Death Trick (11 page)

‘What’s that mean?’

‘I did see a car come away.’

‘Was it the white Seat 127?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘Why not?’

‘It were dark.’

‘You don’t live close to here, so what were you doing around at that time?’

‘I was . . .’ He stopped.

‘Well?’

‘Picking some beans and tomatoes.’

‘Do I look so stupid I might believe that?’

‘I tell you, it’s bloody true.’

‘Then you pick ‘em in the dark because they’re better flavoured?’

‘I picked ‘em in the dark because then the old bastard couldn’t see me.’

‘Ah!’ said Alvarez.

Having made the initial admission, Ferriol found it easier to continue. He worked day in, day out, for a man who’d started life the same as everyone else, yet who now strutted about the place as if he’d that moment come down from heaven. And just because he had money, he treated people like Julia and himself as dirt, always criticizing and complaining. One day—last year, it was—he’d come along in his big car just as Ferriol was cycling home. He’d demanded to know what was in the sack balanced on the handlebars. When he’d discovered that it contained newly dug potatoes, he’d threatened to call the police. Stupid bastard. Everyone knew that it was customary for anyone who grew vegetables for someone else to help himself for his own use. And Roig could have afforded to buy whole mountains of potatoes . . .

‘So you nipped along after it was dark and while you were busy you saw a car leave Casa Gran—but being dark, you couldn’t make out whether it was the same one you’d seen earlier?’

Ferriol nodded.

‘Didn’t you even get an idea of its colour?’

‘I weren’t really looking.’

Alvarez pictured the scene. The car’s headlights sweeping across the field at each turn or bend in the track, Ferriol crouching low so that he would not be sighted . . . ‘Can you tell me anything at all about the car? You must have stood up after it was past and watched it carry on.’

‘Nothing to tell except one of its rear lights wasn’t working.’

‘Which one?’

‘I reckon it was the right-hand.’

‘What time was this?’

Ferriol considered the question and then muttered to himself as he worked out the answer. ‘Near enough eleven,’ he concluded.

If that had been the Seat, thought Alvarez, then it had driven away from Casa Gran inside the period in which, according to the medical evidence, the murder had been committed. ‘Was there any other traffic around at the time?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I wasn’t waiting around, that’s why not.’

‘You’d have heard vehicles and seen their lights.’

‘Of course there was cars.’

‘On the dirt track leading up to Casa Gran?’

‘On the road. There weren’t nothing on the track. I said there wasn’t.’

Somewhat confusing and contradictory, thought Alvarez, but there seemed no point in pursuing the matter. He changed the conversation. ‘I suppose you remember Eulalia?’

‘And if I does?’

‘How did you find her?’

‘Different from the others.’

‘Were you surprised to see a woman of her character with Roig?’

‘It were a bleeding shame.’

The lightest of breezes just stirred the air and the leaves of the algarobba, but not the clusters of its beans, shivered.

‘Did Roig have many visitors apart from the women?’

‘He wasn’t interested in no one else.’

‘Does that mean you didn’t see any other visitors here recently—say in the last couple of months?’

Ferriol scratched his wiry, crinkly hair which had turned grey. ‘I reckon I’ve only seen one.’

‘Who was that?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A boy on a Vespa—don’t know who he was.’

‘When you say boy, how old d’you mean?’

‘Rising twenty.’

‘Can you be certain he was visiting Roig and not Julia?’

‘If he were, why’d he ask if this was the house where Señor Roig lived? And why, when he came back and I asked him if he’d found the señor, did he reply he had seen that pig of a man?’

‘He said, “pig of a man”?’

‘It’s what I’ve just said, isn’t it?’

‘Have you any idea why he talked like that?’

‘Why not, since it were true?’

‘Can you tell me anything more about this young man?’

‘Only that he were an Andaluce.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Where else does a man come from when he swallows half his words and is dressed like a peasant but acts like a duke?’

Alvarez stared across the field at several rows of aubergines.

Was there any significance in the fact that Eulalia had also come from Andalucia?

The Hotel Bahia stood back in Palma Nova, at the very limits of a travel agent’s within-easy-reach-of-the-sea description. True, because it stood on rising land, the sea was visible from the third floor up, but to reach the beach entailed a ten-minute walk along hot, dusty pavements and across busy roads. Occasionally, the beach was not too crowded for comfort.

It was a hotel which unashamedly catered for the lower end of the market and a holiday there cost almost half what it would much closer to the sea. Standards were of necessity pedestrian; bedrooms were small and the furniture plastic; meals, served buffet style, were invariably unadventurous, an economy which suited most guests, who would have viewed a zarzuela de mariscos with the gravest suspicion; the wine list was limited and the wine waiter ignorant; the discotheque was poorly soundproofed, a fact to which anyone on the first three floors would willingly testify; the water in the swimming pool often took on a green tinge because the filter unit needed replacing.

The assistant manager was relieved when Alvarez made it clear that Eulalia Garcia was not in any sort of trouble. ‘I’m glad of that, Inspector.’

‘You like her?’

‘Yes, I do; but don’t get any wrong ideas from that. I just like her in a perfectly straightforward sense, which is why I’ve helped her when I can.’

‘Helped her in what way?’

‘To keep on her feet, if you know what I mean? She’s so inexperienced, she needs someone advising her. The thing is, she comes from a village on the Peninsula where life is totally different from here; more like it was for us years and years ago. She was telling me that novios still never go out unchaperoned after dark.’

‘Try to get our youngsters to behave like that and you’d have a riot on your hands.’

‘That’s right.’

Yet in Bodon, Alvarez thought, while the decencies might still be observed, life was harsh. ‘Could I have a word with her now?’

‘Sure. And I expect you’d like to be on your own?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

The assistant manager stood. ‘Inspector . . .’ He paused. ‘I know you said she wasn’t in any trouble, but if she still needs any sort of help and I can give it, call on me.’

‘I certainly will.’

After the assistant manager had left, Alvarez went over to the window and, since this office was on the second floor, looked out at other buildings. Years ago, he had known this land when it had been fields, stone walls, trees, and the occasional house or casita; there had been sheep, pigs, mules, chickens, ducks . . . Kestrels had hovered overhead, hoopoes had made their brief, undulating flights, and in May the strikingly coloured bee-eaters had arrived . . . He turned as the door opened.

Eulalia entered the room. ‘You wanted to speak to me?’ she asked nervously.

He studied her. Quietly attractive in an unsophisticated manner, she was the girl next-door of many years ago. Black hair, an oval face with dark, smooth complexion, deep brown eyes, a shapely nose, a generous mouth, and no make-up. She wore a pink and white apron over blouse and jeans; he was certain she would have felt more comfortable in a frock, but experience with the guests would have taught her that she was safer in the jeans. ‘Please come in and sit down, señorita.’

She sat, her hands clasped together and folded in her lap.

‘I expect the assistant manager told you I wanted to have a bit of a chat and that’s all? I’m investigating the death of Señor Roig.’

She suddenly began to cry and he cursed himself for such blundering insensitivity—but he had assumed that Roig’s brutal rejection of her must have destroyed all her love for him. He said apologetically: ‘Señorita, please forgive me, but I have to talk about what happened.’

She unclasped her fingers and used her right hand to brush the tears away from her cheeks. ‘I’m . . . I’m all right.’

‘Let me first assure you of something. What you tell me will be in the strictest confidence.’ With sudden anger, he thought of Roig, perversely drawn by her innocence, setting out to destroy it because if he succeeded then his pleasure would be all the greater. His anger was replaced by renewed sympathy for her. He tried to find words that could offer some comfort. ‘Señorita, from my own experience I can assure you that even the most terrible sadness is softened by time.’

She shook her head, denying the possibility.

‘A family can provide a support that no one else can, so why not return home?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I . . . I have to make money and send it back to them.’

‘I promise you, money can never be that important.’

She remained silent.

He sighed. Roig had promised her money which she could send home, correctly judging that to do so would make her seduction easier; now, she was seeing the sacrifice of the love and the comfort of her family as a price she must pay for her sin.

She suddenly said, with desperate intensity: ‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘Señorita, not for one second have I ever thought such a thing possible. My only reason for being here now is to find out if perhaps you know something which will help me identify who did kill him.’

She shook her head.

‘You may believe you do not, but not recognize the meaning of what you do know. Tell me, can you think of anyone who didn’t like him?’

She spoke haltingly and it soon became clear she really knew so little beyond the false, romantic image she had sought that she was not going to be able to help. Then, after she’d answered several questions, she began to speak of the past—as if, he thought, she was trying to learn how she could have acted as she had. In Bodon, no respectable girl was ever alone with a boy unless he was her novio and even then never after dark. This, naturally, did not prevent sidelong glances which spoke volumes; and even, so it was said, if a girl were really fast, with assignations. But she had never given encouragement to any boy. She gained comfort from conforming to the conventions. And up to the day she had left Bodon, no boy had declared himself to her mother, perhaps because she was one of nine and therefore could bring little to her marriage . . .

Life on Mallorca had bewildered and at times frightened her. But the staff of the hotel had been kind and she’d learned not to be too shocked by what she saw and she’d sent as much money as possible home. The letters from there—written by her eldest sister since her mother could not read or write—told her what a difference the money made and that had pleased her, but they’d also made her very homesick . . .

Initially, she’d been bewildered by Roig’s attentions. He was so rich, he made no secret of the fact he was married, and he was more than twice her age. She’d expressed her bewilderment to one of the other chambermaids, who’d laughed and called her a real innocent . . .

Roig had seduced her by all the means Julia had already described to Alvarez. Later, a whole life later, there’d been the morning when he’d curtly told her that it would be best if they parted.

‘Señorita, did you see him again?’

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘But I expect you tried to speak to him?’

‘I couldn’t understand . . . I couldn’t believe he’d just . . .’

‘Did you telephone him?’

She nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘Julia told me he was there, at Casa Gran and she’d get him, but when she came back to the phone she said he’d just left. Then I tried his office, but the secretary said he wasn’t in. It was the same every time I tried.’

‘Did you ever return to Casa Gran to try and meet him face-to-face?’

‘I couldn’t.’

Had she gone, she might have met her successor. Alvarez fiddled with his lower lip for a few seconds, then said: ‘Señorita, do you know anyone on this island who also comes from Andalucia?’

She looked at him in surprise; she nodded.

‘Who is he?’

‘Carlos Vidal.’

‘Whereabouts does he come from?’

‘Posuna.’

‘Is that near Bodon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know him before you came here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps you came because he was already here?’

Her brief reserve came to an end and she once more spoke freely. Vidal had left Posuna many months before, determined to find a better life than any local village could offer. His letters home had astonished everyone with their accounts of wealth beyond normal imagination; wealth even greater than the television had ever shown. Fired by his stories, she had come to Mallorca, seeking the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow . . .

‘Is he your novio?’

‘I told you, I haven’t a novio.’

‘Even so, I imagine you’ve seen a lot of him?’

‘It’s difficult. He works in a hotel in Porto Cristo.’

‘But surely he can get around easily enough on his Vespa?’

She failed to be surprised by his knowledge that Vidal owned a Vespa. ‘He came here once or twice and we’d talk about home, but then . . .’ She tailed off into silence.

‘He ceased coming to see you?’

She nodded.

‘Was that because of Roig?’

‘He wouldn’t understand,’ she said, bitter for the first time. ‘I kept explaining that Pablo’s marriage wasn’t a real one . . .’ She stopped. His marriage had proved to be more durable than his affair with her.

‘Did you see him at all after you’d become friendly with Roig?’

‘Only once.’

‘What happened?’

‘He . . . he was horrible.’

He tried to place the relationship between them, but couldn’t. Vidal was not her novio and had their previous acquaintanceship warmed into real friendship, then surely he would have seen as much as possible of her—a Vespa would not take all that long to get from Porto Cristo to Palma Nova? Against that, he had obviously been outraged by her affair with Roig and this suggested jilted and jealous love. A man was seldom outraged by another man’s seduction unless himself emotionally involved. And why had he travelled to Casa Gran, when he knew she would not be there; why had he referred to Roig in such contemptuous terms, when speaking to Ferriol, if not jealous? . . .