An Inch of Time

by Peter Helton

  SEVENTEEN

  I had a terrible urge to tiptoe past in cartoon style, or else run like hell, but I forced myself to keep to my normal pace so he wouldn’t look up from his chocolate cake. I hummed ‘Walk on by’ to myself, all the time expecting to hear my name called in that stentorian voice of his. When at last I made it to the street corner, I leant against a wall and pinched myself just in case I was sleepwalking.

  Superintendent Michael Needham, Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s finest, had long been keeping a critical eye on the activities of Aqua Investigations. While ‘meddling private investigators’ in general never made it on to the superintendent’s Christmas card list, I had somehow managed to achieve special disapproval ratings. Our paths had crossed frequently in Bath and environs, but the sight of him thousands of miles south of his patch was enough to send my paranoia count through the roof. What were the chances of Needham being on the same Greek island – how many did the tape say there were? – at the same time as me? Exactly. I tried not to hold my breath as I peered around the corner for a good look. I had a three-quarters back view of him now, so unless he really did have eyes at the back of his head as was rumoured, I should be quite safe. His hair, what was left of it after fifty-odd years, had a suspicious amount of colour left in it. Surely he hadn’t taken to dyeing it? A waiter appeared, cleared an empty plate off Needham’s table, then went back into the cafe. A few seconds later he reappeared with another piece of brown cake and put it in front of the superintendent who went to work on it straight away. Not the behaviour of a man who was waiting for someone to join him, unless, of course, he was just trying to sink as much cake as possible before that someone arrived. I checked my watch: it was time to meet Annis and tell her the good news.

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ is how she greeted it.

  ‘Large as life. Slightly larger soon. He’s hoovering up cake at a frightening rate.’

  ‘Certainly sounds like him.’

  ‘He was slurping Greek coffee like a connoisseur, too.’

  ‘That’s very him.’ Superintendent Needham was a coffee lover whose life had long been blighted by cop-shop coffee-machine muck. It wasn’t beyond him to turn up at your house, drink your Blue Mountain first, then arrest you afterwards.

  ‘But what’s he doing here?’

  ‘He could be on holiday, you know. Police must get some eventually.’

  I closed my eyes for a second. ‘White shirt and tie, suit jacket over the back of his chair.’

  ‘Briefcase?’

  I closed my eyes again. ‘The scuffed brown one, under his chair.’

  ‘Bum. He’s here on business. But why should it have anything to do with us?’

  ‘Because we’re here on business.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  I ignored that. ‘Now, if we were here simply for sun, sea and sand in our sandwich, I wouldn’t worry much, but we’re not and so I do.’ Not that Needham was strictly the enemy; he was just not convinced that we were entirely on the straight and narrow he so admirably squeezed along himself, no matter how much cake was on offer.

  ‘How long ago did you spot him at the patisserie?’

  ‘Not five minutes ago.’

  ‘He’ll still be there as long as there’s a biscuit left in the place. Let’s have a look at him.’

  Walking towards Needham was entirely counter-instinctive. Only reluctantly did I lead us back to the street corner from which I had observed the superintendent. He hadn’t moved an inch. He had probably put on an inch, of course, since – unbelievably – he was now staring at some other piece of pastry on his plate.

  ‘That’s his third, at least. This one looks a bit like your hair.’

  ‘It’s kataífi,’ Annis enlightened me. ‘A bit like baklava, just . . . weirder.’

  ‘He seems to have his doubts himself.’

  ‘Did you do anything particularly dodgy recently? Anything that might be especially irritating to the super’s hide?’

  ‘Nothing I can think of. I sneezed near Manvers Street Police Station once.’

  ‘Not an arrestable offence, I’d have thought, though I haven’t checked recently. We could just go and have a chat with him – that would quickly clear things up. Oh hello, he’s got company. Look, he’s consorting with bikers now. Surely a good sign.’

  A tall man in his thirties was shaking hands with Needham, who had risen politely from his chair. The younger man put a black helmet on the ground under the table. He wore jeans and trainers and was just taking off his denim jacket. Underneath, he wore a black tee shirt and under that gym-trained muscles. Clipped to his belt he had a radio with a stubby aerial. He unhooked it and laid it on the table.

  ‘I think I recognize that bloke. He’s the biker on the big BMW who was following Gloves. I seem to recognize his jacket and helmet and he’s the right height. If I’m right, then he’s Greek, or at the least he speaks fluent Greek.’

  ‘Looks pretty native to me, in a tall, tanned, classical Greek sort of way. So why is Needham hanging out with him? You think he’s a police officer?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘One way to find out . . .’

  ‘What, scream “Help! Police!” in Greek and see if he comes to your aid?’

  Annis pulled me away from the corner and shoved two of her three shopping bags at me. ‘No, I’ll go and have cake and coffee; the table next to them’s free now.’

  ‘You can’t; he’ll recognize you.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ She put her hair up in a twist at the back of her head and pulled a straw hat from her bag. ‘Bought it for the beach. Men are notoriously unobservant. Change your hair or put a hat on and they swear you’re a different girl. Watch.’

  Before I could lodge further protest, Annis marched off and, as cool as you like, made for the free table. The biker checked her over, but Needham was talking through his cake and never even looked up. A waiter shot out of the door to take her order. So far so good, but I was still nervous. ‘Please don’t take out a make-up mirror to check over your shoulders,’ I silently implored.

  Soon Annis too was served with Greek coffee and strangely hairy pastry. Typical: everyone except me was eating cake. Out of sight around the corner, I sat on a doorstep and had time to smoke a couple of cigarettes while I contemplated the injustices of the world. I nearly choked on my fumes when Needham walked right past my nose, fortunately without giving me so much as a glance; I was just another tourist tired of shopping.

  Annis appeared moments later. ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You were right: the bloke’s a policeman, an inspector from Athens.’

  ‘Did you find out what Needham’s doing here?’

  ‘Not really, but neither of them mentioned you, me, Aqua Investigations Inc. or Kyla Biggs.’

  ‘So what did they talk about?’

  ‘Cake.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘They did, I swear. The bike cop insisted the stuff he was eating wasn’t as good as the cake they make in Athens.’

  ‘There’s our answer: Needham flew to Corfu on urgent pastry matters.’

  ‘They talked about other stuff too, but I’m not sure what, really. Someone disappeared, but it’s a he they are looking for and he’s Greek – that’s about as much as I could make out. It’s some investigation that’s been going for a while. But they were saying things like “keeping a low profile” and “getting everything in place” and “making sure no one slips through the net”, so they’re up to something. But it certainly didn’t sound as if they were after you or me.’

  ‘An international counterfeit-cake smuggling gang, then. Well I never. I wonder how Needham got himself involved.’

  ‘No idea, but we now know his favourite cake shop if you feel like asking him.’

  ‘No ta, perhaps some other time.’ I’d had enough of town and definitely enough of Needham. A little goes a long way. ‘Let’s go back to the village, but first
I’m going to get a huge slice of cake to take away from the patisserie.’

  ‘Bad luck, hon. They were putting the “Sorry, we’re closed” sign up as I left.’

  On the drive back I irritably parped my horn in every corner and enthusiastically dodged potholes on the narrow roads. Cake deprivation always affects me strongly.

  ‘Greece has the highest number of road deaths in Europe,’ Annis said casually. ‘Try not to make the statistics worse.’

  ‘What’s getting worse is the steering on this chariot. Please observe.’ I turned the wheel several inches to either side without any effect on the direction of travel. ‘I feel like I’m an actor in a forties movie with a back-projection screen behind.’

  I checked the mirror. The back projection was lovely. I slowed down and tried to enjoy. It wasn’t easy: there seemed to be too much to think about. When I first took the job in fogbound Blighty, I had imagined I’d be spending most of my time strolling on long sandy beaches or sitting in restaurants while keeping one lazy eye out for Kyla Biggs. I hadn’t done all that much strolling. I’d also imagined I’d find the locals helpful and Kyla Biggs quickly, and neither could be said to be true. Dimitris, the cafe owner in Neo Makriá, had been helpful, of course, but seemed to become less friendly the longer I hung around. And the longer I thought about him, the more I wondered how on earth he could possibly make a living from selling a dozen cups of coffee a day. Like so many others in the village, he had to have some other income. Farming, perhaps, though no one ever appeared to do any. And though it was true that the landscape was lovely to me, it was also a place full of misplaced snakes and fire-spreading turtles, unfriendly locals and unseen spooks.

  I checked the mirror. The back projection was ugly. A big old lorry was coming up fast from behind, filthy with dried mud, bull bars at the front, tarpaulin flapping wildly at the back. It took up most of the road and was obviously in a hurry. There was nowhere to let it pass on this stretch, so I speeded up a bit. The juggernaut was as grey as fear and thirty seconds later it filled the entire rear view.

  ‘We’re being monstered by a huge lorry. Where did that come from?’

  Annis turned around. ‘Bloody maniac, he’s dancing around on our rear bumper.’

  ‘I’ll try to find a place to let him pass.’ We were up in the hills now, either side of the road nothing but ditches and olive trees. The lorry drove so close behind I imagined I could feel its pressure through the metal. At the next bend I checked the mirror before braking. The lorry pulled back a few yards as it needed to get on the brakes earlier than me. For a second I could see two dark faces behind its half-obscured windscreen, but couldn’t have recognized them. I hung on the wheel to make the turn while the suspension creaked like a sinking ship. Behind me, the lorry hauled through the bend at suicidal speed. We were going downhill now and within seconds the Scandia badge of the lorry filled our rear window again, the roaring engine of the beast drowning out the scream of our own. This time I felt the bump as the lorry shunted into the back of us.

  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.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘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?’