Dead Clever Page 5

  Alvarez took the photograph of Green from his pocket and handed it across. The clerk studied it. ‘That’s him, right enough.’

  ‘You are sure of that?’

  ‘Couldn’t be surer.’

  Alvarez took the photograph back. ‘Right, that’s all. Thanks.’ The clerk left the office. Alvarez said to Ware: ‘Did you manage to gather anything of what he said?’

  ‘Only that he seemed to recognize Green from the photo.’

  ‘He claims he does, but I don’t trust the identification.’ He turned and spoke in Mallorquin to the assistant manager. ‘If I asked you how far I could accept that young man’s judgement, what would you answer?’

  ‘That he’s always out to impress how clever and sharp he is.’

  ‘Fair enough . . . There’s one last thing. After the Englishman left on Monday, the bedroom will have been cleaned. There’s always the off-chance he left something behind, so would you find out who did the work and arrange for us to have a word with whoever it was?’

  ‘A lot of the girls come in from the surrounding villages and I can’t speak to them until tomorrow morning because they’ll have gone home by now.’

  ‘We’ll come back tomorrow, then. And please impress on the girls that we’re interested in everything, even the contents of the wastepaper basket.’

  CHAPTER 7

  When they returned to the hotel the next morning, it was to find that the assistant manager had become a flustered man. ‘I didn’t know yesterday or naturally I’d have told you. Why didn’t the silly girl say at the time?’ He began nervously to knead his fingers together. ‘It’s extraordinary how stupid they can be. I mean, I wouldn’t have eaten her! It wasn’t her fault if the notice had fallen to the floor. Please understand, if I’d known about it, I’d have told you.’

  Alvarez, who sat on the right-hand chair in front of the desk, smiled. ‘I’d understand if I had the slightest idea what you’re talking about!’

  The assistant manager began to calm down. ‘I spoke to the girls who are brought in by Minibus and discovered it was Alejandra who cleaned out Room 18. I told her to come to the office. Then when I started asking her whether she remembered the Englishman, she burst into tears. For ages I couldn’t get any sense at all out of her; she seemed almost hysterical.’

  ‘And when you did learn what was the trouble?’

  ‘It seems the Englishman had put a “Do not disturb” notice on his door, but the string had broken and it had fallen. She didn’t notice it, knocked on the door, and when there wasn’t an answer used her key to go in. She found that the Englishman was still there, with a woman.’

  ‘They were screwing?’

  ‘She won’t say what was going on.’

  ‘But I have to know.’

  ‘She won’t say because she’s so scared I’ll blame her for not seeing the notice.’

  ‘You don’t think it may be a little more complicated than that? You told me she’s from one of the villages and I expect life there is very much the same as it is in an inland village on the island. Where there are tourists, anything goes; where there aren’t, things are very different. On the beaches the girls go topless, in the inland villages they’re not allowed to watch a television programme that may be a little too suggestive. I’d say she was so shocked and embarrassed by what she saw that she feels she became part of the corruption if she admits to seeing it.’

  ‘I suppose that’s possible,’ said the assistant manager doubtfully, wondering if a young woman could still be so naive even if she did come from a small and semi-isolated village.

  Alvarez was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘I think it’ll be best if I talk to her on her own; you don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. Then if you’ll ask her to come here in about five minutes?’

  The assistant manager left. Alvarez explained what was happening to Ware. ‘If I’m right, my best chance of getting her to talk is if there’s just her and me.’

  ‘In other words, you want me out of the way?’

  ‘I hope the suggestion doesn’t offend you?’

  ‘Doesn’t begin to, more especially since I wouldn’t understand a word . . . I’ll clear off and find a coffee somewhere.’

  ‘Remember that it’s an old Mallorquin custom to add brandy to the morning coffee.’

  Tm a convinced traditionalist.’ He left.

  A few minutes later a young woman, neatly dressed, plain face made plainer by nervousness, sidled into the office.

  ‘Hullo, Alejandra, come over here and sit down . . . My name’s Enrique Alvarez and I’m from Mallorca. I understand you live in a nearby village?’

  ‘Esteria,’ she murmured as she sat on the edge of the chair.

  ‘And how far from here is that?’

  ‘About six kilometres.’

  ‘It’s rich countryside, isn’t it? Much richer than where I come from; we’ve no green at this time of the year except where there’s irrigation. Tell me, what kind of crops are mainly grown around Esteria?’

  She had expected to be questioned sharply, perhaps even with some contempt, and initially she was constrained by surprise, then she relaxed and talked freely. Even when he finally introduced the subject of the Englishman in Room 18, she did not immediately revert back to her previous state of embarrassed nervousness.

  ‘I didn’t see the notice. But I did knock and there wasn’t any sort of an answer. I promise you, there wasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you for one second. So when you heard nothing, and because it was getting on in the morning, you naturally assumed he’d left and booked out; you unlocked the door and went in. What did you see?’

  She looked down at the floor and shook her head.

  ‘Just tell me slowly and remember, I know that it wasn’t your fault and you’d have done anything rather than see what you did.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t.’

  ‘I have to know, Alejandra. If you tell me now it’ll be over and done with and probably there’ll be no need ever again to mention it to anyone.’

  She looked up at him, then away. After a while, she spoke in disjointed sentences, fiddling furiously with one of the buttons of her apron as she did so. She had stepped into the room and been so shocked that initially she’d been unable to understand the details of what she was looking at. Then these had become all too clear. The man, naked, had been lying on the bed. The woman, wearing black garter-belt, fish-net stockings, and leather boots, had been whipping him.

  ‘Could you see his face?’

  ‘When he realized I was there, he turned towards me and shouted something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was in English. But . . . but it sounded terrible.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  She couldn’t. The general scene was brutally etched into her memory, but her confusion and embarrassment had been so great that she could recall nothing specific about the two participants.

  There was, he judged, nothing more to be learned from her. He tried to explain that she had absolutely no cause to feel the slightest sense of shame because she had inadvertently witnessed such a scene, but wasn’t certain that his words had much effect. He wished her father good crops and then opened the door for her. She was about to pass through the doorway when she stopped. ‘I’ve forgotten to tell you something. I . . . I just couldn’t go back to do the room after they’d gone, so Carmina cleared it out. She found a book.’

  ‘What kind of a one?’

  ‘A paperback; guests often leave them behind.’

  ‘Would you know what happened to it?’

  ‘It was in English, so she won’t have kept it. She probably sold it to the bookshop because we’re allowed to do that with books that are left.’

  ‘Is Carmina in the hotel now?’

  ‘She’s doing the rooms.’

  ‘Then would you be kind enough to ask her to come and have a word with me?’<
br />
  Carmina was unlike Alejandra. Self-confident, pert, she wore considerable make-up and the dress under the maid’s apron was tight across her breasts and short in hem.

  Alvarez introduced himself, then said: ‘I think you cleaned Room 18 a week ago on Monday?’

  ‘Suppose I did?’

  ‘You found that a paperback had been left behind. I’d like to know what you did with it?’

  ‘Sold it, along with some others, like we’re allowed to.’

  ‘You sold it to whom?’

  ‘The shop along the front what buys foreign books.’

  ‘When was this?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘End of last week, when I’d enough to make it worthwhile. The old buzzard who runs the place won’t buy just one or two.’

  ‘Can you remember the title of the book?’

  She giggled. ‘No, but the cover was hot stuff.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘What way d’you think?’

  ‘I don’t, because there are too many ways to choose from.’

  The answer seemed to annoy her, perhaps because it was clear he found her boring rather than amusingly salacious. She said bad-temperedly: ‘It showed a naked woman whipping a man.’

  ‘Was he naked as well?’

  ‘Interested?’

  ‘Yes, but not for the reason you think.’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing anything, but part of him was hidden.’ She giggled again as she looked quickly at him. ‘Had to be, didn’t it?’

  He said he’d asked her all the questions he wanted to and then followed her out of the office, branching off to cross the lobby to the main entrance. There, he spoke to the doorman to find out whether he’d seen a man bring a woman into the hotel on the Monday morning.

  ‘There’s men and women coming in here all the time.’

  ‘I’m talking about a woman who like as not was a prostitute.’

  ‘How would I know what she is?’

  ‘You’d know.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘You are quite sure of that?’

  ‘Look,’ said the doorman aggressively, ‘I do my job and I don’t set out to make trouble.’

  ‘Meaning that if you’re tipped well you don’t see a whore even when she’s a metre in front of you?’

  ‘There’ve been no whores in here. And anyway, if there’s no fuss, who gets hurt?’

  It was not a question he was prepared to answer. ‘Suppose I asked you to identify her.’

  ‘I’ve just said, there wasn’t no one.’

  Alvarez returned into the hotel and, after a quick word with the receptionist who told him where to go, walked round to the patio on the south side of the hotel where Ware was sitting at a table near the central fountain which wasn’t working.

  ‘Did you have any luck?’ Ware asked.

  ‘Up to a point. When Alejandra entered the bedroom, she was faced by a flagellation scene.’

  ‘Was she indeed! Which one of ‘em was wielding the whip?’

  ‘The woman.’

  ‘So he’s a masochist. They say it takes all sorts to make the world; some of them just seem a bit more assorted than others. Can the girl identify Green?’

  ‘She can’t begin to identify either of them. She was so shocked, she hasn’t any memory of what they looked like.’

  ‘Damn!’

  ‘I know. Had it been Carmina who’d surprised them, we’d have had exact descriptions.’

  ‘Then where do we go from here?’

  ‘We will make inquiries among the car hire firms and at the railway station to see if we can discover how he left and where he went.’ A waiter was passing and Alvarez called him over and ordered a coffee solo and a brandy. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I don’t think we can hope to learn much from either source. At this time of the year, the car-hire firms are so busy that they won’t remember anyone unless they had cause to and he’ll have tried to make certain there wasn’t any; but there will be their records, so would he have hired a car which meant he needed a driving licence in his new name as well as the passport and there would be difficulties when it came to crossing borders? Much more likely he’ll have gone by train. But is a booking clerk ever going to remember his buying a ticket, especially when we’ve no idea of his destination?’

  Ware stared into the distance, frowning slightly, then he relaxed. ‘Even if you’re right to be so pessimistic, we can be ninety-nine per cent certain we now know what happened.’

  ‘But my superior chief is only just content with one hundred per cent! . . . I have forgotten to mention that we may just have one more lead. When the bedroom was finally cleared by Carmina, she found an English paperback had been left behind. It’s a recognized perk of chambermaids to collect up any books left behind and to sell them to a bookshop which specializes in foreign ones for the tourists. If we could trace it, there’s the slight chance it might offer a lead—I’m thinking of a point-of-sale label, or something of that nature. Unfortunately, though, she can’t remember the title of the book, only that the cover shows a naked woman whipping a man. There are, perhaps, not so many people who buy a book with such a cover?’

  ‘Depends on how many ex-public schoolboys have stayed in Stivas recently.’

  Twenty minutes later they took a taxi—Alvarez declined to walk—down to the front road. The bookshop offered escapist entertainment rather than intellectual stimulation; the thousands of paperbacks, on revolving stands, stacked up on tables, and filling endless shelves, were printed in English, French, German, Dutch, and Swedish.

  Alvarez spoke to the owner, who sat at a counter on which were so many books that he was only visible through the small, and necessary, gap by the till. ‘You buy books from the staff at the Hotel Grande?’

  The owner, who had a long, thin, complaining face, spoke in antagonistic tones. ‘I buy books from the staff of all the hotels.’

  ‘Do you know Carmina?’

  ‘I don’t know the names of any of’em.’

  ‘She came in here at the end of last week and sold you several paperbacks.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’d like to know where those books are now?’

  ‘With the rest of’em, of course.’

  ‘It’ll save you a lot of trouble if you can remember whereabouts among all the others.’

  The owner looked even more morose. ‘You said they came in at the end of last week? Then like as not, I’ve not been through ‘em yet.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That they’ll still be in the back room, waiting for sorting and pricing.’

  ‘I’d like to see where.’

  Reluctantly, the owner climbed down from the stool. He unlocked the counter flap, after moving a number of books off this and swearing as he did so, and Alvarez and Ware went through and into the room beyond which smelled of old dust. Everywhere there were books, mostly paperbacks, stacked in piles which in many cases had collapsed so that it seemed to be a scene of confusion, yet the owner unhesitatingly led the way over to two piles, still intact, that were near the dirt-stained, fly-speckled window. That’s where they’ll be; can’t say which ones.’ He left them.

  Alvarez pointed to one pile. ‘Will you take that one and I’ll look through the other?’

  Ware’s had been the smaller pile and he was the first to finish. He straightened up. ‘Naked and near-naked ladies by the score, but none of them enjoying herself with a whip.’

  Alvarez had three more books to check. The second one had a cover which depicted a naked and very generously endowed lady who was about to strike a naked man who knelt beyond her, his honour carefully screened by her right leg. ‘I think we’ve found it!’ He examined the paperback. Its condition suggested it had been bought recently and only read once. There was no point-of-sale tag and no writing on any of the front or back pages. He held out the covers and shook and a slip of paper fell out and fluttered to the ground. He picked this up and saw that it was a receipt, issued b
y Campsa, at Palma airport, dated Saturday July 15 and timed at 2108 hours, for four hundred litres of fuel. He handed the receipt to Ware. ‘I can now tell my superior chief that we are a hundred per cent certain.’

  CHAPTER 8

  When Ware’s father had died, he’d left behind him as many debts as friends; he’d been a man who’d stand drinks all round in the clubhouse while in his pocket was a letter from his bank manager reminding him that his overdraft had risen above the agreed limit and would he please take immediate steps to reduce it. At the time of his death, Ware had been old enough to understand that the reason for the straitened circumstances in which the family suddenly found itself was his father’s improvidence and this knowledge had had a very great effect on him. By nature of the same happy-go-lucky, devil-take-tomorrow character, he would probably have lived a heedless life had he not been forced to appreciate that the cost of selfish happiness came high and it was a cost which often had to be met by others. Now, there were times when Heather, his wife, wondered how he could be two such different people. He would suggest in all seriousness an exotic and expensive holiday in some far-off place and yet on the same day worry at length because their electricity bill had risen slightly. Paradoxically, this contradiction helped him in his job. He had the imagination to visualize possibilities that would never occur to a sobersides, yet would conduct an investigation with a perseverance and attention to detail a more carefree investigator would scorn.

  He and the claims manager of the Crown and Life Insurance Company sat on opposite sides of the long, well polished table in the conference room on the fourth floor of the Edwardian building in Eastley Street.

  Parrot—to his annoyance, his nose was slightly beaked —tapped the four-page report in front of himself. ‘You don’t think that perhaps the evidence is somewhat stronger than you’re suggesting?’

  ‘That depends, of course, whether you’re talking in terms of fact or law. I don’t doubt that he faked his own death, was picked up in Bennett’s boat, landed in Stivas, spent the night at the Hotel Grande, had a constitutional whipping in the morning, and then took off to parts unknown. But try to prove all that in a court of law and counsel would be very quick to point out how everything’s virtual supposition.’