Page 18 of The Island of Lost Girls

‘I – maybe … they check the passports when the ferry comes in, don’t they? Can you check the records? See if she’s in there?’

‘Is confidential,’ he says.

‘She’s only a child!’ she wails again.

The xandarm abruptly turns his back to her and calls out to his colleagues. Their feet drop to the floor and they listen, and she hears a few words she half-recognises. Filja. Mama. Perdida. Pasaporte. The older of the colleagues replies and he nods in response, picks up the phone and dials.

Robin waits, afraid to ask what’s happening in case she somehow sabotages the outcome. As the phone is answered, the officer drops into Kastellani and speaks rapidly. Sinjora. Filja. Perdida. Forse loqo. No sé. Si. Si.

He hangs up. Looks at her again. Points to a wooden bench that sits against the wall by the door, in the shadows.

‘You wait,’ he says.

She waits for nearly three hours. The bench is shallow, and she can never find a position to sit in that doesn’t make her feel as if she is about to slide off onto the floor. And she quickly regrets not having thought to buy a bottle of water, but she senses that if she deserts her post even for a few minutes, she will find herself back at square one. So she sits on in the afternoon heat, bag in lap, and watches the minute hand crawl across the face of a giant clock looted from some long-gone steamer.

As the hour hand approaches three, the door opens once again, and a man walks in. A sweaty man, balding pate damp and tummy hanging over the belt of his suit trousers. A good suit, though. Not cheap.

Even from her seat, Robin can smell the fumes of alcohol and cigars. But, when he comes in, the one she’s started to think of as ‘her’ policeman jumps to his feet. He points at Robin and the man turns, slightly unsteadily, to look at her.

He shambles over. ‘Sinjora?’ he says.

She looks up, hopefully.

‘I am Cosmo Albert. Chief of Police, La Kastellana island. If you will follow me, please?’

He leads her into a back room. An old wooden table with five chairs, and on its surface a paper bag, a knife and the remains of a salami, a jar of cornichons sitting open beside it. The room smells savoury and garlicky, and damp from its proximity to the water. An old computer with a boxy monitor, behind which is another picture – an oil painting, this time – of St James slaying the Moor.

She remarks on it as he sweeps up the sausage, re-lids the jar and puts it all away in the fridge. ‘I see you have St James here,’ she says. ‘There’s one in my room in my penzion, too.’

‘Yes,’ he replies, his back to her. ‘He is our saint, our patron. So he is everywhere. He keep us safe. Sant’Iago and our duqa, they keep our borders strong. That is why his birthday is the Saint’s day. Whatever day the duke is born, his birthday has been same-same for thousand years. Since Duqa Lorenzo, the Relief of La Kastellana. They keep invaders away.’

Except the ones with money, she thinks. Those seem to be conquering this place without any pushback at all. But she keeps her counsel.

He encroaches on her personal space a little as he returns to the table. Smiles close up into her face and breathes his fumes, huffing slightly.

‘Some people believe that our duke is descended from St James,’ he says, and grins with a set of unnaturally pearly whites. ‘But I don’t know.’ He sits in front of the computer and boots it up. ‘Others say they are from the Roman emperor who was here. Heliogabalus. I would think is more likely. Heliogabalus was here for vacations, after all, and you know how the Romans were. Heliogabalus wasn’t saint.’ He snorts with pleasure at his witticism. ‘Sit, sinjora. Please.’

Robin sits. He pecks at the keyboard, index fingers only, logging in, and she waits. A couple of mouse clicks and he turns back to her.

‘So, you lose your daughter?’

‘Not lo—’ she begins to protest, then, humbly, ‘Yes.’

‘How you lost her?’

‘She ran away … left home. Last year. We had a disagreement, and she left … ’

‘A disagreement?’

‘I – yes.’

‘What about?’

What’s that got to do with you?

‘The usual stuff. Teenage stuff. She didn’t like my rules, I didn’t like her behaviour … ’

She searches in her bag for a flyer, lays it down on the table. He eyes it impassively, then looks up. ‘And why you think is here?’

‘Something one of her friends showed me. On the internet. She’s been messaging her friends on an app called PingMe.’

‘An app,’ he says, pensively, as though she’s given him some sort of clue.

‘Yes. They all thought it was some hilarious secret, that they were protecting her from me or something, and all this time I could have found her—’

He interrupts. Looks her hard in the eye with something akin to contempt.

‘And why, sinjora,’ he asks, ‘do you think she wishes to be found?’