Billie sat stunned and pale while he got down and shoved their things together. He snapped the case shut, and fitted the little backpack to Billie.
‘You know people here?’ he said to Meatballs, unsure of whether the bloke had changed his mind or found the port by accident.
‘Neh, some people,’ Meatballs said as they slid in among moored boats.
‘Get me a taxi, then, a car. To Athens.’
They swung in against the slimy black fenders of the wharf and Meatballs killed the motor and leapt up to secure them. When Scully hoisted Billie to the dock, the Greek was gone.
The wind was cold and it had recently rained here too so the air was bright and liquid as they stood between clunking boats. Scully brushed the girl’s hair, careful to avoid her wounds. He dipped his handkerchief in the sea and wiped their clothes as best he could.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes.’
She looked terrible under the wharf lights.
She closed her eyes and her heavy curls bustled in the wind. ‘It hurts.’
Scully dug out some paracetamol. Was she too young for paracetamol? He found a tap and cupped her some water in his hands. She shuddered at the taste of the pills and held the crusty bowl of his hands. Drinking like a dog.
Out to sea the lights of Hydra showed faintly now and then.
‘Afstralia!’
Scully turned and saw the boatman’s face in the flare of a cigarette lighter.
‘Taxi.’
‘Good.’
‘For Napflion.’
‘I want Athens.’
Meatballs shrugged.
‘Okay, what the hell.’
A battered Fiat stood at the end of the mole. A rotund little man got out buttoning a lumber jacket and opened the boot. Scully shook his head at the open boot and climbed in.
The car smelled of cigars and garlic. It was sweet and homely after the boat, it’s motion smooth and straightforward. Never before had he thought of cars as such luxurious conveyances. Down sleepy streets they went, a numbness coming over him.
‘Napflion, neh?’
‘Ochi,’ said Scully, ‘Athini.’
‘Athini?’
The driver pulled over beside a dim taverna and twisted around in his seat.
‘Neh; said Scully, ‘Athini.’
The driver put on the interior light and looked carefully at them. Clearly, he didn’t like the look of things. There was blood all down Scully’s denim jacket, and he was unshaven and looked like a crim. Billie’s face was swollen and showing the first bruises. Her hairline was savaged and little pieces of sticking plaster hung off her. She reeked and looked stolen at worst, neglected at best.
‘Dog,’ said Scully, showing him the wounds, making a set of jaws out of his hands. ‘Dog, dog, it bit her, see?’
‘Hydra?’
‘Ochi, Spetsai. Happened on Spetsai, we came from there just now.’
Scully pulled out twenty thousand drachs and laid the fold across the seat between them.
‘Athini, endakse?’
The man pursed his lips and sighed. Scully smiled raggedly and took out their passports, showed him the pictures.
‘Papa the driver said to Billie, pointing at Scully.
‘Neh,’ said Billie, nodding wearily.
‘Postulena?’
‘Billie Ann Scully.’
He smiled at her and handed back the passports. But it was with a lingering look of concern that he took the money and turned out the light. They were well into the mountains before Scully felt sleep coming at him like a faint wind across water.
• • •
ON A SLICK PALE SEA with the rising sun behind him, Scully watches the rope in the winch and sees the cane pot break the surface of the water, bristling with feelers. It crashes onto the cradle at the gunwhale, smelling of salt and rotten bait and cabbage weed, alive with the cicada click of rock lobsters. The boat surges ahead and a mad school of silver trevally chases leftovers in the clear reef water. Two dolphins break ahead and the world is good, the sea lives, the sky goes blue forever.
• • •
BILLIE WOKE IN THE DRY mountain air and saw nothing beyond the curving road. With his head back and his mouth open, Scully slept on. She watched him in the dark as the man in front sang quietly to himself, and the night throbbed on out there beyond her hurting face. She thought about that castle, the tower down the hill from Scully’s little house. There were birds around it like a cloud. The whole world still except for birds. She wondered if you could love someone too much. If you could it wasn’t fair. People didn’t have a chance. Love was all you had in the end. It was like sleep, like clean water. When you fell off the world there was still love because love made the world. That’s what she believed. That’s how it was.
• • •
SCULLY WOKE IN THE PARKED taxi. He saw the empty driver’s seat, the keys gone from the ignition, his daughter sleeping beside him, their belongings scattered in the dark at their feet. He saw the dimness of the park across the street, and with a spasm of dread, he registered the police station right beside him. Police. For several seconds he listened to the cooling tick of the motor, then he gathered up their things and shook Billie.
‘Let’s go, let’s go.’
The child came to quickly and got out beside him. Together they crossed the deserted street and slipped into the darkness of the park. The air was cool and damp and Scully’s mind skittered. He led her to a clump of bushes that smelled like thyme and gave them some cover. Behind was the bus station. He painstakingly read the sign. Korinthos. Corinth. No sign of life there either. Scully squatted down to think. Was the driver in there reporting them as suspicious characters, a couple of strange looking xeni? A child looking battered and stolen, a man with desperado written all over him.
‘Scully?’
‘Shh.’
Scully saw the driver emerge from the police station with something in his hand. A piece of paper. He put his hand to the door of the Fiat and stopped. He hunched down to the back window and stood up to look around.
‘Kyrios?’ he called faintly. ‘Mister?’
The town was so still his voice carried plainly across to them, little more than a whisper.
‘Scully?’ Billie tugged at his sleeve.
Scully watched him carefully. He thought of the long wait till dawn and the first bus or train out of here.
‘Scully?’ the kid murmured insistently.
The taxi driver pocketed the sheet of paper and walked around the car once, looking up and down the street. Scully thought of the cops on Hydra. They’ve sent out a warning to the mainland. Do they know in there? Then why did the driver come out alone, and what’s on that piece of paper? He’s stalling for time. They’re waiting inside, for more men, for a call from Hydra to confirm. And where can you go, a couple of conspicuous foreigners in the offseason before dawn in Corinth when the trains aren’t running yet and the streets are bare?
Billie was halfway across the park before Scully could take it in. She walked forthrightly, as if determined, or angry, and she didn’t look back. He gasped and stood up. The driver swivelled and grunted in delight. He threw up his hands and laughed. Scully saw him open the door, chattering and still looking about, and that’s when Scully gave up, grabbed the gear, and stepped out into the open.
• • •
WHEN THE TAXI PULLED AWAY with the driver still telling him how be became lost in the wide, squat city with the xeni asleep in the back and how he stopped by the police station for directions, Scully had already decided not to go to Athens at all. Athens was the airport and the airport meant deciding where to go immediately, and he just didn’t know where to head for right now. For the past ten hours or so he’d just been moving, going blindly. Hydra was becoming a series of migraine flashes. But he knew Athens was wrong and he had to rest and think, decide with all his mind, not just the white hot bit that ran when everything else shut down.