A Maze of Murders (6 page)

Swearing, he wriggled into an upright position, reached forward and picked up the receiver.

‘Inspector Alvarez?'

There was, alas, no mistaking the plum-filled voice. ‘Speaking, señorita.'

‘I have been trying to ring you, but there has been no answer.'

‘I have only just got back from some outside work.'

‘The superior chief wishes to speak to you.'

‘I thought he was at a conference.'

‘It ended early.'

A badly organized conference.

Salas was as impolitely abrupt as ever. ‘Have you the slightest idea of what a full analysis of evidence costs?'

‘Not really, señor.'

‘Yet you send a bottle of whisky and some glasses to the Laboratory of Forensic Sciences and demand one such without the authority to do so?'

‘I judged that speed of action was essential.'

‘A most unusual judgement for you to make.'

‘In this case…'

‘What case?'

‘The disappearance of the Englishman, Señor Neil Lewis.'

‘I have read through all the reports received during my absence and cannot recall one dealing with this matter.'

‘I haven't yet made a preliminary report because so many of the facts are still uncertain.'

‘If uncertain, how do you begin to justify your request for a full analysis at exorbitant cost to the department?'

‘Because I think that the results will establish that Lewis was murdered. I believe some form of narcotic was introduced into the unopened bottle of whisky…'

‘It clearly has not occurred to you that if a bottle is unopened, nothing can have been introduced into it.'

‘When I said unopened, señor, I meant it appeared to be, but wasn't. How much effort did Señor Lewis have to use in order to unscrew the cap? If he had to use a degree of force…'

‘Did he?'

‘I cannot determine that fact.'

‘Are there any facts you have determined?'

‘When the three woke up on the boat…'

‘What three, what boat?'

‘Lewis and Sheard met two young women in the port and after a few drinks went for a trip in the boat Lewis had chartered. They anchored off the Hotel Parelona, emptied one bottle of whisky, opened another and had a drink before they began to have fun…'

‘What do you mean by that expression?'

‘Well, they started fondling each other and undressing…'

‘Are you quite incapable of investigating a case without introducing sex into it?'

‘I am only reporting what happened, señor.'

‘Using the word “fun” makes it very obvious that you do so without the sense of distaste I expect from my officers.'

‘I am sorry, señor. They were indulging in amorous foreplay…'

‘Are you trying to be obscenely humorous?'

‘No, señor. That is what it is sometimes called.'

‘By those of a like mind to you.'

‘Then they fell asleep. It seems so unusual a moment to fall asleep in view of the…'

‘Restrain your urge to wallow in unnecessary and unsavoury details.'

Alvarez briefly detailed the facts.

‘You have no reason to suspect involvement in the drug trade other than the Englishman's sudden accession of wealth?'

‘That and the nature of his disappearance.'

‘As to the latter, would it not be reasonable to suppose he was so drunk that he fell over the side and drowned?'

‘The evidence is that he wasn't drunk.'

‘Evidence given by his companions who would have been as drunk as he.'

‘Señorita Glass says she had had very little.'

‘Women are recognized to have an infinite capacity for self-delusion.'

‘But even if he was tight, he was a very strong swimmer.'

‘A man can be so intoxicated that he becomes incapable of doing something which he does easily and well when sober.'

‘If he were too drunk even to remember how to swim, could he have walked out of the saloon on to the deck and across to the stern? Would he have bothered to in order to urinate?'

‘I am glad to say it is not a question I can answer. Have you traced the source of the money?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Why not?'

‘The banks are checking, but they say it'll take time.'

‘Can you name anything on this island that does not take twice as long as is reasonable?' He rang off.

Alvarez replaced the receiver. If only Salas had remained at the conference until at least some of the facts could have been established with a degree of certainty … If every ‘if' were a peseta, no man would be poor.

CHAPTER 8

The phone rang as he was about to leave the office for his merienda of a coffee and brandy at the Club Llueso.

‘It's the Guardia, phoning from Torret. We've a dead man, in his twenties, in what's almost certainly a hit-and-run.'

‘Torret's in Inspector Cardona's territory,' he said with satisfaction.

‘We called him and he's worked out that as the body is six kilometres to the east of the village, it's just in yours.'

Some would do anything to evade their responsibilities, he thought resentfully.

*   *   *

The road, which over the past two kilometres had become a switchback, turned sharp right round a bluff of exposed rock, then bore sharply down in a left-hand curve before levelling off. Evergreen oaks cast their shadows on the road and fields of almond trees stretched almost to the mountains. It was a part of the island with very little underground water so that only one crop a year could be grown to augment the almonds.

Alvarez parked behind the white and green Renault, walked up to the driver's door. The two cabos remained seated, enjoying the slight relief from the heat that the car's fan provided. The driver spoke through the open window. ‘He went off the road down by the second telegraph pole.'

Alvarez saw that a cistus bush immediately to the side of the pole had been partially flattened. ‘What was he riding?'

‘A Vespa. That's been caught up a metre or so below the level of the road. From the look of things, a car coming up behind didn't see it in time and smacked it over. There's a fair drop on to rock and the poor sod landed on his head – wasn't wearing a crash helmet.'

‘Do we know when the accident happened?'

‘The doc says rigor was fully established and that, plus body temperature, suggested twelve hours from death, only in this heat nothing could be certain.'

‘Where's the body?'

‘With the village undertakers.'

‘Do we have identification?'

‘There was none on him and a check with Traffic gives the Vespa as owned by a bloke in Palma. He's been contacted and says he sold it last year, but just didn't bother with the paperwork for the transfer.'

‘Have any locals been reported missing?'

‘None we've heard about.'

Alvarez walked down the road. A short distance from the cistus bush, there was a mark on the tarmac where something had recently scraped along the surface with considerable force. He reached the bush and looked down and immediately wished he hadn't. The land was steeper than seemed likely from the road and there was a sloping fall of some seven metres. At the point where the Vespa had been held by a projecting rock, the land fell less steeply than elsewhere, nevertheless he would not have dreamt of climbing down had not there been two cabos ready to jeer at him if he did not.

It was an old machine, in parts rusty, and now slightly bent though far from wrecked. It was difficult to disagree with the conclusion that a car coming up from behind had hit the Vespa and knocked it on to its side with such force that it had swept along the road to fall over the edge; yet the rear of the machine had not suffered the crumpling he would have expected to find in such an accident.

Careful only to look up, never down, he climbed back to the road. He walked up to the car. ‘Call Traffic to collect the Vespa and take it to Palma for a full vehicle examination.'

‘What's to prevent you telling 'em?' asked the driver bad-temperedly.

He carried on to his own car and drove off.

Torret, originally built about a hill for defensive purposes, had altered little, largely because it was well back from the coast and few foreigners ever visited it, even fewer lived there – those who did were of strange persuasions, some of which even the accommodating locals would have baulked at had they known about them. It was a village of uneven levels, narrow streets mostly without pavements, a church with a relic of St Boniface, a band which could play four and a half tunes, and a yearly fight between Moors and Christians of such violence that in some years there were almost as many casualties as tradition claimed for the original battle (which some historians were so insensitive as to claim never occurred).

He parked in the main square and walked across to a bar which was built against one wall of the church, a juxtaposition the Latin character found perfectly natural. He ordered a coffee and a brandy, then said to the owner: ‘Where will I find the undertaker?'

‘At the edge of the village, on the Palma road. Moved there a couple of years back … You sound like you're from Llueso?'

‘That's right.'

‘Can't mistake the accent!'

‘The purest Mallorquin,' Alvarez responded, automatically defending the good name of his village.

‘I've a cousin who lives there, Lucía, married to Gustavo, a carpenter.'

‘I've had a word or two with him, but I've not met her.'

‘The last time she was here, she said Gustavo's very successful. Could that be right?'

‘He's moved into specially built workshops just outside the village and is doing cabinet-making as well as ordinary work. They say that last year he won a prestigious prize in the Barcelona exhibition.'

‘Is that right! If Lucía's mother had lived to now, I wonder what she'd have to say. When Lucía told her she was marrying a man from Llueso, she had hysterics and burned candles by the score to try and stop it … You never can tell, can you?'

‘Not until it's too late to do anything about things.'

The owner moved away to serve another customer. Alvarez spooned sugar into the cup, drank some of the coffee, emptied the brandy into what remained. The Vergers would have married at least thirty-five years before. Then, Torret had, as had many inland villages, been relatively isolated, not only physically but also psychologically, so that Lucía's mother's hostility towards the marriage was understandable. Then, ignorance had often fuelled traditional rivalries; it had been a source of pride that the vocabulary of one village was noticeably different from that of another. Here a wife could plough, there to do so was to earn as much shame as if she were a puta … Easy travel and television had homogenized the island, thereby eliminating those fears and prejudices born of ignorance, but at a price that still couldn't be accurately calculated. It would be ironic if when the price did become known, it would be seen that there had been merit in ignorance …

He left the bar and returned to his car, drove through the steep, narrow, winding streets to the undertaker's house and offices – the latter tastefully camouflaged as an ordinary extension.

The undertaker was short and tubby, and he had a mobile face which could register whatever degree of mournful compassion seemed appropriate. ‘You believe you may be a relative?'

‘Cuerpo General de Policia.'

‘You have papers of authority to confirm that fact?'

‘Never bother to carry 'em around.'

‘Then I regret I cannot permit you to view the deceased.'

‘Did he present his papers in order that you could accept him?'

‘Only a genuine policeman could say anything so ridiculous!' He led the way through an inner doorway into a tiled room and crossed to one of four refrigerated cabinets, disengaged the locking bars, and pulled out a shelf. ‘His cranial injuries are very considerable.'

They were, but Alvarez had no difficulty in recognizing Sheard.

CHAPTER 9

Alvarez watched a gecko scurry across the ceiling, then come to an abrupt halt a few centimetres away from the corner. Such action often indicated a potential victim had been sighted, yet he could see no fly or spider and it seemed possible the gecko had been tricked by the light into believing it had seen movement. Perhaps he, too, was being tricked into believing he was seeing connections where there was none.

A detective quickly learned that coincidences were commonplace, yet when faced by one his first reaction was almost invariably to dismiss the possibility that it was genuine. So here he was, trying to identify the connection between the presumed death of Lewis and the death of Sheard, when it could be pure coincidence that one had died within four days of the other.

The telephone rang.

‘This is Benito Vinent, manager of the Annuig branch of Sa Nostra. A day or two ago, I received a request for information concerning a foreigner, probably English-speaking, who had made a heavy withdrawal in cash in the past two weeks. I have information regarding such a withdrawal, but before going any further, I need to satisfy myself that the proper procedure has been observed. You have obtained the necessary permission to request and be given such information?' He spoke with old-fashioned formality that was leavened with a touch of irony, as if he were smiling at himself.

‘It would not occur to me', Alvarez answered reproachfully, ‘to act before I had done so.'

‘I'm sorry that I was obliged to ask.'

‘Think nothing of it.'

‘On the twenty-fifth of last month, Señor Clough presented a cheque in sterling for a large sum. He has not banked with us for long, but since he has shown himself to be a valued client, his account was immediately credited with that sum in pesetas. He withdrew one million in cash.'