Alien Vengeance (3 page)

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind,’ Hilary contradicted. ‘We’ll drive you to this Loussenas, wherever it is. If it’s in the mountains it should be spectacular, and we’re in no great hurry to get to Chania in one day.’

‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ Gemma protested.

‘You haven’t asked,’ Hilary said firmly. ‘I’m telling you what’s going to happen. And James will say exactly the same, so no arguments.’ She gave Gemma back her note, and added a comforting pat on the shoulder. ‘And now I’m going up to have a shower. Takis, I hope the water is at least lukewarm.’

‘At this hour of the day,
kyria
, it may even be hot,’ Takis assured her graciously.

‘In that case, I’ll have one as well,’ Gemma said.

But once in her room, she made no immediate attempt to use the miniscule shower cubicle attached to it.

Instead, she sat on the edge of the rather hard mattress and read Mike’s note again. It was odd, she thought, and totally unlike his usual breezy scrawls, and it made her uneasy.

She uttered an impatient exclamation, and got to her feet. Instead of inventing problems, she should be thankful that Mike had taken the trouble to type, rather than expecting her to decipher his normal hieroglyphics.

It was the events of the day which had made her uneasy, and nothing to do with Mike at all. He was probably hale and hearty, and far too interested in his plants to spare her more than a passing thought. And if she was to mention when she saw him that his note hadn’t been very welcoming, he would simply look injured and say, ‘Well, I told you how to get here, didn’t I?’

She sighed, and began to unbutton her dress. If she showered quickly, she would have time to do her packing before dinner, as James and Hilary would probably want to make an early start in the morning.

She was glad she was going to Loussenas with them, and not some unknown driver, she told herself.

And tried to suppress the thought that, fond as she was of Mike, she would far sooner be going to Chania tomorrow than the Villa Ione.

GEMMA had the same feeling, but doubled and redoubled in spades, the following day as she stood beside the battered signpost stating Loussenas was one kilometre away, watching James reverse the car with infinite care.

They’d wanted to drive her to the door, but she wouldn’t allow it. The road was getting steeper all the time, and deteriorating at every yard into a lacework of potholes. They’d been climbing, it seemed, since the moment they’d left the main road. At first, it had been easy to admire the scenery, but as the road narrowed, and hair-pinned, they all became very quiet, and started averting their gazes from the sheer drop only a foot or two from the car wheels.

Gemma found herself wondering all the time what they would do if they met another vehicle coming down, but by some miracle that problem did not arise.

The little hamlets they passed through, each with its gleaming church, were a relief. They’d stopped in one and drunk lemonade under the awning of a tavema, telling each other that Loussenas couldn’t be much further now, although the truth was they had no idea how far it was. They’d asked Takis, but he’d only given the map a cursory glance, stabbed it with his finger and said, ‘Loussenas is somewhere above here.’ And that, it turned out, had been putting it mildly.

So when they reached the signpost, Gemma had insisted on getting out. The road was slightly wider just here, sufficient to turn the car anyway.

‘I really don’t like leaving you.’ Hilary had peered at her worriedly. ‘If Mike is as absent-minded as you say, he might have forgotten you and gone off somewhere, and then where will you be?’

‘Stuck,’ Gemma returned robustly. ‘But it won’t happen. He’s living at this villa, after all, so someone will be expecting me.’

Hilary looked unconsoled. ‘If only we knew where we were staying tonight, or if the villa had a phone, we could keep in touch,’ she wailed. ‘It’s so wild up here. God knows how many thousands of feet we are above sea level. Much higher, and we’d need oxygen.’

‘Understating the case as always,’ James said wryly. His fingers closed warmly round Gemma’s wrist. ‘When we get to Chania, we’re hoping to stay at the Hotel Dionysius. If anything goes wrong, leave a message, and we’ll get back somehow and take you off this bloody mountain.’ He paused. ‘And you have our address in England, so whatever happens, we want to know how this little adventure turns out.’

They drove off, Hilary waving frantically. Gemma waved back until the car rounded the first bend and vanished from sight. As she started up the road towards the village, she could still hear the sound of the engine growing fainter and fainter, until at last there was nothing but her own footsteps.

In fact, no sign of life but herself, plodding up the road, and a large bird that might have been a buzzard wheeling and circling against the faultless arc of the sky.

She sighed and transferred her case to her other hand. It was hardly the hilarious reunion she’d envisaged.

She didn’t hurry, but she was tired and breathless by the time she reached the first houses. About half a mile earlier, the ground had levelled out into a small plateau. The land had been cultivated, and there was a little cluster of windmills, their sails turning gently in the breeze. Two women were working in one of the fields, black-clad, with the familiar head scarves round their hair and faces, but they didn’t look up or make any sign as Gemma passed, and she found this odd. In every other village they’d passed through in the car that day, there’d been waves and smiles from almost everyone, from the bearded priest to the smallest toddler.

A donkey was grazing a small patch of scrub at the side of the road, and it turned its head, fixing her with its mild, incurious gaze as she walked past. Further on, goats were tethered, and bee skeps droned sleepily on a wide ledge.

The village road was now a track, its stones cutting uncomfortably through the thin soles of her sandals. It was little wonder so many Cretans wore boots, she thought ironically.

She put down her case and looked about her, flexing her tired hand. All she could see were village houses, many of them single-roomed by the look of them, and hardly likely to qualify as villas. The doorways were dark, and the window shutters closed, like so many blank eyes staring at her, she thought with a little shiver.

And there was no one about. The place was deserted. There was a tiny kafeneion, but there were no men sitting at its tables in the shade, drinking coffee, and arguing about politics. Each house had its own verandah, but there were no women gathered in groups to chatter and weave the rugs and linens for which Cretans were famous.

Many of the villages they’d passed through had stalls beside the road, displaying their weaving and embroidery, but presumably Loussenas attracted too few tourists to bother.

The Villa Ione couldn’t be far away in any direction, but Gemma wished there could be just one friendly face to ask, if only to dispel this growing sense of uneasy isolation which was pressing down on her.

The Cretans were among the most hospitable people on earth. Love for the stranger in their midst was bred into them. She remembered Takis warning them all that if they were offered food and drink anywhere, they should accept, even if they suspected it was all the host possessed. To refuse, he said, was hurtful, and damaging to Cretan pride.

The villagers of Loussenas, Gemma thought wryly, must be the exceptions to that rule. There were people in the houses, she was sure. She could sense movement in the shadowy interiors, but it was clear no one intended to welcome her, or offer as much as a drink of water, even though the well was there, at the end of the street, and a stone’s throw from the bright blue door of the little church.

There was nothing for it, but to go on.

Again, she had the feeling that she was being watched. She groaned inwardly. Why had she had to come all the way to Crete simply to discover she was paranoid?

Beyond the church was the priest’s house, and beyond that again the ground rose, and through a clump of straggling trees, she saw a high white wall.

Standing in its own grounds, she thought, this desirable residence must be the Villa lone.

There was a narrow gate in the wall, and a copper bell hanging beside it. The sound was sweet and pure as she rang it, and it echoed endlessly into the stillness, but at last there was nothing left but silence.

Gemma sighed. ‘ “ ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller”,’ she muttered, and tried the gate. It opened with a faint squeak to the first pressure of her hand, and she stepped inside.

The garden was quite small, but it was well-tended and bright with flowers. The house itself was a good size, the living quarters built over what Gemma assumed had once been a byre and would now be a garage, with a flight of steep steps leading up the side of the building to the terraced entrance. The steps were worn, but in good order, and the whole house looked as if it had just been freshly painted white. Gemma, looking up, saw solar heating panels in the roof. Loussenas might be a backwater, but one of its residents knew about modern technology, it seemed.

There were some Greek letters carved into the stonework at the bottom of the steps, and she peered at them, wishing she’d taken the trouble to learn the alphabet before she came. They looked as if they might spell ‘Ione’ she decided, and started up the steps.

The little terrace was tiled in a warm terracotta shade, and tubs and urns of geraniums and cyclamen had been arranged round its edge. Splashes on the tiles indicated that someone had been busy with a watering can not long before, and her spirits rose.

She went to the open door, and called a tentative, ‘Hello.’

Nothing. No voice, no step, just silence.

Out of the corner of her eye, Gemma caught a faint movement. She swung round, and saw a cat peering at her round one of the urns. It was a typically scrawny specimen, grey and white, and striped like a zebra, with eyes that looked almost twice the size of its pointed face.

Gemma crouched down, and snapped her fingers gently. ‘Are you the welcoming committee?’

The cat arched its back as if offended by the suggestion, and vanished in one sinuous movement.

Gemma shrugged and rose to her feet. ‘That figures,’ she muttered aloud.

She stepped over the threshold, and looked around. She seemed to be in the main room of the house. It was large and airy, and windows, which she suspected were a recent addition, filled the far wall, giving a spectacular view of the valley beneath. The furniture was wooden, and simply designed, and the cushions, rugs and hangings were all hand-woven. One rug, a sunburst in shades of crimson and gold, had been used dramatically as a wall hanging. An archway led through into a small dining room, and beyond this was the kitchen.

It was clean, but very simple with few concessions to modernity apart from the small sink unit, and a tiny refrigerator and cooker, both run off bottled gas she noticed.

There were lamps in all the rooms, suggesting that the Villa Ione had no electricity, and there was no sign of a telephone.

There was a scrubbed wooden table in the middle of the kitchen, and in its centre, a folded sheet of paper anchored by a pottery candleholder.

She picked it up and opened it out. Five typed words. ‘Make yourself at home, Gemma.’

‘Oh, thank you, I will,’ she said ironically. ‘I will also have to stop talking to myself, or it could become a nasty habit.’

She opened the fridge. It might be small, but the interior was crammed with food, while the bottom shelf, she was relieved to see, was devoted to cans of beer and soft drinks. She opened a Coke and drank it gratefully, straight from the can.

She kicked off her sandals and wandered back to the living room, enjoying the cool feel of the tiles under her burning feet.

In a way, she could understand why Mike preferred to remain holed up here, rather than submit to the noise and bustle of Heraklion. She perched on the wooden arm of the sofa and stared through the window, wondering which of the stark-looking crags her brother was scrambling about on, looking for specimens, and wishing that just for once he’d given up the hunt to be there to meet her.

Still clutching her can of Coke, she climbed the flight of wooden stairs leading out of the living room to the next floor. Straight ahead of her, a narrow passage led to glazed doors opening on to another terrace, equipped with sun loungers. Two large bedrooms, each with its own small bathroom, flanked the passage, again very simply furnished. Each room contained little more than a double bed, built on to a stone platform in a corner of the room, a large chest of drawers, and an alcove with a hanging rail behind a woven curtain, which presumably acted as the wardrobe. In addition, each room had its own small balcony.

One room was clearly in use already, and in the other the bed had been freshly made up with an attractive blue-and-white bedcover in a Cretan design.

Gemma fetched up her case, and extracted her toilet bag. There were towels, thick and soft and smelling of herbs, folded on a chair, inviting her to make use of them. Well, she thought, with a mental shrug, she’d been told to make herself at home, and she could think of nothing more homely than a shower. She felt hot, tired and sticky, and a little depressed, and showering would refresh her as well as helping to pass the time.

If there was no electricity, perhaps there was no piped water either, and the expensive bathroom fittings were just for show, she thought with a little grimace as she fiddled with the controls of the shower.

But water there was in abundance, and at just the right temperature, she realised with satisfaction, revelling in the sensation as it cascaded through her hair and down her body. It was wonderful to feel the tension seeping out of her, she thought, turning off the water and languidly wringing the excess moisture out of her thick rope of blonde hair. She took one of the towels and wrapped it round herself, sarong-style, anchoring the free end securely. She couldn’t use her hand-drier, but she could dry her hair just as well in the sun, and the little terrace at the end of the passage was sufficiently secluded to preclude her needing to get dressed again just yet. If there was nothing else to do, she could always work on her suntan.