Medusa Read Free Page B

indicate who the men were. ‘Looks like they been digging. Two of them, I reck’n.’ He thought perhaps the rains had flushed them out of one of the caves. Some of the old cave dwellings were still used and in summer there were women as well as men in them, kids too, often as not the whole family wandering about stark naked. ‘It’s like snakes out in the bush,’ he muttered, holding up a filthy remnant of patched jeans. ‘Always discarding their old skin. There’s usually bits and pieces of worn-out rag below the cave entrances.’
    In the circumstances there didn’t seem much point in notifying the authorities. Lennie agreed. ‘What the hell can they do? Anyway, look at it from their point of view, why should they bother? It’s another foreign villa broken into, that’s all. Who cares?’ And then, as I was leaving, he suddenly said, ‘That girl you’re so keen on, mate –’ and he grinned at me slyly. ‘The archy-logical piece wot’s digging over by the old hospital …’ He paused there, his pale eyes narrowed, watching for my reaction.
    He was referring to Petra, of course. The huge, hulking ruins of the old hospital were what had given Illa del Rei the nickname of Bloody Island. ‘Well, go on,’ I said. ‘What about her?’
    â€˜Workmen up the road say they’ve seen her several times. I was asking them about these two bastards.’ He tossed the bundle of rags into the back of my estate car. They couldn’t tell me a damned thing, only that a girl in a Der Chevoh had been going into one of the caves. And this morning, just after Ramón and I got here, she come skidding to a halt wanting to know where she could find you. She was bright-eyed as a cricket, all steamed up about something.’
    â€˜Did she say what?’
    He shook his head, the leathery skin of his face stretched in a grin. ‘You want to watch it, mate. You go wandering around in them caves alone with a sheila like that and you’ll get yourself thrown out of the house – straight into the drink, I wouldn’t wonder.’
    â€˜Soo wouldn’t even notice.’ I couldn’t help it, my voice suddenly giving vent to my anger. ‘She’s just bought a villa and now I’ve got to go over there and sort out the details.’
    â€˜Don’t push your luck,’ he said, suddenly serious. He looked then, as he often did, like an elderly tortoise. ‘You go taking that girl on your next delivery run … Yeah, you thought I didn’t hear, but I was right there in the back of the shop when she asked you. You do that and Soo’d notice all right.’
    I caught hold of his shoulder then, shaking him. ‘You let your sense of humour run away with you sometimes. This isn’t the moment to have Soo getting upset.’
    â€˜Okay then, mum’s the word.’ And he gave that high-pitched, cackling laugh of his. Christ! I could have hit the man, he was so damned aggravating at times, and I was on a short fuse anyway. I had been going through a bad patch with Soo ever since she’d found she was pregnant again. She was worried, of course, and knowing how I felt about having a kid around the place, a boy I could teach to sail …
    I was thinking about that as I drove north across the island to Punta Codolar, about Lennie, too, how tiresome he could be. Half Cockney, half Irish, claiming his name was McKay and with a passport to prove it, we knew no more of his background than when he had landed from the Barcelona ferry almost two years ago with nothing but the clothes he stood up in and an elderly squeezebox wrapped in a piece of sacking. I had found him playing for his supper at one of the quayside restaurants, a small terrier of a man with something appealing about him, and when I had said I needed an extra hand scrubbing the bottoms of the boats we were fitting out, he had simply said,