Doctor Frigo (7 page)

My father spoke bitterly; in those days his social conscience was much in evidence and embraced many causes. Five years later, when he was writing his Party’s manifesto for national progress and social justice, the plight of the Coraza islanders wasn’t even mentioned.

‘So they’re doing something at last,’ I said to Elizabeth. ‘I’ve always thought the Corazas might be interesting, though I can’t see what they’ve got to do with Villegas being in St Paul.’

Elizabeth was negotiating the fish market – always tricky at night because drunks there tend to ignore the traffic. ‘Interesting in what way?’ she asked.

‘Socially and archaeologically I imagine. Medically, too. This Dutchman of yours, what was he? An archaeologist or a biologist?’

‘Neither. He was a geologist.’

‘But there are no minerals in the Corazas. The government would have soon been at them if there had been. There’s not much of anything except guano, and even that’s not in commercial quantities.’

‘The Molinet this man bought was too heavy to go with him on the plane. I had to ship it home to him via Le Havre. That meant documents, so I had a good look at his passport. His occupation was given as petroleum geologist.’

I was silent.

She went on. ‘Talking to him I found out about the others in the party. One of the Frenchmen was a hydrographer. The other two were engineers. He didn’t say what kind. Uncultured types though, not interested in anything but stress calculations, whatever they are. Still they were all experts together, a consultant team.’

‘Did he say what the team had been doing?’

‘Working on a survey vessel. He said that the technicians on board had been British, the crew Jamaicans and the food terrible.’

‘Off-shore oil? Is that what they were looking for?’

‘Oh they already knew that the oil was there. Their business was to decide how best to get at it.’ She gave me an apologetic glance. ‘I’m sorry, Ernesto. I must admit that at the time I didn’t listen very carefully. All I was worried about was that he might change his mind about the Molinet when he found out that it was so heavy. So, though I was
relieved when he went on talking about his job, I didn’t pay much attention. That’s why I needed a swim, to try to remember more of what he said.’

‘But he did say that they already knew the oil was there?’

‘Oh yes. Apparently this situation is cropping up all the time nowadays. Knowing about the existence of oil is nothing you see. Knowing how to get at it and whether it’s worth the cost of doing so are the things that count. If the price of a barrel of crude is three dollars and it will cost five to get it you don’t bother. But then the price of a barrel goes up to twelve dollars or more and you think again. Still, it’s the engineers and scientists who have to solve these equations. He said that teams like his were the new wealth-makers.’

‘But why a European team?’ I asked. ‘If the Oligarchy gave anyone an oil drilling concession for the Coraza area it would surely be to some American company. Those people have teams of their own.’

‘Ah, but this one specializes in deep-sea work. Over three hundred metres! He was very proud of that. It’s not the same as ordinary off-shore drilling. The rigs have to be different. Lots of things are different. Anyway, these men didn’t sound particularly European in spite of their passports, and among themselves they spoke American English, even the Frenchmen. What’s more they weren’t working for a company but an international consortium. I do remember that. The Consortium, he called it, as if it were God.’

‘How many companies in it? Did he say?’

‘Five, I think. Naturally, I didn’t know then about Villegas coming here or I might have asked him who the companies are.’

‘And if there’s a French company what percentage of the consortium it has?’

‘That too.’ She parked in the Place Carbet.

I listened for a moment to the crickets chirping. A lot of people find the noise soothing. I don’t.

‘You still haven’t explained why Villegas is suddenly so important,’ I said. ‘You called him a card worth having. You didn’t say in what sort of game.’

She was combing her hair. ‘If you were an oil consortium, Ernesto, and about to invest billions of dollars in a coffee republic, wouldn’t you look twice at its government before you finally committed yourself?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And if what you saw was a group of feudal landowners running the country with petty gangsters disguised as a militia and an eighty per cent per annum rate of inflation, what would you do?’

‘Ask the CIA to change the government, I expect.’

I smiled as I said it.

She frowned. ‘Oh the CIA wouldn’t do that, not any more, and certainly not in Latin America. They’re trying to become respectable again.’

‘I was being facetious.’

She ignored that. ‘What they might do, though, is to get someone else, some other agency with an interest in the area, and the consortium, to do the dirty work for them. And, naurally, put up with the embarrassment if things went wrong. They’ve done deals with the British and the West Germans on that basis.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ I remarked; ‘or are you just making this up?’

‘I know a lot about it.’ She shook out her towel. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if now they’ve made a deal with S-dec and the French.’

I made no comment on that and she didn’t seem to expect one.

‘What I don’t understand,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘is why they make you his doctor. Of course Franz Josef was always a little jealous of Maximilian’s popular following, especially in Lombardy, and sometimes afraid of it too. This Uncle Paco of yours, what’s his name?’

‘Segura.’

‘Yes, this Segura may be the Count Grünne of the court whose confidential advice plays on those fears.’

A Hapsburg parable was the last thing I was prepared to take at that moment. ‘Oh for God’s sake Elizabeth!’ I snapped. ‘They’ve appointed me as his doctor because he asked for one who could speak Spanish. I happen to qualify. It’s as simple as that.’

She was good enough to allow me to go on thinking so.

Later though, as I was trying to go to sleep, I kept recalling things she had said and things I had remembered.

That bad thing that had once happened to the shores of the Corazas, the thing that had stopped the turtles coming back to breed – had it been a massive undersea seepage of oil?

And what really happened when a coffee republic struck it rich?

Perhaps, I thought, Uncle Paco would tell me.

Kept appointment 11.00 hrs. made for me by Commissaire Gillon see new patient Señor Manuel VILLEGAS Lopez at Villa Les Muettes.

Gillon had said that there would be one of his ‘security boys’ on duty at the outer gate. There was. He sat in a 2 cv parked under a tree to shade it from the sun and so placed that it could, if necessary, be driven across the entrance to block the opening of the iron gates. When I stopped he got
out and slid back a locking bar which looked as if it had been recently installed.

To my surprise I recognized him. He was a middle-aged black with a goatee beard whom I had seen once or twice entering and leaving the Préfecture. Because he always wore a tie and white shirt I had assumed that he worked there as a clerk. Now he was also wearing a holstered pistol.

He nodded amiably as he took a paper from his shirt pocket and glanced at it.

‘Doctor Castillo?’

I produced my identity card which he examined carefully before handing it back.

‘My name’s Albert, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Seems we’ll be seeing quite a lot of one another. You always going to be visiting the subject at this time?’

‘Not always. When I’m on night duty at the hospital I sometimes sleep late in the mornings. We get emergencies too. Does the time make any difference to you, Monsieur Albert?’

‘No, but there are three of us on this job, you see, eight-hour shifts. I’m senior so I’m taking the morning shift. The others’ll have to get to recognize you too if you come at other times. Just thought you might save yourself two more lots of quizzing. Very important subject inside there, Doctor.’ He grinned and then glanced at the leather case strapped behind me on the moto. ‘Medical bag?’

‘Yes. Do you want to look inside?’

‘Any guns or grenades?’

‘No.’

‘Well’ – he grinned again – ‘maybe I will look anyway. That way I’ll know what a medical bag ought to have in it as well as a stethoscope. Besides,’ he added as I undid the straps, ‘I can mention your bag was opened and inspected in the report. Thoroughness. The Commissaire likes that.’

He was good about it though. He just looked and didn’t attempt to touch anything. Of the drugs there he said dryly,
‘You wouldn’t need a gun to kill an enemy, would you Doctor?’

But his question about weapons and the fact that he had taken the trouble to check the case interested me. In spite of his joking reference to his report he struck me as too intelligent a man to embellish reports unnecessarily. Obviously he was obeying orders which envisaged the possibility of someone trying to get to my patient with a view to killing him. At first I had assumed that the ‘threats to his well-being’ mentioned by Gillon would be represented chiefly by importunate newspaper men.

I did not trouble to strap the case back on the carrier and soon wished that I had. The track up to the house was quite long and wound through a jungle of wild bananas. In places the rains had scoured deep transverse ruts across the surface which made it difficult to ride with only one free hand for steering. In the end I dismounted and walked the rest of the way.

Les Muettes, or at least the original version of it, was built in the mid-nineteenth century by a planter who spent so much money on it that his heirs soon went bankrupt. By the end of World War II it had been derelict for years. However, it had been built of stone on good foundations, and in the fifties a Parisian banker bought it together with two hectares of land giving access to a beach. An architect was brought in to restore the house adding bathrooms and other modern amenities, and a landscape gardener set to work on the surroundings. When they had finished the place was a luxury winter villa. The banker and his family now spend January and February there. For the rest of the year, when tenants able to pay an exorbitant rent can be found, the villa is leased. The only all-year-round occupants are the servants.

I had been there once before, by ambulance on an emergency case. All I can remember from that occasion was a magnificent view from the terrace and a kidney-shaped swimming pool. It was the latter which had caused the
emergency. A gardener, trying to scrub the tiling when the pool was almost empty, had fallen in and broken a leg. We had had a job getting him out.

The track became an asphalt drive which descended into a paved courtyard. There was a portico over the entrance and two big shade trees so that visitors were protected from both sun and rain. A three-car garage to one side housed a Citroën DS (the banker’s?) swathed in a protective cocoon of plastic, a small Renault and a speedboat on a trailer. I left the moto beside them.

A black butler in a wasp-striped waistcoat opened one of the mahogany double-doors and held out a silver tray for my card. When I told him that I had no card and gave my name, he bowed and led me across marble flooring to a sort of alcove separated by jalousies from the main drawing-room and the terrace beyond.

‘You wait please,’ the butler said. ‘I tell Madame.’

To one side there was a wrought-iron table with a glass top, neat rows of bottles and a grouping of ice-bucket, martini mixer and drinking glasses of various sizes. On shelving built along the inner wall was an array of hi-fi equipment and a record library. Since there was nothing there on which to sit down I looked at the records. Arranged carefully in alphabetical order were Bach, Bartok, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Scarlatti, Schumann, Stravinsky and Wagner. On top of the small pile by the turntable was
An Evening with Cole Porter.
I was about to take a look at the next record on the pile when I heard approaching footsteps on the marble.

I had seen photographs of Villegas’ wife, Doña Julia, and heard that she was a handsome woman, but, allowing for the usual flattery of studio portraits, had not expected her to look so handsome in the flesh. For one of my country-women she was of above average height and although she was in her late forties and had borne three children her figure was surprisingly youthful. Her pale, aquiline features were somewhat lined about the eyes – though the lightly
tinted glasses she wore almost concealed this – but her sleeveless blouse revealed smooth, firm arms. Her sleek black hair looked untouched by age.

The Uncle Paco who introduced us I scarcely recognized.

He had always, since I had known him anyway, had narrow shoulders, a big belly and pigeon toes; but in the old days those defects had been relatively unobtrusive. With the belly restrained by a corset and the shoulders modified by suits from expensive tailors he had achieved an appearance which, though chubby, had been somehow dapper. Now, he was an ovoid hulk of a man, bald with tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears and large crimson dewlaps which quivered with every movement he made. The patterned Mexican shirt he wore, creased horizontally from sternum to crotch, did not help. Only the odd blue eyes, peeping out from their puffy surroundings through heavy-rimmed glasses, were the same – amused, wary and ever ready to twinkle with malice.

They twinkled now as he watched Doña Julia uttering conventional politeness and trying to size me up as she did so.

‘I am of course aware, Doctor,’ she continued smoothly, ‘that etiquette prevents your listening sympathetically to any criticism of a professional colleague, but perhaps I am allowed to say that it is a relief to encounter again a doctor with whom one shares a common language.’