The Ambiguity of Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Can you say what kind it was?’

  ‘I don’t know one from another, not like Francisco. If he wins the lottery, he’s going to buy a BMW and take me everywhere in it.’

  ‘It seems you were able to see the car pretty clearly, but how’s that when you’d driven into the clearing and must have been facing the wrong way?’

  There was a long silence during which her face reddened.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘it was a little cramped in the car, so you moved out of it?’

  ‘We just sat. Nothing happened.’

  He thought it more likely that the nightingales had been singing loudly.

  CHAPTER 7

  Inés, very reluctantly, had given Alvarez her novio’s address, but when he spoke to Francisco’s mother, she said that her son had driven off without telling her where he was going and she’d no idea where he might be. Alvarez assured her that although this was a police matter, her son was in no way directly involved and he finally persuaded her to surmise that Francisco might have driven down to Port Llueso to meet his pals and waste his time and money in a bar. Did Francisco favour any particular bar? Her son was like her husband and favoured them all.

  Alvarez returned to his car and sat behind the wheel. There were almost as many bars in the port as politicians in hell and tracing Francisco Ferriol could prove to be a very long task. But time was moving on and soon Dolores would start preparing supper. When in a sunny mood, nothing gave her greater pleasure than to give full rein to her genius and it might even be that she would be cooking Bacalao al cava rosado – a mixture of fish, wine, cream, onion, mushrooms, nuts, and black pepper, that in her hands became a culinary masterpiece. But it had to be remembered that it was a dish which needed to be eaten as soon as it was cooked; a portion kept warm for a latecomer would become a shadow of its true self. Clearly, logic demanded that Ferriol be questioned another day. Unfortunately, matters other than logic had to be considered. Since there was to be a PM on Zavala, the superior chief would be advised of that fact, probably already had been. Salas expected everything to be done as soon as the need to do it arose; he invariably treated excuses, even genuine ones, with gross insensitiveness … Regretfully, Alvarez decided he was going to have to risk a spoiled meal.

  Material greed had led men to do their best to destroy the charm of Bahia de Llueso, but their best had not yet been good enough. The bay backed by mountains and marshland, the cerulean sea, and the curving beaches of sand, pebbles, or rock, were still beautiful despite the marina, flats, restaurants, and stores selling kitschy goods and the holiday camp which looked as if it had been designed by a French bureaucrat. However depressed, he had only to drive down to the port and stare out at the natural beauty to feel refreshed.

  Since a group of young Mallorquin men would be looking for nubile tourists, he first checked the bars along the Parelona road where prices would be less unreasonable than on the front. In Bar Rico, a place of chrome and saucy posters, four men were fooling around, trying to gain the attention of the three young women on barstools who were doing their best to show bored disinterest. He said loudly: ‘Is any of you Francisco Ferriol?’

  They stopped their shoving, shouting, and laughing, and stared aggressively at him.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ one of them finally demanded.

  ‘Cuerpo General de Policia.’

  They were not frightened, as they would have been in the years when authority was challenged only by a brave man or a fool, but three of them showed a sense of caution by moving slightly away from the fourth.

  ‘You’re Ferriol,’ Alvarez said as a statement, not a question. ‘I’d like a word.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Will you have a drink?’

  The question perplexed and worried Ferriol because the last thing he’d expected had been a friendly gesture. He looked to his companions for help; they looked away.

  Alvarez crossed to the bar. ‘I’ll have a coñac,’ he said to the bartender. ‘With ice.’

  The three hurriedly said they’d be seeing Ferriol sometime and left. The young women waited long enough to prove their continuing disinterest, then followed.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything?’ Alvarez asked.

  ‘You can give us a whisky if you want,’ Ferriol muttered.

  His manners matched his appearance, Alvarez decided. Why did modern youth enjoy hairstyles which made them look as if they were suffering from alopecia? The barman put two glasses in front of him. ‘How much?’ he asked. The barman hesitated, decided discretion before profit and charged less than he would normally have done.

  He carried the glasses over to one of the tables, sat. Ferriol, trying to project a sense of challenge, waited before joining him. ‘What is it, then?’ he asked as he sat.

  ‘Why do I want to talk? I’m interested in last night when you were with your novia.’

  ‘She’s not my novia.’

  ‘She seems to think she is.’

  ‘Can’t help what she thinks.’

  Alvarez’s dislike for the other grew. Perhaps it would be kind to let Inés know that the relationship was much less firm than she obviously thought? The idea had only to be considered to know it was ridiculous. The man who stood in the middle of a herd was liable to be struck on both sides. ‘Last night, you were with Inés and you drove up to Son Fuyell and parked amongst the pine trees just inside the gates.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Silly bitch!’

  ‘I’m very old-fashioned,’ Alvarez said quietly, ‘so when I hear a man call a young lady a bitch, I suffer the urge to drag him along to somewhere quiet and teach him some manners.’

  ‘You and who else?’

  ‘A couple of friends who enjoy body-building and weightlifting.’

  Ferriol said sullenly: ‘She shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘When I’m out with her, her dad thinks we’re with friends.’

  Alvarez would have condemned such deceit had he not been able to remember how Juana-María had, without actually lying, allowed her parents to assume she and he had been at one of her friends’ homes … Not that in those days deceit had covered up anything more than a few kisses, sweeter than honey for having been stolen …

  Ferriol said, less belligerently than intended: ‘Why are you going on about this?’

  Alvarez jerked his mind back to the present. ‘While you were there, did anything unusual happen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t see a car being driven very quickly on the track down from the house?’

  ‘You meant … Yeah, there was a car.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘There ain’t nothing to tell except the driver was crazy or it was a hire car and he didn’t care what happened to it.’

  ‘Are you saying that you could see the driver was a man?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Would you recognize him?’

  ‘Wouldn’t reckon so.’

  ‘But you are sure it was a man?’

  ‘Ain’t I just said?’

  ‘Can you identify what make and type of car it was?’

  ‘One of the new Astras – a shooting brake.’

  ‘You seem very certain.’

  ‘I work in a garage, don’t I? I know my cars.’

  ‘Have you any idea of its colour?’

  ‘It was dark. Can’t say no more.’

  ‘When it reached the road, it turned left?’

  ‘It wasn’t going to turn right when that don’t lead to anywhere.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking at my watch.’

  ‘You’ll know near enough.’

  Ferriol finished his drink. ‘Must’ve been around eleven. We was back at her place by midnight because if she’s any later, her dad makes a bloody stupid fuss.’

  Dr Sanz estimated the time of death at between seven and nine, Susana�
�s evidence strongly suggested that Zavala had died between seven-thirty and eight. If the car was leaving the property at eleven, it seemed unlikely – from the point of view of time – to have been in any way directly connected with the death. Yet the fact that it was being driven recklessly suggested a sense of panic. Had the driver waited until well after dark to leave in the expectation of doing so unobserved and the waiting had unnerved him?

  * * *

  On the drive to his office, Alvarez decided to phone on his arrival. In his office, it occurred to him that if Salas were late to work that morning, he would not be best pleased to have this fact exposed; better to leave the call until later. He left it until after merienda, at which point he could think of no valid reason for further delay.

  The secretary with the plum-filled voice curtly told him the superior chief was at an important meeting that could not be interrupted. Typically, she cut the connection without bothering to say goodbye.

  Alvarez lit a cigarette, then remembered it was only a couple of days since he’d promised himself to cut right back on smoking and drinking. He blamed his memory, not his willpower.

  Salas rang at a quarter to twelve, his greeting as abrupt as ever. ‘Where’s your report on the Zavala case?’

  ‘I haven’t sent it yet because –’

  ‘Of an inability to display even a basic degree of efficiency. Why did you ask for a PM?’

  ‘Dr Sanz said that in the circumstances one would be necessary…’

  ‘What are the facts of the case?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say right now –’

  ‘Because you are the investigating officer?’

  Alvarez tried to explain the problems.

  ‘You really think that if this was not an accident, the murderer would have stayed until after dark before leaving?’

  ‘There are two other possibilities which could just about fit the facts.’

  ‘Name them.’

  ‘The driver called to see Zavala, found him drowned in the pool and panicked…’

  ‘Someone drove there that late at night?’

  ‘That is one problem. Another is, if completely innocent, wouldn’t he have alerted someone either immediately, or after his initial panic had subsided?’

  ‘You talked about two possibilities.’

  ‘The driver wasn’t in a panic, but a rage. He had turned into the track leading up to Son Fuyell believing it gave access to somewhere else – despite the name on each gatepost discovered his error, turned – which he could only have done with considerable difficulty – and returned to the road, furious at the time wasted. Drink may have muddled his mind.’

  ‘Very likely, if a foreigner. Am I not correct in thinking that despite the ambiguous evidence of this car, you cannot say with any certainty that death was not from accidental drowning?’

  ‘The doctor thought the blow to the head would not have been sufficient to render Zavala unconscious. And why did he fall on to the chair?’

  ‘You have never stumbled?’

  ‘Well, yes, but … If he was dazed, when he fell in he would have struggled not to drown; all he had to do was stand up because opposite the fallen chair the water would only have come up to his waist.’

  ‘Dazed, might he not have stumbled this way and that and ended up falling in at the deep end?’

  ‘I suppose so…’

  ‘And, being a foreigner, it will almost certainly be determined that he was drunk at the time of his death. Drunken men have drowned in puddles. So to return to what I said a moment ago, you can offer no evidence to negate the probability that this was an accidental drowning?’

  ‘A clever murderer always tries to make death look like an accident.’

  ‘I am tempted to observe that to try to make an accident look like a murder clearly calls for something less than a clever mind.’ He cut the connection.

  Alvarez replaced the receiver. For the past minutes, Salas had been virtually suggesting there was no cause for further investigation. He had been arguing that there was. Such a reversal of roles normally held was very confusing.

  CHAPTER 8

  Alvarez slightly altered the angle of the fan in the hope that this would bring greater relief from the heat, settled back in the chair. In a perfect world, criminals would go on holiday between May and October …

  The ringing of the telephone awoke him with a start. He wondered who could be such an insensitive fool as to interrupt his siesta? Then he realized he was in the office and it was still morning …

  The caller was an assistant at the Institute of Forensic Anatomy. Zavala had died from drowning in fresh water. The blow to the head had not fractured the skull; it was difficult to be certain to what extent he had been affected by it, but it was possible he had been sufficiently dazed as not to be in full control of his limbs. There was one further point. On his throat was a bruise, not visible on the epidermis; connective tissues had been crushed and capillaries and smaller veins torn.

  ‘Does that mean a really hard blow?’ Alvarez asked.

  ‘It would have been reasonably forceful. But I can’t be more precise than that because different people bruise differently from the same force.’

  ‘Have you any idea what could have caused it?’

  ‘The shape of a bruise often can’t give any indication of the object responsible and that’s the case here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to have a guess?’

  ‘Only a vague one and on condition I’m not quoted. It’s more likely to have been something with an irregular surface, like a hand, than a regular one, like a cosh.’

  ‘You’re saying it probably was a blow from a fist?’

  ‘Give you blokes so much as a hint and you’re shouting fact! I’m not saying anything of the sort. It might have been a fist, it might have been a hundred and one other things.’

  ‘When did he get the bruise?’

  ‘Close to the time of death. But if you’re going to ask how close, the answer is, we can’t say. When injuries occur about then, it’s usually impossible to be certain.’

  ‘Can’t you be more definite about something?’

  ‘He’s dead. I know that for sure because he never said “ouch” when I started slicing.’

  Alvarez mentally winced. Medical men had a sense of humour that lacked any consideration for people’s susceptibilities.

  ‘Finally, his blood to alcohol level shows he’d been drinking.’

  ‘Could that mean he was too far gone to save himself from drowning?’

  ‘Unless he was unusually responsive to alcohol, no.’

  After the call was over, Alvarez very reluctantly came to the conclusion that he would have to phone Palma.

  Salas was at his curtest. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have just heard from the Institute, re the Zavala case, señor. Death was by drowning in fresh water; the blow to his head did not fracture his skull, but probably left him dazed, adding to the effects of the alcohol.’

  ‘As I suggested, when he fell into the pool, he lacked the sense to save himself from drowning.’

  ‘It seems not, señor.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He had not been drinking that heavily. So he would surely have acted positively when he fell unless, to quote the Institute, he was peculiarly susceptible to the effects of alcohol.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘It hadn’t occurred to you to find out? Is there anything more?’

  ‘The postmortem exposed a bruise to the throat. It can’t be said with any certainty what caused this, but was more likely to have been something like a fist than a cosh. It’s impossible to suggest when the blow was delivered beyond the fact that it would have been close to the time of death.’

  ‘I cannot remember a previous report in which the investigating officer has been so uncertain of the facts.’

  ‘That is the Institute’s responsibility, not mine. But even as things are, we now have the probability th
at Zavala received a blow to the throat which caused him to fall and strike his head on the chair. I think we must now definitely treat this case as one of manslaughter or murder…’

  ‘Which, in view of the evidence, you should have been doing.’

  ‘Señor, it was you who said earlier –’

  Salas cut the connection.

  Alvarez altered the direction of the fan yet again. Sweet Mary! if it became any hotter, all life must stop … He settled back in the chair. Had Zavala been murdered or had he died in an accident? The answer, as so often, was probably to be found in a further question – Was there someone who had a motive for killing him?

  Could one suspect be the owner of the car Ferriol had seen? He’d identified it as a new Astra shooting brake, dark-coloured. To try to trace it from so broad a description might seem to be as unrewarding a task as to identify a particular grain of sand on a beach. But until recently, shooting brakes had been few because popular regard had associated them with hearses, and even if that no longer held good and they had become more popular, they still could not be called common. If a list of new, dark-coloured Astra shooting brakes was drawn up, it might just be possible to identify an owner who had known Zavala …

  Could Karen be the key to motive? An attractive woman who had tried to hide the fact she was married. The English lived strange lives, but it seemed reasonable to suppose that there were husbands who would bitterly resent the fact that they were being cuckolded. Karen was not, as far as he could judge, a very common name so the records of women of that name who held residencias could be searched; photographs could then be shown to Susana …

  He congratulated himself. By using logic, he had found how to proceed with the case at no immediate cost of effort to himself. Then he remembered that he had not yet had a word with Lorenzo …

  * * *

  A phone call to Susana at Son Fuyell had determined Lorenzo had not turned up for work that morning, so Alvarez waited until after his siesta before driving to the other’s home.