Medusa

It was past midnight when we left Fornells and she was asleep before we reached the old salt pans and the end of the shallow inlet. We had shared a bottle of Rioja tinto over the meal and she had had a large La Ina before it and two brandies with the coffee. She had every reason to sleep, but as soon as I turned the car on to the quay she was awake. Petra’s inflatable was lying alongside and she saw it before I could switch the lights off. ‘What’s Petra doing here?’

I thought I detected a note of hostility in her voice, so I said nothing. Somebody must have recovered the boat from Cala Llonga, or wherever Evans had beached it, somebody from Medusa presumably. The lights were on in our flat upstairs, the chandlery door ajar, and as we went in Petra appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘You found her.’ She was looking down at Soo. ‘Thank God for that. We’ve been waiting here — hours it seems, waiting and wondering. You all right, Soo?’

‘Yes. I’m all right.’ Her voice shook slightly.

‘Who’s with you?’ I asked. ‘You said we.’

I think I knew the answer, but when she said ‘Gareth’, Soo gave a little gasp and I cursed under my breath. It wasn’t the moment. ‘What the hell’s he want?’

‘You’d better come up,’ Petra said. ‘It’s been a long couple of hours, and not knowing didn’t help.’ Her voice was a little slurred.

I told her to get Soo to bed and pushed past her, taking the stairs two at a time. I wanted to get shot of him, to save Soo the emotional strain of meeting him face-to-face. I didn’t know what the effect on her would be.

He was in the front room, sitting in the wing chair I normally used with a glass in his hand and a bottle of brandy open on the table beside him. He was dressed in a white open-necked shirt and grey flannels, his face gleaming with perspiration, and his eyes had difficulty in focusing on me. ‘Ah, M-Mike.’ He hauled himself to his feet, clutching the back of the chair. He was very, very tight. He started to say something, but then he stopped, his eyes narrowing as he stared past me.

I turned to find Soo in the doorway, her eyes wide and fixed on Gareth as he tried to pull himself together. ‘Y’rorlright-th’n,’ he mumbled.

She nodded and they stood there, the two of them, gazing at each other. Then abruptly Soo turned away, walking blindly into Petra, who had been standing just behind her in the doorway. ‘Get her to bed,’ I told her again, and she took Soo’s arm and led her off to the bedroom. But she was back almost immediately. ‘She’s asking for Benjie.’

I’d forgotten about the dog. ‘Tell her I’ll get it for her.’

Gareth had subsided back into my chair, his arms slack, his eyes closing. ‘Where did you find her?’ he asked. And when I told him, he muttered, ‘That’s like Pat. Leave it to the sea, anything so long as he doesn’t have to do it himself.’ He hesitated. ‘Impersonal,’ he went on reflectively. ‘Couldn’t stand close contact, y’know. Didn’t like to touch people, women especially.’ And he added, ‘Strange sort of man.’

Those last words were mumbled so softly I could barely hear them, and when I told him how he had seized hold of Petra and held a knife at her throat, he didn’t seem to take it in, muttering something about he’d been thinking, his eyes half-closed.

I picked up the bottle and poured myself a drink. As I put it back on the side table, he reached out for it. ‘B’n thinking,’ he said again, leaning forward and staring down at his glass, which was half-full. ‘Abou’ what they did to poor ol’ Byng.’ He shook his head, picking up his glass. He stared at it for a moment, then put it down again, carefully. ‘Had enough, eh?’ He collapsed back in his chair. ‘Byng. And now me. Know what they’ll do to me?’ He was leaning back, his black hair limp against the wing of the chair, deep furrows creasing his forehead, and his dark eyes staring into space, ‘I b’n wress-wrestling all afternoon with a bloody form, man. S two three t-two — report on collision and grounding. I grounded my ship, y’see.’ The eyes fixed suddenly on me. ‘How the hell do I explain that?’ And then, leaning suddenly forward, ‘Bu’ I di’n run.’ He was peering up at me. ‘I di’n run like poor ol’ Byng. Shot him,’ he added. ‘On the quarterdeck of the ol’ Monarch — in Portsmouth Harbour with the whole Fleet gawping at it.’ And then he quoted, speaking slowly, groping for the words: ‘Il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encrug-encourager les autres — that’s what Voltaire said. F-fortunately I’m not an admiral. Tuer, non, mais …’