Death Trick

by Roderic Jeffries

‘Would he, if he’d got your message?’

  ‘Beatriz may not have left it; she likes him and thinks I shouldn’t keep bothering him. We islanders don’t take much notice of authority.’ Alvarez spoke with both pride and irritation. He walked over to the garage and looked through the crack between the two doors. ‘The car’s away.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Just to make sure tomorrow, I’ll ring first thing in the morning and say he’s not to leave here until we’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘I don’t see how he’ll be able to wriggle out of that.’

  ‘So now we have to make two decisions. Which bar do we go to for a drink, and to which restaurant for a meal?’

  ‘Tell me something, Enrique: living here, how in the hell do you ever get any work done?’

  ‘It is a question I occasionally ask myself.’

  Alvarez crumbled a slice of coca into the hot chocolate which was well laced with brandy. Dolores dried one of the plates she had just washed. ‘It’s Maria’s First Communion next week.’

  ‘Which Maria’s that?’

  ‘Typical!’ she told the plate. ‘Only a man could ask, which Maria!’

  ‘But we know so many.’

  ‘Cecilia’s Maria, that’s which. Such a sweet little thing.’

  It was not the description he would have given the young girl whose manners so often proved that she’d been spoiled from the day she’d been born.

  ‘I’ve said I’ll help with the cooking for the party which means being out all day, so you’ll have to get your own lunch.’

  He showed his astonishment.

  ‘It won’t kill you for once.’

  Maybe it wouldn’t, but what counted was the principle. In the old days, no woman would for one second have considered leaving her menfolk to provide their own lunch. He’d always been against joining the Common Market.

  ‘Cecilia told me that they’re getting the baker to cook four suckling pigs.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘They want to have a good party.’

  ‘But however many people are they asking?’

  ‘Hundreds,’ she answered, careless of the real number.

  He ate another spoonful of coca and chocolate. Parties on christenings, First Communions, weddings, and Saints’ Days, were becoming bigger and bigger as each giver vied to present the most Lucullan feast. A far cry from his First Communion: just a few pasties filled with angels’-hair jam and homemade wine . . .

  She said: ‘Will you get your present separately or would you rather join in with us?’

  ‘It’ll be a lot easier if I join in with you.’

  ‘Then you’d better give me five thousand pesetas.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘You don’t want us to appear mean, do you?’ She stared hard at him, then resumed washing up. ‘I’ve decided to buy her a frock; there are two I really like in that new shop next to the bank.’

  ‘It’s a very expensive place.’

  ‘The blue one is lovely, but it does cost a bit more than I’d reckoned on. I suppose the green one is almost as nice and it is a lot cheaper, but . . .’

  ‘I think she’s always looked most attractive in green.’

  She said with good-tempered scorn: ‘As if you’ve ever noticed what colour she’s been wearing!’ She turned. ‘You’re bringing the Englishman to lunch, aren’t you?’

  ‘If that’s still all right with you?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he’ll like my cooking.’

  ‘On the contrary. I told him, you’re the finest cook on the island.’

  She accepted that compliment without any sense of modesty.

  ‘I said that your hunters’ quail have flown straight down from heaven.’

  This further compliment provoked a rare touch of self-criticism. ‘The last time there was something not quite right. Perhaps not quite enough sobrasada . . .’

  He looked up at the electric clock on the wall and realized that time was getting on and if he was to be certain of speaking to Oakley, he’d better phone now. He left the kitchen and went through to the front room and the telephone. The call went unanswered. The agreement had been to pick up Farley on the way to Ca’n Tardich, but he decided to go straight there.

  The front door of the house was locked and the garage was empty. If Beatriz had left the message, Oakley’s absence was deliberate and he was probably on the run; but if through carelessness, or pig-headedness, she had not passed on the message, then his absence was probably without any special significance . . .

  He drove back to Llueso and parked outside No. 21, Calle General Riera. Beatriz, obviously about to leave for work and impatient to be on her way, said: ‘Of course I gave him your message.’

  ‘He returned before you left?’

  ‘He did not. I put the message where I always do when there’s something to tell him, but he’s out.’

  ‘What exactly did you write?’

  She said, becoming uneasy instead of belligerent: ‘Just that you’d called with an Englishman and wanted him to be in the house either that evening or this morning.’

  The reference to an Englishman would have alerted Oakley, but he had no passport . . .

  ‘Is there anything more you want?’ she asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then is it all right if I’m on my way?’

  A moment later she wheeled a Mobylette out of the house, started it, and drove off. He watched her round the corner and go out of sight. The first thing to do was to telephone Emigration and warn them that a passportless Oakley might try to slip past (assuming he hadn’t already done so) and . . . Suddenly it occurred to him that on the plea of a lost passport, Oakley might have applied to the British Consulate for temporary papers; they had not been warned not to issue any . . .

  He hurried back to his office and telephoned the consulate. In the past week only two people had applied for temporary papers, following the theft of their passports, and neither was Oakley. Imagining what Salas could have found to say if Oakley had successfully chosen that means of escape, Alvarez breathed a deep sigh of relief. He spoke to Emigration. There was no way Oakley could have left.

  He returned downstairs and as he drew level with the duty desk, the cabo seated behind it said: ‘There was a message for you earlier on. The harbour master reports that one of the yachts has been taken.’

  CHAPTER 19

  By the time Alvarez reached the hotel, Farley was out on the patio which jutted out over the sandy beach, drinking a mid-morning coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry to be so late,’ Alvarez said, ‘but things have started moving very fast.’ He sat at the table. ‘I telephoned Oakley’s house earlier on, but there wasn’t any reply so I went straight there, instead of coming here first. The house was locked and the car was out. Then I had a word with Beatriz and she assured me she’d left the message and he must have seen it. In it, she mentioned I’d been with an Englishman. That obviously alerted him. I was just leaving the station to come here when I received a message to the effect that a yacht’d disappeared from the harbour.’

  ‘Does anyone know at what time it went?’

  ‘At the moment, I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘Then you’ll be in a hurry to start asking questions.’ Farley lifted his cup and drained it. ‘Lead on.’

  They drove round to the eastern arm of the harbour and parked half way along this. ‘The harbour master’s office is just beyond the restaurant,’ said Alvarez, ‘but first it’ll be an idea to check the cars.’

  Cars were parked wherever there was space. The white Seat 127 was the last one before the tables and chairs set outside the yacht club. The driving door was unlocked. On the front passenger seat was a plastic shopping-bag with the logo of Continente, from which had spilled a quarter kilo pack of butter; in the heat—the sun was beating through the side windows—the butter had begun to melt and a small yellow rivulet had spread across the cloth.

  ‘Been shopping,’ said Farley, ‘returned home, went indoors wit
hout unloading everything, read the note, and promptly took off.’

  ‘So now we must speak with the harbour master.’

  The harbour master was not in the small air-conditioned office, but his young and engagingly helpful assistant was and he gave them what information he could. ‘Roughly an hour ago, Señor Cassell came in and wanted to know where his yacht was; very pugnacious about it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I went with him to his berth, but that was certainly empty. So I had a quick look round the harbour to make certain some bloody fool joker hadn’t merely shifted her.’

  ‘Was it fit to go to sea?’

  ‘The señor’s a real yachtsman, unlike some of the owners of the floating gin palaces who hardly know which end of the boat is which; his yacht is always ready to sail.’

  ‘Would it be big enough to reach the mainland?’

  The assistant spoke with cheerful contempt tor such ignorance. ‘It’s never merely a question of size, it’s how the yacht’s built and who’s sailing her. A couple of good seamen could sail the señor’s yacht right round the world.’

  ‘Then could one man handle it?’

  ‘She; a boat’s always feminine because you don’t know how she’s going to behave next . . . Yeah, someone who knows what he’s doing could easily sail her. All I was really saying was, on a long passage it’s safer and easier with two.’

  Alvarez told Farley in English what had been said.

  ‘Where d’you reckon he’ll be making for?’ asked Farley.

  ‘Almost certainly not Menorca, Ibiza, or Formentera, since he must know they’ll be alerted. But as to how much further afield . . . ?’

  ‘How far is it to France?’

  Alvarez put the question to the assistant, who went over to the chart table, opened a drawer and brought out a chart, then used dividers to measure the distance, which he set against the latitude scale. ‘Call it a hundred and eighty nautical miles from here to Port Vendres.’

  ‘What sort of speed would the yacht be making?’

  ‘In a light wind like this?’ He looked out through the window at the bay. ‘With plenty of sail hoisted, four knots at the very most. But that’s guesswork. You’ll have to speak to the señor to find out more precisely how she makes in these conditions.’

  ‘Does she have a motor?’

  ‘Bound to have, but that’ll be only for docking, emergencies, or charging the batteries. She’ll make better way under sail.’

  Again, Alvarez translated.

  ‘What’s the earliest time at which she could have been stolen?’ Farley asked.

  The assistant said that the señor had been aboard, splicing some ropes, until around eight, when he’d returned home. She could have been taken any time after that.

  Farley looked at his watch. ‘That gives a maximum of fifteen hours; give her three to four knots and she’s forty-five to sixty miles away—in other words, she can’t have reached the mainland.’

  ‘Before a search can be ordered,’ said Alvarez, T have to inform my superior chief of what has happened and before I do that I need at least two brandies. So we need to add on a couple of miles, at least.’

  Salas was surprisingly calm. He said that in the circumstances Alvarez had done almost as much as a competent officer would have done and agreed it would have been impossible to keep a constant watch on all the yachts in Llueso harbour, even more impossible on those in all the other harbours as well. There was a puzzled look on Alvarez’s face as he replaced the receiver.

  The decision had to be made where to search, accepting that the resources available were very limited. The Peninsula offered the nearest coast, but the police there could act immediately and there would be none of the delays— potentially so valuable to Oakley—which could occur once national boundaries were crossed. France was reasonably near, but was the most obvious country. Of those further away and politically possible, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, lay to the east and each, for different reasons, could prove an attractive haven; Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt were to the south and east, and while it might not be so easy to lose oneself in one of them, extradition would be more difficult or impossible. Gibraltar, Portugal, and the Americas, lay to the west . . . Alvarez decided on France, his reasoning being simple. When Oakley stole the yacht (not knowing the owner lived locally), he must have hoped that its disappearance would go unnoticed for a long time —obviously, the empty berth would be remarked, but unless by the owner or friends of his (many boats were owned by people who lived abroad and only came out for holidays) then this would cause no comment. But, being a clever man, he accepted that Sod’s Law was always waiting to strike and the disappearance might well be noticed much sooner than expected, so that the quicker he was ashore in another country, the better . . .

  The harbour master and Cassell—belligerent, damning Alvarez for allowing his beloved craft to be stolen—conferred about winds, currents, distances through water as opposed to over the land, ability to sail into the wind, and amount of sail one man would prudently carry, and determined a figure that gave the radius of a circle, centred on Puerto Llueso. The course to Port Vendres was plotted and the point at which this cut the radius of the circle was named as the yacht’s position in one hour’s time.

  A seaplane, normally used to ‘bomb’ forest fires with several tonnes of sea water, took off from Llueso Bay and headed eastwards, climbing steadily.

  Sometimes, the needle in the haystack is found. At 14.12 hours, the crew sighted a yacht, heading north. They went down and circled her, radioed the number on her mainsail; it was confirmed that she was the yacht they had sought.

  They were ordered to remain on station until a fast naval patrol boat reached the scene.

  They began the boring task of circling the yacht as she sailed steadily on. It was soon remarked that there was no sign of life aboard.

  CHAPTER 20

  ‘Well?’ said Salas, over the phone.

  Alvarez began to tap on the desk with his fingers. ‘The cabin’s been checked for prints and his have been found; Señor Cassell says that at no time has he ever been invited aboard. It must have been he who stole the yacht.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Then on the face of things he must have fallen overboard and by now be presumed drowned. The safety harness had been rigged, but the harness itself was lying on deck. Señor Cassell says that in fine weather, with very little sea, there’s always the temptation to work on deck without wearing a harness. But it’s easy to slip and fall overboard and with the sails set and the self-steering engaged, and no one else aboard to bring it back, there’s absolutely no hope. You just watch it sail out of sight as you wait to drown . . . A horrible thought, isn’t it?’

  Salas seldom concerned himself with horrible thoughts. ‘What lifeboats or rafts were there?’

  ‘One liferaft, kept in a metal container lashed on deck, and one small inflatable. Both were still aboard.’

  ‘Could he have left the yacht soon after clearing the port, leaving it to sail on unmanned?’

  ‘I’ve checked on that point. Until not long before the yacht was sighted, the wind was more westerly. I don’t understand all the reasoning, but Señor Cassell and the harbour master insist that the fact that the yacht was found where she was shows she was under command until a short time before she was sighted; say a couple of hours. That’s borne out by the meal. There was always some tinned food aboard and some baked beans had been opened and heated; these were cold, but they had not begun to dry out on the surface.’

  ‘Then the suggestion has to be that he’d started to eat, something happened up on deck which alerted him, he went up, and in dealing with the trouble he fell overboard because he hadn’t bothered to don the safety harness?’

  ‘Indeed, señor. And it is fact that a boat-hook was loose and rolling about because a lashing had frayed.’

  ‘But you don’t agree with so logical a conclusion?’

  ‘I can’t help thinking that it w
ould be very convenient for him if he could persuade us that he was dead.’

  ‘I thought you’d just assured me that he must have sailed the boat out of port and until something like two hours before it was sighted?’

  ‘Yes, but might he not have set the scene to make us think that he’d fallen overboard whereas in reality he was picked up by a fast powerboat and whisked away? . . . Eventually, of course, the truth will probably be discoverable through studying the business dealings of Ashley Developments; although it’s very doubtful that we shall ever gain permission . . .’

  Salas shouted: ‘I know exactly what you’re trying to do. Didn’t I warn you at the beginning of the case?’

  ‘About what, señor?’

  ‘About complicating every bloody thing in sight. You’ve buried and resurrected this Englishman so many times I’ve lost count and now, goddamn it, you want to do both at the same time.’ He slammed down the receiver.

  For a time it had seemed that Salas was becoming a patient man, ready to listen to reason; the last few moments had proved this not to be so. Alvarez was relieved. Change so often presaged trouble.

  An assistant from the forensic laboratory rang on Saturday morning. ‘We’ve examined the passport. We lifted off the paper without any trouble, but the original entry had been carefully erased and bringing that up proved a bit more difficult. The name is Mrs Stephanie Oakley and the address is Flat 64, 58 Via Santa Lucia, San Remo, Italy. There’s no telephone number.’

  ‘You what?’ demanded Salas, in tones of disbelief.

  ‘I’d like to go to Italy, señor,’ replied Alvarez.

  ‘And so would I. Regrettably, I don’t find it nearly so easy to ignore the demands of my work.’

  ‘If the señora is still living there, she needs to be questioned.’

  ‘That is obvious. What is far less obvious is why you don’t propose to ask the Italian police to find out whether she’s still at that address.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be nearly so satisfactory.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘To finding out the facts. I might be able to tell if she’s speaking the truth, but if the Italian police question her they cannot judge because they will not know all the background; and if they do question her first and in consequence of what they report, we then decide I must question her as well, she will be forewarned.’