‘Why should I have owed him a peseta?’
‘He’ll have paid for the load before you picked it up because the people delivering will have demanded cash. You won’t have been able to pay him back until you’d sold the load. If he died in the middle of the operation, you’ll be quite rich.’
Collom handed Alvarez a glass and returned to his chair. ‘I’ve never worked with him.’
Alvarez looked wearily bored by the answer, but did not challenge it. He drank, then held the balloon glass in the palm of his hand. ‘I need your prints before I go.’
Collom’s mother came into the room, her movements nervous and uncertain as if she were worried she were going to be roughly ordered out. She looked at her son, so much larger than she that it was difficult to believe she had once borne him, then at Alvarez. ‘I wondered, señor, if you would like a biscuit? I have made some this morning and they’re all crispy.’
‘There’s nothing I’d like more.’
She sighed with relief and hurried away.
Collom spoke with angry disgust. ‘Boozing ’em ain’t enough now: you’ve got to feed the bastards as well.’
*
Brenda was lying face upwards on a lilo, twenty metres out from the shore, as she soaked up even more sun.
It was no good shouting, thought Alvarez, because she’d never hear him: close inshore the sea was boiling with children, all of whom were shouting at the tops of their voices. So did he roll up his trousers and take off shoes and socks and wade out? He was all too conscious of the fact that his legs were white and his knees were knobbly and that no man was ever at his best in rolled-up trousers.
A Mallorquin boy of about eight was building a sandcastle immediately to his right. He spoke to the boy. ‘How’d you like to make yourself a peseta?’
The boy finished scooping a tunnel before he looked up and said: ‘Doing what?’
‘Going out to that lady on the lilo, there, and asking her to come ashore because I’d like to have a chat with her.’
The boy grinned with cheeky insolence. ‘I’ll do it for five pesetas.’
‘Five? When I was your age … ’
‘They hadn’t invented money.’
Alvarez took a five-peseta piece from his pocket and handed it over. He’d known the time when one peseta was a third of a man’s wages for the day … He smiled. What the hell!
The boy ran into the water, splashing an elderly, pinkskinned man who spoke roughly in German, and flung himself down into the sea to swim the last few metres when the water was just deep enough. He spoke to Brenda, who failed to understand him, then pointed at Alvarez. Brenda paddled the lilo round to face the shore. As soon as she recognized Alvarez, she waved.
He watched her paddle ashore. She looked like that picture of Venus, rising out of the water with a huge shell behind her. By God! she stripped years off a man …
She stepped off the lilo and dragged it ashore. ‘Fancy seeing you here! Go and change and come and have a swim.’
‘I wish I could, señora … ’
‘The water’s like velvet. And if you haven’t a costume handy, I’ll lend you one of Steve’s. The middle will be a bit tight, that’s the only trouble.’
‘I think, señora, the middle would be under too much strain for either comfort or safety. I would like to talk to you in the flat, if I may?’
‘Sure. I was going to come ashore, anyway.’
He carried the lilo across the road and as he followed her up the stairs he could not stop watching the way her hips moved: seldom had he seen such voluptuous movement. She said they’d sit out and drink on the balcony and went inside, he put the lilo down and sat on one of the canvas chairs and sadly wondered if women ever truly found men voluptuous.
She returned with a tray on which were two glasses, a bottle of brandy, and an insulated ice bowl. ‘I guessed you’d have a brandy? With lots of ice? I’m sure it’s all right so long as you use lots of ice because then brandy won’t do you any harm. That’s what John always said, anyway.’
He drank and the brandy was already cold enough to bring out sweat on his face and neck. ‘Señora, is Señor Adamson here?’
‘No.’ She leaned back and faced the sun and her breasts stood very proud and seemingly at risk of escaping from the bikini top. ‘To tell the truth, we’ve been getting on each other’s nerves a bit recently so he cleared off for the day.’
‘I’m sorry there has been trouble.’
‘He can’t seem to understand … ’ She became silent for a while, then said: ‘I know I’m stupid. John always used to say I was the only person he’d ever met who thought two and two made twenty-two. But even if I am stupid, I don’t see why he should get so angry just because I’m upset that he’s dead.’
By now, Alvarez was able to follow without too much trouble whom she was talking about.
‘After all, he was my husband. And one can’t lose a husband without being just a little upset, can one?’
‘I should think not, señora.’
‘All right, he chased after other women and that made me spitting mad, but I think he just couldn’t help it. Some men are like that. They see a fresh body and they’re off. God knows why. After all, we’re all the same underneath our clothes, aren’t we?’
‘More or less, señora.’
‘Still, he’ll have to get over it and if he doesn’t, he can take a powder. I just can’t stand sulky bad tempers.’
‘Does Señor Adamson have a job?’
‘Steve?’ she laughed. ‘Work and him don’t adjust. No, he’s one of those blokes made for lounging around, looking divinely handsome. He’s a real knock-out in a dinner-jacket. And can he dance! Talk about sex on the move.’
‘Señora, I fear I have something more to tell you about your husband.’
She shifted in the chair and stared at him, her deep blue eyes suddenly filled with worry. ‘Is it something rather nasty? Then have you got to tell me? I do so hate hearing nasty things.’
‘He did not commit suicide. Your husband was murdered.’
‘Murdered? … I’m glad.’
‘You’re glad?’
‘John was a fighter and that’s what I most liked about him. And I don’t mean him and me fighting like cat and dog because that’s different. I mean taking the world on and not giving way to anyone. When you told me he’d committed suicide … it just wasn’t him. It turned him into someone who’d given in and it was terrible to think of him as that.’
‘The fact he was murdered, señora, means someone murdered him.’
‘Well, even I can see that!’
‘What I’m indicating is that now I have to find out who killed him. It may make life unpleasant for some people.’
‘So it damn well should.’ She spoke with sudden fierceness.
‘Perhaps you will help me? Do you remember that I showed you the note that was left in the typewriter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it could have been forged? That someone else wrote it, then imitated the signature?’
She thought about that. ‘Not in a thousand years,’ she said decisively.
‘I think, señora, that that is probably what happened, however.’
‘The way it was written was exactly how he’d have written it — all snarky. I could even hear him saying it in his laughing voice.’
‘Yet surely someone wishing to imitate what he might write if he were going to commit suicide would have written just like that?’
‘You mean, put two fingers up at the world and deliberately jeer at the conventions? … They’d have had to know him pretty well to get it so right.’
He nodded.
‘But none of his friends would kill him. It’s a ridiculous thing to say.’
‘Unfortunately, it has to be said … Señora, could you swear that the signature definitely was not forged?’
‘Well, it … Look, I’m sure it wasn’t. But I can’t say for absolute certain, can I?’
; ‘Very true. You are being most helpful.’
She said suddenly, surprise roughening her voice: ‘I think that you’re thinking maybe Steve or I could have done it.’
‘Only a man would have had the strength to throttle Señor Calvin.’
‘It wasn’t Steve. He hasn’t the courage to do a thing like that. Don’t take any notice of the way he acts or talks. I’m telling you, he hasn’t the courage. If he says something really wild, it’s meaningless … ’
He interrupted her. ‘Señora, I will question him whatever you say.’
‘But it couldn’t have been Steve. Why would he ever do such a thing?’
‘Your husband was in danger of being forced back to England where he would have been arrested for currency manipulations. If he had been fined very heavily, he might have had to sell everything in this country and somehow take the money back to England to pay the fine and so avoid further imprisonment. Then there would have been nothing here to repay you all the money of yours he had had.’
‘You think that Steve and I could ever have worked out anything that complicated?’ She laughed.
She sounded genuinely amused, he thought. Yet he suspected that long ago she had discovered the value of appearing more naively simple than she was … And if one stopped to think about it, two and two could be said to make twenty-two.
It was clear that, despite whatever rows they had been having recently, she was still very fond of Adamson. In that case, she would probably be only too glad — since women always put their loves before their loyalties — to divert suspicion away from Adamson, even if to do so was to endanger a friend. ‘Señora, I understand all you’ve said. So now I need to know who else to question. Tell me, did Señor Calvin become very friendly with many women in the past few months? And have you recently met any man who is a husband of such a woman who has been scratched, especially on the back of his hands, or who has had other injuries?’
CHAPTER XIII
There had been a breeze in the Port, but up in the valley there was none and the heat, trapped between the two ranges of mountains, was greater than it had been all that summer. Sheep, goats, and the occasional cow or mule, all huddled under what shade they could find, lacking the energy even to forage. Only the vultures and a solitary golden eagle, spiralling high above the mountains, seemed to be unaffected.
The Seat dropped into a large pot-hole which Alvarez failed to avoid and there was a metallic crunch which made him swear. A little further along the very steep, rough dirt track leading up to the rock shelf on the mountain, one of the front tyres struck a large stone, the steering-wheel jerked and the car was momentarily deflected towards the edge. Sweet Mary, preserve me! he prayed, not daring to look right towards the precipitous slope on that side because heights turned him into a coward. He should have walked up the path he and the shepherd had used before, but the thought of such a climb in the heat had been too much.
The zig-zagging track came to an end. He climbed out of the car and wondered how he was ever going to get it back down. Perhaps he would abandon it.
Climbing, he skirted a large, straggly spurge bush only to scratch his right ankle on a spiny creeper. Jumping aside, he stepped on some loose stones and felt them rattle away so that his mind was filled with visions of a rock avalanche. In a state of near panic, he reached the rock shelf.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face and neck and tried to regain his breath. Then he began to search the shelf systematically and exhaustively. He found marks, probably recent, possibly made by shoes, but these were meaningless and it was impossible to know whether they had been made before the body was found. There was a scrap of plastic, wedged behind a small piece of rock which was up against the rock face, but this again was of no significance. The rock face still bore the signs of the shooting, otherwise it was clear.
He leaned against the rock and lit a cigarette. He had been pretty certain he could not have missed anything of consequence the previous time, but had had to check. He stared out across the valley and once again the scene filled him with a wonderful sense of peace and the fact that he stood within a couple of metres of where there had been a murdered body produced no sense of discord.
When his cigarette was finished, he walked over to the edge of the shelf, dropped the butt and stamped it out, then kicked it over the edge. Had Calvin been strangled up here and then the scene set for the bogus suicide? Had he been strangled elsewhere and then his body brought up? If the former, what had he and his murderer been doing up here? If the latter, why: why not have left the body very much nearer Ca’n Adeane? He’d originally presumed that the suicide had taken place on the shelf because Calvin had wanted a last look at beauty before he blasted himself into the unknown. Since that was nonsense, why had the body been brought so far unless for the obvious reason of hiding it for as long as possible? Then why leave the fake suicide note where it would be found immediately?
After a time he returned to the car. He studied the maximum width available to him for turning, looked with horror at the slope on the outside of the path, wondered about backing down the slope and knew that anything was preferable to that.
It took him nine locks to turn the car and when the last one was over he was sweating so heavily that he actually felt momentarily cold as the sweat evaporated. He lit another cigarette, promised himself a really large brandy at the first available opportunity, and began the drive down.
The shepherd, with his dog and his flock of sheep, was just along the track from his house. ‘Been back up there again, eh? Didn’t walk this time, but you ought to have done. Nothing like a good walk to take the fat off your belly.’
‘How d’you know where I’ve been?’ asked Alvarez curiously.
‘Got eyes, ain’t I? I looks and I sees. I don’t keep me animals healthy without looking all the time.’ He waved his stick at a sheep, which moved back towards the main body of the flock while the dog came to a standing position and waited for the order which did not follow.
‘You’ve just seen me in the car going along the dirt track to the rock shelf?’
‘’Course I did.’
‘If you’ve got eyes that good, you must know a lot of what goes on about here?’
‘I knows as much as the next man. And a little bit more.’
‘Then maybe you’ve seen another car drive up that path not so very long ago?’
‘Maybe I have.’ The shepherd hawked and spat.
Alvarez waited, showing not the slightest hint of impatience.
‘I see a car like yours.’
‘A Seat six hundred?’
‘How do I know what kind it is? I ain’t interested in what a car is unless it runs over one of me sheep.’
‘When you charge the driver three times what the beast is worth?’
The shepherd cackled with laughter. ‘They’ve got more money than sense, ain’t they, so where’s the harm?’
‘No harm. What colour was this car?’
The shepherd thought for some time. ‘It were light.’
‘White, grey, fawn?’
‘It were light-coloured. I don’t know no more than that.’
‘How long ago do you reckon you saw it?’
‘I isn’t never worried about time. When it’s light I gets up, when it’s dark I goes to bed.’
‘But you’ll have some idea of how many days or weeks ago you saw it?’
‘It weren’t all that long ago. Like as not, a week or two.’
‘Do you often see cars going up that track?’
‘Ain’t seen another since I don’t know when.’
‘Did you get a sight of who was in it?’
‘With me that far away? You must think I’ve eyes like a hawk’s.’
‘Why not? You’re an old buzzard.’
The simple joke so amused the shepherd that he laughed himself into a coughing fit and Alvarez had to thump him on the back.
‘Why d’you keep asking questions?’ asked the s
hepherd, when he was once more able to speak.
‘Because the Englishman was murdered and didn’t commit suicide. Someone throttled him.’
The shepherd stared at Alvarez. ‘Him with half his head blown off and you talk about being throttled? How bloody daft can you get?’ He was very annoyed and he turned his back on Alvarez, whistled the dog into action, and began to move the flock on.
*
Alvarez compared Collom’s fingerprints with the unidentified print taken from the shotgun and found that none matched. He sighed, rested his arms on the desk, his head on his arms, and went to sleep.
The telephone woke him, as it had so often done recently. Resentfully, he answered it.
‘I’m speaking from the Department of Graphology. I’ve compared the crime signature with the specimen signatures and although it’s impossible to be definite on the strength of just one crime signature, I’d say it’s genuine.’
‘Did you say genuine?’
‘You sound surprised?’
‘If it is genuine, I can’t make head or tail of things.’
‘Sorry to confuse the issue … There you are, then. No certainty, but great probability.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alvarez, wondering what he was thanking the other for.
After replacing the receiver, he stared at the top of his desk. How could the signature be genuine? One of the suspects had surely to be either a first-class forger or else to have access to the work of one. Adamson?
He went back to sleep.
*
From the next room came the sounds of Antonia’s making the bed. It was wasted effort, thought Meegan. Like all Mallorquins, she never tucked the bedclothes in and so invariably Helen remade the bed. Wasted effort was something about which he was a bit of an expert. He looked away from the typewriter and round at the shelf on which were all his published books. There were nine hardback titles and one paperback translation from Holland. (The Dutch were still very sympathetic towards the English.)
He could still remember the sense of exaltation he had felt when he’d heard his first book had been accepted. Success and fortune: move over Graham Greene, one step down the ladder of fame, Angus Wilson. He could also still remember his great worry: would the critics appreciate the fact that the novel was at two levels — for those with the intelligence to see below the surface? Should he not at least have hinted at this in the blurb, despite the publisher’s Philistine comment on pretentiousness? … He could have saved himself an awful lot of worry. The only critic who reviewed the book in print worked for a paper published in a town in Yorkshire that had taken him ages to find on a map — and quite clearly that critic hadn’t even scratched the surface of the first level.
Two-Faced Death (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 13
