An Artistic Way to Go

by Roderic Jeffries

  Coming from Delgado, that was a compliment.

  * * *

  Alvarez drove down the harbour arm and then along the front road until he reached 157a. Here, half a kilometre from the centre of the tourist area, some of the older property remained and both 157 and 158 were two floors high, had outside staircases up to the top floors, and were in need of repairs to the exterior fabric. Outside 158, an old woman, dressed all in black, sat within the shade of the narrow, overhead patio. He crossed the wide pavement and came to a stop by the chair. ‘Good morning.’

  She stared at him with rheumy eyes, chewing on nothing with toothless gums. He greeted her a second time; she continued to stare silently at him and make no reply. Old age, the one disease that was only escaped through premature death, he thought, with an inward shudder.

  A younger woman hurried out through the ground-floor doorway. ‘She’s deaf and away in the hills much of the time. What do you want?’ She spoke with the nervous impatience of someone who was faced each day with a greater burden than she thought she could meet.

  He introduced himself.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ She looked nervously at her mother, who was alternately mumbling and grimacing.

  ‘I just need to ask a couple of questions about someone else.’

  She hesitated, finally said: ‘You’d best come inside.’

  He followed her into the front room, which had the minimum of furniture, but was spotlessly clean. ‘You’ll take a coñac?’

  There would be little money in this house to spend on drink and it might have seemed kinder to have refused the offer, but had he done so it would have been an indication that he was aware of her relative poverty and that would have mortified her. ‘A very small one. I have an ulcer and have to be careful.’

  ‘My husband also had ulcers and before he died, God rest his soul, he couldn’t take any alcohol.’

  ‘Then I must count myself fortunate.’

  She went through to the back room, returned with a glass in which was a brandy as small, even, as those that were served in English bars. He wished her health, sipped the drink, encouraged her to tell him about the hardships of life, hoping that she would gain some slight, if illusory relief from them by doing so. It was not until many minutes later that he said: ‘Does an Englishman live next door?’

  She nodded. ‘He rents the flat for thirty thousand a month. How can a man be so stupid as to pay that sort of money?’

  How would she describe the foreigners who, at the height of the season, paid perhaps even as much as a million to rent the large villas with swimming pools and staff? ‘Do you see much of him?’

  ‘He has a chat now and then. Ma likes him, when she’s in a state to like anyone, that is. Works in the boatyard. I told him, watch out for that one, Gregorio’s a real fox! When I was young, he was the same as the rest of us, but now look at him. Lives in a palace and married to a forastero from the Peninsula. Like a stranger.’

  The inrush of tourist money had bred such inequality, where before there had been the equality of poverty, that lifelong friendships had been sundered. ‘Is the Englishman married?’

  ‘Does any man marry when he can get what he wants and stay single?’

  ‘He has girlfriends?’

  ‘Call ’em that if you like. When I was young, we had a different name.’

  ‘You see them often?’

  ‘Me? I’m too busy to bother about such things, what with a job, the house, and Ma to look after. She sits out every day it’s fine and if it’s one of her good days she notices who goes up to his flat.’

  ‘Has she seen anyone in the last few days?’

  ‘Probably, but I wouldn’t know for sure. Don’t always listen too hard to what she’s saying.’

  ‘Would she be able to describe the most recent visitors?’

  ‘Not today. Couldn’t tell you who she is herself.’

  ‘And you’ve not seen anyone?’

  ‘Only the married one yesterday, when I rushed home for a bit.’ She spoke with the scorn of a virtuous woman.

  ‘How do you know she’s married?’

  ‘Got eyes in my head, haven’t I? She’s so brazen, she doesn’t even take the ring off her finger.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  She did so.

  He was disconcerted by the fact that she thought Rachael looked like a tart.

  CHAPTER 13

  Twenty-five years before, Cala Xima had been no more than a beach; now that it was a summer resort which lacked any roots in the past, its only character was the one provided by the tourists – the mindless pursuit of pleasure. Probably there was not, throughout the season, one tourist who knew, let alone was interested in, the fact that three kilometres inland there was a five thousand-year-old talayot that intrigued and puzzled archaeologists because of its unique form.

  Alvarez parked his car and walked along the pavement. He passed a shop selling T-shirts with obscene messages in English, French, or German; a group of teenagers who forced him into the road; a woman, so obese that even a kaftan might not have been sufficient to preserve the susceptibilities of others, who wore a bikini-top and shorts; a man who had drunk himself into near insensibility. This was the price that had had to be paid for the huge material benefits which tourism had brought to the island; it was a price that his generation, but perhaps not the next, would rather had not been paid.

  Garaje Xima stood on a corner site, one road back from the front. In one corner of the large open area, in which the hire cars were stored, was a small glassed-in office. A man in his early twenties, sleekly handsome and with the eager, predatory gaze of a committed one-night stander, was working at a computer. As Alvarez entered from the road, he studied Alvarez’s appearance, looked back at the screen.

  ‘I’d like some information.’

  ‘Prices are in the folder. No cars available for the next five days.’

  ‘I’m not after hiring a car.’

  ‘Then why bother me?’

  ‘Cuerpo General de Policia.’

  He used his legs to swivel the chair round and stood to face Alvarez across the counter, watchful but not fearful, as he would probably have been in earlier times.

  ‘I want to know if this car was hired from you and if so, the name and address of the hirer.’

  ‘Has some stupid bastard crashed or tried to sell it?’

  Alvarez passed across a slip of paper. ‘That’s the number.’

  The man sat, tapped out instructions on the keyboard, read the screen. ‘Ernest White. Hired the car on the thirteenth for eight days. Came in yesterday and extended the hiring for another week.’

  ‘What nationality is he?’

  ‘He’s on an American driving licence and his passport’s American.’

  ‘His address?’

  ‘We delivered the car to the Hotel Pedro.’

  ‘Whereabouts is that?’

  ‘Down to the front road, turn right, and it’s just over half a kilometre along; you can’t miss it. In some sort of trouble, is he?’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  Alvarez returned to his car and drove past the usual depressing mixture of tourist shops, cafés and restaurants to the hotel. Set back from the road and fronted by neatly trimmed palms, the large building had considerable style, suggesting the architect had not been Mallorquin. Ignoring a notice directing all cars to the rear, he parked in the turning circle, climbed the marble steps, and entered the spacious foyer that was luxuriously furnished and had in the centre a fountain whose splashing water recalled the influence of the Moors. A hotel, of which there were gradually becoming more as the island tried to improve its image, which catered for holidaymakers who were prepared to pay more in order to be separated from those who would only pay less.

  Despite the air-conditioning, the desk clerk, who wore a uniform of tie and dark-blue suit, had beads of sweat on his face. He listened to Alvarez, then spoke over the internal phone.

  Alvarez was shown into
a small office, where he was introduced to the assistant manager, a Dutchman who spoke five languages fluently and a couple more reasonably well and who had a manner which suggested that after several years in the hotel trade, he had heard and seen it all. ‘There is some sort of problem?’

  ‘This is just a routine inquiry,’ Alvarez replied.

  ‘The last “routine inquiry” with which I was concerned ended in a client falling out of a third-floor window as he tried to escape arrest for rape.’

  ‘You can rest assured that in this case there has been no rape.’

  ‘A reassurance that does, however, leave any number of other possibilities.’

  When he judged that his unasked question was not going to be answered, he said: ‘How exactly can I help you, Inspector?’

  ‘I need to speak to Señor Ernest White, an American, who is probably staying here.’

  The man tapped out instructions on the keyboard of the desk-top computer, read the information that came up on the VDU. ‘We do have a guest by that name.’

  ‘Can you check if he’s in his room?’

  He used the internal telephone to call room 432. ‘No reply,’ he said, as he replaced the receiver. ‘Would you like me to have him paged?’

  ‘Yes, please. And would it be possible to have a word with him in here?’

  The assistant manager left. Alvarez wondered whether he’d have enjoyed working in the hotel business? Most hotels closed at the end of September and did not reopen until Easter, so that winter was one long holiday, subsidized by unemployment pay; there were tips; there were commissions to be discreetly earned; and even allowing for exaggerated hopes, it seemed there were many young romantics eager for passionate holiday romances … But during the season, it was all work; tips were earned by being deferential towards people to whom it would be a pleasure to be rude; all the worthwhile commissions were cornered by the concierge; and a man who was mature preferred quality to quantity in sex, as in most other things.

  The door opened and the assistant manager briefly looked in. ‘Señor White, Inspector.’

  White entered, came forward with outstretched hand. ‘The name’s Ernest.’

  All-American, Alvarez thought, as he shook hands and noticed the scar on the right cheek. But the blue eyes were not smiling, even if the mouth was, and they held a suggestion of watchful calculation. With nothing but these two facts and instinct to back his judgement, he identified White as either a criminal or someone with close connections with the criminal world.

  ‘The hotel guy said you want to speak to me?’

  ‘That’s right. Thank you for coming, señor. Please sit.’

  They both sat. ‘Do you know Señor Cooper, who lives at Ca’n Oliver, in La Huerta de Llueso?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And you visited his house last Sunday, when you saw him, and last Tuesday, when you did not?’

  ‘That’s the way it went.’

  ‘On Tuesday, Rosa, the maid, told you that he had disappeared?’

  ‘Which sure surprised me.’

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me discover the reason for his disappearance.’

  ‘I doubt that, but anything I can do.’

  ‘Have you seen him since you left Ca’n Oliver on Sunday?’

  ‘Not so much as his shadow.’

  ‘Have you any idea what may have happened to him?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘You are a friend of long standing?’

  ‘Never met the guy before Sunday.’

  ‘Then what brought about the meeting?’

  ‘I’ve a friend who knows him and when this friend heard I’d be on the island, he said to look up Oliver. So I arranged to visit him.’

  ‘And how did the meeting go?’

  ‘Like pork crackling at a Bar Mitzvah.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I’d kind of forgotten that the English don’t take to sudden friendships and so what I met was polite reserve.’

  ‘You’re saying you had an argument?’

  ‘Hell, no! If a guy doesn’t want to pour me a second Scotch on the rocks, I’m not going to argue about it.’

  ‘If you didn’t have an argument, why did your visit so distress the señor?’

  ‘I don’t recollect saying it did.’

  ‘Rosa told me that he appeared to be very upset by it.’

  ‘I’d say she was mistaking distress for limey social disapproval. I wasn’t wearing a coronet.’ White was not trying to conceal his amused contempt for an islander who cut so different a picture from the conventional one of the hard, fast-talking detective.

  ‘You hired a car from Garaje Xima on the thirteenth.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘For eight days?’

  ‘That’s important?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That makes two of us!’

  ‘Presumably, you originally thought you would only be staying for eight days?’

  ‘I guess that’s a fair enough assumption.’

  ‘Yesterday, you decided you would be staying for longer?’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘There’s more to see on the island than I thought.’

  ‘Did you fly direct from America to here?’

  ‘Via Madrid.’

  ‘For what dates did you book your air ticket?’

  For the first time, White hesitated. Then, as if to cover up this brief moment of doubt, he spoke with added casual humour. ‘For eight days. But it’s open-ended, so even if it bothered the clerk who didn’t seem to know what it was, there’s no problem.’

  ‘And no problem either about staying longer away from America than you’d intended?’

  ‘That’s the way it is.’

  ‘Then you have a very convenient job.’

  ‘If I knew what that meant, I could answer.’

  ‘I must apologize for my English, señor.’

  ‘From where I sit, there’s no call for apologies.’

  ‘What I was trying to say is, you obviously have a job which allows you unexpectedly to take a longer holiday than intended.’

  ‘I work for myself, so the boss is flexible.’ He smiled.

  ‘What kind of work do you do, señor?’

  ‘Sales.’

  ‘In which area?’

  ‘The garment trade.’

  ‘Thank you. I think that is all I need to ask.’

  White stood, his movements smooth and quick. ‘Sorry I can’t be more helpful.’

  ‘And I am sorry to have had to disturb you.’

  He began to cross to the door.

  ‘I have a memory like a mosquito net!’ Alvarez suddenly said. ‘There is something more I have to ask.’

  White turned. ‘Name it.’

  ‘Did you visit Llueso before last Sunday?’

  ‘I drove through it.’

  ‘For any particular reason?’

  ‘A guy in the hotel said not to miss Parelona. Seemed a good idea to take a look at the place on the way.’

  ‘Did you stop in the village?’

  ‘Might have had a coffee at a café… Your “something more” stretches a long way.’

  ‘Forgive me, but sometimes one question calls for many answers. Since you may have stopped for a coffee, perhaps you decided also to find out where Señor Cooper lived so that you could study his house through binoculars?’

  ‘Are you on the level? Why should I do that?’

  ‘That is my next question.’

  ‘Then the answer comes short. I didn’t.’

  ‘A man was seen studying the señor’s house through binoculars.’

  ‘Great. Only it wasn’t yours truly.’

  ‘The description of this man fits you, even down to the scar on your right cheek.’

  ‘I guess you’ve been talking to someone with a great imagination.’

  ‘What was your reason for visiting Señor Cooper?’


  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘What did you say to frighten him?’

  White shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of tired impatience.

  ‘Since you extended the hire of the car for another eight days as from yesterday, I imagine you have done the same with your airplane ticket. So if I ask you not to leave the island for at least the next six days, this will not cause any inconvenience?’

  White, balancing himself on the balls of his feet as a man did when he was preparing to attack or defend himself, said, ‘Are you trying to arrest me?’ There was no trace of condescending humour in his manner now; only cold, hard calculation.

  ‘Just because a few more questions may need answering? Of course not, señor. All I’m asking you to do is to be ready to help with the investigation, if you can.’

  ‘If you’re not arresting me, I’ll leave when I want,’ he said flatly.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘After I’ve found a mouthpiece, you’ll discover just how goddamn wrong you are.’

  ‘I fear that lawyers here do not always have the same sense of professional urgency that they have in the television from your country, and should you consult one, it would probably take him many days to bring his mind to bear on your problem. But in order to make certain you are not tempted to prove me wrong and leave before the six days are up, I shall ask you for your passport.’

  Just for a moment, White looked as if he would react with physical violence.

  * * *

  Because he had been born and brought up on the Peninsula, and had taken his law degree at Barcelona University, Gallardo had no complex and interlocking web of relatives on the island, all of whose interests had to be considered if there were any danger of their conflicting with those of his clients; he was thus able to offer unbiased legal advice to foreigners, an unusual fact which ensured that he received much of their work.

  He shook hands with Alvarez, indicated the seat in front of the desk, sat, and listened with his egg-shaped head tilted to one side. He nodded. ‘I handled the purchase of Señor Cooper’s home and advised him that it was essential he made a Spanish will since he now owned property in Spain.’

  ‘Will you give me the details of that will?’

  ‘You think…?’