An Inch of Time (33 page)

‘Heroic stuff.'

‘She said she'll call the police once everyone's gone home. Morva doesn't want the police here while her students are around. Bad for business. Too much to explain.'

‘I'd say.'

‘She hasn't really . . . registered the business as such. Tax-wise. Or the building for business use. Couldn't really, with the sanitary arrangements being what they are . . .'

‘Crap. I don't care. Dead bodies don't simply appear; there's usually blunt instruments involved. Or pointy ones. With thoroughly unpleasant people at the other end of them.'

‘He must have been there for ages.'

‘You're an expert on human decomposition now.'

‘Well, it's not a very fresh corpse – like, it didn't smell or anything. Must have been there a few years.'

‘He is right, you know.'

I whirled round. Dr Kalogeropoulos was giving me a thoroughly unprofessional look through his bottle-glass spectacles. ‘You knew about this?' I just hate it when everyone seems to know more than me. Although I should be used to it by now.

‘Not all along. But I have taken an interest lately. For Morva's sake.'

‘Who is he? Was he?'

‘Petros Grapsas.'

‘Ah, well, that explains everything. I'll get some more junk to pile on top of him, shall I?'

‘He was a kind of tax inspector. Investigating fraud. Killed by accident. Apparently.'

‘By accident.'

‘A scuffle. He fell, hit his head on something.'

‘Apparently.'

‘Indeed. They panicked and hid the body. It happened before I came back here, so he's been in there a while.'

‘And, of course, they thought a deserted village was a good place to stash him. What a disappointment. Why didn't they just stick him in the graveyard?'

‘Probably too scared; you know how superstitious people are around here.'

‘No wonder they weren't keen on Morva moving in and doing the place up.'

‘A couple of villagers came up one night, during the last thunderstorm, to try to move the body, but they couldn't remember where exactly they'd put him in the first place and gave up.'

‘I think I saw them as they came past the motorhome,' said Charlie.

‘Did you? The villagers were hoping that if they made sure she didn't find a builder willing to do the job, Morva would give up. But then Mr Honeysett here turned up.'

‘I knew it would turn out to be my fault.'

‘You brought Charlie here.'

Charlie crossed his arms in front of his chest and nodded in agreement: all your fault.

‘Well, we can't just forget about him,
even if he was a tax inspector
,' I said loudly for the benefit of Morva who had just entered the courtyard.

She had the decency to put on a sheepish expression. ‘It's only until tomorrow; then I'll call the police. Honestly,' she said. ‘Did you come up to see me, doctor?'

‘No, not you.'

‘Oh, OK,' she said and beat a hasty retreat towards the other end of the courtyard to join Tim at the table.

‘Well, that's all sorted, then,' Charlie said cheerfully and went the same way.

That left the doctor and me looking at one another for a few heartbeats. ‘You've come to see me, then,' I concluded.

He sighed heavily. ‘Perhaps we could take a little walk.'

Making Turkish breakfast in Greece had, of course, been tempting fate. Reluctantly, I followed the doctor out of the courtyard. He struck out at a surprising pace into the heart of the ruined village. We passed Helen who was sketching another ruin from a respectful distance. The doctor squinted in the direction of my wave. ‘Is there somebody?'

‘Helen, over there, in the shade under the walnut.'

‘I'll have to take your word for it.'

‘Your eyesight is really quite bad, isn't it? I noticed that before.'

‘Failing. Failing fast, in fact. A year or two and I'll be practically blind.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that. Can't they . . . operate or something?'

‘No. It's congenital; there's no way of stopping it. I shouldn't be driving, really; I only get away with it because I've known the roads around here all my life.'

‘What will you do when . . . you know? Can you go on practising? As a doctor?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Anything I can do?'

We had reached a squat deserted farm building and its skeleton crew of outbuildings. He halted by a convoluted fig tree. ‘Is there anyone close by?'

‘Not that I can see.'

‘Well, there
is
something you can do. Go away. If you don't, the local police will soon find a way to get you off the island, anyway.'

‘Has this to do with Kyla Biggs?'

‘You've been sniffing around the olive oil co-op.'

‘The one that mysteriously changes its name?'

‘The village has a lot invested in that business.
My mother
has.
I
have – everything I had. I wasn't entirely sure what I let myself in for then, but it's too late now. The income will be important once my eyesight goes completely. Not just for me and my mother; many people in the village rely on the co-op.'

‘Where is Kyla?'

‘I'm not sure.'

‘She's alive?'

‘I think so. Yes. Yes, she is. Look, they are not bad people, but they've got themselves mixed up with mafia types and they are quite ruthless, I assure you. Kyla suspected something was not right and decided to do a bit of investigating. And got caught doing it. They were supposed to get rid of her, but they didn't. They're not murderers.'

‘Tell that to Mr Junkman down at Morva's place. So where is she?'

‘They've pretended to the mafia lot that they got rid of her. They didn't want to harm her, but they couldn't just let her go, so they're keeping her hidden somewhere. She's fine. But unless they find a way to make sure she doesn't expose the scheme, they can't really let her go home. No one knows what to do about it.'

‘Have you seen her?'

‘No, I'm not that involved. It's best not to get too . . . close.'

‘So there's obviously fraud involved. How does it work?'

‘It all started quite small, the usual thing – EU subsidies. There's never been a real survey of who owns which trees. So, to get maximum EU subsidies, everyone registered the same huge number of trees. From the aerial pictures, one tree looks much like another. No one bothered to count them, so everyone got subsidies for the same trees. Then the subsidies got phased out. So the co-op was formed. A few oil samples were faked and the supermarket deal came.'

‘It's not really organic, then?'

‘Oh no, far from it. That would mean real work. No, they get sprayed a lot. For Dacus fly and other pests.'

‘And the name changing?'

‘It worked once; so why not twice? Another name, another supermarket, another exclusive deal.'

‘So that's where the Moroccan oil comes in.'

‘Moroccan oil is good oil and still quite cheap. In a bottle with a label from an organic Greek estate, it suddenly becomes very expensive.'

‘I know, I bought some of it. And the supermarkets – don't they know this is going on? Don't they visit sometimes to see how it's all going?'

‘The supermarkets try not to know. They all want the business. Were you sent to find out about the oil or to find the woman?'

‘I think I was sent to see how well the secret was kept.'

‘Then finding out might well put you in danger. You
and
your friends . . .'

‘Is that why you are telling me? To make it too dangerous for me?'

A faint smile, a waggle of the head. ‘If you've been inside the plantation, then you already know.' He avoided my eyes, looking vaguely across the narrow valley. ‘My eyesight may be going, but I still know every stone in this village. We used to play here a lot as children. There was only one old couple left up here then, eking out an existence. Keeping a goat, growing some vegetables, keeping chickens. Some winters, they must have been near starvation. Yet they couldn't bear to leave this place. You don't belong here, Mr Honeysett. None of you does. You can easily leave and go back to your life in England. This is a poor country and the supermarkets are very rich.' I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut across me. ‘Have you tried the oil?'

‘I bought some in England.'

‘And did you like it? Of course you did. Perhaps you think you are a connoisseur but really you know very little about olive oil. And so it was good enough for you.'

‘How about Turkish hazelnut oil, then?'

‘You found that out, too? Then you really must go home, Mr Honeysett.'

‘What about it?'

He looked at me for a moment, shrugged: what the hell. ‘That's a separate venture. Hazelnut oil doesn't taste of much. With a bit of deodorizing and mixing with strong cheap extra virgin, it makes a passable olive oil. Everyone does it; the Italians did it first. Everyone knows they're exporting twice as much oil as they produce. It has to come from somewhere, you know.'

‘So it's all rubbish? None of it is real? Where do you go for real olive oil?'

He pushed himself off from the tree he'd been leaning against and walked off without looking back. ‘Your olive trees.
Your own
olive trees. Go home and plant some, Mr Honeysett. And take your friends with you. Soon?'

I watched him walk away until he disappeared behind a building near the church.

When I returned to the long table in the courtyard, I found Annis in a less than chatty mood. Louise chased the last olive round her plate with a morsel of bread. ‘Nice lunch; every bit as good as last night's supper.'

‘It was breakfast.'

‘You have lavish breakfasts.'

‘Trying to.' There was stale bread and some honey left. I drowned the former in the latter and stuffed it in my mouth before Tim could snaffle it. Everyone except the students was here.

‘Are your students likely to come in at any moment?'

Morva checked her watch. ‘Not for half an hour or so.'

It seemed somehow proper to make my report to Louise, perhaps to convince her that I wasn't completely useless. ‘Kyla is alive and she's on the island.'

‘Where? At the co-op?'

‘Quite likely. Remember the quad biker driving out to the shed?' I asked Annis.

‘Uh-huh.'

‘I think that's where they keep her. To stop her from exposing the fact that the place exports fake olive oil.'

‘And the supermarket is selling it? Last year half their organic vegetables were found to have pesticides on them. No wonder they don't want this to come out. Kyla must have got wind of it somehow.'

‘So why don't we just call the police right now?' Charlie asked.

‘Because we're pretty certain they're in on it.'

Louise was getting agitated. ‘I can't believe we're sitting round here discussing it. Let's go there and get her out. Now!'

‘There's Vampire Boy,' Annis warned.

‘Who's Vampire Boy?'

‘They've got someone guarding the place with a shotgun. He was wearing some vampire tee shirt when we saw him,' I explained.

‘What kind of tee shirt?'

‘It had some sort of joke . . .'

Annis helped me out. ‘It said “Have a Stake in the Future, Become a Vampire”.'

‘
What?
That's
my
tee shirt. I mean, it's Kyla's. I had it printed for her because of the teen vampire stuff she likes to watch. I invented that slogan; you can't buy them. She's definitely there. We must get her out.' Louise shot up from her seat.

I pulled her down again. ‘We will.'

‘When?'

‘As soon as it's dark.'

‘And the vampire shotgun?' Annis asked, not unreasonably.

I had no plan at all but Morva came to my rescue. ‘We'll all go. Not the students, I mean, but us lot here. They're not mad; they can't kidnap or shoot all of us.'

‘Oh, quite,' Annis agreed. ‘Not all of us. Remind me, Chris: was it a double-barrelled shotgun?'

I ignored her. ‘Tim, you can get us in through the gate, surely?'

‘No probs.'

‘There you are,' I said to Louise. ‘We'll set off as soon as it gets dark.'

Sophie's eyes shone. ‘I'm gonna come, too. The more the better. Surely.'

We had managed to persuade the students to go for a meal in Corfu Town, but Sophie had changed her mind at the last minute and stayed behind.

‘You shouldn't have told her,' I said to Charlie, who was unsuccessfully trying to get Sophie to relinquish her wine bottle.

‘Let her come with us.'

‘She's pissed.'

‘She'll be fine. I'll look after her,' he promised.

‘On your head be it.'

At dusk, we set off in the two cars, with Charlie and Sophie, who was still stubbornly clutching her bottle, in the back of my rented wreck. As agreed, we drove in convoy through the village, waved at anyone who was looking as though we were off on an adventure.

Which we were. At the turn-off to the olive grove, I slowed. No one appeared to be around and I gave the OK signal to turn on to the narrow track. After a hundred yards and out of sight of the road, we turned off the track and cut the engines.

It was darker here than I had anticipated, but this was my third visit and I remembered it well enough to lead the troops, all but Sophie, who had passed out in the back of the car, clutching her bottle. We decided it was safer to leave her there, and after a short march and stumble we reached the front gate.

We stood back in the darkness, breathing in the faint scent of charcoal burning, while Tim magicked the lock open. It took him all of one minute to defeat it. We left the gate ajar for a swifter exit and moved quietly along the lane. I took point with Annis behind me, while Charlie brought up the rear.