As Olivia walked along the main street early the next morning, a rooster was crowing and the smell of breakfast cooking drifted out from the small wooden houses. Children were playing on the balconies, old people nodding on the porch swings. A lugubrious man with pale skin and an undertaker’s suit raised his hat to her. At his side was a young, red-haired black girl and a fair-skinned child with a flat nose, broad lips and tightly curled hair. The blond, pale lady she had seen when she arrived was walking elegantly along, still protected by her parasol and her handsome companion. Olivia started to imagine she was in a weird land of incest and interbreeding, where fathers would sleep with their nephews and great-aunts have secret affairs with donkeys.
She headed for a hardware shop and chandler’s she had spotted the previous night, full of tin buckets, coils of rope and washing-up bowls. She loved the feeling that in hardware shops everything was useful and sensibly priced. Even if you spent really quite a large amount of money, it wouldn’t be wasteful or extravagant. The sign above the window looked like something out of a funeral home in nineteenth-century Chicago: curly, intricate black writing which read HENRY MORGAN & SONS was peeling off now, showing the weathered wood beneath.
Inside, a tall man in a black suit was measuring rice out of a big wooden vat with a metal scoop—no Uncle Ben’s boil-in-the-bag in Popayan. The man was muttering away to his customer in an Irish accent as thick as Miss Ruthie’s. Olivia bent over the counter, fascinated by the array of things on sale: fishhooks, torches, string, small triangular flags, cleats, shoe polish. There was the jangling of a bell as the door opened; the conversation stopped abruptly and a heavily accented voice asked for cigarettes.
“We’re all out of smokes. I’m sorry.”
“You do not have cigarettes?” It was a guttural, heavily accented voice, the r rolled, the t so emphasized it almost incorporated a spit.
Quick as a flash, Olivia flipped up the mirror on her spy ring, wild with excitement at a first chance to use it. The man, who had his back to her, was short and thick-waisted, clad in jeans and a polo shirt. She moved her hand slightly to get a better view and gasped as she saw the tightly curled black hair: it was Alfonso. She looked down quickly and peered into a cabinet, feigning an intent interest in a barometer. Alfonso was expressing some threatening-sounding skepticism about the alleged absence of cigarettes.
“Oh, but to be sure we’ll have some Thursday when the boat comes in,” said the tall man. “Try Paddy at the Bucket of Blood.”
Alfonso cursed, then swung out of the shop, slamming the door behind him and making the bell jingle hysterically.
There was silence for a moment, then the storekeeper and customer started talking in lowered voices. At one point she picked out “in the caves” and “O’Reilly’s goats are dead,” but she thought that might be a line from an Irish ditty she had learnt at school and reminded herself sternly not to romanticize the situation.
Eventually she turned and asked for a ball of string, a map of the island, a bag of carrots and a large knife, adding casually, “Oh, and a packet of cigarettes.”
“To be sure. What type will you be wanting?” said the shopkeeper.
“What have you got?”
“Marlboro, Marlboro Lights and Camels,” he said, casting a merry look out into the street.
Olivia followed his gaze. Alfonso was deep in a conversation, but Olivia couldn’t see who he was talking to. He moved slightly to the left and she caught a glimpse of cropped peroxide hair and baggy hip-hop clothes. She gripped the edge of the counter, her cheeks reddening, feeling a lurch of pain. It was Morton C. Morton C. was in cahoots with Alfonso. The sneaky bastard. How could she have been such an idiot? She couldn’t visit Feramo now. Feramo wouldn’t want a girl in his harem who had casually snogged one of his minions. She had managed to ruin the whole objective of her surveillance mission with one pathetic lapse of self-control.
She watched till the two men finished talking and went their separate ways. Then, carrying her map, carrots and cigarettes, slipped down the path at the side of the shop to sit by the sea, hidden from view in the tall grass. Her hand was shaking as she lit a cigarette, coughed and put it out immediately. She didn’t know if she was more hurt or more angry or just both. You can’t trust anybody, she told herself, brushing a tear from her cheek with her fist. Not anybody.
After a while she straightened up, jutting her chin defiantly, and walked back along the path.
The secret of success lies in how you emerge from failure, she told herself. She had two hours before her dive. That should be enough time to get to the top of Pumpkin Hill and see what was going on. At least she would get something out of this debacle: photos, at least, and maybe clues.
Following the map, she headed out of the village along a path with numerous forks and turnoffs. At every point of potential confusion she left a carrot pointing the way back. Ahead of her, Pumpkin Hill rose up from the undergrowth like a grassy hillock on the South Downs, a sandy path zigzagging up it, exposed and unprotected. On the right, the undergrowth continued up a narrow valley on the side of the hill. As she grew closer, she crouched down and trained her spyglass on the summit. She caught movement behind a tree and peered through the glass, trying to focus. A figure stepped out in camouflage gear, carrying what looked like an automatic weapon, and surveyed the area. She whipped out her miniature camera and snapped. This is outrageous! she thought. Pumpkin Hill is common land. People should have the right to roam and certainly should be able to do so without men pointing machine guns at them. Olivia did not agree with weapons of destruction, mass, individual or otherwise.
Dropping a carrot to mark the spot, she left the main path and went into the narrow wooded valley to the right of the hill. She marched ahead angrily, brushing branches aside, her agitation unleashing her imagination. Her mind started racing with notions as to what Feramo was cooking up in his fraudulent soi-disant eco-lodge. She became certain it was acetylene-based and headed for LA. Maybe he was training commercial diver/welders to take jobs in the sewers. Maybe they were going to release gigantic acetylene and oxygen bubbles, mix them and set them alight underwater. Maybe they were going to get into the cooling systems of nuclear power stations and set the bubbles off there. It was brilliant. A commercial diver could go into the plant with nothing more than the normal tools of his trade and blow the place sky high.
The trees and undergrowth reached almost to the summit. In places, the ground beneath was almost sheer. The climb left her covered in small cuts and scratches. As she neared the top, her spirits lifted, until she saw that her way was barred by a ten-foot fence with spikes on top. If she veered to the left, she would emerge onto the hill in plain view of the guard. She went to the right instead and came to a deep ravine. There was a ledge on the other side with a tree growing out of it, above which was a fairly easy climb. Olivia weighed things up. If it wasn’t for the fifty-foot drop below, she told herself, she wouldn’t think twice about jumping across. For God’s sake, she had seen it done a thousand times by blond-haired princes in tights in Disney cartoons.
Before she had really thought it through, she jumped and found herself on the other side, slithering on some incredibly slimy substance which smelled revolting. She only just stopped herself from falling into the ravine by grabbing the bottom of the tree, which was also covered in the disgusting slime. As she turned her head to look, she knew there was something bad about the slime. Her nostrils weren’t having any of it. Calling on the training afforded by innumerable smelly Third World toilets during her hippie traveling years, she expelled her breath sharply and didn’t take in any more air until she was out of stink range. Then, lungs bursting, she turned her head heavenwards, took a tentative sniff, then took a deep breath of delicious pure Popayan air and started peeling off her clothes.
She lay on her stomach in her bra and knickers, her slime-coated jeans, T-shirt and shoes hidden at a distance so she couldn’t smell them. She was out of sight of the guards, round the side of the hill, and peering through her spyglass at Pierre Feramo’s resort. A turquoise coral lagoon was ringed with a perfect white beach dotted with palms and wooden sun loungers with cream linen cushions. In the center, a square pool was set into a wooden deck. A large thatched structure behind was obviously the reception area and restaurant. A wooden jetty stretched over the lagoon, leading to a thatched bar. On either side two further walkways stretched over the water, three thatched huts leading off each. Each hut had a shaded wooden veranda with a wooden staircase leading directly into the sea. Six more guest huts were scattered among the palms on the edge of the beach. Mmmm, she thought, slipping without noticing into holiday hotel mode. Maybe I should visit, after all. I wonder if I could get one of the huts over the water. Or maybe it would be nicer to be back on the edge of the beach? But what about sandflies?
The clientele dotted on the sun loungers and bar stools looked like Vogue models. A couple paddled kayaks across the lagoon. A man was snorkeling. Two girls were wading to the edge of the reef in scuba gear, aided by an instructor. To the right of the resort was a parking area, where there were trucks and diggers, a compressor and tanks. A rough roadway snaked round a headland. Beyond, a substantial concrete pier led out past the coral to the point where the water turned from turquoise to darkest blue. She put the spyglass down and took some more snaps. Then she put the spyglass back to her eye, but for some reason couldn’t see anything.
“It’s the wrong way round.”
She started to scream, but a hand was over her mouth, the other holding her arm behind her back.