‘Something to do – won’t be long.’ Then he pulled his mask back on, and dropped away. Before I lost sight of him I saw him turn in the water in the direction the woman had taken. Back on the caique I found my pipe, sat on the gunwale and fired up some smoke. The breeze and the sun dried me.
I saw Warboys and the woman emerge from the water, and walk up the shallows to the beach. They held hands as they crossed the sand. She must have untied her rope, because as she walked the man in her boat pulled it back in; hand over hand, like a fisherman hauling in a fish. He looked over at me, and waved: that was all right then. The other girl stayed in the water, hanging on their boat’s side. I saw her reach up and stroke the man’s unshaven face. He smiled. That was a nice thing to do. Part of my mind told me that this was what the world could be like, if ever we got our act together.
I was sleeping, sitting on the deck, propped up against the main mast when Tony came aboard. He must have swum from the shore. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep. He sat down alongside me, and held out his hand, saying, ‘She asked me to give you this.’
A small bronze coin: Roman. I have it yet.
Warboys made the long sweeping turn into Kyrenia harbour in the late afternoon. The sun was already low. When the tide turned, the wind over Kormakiti Point had died with it, and we had driven home in big long seas that failed to distract my stomach. We found the dinghy in which we had rowed out to the caique still at its buoy in the middle of the harbour, swapped the vessels over and rowed ashore. For the first time in my life I properly experienced that odd feeling of dry land pitching gently beneath my feet: it lasted for a couple of hours.
There was a wiry, barefoot boy lounging at a table outside the restaurant we had eaten at the night before: three empty glasses stood on the table next to him. The wasps and flies around them said they had recently contained something sugary. He jumped up in front of us, and said, ‘Hello, Lion.’
Warboys reached out and ruffled his hair; the way you would with any kid.
‘Demetrius. Have you been waiting long?’
The owner had been hovering in the doorway. He grunted and said, ‘Long enough to drink the juice of nine lemons.’ That was the local lemonade. Cloudy and sweet – the bite of the lemons came at the back of your throat as you swallowed it.
‘One hour,’ the boy said. ‘One hour, and seven minutes.’ I glanced at his wrist. No watch. That was interesting. ‘I have a letter from the priest.’ He handed Warboys a grubby envelope. It was old, had been resealed with sealing wax, and contained a piece of lined writing paper folded twice. A short line of Greek letters.
‘I can’t read that,’ I told Warboys.
‘It says a woman, that’s all.’
‘She was an old crippled lady,’ the boy grinned.
Warboys asked, ‘How do you know?’ and gave him a coin. The boy tossed the coin from one hand to another several times, and Warboys held out another.
‘I saw her when she left the colonel. She was very angry – like Clytemnestra.’
Warboys said, ‘Thank you, Demetrius,’ and flipped him the second coin. It was all we were going to get. We moved into the cool of the restaurant, and again sat at its rear. The owner brought us a glass of ouzo each, a jug of cold water and a bowl of olives to share. I asked Tony about the boy. Was he EOKA too?
‘No, just a courier. He suits the GCs, and he suits me.’
‘Won’t he give you away one day?’
‘I pay him too well for that. With money from Adonis, and money from me, he probably takes home more than his father.’
‘And the message was about me.’
‘At the moment it doesn’t make sense in any other context. The person who asked for your head was a woman . . . an old crippled lady, if what the kid said is right. It’s like the story of John the Baptist, isn’t it?’
‘Does it mean anything else?’
‘If they are willing to tell you that much I’d say they’ve turned her down and taken your bait.’
‘You think they killed her?’
‘No. They don’t do anything face to face, but don’t worry, once they’ve agreed the deal they’ll see it through as a matter of honour. I hope you can come up with the money, or they’ll be very annoyed.’
‘It won’t be a problem.’
‘Good. Then you’d better leave the delivery of it to me.’
‘Only after the dirty deed is done.’ I smiled.
After a pause he asked me, ‘Do you think this is just some kind of joke?’
This time I wanted to tell him the truth: I wanted him to believe me, so I gave him the eye lock before I answered.
‘I think it’s all a joke, Tony – love, life and everything – and we’re the butt of it.’
‘If I believed that, Charlie, I’d put my pistol in my mouth.’
‘It’s because I do, that I don’t.’ The sentence looks a bit skew-whiff the way I’ve written it, but Warboys nodded slowly. He understood me. ‘And for your information I can’t think of any crippled old ladies I’ve offended recently.’
But I can think of someone who, if she survived, I might have crippled. But I didn’t say that. What would Grace do to a man who crippled her?
‘Maybe she was only another courier, acting on behalf of someone else. We use so many cut-outs that I sometimes wonder who we’re working for,’ Warboys said wearily. He didn’t want to think about it
