Medusa

I must have contacted between twenty and thirty people that morning, all men who had as much to lose as I had if the political stability of the island was destroyed, and by the time I drove round to the commercial quay to check that Carp was cleared and ready to sail, my mind was made up. Tongues were wagging, and if I stayed, I might well find myself the scapegoat for what had happened. I was lucky to be free at the moment. If I hadn’t got up at first light the previous day and searched the ship I would undoubtedly be under interrogation at Guardia headquarters, perhaps even flown off to mainland Spain. I had talked it over with Carp late that night. He knew what to do and the deterioration in the weather would make it all the more convincing that he had to put back into the nearest shelter to clear a warp wrapped round one of the prop shafts or deal with some water in the fuel tank. The probability was that nobody would bother to report the cat in Addaia, but if they did, then he had any number of good excuses.

The Policia Municipal building looks right down on to the commercial quay, so that I was not surprised when a police car with two officers in it drew up on the quayside. We were just taking the last of the fresh stores on board and they parked there, watching us. If I had not come ashore when Luis uncleated the stern warp preparatory to letting go, they would have been on the radio immediately for a harbour launch, which would have stopped us before we had even reached Bloody Island.

I watched from the quay as Luis coiled down the stern warp, then ran for’ard to hoist the jib. The mains’l was already set and flapping on a loose sheet as the engines took her out into the open waters of the harbour and Carp turned her into the wind, heading east to clear the old grassed-over fort on Figuera Point at the entrance to the harbour proper. She looked a lovely sight once the sails had been hauled in tight, a rather hazy sun glinting on the new paint of the hull and transforming the twin bow waves into silver glitters of spray.

I turned then, thinking as I walked back to my car that I might catch up with them before they cleared the point. But then the police car cruised up alongside, ‘You are not going with them?’ It was Inspector Molina, and he was smiling at me. ‘Such a nice boat. It must be very tempting. And Malta. Your wife comes from Malta.’

He was still smiling as I said, ‘Yes, I would have enjoyed the trip. But you have my passport.’

‘Ah si, and you are a law-abiding citizen of our island.’ And he added, They can see your boat is preparing to sail from up there.’ He nodded in the direction of the citadel with the slip road snaking up like a staircase with two hairpin bends in it. ‘I just come to make sure.’

It was on the tip of my tongue then to tell him he would have been better employed searching the Santa Maria and the villa on Punta Codolar, but I checked myself. Sooner or later it was surely inevitable they would find the gun where I had hidden it. ‘Adiós.’ They drove off and I went back to the office to ring Lopescado at the Taberna Felipe in Ciudadela. The Santa Maria had left.

‘When?’

But he didn’t know. Sometime during the night, he said, for it had been there the previous evening. In fact, all three of them had come ashore about eight o’clock. They had sat around outside and had a few drinks, then they had gone into the fish bar for a meal. They had left about ten-thirty and gone straight back to the ship.

‘All of them?’ I asked.

‘Yes, all of them, and the boat is still there when I go to bed, with a light shining in the wheelhouse aft as well as a riding light at the forestay.’

‘Did you gather where they were going? Did they clear customs, anything like that?’

‘No, I never saw any official go on board, not then, nor any time earlier during the evening. But then I was very busy last night, a beeg party from Banyos, a German party …’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Once, when I am serving the next table, I hear your name mentioned. It was something about the policia. They were arguing about why some information had not been acted on. The last I hear they think you will try to leave Mahon sometime today. No, you will have to leave. Those were his words.’

‘Whose words?’ I asked. ‘Was it Evans who said that?’

‘Si. The boss man with the Guevara moustache. Pat Eevanz.’