An Inch of Time by Peter Helton Page B

– only it was all happening very quietly. The pace also appeared wrong, like a film run on slightly reduced speed, or as though everyone in the village had his mind on other things.
    The man inside the kiosk looked soft-skinned and pale against a backdrop of cigarette packets and Greek paperbacks. I butchered sufficient Greek to make myself understood and was told to go round the side, where, on a waist-high shelf, sat a large red telephone from which I called Annis at Mill House.
    â€˜Rubbish, you’re in a lay-by off the A2 – admit it.’ Her voice sounded very far away.
    â€˜No, I’m actually standing in the square of a . . .’ I nearly said ‘strange Greek village’, but since I wanted her to join me here, left it at ‘Greek village’.
    â€˜You haven’t found her yet?’
    â€˜Kyla Biggs? Give me a break, I only got here yesterday. I found Morva, though; it’s where I’m staying.’ I gave her a quick description of the place. ‘Did the cheque arrive?’
    â€˜Yesterday. I banked it. That’s the good news. I have some rather bad news, though.’
    â€˜Out with it, then.’
    â€˜Derringer is missing.’
    â€˜Oh no, he’s not. He’s run away to Greece. As a stowaway.’
    â€˜The little swine! Everyone’s on holiday except me.’
    â€˜Are you coming down, then?’
    â€˜I might. Only not yet, hon, not until I’ve finished this painting. But go on, tempt me. What’s the weather like?’
    â€˜Warm, dazzling sunshine. What’s yours like?’
    â€˜Hard to tell with this fog.’
    â€˜I’m so glad.’
    I paid for the call and a pair of cheap sunglasses that had taken my fancy. ‘Foggy in England?’ the kiosk owner asked. It was a rhetorical question. If you were in the habit of using the village phone, then presumably the entire village got to share your happy news.
    Dodging potholes and constantly stopping to guess the way meant I made slow progress. Someone harbouring an anti-Anglo grudge had used a spray-can to obscure the English translations on road signs for miles around, and one thing you don’t learn while listening to language tapes is how to read a foreign alphabet. Fortunately, some of it was sufficiently similar for me to make an educated guess, enough to get me eventually on to the main road south.
    Spring was well advanced wherever I looked. The hard heat of summer had not yet arrived to burn the grasses crisp and turn the road verges to dust, allowing me to drive through a lush, subtropical fantasy land where everything but the road itself had some kind of plant growing from it. I crossed a narrow river with improbably green water and passed countless houses half obscured by spring blossom. The traffic was a stream of lorries, scooters, mopeds, pick-ups, ancient three-wheeled trucks (all with green cabs) and buses. Buses had a habit of cornering at speed, using most of the road and a lot of air horn, which apparently made that all right. I quickly learnt to listen as well as look as I drove, feeling small and squashable in Morva’s tiny underpowered car. And yet after a while I began to relax into it, windows open, elbow on the sill, driving more slowly, breathing more deeply. The further south I went, the more the traffic thinned out.
    I braked. If Morva’s description was accurate, then this had to be it. The place where Kyla Biggs’s car had been found abandoned was right in front of a long wall of cactus by the side of the road before the turn-off to a place called Chlomós. Morva had mentioned the cactus – it had formed the backdrop to the photo of the car, published in the local paper. I pulled off on to a narrow unmade road leading into the hills and walked across to the cacti. They were the prickly pear type, taller than myself and already bearing small flowers. There were no houses on this bit of road, just a blind stone hut