by Peter Helton
Not so in these days of tarmac roads, of course. The Toyota was back. Now and then I could see a flicker of blue below as my pursuer negotiated the switchback mountain, much faster than I could manage with Morva’s clapped-out Fiesta.
The birder looked at me with the disinterest of the specialist – I was entirely the wrong species. I still gave him my finest smile. ‘Amazing bins you’ve got there. Would you mind if I had a look through them?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve lost him now, anyway. I thought I saw an Egyptian vulture as I drove up and pulled in immediately, though I may have been mistaken. He moved off north, I thought. I only caught a glimpse while I was driving.’
‘Ta.’ I took the heavy binoculars from him – more Zeiss hardware – and pointed them down the mountain, trying to bring my blue quarry closer. What was I thinking? It was I who was the quarry.
‘You won’t see anything down there; north of the lake is where you should be looking. Over there,’ he said, tapping me on the arm, exasperated.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s more the performance of your binoculars I’d like to check out.’
‘Yes, you said you had no interest in ornithology.’
‘That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t come here for the birds. These bins are brilliant; mine are rubbish.’ I meant it. The magnification was such that when I found the Toyota zooming up the hill I had to take my eyes away from the glasses to reassure myself that its arrival wasn’t imminent.
‘What kind of glasses have you got?’ the twitcher asked, more friendly now that I had acknowledged his superiority in the bins department.
Below me, the Toyota had reached the unsignposted turn-off, slowed and come to a stop. I had a good view of it now below a rocky outcrop devoid of trees. The driver’s door opened and my silver-haired pursuer got out.
She was dressed entirely in black: black trainers, jeans, vest top and gloves. She was about mid-thirties, her hair was bleached – her darker roots were showing – and a nose-ring or stud glittered by her left nostril. It was the gloves that worried me. ‘Mm? Erm, I have no idea what make they are, to be honest. I bought them at a jumble sale.’
The woman stood with her hands on her hips, staring down the turn-off. Then she suddenly swung round. Had the sun reflected off the binoculars? She seemed to look straight at me for a couple of seconds, then swung herself back into the driver’s seat.
‘Well, small wonder,’ the twitcher said. ‘You always get what you pay for.’
I handed back the binoculars. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for. Must dash.’
The Fiesta’s wheels spun as I drove off past the twitcher, whose puzzled look clearly spelled ‘never talk to strangers’ across his face. I laboured at the wheel and tormented the little engine, but there really was no point: the Toyota had probably four times the horsepower. At every bend I could see it below me, getting closer. I should just stop, I told myself, and have it out with the woman. But perhaps not on an empty road on the mountainside. It wasn’t the fact I was being followed that worried me; I myself had followed people many times and some of them were still alive. It was the gloves. Only seriously weird people drive with gloves on. Avoid them at all costs.
The Toyota was getting very close – I could catch glimpses of it in my mirrors now. A few houses began to appear, then at last I heaved the car into the village proper. Which way, which way? These streets were narrow, some not made for cars at all. What if I got stuck somewhere? The Toyota was now just a street corner behind. A small lorry, loaded to the gills with propane gas bottles, was in the process of pulling out of a yard and into the road. It would take up all the available space. I parped my horn as I squeezed past, then looked back. The lorry lumbered into the middle of the narrow street. An angry Toyota car horn blared behind me. I chose the quickest way out, back towards the north. I calculated that I had bought myself no more than three minutes’ head start before the Toyota would again be eating up the distance between us. Where horsepower was lacking, bravado would have to do.
In a Ford Fiesta no one can hear you scream. I flung the car down the mountain, past some astonished sightseers who had pulled up at a beauty spot. I had no time for the views; the bends arrived at alarming speeds and the car cornered like a crateful of fish. Not once did I dare look in my mirrors. For all I knew, the Toyota could be nudging the rear bumper. I flung the thing about on the potholed road that seemed to go on for ever, then at last I made it to the coast and slipped the car among a healthy amount of traffic and felt a whole lot better for it. There was no sign of my pursuer. With any luck, I had given her the slip.
For a while I just bumbled along the coast road, with the sea glittering to my right and the land rising on my left. I knew I was going in the wrong direction, but just now I didn’t really care. When I got to a place called Benitses, I stopped, slid the car between a couple of tourist jeeps and sat down at a cafe table within commando-roll distance of the driver’s door. An Australian waitress served me iced coffee; a boy tried to sell me a pair of sunglasses, despite the fact that I had a pair on my nose; half-naked British tourists studied the menu boards promising all-day English breakfasts. All the clichés appeared to be intact and all seemed well with the world. I leant back in my plastic chair, stretched out my legs and tried to relax. The narrow strip of beach was dotted with bodies sizzling in the unusual spring heat, and the predominant smell in the air, even with the road between us, was of factor eight. Benitses was obviously built to cater for a large number of summer visitors, yet right now its cafes and restaurants looked impatiently unfrequented. The place had an eager, expectant air I wanted to lose myself in. I felt like skiving. For a while I tried to imagine myself at the beginning of a carefree few weeks of holiday, with nothing much to do apart from rattling ice cubes in my drinks and reading bilingual menus by the dazzling sea.
Until the Toyota crawled into view. I sat up so quickly I swallowed an ice cube. Even though Gloves looked straight at me through the tinted windows, I found it impossible to read her face. A local bus arrived behind her, its driver half obscured by religious medals, beads, effigies of saints and bunting. With no room to overtake, he laboured his horn, bullying Gloves into driving on. I dropped some euros on the table and lunged for the Fiesta. As quickly as traffic allowed, I drove in the opposite direction, ignoring the first opportunity to turn off the main road. I chose the second turn-off, a narrow tarmac road, and took to the hills. After half an hour’s aimless drive, I was sure I had lost her. But for how long? If Gloves had picked me up so easily today despite my having changed cars, then she was either very lucky or she knew exactly where to find me.
EIGHT
‘Not just a pretty face, I see.’ It was Helen who had sneaked up behind me under the orange trees in the neglected little grove near the church. I didn’t look around, just kept sketching. I had it bad.
The sight of painters at work in the landscape, among the ridiculously picturesque decay of Ano Makriá, was timeless. On my return to the village I had found the house deserted by all but the chickens and the painters out at work among the ruins. They presented a sight that could have belonged to any time in the last three centuries: straw-hatted figures in paint-spattered clothes working at wooden easels under sunshades in the early evening light. The lure had been too strong; I’d simply had to join them. Morva generously kitted me out with all I needed from her considerable store and I soon found myself sitting on the remains of a broken barrel, sketching the overgrown tumble of stone where the wall surrounding the grove had fallen down. The sun had long disappeared behind the rim of the valley, but I was still drawing.
‘I thought you said your work was abstract?’ Helen went on. ‘I think your talents are wasted on abstract work. That’s such a sensitive drawing – you’ll simply have to paint it.’ She was standing very close behind me now, close enough for me to smell her flowery perfume.
I looked up. Her raised eyebrows were demanding an answer. �
�That’s what I’m afraid of. It’s been tugging at me from the moment I got here. This stuff –’ I waved my pencil at the offending landscape – ‘just cries out to be painted.’
‘Good. We’ll seduce you away from the dark side yet, back into the world of light and form, Mr Honeysett.’ She strode off in her long, loose flower-print dress. I watched her disappear into the nineteenth century or thereabouts, her progress a painting every few yards. Ridiculous. Surely one sketchbook of landscape drawings couldn’t turn you into a figurative painter?
The sky would remain light for a long while yet, but when I heard the signal for supper – a metal rod struck against a rusty bit of iron on a rope – I packed up my sketch pad and pencils. After struggling so long with my work back in England, I had now become obsessed all over again with drawing and painting, even the very smell of art materials. But I never subscribed to starving for my art. Not even Van Gogh starved for his art; when he went hungry, it was only because he had spent his brother’s allowance in the whorehouse.
By the time I turned into the courtyard the table was already laid, and Helen, Sophie and Morva were toasting my arrival with glasses of red. I fancied a beer myself so went inside to see if there was a cool bottle in the half-barrel of well water in the kitchen where essentials like beer and butter were kept cold. A strong smell of burning food greeted me as I came near the kitchen. I hastened my steps to catch a glimpse of Margarita at the stove, incinerating what looked like quarters of chicken in a gigantic black-iron pan. She jumped with surprise as I entered and whisked the pan off the heat. It was smoking and the chicken looked well cremated. Margarita let loose a flood of excited Greek, of which I understood not a single word, while she tumbled the smoking chicken pieces into a serving dish. She looked at me with gestures of despair not seen in ham acting since the arrival of the talkies. There was something strange about this girl and I thought it best to leave her to whatever she was up to. I grabbed a beer from the half-barrel under the table and turned to exit. Just then, from the corner of my eye, I caught a quick movement, but when I looked back all I saw was Margarita trying to stare a hole in the wall. Salt crystals crunched underfoot as I left the kitchen.
‘I’d stick to the salad tonight,’ I announced to the table as I prised the top off my bottle of Amstel. ‘I’m getting a strange feeling about your Margarita,’ I said quietly to Morva. ‘Either she’s not all there or she’s just deliberately burnt supper.’
Almost immediately, Margarita rushed to the table, hair flying, dumped the cremated chicken and a dish of potatoes on the table, then ran on out of the courtyard towards her moped, ululating in Greek all the while.
I looked at Morva who shrugged deeply. ‘Don’t all look at me; even I didn’t understand half of that. Something about the evil eye and pixies. Or it could be sprites – not sure.’
Sophie prodded the smoking chicken with a knife. ‘Mm, interesting. As a variation of Blackened Chicken, it’s pretty hard-core.’
‘Sorry about that, I don’t know what’s got into her. She’s a good cook, I was told; she must have taken her eyes off it for a second. Or . . . or quite a few seconds, I guess.’
I sat down next to Helen. Sophie, as before, had settled a little apart, her sandal-clad feet on the chair beside her, as if to make sure it remained empty.
‘Where’s Rob, I wonder?’ Morva asked. ‘Poor Rob; chicken is his favourite.’
Helen brushed at the back of my tee-shirt. ‘What’s that on your back – salt? There’s some in your hair as well.’
‘There was loads on the kitchen floor just now.’
‘Have you been rolling in it?’ Helen said. ‘Rob started a new painting today up behind the old olive press. Maybe he didn’t hear the signal for supper.’
‘Perhaps someone should go and find him,’ Sophie said, not volunteering.
The whine of Margarita’s moped drifted away, leaving nothing but the timeless sounds of scratching chickens.
‘I’ll have a look for him,’ I offered. ‘You start without me.’
I hadn’t gone far beyond the courtyard walls when Morva came up beside me, carrying a hunk of bread. She tore it in half for me to share and we munched as we walked up the gentle slope. ‘Do you know where the old olive press is?’
‘Erm, good point. It’s that way, isn’t it?’ I pointed to a group of buildings above us to our right.
She pushed my arm forty-five degrees to the left. ‘Are you glad I came yet? Actually, I came to apologize for Margarita. Chucking salt behind someone is supposed to ward off the influence of the evil eye. She must have got it into her head that you’re an evil presence or something.’
‘Told you she gave me a funny look when you told her I was a private eye. Are you sure that’s what you told her?’
‘Pretty sure. My Greek’s not brilliant but it’s not that bad, either.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought her generation still believed in that kind of stuff, would you? Ghosts and the evil eye?’
‘Think again. Out here in the sticks they’re surrounded by it from the day they’re born. The old women are full of the lore and the mutterings are everywhere. It’s catching, too; you’ll find yourself not walking under ladders before you know it. That’s the old olive press over there. No sign of Rob.’ She called for him. ‘Rob, where are you?’
No answer. The building stood a short way apart from the rest, its wide double doors broken. I had a look inside. Nothing but a large circular stone in the centre of the ground floor remained; everything else had rotted away or been removed. A few wooden steps to the left led halfway up the wall into nowhere. I stepped on something crunchy and lifted my foot – a packet of Marlboro, looking new apart from where I squashed it. I straightened out the box and opened it. Only a few cigarettes were missing. The fragrance was still seductive; it wasn’t long since I had given up coughing through a pack of Camels a day.
Morva joined me in the shadowy interior of the mill. ‘I found Rob’s easel and stuff, but he’s not here. His painting isn’t, either; he’s probably taken it back to the house to show me. I don’t know why we’re running after him. He is quite old and I feel a bit protective of him, I expect. He’ll be heartbroken about the burnt chicken, I can tell you that.’
‘Found these.’ I waved the open pack.
‘No thanks, filthy habit. Kids coming here to smoke, I expect. That would explain our night-time visitors.’
‘Bit of a way to come for a smoke. By the time you’re home again you’d want another one, surely.’
‘Oh, let’s go; Rob’s probably long back at the house. We’ll go this way; show you a different part of the village. Hey, is that him between those houses? Rob?’
Someone was moving quickly in the shadowy gap between two ruins. I couldn’t make out who it was, but the figure moved fast and disappeared into or behind one of the houses – it was impossible to tell which.
‘I don’t think that was Rob. Rob doesn’t move like that; he’s only got one gear.’
I agreed. ‘It looked as if whoever it was wore camouflage gear.’
Morva put on a spurt towards the place where the figure had disappeared from view, then suddenly stopped. She put a hand on my arm to hold me back. ‘Forget it, Chris; let’s just go back to the house.’
‘You sure? I mean, we could . . .’
‘No, I’m sure. It’s a free country – anyone’s allowed to walk around here, after all. Come on.’ She pulled me away by my shirt. ‘Let’s see if we can salvage some supper.’
When we got back to the house, Rob was there, as predicted. Morva had been right: he was quite upset and not just about burnt chicken. ‘My painting has disappeared.’ Rob sat at the table, slowly prodding a piece of charred chicken remains. His face said he was not having a good day.
‘Disappeared how?’ Morva demanded to know.
‘Disappeared like – poof – gone,’ Sophie said helpfully.
‘I took a break, went for a stroll, so I could come back to it wi
th fresh eyes, see if much more needed doing. When I got back, it was gone. Simply not there. First I thought perhaps a mysterious gust of wind had blown it off the easel, but there was no sign of it on the ground. I had a good look around, went in ever-increasing circles round the place, but it’s utterly gone. I worked four days on that canvas!’
‘Did you see anyone? Any strangers?’ I asked. ‘Before or after it vanished?’
‘No one, before or after. Or during, for that matter. Though sometimes, of course, it does feel as if there’re people around. Ghosts, I expect, in a place like this. But they tend not to steal paintings.’
‘We did see someone move about,’ Morva said, ‘but we couldn’t make out what they looked like. It’s bound to be a prank of some sort – kids, probably. I mean who in their right mind would want to steal one of your . . . erm, unfinished paintings?’
‘It was so very nearly finished,’ Rob lamented. ‘They could easily have mistaken it for a finished canvas, just sitting there . . .’
As a painter, I thought I could imagine how he must feel. ‘Perhaps Morva is right and it was a prank; they might just have hidden it for a laugh. We’ll go and have a look for it once we’ve had something to eat. Plenty of light left.’
But by the time we had dined on potatoes, bread and salad, dusk had crept into the village and the hunt for the missing artwork was postponed until the morning. Even Derringer shunned the blackened chicken mess. With a builder’s shovel, I dug a shallow grave some fifty yards away from the house and, in the gloom of the approaching night, gave it an undignified burial.