By some strange fortune, the young policeman shouted out in time, his big torch hitting the floor with a thump.
“Police! Mr Black, it’s me! Don’t shoot! You OK? What’s happened?”
Black stayed on his knees, the young constable trying the lights and talking into a handheld radio.
“Junction box,” Black said, his voice flat. “On the stairs.”
At last, the constable pulled Black gently to his feet and eased him toward a chair. Then, looking down at the bloody remains on the floor, he walked quickly to the under stairs cupboard, took an old raincoat out and covered the dog’s body.
“Ask my wife to remain upstairs if you would,” Black said. “I don’t want her to see Wellie like this.”
When he came down, Black handed him the note that had been pinned to the dog’s liver. “Read it.”
The constable took the blood stained note and held it gingerly.
“It says ‘Naughty naughty. Stay out of it. Or it’s Mary’.”
He never saw her standing in the doorway, only heard her choked sob as she looked down at the pathetic bundle on the floor.
*
Holly Morton moved easily through the people, sunglasses balanced on her head so that she looked like one of the gaggle of Dutch tourists at the immigration point in Palma Airport. Twelve feet behind her, chatting amicably with a pair in their sixties like a doting son, Quayle followed her toward the sleepy officials. Here she slowed down to offer her documents to a bored officer and, without a second glance, he waved her through, his eyes zeroing in on a couple behind her.
Holly wandered through into the baggage hall and waited for her suitcase. She had very little to put in it, but Quayle had been shopping again, returning with a variety of things, some second hand, some obviously new, saying that tourists never travelled with just an overnight bag, and never travelled with everything new.
Collecting her grey Samsonite, she tried to look excited as she walked to the customs men near the exit, passed through and waited for Quayle. They had driven from Frankfurt to Amsterdam and stayed there for two days while he had procured a set of seaman’s papers and new passports, this time with full back-up papers like driving licences, theatre tickets, old letters, library cards – and, in one instance, a rate demand from a London borough.
Though she had managed to force Pope from her mind, delighted that he had survived, she was still getting used to not having his constant presence. Sometimes she forgot that he was no longer there and looked around for him, waiting for his imperceptible nod to move. Now, outside the terminal, she tried desperately to look like a tourist who did this sort of thing all the time, smiling at people who walked past.
Finally, Quayle walked past too. She followed him at a distance towards a hire car park, pleased to be up close again. As he started up, she climbed into the nondescript blue sedan and together again they drove out onto the main Palma road.
Only once they were free of the airport did she gave an audible sigh and begin to relax.
“Have you been here before?” she asked, pulling the band from her hair and shaking it loose.
“Once or twice,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
“Isn’t it full of sunburnt drunken Brits, vomiting, fighting and singing ‘you’ll never walk alone’?”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Bits of it – Palma Nova, Magaluf, Pagera – but most if it’s quiet and old and sleepy. We’re going near to a place called Valldemosa. You’ll like it...”
“Can’t I come with you?” she suddenly asked, looking out of the windscreen as they began to head inland.
“No.”
“But why, Titus?”
“It’s safer here. You’ll stay with a friend. Milburn don’t know about him.”
“What’s he like?” she asked resignedly.
“His name’s Marco. He has a big twirly moustache, a heart like a lion – and a thick-walled old bodega. He likes carpets, good wines and old boats. He also likes promiscuous women and dogs, and he cooks pasta just like mama used to do…”
She laughed, delighted at the rich description. “Sounds interesting,” she said with a wry smile.
“Oh he is that,” he replied.
Marco was exactly as Quayle had described. As they drove up his long driveway, he was standing shirtless, lean and brown, with waves of greying hair atop a regal head, a garden hose in his hand as he watered a tub of his precious flowers. Two Staffordshire bull terriers muscled around his bare legs, walking in escort as dropped the hose and approached the car.
With a huge smile painted across his lined face, he took Quayle into a huge bear hug, laughing and shaking him like a child before turning to Holly.
“Bellissima!” he said, kissing his fingertips in an extravagant gallant gesture. “Titus, she is magnificent! How can you trust me with her?” He bent to take a bag. “Come! As the natives here say, my house is your house.”
The interior was surprisingly cool after the hot glare of the sun outside, the thick stone walls and flagstone floors having been built to achieve that three hundred years before. The ceiling was high, cantilevered with thick oak beams that he explained had been taken from a ship that had foundered on the rocks below Deia.
Like the house on Serifos, this one had its share of Oriental carpets thrown about the stone floors. A powerful painting of an Andalusian fighting bull stood above a huge hearth surrounded with leather club chairs. The whole effect was brightened up with bowls of fresh flowers and brightly painted wooden shutters. When Holly looked up, she could see all the way to the terracotta roof tiles.
The bedroom Marco showed her to was an odd shape, with one half of the perimeter wall circular in shape. The hand-carved peasant bed was covered in a bright patchwork quilt. She put down her bags, brushed her hair, and wandered out through the kitchen to find Quayle.
Just outside the house, the branch of an ancient olive tree
