Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

London’s East End. ‘I mean, you’d pay for somethin’ like that at Disney World.’
    After an hour, the plane took off again. Between Turkey and Cyprus they were served with a hard square of bread and goat cheese which looked as if it had been stamped out of a machine, washed down with sour-cherry juice.
    Agatha felt the plane beginning to descend again. More turbulence, this time a thunderstorm. The plane lurched and bucked like a wild thing and, looking out of the window, Agatha saw to her dismay that the whole plane appeared to be covered in sheets of blue lightning. Again, the passengers smiled and chatted and smoked.
    Agatha could not keep quiet any longer. ‘He shouldn’t try to land in this weather,’ she said to the woman next to her.
    ‘Oh, they can land in anything, luv. Pilot’s Turkish. They’re good.’
    ‘Ladies and gentles,’ said a soothing voice. ‘We are shortly about to land at Erçan airport.’
    Again noisy applause on landing. Agatha peered out. It had been raining. She shuffled off the back of the plane on to the staircase, which had not been properly attached to the plane and bobbed and dipped and swayed dangerously.
    I’ll swim home, thought Agatha.
    Having successfully reached the tarmac, she realized the heat was suffocating. It was like moving through warm soup. Wearily she walked into the airport buildings. It looked more like a military airport than a civilian one. It had actually been an RAF airfield up until 1975, and not much had been done to it since then.
    She waited in a long line at passport control, a great number of the Turkish Cypriots having British passports. Her friend of the aeroplane said behind her, ‘Ask them for a form. Don’t let them stamp your passport.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Agatha, swinging around.
    ‘Because if you want to go to Greece, they won’t let you in there if you’ve got one of our stamps on your passport, but they’ll give you a form and stamp that and then you can take it out of your passport, luv, and throw it away afterwards.’
    Agatha thanked her, got her form, filled it in and went to wait for her luggage.
    And waited.
    ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ she demanded angrily.
    No one replied, although a few smiled at her cheerfully. They talked, they smoked, they hugged each other.
    Agatha Raisin, pushy and domineering, had landed among the most laid-back people in the world.
    By the time the luggage arrived and she had arranged her two large suitcases on to a trolley and got through customs, she was soaking with sweat and trembling with fatigue.
    She had booked into the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia and had told them by telephone before she left England to have a taxi waiting for her.
    At first, as she scanned the crowd of waiting faces at the airport, she thought no one was there to meet her. Then she saw a man holding up a card which said, ‘Mrs Rashin.’
    ‘Dome Hotel?’ asked Agatha without much hope.
    ‘Sure,’ said the taxi driver. ‘No problem.’
    Agatha wondered if there might be some Mrs Rashin looking for a taxi, but she was too tired to care.
    She sank thankfully into the back seat. The black night swirled past her beyond the steamy windows. The taxi swung off a dual carriageway, through some army chicanes and then began to climb up a precipitous mountain road. Jagged mountains stood up against the night sky.
    Then the driver said, ‘Kyrenia,’ and far below on her right Agatha could see the twinkling lights of a town – and somewhere down there was James Lacey.
    The Dome Hotel is a large building on the waterfront of Kyrenia, Turkish name Girne, which has seen better days and has a certain battered colonial grandeur. There is something endearing about the Dome. Agatha checked in and had her bags carried up to her room. She switched on the air-conditioning, bathed and got ready for bed, too tired to unpack her suitcases.
    She stretched out on the bed. But exhausted as she was, sleep would not come. She tossed and turned and then got out of bed again.
    She fumbled with the curtains, drew them back, opened the windows and then the shutters.
    She walked out on to a small balcony, her anger draining away. The Mediterranean, silvered by moonlight, stretched out before her, calm and peaceful. The air smelt of jasmine and the salt tang of the sea. She leaned her hands on the iron railing at the edge of the balcony and took deep breaths of warm air. The waves of the sea crashed on the rocks below and to her left was a