An Inch of Time

by Peter Helton

  ‘Was it my idea to go for a walk?’ I enquired as I negotiated the goat track like a tightrope walker.

  ‘Certainly was. I feel much better, don’t you?’

  ‘I do hate young people,’ I confessed.

  Below us, somewhere among the holly oaks and myrtle bushes, a woman shrieked. Twice, loud and long.

  ‘That doesn’t sound too happy. Let’s check it out.’ Annis flew down the slope in the direction of the cry.

  ‘Bloody hell, that’s all I need now.’ I ran after her as fast as my head allowed. I caught up with her by the van. Sophie was standing beside it, swearing continuously and repetitively; her hands fluttered.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘A snake encounter,’ Annis said.

  ‘You could bloody say that. Snakes! That’s all I bloody need! All I wanted was to have a look; I’d never been in a motorhome. I sat down on the edge of the bed and nearly sat down on the damn snake. I jumped up but it’s so bloody small in there I ran smack into a cupboard before I made it out of the bloody door!’

  ‘Did you see where it went?’

  ‘What? Are you mad? I didn’t hang around. I just got out and slammed the door shut behind me.’

  ‘Still in there, then.’ I pressed my nose against the window but it was too bright outside to allow me to see much. ‘Well, we can’t leave it in there to scare Charlie.’

  ‘You’re good with snakes,’ Sophie said. ‘Go and get it out somehow.’

  ‘Yes, you should be used to it by now,’ Annis agreed. ‘Do some snake charming. We’ll watch. You can pass the hat round afterwards.’

  Great. Now I was the local pest control expert. Wriggly things. I wasn’t keen on it, but it looked as if I’d landed the job, with another all-female audience to record any lapses in heroism.

  Under the trees I found a likely-looking stick with a spur at the end with which I might do battle if it came to it. ‘All right, you keep your eyes peeled in case it comes out.’ I opened the van door with a feeling of doom and took my time going in. I quickly looked around. Nothing by my feet, on the bed or the table, as far as I could see. Of course, if Derringer could hide in here, then a long thin thing shouldn’t have much of a problem. ‘Where art thou, wee slitherous beastie?’ I cooed. I trod very softly, hoping to find the reptile asleep again. Some movement in my peripheral vision. There it was, trying to get away into the furthest corner behind the driver’s seat. Perhaps I could chase it out? The heat inside the van was cooking my hangover and my head throbbed as I bent down to give the thing the once-over. This one looked a bit different from the other: it had lozenge markings down the back. It wasn’t all that big, certainly small enough to disappear into the woodwork if I didn’t act quickly. On the worktop lay a well-singed oven glove. Better than nothing, I reasoned, and slipped it on my right hand. I didn’t want to give the snake a chance to think about things so I struck snake-like first, pinning it closely with the stick behind the head into the corner where it writhed and wriggled, its fanged mouth gaping wide. On the tip of its nose it appeared to have some sort of warty growth. It looked well narked. Now for the tricky bit. Pressing down hard with my left on the stick, I gave the business end of the snake a wide birth and came at it from behind, grabbing it firmly behind the neck. It felt much meatier than expected and writhed and twisted frantically as I lifted it up and held it at arm’s length. There were people who kept these animals as pets? I wouldn’t have wanted to pet this one. I had the distinct feeling it hadn’t taken to me.

  ‘Got it, coming out now,’ I called with the voice of a twelve-year-old.

  Outside, Rob had joined the audience from his nearby painting camp. ‘What have you got this time?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t know. Smaller one this time.’ I held it out for inspection. ‘You think it’s poisonous?’

  He waggled his head. ‘No, not poisonous, strictly speaking.’

  I relaxed a little. ‘Strictly speaking? What about less strictly.’

  ‘Well, I mean it would probably be safe to eat, so it’s not poisonous as such. It’s highly venomous, of course. Yes, quite deadly in fact, were it to bite you. Careful how you let it go now; it looks a little on the lively side.’

  Strictly speaking, I had a sudden impulse to chuck the thing at him. With the snake fighting to escape my grip, fangs bared and ready to sink them into the nearest bit of Honeysett, I felt like a man who had accidentally pulled the pin from a grenade and then promptly dropped it down a drain. ‘Any suggestions?’

  ‘Yes, get rid of it. It looks horrible,’ was Sophie’s contribution.

  ‘Make sure you chuck it a good distance away from you,’ said Annis. ‘It does look ugly. What’s that at the end of its nose?’

  Rob knew. ‘That’s one of its characteristics. It’s a nose-horned viper,’ he said, coming closer and peering at it with interest. I was sorely tempted to turn it into a Rob-nosed viper.

  ‘How come you know about these things?’ I seemed to remember him identifying the last snake I caught, too.

  ‘There’s a section in my guide to Corfu. It had pictures. Mind how you go, now.’

  I minded. Never taking my eye off the stroppy serpent, I walked twenty yards towards the scorched patch of ground where the tortoise-fire had burnt. Then I picked my moment and flung the reptile away from me like a hand grenade. I didn’t even wait to see it land, just legged it out of there in case it had thoughts of revenge.

  Rob had already gone back to his painting. Annis gave ironic applause, but Sophie looked genuinely relieved. ‘That was horrible,’ she said with feeling.

  ‘Tell me about it. You had a lucky escape sitting down next to it. I think you probably saved Charlie quite a nasty experience. If he’d have let himself fall on the bed after an afternoon’s work . . . I never asked Rob whether there’s an antidote available for nose-horned viper venom.’

  Sophie shuddered, hugging herself. ‘I don’t know about you, but I need a drink after that.’

  ‘No thanks, I’m still hungover from last night.’ Was I? ‘Actually my headache’s completely gone.’

  ‘That’s the adrenalin.’ Sophie smiled weakly. ‘Erm, could you . . . could you please not tell Charlie that I went into the van uninvited? I know it’s your van, but it’s all his stuff in there. I feel a bit embarrassed about it now, I just wanted to take a look, you know . . .’

  ‘Are you sure? I’d hate to take all the credit.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Oh, all right, I’ll say I spotted the snake through the window.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, relieved, and turned away.

  Then I got a sudden attack of the Columbos. ‘Oh, just one other thing . . . Was the van door open or closed when you got there? We’d better leave it the way you found it.’

  ‘Closed.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive,’ she called over her shoulder.

  I went back to the van, had another quick look around the interior, then slammed the door shut. ‘I may not be ready for a drink but I think I could take a little nourishment now. Let’s see what’s left in the kitchen.’

  The rumbling cement mixer in the courtyard was no longer threatening to fragment my skull, its sound having shrunk along with my hangover. I paused at the door to the room where Charlie was smoothing an area of cement with a wooden trowel. ‘I passed the motorhome just now and saw something moving inside. When I checked it out, it turned out to be a snake.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘I got rid of it for you. But be extra careful, just in case it had a mate. Quite poisonous – sorry, venomous – according to Rob, and he seems to know about these things.’

  ‘Thanks. mate. That could have been nasty. I really hate snakes.’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel that way myself.’

  ‘Serves me right for leaving the door wide open. But it gets too hot in there otherwise.’

  ‘You left it open, did you?’

  ‘Yeah, stupid, I guess.
I’ll go and close it.’

  ‘Don’t bother; I shut it for you. But have a look through your stuff anyway, in case there’s another one. You don’t want to find you’re sharing your pyjamas with a sleepy reptile.’

  He gave a theatrical shudder. ‘I only said to Morva last night how I really hate snakes and stuff like that. The quicker I get these rooms finished, the better. It’ll be baking in the van tonight with the doors shut.’

  In the kitchen Annis was throwing together a salad. ‘I’m certainly going to check the bed before getting in tonight, but I guess this sort of thing doesn’t happen too often.’

  ‘I’m not sure it happens at all.’

  She paused in mid-tomato-slice. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I just asked Charlie and he said he had left the van door open. Because it gets too hot otherwise. But Sophie said that when she got there the door was closed.’

  ‘Is there still feta under that upturned dish? So you think someone put the snake inside and then shut the door to make sure it stayed there.’

  I lifted the china bowl and revealed a half-brick of feta cheese on a plate. Between the seven of us we got through mountains of the stuff. ‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking. I don’t believe it’s all that easy for a small snake to heave itself into a van anyway, though this one was quite muscular and it could conceivably have come down from the tree next to it. But it’s quite another thing for a snake to get into a van and then close the door behind itself.’

  ‘I take your point. But then, of course, one of the students may have passed the van, thought the door had been left open by mistake – oh, what am I saying? They’re far too self-absorbed.’ Annis finished the build of the salad with a scatter of black olives from a big stoneware brine jar.

  We took our plates into the courtyard where a light breeze was stirring now. The grinding cement mixer drowned out the rasping cicadas. We had hardly started on our brunch when Margarita puffed by with bags of shopping, giving us a sour look and talking to herself in Greek. ‘I think she disapproves of our helping ourselves.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Annis said, closely examining an olive on the end of her fork before closing her lips around it. ‘Mm. It seems bloody obvious that someone around here is sabotaging the place.’

  ‘But who?’

  ‘Well, if this was an Agatha Christie movie with famous ageing actors and lots of adverts, then the murderer would naturally be the one you’d least suspect. It’s easy.’

  ‘OK, let’s go with that. So in our case that would be who – Morva?’

  ‘In Agathaland, yes. Either that or her evil twin sister. They were separated at birth. The evil twin grew up in poverty and, driven mad by jealousy of Morva’s good fortune, has been living in the village for years, disguised as a man, plotting her twin’s downfall.’

  ‘Yeah, I buy that.’

  ‘Meanwhile in the real world?’

  ‘Occam’s razor.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Old Bill Occam – his razor. Franciscan philosopher.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘These five hundred years.’

  ‘Then how’s his rusty razor going to help us?’

  ‘The principle of Occam’s razor basically says that if there are several explanations, then the simplest one’s usually right.’

  ‘So in our case that means it’s . . .’

  ‘Margarita,’ we both whispered in unison.

  ‘But, then again, why?’ Annis asked, looking over her shoulder to make sure we hadn’t magically summoned her to the table. ‘What’s she got to gain? Surely she’ll lose her job if this painting school thing of Morva’s fails.’

  ‘True. But.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But, then, perhaps the job isn’t the important thing. Hardly anyone in the village seems to work.’

  ‘Her dad does. Runs the kiosk.’

  ‘Call that work?’ My mind flashed up the image of a spider in the centre of a web that covered the entire village.

  ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘As ever, no,’ I admitted.

  ‘I think you should concentrate on finding Kyla, or tell Mr Morton-Supermarket you can’t find her and then we’ll get the hell out of here before this really does turn into an Agatha Christie mystery.’

  ‘It isn’t one yet, then?’

  ‘Of course not, silly – no dead body.’

  ‘Not for want of opportunity.’

  ‘Exactly. And I think I want to get out of here before someone taps me on the shoulder and says “You’re it”.’

  ‘OK, let’s turn the wick up a bit. I’ll go into town and have a chat with Tim and see if he’s sent me another mugshot of Kyla.’ I pinched the last olive off her plate and got up. ‘You coming, or what?’

  Compared to the rest of the island, Corfu Town seemed busy. I found a parking space near the old bus station and left the car so only one of the unmatched number plates showed. From here it wasn’t far to the internet cafe.

  ‘OK, meet you back at the car in an hour,’ Annis said.

  ‘Why, where are you going?’

  ‘Shopping.’

  ‘We can go together afterwards.’

  ‘Clothes shopping.’

  ‘You’re on your own there.’ She wouldn’t need me for that; her bum would never look big in anything for a start.

  At the superheated internet cafe I skimmed my emails. How did so much junk get through this so-called spam filter? Among the rest were some possible referrals from a large Bristol detective agency – naturally, all stuff they themselves wouldn’t touch with the proverbial. I sent a heartfelt ‘No thanks, me and my bargepole are in sunny Greece’ and then opened Tim’s email. He had scanned the group picture with Kyla in it, the one from the food article. ‘Best I could do’ was Tim’s verbose message. Was it possible to print this out, I asked the bloke running the cafe. The kid came over, grunted in the affirmative and saved the image to a memory stick, then disappeared. I had just started on a reply to Tim’s baroque email when the kid reappeared with the picture printed out on matt photo paper. Kyla was one of six people standing outside the entrance to a posh-looking office building, all smiling as if they’d been told to. The photo was appropriately grainy and in black and white. For some reason, it looked like a picture of people long dead. I fanned myself with the print. Too hot in here. I abandoned the email and went to call Tim instead. The post office was air-conditioned and had the added bonus, presumably, of not broadcasting my conversation all over the island. At Mill House, Tim answered almost straight away.

  ‘I never realized how bloody cold your place gets,’ he complained. ‘You’re nearly out of logs again, by the way.’

  I hadn’t realized I had logs to be out of. Annis must have had some delivered. ‘I had no idea Corfu could get this hot in spring,’ I countered maliciously.

  ‘I might have to come down there, then.’

  ‘Seriously? I thought you were busy working.’

  ‘I was. But the project fell through – cutbacks. I scraped a few days’ holiday together. If a cheap flight comes up, I’ll join you.’

  ‘Don’t leave it too long, I’m trying to wind things up here, one way or another, and get out.’

  ‘Hide nor hair?’

  ‘Couldn’t have said it better myself. And it’s a strange place, Corfu. All I keep turning up is people who aren’t keen on me going around asking questions, and then the next moment I’m disarmed by acts of unexpected kindness.’

  ‘Talking of “disarmed”, you didn’t take the Webley, did you?’

  ‘I’m not mad, you know. You get caught taking a gun across an international border and you’ve had it. Just smuggling the damn cat across Europe was nerve-wracking enough. Actually, I don’t think I’d feel any safer carrying a thirty-eight. A lot of weird things have been happening, though most of it hasn’t been aimed at me, I’m glad to say. Spooky things. Stuff you can’t shoot.’

  ‘Oh, I mailed you a picture, by the way.’ />
  ‘I know, I got it. Could you do me another favour?’ I gave Tim a list of names. ‘See what you can find out about them. I’ll call again soon. Oh, here’s a thought . . . if I call and seem to talk rubbish, then that’s because I’m calling from a kiosk in the nearby village where they can hear every word I say. Just give me your news and I’ll pretend we’re chatting about the cat.’

  ‘Why don’t we? How is Derringer?’ Like everyone else who’d met Derringer, Tim had become fond of the beast.

  ‘Murdering the locals and getting fat. Greek rodents seem to agree with him. And I suspect there are seven people feeding him kebabs, chicken and feta cheese under the table.’

  Annis and I had agreed to meet outside the church of Agios Spiridon, the much-travelled (and mummified) patron saint of Corfu, for no other reason than that its red-capped tower was hard to miss. I had some time left and allowed myself to drift about the narrow streets and alleys. Not all the shops sold useless tourist tat. If you wanted your shoes repaired, your dress mended or the tin lining of your coffee pot replaced, then you could still find the tiny workshops that served the permanent inhabitants of Corfu in the narrower and less glamorous alleyways of the town. Taking mainly left turns, I managed to come nearly full circle, keeping a lookout for a suitable cafe. Eventually, the alley I walked up widened and there, between a stationer’s and a draper’s shop, I found what I had been hoping for: a patisserie with little tables outside in the shade of the colonnaded building. Unfortunately, the only free seat to be had was opposite a balding, overweight, cake-eating police officer called Superintendent Michael Needham.