Right at that moment something happened. I don’t know what it was, but something happened. And whatever it was she knew it too.
We slept deeply and late, and when we walked downstairs looking for breakfast she slipped her hand into mine.
Does luck come into it, or does God just sometimes deal you some very nice cards?
‘Nicosia is a shitehole,’ Tobin told me. ‘You’ve driven through part of it once, and round it once. That should be enough for anyone.’
‘I still want to see it. When I get home everyone’s going to ask me what Nicosia’s like. They won’t ask about the sea and the mountains. They won’t even ask me about Famagusta. They’ll ask about Nicosia.’
‘That’s because of the Brits getting killed there. It’s in all the papers. Why indulge them? The papers should be encouraged to report uplifting and interesting things instead.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as cricket matches, or golf.’
‘Golf?’
‘What’s the matter with golf?’
‘It’s infantile, a game for living corpses. Someone hits a ball towards a minute hole in something like somebody’s lawn . . . and then fifteen minutes later they take a hike and do the same thing all over again.’
‘You got something against golf, Charlie?’
‘Yeah, I got something serious against golf.’
‘Good, ’cos I got somethin’ against Nicosia. Understand now?’
Stephanie had been smiling good-humouredly at both of us.
‘I’ll take you into Nic, Charlie. I know an old Maltese banker there. He’s always pleased to see me.’
I put my hand over hers on the table; couldn’t stop myself. Her fingers curled around mine. I asked, ‘Is there a downside to that offer?’
‘You might have to wait outside until I finish work.’
Pat’s laughter always erupted in small bursts. I laughed too. Then I looked away across the garden. Birds were sitting on the rim of the fountain where Laika had tried to weave a spell. Dipping their heads, and drinking delicately. Tipping their heads back. Whistling more like caged songbirds. She squeezed my fingers again.
‘I’ll take you tomorrow morning, Charlie, before EOKA is properly awake. Pat will lend us his jeep.’
‘Will you?’ I asked him.
‘Why not? As long as you wash the blood off before you bring it back. I’ll still be in bed, so if anyone asks I’ll say you stole it.’
One of the other dancers walked up behind him; a blonde with a fresh citronade in her hand. She put her arms around him, and bent to kiss the nape of his neck. She had been rehearsing, and was dressed for dancing. Very beautiful. Filmy blue silks. Where her flesh met the air I could see the faint sheen of perspiration on her arms and her legs. The curious thing was that in this old-fashioned garden it was the rest of us who looked out of place, not her. Pat hooked out the fourth chair at the table for her with his foot, and nodded her into it.
‘This is Inga. She’s from Uppsala in Sweden.’
‘Are there any genuinely Middle Eastern belly dancers left anywhere?’ I demanded.
‘Only in Vegas,’ Steve said. ‘They still like the big ones there. Would you like to come for a walk around the walls? There are some stupendous views towards Turkey, and you’ll meet some nice people.’
Collins walked from the hotel deep in conversation with his officer Thirdlow. The garden was beginning to feel crowded. I glanced at Pat – he was still my mentor here, the guy who knew how things worked. He nodded. A walk with Steve would probably be OK. I could have made all manner of a witty acceptance speech, but I simply smiled at her and said, ‘Love to.’
Ledra Street in Nicosia wasn’t crowded at that time in the morning, but I’d heard too much about it, so I rode with the flap of my holster loose. It was a long, dirty shopping street, and the hundreds of telephone and electricity cables close overhead made a net that would have defeated any but the smallest bird. No one had cleared away the day before’s litter – it was like Borough Market the day after market day. Steve nosed along it quietly. Occasionally locals would have to move aside for us – mostly women out buying early-morning treats for the breakfast table. A few of them smiled as we inched past. Most of the men scowled, or refused to meet our eye. For a few minutes we crept along behind an Orthodox priest who strode lord-like along the centre of the road, deliberately keeping us in our place behind him. That raised a few smiles.
Steve looked a bit rattled for the first time, and whispered, ‘If anything happens I’m going to cream him,’ and hooted the horn twice before he deigned to move over. That just served to draw even more attention to the stand he was making, and he was wearing a smug smile as we passed. A small boy suddenly grabbed an apple from his mother’s wicker basket, and hurled it furiously at us. I fielded it instinctively – a nice high left-hand slip catch, half standing – bowed to him and shouted thanks before I bit into it. That didn’t go down at all well: a young man stepped into the street behind us, and shook his fist. Another joined him. They began to run. Steve put her foot down, and shot us out of the lower road towards Eleftheria Square.
‘Touchy lot, aren’t they?’ I asked her.
‘You weren’t supposed to catch the apple – you were supposed to be hit by it.’
‘Pat was right.’
‘About Nic?’
She was wrenching the car from corner to corner, out through one of the Old Wall gates, heading west.
‘No, about cricket. If that little bastard had been exposed to the game at an impressionable age he might have been able to
