to summer homes, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t see any quay shown on the chart.’ I marked the position of it for him and he stared at it, finally nodding his head. ‘I’ll have a look at that after I’ve seen those cliff caves.’ He called for the bill and got to his feet. ‘That boat of yours. Has it got an echo-sounder?’

  ‘Of course. VHF, too, a big chart table, bunks for six …’

  ‘How much if I want to charter it – for a day, say?’

  I told him it depended whether it was a bareboat charter or fully stocked and crewed.

  ‘Just you and me.’ And then he seemed to change his mind. ‘Forget it. Just an idea.’ He settled the bill, insisting I was his guest, and on the spur of the moment, as we were walking to the cars, I asked him whether he would care to join us at the Red Cross party that evening. ‘It’s run by a Menorquin friend of ours, Manuela Renato,’ I told him. ‘Usually it’s at a dance hall and restaurant beyond Villa Carlos, but this year she’s org
anised it in the Quarries just above where we live. Should be quite fun – barbecue, bonfire, dancing, fireworks, all in a huge great rock chamber that looks like something hacked out for the tomb of a pharaoh.’

  Why I should have asked him, God knows. Curiosity, I suppose. The man was under pressure, I could see it in his eyes, something hanging over him. And the photograph. I tried to recall the scene in that bar, but Soo and I had been discussing the villa we had just looked over, and it was only when the three of them were putting on their coats and going out into the rain that I really took any notice of them.

  We had reached my car and I stood there waiting for his answer, trying to figure out from the hard jut of his chin, the shape of that short neck and the solid head, the lines at the corners of eyes and mouth, what sort of a man he really was. What did he do for a living? Above all, why was he here?

  ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll come.’ He didn’t thank me, his acceptance almost grudging, as though he felt he shouldn’t be wasting his time on such frivolities.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s settled then. Eight-thirty at our place.’ And I got into my car, never dreaming that my casual invitation would be the catalyst to something that would get completely out of hand.

  He wasn’t looking at me as I backed away from the water’s edge and drove off. He had turned his head towards the harbour entrance again and was standing there, quite still, staring towards the horizon with an intensity that left me with the odd feeling that he was expecting some visitation from the sea.

  The road from Fornells enters the outskirts of Mahon at the opposite end to where we live, and instead of heading straight along the waterfront, past the Aduana, the Customs House, and the commercial wharf, I turned left and drove out on to the naval quay where the boats we had laid up out of the water were parked. I drove straight up to the elderly Hillyard we were working on and called up to Carp. The Danish owner, who had picked the boat up cheap in Palma the previous autumn, had phoned me just before Christmas and I had promised to have it ready in time for him to leave for a family cruise in the Greek islands at Easter. We had left it a little late, particularly as there was a new engine to be installed.