Medusa

Reality closed in on me before I had even hauled the sailboard out of the water, words pouring out of her, a rush of information as she moored the inflatable and began unloading her stores. There had been several quite large political demonstrations ahead of next week’s election and during the night a bomb had gone off in the little square in the centre of Villa Carlos. Two soldiers on sentry duty outside the military HQ and one of the Guardia had been injured, and it had affected the telephone exchange, all lines between Villa Carlos and St Felip being cut. ‘Two-thirty in the morning. It woke me up. I thought one of the big guns on La Mola had gone off. And now I’ve just heard there was another bomb went off in that big new hotel at Santa Galdana and fires started at several of the most congested urbanizacións — St Tomas in particular and St Jaime. None of your properties are involved. At least, Lennie doesn’t think so.’ She asked me what I had been up to. ‘You’ve been in Malta, I gather. Were you mixed up in that disturbance? I was picking up newsflashes about it as I waited at Gatwick for my plane.’

I told her a bit of what had happened as I helped her hump her shopping up to the camp, which was in the lee of one of the hospital’s standing walls, close by the old burial ground and the dig. There was just the one big tent. Now that the hypostile was fully excavated she was using that as an office-cum-storeroom, the big stone roofing slabs covered with vegetation providing protection from sun as well as wind and rain.

Her father was dead and she had only been back a few days, having stayed on after the funeral to help her mother move up to her sister’s in Nottingham. ‘I’ve traded in my car, by the way. The little CV2 had just about had it and that old rogue Flórez offered me a Beetle — very cheap!’ I asked her if she had had time to see Soo since she had arrived back in Mahon and she said she had been talking to her only a few hours before.

‘How is she?’ I asked.

‘Oh, she’s fine, and very full of what her Lieutenant Commander has been up to, and now that he’s right here …’ She was grinning at me and I told her not to be bitchy, but she only laughed. ‘You can’t blame her when every time she looks out of the window now she can see his ship anchored there.’ And then she switched to her work. ‘You remember the drawing on the cave roof I took you to see?’

‘The night of the Red Cross barbecue?’ I stared at her angrily. ‘I’m hardly likely to forget it.’

She ignored that, telling me how she had checked on it while she was in England. They don’t think it can be anything important, probably done with a burnt stick in roughly the same period as the megalithic remains. Certainly no older, which is a pity because Lennie knows of some more drawings — drawings that are fully exposed, human figures as well as animals — in a passageway leading back into the headland above that big underwater cave Bill Tanner told me about at Arenal d’en Castell.’

By then she had disposed of the stores she had brought out and, still talking, she began to help me off with my wet suit. I asked her for more details about the night’s bombings, whether she had picked up any gossip about the reaction of the authorities, but she had no official information, only what she had heard from Lennie when she had met him coming out of the chandlery. ‘He said it’s been panic stations since the early hours with the policia and the Guardia rushing around all the major foreign developments.’ The violence had been directed exclusively against foreign-owned property. ‘Except for the Villa Carlos bomb. It was in a parked car and they think it may have gone off by accident. There’s talk, too, of disturbances in Alayor and Ciudadela, but nothing serious — just demonstrations, no bombs.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ I murmured and asked her for the loan of a towel as she pulled the wet suit clear of my feet. But instead of handing it to me she insisted on towelling me down with the inevitable result that we finished up in each other’s arms arguing hilariously as to how we should proceed, her camp bed being designed strictly for one person and the floor being bare earth and rock. We had just settled for a sleeping bag opened out and spread on the floor when we were interrupted by the sound of an outboard coming steadily nearer. ‘Oh hell! I forgot.’ Petra pulled herself away from me and glanced at her watch, which by then was the only thing she had on. ‘Lennie! I told him to be here by ten.’

‘Why?’ I was annoyed and frustrated, suddenly suspicious. ‘Lennie should be painting a villa over by Cala en Porter.’