Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense (11 page)

It was difficult to date the death exactly after so long, but a check on the tide tables (in which, according to a Commander Donleavy, Griffiths had shown a great interest) made it seem most likely that he had died on 14 September. This was confirmed by the presence in his pocket of a
NUGGY BAR
, a nut and nougat confection which was not available in the shops until 10 September.

Because the Product Manager of
NUGGY BAR
, after cancelling the product's launch, had suddenly remembered a precept that he'd heard in a lecture when he'd been a Management Trainee at
GLISS
. . . .

ONCE YOU HAVE MADE YOUR MAJOR DECISIONS ABOUT THE PRODUCT AND THE TIMING OF ITS LAUNCH, DO NOT INDULGE SECOND THOUGHTS
.

So he'd rescinded his second thoughts and the campaign had gone ahead as planned. (It may be worth recording that the
NUGGY BAR
was not a success. The majority of the buying public found it “pretty revolting”.)

The body of Hector Griffiths' step-daughter, Janet Wintle, was never found. Which was a pity for two old ladies in Stockport who, under the terms of a trust set up in her mother's will, stood to inherit her not inconsiderable wealth.

T
HERE WAS ONLY
one girl worth looking at in that planeload. I'd been doing the job for two months, since May, and I'd got quicker at spotting them.

She was tall, but then I'm tall, so no problem there. Thin, but the bits that needed to be round were good and round. Dress: expensive casual. Good jeans, white cotton shirt, artless but pricey. Brown eyes, biscuit-coloured hair pulled back into a rubber band knot, skin which had already seen a bit of sun and just needed Corfu to polish up the colour. (Have to watch that. With a lot of the girls—particularly from England—they're so pale you daren't go near them for the first week. Lascivious approaches get nothing but a little scream and a nasty smell of Nivea on your hands.)

The girl's presence moved me forward more keenly than usual with my little spiel. “Hello, Corforamic Tours, Corforamic Tours. I am your Corforamic representative, Rick Lawton. Could you gather up your baggage please, and proceed outside the arrivals hall to your transport.”

I ignored the puffing English matrons and homed in on the girl's luggage.

It was then that I saw the other one. She looked younger, shorter, dumpier; paler brown hair, paler eyes, a sort of diluted version, as if someone had got the proportions wrong when trying to clone from the dishy one.

They were obviously together, so I had to take one bag for each. They thanked me in American accents. That in itself was unusual. Most of the girls who come on these packages are spotty typists from Liverpool.

But then their destination was unusual, too. The majority of the Corforamic properties are tiny, twin-bedded apartments in Paleokastritsa and ipsos. But there's one Rolls-Royce job near Aghios Spiridion—converted windmill, sleeps eight, swimming pool, private beach, live-in maid, telephone. And that was where they were going. They'd booked for a month.

I read it on their labels. “Miss S. Stratton” (the dishy one). “Miss C. Stratton” (the other one). And underneath each name, the destination—“Villa Costas”.

By six I'd seen all the ordinary punters installed, answered the questions about whether it was safe to drink the water, given assurances that the plumbing worked, given the names of doctors to those with small children, told them which supermarkets sold Rice Krispies, quoted the minimal statistics for death by scorpion sting, and tried to convince them that the mere fact of their having paid for a fortnight's holiday was not going automatically to rid the island of mosquitoes.

Villa Costas was a long way to the north of the island. I'd pay a call there the next day.

I drove to Niko's, on the assumption that none of my charges would venture as far as his disco on their first evening. You get to value your privacy in this job. I sat under the vine-laden shelter of the bar and had an ouzo.

As I clouded the drink with water and looked out over the glittering sea, I felt low. Seeing a really beautiful woman always has that effect. Seems to accentuate the divide between the sort of man who gets that sort of girl and me. I always seem to end up with the ugly ones.

It wasn't just that. There was money, too, always money. Sure I got paid as the Corforamic rep., but not much. Winter in England loomed, winter doing some other demeaning selling job, earning peanuts. Not the sort of money that could coolly rent the Villa Costas for a month. Again there was the big divide. Rich and poor. And I knew which side I really belonged. Poor, I was cramped and frustrated. Rich, I could really be myself.

Niko's voice cut into my gloom. “Telephone, Rick.”

She identified herself as Samantha Stratton. The dishy one. Her sister had seen a rat in the kitchen at Villa Costas. Could I do something about it?

I said I'd be right out there. Rats may not be dragons, but they can still make you feel knight-errantish. And, as any self-respecting knight-errant knows, there is no damsel so susceptible as one in distress.

Old Manthos keeps a kind of general store just outside Kassiope. It's an unbelievable mess, slabs of soap mixed up with dried fish, oil lamps, saucepans, tins of powdered milk, brooms, faded postcards, coils of rope, tubes of linament, deflated beach-balls, dusty Turkish Delight, and novelty brandy bottles shaped like Ionic columns. Most of the stock appears to have been there since the days of his long-dead father, whose garlanded photograph earnestly surveys the chaos around him.

But, in spite of the mess, Manthos usually has what you want. May take a bit of time and considerable disturbance of dust, but he'll find it.

So it proved on this occasion. With my limping Greek, it took a few minutes for him to understand the problem, but once he did, he knew exactly where to go. Two crates of disinfectant were upturned, a bunch of children's fishing nets knocked over, a pile of scouring pads scattered, and the old man triumphantly produced a rusty tin, whose label was stained into illegibility.

“Very good,” he said, “very good. Kill rats, kill anything.” He drew his hand across his throat evocatively.

I paid. As I walked out of the shop, he called out, “And if that doesn't work . . .”

“Yes?”

“Ask the priest. The Papas is sure to have a prayer for getting rid of rats.”

It was nearly eight o'clock when I got to Villa Costas, but that's still hot in Corfu in July. Hot enough for Samantha to be on the balcony in a white bikini. The body fulfilled, or possibly exceeded, the promise I had noted at the airport.

“Candy's in bed,” she said. “Shock of seeing the rat on top of all that travelling brought on a migraine.”

“Ah. Well, let's see if we can put paid to this rat's little exploits,” I said, in a business-like and, to my mind, rather masculine manner.

“Sure.”

I filled some little paper dishes with poison and laid them round the kitchen floor. Then I closed the tin and washed my hands. “Shall I leave the poison with you, so you can put down more if you want to?”

She was standing in the kitchen doorway. The glow of the dying sun burnt away her bikini. Among other things, I saw her head shake. “No, thanks. Dangerous stuff to have around. You take it.”

“Okay.”

“Like a drink?”

She was nice. Seemed very forthcoming with me, too. But I didn't want to queer anything up by moving too fast.

Still, when she asked where one went for fun on the island, I mentioned Niko's disco. And, by the time I left—discreetly, didn't lay a finger on her, play it cool, play it cool—we'd agreed to meet there the next evening.

And as I drove back to my flat in Corfu Town, I was beginning to wonder whether maybe after all I was about to become the sort of man who gets that sort of girl.

When I arrived at nine, there were quite a lot of people at the disco. But no tall, beautiful American girl. Come to that, no less tall, less beautiful American girl.

I could wait. Niko signalled me over to where he was sitting, and I ordered an ouzo.

The group drinking at the table was predictable. Niko's two brothers (the one who drove a beer lorry and the one who rented out motor-scooters) were there, along with his cousin the electrician, and Police Inspector Kantalakis, whose relaxed interpretation of government regulations about overcrowding, noise and hygiene always ensured him a generous welcome at the bar.

There was also a new face. Wiry black hair thinning on top, thick black moustache draped over the mouth, healthy growth of chest hair escaping from carefully faded denims. Solid, mid-thirties maybe, ten years older than me. “Rick, this is Brad,” said Niko.

He stretched out a hairy hand. “Hi.” Another American. “We were just talking about Niko's wife,” he said with a grin.

They all laughed, Niko slightly ruefully. Whereas some people have bad backs or business worries to be tenderly asked after, Niko always had wife problems. It was a running joke and, from the way Brad raised it, he seemed to know the group well. “How are things at home, Niko?” he continued.

The proprietor of the bar shrugged that round-shouldered gesture that encompasses the whole world of marital misery.

Brad chuckled. “Sure beats me why people get married at all.”

Inspector Kantalakis and the others gave man-of-the-world laughs, siding with him and conveniently forgetting their own tenacious little wives. The American turned to me. “You married?”

I shook my head. “Never felt the necessity.”

“Too right. There is no necessity.”

The married men laughed again, slightly less easily. Brad called their bluff. “Now come on, all you lot got wives. Give me one good reason
why
, one argument in favour of marriage.”

Inspector Kantalakis guffawed. “Well, there's sex . . .”

“You don't have to get married for that,” I said.

The Inspector looked at me with distaste. For some reason he never seemed to like me much.

“Come on, just one argument for marriage,” insisted Brad.

They looked sheepish. Faced by this transatlantic sophisticate, none of them was going to show himself up by mentioning love, children, or religion. They wanted to appear modern, and were silent.

“You think of any reason, Rick?”

“Money,” I said, partly for the laugh I knew the word would get, but also because the idea had been going through my mind for some years. Marriage remains one of the few legal ways that someone without exceptional talents can make a quick and significant change in his material circumstances. I reinforced the point, playing for another laugh. “Yes, I reckon that's the only thing that'd get me to the altar. I'm prepared to marry for money.”

As the laugh died, Brad looked at me shrewdly. “If that's so, then you ought to set your cap at what's just arriving.”

I turned to see the girls from Villa Costas getting out of a hire car. “Those two,” Brad continued, “are the daughters of L. K. Stratton of Stratton Petrochemicals. When the old man goes, the elder one gets the lot.”

I was feeling sore. The two girls had joined us at the table and had a couple of drinks. Seeing them together again had only reinforced my previous impression. Miss S. (Samantha) Stratton was not only beautiful, but also poised and entertaining. Miss C. (Candice, to give her full name) Stratton was not only drab in appearance, but mouselike and tentative in conversation. I waited for a lull in the chat, so that I could ask Samantha to dance. If she had needed any recommendation other than that body, Brad's words had just supplied it.

But the minute I was about to suggest a dance, damn me if Brad, who seemed to know the girls quite well, didn't say, “C'mon, Sam, let's bop,” and lead her off into the flashing interior of the disco. The way they started dancing suggested that they knew each other
very
well.

Within minutes, Niko and his relations and Inspector Kantalakis had melted away, leaving me in a role I had suffered too often in double dates from schooltime onwards—stuck with the ugly one.

And what made it worse was that I gathered in this case she was also the poor one.

I stole a look across at her. The sun had already started its work on her pale flesh. The nose glowed; in a couple of days the skin would be coming off like old wallpaper.

She caught my eye and gave a gauche little smile, then looked wistfully to the thundering interior.

No, no, I wasn't going to be caught that way. That terrible old feeling that you
ought
to ask a girl to dance. Hell, I was twenty-six, not some creepy little adolescent.

Still, I had to say something, or just leave. “Your big sister seems to be enjoying herself,” I commented sourly.

“Half-sister, actually. And only big in the sense that she's taller than I am.”

“You mean you're older than she is?”

“Two years and four months older.”

“Would you like to dance?”

Candice was very shy and I played with her exemplary tact. Met her every evening for most of the next week. Picked her up at the Villa Costas and took her down to Niko's. She was too shy to go there on her own, and Sam and Brad (who turned out to be engaged, for God's sake) seemed anxious to be off on their own most of the time.

So I courted Candice like a dutiful boy-next-door. Looked at her soulfully, danced close, kissed her goodbye, nothing more. I was the kind of young man every mother would like their daughter to meet—serious, respectful, with intentions honourable even to the point of matrimony.

And, once I'd written off any chance with Samantha, Candice really didn't seem too bad. Not unattractive at all. Any personal lustre she lacked I could readily supply by thinking of her father's millions.

The fourth night, as I kissed her goodbye with boyish earnestness, I explained that a new planeload of tourists was arriving the next day and I wouldn't have time to pick her up. She looked disappointed, which showed I was getting somewhere. Rather than not see me, she agreed to go under her own steam to Niko's, meet me there at nine. That was a big step for her. I promised I wouldn't be late.