Two-Faced Death (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 10

  Alvarez had two thick slices of bread with the soup, a cup of instant coffee and a small brandy afterwards, and then, when he’d smoked the cigarette, he left.

  Ca’n Pequeño, true to its name, was very small. To some eyes it was probably also mean in character, but Alvarez saw it as an attractive house because it was unchanged after a couple of hundred years and had not been bought by a foreigner and modernized.

  The shepherd was a small man, with a face puckered by age and tanned by the weather. He walked with bowed back and a shuffling gait, as if every movement were an effort, yet he covered the ground with surprising speed, talking continuously and clearly suffering from no shortage of wind. They went up a dirt path which led off at right angles from the dirt track and this soon began to wind its way up the side of the mountain. Alvarez struggled along behind the shepherd for as long as he could, but when the gap between them became too great and his lungs were giving him hell, he called a halt. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his sweating face and neck. ‘How ever much further is there to climb?’

  The shepherd laughed mockingly. ‘You’re not in any condition, are you?’

  ‘It’s a Sunday.’

  ‘Wouldn’t make any difference if it was Monday. You’re too fat. You young ’uns are all the same: eat and drink too much.’

  ‘And the old ’uns talk too much … How much further is the stiff?’

  ‘Up a bit yet. Think you’ll make it?’

  Alvarez mopped his face again, returned the handkerchief to his pocket. He sighed heavily, then forced his leaden feet onwards. The path wound its way between boulders and outcrops of rock and seemed to become steeper with every metre.

  The shepherd stopped and turned. ‘I’ll tell you something. If I’d of known you weren’t fit, I’d’ve said come up the other way by car.’ He laughed shrilly.

  ‘Are you bloody telling me there’s a car track we could’ve taken?’

  ‘Never crossed me mind ’til now when I saw you panting and sweating like a man near to quittin’.’

  Alvarez swore, yet within him there was a thin shaft of reluctant amusement: the Mallorquin peasant always had been a great man for slyly knocking authority. The shepherd would enjoy himself for days remembering all the physical discomfort he had caused the detective.

  They resumed their march and finally reached the end of the path, immediately above which was a natural shelf, formed when a huge mass of rock had broken off at some time in the distant past.

  The body, slumped sideways, lay against the sheer face of rock which backed the shelf. ‘Ain’t too pretty to look at,’ said the shepherd, with relish. It was a gross understatement. Even Alvarez, who had met brutal death before, swallowed heavily when he first studied the body. The gun had originally made a mess of part of the head and the heat and the flies had carried on from there.

  The shepherd pointed. ‘It’s a lovely gun he used: never seen one like it before.’

  ‘D’you touch it?’

  ‘I ain’t that soft … What d’you reckon’ll happen to it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, except it won’t finish up in your thieving hands.’ Alvarez walked up to the body. Why did death so often have to be degrading? Man was mortal, but there should have been other ways of proving it than to let a body become host to maggots.

  ‘I suppose it’s that silly bugger of an Englishman?’ said the shepherd. ‘Was he a millionaire?’

  ‘Probably only if you count in other people’s money.’ Alvarez hunkered down and stared at the gun. The butt had been between the feet when it was fired and there was a small ‘star’ on the rock, hammered out when the gun recoiled. Because it was difficult — though not impossible — to put the muzzles of a normally barrelled twelve bore in one’s mouth and then pull a trigger with a forefinger, string had been looped from the for’d trigger, round the butt, and back up. The end of this string lay near the left hand. After the explosion the body had keeled over from its sitting position and the gun had been pushed sideways so that now it stuck out at an angle and was aimed well to the left.

  Alvarez gripped the gun by the muzzles — very slightly tarnished by rust — and pulled it free. He pressed the locking bar, but applied no pressure to the barrels: the gun opened to show it was self-opening. The right-hand cartridge had been fired, the left-hand one hadn’t: strangely, the fired cartridge was not ejected when the gun broke. Faulty ejector, he thought, gratified to discover that even the best products of England were no longer free from faults. He raised the breech above the butt and the two cartridges fell into the palm of his left hand. He closed the gun, briefly examined the chasing which proved to be of superb quality, dropped the cartridges into his trouser pocket, then tried the gun for balance and brought it to his shoulder.

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked the shepherd eagerly.

  ‘As if it were part of me.’

  ‘Let’s have a go with it.’

  Alvarez lowered the gun. ‘All right. But you drop it, or put the smallest of dents in the barrels, and I’ll have you locked up until you’re ten years dead and buried.’ He passed the gun over.

  The shepherd raised it and swung on to a soaring swallow which skimmed the rock face. When the swallow disappeared behind an outcrop, he lowered the gun. ‘If I’d of had one like this when I was younger, I’d’ve kept my family just by shooting. If it ever comes up for sale, let us know, will you?’ Very reluctantly, he passed it back.

  ‘Sure.’ Alvarez hadn’t the heart to destroy a daydream by telling him that the gun would cost much more than his flock of sheep was worth. He carefully laid the gun down on the rock, triggers uppermost.

  He examined the body. The shirt, monogrammed J.C., was — where it wasn’t stained — light puce and obviously of very good quality: the linen trousers were dark blue: the brown sandals were locally made and expensive. He checked the contents of the trouser pockets: a ring of keys, probably car keys, and a handkerchief monogrammed J.C.

  Examined close to, the damage to the head was even more terrible and Alvarez swallowed heavily more than once: his feelings were not improved by the fact that the shepherd clearly felt no such revulsion. The column of shot had pulverized much of the face above the mouth and on the rock, at a height slightly above that at which the head would have been when the body was in a sitting position, were several stains.

  He stood up and looked out across the valley. He looked at the fields and trees in their many different shades of green, the scattered houses, the range of mountains with the deep blue sky above them to highlight their jagged crests, and he thought that if a man wanted to fill his soul with beauty in an attempt to justify his existence just before he ended it, nowhere in the world could better serve him than this rocky ledge along the Laraix valley.

  ‘He’s messed up my day right proper, he has,’ said the shepherd. ‘All this time wasted, bringing you up here. What’s more, I’ve still that bloody sheep to find.’

  Alvarez continued to look out across the valley. ‘How d’you come to lose one — forget to hobble it?’

  ‘What d’you take me for? Me forget to hobble a sheep? I’ve been minding sheep since I was a nipper.’

  Alvarez ceased to listen. When a man committed suicide with a shotgun, what were his last thoughts before he pulled the trigger? Did he wonder at the chain of events which had defeated his pride? Did he stand aside from himself, look down at the crouching figure with the gun muzzles in his mouth, and pity what he saw? Or did he hate what he saw? Or did he just say, ‘What the hell?’ and pull the string, hoping that everything happened too quickly for him to feel the column of shot tearing his flesh apart …

  *

  The garage of Ca’n Adeane was to the left and behind the house, in the direction of the woods which bordered the torrente. It was built of breeze blocks which had been plastered over and rising damp had stained the sides brown to a height of a metre. The two wooden doors had been newly painted a light shade of green.

  Alva
rez tried the Yale-type key from the bunch of keys taken from the pocket of the dead man and it turned the tumblers of the lock. Inside was a Peugeot 504, left-hand drive, on English plates. The law regarding tourist and foreign-plated cars owned by residents had been altered, but Calvin had not been the kind of man to worry about such things as that.

  He climbed into the car and sat behind the wheel. He tried the ignition key and it fitted. He started the engine, ran it for a few seconds, then switched off and withdrew the key.

  He went into the house — the maid had shown him where the front-door key was kept under a flowerpot — and upstairs to the large bedroom. In the built-in cupboard which covered the whole of one wall was a shoe rack. The shoes on this rack were size forty-five and that was the size of the sandals on the body.

  *

  Brenda Calvin had the kind of body which theoretically should never have been squeezed into a bikini, but somehow with her the abundance of flesh which overflowed the small scraps of material was, in male eyes at least, sensually attractive, not vaguely obscene. She lay on her stomach on a towel with her bikini top undone, letting the burning sunshine envelop her.

  ‘Señora Calvin.’

  She opened her eyes. ‘Who’s that and what’s the panic?’

  ‘Inspector Alvarez, señora. I would like a word with you, if I may?’

  She rolled over, only remembering at the very last minute to grab at her bikini top and press it down. ‘Oops! Nearly lost it that time.’

  Alvarez looked along the beach and tried in his mind not to fill in the shapes he had so nearly seen.

  She tied the bikini top behind herself. ‘What’s brought you here?’ She studied his face and drew in her breath. ‘Have … have you found him?’

  ‘Yes, señora,’ he answered quietly.

  ‘And he’s dead?’

  ‘I am very sorry. Yes, he is dead. Perhaps we can go to your flat?’

  She stood up, picked up the towel, turned to face the road, then turned back. ‘I know it’s silly of me, but I’ve been hoping terribly he was alive and just having a joke on us all. It’s not that emotionally he still means anything much to me … At least, I didn’t think he did … ’ She stopped as she brushed some sand from her golden midriff and Alvarez watched her hands and wondered if her flesh felt as honey smooth as it looked.

  ‘Did John shoot himself?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘That bloody gun! Guns have always scared me silly. But he used to go shooting a lot in England and although he wasn’t a man to boast in that sort of a way, he always said he was a really good shot. He certainly loved that gun. I’ve seen him take ages and ages cleaning it and rubbing it down with an oily rag as if it were going to purr. Was he … badly hurt?’

  ‘Señora, I have to tell you that a shotgun is very destructive.’

  She moved abruptly and crossed the short stretch of sand to the pavement, where she waited under the shade of a palm tree. When the road was clear, she crossed. She climbed the rickety wooden stairs to her flat.

  Adamson was sprawled out in one of the battered armchairs. He wore only pyjama trousers, he hadn’t shaved, and he was noticeably bleary-eyed. He stared at Alvarez with an obsequious dislike, cleared his throat noisily, then said as belligerently as he dared: ‘What’s got you back? Have you turned up the old bastard?’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Steve,’ she said unhappily.

  ‘I’m not going to shed crocodile tears — and there’s no call for you to do so, considering what you used to call him. A man doesn’t become a saint just because he’s dead.’ He turned towards Alvarez. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘He doesn’t become one without dying … Señora, I am very sorry but there has to be an identification and you will have to make it. It cannot be pleasant, but please understand I will do my best to make it as little unpleasant as possible.’

  She shivered, then reached out for the nearest chair and sat down. Her voice shook. ‘I can’t stand death. It terrifies me. John used to laugh at me because of it and tell me death was the only certain thing in life, but he couldn’t understand. I need to believe I’ll go on living for ever and ever but when I meet death I know I can’t … ’

  ‘Señora, I also am the same. Probably, underneath, we all are. Maybe the kindest thing we can do for ourselves is to pray for a death which comes up from behind and blinds us before we know it’s there.’

  Adamson laughed. ‘Today’s funny story.’

  ‘You bloody fool!’ she shouted.

  He looked angrily bewildered.

  She slowly stood up. ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Alvarez. ‘As I have told you, I will do all I can.’

  ‘Here,’ said Adamson, ‘if that’s the way you feel, Boo, I’ll chuck a few clothes on and come along and hold your hand.’

  ‘Get lost,’ she snapped.

  *

  The morgue was at the back of the undertakers, on the ground floor. There was no sign to show what the building housed, but the road outside was the only one in the town in which the children never played.

  Alvarez led Brenda into the waiting-room, barely furnished with only three wood and rush seats, a small table with a vase of cut flowers on it, two framed texts from the Bible, and a painting of the Virgin Mary. The undertaker was as broadly built as Alvarez, with the ruddy complexion and the deliberate movements of a man of the fields, but he also had a natural dignified grace and his manner was without the slightest trace of professional sanctimoniousness. He greeted Brenda in English, then said to Alvarez in Mallorquin: ‘Has someone warned her?’

  ‘I have. But let’s keep it as low key as we possibly can. She’s in a bit of a state.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They entered the mortuary, newly equipped with a freezing compartment which contained two cabinets. The undertaker rolled out one of the compartments and pulled back the white shroud, leaving just the head covered. Belinda grabbed hold of Alvarez’s arm and squeezed it hard.

  ‘They’re his,’ she said in a strained whisper. ‘He was wearing those clothes the last time I saw him.’

  ‘Did he ever have on any kind of personal jewellery?’

  ‘He … he always wore a signet ring which I gave him when we got married. He wore it even after we’d separated. He used to say … ’ She stopped.

  Alvarez gently released his arm, went over to the compartment, lifted the right hand, and eased off the gold signet ring from the middle finger. He handed it to her.

  She began to cry as she said: ‘They’re our two initials, J and B. I had them entwined. For a long time, I thought that their being entwined really meant something.’

  The undertaker pulled the shroud back over the body and rolled the compartment into the cabinet.

  Alvarez guided Brenda out into the hot sunshine.

  CHAPTER X

  Mallorquins were as great traditionalists as the Spaniards — only the law ever made the mistake of calling the islanders Spaniards — and the square was still the focal point, even the raison d’être, of every village. In Llueso, the post office, the telegraph office, the Guardia post, the municipal police post, were just off the square, whilst in it the vegetable and fish market was held every Sunday morning, all fiestas started or finished there, proclamations were proclaimed there, dogs were injected against rabies there … and at any hour of the day and most of the hours of the night, Mallorquins and foreigners sat at the outside tables of the two cafés which immediately bordered the raised half of the square — designed to give a level surface on a sloping site — and they drank and watched the world go by.

  Meegan stirred his coffee. He nodded briefly at a couple who strolled towards his table, then busied himself in lighting a cigarette before they could take his greeting as an invitation to sit down and talk. A very faint breeze stirred the leaves of the plane trees which ringed the square and somewhere nearby, but out of sight, a group of children began to sing and by some near mir
acle they were all in tune.

  Helen came round the side of the church and past the small enclosed fish market with its stone benches and he knew a sudden sharp mental pain because in his eyes she was so beautiful. She saw where he was seated and crossed the square. ‘Poor Mary — she was bad tonight.’ Once a week, usually on a Sunday evening, she visited an elderly and crippled English woman who lived on her own because she had been deserted by her husband who could not bear her continuing incapacity. Helen sat. ‘She was in terrible pain.’

  ‘I wonder why she doesn’t go home?’

  Helen shrugged her shoulders. It was not a question anyone other than Mary could answer and she never spoke about her personal life.

  ‘What are you going to have to drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Just coffee, thanks. Mary gave me an enormous brandy.’

  He raised his hand to catch the attention of a waiter.

  ‘By the way, she’s heard from someone that the police have finally found John, dead.’

  He swung round, dropping his arm and catching his glass to knock it to the ground where it smashed.

  She stared at him, her expression strained. ‘What … what in God’s name is the matter?’

  He struggled to speak calmly. ‘It’s just I was surprised and forgot the glass was there.’ The couple at the next table were staring at him: he showed them in pantomime how the glass had come to be broken and they smiled.

  She leaned forward and put her hand on his right arm, which rested on the table. ‘Jim, what’s the matter? What’s worrying you sick?’

  ‘Nothing is.’

  ‘You looked as if something had frightened you into next week.’

  ‘I told you. I was just surprised.’

  ‘Why? You knew he’d said he’d committed suicide.’

  The waiter came over and Meegan explained what had happened with the glass. ‘No worry,’ said the waiter, in heavily accented English. He brushed the bits of glass together with his shoe, said he’d sweep them up later, took their order, and left.