Hammond Innes - Medusa

He nodded vaguely, telling me that since I had last seen him he had driven round Villa Carlos, then on to the little inlet of St Esteve immediately to the south, had had a look at the tunnelled redoubt known as Marlborough’s Fort, and finally, before coming back to Fornells for lunch, he had been all round the small fishing port of Es Grau to the north of Mahon. He spoke quickly, giving me a very precise inventory of his morning’s tour as though he were making a report, and all the time he was staring past me, out towards the light at the end of the eastern arm of the harbour. There was a girl in a wet suit board-sailing across the entrance, a glistening, statuesque figure, the orange sail bright in the sun. But I don’t think he saw her. I had a strange feeling he was talking for the sake of talking, as though he sensed what I had come to tell him and was putting it off.

The waiter appeared with a plate of four large mussels cooked with herbs and garlic. ‘Will you join me?’ The clouds were gone now and it was quite warm again sitting there in the sun, the town and the hill behind it sheltering us from the wind. I nodded and he said, ‘ Dos ,’ holding up two fingers in case he had not made his meaning clear. After that he didn’t say anything, the silence hanging heavy in the air as the waiter filled a glass for me. When he was gone I produced the photograph. ‘When was that taken?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘Several years ago, I imagine.’

‘Is he a seaman? He certainly looks like one with that peaked cap.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘What’s he do for a living then?’

He gave a little shrug, his head turned towards the harbour entrance again.

‘But you do know him?’

‘Of course.’ He hesitated, then he added, ‘We were at school together, you see.’

‘You know him quite well then?’

‘Well enough.’ The words seemed forced out of him. ‘He saved my life — not once, but twice.’ His eyes were blank, his mind turned inwards.

‘He hasn’t got a beard now,’ I said.

He turned his head then, a quick movement, his eyes staring straight at me, hard now and grey in the sunshine. ‘You’ve seen him.’ It wasn’t a question. He knew, and suddenly he seemed a different man, no longer hesitant, his voice sharper, a note of authority in it. ‘When? Recently? Within the last few days?’

‘No. Several months ago.’ And I told him about the three men Soo and I had seen that filthy wet day when we had gone into the bar-restaurant at Es Grau, and how Miguel had seen him more recently.

‘Where?’

‘On Punta Codolar.’ And I told him about the villa Miguel was working on.

‘Punta Codolar. Where’s that? Show me.’ He turned the chart towards me, but I pushed it away.

‘It’s only a few miles from here, the next headland to the east.’

‘And he was at this villa. How long ago, did your builder friend say?’

‘About a month.’

‘He made an offer for it, for a half-finished villa?’

‘So Miguel said.’

He opened the chart up, his stubby finger stabbing at the irregular shape of Punta Codolar. ‘Why? Did he say why?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer, shaking his head — ‘No. No of course not, he wouldn’t tell you that. But the headland there is the western arm of Macaret and Port d’Addaia.’ After that he didn’t say anything. He seemed quite stunned, his eyes staring past me, seeing nothing.

‘Better eat those while they’re hot,’ I said, indicating the mejillones in the little dish in front of him. ‘They’re very good, but it’s important they should be piping hot.’

He nodded, picking up the small spoon and digging a mussel out of its shell, the movement quite automatic, his mind still far away. ‘And you haven’t seen him since the autumn?’

‘No.’

‘But the builder fellow saw him about a month ago. Has he seen him at all since then?’

‘I don’t think so. Miguel would have said if he had.’

‘A month ago.’ He repeated it slowly, chewing over a mussel, his eyes screwed up against the sun. ‘And he was clean-shaven.’ He gave a long sigh as though I had saddled him with some impossible burden. ‘And when you and your wife saw him in that bar, who were the two men he was with — you said something about their being politically motivated. What exactly did you mean?’

I explained then about Ismail Fuxa, that he was supposed to be one of the leaders of the separatist movement.

‘An activist?’

‘I think so. But he keeps in the background.’

‘And the other man?’

‘I can’t be certain,’ I said, ‘but he looked very much like a man I had surprised paint-spraying a slogan on the living-room wall of a villa we look after.’ I started to explain how I’d only caught a glimpse of him, but he interrupted me.

‘Where was this? Where’s the villa he daubed?’

‘Between Binicalaf and Binicalaf Nou.’

‘Those names mean nothing to me.’ He opened the chart out. ‘Could you show me please.’ I pointed to the position of the villa and he said, ‘That’s on the south side of the island, the opposite coast to Macaret. There’s an inlet there.’ He turned the map sideways so that he could read the name. ‘Cales Coves. Do you know it?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ve sailed in there quite a few times. There are two inlets in fact, that’s why Cales is plural. Coves refers to the caves.’

‘I suppose you know just about all the inlets round Menorca.’

‘Well, not quite all. There are over a hundred and fifty of them and not all are suitable for a deep-draught boat.’ He enquired what sort of boat I had and when I said it was an old fishing boat, he asked me whether I hired it out to visitors.

‘In the summer, yes,’ I told him. ‘The Santa Maria is not the ideal craft for charter work, but the sort of yacht I need to make that part of the business pay calls for far more money than we can afford. It’s a risky game, a lot of competition.’ He seemed more relaxed now, as though he had got used to the idea that the man he was trying to catch up with had been seen on the island. More mussels arrived and another carafe of wine, and he began asking me about other inlets to the south, particularly those closest to Mahon. Except for St Esteve he had only looked at the inlets to the north.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Two days.’

The first day he had spent taking over his hire car and having a look at the peninsula that forms the northern arm of Port Mahon, the land that provided the view from our office window.

‘What about the megalithic remains,’ I asked him — ‘the taulas, talayots and navetas?’

But he hadn’t seen any of that, and I don’t think he took it in when I told him the whole of Menorca was more or less an open-air archaeological museum. All he wanted me to talk about was the little ports and coves. For a man who hadn’t got a boat, and who wasn’t involved in sailing, it struck me as odd. I got to my feet, telling him I was going to phone my wife. ‘I’ll join you for lunch if I may, it’s too late to go back home.’

When I got through to Soo she said she had Petra with her. ‘She’s waiting for the boat, and, Mike — she wants to take you into a cave over by Cales Coves.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Lennie told me. Said she was very excited about something. Has she told you what it is?’

‘No. She can’t explain it, you’ve got to see it, she says.’

I offered to return to Binicalaf and meet her there after lunch, but she said Petra had to get back to camp to get herself organised for the evening. ‘You haven’t forgotten we asked her to the Red Cross do tonight, have you?’ There was the sound of muffled voices, then Soo added, ‘She says she’ll try and explain it to us this evening.’ And then she was asking me about my meeting with Miguel.