An Inch of Time

by Peter Helton

  ‘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.

  ‘Thanks, Chris, you’re a star. Here –’ she held out the half-empty bottle – ‘have some. It’ll dull the pain.’

  Whatever medication Dimitris’s bottle had provided me with had worn off by the time I stood impatiently at the kiosk in Ano Makriá, dialling the Mill House number for the third time. Something had to give and, as usual, it looked as if it was going to be me. At last I got a ringing tone, so faint it was difficult to have faith in it. Even the gurgling of my stomach was louder. I was about ready to hang up when Annis answered the phone.

  ‘Have you finished that painting yet?’

  ‘I have. Last night. Where exactly in Corfu are you? How am I going to find you?’

  ‘You mean you’re coming? You mean I don’t have to beg you to come down here?’

  ‘You were going to beg? How sweet; let’s hear it.’

  ‘Hurry. I have made no progress, Morva got run over by a driverless car and I am now a hungover painting tutor, grocery boy and private eye all rolled into one slightly sweaty package.’

  ‘You make it sound so attractive, how can I possibly stay away?’

  ‘I’m also being followed by a weird woman i
n a big blue Toyota who drives with gloves on.’

  ‘Stay away from her. I’m on my way. I’m looking at flights on your coal-fired computer as we speak . . .’ I could hear her hum to herself as she scrolled through web pages. ‘There’s one from Bristol, gets into Corfu airport on Saturday, at twenty past seven in the evening, your time. Hang on . . .’

  I hung on while Annis booked her flight online. The same three men were sitting outside the kafénion; several figures shrouded themselves in smoke in the deep gloom inside the ouzeria; a man was weighing produce for a small group of women in floral-print dresses at the back of a pickup truck packed high with crates of vegetables and fruit; a lorry with a heavy load under a green tarpaulin squeezed into the square at one end and out the other. A group of young men at the corner were playing pig-in-the-middle with a small boy demanding his tiny red ball back. It was hot. I was hot.

  ‘Yup, it’s booked. Will you pick me up?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you want me to bring anything?’

  ‘Now you mention it. Jake’s got a mate, Charlie – he’s a builder. When I left, he was out of work. Ask him if he fancies a job in the sun. It won’t pay much but the food will be . . . interesting and the company . . . diverting.’

  I hung up and dialled again, this time a long UK number I had found in the envelope along with the money and the picture of Kyla Biggs.

  Naively perhaps, I had hoped to talk to John Morton. What I got instead was a well-groomed, wide-awake corporate female voice.

  ‘Is Mr Morton expecting your call?’

  ‘He should be. By the way, I’m using a public phone in a village square.’

  ‘One moment, please.’ While I waited with expensive static in my ear, something blue in the corner of my eye made me turn. And there it was: the blue Toyota, creeping slowly into the village. I put as much of the kiosk between me and the new arrival as the cord on the receiver allowed. The car stopped by the palm tree, but no one got out. ‘Mr Morton is not available at the moment. But he’ll get in touch soon. Goodbye.’

  ‘Hang on. How’s he going to get in touch? My mobile doesn’t . . .’

  ‘Please don’t worry about it. He’ll find you, Mr Honeysett.’ She hung up, leaving me with the much cheaper purring sound in my ear.

  Mr Honeysett? Who had said anything about Honeysett?

  If I was supposed to be impressed by how easily Morton could find me, then, no, I wasn’t. Everyone seemed to find me far too easily just now. I stepped around and paid the taciturn man a fortune in euros for the phone calls and wondered how to deal with Gloves; I could hardly hide behind this kiosk all day. I feigned interest in some of the plastic toys dangling from the roof and peered around the corner. The car was gone. This unnerved me just as much as its arrival had done. I preferred my mysterious strangers to be where I could see them, or else stay away and be strange somewhere else. I got back on the bike and took the tarmac road out of the village.

  ELEVEN

  I’ve never been any good at multitasking, so the imminent arrival of the energetic Annis Jordan cheered me up immensely, and if she’d manage to bring Charlie the builder with her, it would cheer Morva even more.

  So I relaxed. I couldn’t help drifting back into holiday mood. There was nothing but grey metal stubs where the Honda’s mirrors had once been, so perhaps I didn’t check behind me quite as often as I should have done. I tootled on the Honda along the narrow tarmac roads through the tree-covered hills. The odours of verdant land baking in the sun were marbled with ribbons of other smells – of goats tethered by the roadside, of distant charcoal grills or gusts of ozone on the breeze. At junctions, often with even narrower dirt tracks, road signs were either missing or obscured with paint. One sign looked as if someone had used it for shotgun target practice. The bald patch on the tree trunk behind suggested there was room for improvement in his aim.

  Tootling on, I pleasantly lost all sense of where I was going. All I had was a postcard of a taverna. Which the police seemed eager for me to believe was on a different island. From time to time I stopped at the roadside to show the postcard to people waiting at bus stops or walking donkeys, but always got a negative reply. I had no idea where this road was heading and didn’t really care. Some of the vistas were too beautiful to whizz past so I slowed down even further. Which must have taken the Toyota driver by surprise, since the car suddenly appeared round the bend behind me, its three-litre engine surging noisily.

  In the tinny old Fiesta I had felt a little vulnerable; now I felt positively naked. On this road there was nowhere to go. Here, if I had wanted to avoid being caught by the Toyota, I’d have been better off on foot, had it not been for one thing: I didn’t think of it.

  Instead, I opened the throttle and ran with a screaming little motor under a dented little tank with a dubious amount of petrol in it. Behind me, Gloves put her foot down. The road I was following rose and fell, following the contours of the tree-clad hill. The Toyota’s engine had thirty times the capacity of the Honda’s and stayed unshakeably a few yards behind me, even on this downhill stretch. After a dip, the road rose again and the contest became ludicrously uneven. The clapped-out Honda wasn’t at all happy going uphill and very soon I would fall into the Toyota’s clutches. I tilted up through a bend with idiotic speed and nearly came a cropper as my saviours came bleating the other way. Driven by a young boy, a flock of twenty or so goats were just then pouring on to the road. A narrow gap allowed me to whine through on the Honda and to watch over my shoulder as Gloves stood on her brakes to avoid massacring the lot.

  I ran on. The road levelled out and then fell away sharply again. The goats wouldn’t delay Gloves long and I’d be back to square one soon. To my right, a low, crumbling wall and a ruined stone hut. It wasn’t much, but I’d take it. I wrestled the Honda to a snaking stop and wheeled it off the road. Behind the wall, I lay it flat on the ground and dropped down myself next to the ticking, hissing machine. Not a moment too soon. Gloves came flying down the hill seconds later and whizzed past. I stuck my nose over the wall to watch her take the next bend. She slowed, then stopped. A moment later she got out of the car.

  A new engine noise, much quieter, instinctively made me duck lower. Wearing black helmet and dark sun visor, denim jacket, jeans and trainers, a broad-shouldered figure on a tall BMW trail bike slowed right down and stopped level with me on the opposite side of the road. The big engine purled, the twin exhausts gently putting. He sat motionless for a moment, observing Gloves as she stood by the verge and peered downhill with one hand shading her eyes.

  I had hoped to turn the tables on Gloves and follow her for a change, but it looked as if someone else already had that job. Gloves looked back in our direction, but the rider was well hidden by dense oleanders between roadside rocks. She got back in the car and as soon as she had driven out of sight the tall rider followed.

  ‘Well, what do you know?’ I said to the lizard who was sunbathing a few inches away on the wall.

  ‘I know your bike’s been leaking petrol because you didn’t close the petrol tap when you laid it on its side’ is what the lizard might have said, had he shown any interest in the matter.

  The Honda had taken exception to being made to lie down. I had to work the kick-starter for what seemed like for ever before the engine reluctantly fired. As I went after bike and car at full throttle, a new set of questions kept me busy: quite apart from who was Gloves, I now had who was following Gloves and why? Did Gloves know she was being followed? Did the tall biker know she was following me? And, if so, did he know why she was following me? And would he notice that now I was following him?

  Well, trying to. Every time I went beyond forty miles an hour the engine started misbehaving. Fortunately, Gloves was taking it easy. I caught up with the back of the train further down the hill, the biker once more hiding behind trees on a bend, Gloves a hairpin further down, once more out of the car and looking down, probably wondering how she had managed to lose me. The bik
e rider, I noticed, held one hand up to his helmet and his head was moving in the way it does when humans talk, especially to people who aren’t there. He was talking either on a phone or a radio. Sitting astride his big idling machine, I hoped he wouldn’t hear me as I coasted close to him with my engine turned off. I was sending silent incantations to the back of his head: don’t look round, nothing behind you, keep talking, no need to turn around. I rolled the last few yards with my breath held until I was no more than three bike lengths behind him. He was listening to a squawking voice from a tinny loudspeaker, then suddenly spoke in fast Greek of which I understood only very few words – amáxi, yináika, mikaní (car, woman, bike) and several Greek swear words I thought I remembered Morva using – but I heard distinctly the mention of Neo Makriá. I could see now that he was talking into a grey radio with a stubby little aerial.

  Below us, Gloves climbed back into her car and drove off. The biker terminated his call, stashed the radio in his jacket. We were on a sharp bend and I hoped I wouldn’t show up in his right rear-view mirror, but I needn’t have worried. As soon as the Toyota had disappeared from sight, he zoomed after it without a thought for what lay behind him. I was left pumping the kick-starter again, then launched myself after him. I wished I had at least the protection of gloves and helmet as I dodged the potholes down the hill. There was no sign of bike or car on the next stretch of road, so I opened the throttle and squeezed a trembling fifty out of the little bike, then had to throw the anchor out sharpish as the next bend rushing up turned out to be full of gravel. The engine sounded increasingly rough, but I thought this wasn’t the moment to worry about it. The bottom of the hill approached when a gap in the vegetation afforded me a view of a straight road on the valley floor where I could see Toyota and bike disappearing fast towards the south-west. As I rolled up to the junction, the bike gave a tortured squawk, followed by a loud bang which blew the engine out.