An Enigmatic Disappearance

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘I’m sure it surprised you. How did he send you this money?’

  ‘In the literal sense he didn’t. He arranged for his bank in the Islas Normandas – I understand that the British are so persecuted by their tax bandits that they find such offshore accounts even more beneficial than we do – to pay it to me when I went there for a short holiday.’

  ‘They gave it to you in what form?’

  ‘A number of high-value travellers’ cheques.’

  ‘Where did you cash these?’

  ‘Here and there. I don’t really remember.’

  ‘How very convenient!’

  ‘That great philosopher, Javier Solchaga, once said that memory responds to man’s subconscious more readily than to his conscious.’

  ‘What is the name of your benefactor?’

  ‘Jeremy Awkright.’

  ‘His address?’

  ‘Very sadly, he passed on soon afterwards. For the truly good, this world is so often a resting place of short duration.’

  ‘Does his widow still live in the same house?’

  ‘I don’t remember saying he was married, but, in fact, he was. I had a brief note in reply to my letter of commiseration in which she said she’d found the house too big and full of memories and had sold it and would be moving out within days. She promised to let me know her new address but, sadly, has never done so. I deeply regret that – I should have liked to invite her here for as long as she wished as a small gesture of thanks for her husband’s wonderful kindness.’

  Domingo had spoken with such warm sincerity that Alvarez found himself almost believing what he had been told.

  CHAPTER 22

  On Monday morning, Alvarez arrived in his office, sat, and stared at the telephone. He must phone Salas and report on his visit to the Peninsula – an unwelcome task and therefore best carried out as soon as possible. Yet the superior chief might have been delayed by any one of a dozen concerns and not yet at work. So perhaps it was best to wait a while …

  It was just after ten when he returned from merienda. A task delayed was a task betrayed. He sat, lifted the receiver, dialled.

  ‘Well?’ said Salas.

  ‘I have to report, señor, that I questioned the mayor of Son Jordi. I asked him if Señora Belinda Ogden’s body had been taken to the village before the undertaker removed it. As expected, it had not been. It seems the señora’s companion carried her from the place of the accident to the car and drove her to Las Macaulas.’

  ‘The man’s name?’

  ‘I was unable to determine that.’ He paused, but surprisingly, Salas made no comment. ‘At the doctor’s surgery in Las Macaulas, she was pronounced dead. In view of the circumstances, it was necessary to remove her body immediately and the undertaker, Domingo, was called. According to his records, the señora’s body was held in storage until Señor Ogden agreed to meet all funeral expenses. He asked for her to be cremated.

  ‘Inquiries in Las Macaulas showed that soon after these incidents, the doctor retired, though not of a retiring age, and left the town with his family. No one knows for certain where he’s gone, although there is the suggestion it was Argentina where he was born. I judge it very unlikely that we will be able to trace his present whereabouts.

  ‘I questioned Domingo. I would describe him as smooth as butter, as sharp as a knife, as twisted as a…’

  ‘Try not to become absurd.’

  ‘Yes, señor. I asked him to identify the man who, with him, collected the señora’s body from the surgery. He claimed this was impossible. He showed me the señora’s file which contained two letters from Señor Ogden, the first refusing to pay her funeral expenses, the second agreeing to do so and demanding cremation. There was also the receipt from the Barcelona crematorium. This surely means that when a suitable body became available, a coffin filled with something was buried in the local cemetery, while the body was held back to be sent, when the time was judged right, to the crematorium in the name of Señora Ogden.’

  ‘How much of this does Domingo admit?’

  ‘None of it.’

  ‘An exhumation will prove or disprove the possibility.’

  ‘He pointed out that since it would be impossible for us to pinpoint which of many funerals was faked, many exhumations would have to be undertaken; that the authorities would never agree to this, not least because we can offer only a theory and not proof.’

  ‘If this deception was carried out, Domingo will have demanded and been paid a considerable sum of money. An examination of his lifestyle and accounts will expose this.’

  ‘That’s what I reckoned, señor, especially on finding that he’d moved into a new and very expensive house soon after the señora supposedly died. But he claims he won a considerable sum of money on the English lottery and it was that, together with a mortgage, which permitted him to buy the place.’

  ‘Winning money is every criminal’s favourite explanation for sudden wealth.’

  ‘He says he bought the ticket in England when attending a conference. Because he would be leaving the country before the draw, he gave the ticket to an English friend he’d met. At a later date the friend phoned him to say he’d won a prize…’

  ‘That proves he’s lying. The friend would have said nothing so that he could keep the money for himself.’

  ‘But there are people so honest that…’

  ‘Spare me such naive stupidity.’

  ‘He claims that the friend transferred the money to a bank in the Islas Normandas and he collected it from there in the form of travellers’ cheques. He cannot remember at which bank or banks he cashed these.’

  ‘I’ve never before heard such a farrago of nonsense.’

  ‘Quite so, señor. But unfortunately, while we can be certain that that is so, it’s going to be very difficult to prove this…’

  ‘I should have placed the investigation in the hands of the local officers instead of expecting you to handle a matter requiring intelligent initiative.’ Salas cut the connection.

  Alvarez replaced the receiver, slumped back in the chair, put his feet up on the desk. He’d done his best and no man should reproach himself when he could say that.

  He needed to question Ogden again, but time for reflection would not go amiss; he’d wait until the afternoon.

  * * *

  Alvarez parked in front of Ca’n Nou and crossed the gravel drive to the front door, rang the bell. The door was opened by Concha. ‘What do you want now?’ she said with curt hostility.

  ‘To talk to the señor.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Have you any idea when he’ll be back?’

  ‘How can I tell? I’m preparing supper, but perhaps he will be too drunk to want to eat.’

  ‘Is he still upset?’

  ‘Sweet Mary, what kind of a person are you? His wife dies and you ask me if he is still upset!’

  ‘It’s not every bereaved husband who is.’

  ‘You would bury a wife with a smile, not a tear?… Unlike you, he grieves until it hurts to watch. Why won’t you leave him alone?’

  ‘I need to ask him questions.’

  ‘You have not asked enough to make yourself feel important?’

  ‘I’m investigating the death of his wife…’

  ‘Which anyone but a heartless fool would know had nothing to do with him … I tell you this, any woman who married you would get even less than she expected!’ She slammed the door shut.

  She was probably right, he thought as he made his way back to the car. What did he have to offer? Only a belief in the ultimate triumph of justice. In the present age, such a belief tended to be a liability, not an asset.

  He settled behind the wheel. Was there value in what he’d just heard? Concha was not someone to see true emotion because it was conventional wisdom that there should be emotion to be seen. She was convinced Ogden’s grieving was genuine. But was he grieving because his wife had died, or because her death had not gone unquestioned as planned?r />
  * * *

  As Alvarez entered the house, he could hear Dolores singing a song which contained strange, disturbing notes that identified a Moorish origin. He carried on through to the dining-room and sat at the table opposite Jaime. He brought a glass out of the sideboard, helped himself to brandy, added three cubes of ice. He drank, then leaned forward and said in a low vocie: ‘Have you given her a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates?’

  ‘Why would I go and do a thing like that?’

  ‘How long has she been singing?’

  ‘Ever since I got back from work. Yet only this morning she was snapping my head off.’ He emptied his glass. ‘If I live to be a thousand, I’ll never understand women.’

  ‘Does any man?’

  ‘I had a cousin who used to boast he did, but when you met his wife you knew he was a liar.’

  The singing stopped a moment before Dolores, red of face, sweating freely, pushed her way through the bead curtain. ‘Good, you’re back, Enrique. The meal would have been spoiled if you’d been late.’

  ‘Is it something special, then?’

  ‘I thought everyone would like pez espada o aguja palada.’ She hurried back into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s a long time since she cooked that.’ Alvarez drained his glass, refilled it. ‘Try and work out if it’s something you’ve said or done that’s put her into a good mood and then say or do it again.’

  * * *

  On Tuesday morning, it was once again Concha who opened the front door of Ca’n Nou. ‘Haven’t you anything better to do? Can’t leave him alone, can you?’ She glared at Alvarez before she reluctantly stepped to one side. ‘He’s out by the pool.’

  He politely thanked her and received only a snort of dislike in return, made his way through to the patio. Ogden, his face grey and lined, wearing swimming trunks, was seated at the table on which was a bottle of gin, another of tonic, and an ice bucket. He looked up, but said nothing.

  Alvarez sat. ‘I should like to talk about the trip to the Peninsula I’ve just made. I first went to Son Jordi at the southern end of the Pyrenees.’

  Ogden looked away, but not before Alvarez noticed his expression, which suggested he was shocked and desperately trying to pull his wits together. ‘That’s the nearest village to where your wife, Señora Belinda, supposedly suffered her accident. The mayor told me that the man she was with drove her straight into Las Macaulas because he knew there was no doctor in Son Jordi. D’you think he just guessed there wouldn’t be, or did he know that?’

  Ogden, with a shaking hand, poured himself another drink.

  ‘The doctor pronounced her dead and called the undertaker. The undertaker got in touch with you regarding the funeral arrangements; after an initial refusal, you agreed to pay for a cremation. Apparently, all very straightforward. Only it seems she was walking in the mountains with her friend and she fell over a rock face. That exactly matches Señora Sabrina’s accident. Wouldn’t you call that a strange coincidence?’

  ‘Why ask me?’

  ‘Didn’t you scout the area around Son Jordi very thoroughly to find somewhere where the accident could supposedly take place?’

  ‘That’s a filthy suggestion.’

  ‘At Son Brau, you and your wife were received as guests. There, you indulged in the English pleasure of walking the estate. Of course, your wife had no idea that you were searching for somewhere suitable to stage a second, but this time genuine, “accident”.’

  ‘I never walked around that place. I can’t walk as I used to.’

  It was time for a lie. ‘Señor Zafortega told me that you both had been guests more than once and you always asked if he minded if you went for a walk.’

  ‘He’s wrong. If anyone went, it was Sabrina on her own. I’ve just told you, I couldn’t.’

  ‘You both went. She thought it was to be another faked accident, you knew you were going to murder her.’

  ‘No!’ Ogden shouted, his face strained, his lips trembling.

  Concha hurried out of the house. ‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded breathlessly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Alvarez replied shortly.

  ‘Then why is the señor shouting in pain?’

  ‘The truth is often painful.’

  ‘What do you know about truth? You, who ask if he is grieving.’

  ‘I’m doing my job…’

  ‘Then if you were even half a man, you would find another job.’ She switched to Castilian and spoke very simply and slowly to Ogden. ‘Your food is prepared, señor.’ She briefly stared at Alvarez with contempt, turned on her heels and went back into the house.

  Alvarez silently swore. The tension, born of guilt and fear, built up until Ogden had been on the point of confessing, had now been dissipated, thanks to Concha’s intervention, and it would be very difficult, probably impossible, to regenerate it. Nevertheless, he doggedly continued the questioning. ‘The next coincidence was the fact that the doctor who issued the certificate on Señora Belinda’s death retired soon after he had done so, even though well short of retiring age. Clearly, he came into a large sum of money…’

  ‘You think I killed Sabrina? Why would I kill someone who meant everything to me?’ Ogden demanded wildly.

  ‘For the two reasons that so often lead to murder – jealousy and money. Although you had swindled an insurance company out of a very large sum, your wife had extravagant tastes and you knew that you could not go on spending at the same rate, yet you could be certain that if you did not continue to indulge her, she would leave you for a man who could. The only solution to this problem was to commit a second insurance fraud. But having reached that conclusion, you suddenly learned that she was having an affair, jealousy drove you to decide that this time the insurance claim would be genuine because she would indeed be dead…’

  ‘Short of money? I know where to invest because I’ve friends back in the City who’ll give the nod on inside information if they’re certain it can’t ever be traced back and there’s something in it for them. I’m richer now than when I left England.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘How d’you think I could afford to buy the bracelet if I was short?’

  ‘What bracelet?’

  ‘The one she saw…’ He stopped, swallowed heavily several times, began to blubber. Tears trickled down his cheeks and his mouth worked as if he were chewing something.

  After a while, Alvarez asked a second time: ‘What bracelet?’

  He regained a measure of self-control and spoke in a flat voice, now devoid of any trace of hysteria. ‘One of the diamonds in the emerald ring was loose. We took it to a jeweller’s in Palma to have it reset and they’d a sapphire bracelet on view. She loved sapphires because of her mother…’ He became silent.

  ‘She saw this bracelet,’ Alvarez prompted.

  ‘She kept looking at it and the assistant egged her on, like they always do, and said how someone with real taste would buy it … I made out I didn’t realize how much she liked it. But a few days later I bought it for her. I hoped…’

  ‘What did you hope?’

  ‘That she’d realize how much I could give her and so would never want to leave me.’

  ‘When did you buy it?’

  ‘Just before her birthday. She guessed what it was before she unwrapped the package, but wouldn’t open up for a long time in case she was wrong. She looked … She looked…’ He began to cry once more.

  ‘What’s the name of the jeweller’s?’

  ‘Joyeria Roldan,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Where’s the bracelet now?’

  ‘In the safe. When she took it out of its case, she told me she was the luckiest woman in the world … Lucky? When she’s dead?’ His voice suddenly rose. ‘And you can think I killed her?’

  * * *

  Back in the office, Alvarez phoned Joyeria Roldan. He spoke to a superior woman who passed him on to an even more superior man.

  ‘It is not our policy to discuss our clients’ busines
s with third parties.’

  ‘The police have the powers to change policies,’ Alvarez said shortly.

  ‘What was the name?’

  ‘Ogden.’ He had to spell it out.

  There was a pause, then: ‘Señor Ogden purchased a sapphire bracelet on the twenty-third of June.’

  ‘How much did it cost?’

  ‘Four million five hundred thousand pesetas.’

  ‘Has Señor Ogden recently asked you to repurchase it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The tone made it clear that Joyeria Roldan took care not to do business with that kind of customer.

  After ringing off, Alvarez settled back in the chair. Would a man spend four and a half million pesetas buying jewellery for his wife when he intended to kill her within days? Unlikely. Unless, of course, he was sufficiently sharp-witted to realize that to do so would be to underpin his apparent innocence. Could any amateur summon up the acting skills to simulate the raw grief which had seemingly overwhelmed Ogden?

  Where lay the truth?

  Some facts were certain. With the help of Belinda/Sabrina, Ogden had carried out an insurance fraud. In Mallorca, the two of them had led an extravagant life, but it seemed his wealth could sustain that. But she had not learned that the gods never fulfilled all wishes, or humans might become gods and so instead of being content with what she had, she had yearned for more – the passion of youth.

  Some facts seemed certain. Sabrina’s death could have been accident or murder and motive would determine which. The motive? She had discovered Ruffolo was also having an affair with Carol and, maddened by jealousy, had threatened to betray him to Ada unless he threw Carol aside. But evidence said her affair with Ruffolo had ended amicably long before her death. Ogden, having planned to defraud a second insurance company, had learned of Sabrina’s infidelity and determined to gain revenge as well as a further half million pounds. But he had bought her a very expensive bracelet which was hardly the act of a man intending to murder. And his grief seemed genuine.