An Inch of Time

by Peter Helton

  ‘Go ahead,’ I offered. ‘You’ve been taking your rock for a walk.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She dropped it carelessly into the grass. ‘I just felt a bit, I don’t know. Sounds stupid, but I was painting over there by a ruined house and I became convinced I wasn’t alone. I walked all round it and saw nobody, but the feeling never went away. I kept thinking I could hear someone creeping around just on the other side.’

  ‘Could be a dog, a fat tortoise, even . . .’ I offered half-heartedly.

  ‘I know, I know. I told myself that, but every time I went back to painting I’d hear a rustling or a twig snapping. It just suddenly felt really spooky and I had to get out of there. Left my easel and stuff up there and walked away. I know it’s silly, but with all the weird things happening just recently . . .’

  ‘You want us to go back with you? Get your stuff?’

  Helen looked in the direction she had come from and hesitated. ‘Erm, no, I’ll just stay here with you a bit if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Tell you what, you stay here with Annis and I’ll have a look around. Which house is it?’

  ‘It’s right back there at the edge – the one with the bougainvillea. You’ll see my easel. Don’t look at the painting – it’s rubbish. But I bet there’s nothing up there, I’m sure it’s just me.’

  Just her.

  I found the place by following the direction from which Helen had appeared. You couldn’t miss it. The motif she had chosen for her painting was a large farmhouse, one of the most dilapidated, so much so that I suspected it had been a ruin long before the village was abandoned. The roof had completely disappeared and, on closer inspection, the house consisted of only three walls enclosing some overgrown rubble where the interior floors had collapsed long ago. An old bougainvillea still adorned one corner; the rest was romantically ruinous, which presumably was what had caught Helen’s painterly eye. I picked my way through the weeds around the melancholic structure and ended up by the easel again. The painting resting on it was in its early stages, yet her intentions were clear to see. I noted with a certain satisfaction that Helen had taken on board some of what I had told her; the contrasts were less strident, allowing the colour to chime and the composition to work more convincingly.

  Then I felt it. It was silent. Deadly quiet. Here the cicadas had stopped and there was no wind. The day had rolled to a standstill. Each object my eyes focused on was sharp-edged and washed in hard, bone-bleaching midday sunlight. I moved my foot and the scraping noise on the dry ground sounded amplified and close. My breath hung in the unmoving heat like a question: What are you doing here? Now I could hear what Helen had heard: a crick over there, a rustle closer by, a stony chink in the middle distance. Something nibbled insistently at my rational mind, nudging me, urging me to go away.

  Helen’s grey plastic art box stood open by the foot of the easel, its stepped tiers pulled apart, inviting inspection. All the art materials inside were French, down to the pencils, erasers and drawing pins, which probably meant she had bought the lot at a French art shop. Perhaps she had been on a painting holiday there in the past. Or was France where Helen had hidden her loot from years of defrauding the finance company? Naturally, being hopeless at finance, I instantly imagined it hidden under the floorboards of an isolated cottage deep in the French countryside.

  I straightened up and looked about me. On second thoughts, what better place to hide your ill-gotten treasure than right here in this crumbling corner of Corfu? I left everything in place and turned to go. Helen’s past was none of my business. She had, as they say, paid her debt to society, and, according to Tim, in full. Did that morally entitle her to keep the money? And if she returned it now, would they give her back the years she spent in prison for it? I felt tempted to ask her whether she thought it had all been worth it.

  As I stepped away from the easel and into the shadows under a large olive tree, I felt it before I heard it – like a huge mouth exhaling in an enormous sigh right behind me. Then came the loud crash and thump of falling masonry. Instinctively, I ran without even looking behind. After the crash, a dust cloud overtook me and I stopped and turned.

  The cloud of dust still floated like a ghost where moments before I had mused over Helen’s French painting gear. The painting had disappeared. The wall of the ruined house had collapsed outward, now just a line of rubble like a stony arm reaching out towards the point where I had stood a moment ago. The little easel was a bundle of splinters; the painting had been flung several feet into the weeds. Miraculously, the art box stood dusty but otherwise untouched. Annis and Helen came rushing through the trees. ‘Oh my god, are you OK, Chris?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I was already on my way back when it fell. But only just.’

  ‘You could have been killed,’ Annis said.

  Helen looked pale. ‘And I could have been killed. If I had stayed here, painting.’

  ‘Quite. Just before it happened, when I was standing looking at your painting, I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Just like you did – almost scared to be here.’

  ‘We both had a premonition,’ Helen concluded.

  ‘Not really; neither of us thought “Hey, that wall is getting ready to fall down”.’

  ‘Well, not all premonitions are that precise. It’s obvious, Chris, that you and I have a sixth sense for these things.’

  Annis rolled her eyes and walked off to inspect what was left of the house, keeping a respectful distance from the tottering masonry.

  ‘My painting – where’s that got to?’

  ‘It’s over here.’ I pulled it out of the weeds and blew the dust off it.

  ‘Might as well chuck it away.’

  ‘No, it looks OK. I mean, it doesn’t look to be damaged.’ I handed it to her.

  She dropped it back on the ground. ‘Well, I’m hardly going to finish it now, am I?’ She gestured at the ruin. ‘The bloody thing has half disappeared and taken the bougainvillea with it.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you just hate it when your models fidget?’

  Annis sank deeper into her multicoloured chair outside the psistaría and sipped beer straight from the bottle. ‘I’m glad we came out here tonight.’

  It was early evening in Neo Makriá and the grill had only just opened its doors to customers. Like everywhere around the Mediterranean, people in Greece ate late, but while the charcoal grill heated we had been furnished with bread, a dish of shiny black olives and bottles of Amstel beer.

  ‘You’ve had enough of the ghost village?’ I asked.

  ‘For today, yes. And I’m probably not the only one. I think Helen has had just about all she can stomach. She seemed quite spooked even before the wall nearly fell on her.’

  ‘Fell on her? It nearly flattened me! Helen was nowhere near it.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, but if she hadn’t walked away when she did . . . and now she can’t even finish her painting. Rob had one painting disappear. That never turned up again, did it? Not exactly brilliant for a painting school. It’s not like they’ll go home at the end of their holiday and recommend the place to friends and family.’

  ‘I don’t think any of them want to talk to friends and family much. Where did Morva find that lot? I suppose strange places attract strange people.’

  ‘That includes us, you know.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ I had known that for a long time.

  ‘If Helen really has all that money squirrelled away somewhere, do you think they’re still trying to find out what she’s done with it? And try to get it off her?’

  ‘If it’s enough money, I’m sure they’ll have a go.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Who would come after her – the police?’

  ‘It’s possible. But more likely someone like me, a private eye, sent by the insurers or the company she defrauded. She must have wondered when I first got here if I was who I said I was.’

  ‘Actually, I think she quite fancies you.’

&nbs
p; ‘Helen? I doubt it.’ I thought back to the drunken night under the olive tree. ‘But I think she would like to make sure of me.’

  ‘Oh yes, that she would. Here comes the food.’

  Vegetables were predictably not a forte of the local grill. Meat and the ability to pay for it still being a sign of status in the islands, the psistaría was where you went to see it cooked quickly over fierce heat and served with a minimum of interference from the plant kingdom, the presence of a few tomatoes and sprigs of parsley being largely symbolic. What it lacked in nutritional balance, it made up in salty savouriness.

  ‘If Tim really does make it out here, he’ll try to move in next door,’ I predicted when at last I pushed back my empty plate, feeling a stone heavier.

  ‘Yeah, I can see that happen. Getting him to eat anything that isn’t brown is hard work. More beer?’

  ‘No, not just yet. Tell you what, let’s go for a stroll and come back for another beer afterwards,’ I suggested.

  We walked west on the tarmac road out of the village, soon leaving the houses, the scent of charcoal grills and the stare of curious eyes behind. Turning down a rutted dirt path at random, we were soon surrounded by well-tended olive groves. Or were they? Here and there, ancient limbs of these massive trees had been expertly propped up to prevent them from breaking under their own weight. Yet I had noticed before that maintenance of the trees and the ground between them appeared to die away only a few yards from the roadside, like window dressing for whoever used the tarmac roads.

  These were age-old groves that had been in cultivation for centuries, where each gnarled tree had grown into its own distinct shape. As the wind caught their crowns, they appeared to me like a group of bent old men with wild hair, and they definitely had a neglected look.

  Our rutted path joined a broader though no less churned-up dirt road. The sun set behind us. Here the trees looked well pruned again and without tell-tale suckers at their bases. The dusky spaces between them created an atmosphere perfect for private dreams. We walked on quietly in the deepening shadows for a few minutes until a high chain-link fence came into view. The path led straight up to a broad gate which stood ajar.

  The place looked familiar. ‘I know where we are now. It’s the entrance to the Thalassa Organic Oil Co-op.’ Yes, it was the exact place where I had encountered the unfriendly convoy of luxury cars. Only this time the gate was unlocked. Something else was different, too. ‘There’s only one problem with this: it has magically changed its name to the Achillion Organic Olive Oil Co-op.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Definitely – same place, same track, same road. Different name. It was Thalassa before; it means “sea” or “ocean”.’

  ‘Ocean Olive Oil? We bought a bottle of that once, from your man’s supermarket no less. I remember you moaning about the price.’

  ‘With an ocean wave curling round an olive on the label? Yeah, I remember that.’

  ‘There you go; perhaps it changed hands.’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ I pushed the gate, just wide enough to squeeze through. ‘Getting the name of your estate known and getting it on to supermarket shelves is every grower’s dream. Changing the name would be idiotic.’

  ‘Everything else constantly gets renamed,’ Annis objected.

  ‘I know, but olive oil isn’t like bathroom cleaner or chocolate bars. It’s more like whisky or champagne. Everyone I have met so far has something to do with this olive oil co-op. This –’ I pushed the gate open another squeaking inch or two – ‘is why Kyla Biggs came here, and I’m convinced she came through this gate. I can practically smell her perfume. Let’s have a look around inside.’ We squeezed through the gate and started down the track which gently curved away to the left.

  Annis wasn’t convinced of the wisdom of this. ‘And if we meet some of the inmates, you are planning to say what, exactly?’

  ‘I’ll be saying “Run like hell” or something similar. Unless we meet the guy with the shotgun. Then it’s “Run like hell but try to zigzag a bit”.’

  ‘Remind me: was it a double-barrelled shotgun?’

  We hadn’t walked ten yards before we heard a car engine start up and headlights illuminate the trees a hundred yards or so further on. I pulled Annis off the track and we dived for cover in a patch of wild flowers. I was hoping it would be dark enough down here to be quite invisible from the car that came up towards the gate. It was the BMW, still with its top down. Driving it was the same guy as before and in the passenger seat slouched the spiky-haired man with the shotgun. The car stopped level with us; we dug our noses deeper into the flowers. The passenger got out, carrying his shotgun in the crook of his arm, and opened the gate for the driver, who left without him. After he’d closed and locked the gate, Spiky stood a moment in the gathering darkness, then a match flared and briefly illuminated his face as he touched it to a cigarette. He walked back the way he had come.

  We waited a while before brushing ourselves down and getting back on to the track. ‘The guy in the car was the one who told me to go away that time just before the crop sprayer arrived.’

  ‘Crop sprayer? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, a helicopter – why?’

  ‘You sure it was spraying these trees?’

  ‘Yes, it went back and forth, I could see the stuff wafting down.’

  ‘Not allowed if it’s meant to be organic. That’s what you pay for – no pesticides, no fungicides, no post-harvest chemicals. Nothing artificial at all.’

  ‘No wonder they didn’t want me here when the helicopter arrived. I wasn’t thinking of the organic bit. If they’re flogging ordinary extra virgin as organic, then that’s serious fraud. The difference in price is huge. We’re not talking a bit of farmgate leg-pulling here.’

  ‘That might explain how struggling olive farmers are driving large Beemers.’

  We had been talking very quietly as we walked carefully in the middle of the track, when a bright light lit up the area ahead and loud, carefree voices sounded close by. We dived for cover once more, this time to the right where the light was dimmest. Even so, we had to keep going quite a way before we felt we were safely out of sight again. In the brief moment before we scarpered, the light had revealed a huddle of low, simple buildings and sheds. The male voices called brashly in Greek to each other.

  ‘I don’t suppose you understand any of that?’ Annis whispered.

  ‘Yes, his hovercraft is full of eels.’

  ‘I thought you learned loads on the way down here.’

  ‘I did. And as soon as they ask the way to the post office we’re in business.’

  After some banging and clanging noises a small engine started up. Moments later a quad bike pulling a trailer came bouncing through the trees. It made straight for us. In the dark, we had managed to take ‘cover’ right next to a dirt path between the trees, just wide enough to let a bloke with a quad bike demonstrate his racing credentials. We scrambled away behind a large tree trunk just in time. Once it had passed we watched the quad and trailer disappear along the path until it stopped some hundred yards away, near what looked like a shed. Closer to hand, at one-minute intervals, a hollow kind of banging sound came from the direction of the buildings.

  ‘I wonder what’s going on there?’

  ‘Sounds like someone’s banging a badly tuned drum,’ Annis suggested.

  ‘Apart from the chef at the grill twiddling the skewers, it could be the first possible evidence of work around here. I think that needs investigating. Follow me.’

  ‘Just what I had in mind for a night out,’ Annis grumbled. ‘Crawling on all fours through a dodgy olive estate.’

  ‘Just to the edge of the light; we should be able to see from there.’

  What we could see from there was indeed something resembling work. Three low buildings were surrounding a gravelled yard in a loose horseshoe. Two appeared to be large modern sheds associated with olive oil production; the one nearest us looked like a prefab office. In
front of it stood a table with chairs and, next to that, a large metal barbecue. The area was only lit by three light bulbs dangling from a cable strung between the buildings and by the light falling through the open door of one of the sheds. Somewhere in the background I could hear the purr of a diesel generator.

  At regular intervals spiky-haired shotgun man appeared in the square doorway of the long concrete building on the far side, each time carrying a blue plastic barrel which he flung into the yard where already a collection of twenty or so lay at haphazard angles. He had put his shotgun to rest against the wall beside the door, suggesting that he liked to keep it to hand. He didn’t much enjoy his work, judging by the short-tempered grunt he produced each time he flung another barrel towards the growing heap.

  ‘Those barrels look familiar,’ Annis observed.

  ‘Findik.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘Turkish hazelnut oil, I shouldn’t wonder. But I’d like to be sure. Wait here.’

  ‘Are you mad, where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to go have a quick look, just to make sure.’

  ‘Just to make sure you get caught? I’m just about ready for that beer you offered.’

  ‘I counted and he takes about forty seconds to fetch each one. Plenty of time for me to get to the nearest barrel. Then I’ll take cover and come back when he’s gone inside for the next. Then we’ll get out of here and have that beer.’ Spiky went inside and I loped across to the heap of barrels, all the while counting the seconds. I got there in twenty. Hey, I might even make it back in one go before he emerged. I went down on all fours to examine the print around the rim of the closest barrel. All the writing was in French and Arabic. I was so confounded by it that I didn’t notice Spiky was back until he flung his next barrel with a loud grunt in my direction. It hit the ones in front of me and bounced straight over my head. I risked a peak at him. He hadn’t moved and showed no sign of wanting to go back in. Instead, he sauntered across to a chair by the barbecue where he flounced down and lit a cigarette. He was wearing a black tee shirt tonight with a lurid red inscription across his chest proclaiming ‘Have a Stake in the Future – Become a Vampire’. Spiky had left his shotgun leaning against the outside of the long shed. If he did spot me, he would have to get there before he could shoot me full of holes, which might be enough time to dive into the darkness and make my escape. I hoped Annis would take to her heels at the same time.