Medusa

'Archaeologists, you mean?'

'No, no. People who haven't the slightest idea they've uncovered anything. And if they did know, I imagine they couldn't care less. The charcoal drawing was only uncovered because they had been clearing a roof fall, and part of the drawing has already been sliced away when they were shovelling the rubble clear. They've dug out a hole I think I could have wriggled through, but I wasn't going to risk that on my own, it looked too unsafe.' And she added, I could hear water slopping around, Mike, and there was a draught of air. I think they've opened up a way through to the sea. But why?' She stared up at me, her body close against mine. 'Do you think that's what they were up to, cutting a way through to the sea?'

'How do I know?' I said. 'I'd have to see it…'

'Exactly. That's why I want you to come over there with me. Now. Before they have time to block it up, or do whatever it is they plan to do with it. They may be working on it this minute, so if we went now..'

'What — right in the middle of the party? I can't leave Soo, and anyway — '

'Well, afterwards. As soon as the party is over.'

I shook my head. 'It's quite out of the question.' And I told her the sensible thing would be to wait for daylight and then go back in with the curator from the museum or somebody from the Mayor's Office, one of the planning officials. It crossed my mind that this might have some connection with the squatters who had been sleeping in the villa Lennie was repairing, but I didn't tell her that. 'Wait till the morning,' I said again, 'and take one of the local authority officials in with you.'

'No.' She stopped abruptly, standing back from me in the middle of that dancing throng staring me in the face. Tonight. Please.' And then in a rush: 'You know how things work here, or rather don't — not always. It could be days before any official bothered to come out. They're not interested in caves and digs. A few people are, Father Pepito for instance, but none of the officials I know, not really, and I want somebody to see it HOW, before the charcoal outline of that figure is totally destroyed or the roof collapses again. Please, Mike. It's important to me.'

I'll think about it,' I said, and we went on dancing, which was a mistake with Soo in her condition. She had been watching us and she was furious, telling me I had humiliated her in front of everybody. That was after I had returned to our table and Lloyd Jones had taken Petra off to dance. It made no difference that we had only been dancing together because Petra had wanted to get me to visit the cave and see what it was she'd discovered.

'So you're going with her. When?'

'Oh, don't be so silly,' I said. 'She just wants to show me a bit of a charcoal wall painting, that's all. It won't take long.'

When?' she repeated, and there was a hot flush on her cheeks.

Tonight,' I told her. 'She wants me to go tonight.'

'I see.' Her tone was icy, and after that she wouldn't speak to me. hi the end I went over to the bar and got myself a large Soberano to chase down the wine I had been drinking. A hand gripped my elbow and I turned to find Manuela's husband, Gonzalez, beside me. 'You come to our table for a moment if you please. The Alcalde wish to speak with you about the opening of the new urbanizationnear the lake at Albufera next month. Jorge has been asked to make the opening and he wish you to take part in it, okay?'

I was not altogether surprised that Jorge Martinez should ask me to take part in the official opening of a new urbanization. Iwas one of the founder members of an unofficial association of resident English businessmen and I had on occasions acted as spokesman when the bureau crats in the ayuntiamentohad proved to be more than usually difficult over a planning application so that I knew Jorge in his official capacity as Mayor at the Mahon town hall as well as socially. In any case, since I was involved in property it was important for me to keep in with him.

In the post-Franco era, the political structure of what had become a monarchical democracy had steadily developed. The Baleares islands became one of the seventeen autonomous regions with its own elected parliament. The centre of this local government was at Palma, Mallorca. Foreign policy, finance and defence was, of course, still administered from Madrid through a Provincial Governor appointed by the ruling party. There was also a Military Governor. But Palma was over a hundred sea miles from Mahon and the comparatively recent introduction of this regional democratic autonomy had increased the importance of the local town halls and their councils, and in particular the power of the mayors who were elected by those councils. At least that's how it seemed to me, and I mention it here because I cannot help thinking that this dissemination of power may have had abearing on what happened later.

Jorge Martinez was a lawyer, a slim man with sharp features and a way of holding his long, narrow head that suggested a cobra about to strike. He was, in fact, a very formidable little man and quite a prominent member of the ruling party, the Partido Socialista Obiero Espanolor PSOE. He had only been Alcalde in Mahon a short time, but already he had his hands firmly on the local power reins, his political sense acute. He got up as I reached the table, shook me by the hand, holding my elbow at the same time, and waved me to an empty seat opposite him. His wife was there, a dark-eyed, vivacious woman, also another lawyer and Colonel Jimenez of the Guardia Civil.Gonzalez topped up my glass with more brandy.

The Alcalde not only wanted me to attend the opening, but would I make a speech? 'Five, ten minutes, what you like, Mr Steele.' And he smiled, his use of the English address rather than the Spanish senorquite deliberate. 'You are very much known in your community and you will comprehend that here in Menorca we have problems — political problems arising from all the villa people. Not those who come to end their lifes here, but the summer migration. It is a question of the environment. So you speak about that, hah?'

He stopped there, waiting for some acknowledgement, and when I made no comment he said brusquely, 'You speak about the regulations the developers are agreeing to. Also you say this urbanizationis a good developing; it is small, villas not too close, the environment of Albufera acknowledged, and it is good for our island. It brings work, it brings money, some foreign currency. Okay? You speak first in Spanish, then in English, so very short speaking, but the political point made very clear.' And he added, 'I am informed you always have good co-operation with my officials at the ayuntiamento.So you agree, hah?'

He had that explosive way of asking a question and insisting on agreement at the same time. In any case, when you have had a few drinks, and the commitment is over two weeks away, it is easier to say yes than to think up some convincing excuse on the spur of the moment. 'Bueno, bueno.'He smiled, a glint of gold teeth. 'So nice to talk with you, senor.' I was dismissed, and I left the table with the feeling that if I had declined his invitation he would have seen to it that next time I needed a permit for something from the Mahon town hall it would not be forthcoming. But a speech in Spanish — or did he mean the local Catalan, which is very different? In any case, my Spanish was a hybrid of the two, having been picked up quite haphazardly as occasion demanded.

Somebody had thrown a pile of furze on the fire, the band half-drowned in the crackle of the flames. Florez passed, light on his feet, the young woman in his arms glittering with tinsel, the button eyes in his round face fixed on the table I had just left as though watching for an opportunity to ingratiate himself. I went back to the bar and stood there watching the shadows of the dancers moving against the limestone roofing and the far recesses of the great cavern. The dancers themselves were a flicker of fire-red images, the whole scene so lurid and theatrical that it seemed almost grotesque, the band thumping out a brazen cacophony of sound that ricocheted off the stone walls, the beat so magnified it almost split one's ears.