The Ghost Of Villa Winter

2. The Journey South-2

In her side vision she caught Mr Suave fiddling with his fanny pack. Not an American phrase she was inclined to favour under normal circumstances – she found it crude in British translation – but there was an occasion for everything and this, she decided, was it. Fanny pack. One with multiple zippers. At his feet lay a red backpack, bulging full. Seemed to be bringing with him enough paraphernalia for an entire weekend. They’d be back in Puerto del Rosario by five. Not so suave, after all. The suave don’t wear fanny packs and carry around red backpacks. The suave would have only a slim leather wallet in the breast pocket. She was stereotyping, she knew, and you could never properly judge a book by its cover; she’d made enough errors over the years to know that. But overall, she had a high success rate when it came to first impressions. What she was sure of was no one on this tour appeared the least bit interesting, to her at any rate, and now she couldn’t decide if she was disappointed or relieved. The absence of a congenial companion meant she could give the trip her full attention, particularly when it came to sensing the atmosphere of the mysterious Villa Winter, but it might have been fun to share her insights with a favourable soul. Perhaps someone of that sort would join the tour down the coast. When she’d booked, she was told she had purchased the penultimate ticket. She shifted in her seat, making sure the base of her spine was hard up against the seat back for the sake of her sore hip, forcing herself yet again to adopt an attitude of optimistic anticipation. There was no point going on a guided tour if you were determined not to enjoy it. Misgivings be damned!

The driver closed the side door and hurried to his seat behind the wheel as the irate official drew near. A rev of the engine and they were away.

They had not journeyed as far as the main-road roundabout when a violent screech ripped through the tour bus, succeeded by a loud apology from the driver who appeared to be adjusting his headset.

‘Bonjour. My name is Francois,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘Welcome to Winter Tours.’

The party waited for him to say more but he fell silent, concentrating on the road.

What he lacked in the vocal department, he made up for with his feet, choosing to be heavy on the brake and causing the tour party to lurch forwards at every intersection. Mr Not-so-suave gripped the backrest of the seat in front, his fingers catching some of Miss Sparrow’s hair. At the next intersection, as her head lurched forwards, she gave a little start and reached a hand behind her. Clarissa suppressed a laugh. Mr Not-at-all-suave caught Clarissa’s eye and gave her an apologetic smile. She thought the gesture misplaced. It was the bird-woman he should have apologised to.

‘It’s my back,’ he said.

‘Bad, is it?’

‘Had I known…’

‘Had any of us known, I daresay.’

A cultured accent, Home Counties, Sussex probably.

She drew her near-empty canvas bag to her side and turned to look out her window.

She had chosen the coastal side of the bus, the sunny side but for the thickening haze. Her single-seated companions enjoyed the views of the mountains. With their chalky rocky scree, their interesting shapes, their grandiosity, the way they emerged discretely out of the plain, those mountains made Fuerteventura a natural sculpture park. Paco told her they were the remnants of three ancient shield volcanoes, the ferocious wind having eroded the softer rock over many millennia, leaving a series of ridges. The ranges on the western coast formed a massif, all sensual undulations, moulded, like the curves of a pregnant woman. There were very few trees about to detract from the nudity.

As appealing as the mountains were, she had no strong need to gaze at what she had been introduced to already. Better the others enjoyed the privilege. Claire and Paco had made a point of taking her down every road on the island, save for the road to Cofete. Odd, they’d never taken her down there.

The leaflet advertising the tour afforded an opportunity to test an idea. Ever since she heard about the strange theories surrounding the old farmhouse, of German U-boats and secret bunkers, she’d felt drawn to the place. Ghosts spoke a language of their own and if a member of the spirit world inhabited the abandoned abode, she was sure to pick up on it. She was never wrong in these matters. Only three of the thirty or more premises she’d investigated on so-called ghost tours had contained a legitimate ghost. She prided herself on her mediumistic prowess. She was apt to pick up on preternatural inhabitants of places said not to be haunted. Sometimes she thought she could singlehandedly re-write history based on the information she had gleaned, but that was being arrogant. She followed her dreams and her visions and her intuition, that was all. A natural psychic and a cynic to boot. At her age, it was a healthy mix. Would she encounter the spirits of the dead in Villa Winter? There seemed little doubt.

Once past the airport and the tourist enclave of Caleta de Fuste, the road curved inland, rounding a mountainous ridge before cutting across the lava scree of the more recent eruptions near Pozo n***o. The landscape here was always mesmerising, the hazy sunlight picking out the clefts and ridges of the mountains all around. Many a time Clarissa complained to Claire there were not enough places to pull over and admire the scenery. The island benefited from being traversed on foot. Not that she was fit or agile enough for that.

The others on the bus seemed equally taken by what they saw. Even the boys in the back had gone quiet.

The bus bypassed Gran Tarajal and Costa Calma and was making straight for Morro Jable, the last town before they entered the wild land of the island’s southern tip. Having come this far, she thought perhaps there were to be no further passengers.

She was wrong. When the bus pulled up at the public bus stop in the centre of Morro Jable – once an isolated fishing village, now what amounted in its entirety to a tourist resort – one plump, squat and eager-looking couple who stood out from the locals in their figure hugging I Love Fuerteventura T-shirts stopped craning their necks and scurried to the kerb. A deeply tanned, bulldozer of a man sporting a Caesar-cut hair style and a stubble beard stood a few paces behind them, looking like he’d materialised from an advert selling sports cars or jewellery in a glossy magazine, too cool to lift his eyes from his phone.

Francois went and opened the side door, and the man pushed past the couple and entered the bus in a single stride, choosing the double seat behind Clarissa. His perfume followed him – designer patchouli and no doubt expensive – and she noted the embroidered rainbow on his muscle shirt. She sensed him behind her, exuding cool indifference. The couple were still fussing with what appeared to be their tickets.

‘I told you the bus would be late, Margaret,’ the tourist, a balding, red-headed man, said in a thick Birmingham accent as he entered the bus. ‘There was no need to fret.’

The woman, Margaret – a female version of her husband, although her hair was thick and curly and more sandy than red – did not look in the least fretful. He did. But his manner changed in an instant when he mounted the two steps and beheld Mr Non-suave who, Clarissa saw, was cowering in his seat.

‘Richard Parry! Well, I never!’ The man piled into the seat in front Clarissa and swivelled round to face the man she now knew as Richard. As Margaret squeezed by her husband to take up the window seat beside him, the man twisted round even further, the better to observe his friend. Friend? Clarissa thought not. Not by the way Richard transparently wanted the floor to swallow him up. A rather extreme reaction and one she thought he’d do well to hide. Whatever must the poor red-headed chap think.

He appeared oblivious. A wide grin lit his round, freckled face.

‘Fancy meeting you on a tour bus. I can’t believe it. I really can’t. What on earth are you doing in Fuerteventura anyway? I never expected you to travel beyond Lanzarote. I always thought of you tucked away in that house of yours – up there in Haría, isn’t it? – churning out your next book. How is the writing? Good? I have to say I haven’t bought your latest yet. I must apologise for that. But to my credit, if you can permit me such an indulgence, I’ve gone back to reading Killer’s Heels. Third time I’ve read that book and I think it might be my favourite. Mind you, Haversack Harvest is a corker, too. What stopped you writing books set in Bunton? I expect you’ve been influenced by the islands. They do have a powerful effect on people. Margaret, look who we’ve got for company.’

‘I’ve seen. Hello, Mr Parry.’

‘Don’t call him that. He’s Richard to us. We’re practically old friends.’

‘Fred, Margaret, it’s good to see you both,’ Richard managed with a strained grin.

Francois threw the gears into reverse and everyone other than the newcomers braced for the inevitable lurch forwards. It came as Margaret was buckling herself into her seat and she raised a hand to the double seat in front and let out a soft cry. Her husband, Fred, found himself thrown, shoulder first, into its backrest, causing one of the matrons to half-turn her head. The motion ended the conversation, and Fred reached for his seat belt and attended to his wife.

Richard breathed a sigh as he turned his attention to the view. An author? Perhaps this Richard fellow might prove a touch more interesting than she’d surmised. She immediately thought of Trevor, her Jean Genet. How the genius must suffer for their art.

Francois, who’d remained silent during the entire drive down the coast, took the opportunity of the sweeping bends as he drove up into the deep valley above Morro Jable to launch into a short speech, peering into the rear vision mirror, the better to see the lads at the back. The tour party looked attentive.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Winter Tours.’ He pronounced Winter with a V. ‘We are now driving into the wild south of Fuerteventura, known as Jandía.’ He pronounced the J as an aitch in the usual Spanish way, but with particular emphasis, which came across as a touch Germanic. Clarissa noted he hadn’t pronounced the J in Morro Jable with quite the same vim. ‘First, we head down to the end of the island, then back and over the mountain to Cofete, where we have lunch. After, we visit Villa Winter. Any questions?’ He paused, but no one spoke. ‘The road is rough,’ he said, scanning the group in the mirror as a supercilious grin spread across his face. The bus was making straight for a hairpin bend.

‘Steady on,’ Fred yelled, voicing the concern no doubt felt by the rest of the tour bus.

Francois braked and laughed.

‘Don’t worry. I drive this road many times and I go slow and safe.’

He was doing nothing of the sort. Fred opened his mouth, but before he could form a word, Francois threw the bus into the bend, causing Fred to lean into Margaret and Richard to almost slide out of his seat. Clarissa caught his gaze and gave him a sympathetic smile before turning her face to the window. A plastic drink bottle rolled across the floor, hitting Clarissa’s foot as they rounded the curve. She wanted to pick it up but the centrifugal force was too great. She had no idea who it belonged to.