An Enigmatic Disappearance (16 page)

‘Señor Ruffolo kindly offered me a drink.'

‘And you were too bloody polite to refuse?' She dropped down on to one of the armchairs, her flesh bulging in and around her costume. ‘If everyone else is boozing, why aren't I?'

Ruffolo stood. ‘I'm sorry, my angel.' He went over to the fireplace and pressed the bell.

‘So what have you two men been talking about?'

Ruffolo returned to his chair. ‘The inspector has been asking me if I can help in his inquiries into the death of Sabrina.'

‘What makes him think you can?'

‘As far as I can make out, no particular reason.'

‘Then why's he been talking to you and not me?'

‘Sweet, how can I possibly answer that? Perhaps he will soon start asking you the same questions he's been asking me.'

‘Then in that case, you'd better clear off for a while.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘He had to talk to you on your own, so he'll need to talk to me on my own. Run along and sunbathe.'

‘But…'

‘Be a good boy.'

Carlos entered the room.

‘Champagne for the señora. And another coñac for the inspector. And bring me a gin and tonic out by the pool.' Ruffolo's resentful pique was obvious from his tone.

Ada waited until both Carlos and Ruffolo had left the room, then said: ‘All right, let's have it.'

‘How do you mean, señorita?' Alvarez asked.

‘Don't try and come dumb with me. You may look dozy, but there's a mind behind the face.'

Carlos entered. He put an ice bucket, in which was a bottle of champagne, and a flute on the table at the side of her chair and was about to open the bottle when she stopped him.

‘He can do that.' She jerked her head in Alvarez's direction.

Carlos set a full glass down on Alvarez's table, picked up the empty one, left. Alvarez went over to her side and managed to open the bottle of Veuve Clicquot without spilling a drop. He filled the flute, then returned to his seat.

She drank eagerly. ‘When I was working and people thought that buying half a pint gave them the right to treat me like a piece of furniture or make suggestions I'd heard a thousand times before, I promised myself that if ever I was rich, I'd drink champagne morning, noon, and night to spit in their eyes. It's not often a dream comes true.'

‘Is the reality as satisfying as you'd hoped?'

‘That's a bloody funny thing to ask.' She drained her glass, refilled it. ‘You're a real cynic, aren't you?'

‘I'm old enough to understand life a little.'

‘And I'm older than you so I understand more. Which means I know you didn't haul Rino in here just to ask him if he could help you. You reckon he knows something important. What?'

‘In any investigation, one hears things that have to be checked out.'

‘So what things have you been checking out?'

‘Several small matters.'

‘Are you going to name them?'

‘No.'

‘You're a stubborn bastard!'

‘We have a saying, When a mule has a Mallorquin owner, it is the mule which swears … Perhaps you will confirm that on the Sunday afternoon on which Señora Ogden disappeared, Señor Ruffolo –'

‘I told you.'

‘You are positive that he was with you then and throughout the Monday?'

‘Yes.' She hesitated, then said: ‘Is he in trouble?'

‘If he has told me the truth, no.'

‘He's made me happy.'

‘As I have said before, that is all that's important in any relationship.'

‘If people have been blacking him, it's only because they're really getting at me.'

‘Why should they do that?'

‘They're angry that someone like me should be able to lead the life I do. And also because they're scared I can pick out the frauds. Back home, most of 'em were in ordinary jobs, leading ordinary lives, yet out here you'd think they ran the country. So if they get the chance to sneer at me, they give themselves a lift up.'

‘If they are so unfriendly, doesn't it make life very unpleasant for you?'

‘No.'

‘Because you can live in this house which is so much bigger than theirs; you can give parties so much more splendid than they can; they profess to despise you, yet lack the character to refuse to enjoy the kind of hospitality they cannot afford?'

She emptied her glass once more, refilled it. ‘You're beginning to scare me. My body is available when that suits me, but I like to keep my mind strictly to myself.'

*   *   *

Keane opened the front door of the bungalow in Ca'n Ximor. He said lightly: ‘As predicted, the penny returns.'

Alvarez failed to make any sense of that, but was certain no compliment was intended. He followed the other through to the pool patio where Cora was seated at the table on which were two glasses and a small bowl of stuffed olives. When she saw him, her expression became disturbed.

‘An old friend honouring us with a visit,' Keane said.

She mumbled a welcome.

He turned to Alvarez. ‘You will undoubtedly join us in a drink?'

He had spoken, Alvarez thought, pleasantly enough, yet it was impossible to escape the impression that behind the words lay sarcasm. ‘Thank you; a little coñac with ice would be very pleasant.'

Keane returned into the house. Cora cleared her throat, did this a second time. She tried to smile, but her expression was almost a grimace. ‘Have you managed to…' She stopped.

‘Unfortunately, señora, I have been able to make very little progress in the case. I am hoping your husband will be able to help me.'

‘But he can't. You must understand, he can't.'

As she finished speaking, Keane came through the doorway, a glass in his right hand. ‘Who can't do what?'

‘You can't help the inspector because you don't know anything.'

Keane handed Alvarez the glass. ‘I rather thought I'd made that clear at our last meeting.' He sat. ‘But perhaps the art of successful detection lies in repeatedly asking the same question until one receives the answer one wants. So what answer would you like from me now?'

‘I should prefer to hear the truth.'

‘The truth about what?'

‘Your relationship with Señora Ogden.'

‘He's told you before, there wasn't one,' Cora said, her voice high.

‘That's not the answer he seeks,' said Keane. ‘So it'll only provoke the same question yet again.'

‘I don't understand…'

‘Because you suffer the grave disadvantage of an innocent mind. The inspector is clearly convinced that I lusted after Sabrina, but she scornfully rejected my advances; that in my jealous, angry resentment, I decided that if I could not enjoy her favours, no one else would get the chance.'

‘You're not saying he thinks you … Oh, my God! That's impossible.'

‘Every detective is trained to believe two impossibilities each day before breakfast.'

She faced Alvarez. ‘Can't you understand, my husband didn't even like her?'

‘Señora, I have been told differently. You and your husband were friendly with Señora Ogden until he said something to her that caused her immediately to break off the friendship; indeed, she was so upset, she would not repeat even to Señor Ogden what had been said.'

Cora swung round to face Keane. ‘Tell him that's just not true.'

Seeking reassurance? Alvarez wondered.

Keane spoke in a typically oblique manner. ‘There's no need. Anyone who knew Sabrina could be certain she was incapable of such verbal restraint.'

‘The señora,' Alvarez said, ‘was silent because she feared that if her husband learned what you had said, he would become so angry there would be serious trouble.'

‘Pistols for two, breakfast for one? Not Bevis's scene unless, of course, he could be certain my pistol would misfire.'

‘The inference has to be that he would be outraged because you had made an immoral suggestion to his wife.'

‘No!' Cora cried. ‘Clive couldn't do such a thing.'

‘Your support is heart-warming,' Keane said, ‘but sadly it's unlikely to carry the weight in the inspector's eyes because a wife's evidence is so often false, intended either to attack or defend her husband.'

Alvarez stolidly persevered with the questioning. ‘What did you say to Señora Ogden that so disturbed her?'

‘As I've indicated, I've no recollection of any such incident.'

‘Even though it caused such offence that it brought an end to the friendship?'

‘There was no friendship, merely an acquaintanceship.'

‘It's difficult to believe you can't begin to remember what it was you said.'

‘Even more difficult to persuade you that the whole incident is almost certainly imaginary.'

Cora said hurriedly: ‘You've got to understand, Inspector, that my husband can upset people even though that's the last thing he wants to do. It's just that he's trying…' She stopped.

‘Yes, señora?'

‘To be clever.'

Keane spoke with heavy irony. ‘Your character reference has much in common with a gift from the Greeks.'

‘But he must understand that if you did say something to upset her, it wasn't … You weren't trying to … to seduce her.'

‘Seduction suggests temptation has to be employed: it's doubtful that, where she was concerned, there was ever any need for this.'

‘Why d'you keep talking like that?' she demanded wildly.

‘Such unconcern proves my conscience is whiter than the driven snow.'

Alvarez finished his drink. ‘Señor, I have just one more question. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of Sunday, the sixth, and all day Monday?'

Keane shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have no idea.'

‘It's important to have an answer since Señora Ogden disappeared that Sunday afternoon.'

Cora said wildly: ‘Oh, God, you can't really think…' She came so clumsily to her feet that her chair fell over. ‘I'll find out what we were doing.' She hurried into the house.

Keane leaned over and righted the chair, then said: ‘Let me refill your glass.' He stood, picked up Alvarez's glass, went indoors.

Alvarez stared at the distant hills and mountains and watched the shadow of a solitary small puffball of cloud slide along their sides. A couple of dragonflies performed an elaborate dance above the pool. A hummingbird hawk moth, its wings a blur, hovered in front of a lantana bush in flower. A lazy spasm of breeze briefly brought the sounds of the bells of a flock of sheep.

They returned; Cora sat immediately, Keane after he had handed the glass to Alvarez.

Cora said: ‘We were in this house the whole weekend.'

‘How can you be so certain, señora?'

‘It's in my diary.'

‘In which,' Keane said, ‘the uneventful as well as the eventful is recorded because my wife is a true diarist.'

‘May I see that?'

Keane answered. ‘As does any lady of an artistic, sensitive nature, my wife records her thoughts and emotions as well as the daily passage of life and therefore all the entries are intensely personal.'

‘I only wish to read what is written for those two days.'

‘But what thoughts and emotions may my wife have enjoyed or suffered? They are not for sharing with anyone – not even with me.'

‘The entries could confirm what your wife has said and then whatever your relationship with Señora Ogden, I would be certain this has no bearing on my investigation.'

‘The price of my innocence is the betrayal of her private self? I'm afraid that the cost is too high.'

Alvarez finished his drink, stood and said goodbye. This time, neither of them accompanied him through the house. Was there, in truth, a diary? Did Keane need protection, except from his own tongue? Did his manner indicate merely arrogance, or was it employed as a cloak? Had he pursued Sabrina, only to be scornfully rejected? Did his wife so urgently try to back him up because she wanted to hide from herself the probable truth?

He climbed into the Ibiza and heaved the driving door shut with unnecessary force, his anger sustained by his inability to answer any of those questions either.

CHAPTER 19

Carrer Gabriel Font was in the centre of an area which had been developed over the past few years and thereby done much to destroy the character of the port which had once been its main attraction. Number 15 was a five-storey block of flats, ugly, but not really any uglier than others. The name tag listed Wilms on the third floor. Alvarez pressed the call button of the entryphone. He identified himself and the door lock buzzed.

The lift took him smoothly to the third floor and he stepped out on to a small landing which ran round the central stair shaft and was illuminated by light coming through the cupola above the fifth floor. He crossed to the right-hand door, rang the bell.

Wilms was short, squarely built, and clearly careless of personal cleanliness. ‘So what is the problem?' he asked in slow, careful Spanish.

‘I'm making inquiries regarding the death of Señora Ogden.'

Wilms finally stepped to one side. The entrance hall was unfurnished except for a large, unframed painting in garish colours whose subject might have been anything or nothing; the sitting-room had paperbacks, magazines, newspapers, and empty cans littered everywhere, while on the table were the remains of at least one meal. Alvarez sat on the chair which looked the least filthy of the three. Wilms lit a cigarette.

‘Señor Ruffolo often comes here with a woman, doesn't he?'

‘Is that against the law?'

‘No. But not declaring the rent that he pays you is,' Alvarez replied, shamelessly forgetting what he'd said to Ruffolo. ‘So it'll be in your interests to be helpful.'