Dead Clever Page 4

  They drove down the winding road to the gates, which opened as they came in sight of them. Once through the gateway and on the road, Ware said: ‘What do you make of him?’

  Alvarez answered carefully: ‘He certainly acts like a great hidalgo.’

  ‘If that means a cold, condescending bastard, I’ll agree!’

  ‘But perhaps his manner was telling us more than that he considers himself to be a great man. Someone who is afraid often attacks as a form of defence.’

  ‘All right, let’s assume he didn’t like our questions one little bit. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘To whichever restaurant we decide on. It’s lunch-time.’

  Ware laughed. ‘You’re a great man for getting your priorities right.’

  It was after 4.30 when they walked along the eastern arm of the harbour to the harbourmaster’s office, two rooms which were filled to overflowing with tables, bookcases, filing-cabinets, and instruments, and kept cool by air-conditioning and outside awnings.

  The elderly harbourmaster shook his head. ‘I know señor Bennett’s boat right enough since it’s one of the largest in the harbour. But I’ve no idea whether she was at sea a week ago last night.’

  ‘You don’t keep a log of movements?’

  ‘Normally, no; there’s no reason to do so. It’s very different if we’ve reason to suspect smuggling. Then we keep a close watch.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The harbourmaster was uncertain whether or not that had been said ironically.

  ‘Which is his boat?’

  ‘The last but one tied up at this quay. I don’t remember her name, but she’s a trawler yacht, with plenty of accommodation.’

  ‘Have you ever been aboard it?’

  ‘He’s never asked me aboard. He’s not a friendly man; polite, but not friendly.’

  Alvarez translated what had been said. Ware asked: ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We’ll search the boat.’

  ‘Without a search warrant?’

  ‘Sometimes, things are easier in this country than they are in yours.’ Alvarez thanked the harbourmaster and then they left the building and walked up the quay to the penultimate boat.

  She was stern-fast to the quayside and a small gangway, with stainless steel stanchions and whitened ropes, was pushed inboard so that there was no immediate way of boarding. She was not beautiful, as was the powerful, narrow-hulled speedboat in the next berth, but there was no mistaking the fact that in heavy seas she would be a good boat to be aboard.

  ‘You can reach further than I can,’ said Alvarez, as he stared across at the stern. ‘D’you think you can get hold of the gangway?’

  ‘Not without risking a ducking in water that looks unhealthily filthy,’ replied Ware. ‘There’s an English yacht four back and I saw a bloke varnishing the coaming. I’ll ask if he’ll lend us a boathook.’

  He was gone less than a minute and he brought back a boathook whose wooden haft was stained and scarred. Using this, he drew the gangway aft until he could catch hold of the end and lower it to the quay. ‘I’ll run this hook back now because we can return the gangway without it.’

  As Ware left, Alvarez began to climb the gangway. Absurdly, it was an ordeal severe enough to make him sweat since he suffered badly from altophobia and it was with an audible expression of relief that he stepped aboard. There was open deck, then an area enclosed by three bulkheads and deckhead that was, in effect, a fair-weather smoke-room. For’d of this was a door which proved to be locked. As Ware boarded, Alvarez took from his pocket a set of skeleton keys which he’d confiscated from a housebreaker several years before. The third one, after some skilful probing, worked the tumblers.

  ‘You’re a man of many talents!’ said Ware.

  He smiled briefly. ‘Some of which I try to keep hidden.’

  The ‘midships and aft accommodation consisted of a master stateroom with bathroom, four other cabins and one bathroom, a saloon—with bar aft—and a galley; for’d were two small cabins and one shower-stall and head, obviously intended for the crew; up top was a very well equipped chartroom and for’d of this a small wheelhouse.

  In the chartroom, Alvarez searched the drawers under the chart table and in the third one down found a log book. He read through the last few entries and whistled with quiet satisfaction. He carried the log through to the wheelhouse, where Ware was searching through a flag locker in which were kept national flags and those of the international code.

  ‘From the look on your face, you’ve found something,’ said Ware, as he straightened up after replacing the black and white ‘third substitute’ flag in its locker.

  ‘Bennett’s a very meticulous man who’s obviously never realized that there are times when it pays to be slipshod. He keeps a detailed log of all his voyages and on the thirteenth he set sail from here at sixteen-thirty hours, arriving at Stivas on Sunday evening at twenty-two hundred; he sailed back from Stivas on Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘South of Barcelona. It used to be a small fishing port and their sardines, grilled over an open wood fire, were like . . .’ He found it too difficult to do justice to their excellence. ‘Now, it’s one of the largest yacht harbours on the coast. And I haven’t tasted a Stivas sardine in years.’

  Ware leaned against the flag locker and stared out through one of the for’d ports. ‘He sailed to the prearranged spot and showed special lights for identification. Green jumped and with his parachuting skill landed alongside. Once aboard, they continued on to Stivas . . . When they docked, they wouldn’t have had to clear customs or immigration, would they?’

  ‘No. But, of course, the boat might have been boarded by someone to make certain it had sailed from this island, as claimed.’

  ‘Failing that, how do we prove that Green was aboard? How are we going to trace him ashore?’

  ‘There are always people around; boat owners, boat bums, sightseers, port officials. But let’s suppose he was lucky and no one observed him land or we can’t find someone who did. If you’d been Green, what would you have done on arrival, remembering it’s late at night? Would you have stayed aboard until the morning when everything’s moving once more or would you have gone ashore immediately?’

  ‘Immediately,’ Ware answered. ‘All the time I’m aboard, I’m at risk. As soon as I’m ashore, I can adopt a new identity.’

  ‘Which we have to uncover.’

  ‘That’s the hard part, isn’t it . . . Enrique, I’ve obviously got to go to Stivas, but I’m not going to get very far on my own. Imagine my stumbling through my dozen words of Spanish, asking around after a man whose name I don’t know! Is there any chance you could come along with me?’

  CHAPTER 6

  Salas was his normal ungracious self. ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘I’m ringing in connection with the Green case, señor,’ replied Alvarez.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘A problem has arisen.’

  ‘With you, problems are forever arising.’

  ‘As you know, señor, inquiries show that the plane crashed into the sea and there can’t be any doubts on that score.’

  ‘A man with your talent for confusion can always produce doubts.’

  ‘The question is, was Green in the plane when it crashed?’

  Salas said, in tones of disbelief: ‘Didn’t you assure me beyond the slightest possibility of contradiction that he had died in the plane?’

  ‘As a matter of fact . . .’

  ‘And now you’re trying to tell me that he may, after all, still be alive?’

  ‘You did say, señor, that if I was certain he was dead, probably he was alive.’

  It had been a mistake to believe Salas might find some wry amusement from the memory. ‘When I said that, Inspector, I was indulging in an ironic flight of imagination. I should have known better than to believe that however wild the flight, it could ever hope to keep pace with you.’

  ‘At the time I was
not aware of the fact that—’

  ‘I have to confess that I cannot begin to understand why fate has been so unkind to me. Had I ever done a whit less than my duty, had I even once been guilty of the slightest degree of incompetence, I could console myself with the thought that you were under my command because as a man sows, so must he be made to reap. But I am denied any such consolation.’

  Alvarez waited, but when Salas said nothing more, he finally broke the silence. ‘señor Ware and I believe that Green parachuted from the plane to board a boat which landed him in Stivas. So inquiries need to be made there. señor Ware has asked if I could go with him to make such inquiries because he will find it extremely difficult to make them on his own. All my expenses will be met by the company for whom he is working.’

  ‘He is suggesting you accompany him?’

  ‘Yes, señor.’

  ‘Then the man’s a fool.’

  It had taken only nine years to transform Stivas from a small, timelessly peaceful fishing village into a tourist centre where time was expensive and peace was virtually unknown. The marina had been enlarged three times and was now filled with yachts, motor-cruisers, and power boats, very few of which flew the Spanish flag. Tax evasion was one industry that was not subject to cyclical fluctuations.

  The harbourmaster’s office was in a large building set at the west end of what had been the original harbour. The harbourmaster was a paunchy man who had grown so rich through his job that he was having great trouble in concealing his wealth. When he shook his head, his jowls wobbled. ‘No, there’s no way,’ he said in Catalan.

  ‘The motor-cruiser’s a pretty big one, so someone may have remarked it.’ Alvarez spoke in Mallorquin and they understood each other, although there were some differences between their vocabularies and pronunciations.

  ‘You call her big? Here, we don’t call a cruiser big until she’s over thirty metres long and then it’s a job to remember one from the other.’

  Alvarez tried to look impressed. ‘Still, I’d be very grateful if you’d ask all your chaps if any of them remembers the Morag coming into harbour.’

  A moment later he led the way outside where the sharp sunshine unkindly highlighted the lines in his face, making him look both older than he was and sadder. ‘I’m afraid he’s not going to be much help,’ he said.

  ‘I gathered that,’ replied Ware, ‘without understanding a word.’

  ‘We’ll have to find out what we can for ourselves.’

  They questioned boat owners, a couple of men who were revarnishing a large schooner, workers in a boatyard, and a diving team who were setting the piles for an extension to one of the jetties, and the answers were always the same: none of them could remember the Morag coming into harbour.

  They had lunch at one of the restaurants which overlooked the harbour; the prices astounded Alvarez, even though he was used to those which were charged in the tourist areas of the island. Afterwards, they spoke to three elderly fishermen who were mending nets (a few berths had, much to the harbourmaster’s annoyance, been reserved for them), but they could not help; neither, having questioned his staff, could the harbourmaster, as he quickly informed them when they returned to his office.

  Alvarez mopped his face and neck with a handkerchief. ‘All that we’re left with now is our belief that he’d have gone ashore immediately and, since it was so late, booked in at a hotel.’

  ‘Remembering that it has to be odds on that he assumed a different identity the moment he was ashore.’

  ‘You don’t have to remind me how difficult it’s going to be!’ said Alvarez lugubriously. Then he cheered up. ‘Let’s discuss the problem over a drink.’

  The evening sun was still hot and they were glad of the shade of the overhead awning as they sat outside one of the dockside cafes. Alvarez drank, sighed with pleasure, put the glass down on the table. ‘Foreigners booking into a hotel have to show their passports and fill in a card, so there’s no problem to finding out the names of everyone who booked into a hotel that night. But would he have stayed in Stivas and how do we identify him under a new identity? . . . There’s not another town of any size for roughly twelve kilometres and there’d have been no public transport so the only way he could have travelled out would have been by taxi. Wouldn’t he have decided that a taxi-driver would be curious about a foreigner who at so late an hour went from here, where foreigners are specially catered for, to somewhere where perhaps they are not?’

  ‘That sounds logical.’

  ‘Then we will ask the municipal police to check all hotels and hostals and to draw up a list of men who booked in after the time of arrival, discarding any who were obviously on a package tour. Once we have the list, we’ll send the numbers of their passports to London and ask if any is false.’

  Following the previous request from Alvarez, a copy of Timothy Green’s passport photograph was sent by air from London to Barcelona, where a special messenger collected it and took it down by train to Stivas. The coloured photograph was no better and no worse than average; Green had a forgettable face set under blond hair, the only immediate noticeable feature of which was a generous moustache.

  A Telex message from London, concerning the passport numbers, arrived six hours later. One of the numbers was of a passport stolen, along with ten others, from a consulate in Greece. Alvarez checked that number against the list he held; Thomas Grieves had booked in at the Hotel Grande at 11.15 on the Sunday night.

  ‘Eureka! . . . Isn’t it extraordinary how often they stick to the same initials?’ said Ware, speaking with considerable satisfaction. ‘Legend has it that that’s so that they can continue to use their silver-backed monogrammed hairbrushes, but who uses them in this day and age?’

  A taxi took them along the front and then, beyond the marina, up the gently sloping land on the west side of the bay to the Hotel Grande.

  It was clear that the hotel was grand in name only. There was litter on the floor of the lobby, plants in the unpolished brass containers were dusty, and the very small concessionary shop beyond the desk had in its display window only the kind of mementoes that a holidaymaker bought when his judgement had been badly affected by too much wine and sun.

  The clerk behind the desk was tired and lethargic and it seemed to cost him considerable mental effort to decide to call the assistant manager. The latter, much more wide awake, asked Alvarez and Ware into his office. He cleared some files off a chair and then placed that, and another, in front of the desk. As he sat, he said: ‘Now, Inspector, how can I help? I hope that there’s nothing wrong as far as the hotel’s concerned?’

  ‘We’re here because we’re interested in a guest who stayed just over a week ago.’

  ‘Is this connected with the inquiries the municipal police were making earlier on?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They wanted the names of male guests who booked in after ten on Sunday night, the fourteenth; we had one.’

  ‘And his name was Thomas Grieves. How long was he here?’

  ‘Just the one night.’

  ‘Can you say how he paid the bill on Monday morning —in cash, by credit card, or however?’

  ‘Give me a moment and I’ll be able to tell you.’ The assistant manager swivelled his chair round, switched on a desktop computer, tapped out a series of numbers, read what appeared on the screen of the VDU, stood and went over to a small plastic case from which he brought out a floppy disk which he fed into the machine. He tapped out more numbers, then waited. ‘This time last year I’d have opened a ledger and given you the answer within twenty seconds; now we’re computerized and it takes five minutes to look up anything. That’s called modernization!’

  They dutifully laughed.

  Line after line of writing appeared on the VDU and the assistant manager read down them. ‘The account was for four thousand two hundred and fifty pesetas, including IVA; he paid in cash.’

  ‘Did you see him at any time?’

  ‘No. I go off du
ty at seven in the evening and don’t come in at all on a Monday, which is my day off, unless there are problems.’

  ‘Could you find out who did see him so that we can have a word?’

  ‘The staff who were on duty then almost certainly won’t be in the hotel right now, but I’ll do what I can.’

  During the next hour they spoke to a night doorman and desk-clerk, both resentful at being called back to the hotel while off duty. The doorman half remembered a guest who’d arrived late that Sunday night with very little luggage, but freely admitted that he couldn’t begin to describe the man. The desk-clerk was considerably younger and cocky.

  ‘Sure, I remember him,’ he said, as he stood by the side of the assistant manager’s desk. He wore a T-shirt, over a pair of shorts, which bore a message in English that would have made any maiden aunt blush violently.

  ‘Did he speak Spanish?’

  ‘Do the foreigners ever?’

  ‘Then you speak English?’

  ‘I speak it bloody good,’ he replied proudly in English.

  ‘D’you think you’d know him again?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then will you describe him?’

  He started confidently, very quickly realized how unimpressive he sounded. ‘He was tall and . . . He was pleasant enough. I mean, he wasn’t looking down the side of his nose, like some of’em do . . .’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Older than me, but nowhere near as old as you.’

  This description confirmed Alvarez’s previous assessment of the qualities of the young man. ‘What shape was his face—round, oval, or square?’

  ‘Well, it was . . . Kind of neither one nor the other . . . I mean, I didn’t take all that close notice since I wasn’t to know you’d be asking all these questions, was I?’

  ‘Clean-shaven?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m not quite certain about that.’

  ‘Perhaps it’ll be quicker if you tell me exactly what you do remember about him?’

  ‘His hair was light and kind of blond; like the Norwegian bints have.’ He leered at them, suggesting torrid experiences with an endless succession of beautiful Norwegian girls. ‘And you were talking about him being clean shaven. He had a moustache; I can remember that now.’