Mistakenly in Mallorca (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 11

  ‘You’ll show me how to drink. And how to talk. But not how to make money.’

  ‘If we sell that field to the Dutchman …’

  ‘Bring him here so that I can talk to him.’

  ‘No,’ he muttered sulkily, ‘he’ll only do business with a man … Marie, he’s offering two million pesetas. Two whole million.’ He thought about the figure and poured himself another drink.

  ‘You’re not doing any more business for me until that English señora is paying a proper rent for my house: not if the Dutchman offers ten million.’

  Dolores entered the kitchen, looked at Mayans, and giggled. He cursed her and suggested that, despite her mode of life, her mother had been insensible to shame. He drank the brandy with angry haste.

  ‘Dolores,’ said Marie, ‘cut the bread and put some oil on it and stop giggling.’

  Dolores went past Mayans, swinging her hips and sending her mini skirt fluttering because she knew he couldn’t keep his eyes off a good pair of thighs. She cut three slices of pan Mallorquin, poured olive oil on to them, sprinkled them with salt, and put them on three plates.

  *

  ‘That young man,’ said the mountain, ‘didn’t seem to know Geoffrey Maitland, did he, Mary?’ She reached over to the glass dish of salted peanuts, picked up several and hurried them to her mouth. She chewed quickly and swallowed, reached out and picked up several more. She spoke before she ate them. ‘His estate will be a fairly large one. He bought a lot of land for investment several years ago and I was told some of it is very likely to get planning permission.’

  Lord Eastmore tried not to look as bored as he felt and fidgeted with his cigar.

  ‘It seems,’ went on the mountain, after swallowing, ‘from what you say about Elvina Woods that it’s a very great pity she is probably going to inherit.’

  Lady Eastmore sipped her white Cinzano with a dash of soda. The mountain, annoyed with the waste of time, picked up the glass dish and emptied the contents into the palm of her left hand. In between much more rapid mouthfuls, she said: ‘Charles, did you say there was some nasty little snooper from the Bank of England going round this place, checking up on bank accounts and all that sort of thing?’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘Fellow ought to be hanged. That would teach him to mind his own business. We’ve gone far too soft … Mary, have you a few more peanuts? I rather enjoy one or two with a drink. And if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like another drink. This heat makes me very thirsty.’ She suddenly belched, but with the gentility of generations of good breeding.

  CHAPTER XII

  WHEN IT WAS dark — and the night was very dark because at sunset the clouds, dramatically edged with red, had come rolling in from the north-east — Tatham went into the garage and lowered the back seat of the Fiat to provide the full cargo compartment.

  Back in the house, he collected together four of the plastic boxes, filled with cotton-wool, that Elvina always had with her when flower-hunting, her camera with special lens, the book on flowers of South-West Europe, a torch, and her handbag. He checked on flowers peculiar to Mallorca and picked out Scutellaria balearica, which he underlined with ink and against which he put a question mark, which had been her way of identifying species she was specifically seeking.

  Lifting out the body from the deep-freeze was not as unpleasant a task as he had imagined it might be. The bedspread was still firmly secured around her and in any case he was soon suffering from hands so cold it was impossible to worry about much else. He placed the body in the cargo compartment of the Fiat.

  On the front passenger seat he put flower book, open at the relevant page, collecting boxes, camera, torch, and her handbag in which was the cable from Madge which had given news of Maitland’s death and the ticket to London. He returned to the house and collected a second torch, slim enough to fit into his pocket, a pair of gloves, and a large sheet of brown paper, together with a long length of string.

  He switched off all the lights except the one in the hall and up in his bedroom, locked the front door, and climbed into the car. The drive to Puerto Llueso and then on along the Parelona road was totally uneventful, with very little traffic even in the Puerto. There was no other car in the parking area by the viewing point.

  Potentially, the greatest moment of danger had always clearly been when he was crossing from the car to the edge of the cliff. But this distance was only a few metres and because the road was uphill from either direction any approaching car — necessarily in an intermediate gear and revving hard — would be audible and its headlights visible long before the occupants would be in a position to note him.

  He backed the Fiat so that the tailgate was towards the sea, switched off the lights, and waited, with both windows down. He heard the murmur of the wind across the stunted scrub and grass and the distant hiss of the sea below as the small waves beat against the rock faces. Then he heard a car approaching from the Parelona direction and seconds later he saw the reflection of the headlights, though not the lights themselves. He counted. After approximately forty-five seconds, the car breasted the road and gathered speed along the hundred-metre stretch of level to the descent and the first left-hand turn. Because the Fiat was set back from the road, the headlights had at no time been focused directly on it or even very near it. He waited and a few minutes later a car approached from the Puerto direction. This one took thirty-three seconds to come into view. Then he had a minimum of thirty-three seconds in which to get from the Fiat to the cliff edge.

  He climbed out of the car — he’d previously taped the light buttons so that the interior lights did not automatically come on — and made a last audible and visual check: he heard and saw nothing. He went round to the rear, lifted up the tailgate, slid the body back until he could lift it out. Then, at no small effort, he hooked his elbow over the tailgate and slammed this shut.

  He heard a car approaching from the Parelona direction.

  His eyes were well attuned to the dark and he could just make out the edge of the cliff. He began to walk and almost immediately stumbled badly as his right foot caught in an unseen pothole. He cursed, but did not dare use a torch.

  He had counted thirty by the time he reached the edge of the cliff. He knelt and the wind, damped from the sea, came up vertically to ruffle his face. He undid the cover and rolled the body out, making certain the shoes scraped along the rock. There was a quick rattle of stones, a thud a very short while afterwards, and then silence. The average sea temperature at this time of the year was fifteen degrees centigrade, fractionally more than the air temperature: the body would be thawed out evenly and quite quickly.

  Headlights speared the sky and then descended as the car breasted the rise. By then, he was lying down on his stomach, facing the sea, with the Fiat giving him extra cover.

  The car passed abreast of him, engine note dropping as the driver changed gear. It gathered speed. Just before it went out of sight, its brake lights shone bright red as the driver prepared for the first corner.

  Tatham stood up and returned to the Fiat. He wrapped up the bedcover in the brown paper, tied it up with string and added a loop so that he could carry it over his shoulders. He set the rear car-seat back in position and checked no traces were left.

  It was going to be a long walk. But he was used to hard physical exercise and at another time he would have enjoyed it. By happy chance, the old mule track between Puerto Llueso and Parelona, built centuries before, crossed at the same point as the road so that they ran for a while parallel to each other. He began to walk along the track, using the torch when absolutely necessary as it zigzagged to avoid too steep a gradient. Above him or below him, up to a kilometre away at times, the occasional car passed by, covering in minutes a journey that was going to take him hours.

  CHAPTER XIII

  ENRIQUE ALVAREZ PALASI was both an anomaly and an enigma. He was an anomaly because members of the Cuerpo de Policia were supposed to work from police stations belonging t
o the Policia Armada y de Tráfico: he was an enigma because none of his companions could understand him. In the Llueso station of the Guardia Civil he was known as The Loner and the captain in charge of the sector had sworn to get rid of him, but all requests for his transfer clearly became lost between Llueso and Palma for there were never any orders detailing him to move. Had the captain been sufficiently interested, which he wasn’t, to discover why Alvarez was around, he would have learned that he’d temporarily been billeted on the Llueso Guardia Civil six years previously because of a sudden and dramatic increase in crime. This had been due to the rowdy behaviour of people who’d come out on a series of holidays organized by an English soccer club’s supporters’ club. The supporters’ club had learned their lesson and never organized another holiday, but no one in Palma thought to give the order to recall Alvarez. Of course, had he been a man of the slightest ambition, he would have set about having himself transferred back from Llueso. But he had none, other than to retire, buy a small patch of land, and sit on this and feel the soil running through his fingers. He’d once said this to a lst-class guard with whom he’d become almost friendly and the 1st-class guard had called him shallow-witted.

  He was from peasant stock and proud of the fact. His parents had been illiterate, but good farmers, managing to make a bare living out of three hectares of boulder-strewn land — the other fifteen hectares they’d owned had been pine-woods, incapable of growing crops. Towards the end of the Civil War, his father had been called up and sent to the Peninsula to fight. He’d been wounded, decorated for bravery, and returned. His wound to his back had made farming both difficult and painful and his wife had had to do the hardest work — as she had when he was away. As strong as an ox, and about as graceful, a woman of fierce love and pride, she’d burned herself out in the service of her family.

  His parents had been so proud of their only son that no sacrifice had been too great, no work too hard, to give him a better chance in life than ever they’d had. Although illiterate, they’d viewed the future with some understanding and seen things were going to change: so they’d made him go to school before this was obligatory and paid the fees with money that could have bought them just a little comfort in life. He had been a bright pupil.

  The tourist boom had started at about the time that his father’s back had become considerably worse and his mother had suffered a crippling rheumatism. They’d known very little about the boom until the day an Englishman, round, pleasant face, always smiling, very chatty, had visited their farm and interrupted their sowing. Their land, he’d said, was on the sea and was becoming quite valuable. This had astonished them because pine-woods had never been of any commercial value except, possibly, for making very poor quality charcoal. He could, he went on, get them a really good price for their land and with that money they could buy a proper farm in the plains and grow the kind of crops which until now they’d only dreamed about. What true peasant could ignore such an offer? Of course, the Englishman had added, there would have to be a lot of bargaining with hard-headed businessmen and who better than himself to do the bargaining on their behalf? He’d see no one swindled them. Even in their restricted lives, the saying ‘An Englishman’s word’ had meaning. So with simple faith they’d trusted him, and with simple trickery he’d swindled them, paying them only what the land had been worth as farmland and pine-woods. The Englishman had made so much money on the deal that he’d given large sums to charity and become well known and respected as a philanthropist.

  His parents had died shortly afterwards. Take a peasant away from the land and he’s no reason for living.

  For several years after the death of his parents, he’d stayed with relatives who lived near the fastest-growing strip of tourist land east of Palma. He’d discovered, to his great pleasure, that all the stories about foreign girls were true.

  Then, after doing his military training, he’d met Juana-Marie. Juana-Marie was more beautiful than the moon over the water on a summer’s night, sweeter than the honey of the wild bees who worked in the foothills of the Sierra de Allabia, more loving than a mother with her firstborn. Every flash of her dark eyes, every toss of her black hair, every smile of her curving lips, gathered up his heart a little more. She was unique and wonderful. She wanted him to become a great person in life. So he forgot the shiftless life he had been living and studied for the competitive exams of the Civil Service. He’d passed, very well. He’d entered the State Police Training School and had come second in his class. A very bright future lay ahead of him.

  At five-fifteen one Thursday afternoon, Juana-Marie had left her parents’ house to walk to her cousins’ who were helping her prepare everything for her wedding. At five-twenty, Robert Jouanier, French, wealthy, had decided to go out and buy more wine. His current girlfriend tried to dissuade him, saying he’d drunk too much to go anywhere, but he was at the stage where any opposition, however reasonable, merely stiffened his drunken intentions. He took a very sharp corner at 60 k.p.h. and lost control of his Mercedes. It mounted the pavement and pinned Juana-Marie against a wall and she died quite quickly.

  Alvarez lost all his ambition.

  *

  The guard, grey-green jacket off because the day was warm and the building old and stuffy, put his head round Alvarez’s door. ‘Hey, wake up. There’s work for you.’

  Alvarez looked up from the book he’d been reading. ‘You make it sound like there’s been an earthquake.’ He was squat, broad-shouldered, and had a heavy face that tended to become owlish in expression when he wore horn-rimmed glasses, which he did for reading small print. His complexion was dark, yet in his features there was no strong hint of Moorish ancestors.

  The guard grimaced. ‘One tremor and I’ll guarantee you wouldn’t just be sitting there …! There’s a foreigner been along to the Municipal boys to say his aunt seems to be missing.’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do? Pluck her out of the air?’

  ‘You’re a bad-tempered old sod,’ said the guard, just before he left and shut the door.

  Alvarez wasn’t bad-tempered, just indifferently cynical. Foreigners were always going missing. Usually one found them in bed with a member of the opposite sex: sometimes of the same sex. Age seemed to be no bar. He’d once tracked down a man of seventy-one who’d taken off.

  He lit a cheap cigar and stared down at the paper he’d been reading. Real Mallorca were signing on a new and well-known player for the coming season. They’d need more than one new player if they were to get anywhere, judging by the previous year. He’d lost a hundred pesetas over them last season, betting they’d be in the top four of their division.

  He picked up the telephone receiver and asked for the Municipal Police and eventually he was put through to them. An Englishman, John Tatham, had been in to say his aunt had not slept at her house the previous night, her car was not in the garage, and she was due to fly to England in less than two hours’ time. Her address was in La Huerta. He replaced the receiver. La Huerta was where all the foreign money lived. Much of that money had been made out of land on the island. Lots of people said the foreigners were a good thing because their money had brought prosperity to the island: who now saw children bare-footed in the streets? But couldn’t shoes have been provided without prostituting the land?

  He left the building by one of the side doors and walked along the narrow street to the square and the Llueso Club. In the bar, he ordered a coffee and a brandy. He lit a cigarette and studied his reflection in the mirror. A brooding face, a crumpled shirt because no woman ironed for him, a tie because regulations demanded it and not even he could ignore them too blatantly all the time, the top button of his shirt undone because he hated any restraint around his bull neck. When the precious, wealthy young Englishman in La Huerta saw him, there’d be a delicate raised eyebrow: no one could look so bloody superior as the English. But he didn’t give a sparrow’s fart for any Englishman. He’d ship the lot home in a Civil War prisoner-of-war hulk, to see what that
did to their exquisite manners.

  The waiter moved along the counter to pass him his coffee and cognac. ‘You look like you’ve just lost the ticket that won the lottery,’ said the waiter.

  ‘It’s my indigestion.’

  ‘My doctor says that anyone with indigestion should immediately give up drinking coffee and cognac.’

  ‘I’ll keep belching.’

  A man farther along the counter laughed. ‘Can’t you see, Alberto, he knows you’re fiddling the duros but is killing himself trying to find out how.’

  ‘When I decide to pinch the pesetas,’ boasted the waiter, ‘I’ll not mess around with duros.’

  Alvarez stirred sugar into his coffee. ‘Does anyone know whereabouts in La Huerta Ca’n Manin is?’

  ‘Ca’n Manin?’ The waiter leaned both elbows on the bar. ‘Is that where the American millionaire lives who brings a new wife from America each year?’

  ‘It’s an Englishwoman who’s got a nephew staying with her right now.’

  ‘I know,’ said the man down the bar. ‘It’s not in the urbanization, but up on the road to the castle and past that big house which looks like somebody had a bad dream. It belongs to José.’ He chuckled. ‘Or his wife. The old Englishwoman who lives there is clever and mad.’

  ‘A useful combination,’ said Alvarez, as he drank some brandy.

  ‘Too clever for José — that’s for sure. She signed a lifelong lease at a rent which must make her laugh every time she thinks about it. José’s wife beats him over the head and calls him names no lady should know because for a stupid foreigner the rent now should be over ten thousand a month.’

  ‘And why is she mad?’

  ‘Why is anyone mad? God and women make them that way. My cousin works for the English and she has heard them say that the señora from Ca’n Manin is mad.’

  Alvarez finished the brandy and then the coffee. He paid — two five-peseta pieces, which the man along the bar loudly said Alberto would pocket as soon as Alvarez was out of sight.