Sleeping Tiger by Rosamunde Pilcher Read Free Book Online Page B

worst of her apprehensions had more than been fulfilled. She had lost her suitcase and she had lost her money. And she still had to get to Cala Fuerte.
    At last it was over. The Guardia Civil squared off his papers and stood up. Selina thanked him, and shook hands. He looked surprised, but still did not smile.
    Together, Selina and Toni crossed the now empty airport building, went out through the glass doors, and stopped, facing each other. Selina held her coat over her arm, for it had begun to get uncomfortably warm, and watched him, waiting for him to make the first move.
    He took off his dark glasses.
    She said, “I still have to get to Cala Fuerte.”
    â€œYou have no money.”
    â€œBut you’ll get paid, I promise you. When we get to Cala Fuerte … my … father will pay your fare.”
    Toni frowned enormously. “Your father? You have a father here? Why didn’t you say?”
    â€œIt wouldn’t have made any difference. We … we couldn’t get in touch with him. Could we?”
    â€œYour father lives in Cala Fuerte?”
    â€œYes. At a house called the Casa Barco. I am sure he will be there, and will pay you.” Toni watched her, suspicious and unbelieving. “And you can’t just leave me here. I haven’t even got my plane ticket back to London.”
    He stared into space for a bit, then decided to light a cigarette. He was giving nothing away, and refusing to commit himself.
    â€œYou said you’d take me,” Selina went on. “And I’ll see that you’re paid. I promise.”
    His cigarette was lighted. He blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and his black eyes swivelled back to Selina’s face. She looked anxious and pale, but also, undoubtedly, well-to-do. The ruined handbag was alligator, and the good shoes matched. The scarf was silk, and both the dress and the coat of expensive wool. Sometimes, as she moved, Toni glimpsed the gold of a thin chain around her neck, and she wore a gold watch. There was, undoubtedly, money around—if not in the handbag, then somewhere. It was only March and there were not yet so many taxi fares that he could afford to turn down a good one. And this girl, this young Inglesa, did not look capable of tricking anybody.
    He made up his mind. “All right,” he said at last. “We go.”

4
    Made beneficent by his own kindness, Toni talked expansively.
    â€œSan Antonio, until five years ago, was a very poor island. The communications with Spain were lousy, only a small boat twice a week. But now we have the airport, so that visitors come and in the summer there are a lot of people, and things are getting O.K.”
    Selina thought that the first thing that needed to get O.K. was the surface of the roads. The one they were on was unsurfaced and rutted with car tracks, on which the aged Oldsmobile, which was Toni’s taxi, rocked and bucketed like a ship at sea. It wound, between low, dry-stone walls, through a countryside squared off into little farmsteads. The ground looked stony and unpromising, the squat buildings had been bleached by the fierce sun to the colour of pale sand. The women, who worked in the fields, wore black skirts to their ankles and black scarves about their heads. The men were in faded blue, ploughing the unresponsive earth, or jolting, in wooden carts, behind a pair of mules. There were flocks of goats, and scrawny chickens, and every mile or so a well, circled by a patient, blinkered horse, and a water-wheel, spilling brimming buckets into the irrigation ditches.
    Selina noticed this, and said, “But you had rain last night.”
    â€œThat was the first rain for months. We are always short of water. There are no rivers, only springs. The sun is already hot, and the ground dries very fast.”
    â€œWe flew through a storm last night, over the Pyrenees.”
    â€œThe bad weather has been in the Mediterranean for days.”
    â€œIs it