Two-Faced Death (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1)

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Who … who said I’d ever been in trouble with ’em?’ muttered Adamson.

  Alvarez waited.

  ‘Don’t you … ’ began Brenda. Then she realized that nothing she could say or do would alter the situation and, shoulders slumped, she turned back and looked for another clean glass.

  Adamson cleared his throat. ‘I … I guess there was a bit of trouble once.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About three years back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Valencia.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was in a van that turned out to have a load of grass hidden away in it.’

  ‘You are referring to marijuana?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Four of us had been knocking around in Morocco for weeks in this Volks minibus. Then we sailed over to Valencia and the police and customs hit us like a ton of bloody bricks. They stripped the van out and found the stuff.’

  ‘You were jailed?’

  ‘They slung us into a stinking jail before we’d time to shout for help.’

  ‘How did you get out? Drug smugglers in Spain usually get at least five years.’

  ‘Me and the other two didn’t know anything about it — that’s dead straight. It was all Bruno’s bloody silly fault. I could’ve told him, forget it, it’s not worth the game in Spain. Bruno was level and told ’em it was all his idea, but at first they weren’t interested. Then some bloke from our consulate came along and got us a lawyer and someone else got in touch with the place in Morocco where Bruno’d bought the grass whilst we were visiting friends fifty miles away and they said, sure, it was only Bruno who did the buying, In the end, the lawyer got us out of the nick. But not a word of apology.’

  ‘How long were you inside?’

  ‘Eight weeks and it seemed more like eight months.’ Quite long enough to have made contact with a master forger. ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘What more d’you want?’

  ‘Is Bruno all right?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Haven’t you been back to find out?’

  ‘In my book, if a bloke’s a bloody fool who gets his pals into trouble, he’s got to learn to live with himself.’

  He’d run, thought Alvarez with contempt, and had not stopped running until he’d reached the island. ‘Now let me see your hands.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I wish to see if they are at all damaged.’

  ‘Because of John being strangled? Look, mate, I told you, I didn’t do him in.’

  ‘Then your hands will surely be unmarked.’

  Brenda handed Alvarez a brandy and Adamson a gin and tonic: she poured out a Ricard for herself. She sat down on the settee and looked from one to the other of the two men, worry twisting her very full mouth.

  Alvarez drank, then put the glass down on the floor by the side of his chair, stood up, and crossed to Adamson’s side. ‘Let me see your hands.’

  Very slowly, Adamson extended his hands. They shook. ‘I’ve been boozing too much.’

  The palms of Adamson’s hands were unmarked. ‘Turn your hands over, please, so that I may see their backs.’ Once again, it was clear that the skin had suffered no damage within weeks. Alvarez returned to his chair.

  Adamson lit a cigarette. ‘Didn’t I tell you? The trouble with you blokes is, you’ll never believe anybody.’

  ‘Perhaps in our job that is necessary. Señor, where were you on the twenty-first of July, a Wednesday?’

  ‘He was with me,’ said Brenda loudly. ‘I told you that last time.’

  ‘It would be much better if the señor answers me, señora.’

  ‘I was with her,’ said Adamson and a trace of his usual cockiness had returned to his voice.

  ‘You are quite certain?’

  ‘Couldn’t be more certain.’

  ‘Have you done much shooting?’

  ‘He’s never done any,’ said Brenda.

  ‘That’s dead right. I don’t know one end of a gun from the other. So I didn’t stand that gun in his lap and pull the trigger and make it seem like he’d committed suicide.’

  ‘Señor, it seems that the person who faked the suicide either knew nothing about guns or forgot what he did know.’ Adamson was plainly shocked to discover that his vehement denial had been to his own disadvantage.

  ‘Do you have a car, señora?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Do you sometimes hire one?’

  ‘If I need one.’

  ‘From which firm?’

  ‘The one along the road at the back of here.’

  ‘Garage Llueso?’

  ‘If that’s its name.’

  ‘Have you hired a car from there recently?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And have you, señor?’

  ‘No.’

  Alvarez finished his drink. ‘I think I have finished asking questions. Thank you for helping. Now all I need to do is to ask you, señor, to let me take your fingerprints.’ He heard Brenda sharply draw in her breath.

  ‘Do what?’ demanded Adamson hoarsely.

  ‘There was a print on the gun which I wish to identify.’

  ‘It wasn’t mine,’ said Adamson, with certainty.

  Brenda was clearly reassured by Adamson’s answer. ‘Come on, Steve, drain your glass. We’re all waiting with our tongues hanging out.’

  ‘I think, señora … ’ Alvarez began.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve had the other half.’ She stood up, crossed the centre of the room to take his glass, and then went over to the sideboard. ‘John always used to say that a one-drink man was basically untrustworthy because he wasn’t one thing or the other.’ As she poured out the drinks, she giggled.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Adamson.

  ‘That made me think of you, love,’ she answered enigmatically.

  She gave Alvarez back his glass, took Adamson’s and returned to the sideboard. ‘Bottoms up, Enrique. Or as an old boy-friend of mine used to say, “Here’s to the health of your blood, if your health isn’t bloody, your blood must be healthy … ” I’m sure I’ve gone wrong somewhere.’

  ‘Like always,’ muttered Adamson.

  She giggled again. ‘You know something? It kind of still makes sense the way round I had it.’

  She had a remarkable habit, Alvarez thought, of twisting things round and yet still making sense.

  *

  Goldstein stood squarely in the centre of the sitting-room. He held his chin high and his shoulders ramrod straight. ‘I wish to make it quite clear that I protest most vigorously at the inference which lies behind your words.’

  ‘Perce, the inspector’s only … ’ began Amanda.

  ‘I shall speak to the British Consul. I will not be termed a criminal.’

  ‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, with grave patience, ‘in an investigation of this nature … ’

  ‘In England the police have the wit to confine their enquiries to those people who might conceivably have been guilty of the crime.’

  ‘Señor, I merely ask that you show me your hands, give me your fingerprints, and account for your movements on the twenty-first of last month.’

  ‘I am not a criminal.’

  ‘Perce,’ Amanda said, ‘you’re being rather difficult.’ She looked appealingly at Alvarez, very frightened that he would be so irritated by her husband’s rude boorishness that he would refer to what she had told him on his previous visit.

  ‘We come from a country where it is every citizen’s inalienable right to be as difficult as he pleases.’

  ‘But, señor, you are now living in a country where it is every citizen’s duty to help the police,’ said Alvarez.

  ‘Are you trying to threaten me?’

  ‘Perce,’ she said, ‘for God’s sake don’t forget what could happen. Things are different out here.’

  ‘Very different. There seems to be no differentiation made betwee
n criminal and gentleman. And stop calling me Perce.’

  There was a silence, broken by Alvarez. ‘May I now see your hands, please.’

  ‘I act under protest. Is that quite clear?’ Goldstein held out his hands.

  The palms were smooth and the skin was unscarred. ‘Would you turn your hands over, please.’ The backs of the hands were equally unmarked.

  ‘Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘In this respect, thank you, yes. Now will you tell me, please, where you were on the twenty-first of last month.’ Goldstein turned and stalked over to his desk, from which he picked up his diary. He turned back the pages. ‘I went down to the Port in the morning.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone who would be able to corroborate the fact that you had been there?’

  ‘I have no record of such a meeting. Nor is it necessary. I went to the Port.’

  ‘What about the afternoon?’

  ‘I stayed in this house.’

  ‘With your wife?’

  ‘Do you wish to suggest I would have been here with anyone else?’

  ‘Señor, I can clearly perceive that that is not possible.’ Goldstein looked bleakly at Alvarez, but decided not to pursue the conversation.

  Alvarez bent down and picked up his case. ‘If I may put this on your desk and then take your fingerprints?’

  ‘I suppose I cannot escape the miserable situation. But rest very assured that the consul will hear about it.’

  *

  Antonia lived with her parents on the outskirts of Llueso, in a small unmodernized cottage, rather pokey, often damp, which her mother kept scrupulously clean and tidy and of which she was as proud as if it had been a mansion.

  Alvarez walked up the stone path to disturb a couple of hens which were scratching around in the dirt. There was a goat tethered under an algarroba tree and as he briefly watched it, assessing its shape and potentiality, he heard the grunts of a contented pig. This family still lived sensibly, he thought with approval, producing as much of their own food as possible and not becoming so lazy that they had to run every day to the nearest foodstore.

  Antonia’s mother was at the side of the house, weeding lettuces: bent double, she wielded a small, short-handled hoe with unvarying precision. When she saw him come round the house, she stood upright, pushed back her wide-brimmed straw hat which protected both her head and her neck from the sun, and called out: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is Señorita Antonia in?’

  ‘She’s cooking the meal.’ She studied him. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ she demanded, with some asperity.

  ‘Inspector Alvarez, Cuerpo de Policia. But I have come only to ask your daughter something that’s of no direct concern of hers,’ he added reassuringly.

  ‘Go on round to the back door, then.’

  He went along the cinder path, past a lean-to from which came more pig grunts, a well, and a number of strings of tomatoes which had been prepared for drying, and came to the back door.

  Antonia was making soup and the smell made him feel hungry. After introducing himself, he said: ‘You work for the Meegans, the English couple in Ca’n Tizex?’

  She nodded. She didn’t fear him, as might an older person who had known how powerful the police had been in other times, but she was respectful and watchful.

  ‘I want your help to try and discover what kind of people they really are. How would you describe them?’

  ‘Describe them?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t know anything, except they’re foreigners. They’re pleasant enough, but they waste a lot of food. I bring it back home and either we eat it or give it to the pig, so it does us some good.’

  He leaned against the stone sink which was fed by a single cold water tap. ‘How d’you reckon they get on together? All right — or do they fight a bit?’

  ‘They’re always rowing but I’ve never seen him hit her. And come to that, I reckon she’s the kind of person who’d only let herself be hit once.’

  He nodded. ‘I know what you mean. Have they been rowing recently?’

  She thought back. ‘Not for a while, I suppose.’

  ‘Then things have changed?’

  She began to shred wild spinach with a large knife. ‘I suppose they have. He used to go on and on at her and she’d shout back, but recently he’s been all quiet and she’s been all smiles and pleasant to him.’

  ‘When d’you reckon the change came?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘A week or two back,’ she said, very vaguely.

  ‘Have you any idea what they usually used to row about?’

  ‘Not really.’ She suddenly grinned slyly. ‘But I’ll bet you anything you like it was another man.’

  ‘Why d’you reckon that?’

  ‘The way he always got red in the face and shouted and she became all hoity-toity, like a woman does when she’s trying to cover up.’ She began to peel and then to chop an onion.

  ‘Tell me something more. Have you noticed anything else about either of them recently? Has he looked as if he’s been in any kind of a fight?’

  She was surprised and for a few seconds she stopped chopping the onion. ‘Here, that’s odd, that is!’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘When you was talking about them fighting and I said he never hit her, I’d forgot the right old bruise he had on his cheek. I remember thinking at the time, had she laid into him?’

  ‘How long ago?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Not very long. Much the same time as they stopped shouting at each other.’

  He rubbed the lobe of his right ear.

  *

  In his office, Alvarez leaned back in the chair and put his feet up on the desk. For a time he stared at the shutters, partially opened to allow enough light into the room to prevent its being gloomy, then he removed his feet, leaned forward for the phone, checked what the number was and dialled the Institute of Forensic Pathology. He spoke to the professor’s assistant and asked if it were conceivable that a man could be strangled without his tearing at the strangler’s hands?

  ‘It’s like this, Inspector. When a bloke’s being strangled it’s a hundred to one he panics and when he panics he doesn’t stop to think of hitting the strangler in the goolies or to bring his own hands up between the other’s and jerk them away, he just claws at the wrists and arms. That’s why in nearly every case where the victim isn’t drugged or drunk, he tears the strangler’s hands.’

  ‘Suppose in this case there was a fight first and the strangler tied up Calvin’s hands before strangling him?’

  ‘You can forget that one. We checked under the skin of the wrists and there wasn’t any bruising: the dead man didn’t have his wrists bound.’

  ‘But the skin under Calvin’s nail quite definitely wasn’t his own?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Alvarez. After saying goodbye, he rang off.

  He poured himself out a drink and lit a cigarette, then heaved himself to his feet and went over to the window to open the shutters fully, flooding the room with sunlight. On the desk he laid out the sets of fingerprints he had taken and, using a magnifying glass, compared these with the unidentified print on the shotgun. None of them matched. He swore for the second time.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Superior Chief Salas rang at nine o’clock the following morning. He spoke with cold precision, lisping heavily to underline the fact that he was a native of Madrid and was only on the misbegotten island because duty held him there. ‘Alvarez, I have received no general progress report in the murder case.’

  That was logical, thought Alvarez: there had been no progress.

  ‘You initially confuse a suicide with a murder, it is now two full days since you uncovered proof of murder, yet to date I have received no general progress report. Why not?’

  Alvarez stared at the copy of Ultima Hora he had bought on his way in and he noticed the day was Friday the thirteenth. By M
allorquin tradition this was not an unlucky combination, but by British tradition it was — this case concerned the British. ‘Señor, there are very many facets of the case which have had to be exhaustively investigated and I had no wish to send in any details before being quite certain … ’

  ‘I have not even received a report on the post mortem findings.’

  Alvarez scratched his head. He reached down to the bottom drawer and brought out a bottle of brandy. With Salas on the phone and Friday the thirteenth on the calendar, a man needed something.

  Salas sarcastically wondered if Inspector Alvarez even began to understand the urgency of the case — a foreigner murdered on the island, which relied on tourism for its prosperity. And had he somehow failed to appreciate the fact that the honour of the Spanish police was sharply involved? An honour which unfortunately appeared to be in very doubtful hands …

  When the call was finally over, Alvarez slumped back in his chair and stared at his empty glass. Not a word of praise for uncovering the murder in the first instance. What a blunder it had been to uncover it! Why, he wondered resentfully, should he, who didn’t give a twopenny damn if his name became completely forgotten by everyone in authority except the pay branch, be landed with a case which ensured his name was permanently before his superiors’ notice? Surely there were inspectors by the score who would have been delighted to be faced with solving the insoluble, certain they would succeed and that success would lift them high … ?

  Calvin had been murdered. Throttled. But the scene had been cleverly set to suggest suicide. The murderer, then, had not only to be a clever man with a mind which could look round corners, he also was either a very good forger or knew one such … But however clever, he had made mistakes — he had broken the gun to check the used cartridge and had not realized this would recock the gun, he had left a fingerprint on the stock. Several people were known to have motives for killing Calvin and these motives were either of a financial or an emotional nature. One of those suspects, then, undoubtedly should have been scratched on his arms and his prints should match the one on the stock. None of them had a scratched wrist, the prints of none of them matched. Then was there someone as yet unsuspected? Another jealous husband? Someone swindled by Calvin? Or had Collom hired a third person to kill Calvin?