‘Are you buying?’
‘If you’re drinking.’
‘Why are you buying?’
‘Because I’d like the pleasure of a chat with an old friend.’
‘If that was all there was to it, you’d want the old friend to do the buying.’
‘Come on ashore, you sour old bastard.’
Martinez was reluctant to move, but Alvarez made it clear that he was prepared to wait. Swearing, Martinez brushed a last trickle of water through the nearest scupper, laid the brush down on the deck, picked up a dirty T-shirt which he pulled over his broad shoulders, then jumped ashore with an agility which mocked his years.
‘Where d’you like to drink these days?’ asked Alvarez.
‘Somewhere where I can choose who I drink with.’
‘What about Tomi’s?’
‘Are you now so bloody rich you like paying tourist prices?’
‘Tomi’s was all right when I was last there.’
‘Then it’s a long time since you were.’ He began to walk.
They reached the road, crossed to the far pavement and continued past shops which catered for foreigners and in which the prices were high, the quality often low, and taste usually non-existent. A side road brought them to a small bar, seldom patronized by tourists since from the outside it looked dirty and it did not serve snacks with chips. Inside it was spotlessly clean and on the walls were framed photographs of the port which showed a small, sleepy fishing village. Alvarez ordered two brandies, carried the glasses over to a table and sat opposite Martinez. ‘You and Hibrero were friends, weren’t you?’
Martinez produced a cigar and lit it.
‘Elena, his mother, is a very distant relation of mine.’
‘It always was a bloody unlucky family.’
‘She came to the house to tell me that her grandsons are missing and have been since Sunday. Did you see them sail out?’
‘No.’
‘They should have returned the next morning. She’s worried sick, which is hardly surprising since Hibrero died at sea. Shot by the guardia. Wouldn’t stop, so they said. If that’s true, it meant he reckoned he couldn’t ditch the cargo before they came alongside and so he tried to make a run for it. I could never understand why he made such a mistake. If they’d caught him with a cargo, they’d have put him inside for a couple of years, but he’d have lived.’
Martinez slowly considered what had been said and what had been left unsaid; he understood that Alvarez’s sympathies lay with Hibrero, not with the law. ‘A couple of years be buggered,’ he finally said angrily. ‘Hibrero thought the guardia a bunch of ignorant Andaluce peasants and when he’d been drinking, which was often enough, he’d taunt them with being so stupid they’d never get within a thousand years of catching him. I’ve seen him jeering at them until they were redder in the face than a cock’s comb. They’d have fixed the evidence to put him away for life.’
‘Is that so? . . . If he was smart, which he was, how come they got so close to him when he was on a run?’
‘I’ve just told you, he wasn’t so smart after he’d drunk a few.’
‘Are you saying that someone informed on him?’
‘How else could the guardia have got that close to him?’
‘Who talked?’
‘If we knew, d’you think the bastard would still be breathing?’
Alvarez picked up the glasses and took them across to the bar to be refilled. Back at the table, he said: ‘Before I came down here, I phoned the drug squad in Palma to see if they’d taken Miguel and Carlos in and were holding ‘em for questioning.’
‘Then you’re as bleeding stupid as them. The Navarros have never touched drugs.’
‘Hibrero wouldn’t have done. But times change and people change with ‘em.’
Martinez leaned forward until his stomach was against the edge of the table and said bitterly: ‘Haven’t you even enough sense to learn that there are people who don’t ever change?’
‘But are those two some of ‘em?’
There was a short silence. Alvarez said: ‘If you’re so sure of them, tell me where they are now.’
‘How would I bloody know?’ He sat back, drew on the cigar and let the smoke trickle out of his nose.
‘Because you know about everything that goes on around here . . . Elena’s wearing black because of her husband and her son. She’s terrified that now she’s wearing it for both her grandsons as well. She has to know, one way or the other, even if the knowledge will be poison.’
Martinez emptied his glass in two quick swallows and pushed it across the table. Alvarez had both glasses refilled.
Martinez drank, put his glass down on the table. ‘Carlos is dead, Miguel is injured.’
‘What happened?’
‘The boat sank.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Which hospital is Miguel in?’
‘None.’
‘Because he was on a run and daren’t take the risk of being questioned about how he got his wounds?’
Martinez shrugged his shoulders.
As he drove back from the port to Llueso, Alvarez considered what he’s just learned and he wondered how much more Martinez knew but had refused to divulge because he could not, or would not, forget he was speaking to a detective, even if one whose sympathies had been made clear.
Dolores welcomed Alvarez with a torrent of angry words. ‘You’ve finally decided to come home, then! When it suits you and not when I expect you. After all, why should you care what I expect? It means nothing to you that I’ve spent all day slaving in a kitchen that was hotter than hell, labouring to prepare a delicious supper which needs to be eaten at the right moment. Thoughts like that would never bother you. You tell me you’ll be back at such-and-such a time, then return an hour late and the meal’s ruined and all my work has been reduced to ashes. Are you in the least bit concerned? Of course not!’
Tm sorry, but . . .’
She put her hands on her hips and held her head high. ‘You say you are sorry, but that is only because I speak. If I were prepared to remain silent, as you’d like, you would not bother to say anything except you wanted your meal now. But you’re unlucky. I am not prepared to be quiet.’
‘I’ve been working . . .’
‘But of course. And it’s only a coincidence—which you regret—that much of your work had to take place in the bars of Llueso and the port.’
‘Damnit! I’ve been finding out about Miguel and Carlos.’
‘And for that it is so necessary to drink?’
‘Who says I’ve been drinking?’
‘I do.’
‘All right. But that was only because I had to have a word with someone.’
‘Someone who, no doubt, is incapable of talking outside of a bar?’
‘I had to persuade him to tell me what’s been going on . . . Carlos is dead.’
‘Mother of God!’ she whispered, her mood abruptly changed. She went over to the chair next to the one in which Jaime was sitting and slumped down in it. ‘Why is life so cruel?’ She looked up, her dark brown eyes moist. ‘And what about Miguel?’
‘He’s injured, but I don’t know how badly.’
‘Then ring the hospital and find out.’
‘I can’t. He’s not in a hospital.’
‘Why not? Because he was smuggling when it happened?’
‘Yes. So now I have to try and find him and discover how badly injured he is before I go and speak to Elena.’
She nodded. ‘If you say he is still alive, she will pray to all the saints that he recovers and in her heart she will be certain they must listen to her because she is an old woman who has suffered so; but sometimes the saints are deaf and then it will be so much worse for her . . .’ She became silent.
‘Whoever’s looking after him will have made certain that he’s very well hidden so that there’s no chance the guardia discover he’s been injured and start to put two and two to
gether. Has the Navarro family any relations who live in the mountains?’
She thought for a long time, then said: ‘There are some distant cousins; an old couple who won’t leave their house even though the children have begged and begged them to move somewhere where there are other people to notice if they are in trouble. But where? In God’s name, where do the two old people live?’
‘Tomaxi,’ said Jaime.
She turned and looked at him, astonished that he should remember something that she could not.
CHAPTER 12
Puig Tomaxi was only fifteen kilometres from Llueso, but ten of these kilometres were up in the mountains and by car it was a journey which took at least three-quarters of an hour. Tomaxi was the name of the valley at the head of which stood the puig, a mountain with twin crests, just over a thousand metres high. The valley was narrow and not long and even now the land was heartbreakingly stony despite the past generations of men and women who, day after day, removed stones and built them into walls or stacked them on waste land so poor that not even they had considered it cultivatable. The lower slopes on either side of the valley were steep, but these had been terraced in days when people had never heard about cost-effectiveness.
There was only the one farm in the valley, yet even so the land had never provided the family with more than a bare living. The buildings were grouped together at the far end—the house, with stables attached, and two barns, built of stone, with roofs of bamboos and tiles and without glass in any of the windows, as dourly severe in appearance as the mountains.
As he slowly drove down the road which wound its tortuous way towards the floor of the valley, Alvarez tried to sort out his own mind. If Miguel proved to be in the farmhouse, then there were questions which he must be asked; but what to do about the answers? . . . He and Carlos had been fishermen all their working lives and therefore it was safe to assume that their boat had not been lost through negligence or stupidity. So had it been lost through the action of others? What others? Not the police. Fellow smugglers? But the two brothers were of the traditional smuggling fraternity. Or had they, despite what Martinez had said, tried to break into a trade—drugs—that was far from traditional and which paid so much more than did the normal goods and had someone decided to eliminate their competition? Hibrero would never have smuggled drugs, not for any fortune, but his two sons . . . Alvarez nodded. He now knew what he had to do. If they had been into drugs, then, no matter how cruelly his actions affected Elena and Ana, no matter that they had trusted him and would see his action as an unforgivable betrayal of their trust, he would hand Miguel over to the drug squad. Just as Hibrero had always known where lay the line between what was morally right and what was morally wrong—as opposed to legally—so did he.
He reached the floor of the valley and soon the road deteriorated into a pot-holed dirt track. As the car wallowed on its springs, he wondered how long it would be before this land was abandoned? Only as long as it took the couple to die. Even he, who desired more than anything else in the world a finca of his own, would not try to farm here. All that this land produced successfully was despair.
He parked in front of the house and walked across the bone-dry, cracked earth. He was halfway to the door when a man stepped out. ‘Manolo Caceres?’ he asked. Caceres was old and almost as dried-up as the land, yet Alvarez could be certain that he still did a day’s work that would shame most townsmen. ‘My name’s Enrique Alvarez; I’m a cousin of Dolores Ramez, who’s a cousin of Elena Navarro.’
‘Cousin Inspector Alvarez,’ sneered Caceres.
That he had been identified enabled Alvarez to guess what had happened. The previous evening, Martinez had defended the sons of his old friend and had vehemently denied there could be the slightest possibility they had moved from traditional smuggling into drugs. But afterwards, knowing how greed had changed many Mallorquins, he’d begun to wonder and the more he’d wondered, the less certain he’d become . . . But Hibrero had been his friend and until he could know the truth beyond doubt, he owed Hibrero’s remaining son the duty forged by that friendship and so he had passed word through that Miguel had to be moved in case the Inspector was bright enough to work out where he was likely to be hiding . . . ‘Miguel’s not here any longer, is he?’
No answer.
‘When did he leave—late last night?’
No answer.
‘Where’s he been moved to?’
No answer.
Alvarez brought a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it. Caceres stared into the distance. Alvarez lit a cigarette. ‘Elena’s going crazy with worry.’
A woman called out: ‘Who is it?’ A moment later, she appeared in the doorway. She was the same age as her husband, but looked even older because her back was so badly bowed from decades of working bent double in the fields.
‘It’s Cousin Inspector Alvarez,’ sneered Caceres.
Alvarez spoke to her. ‘I’m here to try and help Elena. She doesn’t know where Miguel and Carlos are and she’s terrified that something’s happened to them and she has to mourn afresh. I know that Carlos is dead, but do I have also to tell her that Miguel may die so that she will be left without grandsons?’
‘It’s in God’s hands.’
‘Be quiet, woman,’ Caceres shouted.
‘How badly injured is he?’ asked Alvarez.
She ignored her husband’s order. ‘He has broken ribs, burns, and many bad bruises.’
‘What happened?’
‘He’d gone up to the front of the boat and there was an explosion which threw him against the side. If he’d been near Carlos, he’d have died also.’
‘What caused the explosion?’
Caceres shouted: ‘There wasn’t one. The wife’s talking stupidities. We’ve seen no one and we know nothing.’ He swung round and spoke angrily to his wife, his words inaudible to Alvarez. She returned into the house. He ordered Alvarez to leave, every other word an obscenity.
Alvarez returned to his car and drove back along the pot-holed track. An explosion aboard a diesel-engined fishing-boat which almost certainly had not been carrying bottled gas surely suggested a bomb, planted by men determined to get rid of two newcomers to the drug trade?
He had thought of a way in which he could avoid having personally to tell Elena that one grandson was dead and the other injured, but because it had become his duty to deliver this tragic message, he rejected the temptation to any such evasion. But when he drove up to Elena’s house it was to discover that only Ana was at home, looking tired and careworn; the crying of the baby suggested at least part of the reason for this.
‘Grandmother’s not here,’ she said abruptly.
Initially, he was surprised, having imagined that Elena would not have moved from the house until he returned to tell her if he’d managed to learn anything. ‘D’you know where she is?’
‘She . . . she went into Palma to shop.’
Ana was not a good liar; or perhaps she was too tired and worried to try to sound sincere. He realized that he’d been rather naive to be surprised by Elena’s absence. Word had reached her that Miguel was alive, but injured, and she had gone to nurse him. Alvarez said quietly: ‘They say that Miguel’s injured, but it sounds as if he’s not critically ill.’
Tears trickled down her cheeks as she began to sob; in her grief, she looked ugly, the worst features of her face being exaggerated and the better ones obscured. With an unthinking gesture of appeal, she reached out for him and he hugged her to himself as he murmured comforting words and assured her everything would be all right in the end, even as he hated himself for being such a hypocrite since soon he might have to arrest Miguel.
Her emotions calmed and she quickly drew away from him, suddenly embarrassed by the embrace. He said: ‘When I need a bit of help to face the world, I have a drink. Perhaps you’re the same?’
She hesitated.
‘Where will I find something?’
She led the way into the room with the
suite of furniture in white leather and pointed to the heavily carved sideboard. The baby’s cries intensified and she hurried out of the room, returning with him in her arms. Alvarez opened the doors of the sideboard and he couldn’t remember seeing a larger selection of drinks in a private home. Yet another indication that the brothers had been making far more money than conventional smuggling had ever offered? . . . She said she’d have the same as he, a brandy, and he searched among the bottles, quickly finding a Torres Gran Reserva. ‘Where are the glasses?’
‘In the kitchen.’
He followed her. The walls of the kitchen needed retiling, the ceiling needed repainting, and the floor was plain concrete, yet the gas stove was large and new, on the working surfaces was every possible kind of electrical machine, and the refrigerator was a very large two-door model with an ice dispenser.
They sat outside, at the battered wooden patio table, shaded by the overhead vine whose fruit was formed but stone hard.
‘What have you heard about Miguel’s condition?’ he asked.
She did not bother to try to make out that she had heard nothing. ‘He will recover.’ She stroked the baby’s head. ‘I told them not to,’ she said suddenly.
‘Not to do what?’ he asked, judging she was far too wrapped up in her fears, doubts, and tiredness, to realize that she needed to guard her tongue.
‘I said I was scared because nothing ever comes so easily, but Carlos just laughed. I said at least to save some of the money and not to spend it all, but Carlos called me an idiot because when he needed more, he’d get it.’
‘They’d found something new to smuggle?’
She did not answer him. ‘Carlos said I was always preaching disaster. But I know that nothing ever comes easily, except trouble.’
‘When was all this happening?’
‘Recently,’ she said vaguely. ‘When he bought the furniture and the stuff in the kitchen and the new bed for grandmother, the car, and the christening robe for Pedro . . .’ She stared down at her son with a look of love and fear. ‘I said to Carlos, Pedro could be christened in the robe I was. He wouldn’t hear of that; said mine wasn’t nearly good enough for a Navarro and so he went into Palma and bought one that cost fifty thousand. Fifty thousand!
Dead Clever Page 8
