Meegan, her arm still round his, began to walk round the house to the patio. ‘Then how d’you know what you weighed stripped?’
‘You really are being very trying today. I weighed myself, then took off something for my clothes.’
‘How much?’
As they crossed the patio, she said: ‘I’ll have a long gin and tonic, sweetie, with all the ice you can cram into the glass.’ She released his arm and sat down in a deck-chair. ‘My God, it’s so hot I’m sweating buckets. Rush that drink up.’
‘You can have it as soon as you tell me how much weight you took off for your clothes.’
‘You really are a swine and I can’t think why I like you.’ Her tone became defiant. ‘Six kilos and it probably ought to be seven.’
Meegan laughed.
‘You don’t know what I was wearing.’
‘From the look of you, it’s always precious little.’
‘I’ve always said you had X-ray eyes. Makes a girl embarrassed.’ No one had ever looked less embarrassed.
Meegan turned and spoke to Adamson, who had sat down. ‘What’s yours, Steve?’
‘I could murder a brandy and soda.’
Meegan left the patio and went into the sitting-room and across to the wooden chest in which they kept their bottles. He poured out three drinks, added ice, put some olives on a plate, and carried the tray outside.
‘Where’s Helen?’ asked Brenda, as he handed her the gin and tonic.
‘She went out in the car earlier on.’
‘Then it was her we saw going up the Laraix valley. I said it was, but Steve argued blind it wasn’t. He’s been arguing about everything since he got up this morning. Even tried to tell me that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand.’
‘It is.’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s the capital of Siam. I learned that at school.’
‘It’s the same country.’
‘For God’s sake! … Why can’t they make up their minds where they live?’
Meegan handed Adamson the brandy and soda.
‘I waved like crazy at Helen, but she didn’t answer. I wonder why not? We’d been up to see Violet and Harry. Did you know she’s thinking of returning to England to live?’
‘Violet? She can’t be: the taxes would kill her.’
‘Stephanie. She says she can’t take the mañanas any longer and wants to live in a country where at least some of the things get done properly. I just don’t understand her fuss. I think it’s the way nothing happens when it should, or does when it shouldn’t, that absolutely makes this place. I mean, if you must have things done exactly on time, become an engine driver. Like Perce.’
‘Perce Goldstein isn’t an engine driver and never has been,’ snapped Adamson.
‘Who said anything that daft? You’re going to have to stop drinking if you get that confused. I was talking about a Perce I used to know — George Hamish.’
‘Oh, my God!’ muttered Adamson.
Meegan sat down. Had Brenda realized that her husband lived along the Laraix road and that it was unlikely Helen could have been going to see anyone else along there?
*
Breeden, in the Seat 600 he’d hired at the airport twelve days before, looked briefly out of the side window. He saw a drystone wall and beyond that a field under intense cultivation with crops of peppers, aubergines, beans, lettuces, artichokes, tomatoes, and trefoil, being grown under the shade of algarroba, orange, and almond trees. There was an air of unwholesome excess about the land, he thought. How much nicer his garden in England was with its neatly mown lawn, its round rose-beds, and the crazy-paving path which he had laid that spring. He hoped his sister, who had lived with him since she had been widowed, had remembered to use the long-lasting weedkiller — at the right strength — on the path, if necessary. And was she watering the roses if the ground was too dry?
He saw the dirt track off to the left, by the twisted fig tree, and he slowed down and turned into it. The Seat bounced up and down on the rough surface. In England, he thought, with conscious superiority, one did not have to suffer pot-holed dirt tracks to visit a house. This island was, as he had known it would be, archaic.
He came to an old man who was laboriously cutting long grass on the wide verge with an equally old sickle and who spat into the dust when the car was abreast of him. Breeden knew a moment of sharp irritation, judging the gesture to have been a personal demonstration of hatred towards the foreigner — completely forgetting that it was unlikely the old man could have seen him clearly enough to have identified him as one.
Ca’n Adeane had its nameboard on a wooden pole in the right-hand grass verge. There was an elaborate wrought-iron gate, set in a sandstone wall, and he had to get out and open this: in the heat, in the suit he was wearing, every movement brought out fresh sweat. He felt damp and stickily dirty. Without consciously formulating that fact, he decided he’d make Calvin jump through the hoop.
A track, which ran along the north side of the rectangular field, led up to the house. This was old, with metre-thick walls of honey-grey stone, variegated brown-tiled roof, green wooden shutters, and a patio over which, spread out across a wire framework supported by stone pillars, was a massive vine from which hung dozens of bunches of well formed grapes. Nothing like a Kent or Sussex yeoman’s cottage.
As he stopped in the turning circle at the end of the track, a man stepped out of the front door on to the patio and, coming to a halt under the shade of the vine, studied Breeden.
Breeden, briefcase in his hand, walked over. ‘Mr Calvin?’
‘That’s right.’ Calvin shook hands with a firm grip. He was the same size as Breeden, but there was in all his movements a suggestion of hard physical condition. He was dressed as casually as Breeden was dressed formally, yet there could be no doubt who wore the better quality clothes: his open-neck shirt and green slacks had the unmistakable style of expensive tailoring and material. His face was squarish, a little uneven in features, with eyes wide apart, a nose which was patrician in form, and a mouth which was notable for very full lips. When he smiled, the lines about the corners of his mouth gathered together into an expression of mocking good humour suggesting he was a man who never quite accepted anything at face value, but was always ready for a delayed banana-skin. He had a casually self-confident manner, of the kind that forced respect from porters and headwaiters. ‘And you will be Mr Breeden, from the Bank of England, hot on the scent of corruption?’
‘How did you know who I was?’
‘My dear fellow, since you landed on the island the sole topic of conversation at drinks has been the trail of havoc you’ve left behind you. You’ve even gained the ultimate expression of an Englishman’s respect, a nick-name. The Fifth Horseman.’
‘The Fifth Horseman?’ queried Breeden, knowing he was being slow, yet forced against his will to ask.
‘Riding stirrup to stirrup with war, famine, plague, and death.’
Breeden was used to being received with dislike, even fear, but not mockery. He felt uneasy, as if he had lost his bearings, and because of this he showed an unusual degree of open hostility. ‘Mr Calvin, I want to speak to you.’
‘The circumstances being what they are, I rather imagined that. Come on in and have a drink and throw off some of those clothes you’re wearing or you’ll pass out.’
‘I’m quite all right, thank you,’ he answered stiffly.
‘Suit yourself, as the polar bear said to the Mexican Hairless … Excuse my going first and mind your head on the lintels: this country wasn’t made for six-footers.’
The interior of the house disturbed Breeden. It was all too much … too decadent came to mind when he saw a blown-up Beardsley print. They went through the hall and under a low archway into the high-roofed sitting-room and it seemed to him that everywhere there were Persian carpets, tapestries, paintings, prints, pieces of beautifully inlaid furniture, porcelain figurines, icons, gold and silver snuffboxes, velvet chairs, startlingly coloured cushio
ns … He sat down in an armchair, pressed his knees firmly together, and rested his briefcase on them.
‘What is it to be?’ asked Calvin, who remained standing. ‘A liqueur since we’re not long since lunch, or a brandy or gin since we’re not far short of drinking time?’
‘Nothing for me, thank you. I seldom drink.’
‘Very wise. But that surely makes for a constricted life on an island where the only other forms of popular entertainment are sun, sea and sex?’
To his chagrin, Breeden felt himself blushing slightly, as if he were a callow youth.
Calvin crossed the room, walking round the tiger skin — the head snarled with great malevolence — and went to a beautifully made cocktail cabinet with intricately designed brass hinges and locking plate. He poured himself out a generous brandy, closed the cabinet door, and returned to the centre of the room where he sat on a tapestry-covered low chair. He raised the glass with his left hand. ‘Here’s mud in your eyes. And lots of it when you’re really hot on the trail.’
Breeden coughed. ‘Mr Calvin … ’
‘John. No one uses surnames out here.’
‘I prefer to use surnames, thank you.’
‘No fraternization with the enemy?’
‘Mr Calvin, I have been sent to Mallorca by the Bank of England to investigate certain matters which are concerned with illegal transfer of capital out of Britain by British subjects. Under the Exchange Act of nineteen … ’
‘Don’t you think it’s far too hot for all that?’
‘I wish to make certain facts perfectly clear. Under the act of nineteen forty-seven … ’
‘If you insist on running through the law, let’s paraphrase and save time. Anyone under sixty-five may not take more than five thousand out without paying the dollar premium until four years after he’s emigrated. If he does and Big Brother catches him, he can be fined up to three times the premium he’s evaded. To pay the fine, all existing assets in the UK can be forcibly encashed. How’s that for an amateur assessment?’
‘Within limits, Mr Calvin, what you say is sufficiently accurate … ’
‘Only qualified approval? What is it? Don’t you like amateurs horning in?’
‘Do you understand the full meaning of the relevant sections of the act?’
‘I’ll confess to having been so intrigued by them as to wonder what sort of twisted mind could conceive them. The righteousness of the genuine bureaucrat has always frightened me: any man who can believe that what he’s doing is utterly right is a terrifying phenomenon.’
‘There have to be laws,’ said Breeden defensively.
‘But by what alchemy of logic does a righteous man help to impose oppressive laws and yet not see himself as an oppressor?’
‘What’s wrong with saying a person musn’t take out more than five thousand pounds from the UK without paying a premium? The country can’t be drained of capital.’
‘It’s the mentality that’s so wrong. It’s not other people’s money the emigrant wants to take out of the country, it’s his own. Deny him that right and you’re dictating how he can enjoy his own possessions. That makes you a dictator. And dictators haven’t ever etched their names in history as bywords for liberality and geniality.’
‘Mr Calvin, I know what the law is — I might point out that I am in no way responsible for its form — and when it is broken … ’
‘You come hot under the collar to see me. Why? Have I broken the law? And if I have, can any practical steps be taken to bring home to me the enormity of my behaviour?’ Calvin drank some brandy. ‘Being an essentially practical sort of a bloke, I’d say it would pay you to examine the second question first. After all, what’s the good of calling a man a bastard if you can’t produce his shortened birth certificate to prove it? … Now I am without any assets in the UK. Lamentable from your point of view, but very forward thinking from mine. Without assets to impound, what can you do? The offences under your beloved act are non-extraditable.’
‘Offences are, under sub-section one, non-extraditable as you say.’
‘Disappointed?’
‘I do my work without allowing personal emotions to intrude.’
‘Highly commendable.’
‘Mr Calvin, during the course of my investigations, I have discovered that several people on this island have exported money illegally from the United Kingdom — by which I mean … ’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘Very well. Perhaps you also realize that some of these people still have assets in the UK?’
‘You’ll have to put that down to the incorrigible British vice of amateurism.’
Breeden tried to regain his normal sense of pleasurable superiority. He looked slowly round the room. ‘This house and its contents must represent a very great deal of money, yet your records show that officially you have not exported a single pound. Would you care to say how you’ve acquired this house?’
‘I bought it.’
‘Do you understand that the Bank of England is empowered to investigate … ’
‘Anything that takes its fancy in the United Kingdom, but nothing outside it, to the mortification of all internationally-minded bureaucrats. And out here the Spanish banks have a wonderful sense of bank secrecy. Ask them about my accounts and they’ll smile and shrug their shoulders.’
Breeden could not conceal his sense of triumph. ‘Maybe. But banks do not happen to be the sole source of information. I’ve been talking to English people who’ve been very forthcoming.’
Calvin raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s happened to the tradition of the silent upper lip?’
‘Some of those who have broken the law have assets still in the UK and they’re very frightened at the prospect of losing such assets. They’ve been quite ready to tell me how their money has been illegally shifted out here.’
‘Have you really been exercising a little blackmail? Has the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street taken to harlotry?’
‘My job,’ said Breeden very stiffly, ‘is to discover who has been breaking the law. Mr Calvin, you have illegally transferred, to my knowledge, a considerable sum of money from the United Kingdom to here for three different people.’
‘I want to make one thing quite clear. I’ve always done it for a clear ten per cent. I am not a charitable organization.’ ‘The act of smuggling out money for others, Mr Calvin — Perhaps you never got so far in your reading of the Act? — under section sixty-three, sub-section one, is an arrestable offence, punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment and a heavy fine. Further, it is an extraditable offence.’
Calvin yawned.
‘You arranged with an import/export firm in England that they would be paid large sums of money. They invoiced for the export of machinery although, of course, no machinery was ever exported to Spain. The firm kept the money and used it in the normal course of business in the UK while authorizing their Spanish branch to pay out in Spain, in pesetas, ninety per cent of the amount it had received. You collected the pesetas and paid them to the person concerned, less your ten per cent.’
‘Quite right. It’s all quite simple, really, once the paperwork’s been sorted out. I didn’t invent the system, of course, but I am quite proud of the way I refined its method of execution.’
‘The Bank of England will instruct the Director of Public Prosecutions to take proceedings against you.’
‘And the DPP will discover from the police that nobody but myself knows the name of the export/import firm since I always paid the money in at one end and always received it at the other. It’s quite impossible exhaustively to investigate every firm which might be guilty and in any case I pride myself on the effectiveness of the paperwork involved. In the end the DPP, who surely has to be a practical man by nature, will undoubtedly declare a … Is it a nolle prosequi?’
‘I do not know. But, Mr Calvin, you have overlooked the obvious fact that there will be movements of money through your accounts corresponding to the dates I’ve been
given … ’
‘In England, I naturally dealt in cash. Out here, accounts are secret to an investigating Englishman.’
‘The Spanish authorities will co-operate in a criminal matter.’
‘But first you have to furnish them with the proof that I am a criminal. And how can you do that without access to the accounts?’
Breeden began to tap with his fingers on the briefcase.
‘Give up,’ said Calvin cheerfully, ‘and concentrate for the rest of your stay on having a real holiday … How much longer are you here?’
‘I am leaving for Nice next week,’ said Breeden very stiffly.
‘More unfortunate clients, unknowingly awaiting the pleasure of meeting you?’
‘I have certain persons both here and there whom I shall be interviewing.’
‘And you hope to learn something that will nail me down, once and for all? Forget it. I’ve always looked after my own skin with the care of a dedicated hypochondriac. Relax, now, and have a drink and to hell with duty.’
Breeden stood up. ‘I think I’d better leave.’
‘Really? Just before you go, then, how d’you like the sound of five thousand pounds, paid into a Swiss account in your name and number?’
Breeden’s thin-lipped mouth tightened.
‘Incorruptible? Your sentiments do you tremendous credit, but on this island they’re likely to make you feel rather lonely: corruption is the only common bond between many of us. Never mind. I’ll try not to think too harshly of you — a man can’t easily learn to be weaker than his upbringing and environment have made him.’
Breeden hurried out of the room and the house of corruption and decadence.
CHAPTER VI
Meegan was listening to Strauss’s Don Juan when Helen entered the house and came past the kitchen door to the sitting-room. He stared at her, but said nothing, and after one brief, troubled look at him she went back to the passage which led off to the bedrooms and bathrooms. She returned and sat down as the music came to an end. He stood up and crossed to the playing unit.
‘When I listen to any of his music I always feel as if my emotions were being stretched to their limits,’ she said.
Two-Faced Death (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 5
