‘Oh, that’s…oh, I’m…yes, maybe….’ I blustered. Then remembered what I was here for. ‘Was there another problem? With Christina, I mean?’
And I had that feeling I often get with mathematics, where the answer is there, and you know the answer is there, it is in your brain and taking shape but not fully visible.
More elaborate, slow breathing. She closed her eyes, meditatively. I wondered if she had fallen asleep.
‘Alberto Ribas…’ she said, on her third exhalation. ‘That is the person to ask.’
‘So you think he is responsible for her death?’
‘She predicted her own death. She just didn’t know who was going to kill her. The police spoke to Alberto, and nothing happened to him. But…’ Sabine looked at me for a long while after that but. And then it came. ‘I think he is the one person who truly knows what happened to her.’
I nodded. I said thank you. And as I walked away, I kept seeing that necklace at the bottom of the sea. I knew there was now no way I was going to leave the island without first talking to Alberto Ribas. So when I got in my car, I typed ‘Atlantis Scuba’ into the phone. But according to satnav no such place existed. I just had a list of other diving centres. Divestar Ibiza. OrcaSub Ibiza Diving Centre. Centro de Buceo SCUBA. Anfibios Ibiza. But absolutely no Atlantis Scuba.
So I typed instead ‘Cala d’Hort’ and started driving, south.
The Snake and the Goat
An hour later I was on the beach. A short arc-shaped stretch of busy sand. There was a restaurant. A fresh-fish and paella place. A rustic-looking straw-roofed boutique selling summer dresses and swimwear. The beach itself was full of people and parasols and sun loungers and a couple of pedaloes were out at sea (I remembered me and Karl arguing on one in Corfu, decades before, while Daniel kept diving off the back).
There was an incredible view of Es Vedrà, the rocky islet that rose out of the sea in a dramatic, near-vertical fashion. High limestone dotted with sparse patches of green. The one in Sabine’s painting. The one that had unsettled me on the plane. The one that was meant to have magnetic properties. I strolled along the beach, my hips aching a little. It was baking. I was wearing a long skirt and a blouse, which made me the most overdressed person within a mile radius.
I walked until the sand became pebbles. I reached the beach huts. They had wooden slats for doors and most had boats or paddleboards in them. A couple had solar panels on their makeshift corrugated iron roofs. One had washing out to dry. A child sat on top of one of the roofs, reading. I wondered which hut Alberto called home. I walked up some stone steps to the terrace of a restaurant and, further, to a dusty car park. It was over the other side of the beach from where I had parked – way up the road – but I kept walking, to the red path and trees beyond, smelling pine and hearing the pulsing chirp of cicadas. And eventually, I found a small shack with a faded sign outside saying Atlantis Scuba – Centro Buceo. It was a concrete cube with a flimsy wooden door. The most easy-to-miss diving centre in the world.
I hesitated. I inhaled. I exhaled.
Anxiety made my whole body alert, like the early onset of a panic attack. It was a feeling I was used to. A feeling like my existence was a delicate thread that could vanish in a sudden wind.
My skin prickled.
I knocked. I listened. I heard nothing but cicadas.
This would have been a great time to turn around and walk back to my car and forget all about it. Who did I think I was? Harrison Ford? It was ridiculous. But I was sure I could hear something now. Something above the buzz of insects. So I pushed the door open.
Inside the hut I found absolutely no one at all. Or rather: no human. The air was thick with heat. I scanned around. A desk, some diving equipment, lots of old cardboard boxes on shelves, two chairs, a computer, a futon and a bed sheet, a bag of washing from a laundrette, a dolphin calendar, an old sticker protesting GOLF, NO! and a wooden signpost pointing to the sky, saying Alpha Centauri 4.367 años luz.
And a goat.
An actual goat, front half black, back half white, with wide, wide horns and a strong musky smell that was far too much in this heat.
‘Oh, hello,’ I said, in quiet surprise.
The goat said nothing. And went back to eating oats in a bowl.
I noticed a scruffy pile of flyers on the desk. They were the same as the one Sabine had handed me at the hippy market. Advertising the protest against developing Es Vedrà.
I remembered the words of the taxi driver. ‘It begins with A.’ The well-dressed rich man who had visited Christina. Was the A for Alberto?
Then I heard footsteps and a man mumbling to himself.
The man walked into the hut with his flip-flops and his denim shorts and large salt-and-pepper beard. This was not the man Pau had talked about. This man was topless, but his chest hair almost constituted an item of clothing in its own right. His skin shone from coconut-scented suntan lotion. It took me a second to confirm to myself that this indeed was the man from the author photograph. I hesitated because – and I will just come out with it – I was thrown by the fact that he was carrying a snake. It was black with yellow markings and semi-coiled around his arm. The serpent’s head was now upright, its eyes staring at me. I wasn’t particularly scared of pets. Or any animal. But the combination of goat, snake and hirsute human male in such a claustrophobic location was a bit much.
‘What is the matter?’ he asked me, in accented English, punctuated with a chuckle. ‘You look like you have seen a snake!’
Alberto
He had the look not so much of a pirate but a castaway, with the unkempt hair and the beard escaping his face in every direction, and youthful eyes that shone like a sunrise through an ancient ruin. His eyes aside, it was a lot to deal with. He triggered a primal sense of disgust that I couldn’t ignore.
‘I think I am in the wrong place.’ I don’t know why I said that. Fear, I suppose.
‘That makes two of you, man…’ Alberto said, sounding almost American for a moment.
‘Sorry?’
He nodded to the snake, which was now migrating to his other arm. ‘Snakes! They are great company. The most intellectual of reptiles. Their minds are full of fascinating philosophical riddles. But we are not meant to have snakes! For thousands of years Ibiza had no serpents, no snakes.’
‘Oh.’
He clearly thought I was here for a history lesson.
‘The ancient Phoenicians first settled here because there was nothing deadly on the island. No dangerous animals. No dangerous plants. It was a blessed island. Even twenty years ago, no snakes. And now? Snakes, snakes, snakes. And it is not good. It is not good at all…You see, they may not hurt us. They have no veneno…’
‘Venom?’
‘Exactly,’ he pointed at me as if I had just cracked the Enigma code. He spoke English more fluently than I did, but he liked to decorate his sentences with bits of Spanish as much as possible, to remind me where I was. ‘But they hurt the balance of life. They are destroying the lizards. We used to have lizards everywhere. Now we still do have them, but they are being finished off by this one and his friends.’
The goat had gobbled the oats and was slowly heading out of the door.
‘Hasta luego, Nostradamus,’ Alberto said, waving a cheery goodbye to the goat. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said, as if he had expected the goat to say ‘goodbye’ right back. Then Alberto looked at me. ‘He is a misanthropic soul. Common among goats. But he will be back for supper. He always is.’
