300 Days of Sun (10 page)

“Sure.”

“Night in for you, too?”

I had no idea how long it would take him to realise that might be a good idea, but I thought better of prompting him any further. I had to accept that it was up to him.

I
'd just had a long, blissful shower when my mobile rang: number unknown. I had a lurch of certainty that this, finally, was Rylands.

“Hello?” I said, professional smile in my tone.

“Hello, Joanna.”

I gave a silent curse. “Marc.”

“I couldn't leave it like this. We owe each other an explanation, at least. And when you're avoiding my calls . . .”

“So you've called me from someone else's phone?”

He didn't deny it. “Why did you block me?”

“Sorry, it wasn't . . .” But of course it was, and I had no excuses. I rubbed my eyes with a clenched fist in frustration. I was dog-­tired from the driving on strange roads and the sun; my eyes stung and my limbs were heavy. I couldn't take another session of emotional recrimination. If he wanted to make that my fault, then he could. I was hard to live with, I would admit to that. I knew how he felt: sometimes it was hard enough living with myself. What I didn't realise until it was too late was what a control freak he was. I felt hemmed in.

“Count yourself lucky,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I'm giving you one last chance. I'm going to forgive you for running out on me. For the things you said.”

I sighed. “You see me as you want me to be, not what I am, Marc.” My body temperature spiked again. I went and stood at the open window from where I had a clear view of the night market. Intermittent whiffs of rich chocolate and orange bakery came my way.

“We can all become whatever we want to be,” he replied. “Why can't you just go with it?”

I wondered how well we really knew each other, and couldn't help thinking how it had been only an hour ago with Nathan. The easy company and understanding between us. Even the shorthand in our conversation. Trying to behave with Marc as I had with Nathan was impossible.

“I'm going to come to Faro, we can talk face to face.”

“No, don't! Don't come—­please.”

“But why?”

I didn't reply.

“We have such a good life together,” he said.

“No, we don't, Marc. Not really.”

“What? Great jobs, interesting places, the money to enjoy ourselves and travel . . . I won't believe you if you say you haven't enjoyed it.”

“I don't think we believe in the same things anymore.”
Silence. I squeezed my eyes tightly closed. “I've met someone else.”

“What?”

“I've fallen in love with someone else.”

“What the hell are you doing in Portugal on your own then?” It was a fair point. I could tell he didn't believe me.

“I wanted to be sure,” I said.

Warm air was closing in.

“And are you sure?”

I was lying to Marc, but instinctively, awkwardly, a picture formed in my mind of Nathan grinning at me across the room that morning, his shirt inside out. I did my best to dispose of it but didn't actually succeed.

“Yes. Very sure,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

He ended the call. I remained standing by the window. From the far side of the Jardim Manuel Bivar, a folk dance reached crescendo in a frenzy of music, stamping feet, and applause.

 

ii

N
ext morning the garden lay cool and green, the cake stalls shuttered. I followed the path across it and heard the scream of aircraft coming in to land on the far side of the lagoon.

At the marina I paused to watch a man in a yellow T-­shirt jump into a small boat, start up the outboard motor, and putter off, standing up to hold the tiller. He slipped confidently under the rail bridge without ducking and out of the harbour towards the marshes.

I felt only relief that I was finally free from Marc.

An explosion of engine noise made me jump. It was right next to me so I had no time to do anything but react instinctively. I stepped away. But something jerked at my shoulder, a strong pull, and I felt a sharp punch to my arm. It was from someone riding pillion on a motorcycle and this passenger was pulling on the strap of my bag. His hands knocked into mine. I twisted around, away from my attacker. I clenched my fist around the chunky leather strap. It was broad daylight and I was keeping my bag.

“Hey!” I shouted as loudly as I could.

The traffic in the marina woke up. Other shouts came from the water. The engine roared, and then the motorcycle shot off.

It seemed longer afterwards, but it was all over in seconds.

I
t was just an attempted bag snatch,” I told Nathan when we met up at the Aliança about half an hour later. To his credit, he came running as soon as he got my text. “These things happen everywhere.”

The incident had shaken me more than I wanted to admit but I saw nothing to be gained by making a fuss.

“I've still got my bag. That's all that matters. I probably looked like a prime target, standing there daydreaming at the marina.”

Nathan pulled a disbelieving face. His concern was rather sweet.

“Let's just forget it,” I said.

“But what if it wasn't random? It might have been intended to scare you off. Or, if they had got your bag, to see whether there was anything inside it to show what we're doing.”

“You may be getting a bit ahead of yourself there. It's much more likely to be something and nothing.”

“I don't want you worrying.”

“I'm not worried!”

Both of us had misgivings, it seemed.

Nathan drained his coffee. “I never wanted to put you in danger, Jo. You've been so brilliant, helping me and all. But if this is going to be more dangerous than I thought, then I don't want you involved.”

“But I am involved now.”

“You can stop, though.”

“I don't want to stop.” I pressed a finger into the crumbs on my plate and put it in my mouth. “You asked for my help and I'm giving it. Talking of which, I still haven't heard anything back from Ian Rylands.”

“You going to try again on the number your mate gave you?”

“I have done.”

“Remind me how you left things with him—­Rylands?”

“He said to me: ‘I'll let you have a copy of Esta Hartford's book. Then we can talk again.' He left the book here for me, under the counter, with João. I got, I read it, and now I'm waiting to talk again.”

That's what Rylands had said. There was no ambiguity about it.

“Bit odd,” agreed Nathan.

“But it was before you almost met him at the Chapel of Bones,” I reminded him. “For all I know he had seen us together.”

“What difference does that make?”

“I don't know. It just might, that's all. Think hard—­do you think you might have seen him around town here, after that evening when you thought you saw him in the church?”

Nathan gave it a few minutes, then shook his head. “The trouble is, he wasn't exactly memorable, physically. He faded into the background.”

He was absolutely right there. I had to admit I could remember few details of his face; with concentration, it almost swam into focus but then receded into an impression only of quietness, of resolve and intelligence. “A man in his seventies with white hair,” I said. “A fair height and a hint of military bearing. Sun damage on his face and some kind of black pigment, a mole, maybe worse, on the back of his hand.”

I didn't mention the bulging pockets filled with who knew what. The civil ser­vice career he had admitted to but clearly had downplayed when I'd asked. I had so many more questions now. He was retired, but I hadn't asked what from. My head had been fuddled with wine when he told me about Esta Hartford and her book. Was there something in his phrasing that I should have taken as a subtle warning?

“He said that behind the sea, the heat, and the lovely Moorish buildings, Faro has a seedy underbelly. A murky ocean of political and economic interests. Not his exact words, but something like that.”

Nathan looked up, but not at me. An argument had broken out by the bar, two men shouting and waving their arms and pointing aggressively. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but he could.

“Just politics,” he said. “A difference of opinion about central government.”

“Quite heartening, really.”

The shouting match was joined by a short middle-­aged man in a russet jacket. He began to speak in a measured tone at a lower than normal volume so that they had to stop yelling to hear. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't work out why.

It was only as we left the café that I realised that his was the face on the poster plastered inside the café and at strategic locations all across town.

N
athan didn't arrive at class on the Tuesday morning, which concerned me. I'd sent him a text, to which the reply had been decidedly ambiguous. I suspected he was taking more risks, and had decided to keep me out of it, whether I liked it or not. My reaction to that was complicated. I wanted to help him, and I enjoyed spending time with him. After Marc's call, I realised how close Nathan and I had become, without even trying.

The language course ground on, one day leaving me feeling as if I would never get to grips with these new and complex rules and patterns of words, the next that it was beginning to catch fire. Like the familiar paths across the town, I was finding a way through.

After three days' absence, Nathan was waiting for me at the corner of the Jardim as I arrived back at the studio in the afternoon.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Not important. But I have got some news.”

“Come up.”

He paced around as I boiled water in a saucepan to make some tea.

“This morning, right, my phone rings. I answer it, and this bloke says, ‘Terry Jackson has heard you're looking for him. Well, now you've found him. He wants to meet you.' ”

“Who did he say he was, the man on the phone?”

“He didn't say.”

“You're not going on your own,” I told him.

“I have to.”

“And I'm telling you I am coming, too. Where and when does he want to meet you?”

“On the ferry to Barreta Island. Tomorrow morning at ten.”

“I don't like the sound of this. Why the ferry—­why the island? It's a bit odd, isn't it?”

Nathan shrugged. “At least there will be other ­people around.”

“All right. You go and meet Terry Jackson, but I'm coming, too. Not with you. Just taking the trip and keeping an eye on what's going on. OK?”

He nodded, then exhaled deeply.

I
arrived at the ferry jetty before Nathan. In line to buy my ticket to Barreta Island, I looked around as guilelessly as I could, playing the tourist. There was a brief misunderstanding at the kiosk window when I didn't realise that Barreta was also known as the Ilha Deserta. The Deserted Island, its tourist name.

There didn't seem to be any obvious candidates as far as Terry Jackson was concerned. To be fair, Nathan hadn't been able to furnish much of a description from memory. As a child he'd been more interested in the comics or sweets Terry had once lobbed his way than in details of his appearance. He hadn't been noticeably tall, or fat, or possessed of any odd features that might stick in a boy's mind, apart from an impression that may or may not have been accurate, of reddish hair. (“Not bright red or ginger, just a bit red. But I might be wrong.”)

There were a few men waiting, but they were all with wives or partners or children. Nathan sauntered up, avoiding any contact with me, and stood in the queue. Anyone who saw him that day would have assumed he was perfectly relaxed, a good-­looking young man sure of himself and his advantages. The woman in the kiosk handed him his ticket with a smile several inches wider than the one she was giving everyone else.

He was starting to get agitated, though. The hands were drumming on the wall, though his posture was elaborately calm. I kept him in the corner of my eye, feeling nervous enough myself.

A small child having a tantrum provided a brief distraction. When I next looked surreptitiously at Nathan, a man had appeared in my line of sight. This man had his back to me, but the height and bearing made my heart lurch.

I hadn't seen that coming. And yet somehow, I felt I should have known. I just wasn't thinking quickly enough. Ian Rylands wasn't close enough to Nathan for them to speak, but I could see Rylands was watching him. Hanging back, pretending to look for something in the depths of my bag, wondering whether Rylands had noticed me or whether all his attention was focused on Nathan, I fiddled around with my phone, reading old texts. Then I held it up to take a discreet photo.

Nathan walked confidently down to the boat and Rylands followed. I hung back until both of them were on board. Most of the trippers went through to the open deck at the front but Nathan went for the interior seats. I could see his reasoning. If anyone wanted to talk, they could find relative privacy where he had chosen. I waited until I saw Rylands sit down opposite him, and only then did I go down to the embarkation pontoon and onto the boat. I waited on deck until the ferry had moved off from the quay, then slipped into the seat next to Nathan.

“Morning, Ian—­nice to see you again,” I said brightly.

He smiled. “Very good to see you again, Joanna. I was wondering when you would join us.”

T
he old city walls receded across the water and we began to plough through the green marshlands. The sea was grey, and the clam diggers were few and far between.

“There is always a price to be paid when man plays with nature,” said Rylands.

Neither of us replied. Nathan started tapping against the steel of the open window. I waited to see where this was leading.

“In order to secure the access to the ports of Faro and Olhão, the inlet known as Barra Nova had to be artificially fixed,” said Rylands. “But the stability of the barrier islands has now been undermined. The sands don't stop shifting—­the sands of Culatra Island, of the entire coast. The waters of the lagoon are tamed, but no one can control the ocean on the other side. Same cause, different effect.”

The message seemed to be that he wasn't going to discuss anything important where we could be overheard.

He carried on speaking in an avuncular manner, as if the three of us were on a family outing. Nathan sat impassively, lacking his characteristic engagement with a stranger. He didn't even smile.

“Fixing the barrage, making the permanent reliable entrance to Faro docks from the salt marsh waterways has destabilised the sand spit islands further out in the unforgiving Atlantic. The sea drift is strong, constantly bullying the islands into new positions, redrawing the coastal maps.”

“I didn't come out for a geography lesson,” said Nathan. His South London accent was rougher than usual.

Rylands was unperturbed. “Plenty of time when we get there,” he said in the same reasonable tone. I was glad of the information Will Venning had passed on; this was exactly how an ex–Foreign Office man would conduct himself while holding his cards close to his chest. What killed me was that Nathan and I had made no plan for this, and had no chance to formulate a strategy; Rylands was the one who had us pinned down.

So we sat in awkward silence as the ferry made progress south towards the island. Nathan and I didn't look at each other, but his leg was jammed against mine as we sat wedged together on the bench seat. I pressed back.

The island jetty, when it eventually came in sight, was a primitive structure, joined to a long wooden walkway up to the one architectural feature: a futuristic restaurant with solar panels to the rear. Most of our fellow passengers headed towards a line of rattan sunshades on the beach.

“We'll go the other way,” said Rylands. Another wooden path led through dunes and tough maritime shrubs.

“Why the Ilha Deserta?” asked Nathan. “To make sure I can't do a runner?”

Rylands raised his hands. “I want to find out the truth as much as you do.”

Nathan made a noncommittal sound and we exchanged a glance, reassuring each other. Without a word we followed our mysterious guide past a row of small wooden beach huts, five painted blue and one white. Gulls cawed noisily overhead.

We didn't go far, only to a point on the white sand where we were alone, and it really did seem as if we had made landfall on a deserted island, flat and wide and at one with the horizon. Grey-­blue Atlantic rollers rose and unfurled on shell-­strewn sand. White seabirds gathered at the foamy edge of the water.

“Right, let's have it then,” said Nathan. “You're obviously not Terry Jackson. It was you who called me, wasn't it? And are you also the Peter Maitland who told me to meet him the other week in the church?”

“Ah, that. A name I use sometimes. I have to be careful.”

I shook my head, hoping to convey my cynicism. It was ridiculously cloak and dagger. Perhaps the old man was a bit touched in the head, and we were wasting our time on a wild-­goose chase.

Nathan was impatient. “I'm not playing games, whoever you are. What do you know about Terry Jackson, and why did you use his name to get me here?”