Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts Page 3

  “Have you thought about phoning the police?”

  “The trouble is, she’s not a missing child. She’s forty years old. She has work that takes her abroad at short notice.”

  “But the house was locked from the inside. In theory she should be in here somewhere.”

  “We’ve looked in every room and cupboard in the house.”

  “And there’s no other way out?”

  She looked at me as if something had jabbed her. “Come on.” She put her cup down so quickly coffee splashed half way across the viewing glass. I followed her out of the room and into the kitchen where she pointed to an iron manhole cover set into the stone floor. “Give me a hand. Take hold of the other ring. When I say pull, pull hard. Use your legs to take the strain otherwise you’ll injure your back. Pull!”

  With a metallic grating, the manhole cover lifted. Suddenly a roaring sound filled the kitchen; cold air rushed up into our faces, sending Anne’s hair streaming backward.

  “The mill race,” she shouted above the noise. “It’s the only way out… Or in. If the doors are locked from the inside.”

  I stared down into the hole. Three feet below roared the water, gleaming faintly here and there under the kitchen lights. The tunnel seemed somehow dreadful now. The thing could he crawling with rats; or something cold and wet I could not give a name to.

  It was large enough for an adult to climb through, and leave the house via that dark tunnel; if you were crazy enough to actually want to.

  As we dropped the cover back into position something tapped madly at the window pane. We both looked up startled. Rain drops the size of marbles had begun to strike the glass.

  * * *

  We agreed she should stay in a hotel in Caernarfon and I’d return to the caravan. We walked back together, me in a borrowed cagoule. The rain came down the valley like marching spirits, drumming our heads relentlessly.

  At the river crossing we stopped. The stepping stones had vanished beneath a great sliding sheet of water.

  She called above the roar, “You’d be swept away if you tried to cross there.”

  “Is there another way?”

  She shook her head. “We’Il have to wait until the water level drops. You could telephone your caravan site office and ask them to pass a message on to your wife.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Oh.” She gave a half-embarrassed smile. “It sounds… impertinent. But would you mind stopping the night?”

  * * *

  “I told you it was hypnotic.” Anne handed me a tumbler of whisky.

  “Mmm? Oh, sorry I was miles away. What was that?”

  “Nothing” She smiled as she knelt beside me to watch the water, which had steadily risen toward the glass.

  “I was wondering,” I began, “can you walk from one side of the house to the other through the mill race tunnel?”

  “It’s possible. But there’s a series of arches that almost reach the water so part of the way you’d have to duck your head and hold your breath.”

  “When I first saw you today, I noticed your legs were wet.”

  Sipping her whisky, she nodded. “Mm. I waded into the entrance to see if there was anything… amiss.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a lawyer; you ask questions professionally. It must become a habit.” She said it jokingly but I sensed a lurking unease beneath the words.

  We talked generally about ourselves, Anne, a physiotherapist, lived alone in Coventry; hobbies: tennis and horse riding; pet hates: caged birds. Yet she continually mentioned her sister. And where she could be now. Again and again I felt she was concealing a suspicion where Carol might be; and that suspicion, like a cat in a box, was struggling to spring out.

  Suddenly I look up at her. “Anne, do you mind if I try an experiment?”

  * * *

  Rain thrashed the ground about us as we stood on the banks of the stream just before it vanished into the tunnel beneath the house. In my hand I held a bucket full of tiny polystyrene balls I’d commandeered from a bean bag. “Anne,” I called, “If you go round to the other side of the house. It might not be environmentally friendly, but I’ll dump these in the stream… then I’ll start counting. You shout when you see them come through at your side. Okay?”

  Serious she nodded and ran lightly away.

  The hundreds of polystyrene blobs cascaded onto the water like snowflakes. The water took them away faster than I could run. In a second they’d all bobbed away beneath the house.

  I’d counted a hundred by the time Anne reappeared.

  She asked, “When are you going to put them into the water?”

  I looked at her in surprise and showed her the empty bucket. She looked at it steadily for a moment; then folding her arms as if hugging herself, she walked back through the rain to the house.

  * * *

  Again we had to towel our heads dry. Anne lent me tracksuit bottoms and a sweat shirt. Outside, the whipping rain didn’t pause.

  Now she concentrated on small talk, as if trying to take her mind off her missing sister. “Look at the oak trees.” She nodded toward the living-room window. “When I first saw them, all gnarled up like that, I thought they were olive trees.”

  “You’re right. The sea gales must stunt them.”

  She hugged herself as if cold. “I used to imagine the first Roman soldiers arriving here two thousand years ago, after fighting their way across the mountains. Half-frozen, exhausted, probably in constant fear of ambush, they reached these slopes, saw the trees and for one happy moment they believed they’d found olive groves like they had back home. They’d be excited, thinking they’d found a little piece of Rome in a barbaric northern wilderness. Then they’d see they were merely deformed oaks; and along with the disappointment they’d fear some local wizard was working evil magic on them.” She gave a small smile. “Acorns are no substitute for olives.” Then, dreamily, she gazed through the viewing glass, down into the water: that looked like Guiness.

  * * *

  An hour later, as night fell, premature due to the thick cloud, Anne looked out of the kitchen window. She stopped cutting the cheese and said to me, “Stephen. You’d better look at this.”

  “Good grief.”

  There, floating away from the house on the mill stream were hundreds of white polystyrene balls.

  “I don’t understand it,” I told Anne over supper. “That polystyrene took an hour to travel fifty yards.”

  “No-one… as far as we know has actually explored the tunnel.”

  “Explored? You make it sound as if it’s…” I trailed off to look down through the viewing glass at the Guiness black water. “There’s a hole down there, isn’t there?” I pointed with my fork. “The water flows under the house, under that pane of glass. And just beneath where you’re sitting is a bloody great hole; and the water goes thundering down into it.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes I wondered.”

  “It must pour through a series of passages that run for miles under here; then wells up again at some point a few yards further under the house before flowing out into the open.”

  “I think you’re probably right.”

  “Your sister—”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “No, I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “With the rain hammering the darkness outside, Anne fixed me with those blue-grey eyes. “She is dead. Isn’t she?”

  * * *

  Although none of the bedroom doors locked, the door to the staircase did. I persuaded Anne to lock it. I was still a stranger and told her she’d feel more comfortable if she was securely locked on the upper floor. I’d sleep on the living room sofa in a sleeping bag.

  Sleep didn’t come quickly. The water thundering through the mill race vibrated the sofa, inducing the sensation I was lying on top of some primeval creature whose heartbeat thudded up through its flesh and into mine.

  I lay there thinking about the lonely house, floodin
g streams, a missing woman. And Anne. Blue-grey eyes; long black hair; beautiful fingers; I wished I’d seen her in happier times.

  * * *

  I woke. Darkness.

  The sound, somewhere between a thud and slap, filled the living room. It came with a desperate, clamouring urgency.

  This was someone calling to me.

  Slipping from the sleeping bag, I switched on the table lamp, its yellow light filling just one comer of the big room.

  The sound came continuously; frantically. Thump-thump-thump.

  At the windows I dragged back the curtains expecting to see someone urgently battering the panes. Nothing but rivulets of rain.

  That’s when I stopped dead.

  And looked back at the stone trough in the centre of the room; with its window to the mill race.

  Thump- thump- thump…

  With a feeling of utter dread I knew where the frantic hammering came from.

  Not for a moment did I want to look down there, but I knew I had no choice. Shivering, feeling a near supernatural cold freeze me through, I went to the viewing window. Then I switched on the spotlights.

  Thump-thump-thump…

  The brilliant light filled the stone trough. Instantly, I recoiled backwards. But my eyes never left what I saw beneath the glass.

  There, trapped within the stone box, showered by silver spray, fighting against the undertow, was the woman. Desperately, she beat against the glass that imprisoned her.

  In pure shock I stared down at her. The image burned itself into my brain. Rushing water; white foam, bursting across the woman’s face; skin shining wet; black hair stuck like rats’ tails across her forehead; mouth gasping; mouth shouting words I could not hear; eyes blazing in that brilliant electric light; like laser beams piercing right through my skull: they blazed terror, panic, pleading for help; the water tugging at her with a muscular force that was nothing less than brutal.

  Then her hands came up again to punch upward; a wedding ring clicked against the glass. Something stronger tugged. She was gone.

  * * *

  Panting, I banged on the staircase door until Anne opened it.

  “Anne. Does your sister wear a wedding ring?”

  Startled, she said, “Yes. She’s divorced, like me, but we both wear the rings on our right hands.”

  She showed me her right hand with the wedding ring. Cut from the gold was a heart-shaped hole.

  “Anne,” I breathed deeply, “you’d better put on a dressing gown. I’ve something to tell you.”

  * * *

  This is my secret. I can tell no-one:

  Later I searched the stream from where it left the house, right down to the sea. Nothing. Not a clue. We reported Carol Morris missing to the police. Not only can’t they help, they’re not particularly interested. Probably decamped with a lover they imply.

  On the last day of my holiday I stood with Anne on the footbridge looking down at the mill stream. Anne had stayed on to sort out her sister’s business affairs; however, I believe the real reason was to continue the search.

  She rested her right hand on the rail. The wedding ring with the heart-shaped hole caught the evening light. Sometimes sisters copy one another. I couldn’t forget looking down into the mill race and seeing the hand beating the underside of the glass; burnt into my mind was the image of a ring exactly the same as this: the same heart-shaped hole.

  Gently I said, “You loved your sister didn’t you?” Gazing at the water she nodded.

  “Did you choose the wedding rings together?”

  She looked at me. “No. She chose hers on holiday in South Africa. It was a plain band.”

  “It had a heart cut out of it.”

  “No.” She smiled. “You’re confusing it with mine.”

  I closed my eyes and in my mind’s eye I saw the beating hand; the gold ring; the heart-shaped hole.

  I knew then I’d never return to that solicitor’s office.

  As I stood there, trembling, I felt Anne take my hand, grip it tightly, like she needed a rock to hold on to.

  When I opened my eyes she was smiling at me; those brilliant eyes shining. Then, without a word, we walked hand-in-hand back to the house.

  Gerassimos Flamotas: A Day in the Life

  When Gerassimos Flamotas set off on his moped—an ancient machine pitted with rust—to cross the island’s mountains, he had hope. Or at least he clung to hope as a man ruptured with cancers clings to the dream of a miracle cure.

  He had set out early. Partly to beat the fierce Greek sun and partly so he could pause at each roadside shrine to piously cross himself and whisper a prayer in a way that, to him, seemed sincere. It was still dark enough to see the oil lamps filling the glass-walled shrines with a soft amber light. It winked from the gilded icons and crucifix. The portraits of his namesake, Saint Gerassimos, looked back with the gentle eyes of the martyred. Somewhere He sat, thought Gerassimos the mortal, and He gazed down upon the tortured on Earth. Once the torture had been famine, earthquakes, epidemics, the rusty nails of bandits hammered into flesh, or Nazi bayonets. Now the tortures were more subtle, and infinitely prolonged. The unpaid land taxes, late mortgage payments for his farm, a heap of debts as high as Mount Ainos itself that even now rose up to punch solid rock through the dawn mists.

  Still Gerassimos Flamotas carried hope.

  He arrived in Argostoli by ten.

  By eleven he sat on the marble steps of the bank. Hope gone.

  Worse. What hope he had possessed had been broken, mashed, splintered. That and his spirit too. Spirit and hope. Shattered. Gone forever.

  The sun burnt his balding head. Why hadn’t he brought his hat?

  Why hadn’t he hair?

  He recalled himself twenty years ago. Confident, handsome; returning home from the Greek army a sergeant major; a fortune in his pocket. He remembered the evening strolls in Argostoli’s town square, enjoying the glances of the prettiest girls.

  Oh, and the plans he had.

  Now bitterness filled him. It spiked his tongue; his eyes watered and he never even noticed the tourists he hated so much wandering aimlessly up and down the road. He climbed on the moped and began the long ride home.

  Twenty years ago, he had told himself, he would be a millionaire by the time he was forty. Now he was fifty-one. A sun-shrivelled little man. Poor, poor, poor.

  When he was two kilometres from home he stopped at the roadside. In the distance he could see his peasant’s house, which hung lopsidedly on the hillside. There he was going to grow vines, make wine, be the biggest wine producer in the whole of Kefalonia.

  Now it was Calliga. Drink Calliga Wines announced every other hoarding. Calliga Wines. Maintaining The 3000 Year Old Wine Growing Tradition.

  “Calliga, Calliga, Calliga. Ach…” he spat. His wines would have been sweeter, the reds darker and the rosé; ah, the rosé would have had the faintest blush like a spring rose.

  Even from here he could see his thistle-strangled vines. One hundred acres of grief. Pure undiluted grief.

  His wife’s brother had been an imbecile. Wines would not grow on this soil. Everywhere else on Kefalonia, yes. But not here. Not here!

  He cursed.

  Then he lit a cigarette. Bitterness threatened to wash away his reason. For a moment he wanted to kick over his moped, tear at his clothes and run screaming and blaspheming down to the sea. To choke the miserable life from his body with its salty waters.

  Across the road Saint Gerassimos stood in his glass box shrine, watching him with those big cow eyes. Those ridiculous, dopey eyes. A thousand, two thousand times he had prayed there.

  For what?

  For nothing, Gerassimos. For nothing. What was that phrase he had heard from the lips of a drunken Englishman? For bugger all.

  Reaching down, he picked up a stone the size of a tennis ball. His arm whipped forward, the stone left his fingers. The glass exploded into splinters that flashed in the sun. Feeling hollow, emotionally flat, Gerassimos walk
ed across to the shrine. Saint Gerassimos had fallen into the dust; his pitiful martyr’s face split in two.

  “I am dead,” Gerassimos Flamotas told his wife. She was chopping at the dull earth with a pick where they grew garlic and onions. She did not look up.

  “I am dead,” he repeated in a flat voice. “The bank will repossess. We have nothing, no living. I am dead.”

  His wife stopped hacking the concrete-hard ground and looked up. “We knew this would happen.” There was no surprise; her tone matter-of-fact.

  “Banks!” He spat.

  “The bank has been good. They’ve reduced the payments, extended the term. We couldn’t ask for more. Now…”—she clapped the dust from her hands “…are you going to accept the job my brother offered you?”

  “Waiting tables for tourists!” He swore and stomped his way down through the olive grove to the beach. As always, it was deserted. No tourists came here.

  His only daughter, Rose, had followed him. Nineteen, lumpy in her black dress, loose mouthed—and dumb. She had never uttered a word. Not so much as a single “Mamma”.

  She followed him like a shadow.

  Gerassimos disliked her.

  She would never marry. Never earn a living. Useless. Dead.

  Like him.

  A dead man with his dead family in their dead farm.

  He walked along the beach kicking stones at the sea. Then, sitting on a rock, he lit another cigarette.

  His daughter came to sit next to him and put her hand on his forearm. A mute gesture of affection. Gerassimos shrugged it off as if it had been an insect. Irritating, but unimportant amongst all his other worries.

  The sun pressed on his hairless head like hot metal. He should have brought his hat. Ah, twenty years ago he had hair. Thick, jet black…

  “How much for the girl?”

  The voice startled him. He looked around. Behind him the beach was empty. To his left sat Rose, picking dry eelgrass from her bare toes.

  “How much for the girl?”

  Almost dazed, Gerassimos Flamotas squinted up against the sun.

  A shape moved. A man certainly. Foreign, perhaps. Gerassimos shielded his eyes against the glare. The man was tall, thin. Still he couldn’t see the face. But he got the impression of wealth. Great wealth. Gentility almost.