‘Good or bad?’
‘Facts.’
‘You’re not pregnant?’
She was amused. ‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Would you like some sherry?’
‘Yes, please.’
I stood up and produced a bottle and two glasses from a filing cupboard. Poured. Handed her a generous slug of Harvey’s Luncheon Dry.
‘I came home yesterday,’ she said. ‘I read about you being kidnapped again, on the aeroplane coming back. They had newspapers. Then I heard on the news that you were found, and safe. I thought I would come and see you myself, instead of taking my information to the police.’
‘What information?’ I said. ‘And I thought you were due back home last Saturday.’
She sipped her sherry sedately.
‘Yes, I was. I stayed on, though. Because of you. It cost me a fortune.’ She looked at me over her glass. ‘I was sorry to read you had been recaptured after all. I had seen... your fear of it.’
‘Mm,’ I said ruefully.
‘I found out about that boat for you,’ she said.
I almost spilled the sherry.
She smiled. ‘About the man, to be more exact. The man in the dinghy, who was chasing you.’
‘How?’ I said.
‘After you’d gone, I hired a car and drove to all the places on Minorca where they said yachts could be moored. The nearest good harbour to Cala St Galdana was Ciudadela, and I should think that’s where the boat went after they lost you, but it had gone by the time I started looking.’ She drank some sherry. ‘I asked some English people on a yacht there, and they said there had been an English crew on a sixty-footer there the night before, and they’d overheard them talking about wind for a passage to Palma. I asked them to describe the captain, and they said there didn’t seem to be a proper captain, only a tall young man who looked furious.’ She stopped and considered, and explained further. ‘All the yachts at Ciudadela were moored at right angles to the quayside, you see. Stern on. So that they were all close together, side by side, and you walked straight off the back of them on to dry land.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see.’
‘So I just walked along the whole row, asking. There were Spaniards, Germans, French, Swedes... all sorts. The English people had noticed the other English crew just because they were English, if you see what I mean.’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘And also because it had been the biggest yacht that night in the harbour.’ She paused. ‘So instead of flying home on Saturday, I went to Palma.’
‘It’s a big place,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘It took me three days. But I found out that young man’s name, and quite a lot about him.’
‘Would you like some lunch?’ I said.
13
We walked along to La Riviera at the end of the High Street and ordered moussaka. The place was full as usual, and Hilary leaned forward across the table to make herself privately heard. Her strong plain face was full of the interest and vigour she had put into her search on my behalf, and it was typical of her self-confidence that she was concentrating only on the subject in hand and not the impression she was making as a woman. A headmistress, I thought: not a lover.
‘His name,’ she said, ‘is Alastair Yardley. He is one of a whole host of young men who seem to wander around the Mediterranean looking after boats while the owners are home in England, Italy, France, and wherever. They live in the sun, on the water’s edge, picking up jobs where they can, and leading an odd sort of drop-out existence which supplies a useful service to boat owners.’
‘Sounds attractive.’
‘It’s bumming around,’ she said succinctly.
‘I wouldn’t mind dropping out, right now,’ I said.
‘You’re made of sterner stuff.’
Plasticine, I thought.
‘Go on about Alastair Yardley,’ I said.
‘I asked around for two days without any success. My description of him seemed to fit half the population, and although I’d seen the boat, of course, I wasn’t sure I would know it again, as I haven’t an educated eye for that sort of thing. There are two big marinas at Palma, both of them packed with boats. Some boats are moored stern-on, like at Ciudadela, but dozens more were anchored away from the quays. I hired a boatman to take me round the whole harbour in his motorboat, but with no results. I’m sure he thought I was potty. I was pretty discouraged, actually, and was admitting defeat, when he — the boatman, that is — said there was another small harbour less than a day’s sail away, and why didn’t I look there. So on Wednesday I took a taxi to the port of Andraitx.’
She stopped to eat some moussaka, which had arrived and smelled magnificent.
‘Eat,’ she said, scooping up a third generous forkful and waving at my still full plate.
‘Yes,’ I said. It was the first proper meal I’d approached since the dinner with Jossie, and I should have been ravenous. Instead, the diet of processed cheese seemed to have played havoc with my appetite, and I found difficulty in eating much at all. I hadn’t been able to face any supper, the evening before, when the journalists had finally gone, and not much breakfast either.
‘Tell me about Andraitx,’ I said.
‘In a minute,’ she said. ‘I’m not letting this delicious food get cold.’ She ate with enjoyment and disapproved of my unsuccessful efforts to do the same. I had to wait for the next instalment until she had finished the last morsel and lain down her fork.
‘That was good,’ she said. ‘A great treat.’
‘Andraitx,’ I said.
She half laughed. ‘All right, then. Andraitx. Small by Palma’s standards, but bigger than Ciudadela. The small ports and harbours are the old parts of the islands. The buildings are old... there are no new ritzy hotels there, because there are no beaches. Deep water, rocky cliffs, and so on. I found out so much more about the islands this week than if I’d just stopped in Cala St Galdana for my week and come home last Saturday. They have such a bloody history of battles and sieges and invasions. A horrible violent history. One may sneer now at the way they’ve been turned into a tourist paradise, but the brassy modern civilization must be better than the murderous past.’
‘Dearest Hilary,’ I said. ‘Cut the lecture and come to the grit.’
‘It was the biggest yacht in Andraitx,’ she said. ‘I was sure almost at once, and then I saw the young man on the quayside, not far from where I paid off the taxi. He came out of a shop and walked across the big open space that there is there, between the buildings and the water. He was carrying a heavy box of provisions. He dumped it on the edge of the quay, beside that black rubber dinghy which he brought ashore at Cala St Galdana. Then he went off again, up a street leading away from the quay. I didn’t exactly follow him, I just watched. He went into a doorway a little way up the street, and soon came out again carrying a bundle wrapped in plastic. He went back to the dinghy, and loaded the box and the bundle and himself, and motored out to the yacht.’
The waiter came to take our plates and ask about puddings and coffee.
‘Cheese,’ Hilary decided.
‘Just coffee,’ I said. ‘And do go on.’
‘Well... I went into the shop he’d come out of, and asked about him, but they spoke only Spanish, and I don’t. So then I walked up the street to the doorway I’d seen him go into, and that was where I hit the jackpot.’
She stopped to cut cheese from a selection on a board. I wondered how long it would be before I liked the stuff again.
‘It was a laundry,’ she said. ‘All white and airy. And run by an English couple who’d gone to Majorca originally for a holiday and fallen in love with the place. A nice couple. Friendly, happy, busy, and very, very helpful. They knew the young man fairly well, they said, because he always took his washing in when he was in Andraitx. They do the boat people’s laundry all the time. They reckon to have a bag of dirty clothes washed and ironed in half a day.’