An Artistic Way to Go (21 page)

‘Not before midnight?'

‘That's sharp; that's right!'

He hesitated. She was amused by him and therefore was regarding him good-naturedly. But if he annoyed her, she would almost certainly become pure bitch. Yet if he didn't challenge her, he would never be certain. He took a deep breath. ‘Lady Janlin, that cannot be correct. I know that Señor Burns was not in this house all the time between ten thirty and midnight.'

Her manner did not sharpen; if anything, she became even more offhand. ‘Really?' she drawled.

He bluffed with all the conviction he could command. ‘I have spoken to a witness who saw him in his car after eleven and before midnight.'

‘My good man, that's quite impossible. Suggest your witness adds more water next time.'

‘Do you understand that in this country it is a serious crime deliberately to mislead a police officer?'

‘You're beginning to remind me of my pompous husband and that's bad for my digestion.'

He stood. ‘I offer you one more chance to tell the truth.'

‘He'd never offer anybody anything, so the similarity is not all that close.' She drained her glass and held it out. ‘You know the definition of a gentleman? He pours a lady a drink even when he's not trying to seduce her.'

He tried to work out whether it would be safer to refill her glass or flee.

CHAPTER 23

The fiesta of Llueso was spaced over several days; on the Saturday night, there was dancing in the old square to a live band whose music was amplified until only those who lived on the outskirts of the village had any hope of sleeping during the night unless the members of the band became totally inebriated.

The mobile churro stall was doing almost as much trade as the cafés which surrounded the square and it was five minutes before Alvarez was able to buy a small bag of the crisp, deep-fried, ribbed lengths of pastry-like sweet. He eased his way through the milling crowds until he found a space, began to eat. Taste, smell, and music, resurrected the past in a flash of time. He knew a pain that had never vanished, only dulled. The last time he had escorted Juana-María to a fiesta. There had been few tourists then and money had been so tight that the band had consisted of three villagers who only occasionally had managed to play together and in tune; mothers had watched their daughters with eagle eyes; the churro stall had been small and mobile only to the extent that two men could push it; Juana-María and he had bought a bag of churros and she had said that if there were an odd number of pieces in it, she would know that he truly loved her, but if there were an even number … When he'd wanted to eat quickly, she had held the bag tightly shut, laughing with the abandon that came from pure happiness and causing her mother to chide her for brazenness … A little while later, she had died, pinned against a wall by a car driven by a drunken Frenchman …

Someone spoke to him, but his thoughts were too far away and the noise too great for him either to recognize the voice or understand the words. He turned and to his surprise found himself facing Rachael.

‘I saw you…' she began, but the band scaled fresh heights. She shrugged her shoulders, mouthed words as she pointed to the road past the Club Llueso. She set off and he followed her. Halfway down the road, the buildings masked the noise sufficiently for normal speech to be audible. She came to a stop. ‘I saw you only at the very last moment.'

He replied, with conventional triteness: ‘It's very crowded because a lot of tourists come here for the fiesta.'

‘Frankly, you obviously hadn't seen me so I was about to rush off, reckoning it was a meeting neither of us would welcome. But then I thought…'

‘You thought what, señora?'

‘Rachael! I thought that perhaps the best thing to do was to face you here and now and have it out.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Muriel rang me and said you'd virtually been accusing Neil…'

‘Señora, this…'

‘Rachael, goddamnit!'

‘This is hardly the time or place to discuss such a matter.'

‘I don't give a shit! I must make you understand that neither Neil nor I had anything to do with Oliver's death.'

‘Come to my office on Monday.'

‘Come home now and listen. You owe me that for being so horribly suspicious. Please, you've got to.'

The telephone call from Lady Janlin had panicked her, he thought. Panicky tongues could be provoked into speaking freely. But by Monday she would have calmed down and worked out how to meet the fresh challenge.

*   *   *

She settled on the settee. With her legs tucked under herself, her dress riding some way up her thighs, and her hair slightly dishevelled, she looked vulnerable, younger, and very desirable.

She drank quickly. She said in a low voice: ‘I've been lying to you.' She looked up and directly at him. ‘About Neil and me. But you'd guessed the truth. When you found me in his flat, I could see in your face that you didn't believe what we told you.'

‘You're admitting that your affair with him did not come to an end a long time ago?'

‘Yes.' She studied him as if seeking to discover something. ‘You know, don't you, that sometimes between two people there's an electrical current that blasts them into another world and they forget all loyalties, duties, and self-respect?'

He did not answer.

‘Come on, admit you're not the stolid, unemotional man you try to make out.'

‘When did Señor Cooper discover you were having an affair?'

‘Since it would never have occurred to him that I'd ever be more than distantly polite to someone in Neil's lowly position, and I made certain I was the soul of discretion, he remained in complete and happy ignorance of the fact.'

‘You are still lying.'

‘I swear I'm not.'

‘He learned the truth and threatened to divorce you. Since he was living on this island and all his money was offshore from England, there was no way you could get any court to force him to pay you maintenance. And you knew that since you'd made him a laughing stock by cuckolding him, he'd never willingly give you so much as a peseta.'

‘What are you implying now?'

‘That you had the strongest possible motive for his murder.'

‘He didn't know!' she shouted. ‘You think I'd murder him for his money? Oh, God, how can you be so cruel? Why are you horribly twisting everything I say? Why won't you…?'

The cordless phone on the table by her side rang, bringing an abrupt end to her words. She stared at it, but made no effort to pick it up. Her expression slowly calmed.

Alvarez silently cursed the caller. Fear had undermined her self-control, as he had intended; but this interruption had given her the time to realize that at all costs she must regain it. The ringing ceased. He said: ‘Where were you at eleven o'clock Wednesday evening?'

‘Muriel's told you I was with her.'

‘She also said Señor Burns was in her house until the early hours of Thursday morning. I know that he was not.'

‘You know nothing!' She drained her glass. ‘I asked you here to show you why you had to stop suspecting Neil and me. But all you –'

The phone interrupted her again. This time, she picked it up. ‘Yes, Charles?… I couldn't get to it in time … There's no need to apologize … That is an idea. It would certainly help me to sort out that side of things … The Poperens? Of course you can have them. You know I've never liked them and, after all, you did paint them … At around eleven, then. Good night.' She replaced the phone on the table, stood. ‘It's time for a refill.'

He handed her his glass. As she walked over to the cocktail cabinet, she said: ‘Understand this. I'm no starry-eyed romantic. Even when the electricity flashed, I recognized that what started so suddenly would end equally suddenly.' She turned, walked towards him, a glass in each hand. ‘So there was never the slightest possibility of a long-term relationship and without that, Neil would never risk his neck by murdering Oliver.'

She came to a stop immediately in front of him.

‘Money usually outlives romance.'

‘Neil doesn't have the prescience to understand that. He is an uncomplicated character and for him there's only the present.'

‘Unlike you?'

‘I'm far more complex. Which means that if I had plotted and planned, I'd also have considered every possibility there was for failure and that would have made me far too scared actually to put any of the plots and plans into execution.' She handed him his glass, leaning forward far more than was necessary.

Her dress had a deep décolletage and inevitably his attention was drawn. She was not wearing a brassiere and the upper curves of her shapely breasts were visible. He hastily jerked his gaze away before she caught him peeping. Yet as she straightened up, her quiet smile said that his subterfuge had been a complete waste of time and effort because with infallible female instinct she had divined where his gaze had been focused a moment before; her smile also said – to his surprised excitement – that she was neither annoyed nor contemptuous.

She returned to the settee; as she settled, her skirt rode higher up her thighs than before and again she made no attempt to tug it down. ‘Do you understand now that we couldn't have had anything to do with Oliver's death?' When he did not answer, she said: ‘Christ! Have I got to bare every last inch of my soul to convince you?'

He waited.

She plucked at the hem of her dress. ‘Promise you won't become all holier-than-thou if I admit something?'

‘I try never to do that.'

‘On the Wednesday, all Neil and I did together was have a meal and then go straight to Muriel's – I told him before we drove to the restaurant that it was all finished between us. So he knew there wasn't any future and couldn't have any reason to kill Oliver.'

‘Why did you tell him your relationship was finished?'

‘In one respect, I'm the same as Neil.'

‘Is that an answer?'

‘Dammit, you're making me dot the i's and cross the t's because you're enjoying making me squirm.'

‘That's ridiculous.'

‘Then if you're not being deliberately slow, you aren't very good at judging people. I … I've always needed excitement to make life worth living. And the most exciting thing of all is to meet someone new and face the questions: will he, and if he does, will I?'

She was staring straight at him, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted, the tip of her tongue just visible, her body tensed. He would have had to be a dolt not to have understood. She had set out to convince him of her and Burns's innocence by an apparent show of total innocence. Failing, she had judged her position to be serious. She saw one way of escape. He had been unable to hide his lascivious interest in her. Then let him believe her, or at the very least accept that she had been the unwilling and unwitting partner, and she would offer affirmative answers to the questions he had just posed.

He longed to say he now believed her. His mind even provided Jesuitical justification for doing so. By seducing him in order to make him forget his duty towards the law he was supposed to serve, she would be proving herself to be corrupt; then it would not be unfair if his agreement, knowing he would not subsequently allow himself to be diverted from doing his job, were equally corrupt. Yet to accept such reasoning would be to betray himself, and the most precious thing a man possessed was his self-respect.

He finished his drink, said goodbye, and left.

CHAPTER 24

Monday was a ghastly day; midday Saturday was a long, long way away.

Alvarez stared at the pile of papers, memoranda and unopened letters on his desk and gloomily decided that he must sort out everything, even taking action over those that were very important.

A cabo opened the door and looked into the room. ‘So you've finally decided to turn up! Better late than never, as the puta said when Lent came to an end.'

‘I've already put in a couple of hours' work.'

‘Cows might growl. This came in for you during the night.' He entered the room to place a fax on the desk. ‘Don't work yourself to death or you'll live to regret it,' he said cheerfully, before leaving.

Youth was a time of irrational optimism. Alvarez decided to go to the Club Llueso for a second breakfast in the hopes that a quick coñac would cheer him up; then, ever the man who observed duty, he read the fax.

America reported that Ernest White had been born in Philadelphia to Italian parents. He had had youthful convictions for gang-related offences; in adult life he had matriculated to major crime, but had been convicted only once and imprisoned for five years. Presently believed to be an enforcer for the Ruggiero crime syndicate. The authorities would be grateful for any information concerning his present activities.

Alvarez put the fax down, left the office. The old square was thronged with people, mostly foreigners with nothing to do but eat and drink, and he had to weave his way between them so that by the time he reached the Club Llueso he was sweating freely. The barman said that he looked like a man about to have a fatal heart attack.

He sat at a table by the window and drank some of the coffee, then topped up the cup with brandy. He lit a cigarette. Since White could not be the murderer, the reason for his having visited Cooper became immaterial. Nevertheless, America had asked for information and a drive over to Cala Xima was far preferable to sitting at a desk, sorting through papers …

*   *   *

The brunette, dressed in the briefest of bikinis, stared up at Alvarez with open resentment.

‘Back home,' White said, snapping the words short, ‘I'd have a mouthpiece suing you for harassment.'

‘Then I must count myself fortunate that this is Spain.'