An Inch of Time (27 page)

‘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.

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.