An Air of Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘You suggested earlier, she liked the bottle.’

  ‘You don’t see many women as attached to it as she was.’

  ‘Would you say she was drunk when she went for a swim last night?’

  ‘Had to be, wanting to go in the dark. He tried to stop her; said she couldn’t swim well and shouldn’t be out on her own, but she wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘It’s slightly odd he didn’t go with her if he was so concerned.’

  ‘After all she’d said to him? He let her get on with it and went into the bar, same as anyone else would have done. After a while he came out and asked if she’d returned and when I told him she hadn’t, said he must see she was all right. The next thing, he’s dripping wet, yelling for a torch and to call the police.’

  ‘How long was there between her leaving here and his going out to try to find her?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say. There was paperwork to do and more of the guests were asking fool questions than usual . . . If you want a guess, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes.’

  ‘And how long between his going out and returning to raise the alarm?’

  ‘Could have been the same .or a bit more.’

  ‘So he must have been searching quite hard?’

  ‘From the look of him, he’d almost been swimming . . . Something funny been going on?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You asking questions.’

  ‘All I’m doing is tying to tidy up everything.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Escobar’s tone said he found difficulty in believing that.

  Alvarez left the hotel, crossed to his car and settled behind the wheel, but did not immediately drive off. After many years, a detective developed an instinctive ability to judge when someone was lying. He had become convinced Short had either been lying or concealing pertinent facts. But because his judgement was based on instinct, it could be very wrong. Perhaps he was allowing his visual opinion of Short to colour his judgement? All the evidence suggested Short had tried to prevent his aunt’s going swimming, had become worried, had gone in search of her . . .

  It seemed odd Short had forgotten the name of Lady Gerrard. Titles were relatively rare and what was rare was more readily remembered. Yet why would he lie? Much more reasonable to accept that memory was ever illogical, disappearing when most required, appearing when least wanted . . . Two thousand, two hundred and fifty euros was a considerable amount to carry around in cash; a foolish amount. And from the little he had so far learned or discerned, Dora Coates was not a person one would expect to spend anything like that much on holiday. Small points, probably meaningless, yet which nevertheless raised question marks . . . He cursed his stupid brain. She had died because she had gone for a swim in the dark, too drunk to save herself when in trouble. What could be more straightforward? Why did he have to manufacture questions which could only cause a great deal of unnecessary work? What perversity of mind prompted him into being unable to accept the obvious?

  Seven

  YOU’RE VERY LATE,’ DOLORES SAID, AS ALVAREZ WALKED INTO the dining-room.

  ‘I had to question several people and this took longer than I realised.’

  ‘Why were you questioning them?’

  ‘To make certain the English woman died accidentally.’

  ‘But you surely said she’d drowned?’

  He crossed to the table, picked up the bottle of Soberano and poured himself a generous brandy, added four cubes of ice. ‘One of the easiest ways of concealing murder is by making it appear to be an accident by drowning.’

  ‘You’re saying she was murdered?’

  ‘I don’t yet know.’

  ‘If you’ve been questioning people, you must think she might have been.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Jaime said.

  She was so surprised by her husband’s unusual belligerence, it was several seconds before she said, with haughty annoyance: ‘Would you like to explain what is enough?’

  ‘You talking about Enrique’s work. It’s not right for a woman to be interested in such things.’

  ‘You claim to be qualified to decide what a woman may, or may not, be interested in?’

  ‘All I’m saying . . .’

  ‘Is words made vapid by alcohol.’

  ‘If you’re trying to suggest I’ve drunk too much . . .’

  ‘Why should I bother when that is so obvious?’

  ‘That’s stupid talk.’

  ‘As my mother told me, “A wife must often speak stupidly if she wishes her husband to understand her.” ’

  ‘Your mother didn’t—’

  ‘As far as I can tell,’ Alvarez cut in hurriedly, ‘the drowning was accidental, but I can’t ignore the doctor’s evidence.’

  ‘What was that?’ she asked, addressing Alvarez, but facing Jaime and silently daring him to complete what he had been going to say.

  Alvarez silently sighed with relief when it became obvious Jaime had recovered sufficient sense to say no more. If Dolores became annoyed, her cooking suffered. ‘When a person is drowning, she struggles violently before she dies and in the course of her struggles, her fingers can scrape . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Dolores said. She stood. ‘That a man – and of course it was a man – could force such agony on a woman does not surprise me, but it does fill my heart with sorrow.’ She crossed to the bead curtain and went through into the kitchen.

  Jaime spoke in a low voice. ‘She goes on and on to make you tell her and then when you do, won’t listen. How the hell do you understand?’

  ‘Only the devil can answer that.’

  Alvarez turned into Carrer Grifeu and slowed to read the numbers on the front doors. It was a road of terraced one-floor houses, originally the homes of fishermen and their families, now given a degree of individuality and made cheerful by the different colours in which doors, window frames, and shutters were painted and the window boxes filled with flowering plants. (The influence of foreigners was not all negative.) At the end of the road were several blocks of flats. He could easily remember when none of the houses had been recently painted because no one could afford the luxury of paint, there had been no window boxes because what wife would so publicly admit to wasting time, and beyond had been fields which reached to the mountains.

  He opened the front door of No. 21, stepped inside, and called out. An elderly woman who wore widow’s black – a custom quickly being lost – entered the front room. He introduced himself and her nervousness was immediate. She had been young in times when the police had to be feared. He dispelled any fears with warm friendliness and explained he wanted a word with Señora Eloisa Cardell. She told him she was Eloisa’s mother; her daughter was in her husband’s shop where she had to work far too hard because her husband was lazy and spent most of his time in the bars, as all men did. That was, all except officers of the law, she added hastily. Everyone knew they worked tirelessly for the good of everyone. He did not disagree. He asked her where was the shop?

  He drove down to the front, turned right. Several hundred metres on, he stopped on a solid yellow line, left the car, and walked into Cardell Treasures. A young assistant whose face he recognised, but whose name he could not remember, said Eloisa was in the office. He walked past tables on which were small leather goods, novelty items – many of which would not make suitable gifts for maiden aunts – and imitation weapons from the times of El Cid. Items which tourists would buy and on their return home, wonder why. The office was small and very cramped. Eloisa, in her middle thirties, attractive, dressed smartly, faced Alvarez with a self-confidence her mother lacked.

  ‘Is it a good season?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. The tourists look, but don’t buy. Perhaps it will improve when the Germans come – they spend more than the British.’

  A small man, his face disproportionately featured because of a very high forehead and disrupted by a small and inconsequential moustache, pushed past Alvarez and came to a stop by th
e desk. ‘Where’s the box of lambskin slippers?’

  ‘Wherever you left it,’ she said wearily.

  ‘Someone wants size thirty-nine and there’s none left outside. Find ’em, quick.’ He pushed past Alvarez once more as he hurried out.

  If that had been Eloisa’s husband, Alvarez judged his mother-in-law’s criticism to be justified. ‘On Tuesday, you told the Policia Local you’d heard a woman shouting at night. Will you tell me about it?’

  She spoke rapidly, even for a Mallorquin. She had put her two children to bed, cooked the meal, eaten, tidied up all the things the children had left on the floor, put some clothes in the washing machine, asked her husband to take their dog out for a walk while she washed up – but he had been busy watching the television – had left their house with Carlos – their Ibicencon hound – and taken him to the beach for a quick run. She knew . . . Well, she knew one wasn’t supposed to take one’s dog on to the sand . . .

  He waved aside such bureaucratic nonsense. ‘Did you take a torch with you?’

  ‘It wasn’t necessary. There wasn’t much of a moon, but there was enough light from the road to see where I was going.’

  ‘So what happened on the beach?’

  Carlos had run this way and that, as he always did; she’d found a piece of driftwood and thrown it into the sea because he loved swimming and he’d retrieved it and barked for her to throw again. Weary, because there was still work to be done, she’d been about to return home when she’d heard a cry.

  Her voice rose. ‘If only . . . Why was I so stupid as to think . . .’ She became silent, fidgeted with her fingers.

  ‘Señora,’ he said quietly, ‘we can only do what we think is right at the time. If, later, circumstances suggest it would have been better if we had acted differently, that cannot make us wrong since we do not possess foresight, only hindsight.’

  ‘You really think that’s right?’

  ‘I have had to learn it more times than I wish to remember.’

  Her fingers became still.

  ‘Tell me about the shouts.’

  The woman had cried out in English – she knew some English because it was necessary in her job. She had understood: ‘What are you doing? . . . Don’t . . . Please don’t.’ Then there had been silence. Initially, she had been scared and frightened, but had very quickly had second thoughts. It was a warm night, many couples walked the sand in the dark and then did what couples did. And because she’d heard no more, she’d assumed the woman had decided not to object further.

  ‘So there was no reason to remain alarmed?’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘God forgive me, I thought that if I continued walking along the beach I would meet them and be so embarrassed that I turned back.’

  ‘Before you did, how far could you see along the beach?’

  ‘Not very many metres, if you mean to see clearly.’

  ‘But a couple might have been visible at a distance, even if only as dark shadows?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You saw no shadows?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You did not think the cries might have come from the sea?’

  ‘Can’t you understand? I was so certain she must be on the beach.’

  ‘Of course I understand that; it’s how anyone would have thought. But looking back on things now, do you think the cry might have come from the sea?’

  She was silent for a while, her expression bitter. When she did speak, it was in so low a tone he had difficulty in understanding her. ‘I can’t tell.’

  ‘What was the time when you heard the shouting?’

  ‘I’m not certain.’

  Try to give me a rough idea.’

  ‘I left the house not long after ten thirty.’

  ‘And you heard the shouts how long afterwards?’

  ‘Maybe a little over ten, fifteen minutes. Is . . . is that when the English lady drowned?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ he lied, wanting to leave her with the chance to hope she had heard not the cry of a woman about to drown, but of a woman who had resisted passion until overwhelmed by it.

  Alvarez braked to a halt, shouted through the opened window. The elderly man in the field did not look up and used a mattock to unplug an irrigation channel to allow water to flow between two rows of sweet peppers. Swearing, Alvarez undid the seat-belt, opened the door, stepped out into the sharp sunshine. He shouted again. Was ignored again as the other replugged the one channel, opened the next.

  Alvarez walked a few metres to a gate, opened this, went up the field and then across. He recognised Fuentes. ‘Are you deaf?’

  ‘Watch where you stick your clodding feet.’

  ‘I’ll stick them where I want.’

  ‘In your mouth, most times.’ Fuentes straightened up, rested his hands on the end of the haft of the mattock.

  Alvarez studied the peppers. ‘Don’t look so good, do they?’

  ‘They ain’t so fat as you, if that’s what you means.’

  He looked across at the rows of tomatoes. They’d likely crop a lot better if you pinched out the side shoots like people do these days.’

  ‘If I wants more bloody Stupid advice, I’ll ask you,’ Fuentes said angrily.

  Satisfied he had gained his revenge for being made to leave the car and suffer the short walk in the heat, he said: ‘But the beans look as good as any I’ve seen this year.’

  Fuentes grunted.

  ‘Not so many working the fields these days, are there?’

  ‘The young don’t want to know what work is.’

  ‘There used not to be a square metre of land that wasn’t cultivated; now, field after field is left fallow.’

  Fuentes hawked and spat. ‘My grandson doesn’t know what he wants to do, so I said, take over my land. You’d have thought I was offering him a job cleaning out fosas septicas. Chasing skirt is all he’s keen on.’

  ‘In our day, we had to work as well as chase.’

  Their brief antagonism – the traditional banter of men of the soil – was lost as they contemplated how the lives of Mallorquins had changed since the tourists had come to the island in their millions.

  ‘I’m looking for an English person, name of Gerrard,’ Alvarez finally said.

  Fuentes noticed a small clump of newly surfaced weed and used the mattock to dig it out. ‘There’s two of ’em around here.’

  ‘Husband and wife?’

  ‘Two families. One’s in the big house, the other in the caseta up past Ca’n Fyor, not that you’ll know where that is.’

  ‘The old mill.’

  Fuentes was annoyed.

  ‘Where, I seem to remember, you once worked as lookout.’

  ‘That’s daft talk.’

  The grinding of corn had been a government monopoly and it had been a criminal offence for any individual to carry out such work without a licence. Mallorquins, never willingly observing the law, had been happy to buy wheat clandestinely milled provided it was cheaper than that on sale in the shops. Ca’n Fyor had served the local area. A spring on top of the hill – no one could offer a reasonable explanation as to why there was a spring at the top when common sense said it should be at the bottom – had been channelled into a holding tank, and when this was full, the water had been released to turn the grinding machinery concealed in a cave in the hillside. The noise of the machinery was considerable, so that when it was operating, there had had to be a look-out – a youngster, reliable but not demanding great rewards. They say that much of the contraband which was landed in Gala Tellai used to come past the mill on mules.’

  ‘Folks will say anything that’s stupid enough.’

  ‘You never saw a load of cigarettes pass?’

  ‘I’d have spoken up if I had.’

  ‘Now I know you’re lying!’ Alvarez wished Fuentes good crops, returned to his car.

  He drove past Ca’n Fyor – three buildings, one above the other,
on the side of the solitary two-hundred-metre hill – to the gently rising land which stretched to the mountains. On his left, twenty metres in from the road, was a caseta and beyond that, visible above pines, were the several roof levels of a large, modern house. Fuentes had said one of the Gerrard families lived in the caseta, but that seemed most unlikely; no English person would live in so mean a building. Fuentes, with true peasant guile, had been making a fool of him.

  He parked in front of the caseta, crossed to the front door, knocked. The door was opened by a woman in her middle thirties, attractive rather than pretty because of the considerable character in her face. ‘I’m looking for Lady Gerrard,’ he said in Mallorquin. ‘Can you tell me where she lives?’

  She looked at him, her brow furrowed, and it was obvious she was trying to understand what he had said.

  ‘You are English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He translated what he had previously asked her.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong house. My sister-in-law lives in Ca’n Jerome.’

  ‘Then I must apologise for troubling you. Perhaps you will tell me how to drive there?’

  ‘It’s up the track just past here. But I think she . . .’ She was stopped by a call from behind her. ‘Someone wants to talk to Heloise,’ she shouted back.

  Gerrard entered the sitting-room from the kitchen. ‘Would one term that unusual?’

  ‘Not if you were polite. Inspector Alvarez.’

  ‘Cuerpo General de Policia,’ Alvarez added.

  ‘A detective?’ Gerrard asked.

  ‘Yes, Señor.’

  ‘And you want a word with Heloise. What’s she been up to? Cat burglary sounds apposite.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ She spoke to Alvarez. ‘I have an idea Lady Gerrard is out to lunch.’

  ‘Wasn’t it tomorrow she’s proving her social flexibility by dining with the Unwins?’ Gerrard queried.

  ‘It’s easy enough to find out. I’ll phone.’

  ‘There’s no need to trouble—’ Alvarez began. Gerrard interrupted him. ‘It’s no bother. And whilst you’re waiting, we’re having drinks so you might like to join us? Or perhaps you’re not allowed to drink when on duty?’