The Khufra Run

The island looked fantastic in the light of the full moon, the rugged, hilly landscape of the interior like a black paper cut-out against the night sky and a white band of surf showed clearly at the base of the massive south coast cliffs.

I came in off the sea at three hundred feet, Port Roig to the left of me and beyond, between the two great natural granite breakwaters which enclosed the mouth of the creek, I saw the lights of Tijola. A green flare soared into the night giving me the all clear and as I passed between the two headlands, I put the Otter down into calm water and taxied towards the shore.

It wasn’t much of a place. A couple of dozen small houses, a jetty, a few fishing boats, but it had everything I needed. Calm water to land in because of the enclosed nature of the creek, and lots of peace and quiet which suited me just fine.

There was a small bar on the beach. I could hear a guitar playing in spite of the Otter’s engine, and someone was singing. I dropped the wheels as I moved in towards the beach, and taxied up on to a broad concrete ramp which I’d constructed myself earlier that year with the aid of a couple of locals.

The three men who waited beside the hearse looked exactly the same as the ones I’d left in Cartagena. I switched off the engine, climbed down and they moved past me without a word and started to get the coffin out.

‘Heh, General, how did it go?’

I turned round as Turk moved out of the darkness from the general direction of the beach bar. ‘Fine. Just fine.’

The three men shuffled past me with the coffin and I reached into the cabin for the package. I hefted it in my hands for a moment. ‘Why don’t we just run for the hills with one of these?’

‘Don’t even think of it.’ Turk took the package from me. ‘No place to run. Not from these people. They’d leave you with a penny for each eye, that’s all.’

‘So what is it? Mafia money?’

‘Would that bother you?’

‘Not particularly. When do we get paid?’

‘Thursday. I’ll be in touch.’ He got into the passenger seat of the hearse and leaned out of the window as the driver started the engine. ‘You seeing Lillie tonight?’

‘I expect so.’

‘You’ll find something for her on the table in your kitchen. Give her my love.’

The hearse moved away into the night and I went across the beach to the small flat-roofed cottage I called home. There wasn’t much to it. A bedroom, living room and kitchen, with a shower and toilet in the yard at the rear, but it sufficed, at least for the present.

Turk had left the light on in the kitchen. The something he had put on the table turned out to be a thousand American cigarettes, an item which often tends to be in short supply on the island, and a case of Bourbon. Lillie would be pleased. I stripped off quickly, went out to the yard and had a shower.

Lillie was Lillie St Claire. The Lillie St Claire, the Queen of the Metro lot for most of her career. Two Oscars and seventy-three movies in all, mostly entirely forgettable, maybe a dozen that had been really worth doing, two that ranked among the best ever.

She’d not made a picture in three or four years now as far as I knew, had dropped out completely and now lived in a kind of feudal splendour in a great white villa on the cliffs above Port Roig. I’d flown her to Majorca one afternoon about six months previously, when she’d missed the scheduled flight and was in a hurry to meet some film producer or other. The acquaintance had ripened into one of those quiet, steady, take-it-or-leave-it affairs which suited us both admirably.

But on a night like this, warm and soft and full of moonlight I looked forward to seeing her with some pleasure. I changed quickly into sweater and slacks, loaded the cigarettes and Bourbon into the rear of the old jeep I kept in the shed out back and drove away.

Lillie’s place was seven or eight miles away at the end of a promontory which could only be reached by one of those typically Ibizan dirt roads, twisting and turning between undulating hills, that were more like miniature mountains than anything else, and studded with pine trees.

The night air was heavy with their scent and beyond the cliffs, the sea flashed silver in the moonlight. It was all very spectacular with the Vedra two or three miles or so to my right, a great, solid hump of rock rearing more than a thousand feet out of the sea.

I paused on the brow of the road close to an old ruined mill, a well-known landmark, and got out to admire the view. I reached for a cigarette and somewhere close at hand, a woman screamed, high-pitched and full of terror.

A second later, a naked girl ran out of the darkness into the headlights of the jeep.

2 The Love Goddess (#u1dbf373b-c49f-563b-ad8e-e248ee91b40e)

It was as if the camera had stopped turning, freezing the shot for a moment. Dark hair cut very close to the skull - unnaturally short - even the men were wearing it longer that year. Wide eyes above high cheekbones, filled with a kind of calm desperation rather than fear.

And the rest of her, as was to be expected, was calculated to take the breath away. Firm, round breasts, rather small but sharply pointed, the flat belly of a young girl, the hair dark between the thighs.

She came straight into my arms as if unable to stop that head-long flight, clutched at my sweater for a moment then pushed me away with a sudden, desperate cry. I grabbed hold of her by the wrists and held on tight.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s all right,’ then repeated myself in Spanish for good measure.

She went very still, staring up at me, gasping for breath like the hunted animal she was, not saying a word, and a man ran out of the darkness.

Hippies, they will tell you, are God’s own chosen people. Flower folk. Gentle souls who only want to drop out of the hell that is modern industrial society. Maybe that was true once when they were content with marijuana, but things have changed since they got on to heroin and L.S.D., and most of the crowd who’d washed up on the shores of Ibiza had drifted up from the bottom of a cess pool in my estimation.

The character who crouched a yard or two away, chest heaving as he fought for breath, was a vintage specimen. His black hair hung well below his shoulders and he wore a plaited leather headband, a scarlet shirt secured by a broad leather belt with a round brass buckle, six inches across, that glowed in the headlights like a small moon. The one incongruous feature were the wire spectacles, the eyes glinting behind them like some malevolent fox, on finding the farmer between him and the chicken.

I didn’t need to hear his crazed laugh to know he was as high as a kite or the sight of his shaking hands. It was round about then that two more came crashing out of the pine trees, one of them losing his balance and arriving in an untidy heap in the middle of the road. He got to his feet as the other joined him and they ranged themselves behind Redshirt.

They really were quite something. Identical twins from the look of them and barefooted. Filthy, ragged creatures with tangled beards and long, matted hair, like something out of a child’s nightmare about wild men from the woods coming to get you.

Redshirt spread his arms wide and said in a surprisingly soft voice, ‘Plenty for everyone, man. You wait your turn is all.’

I said to the girl, ‘Get in the jeep. You’ll find a reefer jacket in the back.’

As I opened the door for her he came in fast and when he was close enough, I gave him a good, old-fashioned boot in the crutch. In other circumstances it might have killed or crippled him, but the fact that I was only wearing canvas rope-soled sandals took a little of the steam out of things.

In any event, the end result was perfectly satisfactory. He kept on going for a moment, carried forward by the momentum of his own rush, did a rather neat somersault and ended up in the ditch at the side of the road, curled into a very tight ball.

I shoved the girl into the jeep and scrambled in beside her as one of the Terrible Twins howled like a dog and rushed me. I gave him the door full in the face, rammed my foot down hard and took the jeep forward. I had a final impression of the other gibbering like some great ape in the headlights, then he bounced to one side like a rubber ball and we were away.

The girl leaned over the seat, as exciting and disturbing a sight as any man could wish for, and searched vainly in the shadows for the reefer coat. I gave it half-a-mile, just to be on the safe side, then pulled into the side of the road on a small bluff that overlooked the sea. I found the coat, gave it to her then got out of the jeep and walked to the edge of the cliffs. As I lit a cigarette the door slammed behind me. When I turned, the girl was watching me. She’d buttoned the reefer to the neck and turned up the sleeves, but it was still five sizes too large. The contrast between how she now looked and her former condition was incongruous enough to be almost funny.

She came forward, hands in pockets and I offered her a cigarette which she refused. ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

Her answer was to collapse against me with a long, shuddering sigh. I got an arm around her quickly and held on tight.

After a while, she pulled away. ‘Thank you. I’m all right now.’ Her English was excellent, but with a pronounced French accent.

I said, ‘I’d choose my company a little more carefully another time if I were you.’

She ignored that one and turned to look out to sea again. ‘It is really very beautiful, this world of ours, don’t you agree?’

Which, considering what had gone before, was calculated to take the wind out of anyone’s sails. But she was right, of course. It was a night to thank God for.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.’

She looked up at me, frowning slightly. ‘You’re a strange man. You can be so gentle, yet back there …’

‘I know, angel,’ I said. ‘Red in tooth and claw. I served my apprenticeship in a rough school. Of course, I could have passed by on the other side. Would you have preferred that?’

‘Please forgive me. I’m being very stupid.’ She held out her hand. ‘My name is Claire Bouvier and I’m really very grateful.’