Dead Clever (8 page)

‘All I want is her name and address.’

‘Information provided outside a will which although pertinent to that will is not specifically material to any of the terms in it, clearly comes under the umbrella of client confidentiality, but this may be less absolute than that pertaining to wills. In other words, if the provision of such information is to the advantage of the estate, it may be given. It is clearly to the advantage of Mr Green’s affairs that I know whether or not he died in the air crash. I feel, therefore, that I shall be justified if I give you the name and address of the person to whom all matters of importance are to be referred in the event of his death.’

Lawyers, thought Ware, were surely the most successful of all practitioners of the art of subtle hypocrisy.

Although Ware had always liked the French, he’d never managed to become reconciled to their determined inability to understand their own language when incorrectly spoken by a foreigner. He leaned his head through the open car window and for the third time asked directions to the Rue de la Paix, and for the third time the elderly man on the pavement shrugged his shoulders. ‘Forget it,’ Ware said in English. The Frenchman inclined his head—in contempt, in triumph, in commiseration?—and walked on.

Ware studied the small road map of Changres which the car-hire firm had given him at the airport and he tried to work out why, since he had taken the third road to the right after the cross-roads, he had turned into Rue Mortel which, to add to the confusion, wasn’t marked. A woman, past her youth but maturely smart and very aware of that fact, approached. He leaned out through the window and asked her to help him and this time his accent was an advantage since it marked him as a foreigner and she had a soft spot for the underprivileged. She listened to his halting French and then replied in good English that he was in Rue de la Paix, but the name had recently been changed to Rue Mortel to commemorate the town’s late mayor. He thanked her and she walked on, satisfied that although he was considerably younger than she, he would be watching her.

He left the car and walked along the pavement, past houses which had been built at the turn of the century for the well-to-do bourgeoisie and whose rather bleak exteriors gave no indication of the elegance to be found within many of them. He reached No. 45, pressed the entry button, and the door latch slipped free with a quick buzz. There was a short passage, to the right-hand side of which were the concierge’s rooms, to the left-hand side stairs, and at the end a small courtyard.

He climbed the stairs to the third floor. There were two flats on each floor and in the small brass holder on the left-hand side of the landing was a handwritten card naming Miss S. Collins. He rang the bell.

The door was opened by a woman he judged to be in her early thirties. ‘Miss Collins? My name is Robert Ware.’ She was not beautiful, yet she had a face which attracted because it expressed character; by some visual trick, it seemed to alter in composition when seen from different angles. Her brown eyes were warm, but her nose had a touch of Roman arrogance; her mouth was generous and her lips full, suggesting a capacity for passion; her hair was black and wavy and cut tightly to the shape of her head; she wasn’t fashionably thin, but neither was she plump. A woman to remember and to wonder about. ‘May I have a word with you?’

‘What about?’

There was a touch of huskiness in her voice which reminded him of a distant cousin who rode sidesaddle. He did not answer immediately, but brought out his wallet and from this extracted a card which he handed to her.

She read it, looked up. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’d like to discuss something that concerns us both.’

‘But what? I’ve never heard of this insurance company before. How can anything to do with it concern me?’

‘A few years ago Mr Timothy Green took out a life insurance with them.’

‘Oh! . . .’ She turned away so that he could no longer see her face. ‘I . . . I can’t . . .’ Her voice trailed off into silence.

‘I’m very sorry, but I do have to talk to you,’ he said firmly. It was, he thought, a tribute to her acting ability that until he reminded himself that it was ridiculous, he felt guilty because he was causing her such distress.

She did not move for several seconds, then, shoulders slumped, she stepped back. He accepted this as an invitation to enter, closed the door.

‘I . . . I just can’t get used to knowing he’s dead,’ she murmured.

He noticed, for the first time, the black armband she wore. Since Green must have considered a visit such as the present one to be unlikely, it was a tribute to his skilful planning that he had still taken the possibility into account and arranged for her to wear a sign of mourning. Skilful planning negated by greed or the necessity to be greedy.

She led the way into the sitting-room. Large, with a high ceiling, originally it would have been sombrely decorated and furnished to provide a fitting setting in which a grave and dignified paterfamilias could digest his lunch and dream of mistresses, but now it had been painted in an off-white, the furniture was modern and occasionally frivolous, and the four modern paintings on the walls were filled with colour if little form.

She sat in a rocking-chair and began to rock, staring out through the nearer window as she did so. He studied her face which was in profile. He saw strength and determination. Perhaps she had agreed to help in the proposed fraud without any of the hesitations and fears that most women would have experienced. Before, he had assumed that Green had been much the stronger of the team; now he was certain that if she had not wanted to help him, no amount of cajoling on his part would have persuaded her to do so. He said: ‘Miss Collins, how did you hear about Mr Green’s death?’

She rocked twice before she said sharply: ‘What does that matter?’

‘It could be important.’

‘Oh God, can’t you understand . . .?’

He waited, then said: ‘Either I or the police have to question you. I promise you it will be easier if I do so.’

‘Why d’you say that? Why should the police bother me?’

‘If you’ll answer the question I asked a moment ago, I’ll tell you.’

She continued rocking for several seconds, then abruptly checked the movement with her feet. She ran the tip of her tongue over her full lips. ‘He didn’t return here when he said he would. I thought maybe business had taken longer than he’d expected, then I wondered if the weather had stopped him flying back, so I rang his hotel in Majorca. They told me . . .’ She stopped.

‘They said that his plane had crashed at sea.’

She closed her eyes, resumed rocking.

‘His plane did crash at sea. But as you well know, he was not in it when it crashed.’

She spoke fiercely. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘He parachuted from the plane and was picked up by a boat which landed him on the mainland.’

‘If that had happened, he’d have got in touch with me immediately. Why have you come here with such filthy lies? Oh God, isn’t it enough to have to know he’s dead, without having someone like you taunt me . . .’

‘I’m not taunting you, Miss Collins.’ His tone was sad, because he hated having to convince her that all their plans had failed. ‘Green needed money and he decided to fake his own death so that a claim could be made against his life insurance. In his last will he named you as sole beneficiary, thereby making certain you’d be paid the insurance money. He hired a twin-engined Fleche and flew to Mallorca where he persuaded a past employer of his to cooperate in the fraud. He then flew from the island and rendezvoused with a motor-cruiser, jumped from the plane and parachuted down, and was picked up. The plane crashed several minutes later.

‘The motor-cruiser sailed to Stivas and presumably he telephoned you on arrival to let you know that everything had gone according to plan. He stayed one night in the Hotel Grande before leaving Stivas. Exactly where he is now I don’t know; you most certainly do.’

‘That’s all filthy lies.’

‘We both know it’s the truth.’

‘He’s dead. He never phoned me. D’you hear, he’s dead.’

‘Miss Collins, a Spanish detective and I went to Stivas and talked to the employees at the Hotel Grande, where he used the name Thomas Grieves. We also had his passport number checked and it turned out to belong to a passport which had been stolen.’

‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

‘On the contrary, it proves that Grieves was not who he claimed to be.’

“Just because a man has a false passport . . .’

He interrupted, determined to make her understand that it was hopeless to go on arguing. ‘A desk clerk made a reasonable identification of him from his passport photo. Next morning, a chambermaid went into the bedroom, not realizing he was still there, and he was on the bed . . .’

‘Is she trying to say that that man was Tim?’

He shook his head. ‘She’s unable to identify him, but what’s important . . .’

‘That’s important. She can’t identify him because he wasn’t Tim.’

‘She can’t identify him because . . .’ He stopped.

‘What?’

‘The actual reason is immaterial.’

‘No, it isn’t. You come here making filthy accusations, saying Tim isn’t dead and he’s a crook, but you won’t answer a simple question. It proves you’re lying.’

‘She couldn’t identify him because she was so shocked by what she saw,’ he said reluctantly. ‘He wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him; he was naked and she was wearing standard s/m gear and was whipping him.’

She gave a short cry, put her hand to her mouth.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said sincerely.

She turned away, but not before he saw that now tears were flooding from her eyes. For the first time her grief was bitterly genuine because for the first time she had learned that he had perversely betrayed her. He spoke quickly. ‘The chambermaid left and later another girl cleaned up the room once it was vacated. She found an English paperback had been left behind and she sold this, with some others, to a bookshop in Stivas. We identified the book and found in it a receipt for aviation fuel which had been issued at Palma airport. The airport records show that that receipt refers to the Fleche which Green was flying. So we can prove that Grieves, who stayed the night at the hotel, was really Green.’

There was a long silence, broken only by the sounds of the rocking-chair. Finally he asked, quietly, sympathetically: ‘Will you tell me where he is now?’

‘He’s dead.’

Even now, knowing she had been betrayed, she was yet not prepared to betray. He knew a surge of admiration for her and it was because of this emotion that he said: ‘If no claim is made against the policy, then as far as Crown and Life are concerned there will be no need to initiate any action. The English police have not yet been advised of the facts because until and unless a claim is made there is only evidence that Mr Green is alive, not that there’s been an attempted fraud. Because the company is English, he is English, the plane was British registered, and the crash occurred in international waters, the Spanish police are not directly involved.’ She was staring into the far distance. ‘Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?’

She gave no answer, nor did she withdraw her gaze.

‘Miss Collins, persuade him that it really is in both your interests not to make any claim under the insurance.’

‘Go away.’

He left the flat. As he walked down the stairs, he wondered why life could be so bitterly unfair that a woman of her character fell in love with a man so perverted that it was a pleasure to have a woman whip him.

The morning was exceptionally hot and the humidity was high so that the atmosphere in the office was oppressive even though the window was open and a fan working. Alvarez was slumped in his chair and contemplating infinity when the phone rang to jerk him fully awake. He looked at his watch. A quarter to one. Very soon he could stop work and return home for lunch. He lifted the receiver.

‘Enrique? It’s Robert here. I thought you’d want to know how things have gone. I managed to track down Serena Collins, Green’s girlfriend, and I went over to Changres, in eastern France, to talk to her . . . But before I tell you what happened, just answer something, will you? What kind of woman do you imagine she is?’

He leaned back in the chair. ‘I can only judge from the little we’ve learned about him. He’s clever, prepared to take risks, and no respecter of the law; but he’s also a deviant, which means a serious weakness of character and that in turn suggests he’s a boaster, trying to hide such weakness . . . He’d want a woman who’d enhance his image, someone who draws other men’s eyes and evokes their jealousy.’

‘Exactly how I reasoned. And we couldn’t be more wrong. She’s not the least bit like that. She’s not young and tarty, but mature, warm, and charming. So what’s she doing with him?’

Alvarez was surprised on two accounts; that Serena Collins was such a woman as Ware had just described; that Ware should speak about her with such open, forceful admiration. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t, or won’t, understand the kind of man he really is. Obviously, she knows about the intended insurance fraud since she has to be part of it, but, as we’ve said before, a lot of people don’t regard the defrauding of an insurance company as a serious crime. Which leaves his perversion. Perhaps he’s managed to keep this hidden from her.’

‘I’d have thought that someone of her nature would instinctively realize that there was something rotten about him.’

‘If so, then she condones his behaviour or even indulges his desires.’

‘That’s a disgusting suggestion. Quite impossible.’

It was, thought Alvarez, difficult to understand the sharpness of Ware’s reactions to the suggestion except on the grounds of jealousy. Yet there had never been the slightest suggestion other than that Ware was a very happily married man so how could he become jealous after so brief an acquaintance? Alvarez shrugged his shoulders. Experience proved again and again that when it came to the nature of the relationship between a man and a woman there were no reliable precedents, guide lines, or rules. He changed the course of the conversation. ‘How did she react to your questioning?’