‘Who knows?’ asked Jude in a manner Carole didn’t find helpful. ‘Still,’ she went on, ‘perhaps they never used the dedicated mobile for phoning – that’s why there’s no record of recent calls. Perhaps they only used it for texting.’
‘Hm,’ mumbled Carole, unwilling to admit that this was actually quite a good idea. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘I don’t think we can put it off any longer. We contact Barney.’
‘What, text him on this phone?’
‘No, he’ll smell a rat if we do that. I’ll just call him on his mobile.’
‘Do you want to do that on your own?’
‘Why should I?’ But Jude could feel herself blushing. She didn’t think she could keep from Carole’s beady scrutiny that there was a history between her and Barney Willingdon for much longer.
So she made the call right there in the main room of Morning Glory. And there was no reply from Barney’s mobile.
Though it was only the previous evening that they’d seen him at Antik, Jude still got the feeling that he was deliberately not picking up the phone. She left him a message, though without much hope of its being returned.
Every possible advance they could make on their investigation seemed to involve talking to Barney. And both of them wanted very much to get on with the investigation.
Jude stripped down to a bikini and lay on a lounger, but was still clearly distracted. She couldn’t get comfortable and kept moving towels and shifting her position. Her trashy novel was unable to reassert its tenuous hold on her attention. Eventually, she said, ‘There is one person we could ask where Barney might be.’
‘Who? And don’t say “Erkan” because we’ve—’
‘Not Erkan. Our neighbour.’
‘You mean,’ said Carole with an involuntary shudder, ‘Travers Hughes-Swann.’
‘Yes. He said he’d watched Barney building every one of his villas. He might well know which one he’s likely to be in.’
Carole harrumphed but was forced to admit Travers was their only lead. She looked disapprovingly at her friend’s bikini décolletage. ‘If we go and see him, I hope you’re going to be wearing rather more than that.’
‘You bet I am,’ came the reply. ‘I’ve heard of roving eyes. His eyes don’t rove, they remain firmly fixed on the point between the breasts.’
Both of them were wearing high-necked cotton tops as they walked down the track towards Brighton House. As they turned off the track towards the open railed gates, Travers Hughes-Swann stepped forward from the house to greet them. ‘Well, hello. How very nice to see you lovely ladies. And you’ve timed it very well; I’ve just put the kettle on.’
His words again gave them the uncomfortable feeling that they had been spied on, that he had heard them planning the visit and put the kettle on in anticipation of their arrival. Though both knew they were probably being paranoid.
Travers was dressed as he had been when each of them had met him, in khaki shorts and thick leather sandals over beige woollen socks. With an expansive gesture which somehow didn’t suit him, he said, ‘Welcome to Brighton House!’
Jude was intrigued to see the building he had so vaunted over Morning Glory, and her first impressions were not great. Travers’s idea of keeping the authenticity of Turkish tradition seemed to involve the minimum of modernization. He’d said that Brighton House had been converted from old farm buildings, and that was exactly what they still looked like. A low-pitched roof of red clay tiles seemed to be the only improvement he had made. If he’d perhaps aimed to create rustic charm, then all he had achieved was an aura of scruffiness.
But if he had done little to adapt the house itself, he’d clearly focused his building ambitions on the garden. With, in the view of both women, mixed success. If this was what Travers Hughes-Swann reckoned to be traditional Turkish style, then he’d read different guidebooks from Carole’s.
Certainly, he’d used the authentic local stone, but what he’d done with it was more in keeping with an eighteenth-century Gothic folly than a Turkish garden. The rockeries were kind of all right – it was hard to go wrong with the resplendent plant life available in Turkey – but even they had a rather dated fifties feel. The other structures, however, were the worst kind of garden-centre kitsch – elaborate water-features, pointless grottoes, free-standing unfinished walls. And, to compound the tastelessness, set into the hillside was a kind of stone arbour, inexpertly modelled on a Lycian tomb.
Given Travers’s apparent pride in it, his garden was surprisingly ill-tended. Though some of the plants were neatly fixed to bamboos with plastic ties, weeds flourished amid the shrubs and flowers. The hedges were shaggy. Wheelbarrows and the apparatus for mixing cement lay untidily on the paths. An ancient battered Land Rover stood on the drive.
One mild surprise was the absence of a pool, which showed the villa was somewhere to live in, rather than to be let out to well-heeled tourists.
Carole and Jude would rather not have been forced to comment on what they saw, but Travers Hughes-Swann’s next words, ‘Well, what do you think of it?’ rather cut off that escape route.
‘Well,’ said Jude. ‘It must’ve taken hours.’
‘Certainly did,’ he replied with satisfaction.
‘And did you do it all on your own?’ asked Carole.
‘Oh yes. All my own work. I don’t believe in paying people to execute work which has all been my own conception. I’m not like your mate Barney.’
‘Talking of our mate Barney—’
‘But, as I say, the kettle’s on. Now what would you like – tea or coffee? Or,’ he asked suspiciously, ‘are you the kind of English tourists who spend all your time in foreign countries knocking back the cheap booze?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Carole, and Jude, who would quite have fancied a beer or a glass of wine, mumbled some similar sentiment. Both agreed that coffee would be nice – Jude’s with milk, Carole’s without.
‘Good. I’m not a drinker myself. I don’t like anything that makes me feel out of control. It’s lack of control, you know, that makes today’s youngsters behave so appallingly. Their parents spent more time trying to understand them than discip-line them. Since the last war, England has lost its backbone, you know …’ He must have read something in the women’s faces that made him cut short his diatribe. ‘Right, well, you just relax in my little suntrap—’ he gestured up towards his faux-tomb – ‘and I’ll sort out the beverages.’
The ‘suntrap’ was the tidiest part of the garden. No weeds grew between the square stones of its floor, and a broom propped against the wall suggested that it had been recently swept. The idea that Travers might have done it in anticipation of their arrival was slightly unsettling.
Carole and Jude exchanged looks but, feeling that their host might be eavesdropping, didn’t say anything. They just sat, slightly awkwardly, on the hard metal chairs in the tomb-like structure, waiting for him to reappear with the tray of coffee.
The mugs which he brought out were chipped and didn’t look very hygienic, but it wasn’t the moment to comment. Instead, Carole asked, ‘And you say your wife is bedridden?’
‘Yes, very sad. Totally immobilized by a stroke some years back.’
Jude thought this was rather odd. The previous day Travers had spoken of going out for lunch near Pinara with Phyllis and implied that a sudden deterioration in her condition had made him change his plans. But if his wife was permanently bedridden, then he had just used her as an excuse to ask Jude out for lunch. Which didn’t endear him to her.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Carole. ‘And do you do all the caring yourself?’