Free Small Wars by Sadie Jones Page B

as if Lottie’s behaviour were her own.
    ‘Lottie, what’s Meg doing?’ she said.
    Davis, unused to children, just smiled down at her. ‘I say,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’ve got my batman down here. Shall I give you a lift up to Lionheart? I’m meeting your husband to – Well, we have to go up to one of the villages, but I’ve time, if you don’t mind coming along now.’
    ‘You’re with Hal today?’
    Davis looked at her for a second, then said, as if he hadn’t heard, ‘Should you like a lift up?’
    ‘Yes. Thank you. Right now?’
    ‘Right now would be best. I don’t want to keep the major waiting.’
    Clara picked up Lottie, put her on her hip and went to the door of the shop, leaning into the grocery-smelling dark. ‘Deirdre? Lieutenant Davis says he’ll give us a lift up – will you be long?’
    ‘Oh, jolly good, Roger’s fading. Right now?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll just finish up.’
    Clara was relieved Deirdre would be with them.
    Deirdre sat in the front of Davis’s Land Rover, leaning her arm restlessly on the open window and holding Roger around the middle, and Davis sat practically on the gearstick between her and his driver. Clara and the girls were in the back. Deirdre was quiet, the engine noise made it hard for Clara to speak and she had to keep the girls pinned down over the bumps.
    The Land Rover stopped at the first street of Lionheart, by the Devonshire Road sign. ‘Will this do?’
    ‘Lovely,’ said Clara.
    ‘Will you be seeing Tony Grieves later?’ said Deirdre, suddenly, and Davis said,
    ‘Yes, I should think so.’
    ‘Well be sure and tell him hello, won’t you? From Mrs Innes.’ She said it challengingly, meeting his eye.
    ‘Certainly. Goodbye.’
    She opened the door and put Roger down first, then climbed down after him and hauled her basket out. Davis jumped out and opened Clara’s door for her. He nodded to her obligingly and smiled. He was a little smaller than Hal, possibly, and narrow. His narrowness was boyish.
    ‘Abyssinia,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘I expect so.’
    He turned to Deirdre. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Innes.’
    ‘Yes – don’t forget what I told you.’ Deirdre was impatient, and cross with Roger about something, walking away from them, so Clara and the twins waved off the Land Rover as it turned and drove away.

    At Episkopi Garrison, after lunch, the officers often headed home or to Evdimou beach, which was in the next bay along to the west. The café at Evdimou was run by a Greek named Gregoris; they could drink and relax without the formality of the mess. Hal often went there with Mark Innes, and whiled away the afternoon hours when Mark didn’t want to go home to Deirdre. He never said so, of course, but it was understood. Hal would keep him company, staring at the horizon, drinking bottles of Keo beer and resting his mind in peace, between the business of soldiering and the business of Clara and the girls.
    That afternoon, though, as Davis had said, there was a job to be done. Kirby was driving Hal and Davis to find Loulla Kollias’s wife, Madalyn. After the raid on the farmhouse and the arrest of her husband, she and her children had gone to stay at her sister’s farm on the plains in the middle of the island.
    Davis had a book with him on the journey, which he tried to read, whenever the road was smooth enough. Hal found himself irritated by what he took to be an affectation. There was something about Davis that got his back up, a slouching, sixth-form sensibility; he seemed unable to put himself aside for the job in hand, and at one point had said, ‘Rich, isn’t it, sir? Public relations exercise for the widows and orphans.’
    Hal responded coolly: ‘It’s procedure, Davis. A man died in our custody. D’you expect us to put him out with the rubbish?’
    It took three hours to get there from Episkopi; a long drive, not improved by Davis’s company. They made a detour to the local police station where there was a muddle