The Ambiguity of Murder Read online

  ‘Why are you always going out with that little toad?’

  ‘You’re always nasty about him!’

  ‘I call a spade, a spade.’

  ‘But he’s so amusing. And he knows nearly everyone so that through him we meet more people.’

  ‘If they’re his friends, I don’t want to.’

  ‘Aren’t you being just a little old-fashioned?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘But things have changed so. I mean, these days people can do their own thing and no one worries.’

  ‘Which is why England’s become a sink.’ He drank deeply. ‘Still, if you’re out with him, I know what you’re not doing.’

  That was very amusing, but she was careful not to smile.

  * * *

  Theodore Lockhart enjoyed nothing more than raising someone’s hackles, most especially when that someone was one of the stuffier expatriates. He had a sharp mind, a spiteful character, and a wide knowledge of modern art. He dressed with expensive taste, sported a gold Boucheron and an ornate gold medallion, drove a BMW, lived in a large flat overlooking the bay, and always claimed to be as poor as a church mouse because that caused considerable speculation as to whom was financing him.

  He braked to a halt in front of Ca’n Jerome and hooted twice. The front door opened and as Karen came out and down the two steps on to the gravel, he studied her with approval. She had an attractive face and knew how to make the best of it, a slim, shapely figure which she took care to highlight without being too obvious, could talk intelligently, and was a bitch.

  She opened the front passenger door and climbed in, sat.

  ‘How is his excellency this shining day?’ he asked.

  She clicked her seat belt home. ‘More boorish than ever because he thinks he’s dying.’

  ‘Life is seldom that generous.’ He drove round in a circle, headed for the gateway. ‘I’m surprised he’s let you loose.’

  ‘I told him you were taking me to see the garden with hundreds of bulbs that are out.’

  ‘What garden’s that?’ He braked to a halt, checked the narrow road was clear, turned left.

  ‘The one belonging to your Dutch friends.’

  ‘Acquaintances. The Dutch are so very serious it’s almost impossible to become friendly. Did he believe you?’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘Silly man. If I were he, I wouldn’t believe a single word you told me.’

  ‘Do you have to be so beastly?’

  ‘I was complimenting you.’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘Believe me…’

  ‘Not a single word you tell me.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re in good form. Why so? All excited?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Performance seldom matches expectation … You do know how I hate prying into other people’s affairs, don’t you?’

  ‘You spend your life doing nothing else.’

  ‘I think you’ve been drinking vinegar to clear your complexion.’

  She hastily pulled down the sun blind and examined her reflection in the small mirror. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Isn’t that a small pimple on the tip of your nose?’

  ‘No, it bloody well isn’t.’

  ‘Just a reflection of the sun … I swear I long to stay silent, but duty calls and I must answer. Do you think, my sweet, that it’s a good idea to go on seeing Guido?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want to know why I ask?’

  ‘It’ll be for some nasty reason.’

  ‘I’m thinking only of your happiness. I hear things, Karen.’

  ‘So what have you heard about Guido?’

  He braked at a T-junction, turned into a lane even narrower than the one they had just left. On their right was an orange grove, on their left a field in which grew a mixture of oats and wheat that would be fed green to stock.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer? I suppose you think I’m being stupid?’

  ‘Never stupid. Just ill-advised.’

  ‘Then whatever it is you’ve heard, it’s crap. He’s genuine with me and he’s sworn he’ll marry me the moment I say.’

  ‘Sweetie, the end of the rainbow always remains just out of reach.’

  ‘You’re being sour because you’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m only thinking of you.’

  ‘You never think of anyone but yourself.’

  ‘You’re the complete bitch!’

  She turned to look at him, spoke curiously. ‘Don’t tell me you really are concerned on my behalf?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘You are! You’re being sweet! I think I adore you.’

  He once more spoke facetiously. ‘Please never say anything like that in front of my closest friends or you’ll confuse them.’ He had to slow down to overtake a donkey cart – a form of transport which had become very seldom met, yet only twenty years before had been ubiquitous. ‘What will happen to your husband if you leave him?’

  ‘He’ll become my ex-husband.’

  ‘I simply can’t wait for the day. There’s nothing more amusing than a pompous, self-satisfied, middle-aged man with horns on his head.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Pons silently cursed the American who had invented poker, Belmonte who’d suggested a game, and his run of bad luck. He pushed a chip into the centre, discarded three cards.

  ‘You won’t get rich on a pair,’ sniggered Moya.

  Like all lawyers, Moya made a fortune by exacerbating other people’s miseries. Pons picked up the three cards he’d been dealt and saw to his elated surprise – since this was so against the run – that he now had a third jack. His optimism, nurtured by several glasses of wine, returned. He watched the play with great care. Only Moya and Cerda remained in and each bought just one card. So they had two pairs or were trying to fill a straight or a flush. To match one of their pairs with a singleton, or to complete the sequence, would be against the odds. For their part, they’d seen him have such useless hands throughout the evening that they’d dismiss the possibility that he had bettered this one …

  ‘Throwing in?’ Moya asked.

  He stared at his cards with a blank expression, not an easy task since he liked to trumpet his successes because of the envy they generated.

  ‘Make your mind up. Always assuming you’ve one to make.’

  He pushed one of his chips forward.

  ‘You’ll have us all running for cover!’

  Cerda saw him.

  Moya picked up his cards, looked at them, replaced them on the table face down. ‘I don’t like spoiling someone’s fun, but I just have to raise.’ He bet four chips.

  Pons wondered why lawyers always apologized before putting in the knife – to increase their pleasure? He bet his remaining six chips.

  Cerda threw in.

  ‘You’ve got me thinking I should be sensible and quit. But then again, maybe you’re bluffing.’ Moya reached round to his hip pocket, brought out his wallet and extracted a wad of ten-thousand-peseta notes. He peeled off two. ‘Are you up to playing with the big boys?’ A sneer curled around his words.

  It abruptly became more than just a game of poker; there was now a clash of machismo.

  Pons said: ‘Up fifty thousand.’

  Moya stared with exaggerated concentration at Pons’s stake. ‘I don’t see that.’

  ‘Lawyers are born three parts blind.’

  ‘There’s no bet without the money.’ Moya reached out to collect the pot.

  ‘You don’t swindle me as easily as you do the foreigners. There’s my property. So up fifty thousand.’

  Moya fingered his weak chin that suited his scrawny, pockmarked face. ‘You’re putting your house and land up as security for your bet?’

  ‘Ain’t that what I said?’

  He leaned back in his chair, looked around the table. ‘D’you all hear him?’
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br />   No one spoke.

  ‘We’ll do this the proper way so as there’s no room for complaint later on. I’ll draw up the agreement and you’ll all witness it.’ He turned to Belmonte in whose house they were playing. ‘Something to write on, Andrés, and a pen.’

  Belmonte left the room, returned with a single sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. Moya wrote rapidly, checked what he’d written, then read out: ‘I, Santiago Pons Bonet, hereby testify that on the twelfth of February I pledge part or all of the property I own, known as Ca’n Ibron, as security against any debt I incur in the course of the game of cards played on the date in question. Further, I agree to settle any such debt when so requested after an interval of twenty-four hours and if unable to do so immediately will pay interest on the amount due at bank rate plus twenty per cent…’

  ‘Twenty?’ shouted Pons, outraged.

  ‘Credit is always expensive.’ He pushed the paper across. ‘Sign and we will all witness.’

  Despite the burning need to win to make a fool of Moya and the effects of the wine he had drunk, Pons hesitated. The building trade was suffering a downturn, his company was cash-light, the mortgage repayments on the house were making life difficult, and he was in no position to suffer even a moderate financial loss …

  ‘I always said your tongue’s bigger than your cojones,’ Moya sneered.

  The slur on his manhood swept away all Pons’s caution. He grabbed the pen and signed.

  When the paper was returned to Moya, he examined it carefully before placing it under his pile of counters. He counted out ten notes. ‘There’s your fifty thousand and another fifty.’

  ‘And another hundred thousand.’

  ‘Your hundred and another hundred.’ He counted his remaining money and found it to be insufficient for the bet.

  Pons gleefully thumped a fist down on the table. ‘I can’t see two hundred thousand, I can’t, not even with my eyes wide open. Seems like your tongue is a sight bigger than your pocket!’

  ‘I can cover the bet a thousand times over.’

  ‘Not without security, you can’t.’

  ‘Security? I’ve enough of that to buy the lot of you out and just wonder what’s happened to my small change.’

  ‘Because you’re a swindler. But you’re not swindling me. Security, or the game’s mine.’

  Moya swore at some length, but with little variety. Then he told Belmonte to bring him another piece of paper. When he had this, he wrote rapidly. ‘There you are!’

  Pons reached out and picked it up. ‘Let’s see the one I just signed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make certain this is the same and you ain’t trying anything.’

  Moya threw the first agreement across the table.

  Pons took a long time comparing the two. Finally, he said: ‘The signatures ain’t the same.’

  Moya suggested he did something generally considered to be impossible.

  Pons passed the paper around for it to be witnessed. When it was returned to him, he said: ‘Your hundred thousand and another hundred thousand.’

  ‘And another.’

  ‘And another.’

  ‘And half a million.’

  ‘And a million.’

  The onlookers were gripped by the same feverish tension – occasionally referred to as the curse of the Mallorquins – as the two players; Belmonte began to breathe rapidly through his mouth, as if he’d been running, Cerdo was sweating …

  Moya’s legal work had taught him that, no matter how emotionally involved he became, he must always retain sufficient self-control to be able to see where his own interests lay. He could afford to increase the stake almost indefinitely. But Pons had been having bad cards all night and so his present confidence argued that he finally had a good hand, perhaps even a full house or four of a kind. In which case, he would never fold, however high the stake was raised. And he – Moya – might lose a fortune to an oaf who never lost the chance to insult him. ‘See you.’

  There was a collective sigh – an expression of relief that the tension would not increase, of regret that it would not.

  Pons exposed his three jacks with a hand that trembled.

  ‘You’re that good!’ Moya sounded overwhelmed.

  ‘That’s right. Gets a bit painful playing with the big boys, don’t it?’ Pons reached out to take the pot.

  ‘Hang on.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Doesn’t a straight beat three of a kind?’

  ‘You ain’t got a straight!’

  Moya exposed his hand. ‘Just not your lucky night! How much does it all add up to? Was it something over two million?’

  * * *

  Completed just over two years previously, Ca’n Ibron lacked no luxury other than planning permission. Set in the middle of a couple of hectares of good land, it provided the perfect home for a family.

  Pons drove into the garage too quickly and had to brake very hard to avoid ramming the end wall. He climbed out of the car before he realized he’d left the lights on, leaned back in and lost his balance to collapse across the driving seat. Concentrating very hard, he switched off the lights, stood, weaved his way between the car and the wall to the outside where he came to an unsteady stop. Much wine had been drunk after Moya had left Belmonte’s home; had words been daggers, Moya would have arrived home a bloody corpse.

  The moon was almost full and the sky was cloudless. He stared at the rock-faced house and remembered the party they’d given days after they’d moved in. A whole salmon, two suckling pigs, ham, chorizo and sobrassada delicacies, three different types of Spanish omelettes, brawn … Friends had said they’d never seen such a spread. He turned to look at Cristina’s garden, in the moonlight a place of mysterious forms, and thought of the pleasure she gained from tending it and the fun Rosa and Lucía had in the summer in the splash pool beyond the shade tree. An inner voice began to shout. No one was going to take all this away from him, least of all a runt of a thieving lawyer …

  He crossed to the covered patio. He opened the heavy, panelled wooden door, went inside and almost forgot to close and lock it. He climbed the stairs to their bedroom, which he tried to enter silently, an attempt which failed when he became entangled with a chair and crashed to the floor. The overhead light went on.

  He struggled to his feet. ‘The chair moved and made me fall,’ he said, his speech heavy.

  ‘It simply won’t stay still.’ Cristina sat upright.

  His parents, bewildered by her vivacious sense of humour and light-hearted approach to life, spoke about her as their son’s foreign wife. It was true that her mother was French, but her father was Mallorquin and she had been born and lived all her life on the island.

  He picked up the chair, almost overbalancing in doing so.

  ‘Did you drive back?’

  ‘You think I walked?’

  ‘It looks very unlikely … I do wish you wouldn’t drive when you’ve drunk so much.’

  Many would have shouted at her to keep her trap shut and what her husband drank was his affair. But she was emotional and became very upset if he spoke roughly to her.

  ‘Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘No.’ He began to undress.

  She settled back and turned on her side.

  After some confusion, he managed to put on his pyjamas and climb into bed. As he switched off the light, a hand briefly rested on his chest. ‘Sweet dreams, my love,’ she said.

  He stared into the darkness and suffered black thoughts. How could he have been such a fool? Had he not promised himself at the beginning of the game that if he lost all his chips, he’d quit? How could he have put Cristina’s, Rosa’s, and Lucía’s future happiness at risk? What kind of a bastard husband was he?

  He tried to ease his misery. The bank would lend him the money to pay his gambling losses. Yet no sooner had he assured himself of that than he accepted it was virtually certain they would not. Building was in the doldrums and that made things ver
y difficult for his company which, as did so many these days, ran on borrowed money and the current overdraft was too high – as the bank kept reminding him. The house would have provided very good security, but for Carlos … He cursed his brother who had always been weak and had become mixed up with a bunch of no-gooders. A year before, he’d defrauded a family friend of many millions of pesetas. The victim had generously said he wouldn’t call in the police provided he was repaid the money. Carlos couldn’t repay it as he had already squandered it. His parents couldn’t repay it because they had little capital. They had come to their ‘rich’ son and begged him to find the money because they could not contemplate the thought of Carlos’s being sent to jail. He’d mortgaged the house to raise the money. He’d not told Cristina because he was certain she wouldn’t, couldn’t, understand how he could risk his own family’s happiness for a brother he held in contempt, too emotionally upset to realize it was his parents he was protecting … He’d just have to find work. A rich foreigner who wanted a house built quickly … Zavala! That mega-rich, snake-smooth Bolivian who’d wanted an extension to his already palatial mansion and to whom he’d given an estimate. It had been an honest estimate – for a foreigner – but Zavala, with the miserly instincts of the really wealthy, had gone on and on trying to beat down the price until he’d finally said to find someone else who’d do the job at a loss. But if he now went back and meekly agreed a revised estimate, perhaps he could still secure the job. He’d save on labour by working on site from dawn to dusk. That would be a start. And Zavala, who must mix with the other rich on the island, would say he was employing a builder who worked like a demon and did a first-class job at a very reasonable price. They, in turn, would call on him to do work for them since the rich never suffered downturns …

  Optimism, aided by the wine, prevailed. His firm would prosper until he had paid off Moya and the overdraft, cleared the mortgage. He’d buy Cristina a little red Ford Ka and throw a party for Rosa’s First Communion that would arouse the envy of all their friends …

  He fell asleep and began to snore.

  CHAPTER 4

  July was so hot that many tourists on the beaches sought shade. Alvarez sat at his desk, sweated, and stared at the unopened mail, some of which dated back several days. Dolores was in one of her bad moods and neither Jaime nor he could work out what had so upset her – a question of importance since the impact on their lives was considerable. Only that morning, he had come down to breakfast to be offered only half a yesterday’s barra to accompany the hot chocolate. When he’d asked her, very pleasantly, why she hadn’t earlier bought him an ensaimada, she’d hissed that she wasn’t working herself into the grave for someone so lazy that the only thing he was good at was telling other people what to do …