Two-Faced Death (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 6

  He turned the record over. ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Like any other cocktail party out here, except that the Blagdons know fewer interesting people and one daren’t drink their gin because they buy the cheapest firewater and fill their Gordon’s bottles with it … I wish you’d come.’

  ‘I told you, I wasn’t in the mood.’

  ‘But you ought to get out and about much more … ’

  ‘You don’t think one wanderer in the family is enough?’

  ‘Jim,’ she said quietly, but firmly, ‘we’ve got to talk.’

  He started Till Eulenspiegel playing, then sat down. ‘All right, let’s talk. Was John there?’

  ‘Of course. You know he’s friendly with Martha and George.’

  ‘And that’s why you insisted on going, even though you always describe Martha as the bitch goddess?’

  ‘I needed to get right away from the supercharged atmosphere of this house.’

  ‘Then you didn’t want me to go with you, did you?’

  ‘For Heaven’s sake! Not even you could keep it up at a cocktail party — not after the fourth drink.’ Her gaze softened and her tone warmed. ‘Jim, stop being such a fool and take time off to remember I love you.’

  He stared at her, his face working. ‘Do you? Didn’t you go to his house yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He invited me. And you’d … you’d been so bitter towards me, I went as a kind of stupid retaliation, I suppose.’

  ‘He oozed charm?’ His voice was now harsh.

  ‘Oozed is a very fair description.’

  ‘And you fell for it and … and … ’ He stopped, unable to ask the final question.

  ‘No, I didn’t go to bed with him. Don’t you know me better than that? If I had betrayed you, I’d have come back and told you yesterday, face to face.’

  He longed to believe her, yet knew too much doubt to do so. The mocking theme of the music seemed to underline his doubt.

  *

  In the early hours of Tuesday, there was a violent storm. The thunder, which had been growling somewhere back in the mountains, grew violently louder as lightning speared the sky: one bolt struck the lightning conductor on the hermitage perched high up on its conical hill. Rain fell with torrential force, drumming on roofs so loudly that to those in the houses it sounded as if Olympian oceans of water were being emptied over them: three minutes after the storm first hit Llueso, the lights went out as the electricity failed.

  The torrente which bordered the eastern side of Llueso, a boulder-strewn dry gulch the previous day, began to run, soon with a savage force as the earth-stained water lashed its way down to the sea.

  *

  Alvarez drove out of Llueso at half past eight, crossing over the still running torrente — the level was now right down — and turned left on to the Laraix road. He passed two large houses, owned by foreigners, and the garden centre, whose trade was almost exclusively with foreigners, and then stopped opposite a field in which a couple of dozen hobbled sheep and three hobbled goats were feeding. He lit a cigarette. All the foreigners in the world couldn’t prevent the miracle of rain, he thought with quiet satisfaction. The land was baked dry, the grass seemingly dead, leaves of the orange trees curled, plants drooped despite intensive irrigation … Came the rain and the land swelled, the grass grew green, the orange tree leaves straightened, plants grew tall and proud, and the air was filled with the heady scent of rebirth. He looked up at the mountains, not yet dried out so that they appeared dark and ominous, and saw three vultures soaring in the thermals. He smiled with simple pleasure.

  He returned to his car and drove on, to reach the dirt track off to the left, down which he went with complete indifference to the tortured squeals of the sorely tried suspension. When he reached Ca’n Adeane, he parked immediately in front of the ornate gate.

  He walked down the drive. There were vines trained along the sandstone wall and the bunches were heavy although not quite ripe: someone knew how to prune and tend vines. In the first half of the field were tomatoes, peppers, climbing beans, and lettuces: someone knew how to cultivate the land. Not the Englishman, that was for sure. The second half of the field was stubble and from the bareness of the earth about the stalks it was clear it had been closely gleaned after the corn had been cut — more proof that the place was not farmed by the Englishman: foreigners were indifferent to waste. He reached the house and because it was not owned by an islander he did not step inside before calling out, but knocked on the opened door.

  Calvin came through the fly screen. Alvarez introduced himself. Calvin, showing neither astonishment nor the slightest apprehension, shook hands and said: ‘Come in and have some coffee. I was just making some for myself.’

  Alvarez went in and through to the sitting-room, intrigued by the bizarre furnishings, yet seeing in them only a desire to be different, not the strong smell of decadence which Breeden had found.

  ‘Can I offer you anything to eat?’ asked Calvin.

  ‘Thank you, señor, but a coffee would be quite enough.’

  ‘You’ll take it with a cognac, though?’

  ‘That would be very pleasant.’

  Calvin was gone from the room for some ten minutes. When he returned he carried a tray on which were two cups of coffee, sugar, milk, and two glasses of brandy. ‘The Mallorquin breakfast is one of the local habits I immediately turned to with tremendous enthusiasm: especially after a heavy night.’ He held the tray for Alvarez to help himself.

  Alvarez took sugar but not milk. ‘We have a saying, señor: “Start the day on a cognac and the sun will shine before eleven.”’ He drank some coffee, then tipped the brandy into the cup and stirred with a spoon.

  Calvin sat down. ‘So what brings you all the way out here at breakfast-time? Something very pressing?’

  ‘It is a matter which has to be dealt with, although I, señor, would perhaps not describe it as pressing. My enquiries have to do with the smuggling of American cigarettes and watches into this island in large quantities.’

  ‘Really? You surprise me. I didn’t think that went on these days.’

  ‘There’s always been a little.’ Alvarez shrugged his thickset shoulders. ‘Our fishermen welcome both the profit and the excitement. But unfortunately it seems that the quantity of smuggling has now become very large: so large that much of what comes in is being sent on to the Peninsula, which is easy, of course, as there are no customs.’

  ‘You know, now I think about it, I suppose I have been offered more American cigarettes than usual in the past few months. I’m a great fan of Chesterfields and a lot of people know that … I wonder if the ones I’ve been buying have been smuggled? I’ll show you a pack and maybe you can tell me.’ He stood up and crossed to the walnut roll-top desk, opened a drawer, and brought out a pack of cigarettes.

  Alvarez looked very briefly at the top of the pack. ‘Yes, señor, that has been smuggled. It bears no government seal.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned! I was going to offer you one — does it mean that now you musn’t accept?’

  ‘From a practical point of view, since the smuggling has taken place I can’t see that if I smoke one of the cigarettes I will be affecting anything.’

  Calvin smiled as he opened one end of the top and tapped out a couple of cigarettes, before offering the pack. ‘I wish all authority adopted so sensible an attitude.’ He flicked open a lighter and lit the detective’s cigarette, returned to his seat.

  Alvarez finished his coffee. ‘Señor, permit me to explain simply why I am here now. As I told you, much smuggling is going on and that means the smugglers on the island have had to find much money because the trade does not work on credit. The fishermen who usually smuggle do not have big money — if they did, they would not be fishermen. So someone has provided the big money and I think that person is a foreigner.’

  ‘Why should you think that?’

  ‘We are a small island with peop
le who have always been honest until the foreigners came. Even now, the dishonest islanders are only the ones who have to deal with foreigners and they are only a little dishonest. Except where a man loses his temper, there is nothing. A little smuggling is nothing. But a lot of smuggling is something.’

  ‘You obviously don’t like foreigners?’

  ‘In my job, señor, I neither specially like nor dislike them.’

  ‘But you’re not reluctant to heap the responsibility for trouble on their shoulders?’

  ‘I can only speak from my very limited experience and that tells me who does the stealing and who brings in drugs.’

  ‘No doubt it all depends on one’s point of view. Anyway, let’s move from the general to the specific. You reckon there’s a lot of smuggling going on and it’s being financed by a wealthy foreigner. Believing that, why come here to talk to me about it? Surely you don’t imagine I can help?’

  ‘Señor, as a detective I have to study every possibility that is suggested to me, no matter how impossible I, personally, may think it.’

  ‘And I come within the category of a possibility?’

  ‘Your name has been given to me as that of the man who has supplied the money for the big smuggling.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

  ‘Señor, I try never to joke when I am working because other people do not always understand my sense of humour.’

  ‘Well, I wish the rumour were true. Then, by definition, I’d be a rich man. Instead of someone who has a hell of a job coping with inflation, a dropping pound, and an extravagant wife whose friends all have very expensive tastes.’

  Alvarez looked briefly round the room. ‘But you are not poor, señor?’

  ‘Churchill defined poverty as the moment at which you could no longer afford a bottle of champagne every morning at eleven … You’re trying to judge by the contents of this house? Merely a reminder of life when inflation was German history, the pound stood proud, and my wife and I still struggled to find sufficient in common to continue living together.’

  ‘Then you can assure me you have provided no money for the smuggling?’

  ‘My only contribution has been the unwitting purchase of smuggled cigarettes, such as the pack I’ve just offered you.’

  ‘And if that were a crime, señor, half the population would have to be arrested.’

  ‘Exactly. Now how about another coffee and cognac before you go?’

  ‘Thank you, no. We have another saying: “Start the day on two cognacs and by twelve the sun will be too hot.”’

  Calvin laughed. ‘And there’s more truth than usual in that one … Well, I hope you manage to find out who’s been doing all the smuggling, but I’ll be sorry if all the American cigarettes go off the market. I’m afraid the one local product I’ve never come to terms with is the black tobacco.’ When he saw Alvarez was not moving, he stood up, slightly irritated that the detective didn’t have the nous to know when to go. ‘I’m very sorry, but I’m really rather busy this morning and I have a friend coming here later on to discuss a spot of bother he’s in.’

  Alvarez studied his own shoes, which were heavy and clumsy-looking. ‘Señor, the banker — that is what I shall call him — must have been handling large sums of money.’

  ‘I suppose so. But … ’

  ‘He would need very large sums to pay out to the people who deliver the cigarettes and watches, he would receive even larger sums when they are sold to the next people in the line. So it should be easy to know who could be the banker by seeing what large money he has been handling.’

  ‘And how would you go about that?’

  ‘In the usual way. I would study the person’s style of living and his bank accounts.’

  Calvin sat down again. His voice became edged with sarcasm. ‘You don’t think that a foreigner who went into the smuggling racket would deal in cash and his profits would be moved smartly out of the country so that if suspicion ever did fall on him there wouldn’t be any record of the money movements to trap him?’

  ‘It is forbidden to take large sums of money out of Spain, señor.’

  ‘Forbidden by law, but aren’t we talking about a man who’s laughing at the law? All he’ll do is book to fly out of Spain, load his suitcase with peseta notes, and check in at the airport. The luggage is never searched. He arrives at the other end, collects his suitcase and the fortune, and walks away.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He banks it. You must know about Swiss numbered accounts which were tailored for this sort of operation?’

  ‘I have heard about them, señor,’ said Alvarez vaguely. ‘But is it really quite so simple? When a man has a lot of cash, he sometimes spends a little of it right away, in a kind of celebration, and then perhaps he doesn’t need to draw his usual money from the bank. Do you see what I am thinking?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I am thinking, señor, that if you will tell me where your bank account is, I will investigate it. Then, when I see there are no large sums of money and no times when no money is drawn, I can tell my superior that Señor Calvin has nothing to do with smuggling.’

  When Calvin next spoke, his voice had lost its note of amused condescension. ‘I’ve told you I’ve nothing to do with smuggling and that ought to be enough. And bank accounts in this country are secret.’

  ‘The police always have the right of investigation. Surely it is the same in England?’

  ‘Only when a court has authorized it.’

  ‘We also have certain formalities. Naturally, I would observe them.’

  ‘You want to call me a liar?’

  ‘Señor! Of course I have no such wish. You have given me your word and that is quite sufficient for me. The word of an Englishman! My parents taught me what that means. But my superior comes from Madrid and is not really a gentleman in such matters. And he must be convinced. Surely you would wish me to convince him?’

  Calvin lit a cigarette. There was now a hard, wary look on his face and his voice was crisp. He inhaled, blew out the smoke in four perfect smoke rings, then said: ‘Obviously, I’d better explain something.’

  ‘I am hoping we will have no misunderstandings.’

  ‘The fact is, there have been fairly large amounts passing through my account, but these have absolutely nothing to do with smuggling. They are solely concerned with financial arrangements I make for certain English people.’

  ‘Would you be kind enough to explain them, rather simply so that I can understand?’

  ‘You must have heard that an Englishman can’t ship out of England as much money as he wants without paying a very high premium? I move it out here for a much lesser premium. As far as Spanish law is concerned, I’m doing nothing wrong.’

  ‘And by English law?’

  ‘Since England has little use for democracy these days, it’s illegal. So perhaps now you can understand the situation? Money has been paid into and out of my account, but these sums aren’t in any way tied up with smuggling.’

  ‘Then once you have proved where the money came from, señor, it can be forgotten.’

  ‘Proved?’

  ‘You will naturally wish to prove the truth of what you say.’

  ‘How am I supposed to do that, for Pete’s sake?’

  ‘Most easily, by identifying where the money in your account came from, who paid it to you, and who you paid it to.’

  ‘Look, you haven’t really understood my position. I can’t start proving I did bring the money out from the UK, or the authorities at home will begin to learn what I’ve been up to.’

  ‘But you are in Spain.’

  ‘For me, it’s an extraditable offence.’

  Alvarez rubbed his heavy chin. ‘I can see your problem now, señor, but most unfortunately I shall need absolute proof that the money came from England — and by what means. Perhaps I can proceed on my own and let you be silent? We have very friendly relations with the British police and I am sure they will co-operate.
’

  ‘For God’s sake … Calvin struggled to keep his temper in check. ‘I’ve told you, the moment the English police learn what’s on, they’ll grab me.’

  ‘But if that is the case, how are we ever to prove the facts?’

  ‘Surely common sense will tell you that no one in his right senses would put money made from smuggling through his bank account … ?’

  Alvarez spoke so blandly that it was impossible to judge whether he realized the full import of his words. ‘Señor, some criminals become so clever that sometimes they overlook the obvious.’ He stood up. ‘Perhaps you will consider the matter and then telephone me at the post in Llueso. I shall need the name of your bank — all your banks: and please don’t become distressed when I tell you that I shall have to speak to every bank on the island to make certain you have not forgotten some small, insignificant account.’ He held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, señor, and thank you very much for the coffee and cognac. I hope that between us we find a solution for your problems.’

  He left. Life, he thought, occasionally had its compensations.

  CHAPTER VII

  Alvarez’s bedroom faced south. After he’d woken up in the morning he liked to open the shutters and then return to bed and stare out through the window, across the roofs of other houses, at Puig Llueso on the crown of which stood the several buildings which had once been a hermitage but which were now looked after by nuns. The bones of Santa Antonia were housed in a small casket in the chapel and when his cousin’s son had been so terribly ill and the doctor had been able to do nothing for the terrified boy, he had walked up the track to the chapel and had prayed to Santa Antonia. Within twenty-four hours, the boy had begun to mend. The doctor, of course, had claimed that the antibiotics had worked the cure: doctors were greedy in all things. It had been a miracle. And because it had been a miracle, he had returned to the shrine, completing the last three hundred metres on his knees, and he had knelt again before Santa Antonia’s bones and he had thanked her, with tears brimming down his cheeks.