Dead Clever

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Indeed, but not for very long since it is only recently that the ordinary person has owned anything worth insuring.’ Alvarez chuckled. ‘And now when we wish to describe someone who is really simple, we say that he is a man who forgets to check that his insurance is up to date before he sets fire to his house.’

  The waiter brought their first course—sopas Mallorquinas for Alvarez and grilled gambas for Ware.

  ‘I’ve been dreaming of these,’ said Ware, as he picked up the first of the six very large prawns. He pulled the head away, stripped off the legs and shell, popped the meat into his mouth. ‘As delicious as I’ve been imagining, so don’t ever tell me that dreams don’t come true. I daren’t tell Heather I’ve had these or she’ll divorce me for cruelty . . . To return to essentials. The twin-engined Fleche which flew from this island and crashed into the sea was piloted by a man called Timothy Green who had a life policy with the Crown and Life Insurance Company; it’s they who’ve called me in.

  ‘The policy was first taken out just about three years ago and Green declared, as bound to do, that he held a pilot’s licence and from time to time flew himself about the world. Obviously, the premium charged took account of this additional risk and the policy contained the standard clause that it would only be valid if, in the event of any accident while piloting an aircraft, he held a current licence.’

  Ware was silent as he ate a couple more prawns. Noticing that Alvarez’s glass was almost empty, he refilled it, and his own, from the bottle of Bach. ‘At the end of the first year, Green asked that the capital sum assured be increased by roughly the rate at which inflation was running. Since this was no more than prudent financial management on his part, the increase was granted without any further questions. The same thing happened at the end of the second year. Then, just over a fortnight ago—which is a few weeks short of when, if the sequence had been observed, Green would have been making another application to raise the sum assured by the rate of inflation—he telephoned to say that he wanted to double the amount. Naturally, a rise of this magnitude—and we’re now talking about half a million —wasn’t automatically granted and he was referred to a senior employee who tactfully explained that when so large an increase was sought, it was company practice to ask the policy holder to come to the office for a chat and possibly to undergo a fresh medical check—in other words, the company wanted to judge whether everything was still in order. Green claimed this was impossible because of his business commitments which included an imminent trip abroad, but that he had to have the increased insurance because he was soon marrying again and he wanted to be certain that his wife would be financially secure if anything unfortunate happened to him. The manager was sympathetic but inflexible; until Green came to the office and talked things over, nothing more could be done. Green began to argue and, according to the manager, became obnoxiously abusive.’

  Ware refilled their glasses. ‘Drink up so that we can kill this bottle and have another.’ He smiled. ‘Ordering a second bottle of wine without nervously consulting my wallet always convinces me I really am in Spain!’

  They finished their first course. As the waiter cleared the plates, Ware turned to Alvarez. ‘D’you object to smoking between courses?’

  ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘A man after my own heart!’ He brought a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it. ‘Heather says it’s the sign of a barbarian. So, I tell her, I’m a barbarian.’ He flicked open a lighter and then, when their cigarettes were alight, settled back in his chair. ‘In the light of what I’ve told you, you won’t be surprised to learn that when the company received the report that an aircraft, piloted by Green, had disappeared into the sea, they immediately began to ask questions. Which is why I’m here now.’

  ‘They think it might have been a faked accident?’

  ‘In one. And not just because, without the increase asked for, the sum involved is in the order of a quarter of a million; after all, when businessmen are vain enough to value their lives in millions, that isn’t very much. It’s because of the pattern. As you suggested earlier, taking an insurance company on a faked claim has been popular ever since insurance was invented. But criminals aren’t usually all that imaginative and their methods of fraud tend to run in patterns. Obviously, a man who takes out an insurance today and claims on it tomorrow is going to be suspected, so the fraudster tries to establish himself as honest and the most popular way of doing this is to work to a distant dateline and for a while to pay the premiums on the dot and to increase the sum insured by only a reasonable amount, which is to say by no more than would a prudent man who’d never thought of swindling anyone in the whole of his life. Then, when satisfied he’s established himself, he produces a good reason for asking the capital sum assured to be increased considerably and after another pause he fakes his own death.’

  Alvarez spoke diffidently, rather afraid that what he said might appear to be reflecting on Ware’s ability as an insurance investigator. ‘If this were the pattern that Green were following, wouldn’t he have waited to fake his own death until the sum assured had been increased and he would judge enough time had passed after that for suspicions to be dulled?’

  ‘Normally, the answer has to be yes. But it’s more than possible that he suddenly discovered he didn’t have all the time available that he’d been banking on and so if he was to carry out the fraud at all, he had to do it quickly. I know that if one were in his position and looked at the facts logically, one would say that it must be too dangerous to act precipitately and the idea must be dropped, but a criminal who’s spent a lot of thought and time on a projected job often can’t view it logically; and as you’ll know much better than I, fraudsters tend to be at the smart end of the criminal tree and it’s my experience that a smart man can get so puffed up with pride in his own smartness that he behaves like a plain, ordinary fool.’

  ‘That can be very true.’ Alvarez fiddled with some crumbs from his roll, kneading them into a pellet. ‘But from what you say you cannot as yet be certain that the crash was faked?’

  ‘That’s right. Which is why I’d be grateful for all the help you can give me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Starting off by seeing the officials at the airport who’ll be able to provide us with a much more detailed account of events than I have at the moment.’

  ‘I’ll ring them first thing tomorrow and find out exactly who to talk to and then arrange a meeting.’

  ‘That’s great!’ Ware drained his glass. ‘Where’s that other bottle? . . . You know, Enrique, sitting out here under the stars, eating ambrosia and drinking nectar, I realize I’m a prime candidate for the deadly sin of gluttony!’

  CHAPTER 3

  A sound disturbed Alvarez’s sleep and he opened his eyes and stared at the far wall of the bedroom, clearly visible although both shutters and curtains were closed. He vaguely wondered what the sound could have been as he languidly and pleasurably drifted back to sleep . . .

  There was a pounding on the bedroom door which startled him fully awake. ‘Are you deaf?’ Dolores called out.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked thickly, confusedly wondering if catastrophe had overtaken them all.

  ‘I’ve called you twice already. Aren’t you working today?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘Then you’d best get up before it’s time to start tomorrow.’

  After a while he reluctantly climbed out of bed, crossed to the window, drew the curtains, undipped and opened the shutters. Sharp sunshine engulfed him and he felt the heat on his bare chest. He stared over the rooftops of the village houses at Puig Antonia. The buildings on the top of the sugar-loaf mountain had originally been a hermitage, but now nuns from a contemplative order lived in them. Hermitages in many parts of the island had fallen into desuetude, as hermitages, at around the time when the tourist industry had begun to bring prosperity. Presumably it was easier to renounce the material world when that offered little to
be renounced . . .

  Dolores called from the foot of the stairs: ‘If you’re not down inside five minutes, you’ll have to get your own chocolate.’

  ‘I’m just coming.’ Dolores, he thought as he began to dress, was becoming sharper with every day. Jaime should have read her the riot act a long time ago. Threatening to leave the house before she had prepared his breakfast!

  She spoke even more aggressively when he entered the kitchen. ‘You know why you couldn’t get up when you should, don’t you? You drank too much last night.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Then why were you snoring so loudly in the middle of the night that you woke me up?’

  ‘Because you’re a light sleeper. In any case, snoring has nothing to do with drinking . . . And if you must know, I had dinner with an English señor who would never drink too much and all we had was a little wine. After we’d finished the meal, I came straight home.’

  ‘I doubt very much it was straight.’ She carried a mug of hot chocolate over to the table and put it down in front of him. ‘I’m off now. You’ll be the last to leave the house, so don’t forget to lock up.’

  ‘Just before you go, where’s the coca?’

  Her tone was scornful. ‘You think I have the time to make a coca for a man who demands his breakfast when it’s almost lunch-time? . . . If you want something to eat, there’s bread in the bin.’ She walked out of the kitchen with her head held high, her expression one of haughty disdain.

  He drank some of the chocolate, then went through to the dining-room and across to the large and ornately carved cupboard from which he brought out a bottle which he used to top up the chocolate with brandy. Breakfast was an important meal for a busy man.

  Alvarez and Ware met at the airport, outside the new control tower. The guard on the main entrance directed them over to a lift and this took them to the lower of two floors which were immediately below the main control area. There was a central, octagonally shaped lobby and off this radiated offices. They entered the one on the door of which was printed ‘Co-ordinator’.

  Murillo was only in his middle forties, but a receding hairline and a heavily lined face, in which one eyelid drooped, made him look considerably older. He shook hands briefly, as if he found prolonged physical contact distasteful, returned to his seat behind a large and rather ugly desk. The roar of a jet caused him to look through the large window and he watched an Aviaco 727 climb, leaving a dirty trail of exhaust smoke, then he turned back and said:

  ‘How can I help you, Inspector?’ Both his tone and manner asked them to be as brief as possible.

  ‘Señor Ware has come from England to make inquiries about the crash last Saturday night.’

  ‘So I understood from your telephone call.’

  ‘He’d be most grateful if now you’d give him all the known facts regarding that crash.’

  Murillo nodded, turned over some papers on his desk and found the one he wanted, read quickly, then said, clipping his words short: ‘The plane was a twin-engined, turbo-prop Fleche with long-range fuel tanks. It arrived at fourteen thirty-five on the Thursday, landing at the old airport. Green, the pilot and only occupant, cleared customs and immigration very soon afterwards.’ He waited, impatiently, while Alvarez translated.

  ‘On the Friday—in accordance with regulations—he gave notice of his intention to fly off on Saturday evening and he handed in his flight plan and asked for refuelling the next day. His declared destination, Shoreham, meant a flying time which came a long way inside the period before the next engine service was due.

  ‘At twenty-one hundred hours, on Saturday, he reported to customs and emigration and received a meteorological and flight briefing. He checked that the plane had been refuelled and paid the account.

  ‘He took off at twenty-two thirty-five. Conditions were good—winds southerly, force three, eight-tenths cloud, excellent visibility, and no change expected. Ground staff confirm that on take-off both engines were working perfectly. Radar noted that he kept to his route.

  ‘At twenty-two fifty-five, he sent out a mayday. He reported that his starboard engine had suddenly died and his port one was misfiring and he was turning back. Two minutes later he said that the misfiring on the port engine was becoming worse; after this, radio contact was lost. Radar showed the plane descending gradually, then abruptly plummeting. The image was lost twelve minutes after the last radio contact, when the plane was at roughly two hundred metres height.

  ‘Rescue services were alerted and a full search was mounted and this continued throughout the night; at midday on Sunday the air search was called off and at dark, the sea search. No sign of wreckage was found . . . That is everything.’

  After Alvarez finished translating, Ware looked up from his notebook. ‘Radar lost the plane at two hundred metres —why’s that?’

  ‘The radar set on the mountains cannot track below that height above sea level.’

  ‘Then is it possible that the plane could have dropped below the two hundred metres, levelled out, and continued on its way?’

  ‘In the dark, señor, no pilot would be so foolhardy as to try to fly that low.’

  ‘Not if he’d some pressing reason for doing so? And since the sky was two-tenths clear, there must have been a certain amount of moonlight to mark the sea.’

  Murillo tried not to speak too scathingly. ‘It would seem, señor, that you do not know too much about flying?’

  ‘Change that to nothing,’ replied Ware cheerfully.

  ‘Then permit me to explain something. Moonlight and the sea form a deadly combination which can render a man’s judgement of height useless. He may think he’s a hundred metres above the water, but in truth he may well be skimming it so that if he loses only a few metres, he hits.’

  ‘I can understand that, but sometimes a man’s willing to take a risk that any sensible person would refuse. Do you know what sort of cloud cover there was at the time of the crash?’

  ‘I will find out.’ He used the internal phone to speak to a member of the meteorological office and after a longish wait, during which he drummed on the desk with his fingers, his query was answered. He replaced the receiver. ‘The nearest time at which there was an observation was twenty-three hundred hours. Then, cloud coverage was still eight-tenths.’

  ‘Presumably, that observation was taken here. Out at sea, there might have been more moonlight?’

  Murillo gestured with his hands. ‘señor, that is so, but there is little relevance to the fact. As I said, radar contact was lost at about two hundred metres; it is estimated that at that point the plane was making around two hundred knots and so it is impossible that the pilot could have levelled out before the plane struck the sea.’

  ‘Then there is no doubt that the plane did crash?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Ware thought for a moment, then said: ‘The plane had been properly serviced and its engines were sounding good when it took off, so is there any suggestion why one engine abruptly cut out and the other misfired badly?’

  ‘No. There is no explanation.’

  ‘Could the fuel have been the trouble?’

  ‘We do not supply faulty fuel.’

  Belatedly, Ware realized that while so direct a question was normal in Britain, it was not in Spain. ‘señor, I was not for a moment suggesting there could have been any inefficiency on the part of anyone here.’

  Despite the fact that it was difficult to see how the question could escape such an implication, Murillo accepted the denial.

  ‘Presumably, other planes have been refuelled from the same source since then?’ Ware asked.

  ‘And the fuel has proved to be faultless.’

  ‘Then we’ve covered everything. Thank you for giving me so much of your valuable time.’

  Ware was silent until they were in the lift and then, as Alvarez pressed the button for the ground floor, he said: ‘That would seem to be that. The plane definitely crashed into the sea.’

&n
bsp; ‘Certainly there can be no other conclusion.’

  ‘So this is a claim that’s genuine, despite the surrounding circumstances, and the company’s going to have to pay.’

  Alvarez telephoned Palma and asked the secretary with a plummy voice if Superior Chief Salas was in; to his regret, she said that he was.

  ‘Señor, I have just returned from the airport with señor Ware. From the inquiries we’ve made, it’s clear that the Englishman, Green, was piloting the plane when it crashed into the sea.’

  ‘Are you saying that you can be certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Englishman is dead?’

  ‘Yes, señor.’

  ‘Then undoubtedly he is alive and well,’ said Salas bad temperedly before he replaced the receiver.

  CHAPTER 4

  Unless he considered that there were too many pressing cases in hand—and he seldom did—Alvarez did not work on Saturday afternoons. Man, he was fond of saying, could not live by work alone. He was seated at his desk late Saturday morning, contemplating the pleasures of the coming meal and the subsequent prolonged siesta, when the telephone rang. He wondered whether to ignore it, but there was always the chance that the caller was Salas who would be only too aware of the fact that the time was, as yet, not appropriate to having stopped work. He lifted the receiver.

  ‘Enrique, I’ve some news that’ll interest you!’

  He recognized Ware’s voice.

  ‘I’ve just had a call from England to say that although Timothy Green does not have a criminal record, he was once very close to being arrested for fraud.’

  ‘I can see, of course, how that might have been important before we spoke to Señor Murillo, but surely now . . .?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. If he had had ten convictions for defrauding insurance companies it doesn’t alter anything because his plane quite definitely crashed into the sea. But having learned his history, there’s something I’d like to talk over with you and since I’ve never seen your end of the island, what say I hire a car and drive across and we can have dinner together at the restaurant of your choice and on my expense account?’