Dead Clever (22 page)

Green. A fast talker, a superb salesman, enjoying life to the full; married to a woman who was only comfortable in a suburban sitting-room and forever worrying about what the Joneses thought; seeking an emotional relationship, the depths of which were quite beyond his wife’s ability—or wish—to provide; possessed of a strict sense of morality which, however, owed nothing to conventional thought or the dictates of the law . . .

Bennett. Sharp, clever, hard-headed, and so selfish that he was unable accurately to assess the qualities of others; ruthless where his own interests were concerned; indifferent to misfortune unless he suffered it; contemptuous of weakness, but only identifying this in others, never in himself; a pervert without the strength of will to try to conquer his perversion . . .

Serena. Possessed of two gifts more precious than gold: inner warmth and limitless loyalty, which had first brought her happiness and then anguish, which had driven her to an act which seemed out of character unless and until one knew her well enough to understand that it was wholly in character because the stronger the loyalty, the higher the price it would demand . . .

Green had been a brilliant salesman and this had made Bennett a very wealthy man; the morality of the job had never worried Green because it was only the rich who were being swindled—he would never have helped to swindle a poor man. Then the job had come to an end because Bennett had decided to retire, careless about how his decision affected anyone else. Green’s relations with his wife had never been good—he should have remembered the old Mallorquin adage, The woman you fall in love with stays behind at the altar—and when he could no longer give her enough money to satisfy her desires for suburban grandeur, they had become impossible. He’d met Serena. She was all that his wife wasn’t. Their love had been intense; too intense because the gods were jealous of men and women who were too happy.

Since no individual would suffer and there was little chance at his age of his finding another really good job, he’d had no hesitation in working out a scheme to defraud the insurance company and she’d had none in agreeing to help him execute it. He was smart, so he accepted from the beginning that such a fraud had to be carried out carefully, never rushing any move, and that he must be content with a modest reward.

His plan called for a second accomplice which seemed to offer a serious weakness until one added that such an accomplice would never betray him for the good reason that to do so would inevitably result in the betrayer being, in turn, betrayed . . .

His one, fatal, mistake had been his inability fully to understand what kind of man Bennett was; just as Bennett’s had been the inability to understand what kind of a man Green was. Green had failed to see that Bennett was weak as well as strong and that this weakness could lead him to believe others to be as weak as he just as his strength could incite him to act. Bennett had failed to understand that Green, who had used gentle blackmail to persuade him to help in perpetrating the fraud, would never dream of continuing to blackmail him for ever-increasing sums of money because, according to his moral values, that would have been despicable behaviour . . .

Bennett had decided that the only way to prevent his being blackmailed into poverty was to murder Green. And the proposed fraud might have been tailor-made for such a purpose. But simply to kill him after his descent by parachute would be dangerous because when questions were asked—which they certainly would be by Serena—the trail must lead straight back to him. So he had evolved a scheme which first would alert the insurance company to the fraud, secondly would confirm Green’s part in the fraud and repeatedly ‘prove’ that he had not died in the crash, and thirdly would persuade Serena that he had gone off with another woman. (Of course, had he been able truly to appreciate Serena’s character, he would have realized that she would refuse to believe this possible.)

He had set his plan in motion just before Green made his first move. In Green’s name, he tried to double the capital sum assured, knowing that the insurance company would not agree immediately and that the report of Green’s death so soon afterwards must automatically alert them. (Alvarez remembered how he and Ware had wondered how Green could have been so stupid and greedy as to try to double the amount just before faking his own death; they should also have wondered why he, a man with a tongue of honey, should have verbally attacked the company when they refused, rather than use all his professional charm and guile to try to talk them into doing so—one more action out of character which could have alerted them to the truth early on.)

On the afternoon of the plane crash, Bennett had set sail from Puerto Llueso in his motor-cruiser, apparently exactly following the part allotted to him in Green’s plan. Yet on such a trip any reasonably smart man, however normally precise in habit, would surely have faked his log book; yet he had entered it correctly. In any ensuing investigation, details of the trip would be exposed, but this would happen as if he’d made a stupid mistake . . .

Green had rendezvoused with the motor-cruiser, set the controls of the plane, and jumped. Bennett had picked him up and they’d sailed for Stivas. But at some stage of their trip, Bennett had murdered Green and thrown his weighted body over the side. Green would never again blackmail him . . .

In Stivas, he had gone ashore and registered at the hotel in the name of Thomas Grieves (fully aware of the fact that men who changed their names used the same initials so often that it had become a presumption that the same initials meant the same person).

He’d previously armed himself with a false passport in the name of Grieves, and had not used the one Green had had with him, so there was no problem concerning the photograph. There was, of course, a risk that in the course of any inquiries by Serena, by an insurance adjuster, by the police, a photograph of Green would be shown to the hotel staff and one of them would say that it was definitely not a photograph of Grieves, but this was a risk he had weighed up and was prepared to take. He’d dyed his hair a very light brown—easy to dye it back afterwards—and had worn a false moustache—perhaps the only disguise which would not be betrayed even by sharp sunshine and one physical feature normally remembered—and he had trusted—correctly as it turned out—that the staff of a busy hotel would be unable to remember in detail a guest they’d seen only briefly, many days before.

In the morning he’d taken a woman—presumably a prostitute, but he might have met her in other circumstances —to the hotel because if Serena made inquiries he wanted her to believe that Green had taken off with another woman and that was why he’d never returned to her. It was at this point that he’d betrayed himself, although this had not been obvious until after his own death. Prostitutes were often paid to gratify desires which other women would not. Knowing this, and inflamed by the thought, he had demanded to be whipped . . .

He’d carefully left the paperback with the fuel receipt in it in the hotel bedroom because if a really thorough investigation turned this up it would ‘corroborate’ the evidence of Green’s fraud—never realizing that because the paperback was a crude, mildly pornographic one that featured masochism it would eventually corroborate the murder he had committed . . .

Back on the island, he’d settled down and waited to find out how his plan was working out. Before long, he’d discovered that it was not. Unknown to him at the time, two brothers out fishing had seen the parachute descend; one of them subsequently set out to blackmail him. Once again, he’d seen murder as his only way out. This time, since it could not be concealed altogether, by careful manipulation of the evidence it must be blamed on to a dead man . . . Hence the reason for first refusing to pay Carlos’s blackmail demands, then volunteering to pay them—the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this must be that he could afford to defy the blackmailer but someone else, Green, could not. Hence the hiring of the car in the name of Terence Galloway, which even a casual inquiry would show to be false, and leaving it in sight outside Ca’n Feut —the obvious conclusion that the local, rather dim-witted detective must come to would be that Green had hired it and had been staying at Ca’n Feut. . .

To return to Serena. Fully conversant with Green’s plan, she’d been all too easily able to judge the dangers inherent in it. And when Green failed to arrive at the flat, she must have known an ever-growing fear. Yet when Ware had spoken to her, she had had to conceal that fear and give the impression of a woman who was determined to name her lover dead even while she knew him to be alive. (And Ware had said she was not quite good enough an actress!) . . . And then Ware had told her about the woman in the hotel bedroom. Loyalty, experience, and her certainty of what kind of a man Green really was, had told her that it was quite impossible he was a masochist who had managed to keep any knowledge of this perversion from her. So the man in the hotel could not have been Green. But he had pursued Green’s plan and therefore this could only mean one thing: Green was dead and the impersonator had been the murderer . . .

She was normally a person of warmth and charm; but where there was light, there was also darkness. Her emotions ran deeper, quicker, and more strongly, than most people’s and so when she hated it was with a frightening intensity. The moment she suspected the terrible fact that her lover had been murdered—and this happened even as Ware spoke to her—she had determined to avenge the murder. But she had had to conceal her intention and so she had changed from a woman who knew her lover was alive, but was determined to give the impression she believed him dead, to a woman who knew he was dead but who gave the impression that she believed him to be alive even while she professed her belief in his death . . . Because how could anyone suspect her of being intent on avenging the murder of her lover if she believed him alive?

She had travelled to Mallorca and contacted Bennett in order to discover the truth. She had also met the detective in charge of the case and from him had, with the exercise of subtle charm, learned how the investigations were proceeding . . . (Had her affection been genuine or assumed? Having posed the question, Alvarez refused to try to answer it.) Eventually, she’d come to the conclusion that Bennett had covered his tracks so well that there was only one way in which she could be certain of the truth and even though this called for a course of action which filled her with a sense of repugnance, she had pursued it. She had seduced him, although he must have believed that all the moves were his, and once she was living with him had encouraged him to betray any perverted desires. And the moment he’d disclosed his masochism, she’d known beyond question that he had murdered her lover . . .

She’d poisoned one of the lunches in the deep freeze and had then left, knowing that one day the dish of pork chops in mushroom sauce would be served and she would have gained her revenge . . .

For a long time, Alvarez sat, his bitter, hopeless sadness so great it was like a physical pain. She had killed. But the man she had killed had been a murderer and therefore in her eyes her actions had been entirely justified. Yet now he, Alvarez, would be called upon to hunt her down and arrest her; that he would never, could never, do. . .

He opened the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk and brought out the bottle and a glass and poured himself out a very large brandy. When faced with an impossible, yet inescapable situation, what did a man do? If he was weak, he drank himself into a sodden state of forgetfulness, forgetting that memory must return . . .

And suddenly he realized that Bennett had inadvertently shown him that the situation was neither impossible nor inescapable. If he named Green as the murderer of Bennett, then the search would be for a man who could never be found and not for a woman who could . . . And only he could be certain that Green was not the murderer because only he knew Serena well enough . . .

The family was watching television when Alvarez walked into the room. Dolores said: ‘Enrique, what has happened?’

‘Nothing,’ he answered dully.

‘But you look terrible.’

‘I’m just tired.’

‘Juan, move out of that chair and let your uncle have it.’

‘Why can’t he sit in that one—’ began Juan, pointing at a wooden-backed chair which was not only uncomfortable but also offered the worst view of the television.

‘Will you kindly do as I say.’

Alvarez sat and stared blankly at the screen, seeing nothing, his mind filled with the bitterness of his sorrow. After a while the programme ended and there was a brief argument between Juan and Isabel before they left to go and play in the road. Dolores said: ‘I suppose you two want feeding again?’

‘Of course we do,’ answered Jaime resentfully.

She stood. Just so long as it’s not you who has to spend hours and hours in a boiling hot kitchen! Well, don’t expect a feast; I’m too tired to slave much longer.’ She swept through to the kitchen.

Jaime stared at Alvarez. ‘It’s all your bloody fault!’

‘What is?’

‘If you don’t do something fast, we’re going to become walking skeletons. We haven’t had a decent meal in weeks and all because you won’t let Miguel come home.’

‘I’ve told you both, there’s nothing I can do . . .’ He stopped. Despite his misery, it occurred to him that circumstances had changed the situation. Carlos’s murderer had suffered for his crime and that was what justice was about. On the other hand, if the murder by bombing became officially known and an investigation was launched, Miguel would be forced publicly to identify himself as a smuggler through no fault of his own and that was what injustice was about. So now it could surely only be right to let Miguel reappear and report a natural calamity at sea, cause for commiseration but not a criminal investigation . . . ‘As a matter of fact, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t return now.’

Jaime turned towards the kitchen and shouted: ‘Hey! Enrique says Miguel can return home.’

Dolores appeared in the doorway. ‘And if he does, what will happen to him?’