The Avenue of the Dead (21 page)

‘What the hell does he mean by that?' Lomax demanded as the tape finished.

‘It means he thinks Fleming is still lying,' Davina answered. ‘On the face of it I'd say the whole thing is a pack of lies. He did pass secrets to the Russians, and he got rid of his wife to inherit her money and marry Elizabeth. That's what Kidson wants us to prove. Then he'll blow Fleming's story sky high. I don't much feel like a siesta, do you? Not after this.'

‘It doesn't matter what I feel,' Lomax said. He perched on the arm of her chair and slipped his arm round her. She had soft, shining hair and he liked the red lights that gleamed in it. He kissed the top of her head.

‘You'll have to retire,' he murmured, ‘if we're going to have a proper sex life. Don't worry. We'll have dinner and tequila and I'll carry you to bed.'

She reached up to him. ‘Not too much tequila, love, or all you'll do
is
carry me to bed … I don't like this at all. I've got this nag, nag inside, telling me it's all too glib. Every move we make has been thought out beforehand. It's like playing follow-my-leader with Borisov.' She stood up quickly and turned round to face him. ‘Colin,' she said. ‘You go to Cuernevaca. I don't know the first thing about arson. That's your department. I'm going to the health farm at Tula.'

He didn't argue with her. He just said flatly, ‘You're not going anywhere without me. Those are my orders, Davina, and I'm sticking to them. We go to Cuernevaca together and we go to Tula afterwards.'

From Mexico City, it took just over an hour to reach Cuernevaca. The town had been the headquarters of the Spanish conquistadors, led by Cortes, who had built a castle there. There was a lovely square, surrounded by fine seventeenth-century houses. The castle had been turned into a museum and a crowd of Mexican schoolchildren in summer dress trooped through the dark portico, shepherded by nuns. Lomax parked the car in the square. A yellow dog slunk towards them, tail wagging apprehensively. Davina stooped to stroke it and it cringed, watching her with hungry eyes. Lomax caught her arm. ‘Don't touch it,' he warned. ‘They haven't stamped out rabies here.' He had a small street map, bought at the hotel. Lomax pointed to the residential area just outside the castle. ‘That's where the Flemings' house was. Near the Borda Gardens. We can drive there.'

The property was surrounded by a white crumbling wall covered in creeper. The gate was padlocked, but it hung askew on one hinge. It had once been a well-kept garden; there were fine trees and bushes, and the remains of a tarmacked drive, now cracked and invaded everywhere by weeds. A fallen tree blocked their path to what was left of Raffaella's summer house. Two of the outer walls were standing – they were blackened, with deep cracks driven through them by the fire. There was a coating of black ash mixed into the earth where they stood.

‘Stay here a minute,' Colin said. ‘You'll only get filthy. I'm going to poke around inside.'

Davina watched him pick his way carefully through undergrowth, charred timber and rubble which had crashed through to the ground. There was a big round stone near by, which she guessed had once been a mounting block. She sat down on it to wait and lit a cigarette. A bird whooped from the trees, making her jump. The air was very still. She felt uncomfortable and frightened as if there were a watcher in the dense bushes. Was it her imagination that she could still smell the fire? The silence and the shadows, growing as the sun dipped, were beginning to get on her nerves. She had just got up to go and find Colin when she saw him coming back. He was brushing the dust and the ash off his clothes. There was a broad dark smear on his face. She felt foolishly pleased to see him.

‘Did you find anything?'

‘No. But that was one hell of a blaze. I wouldn't think an oil stove could generate that kind of a fire. Phew, the ash gets everywhere – I wish I had some kind of a ground plan.'

‘Whoever built it might have one,' Davina suggested. ‘Why don't we go back and call into the police station? They might be able to tell us if it was a local builder. And who came out to fight the fire.' She came up to him, took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the dirty mark off his face. ‘I'll be glad to get away from here,' she said.

He looked round and nodded. ‘There's something about violent death that lingers in a place. We'll go to the hotel where Elizabeth stayed and clean up. You can ask about her at the same time. Then we'll call on the local gendarmerie.'

The hotel was close to Cortes Castle; it was an unpretentious building with a dozen rooms and a large Mexican proprietress who was only too pleased to talk to the strangers. Senora Veranez spoke good English and when Davina asked about a friend of hers, a blonde English lady who had stayed there just over eighteen months ago, she thought for a moment, and with a beaming smile said yes, she remembered her. How could one forget such a lovely lady? And with such a disposition – so sweet always, so polite to everyone. Every man in the hotel was in love with her, Senora Veranez declared, including her own husband.

Everyone, she said, wanted to do things for her. She soon made friends, and instead of staying for a week or so, she stayed for a long time. There was one man, an American with a wife – they lived part of the year in the town – the Senora lifted her plump shoulders. He was always with the lovely English lady. And then his wife died in a terrible fire, and the English lady left the hotel.

‘What time was this fire?' Davina asked.

‘In the early evening. I remember, it was getting a little dark and the sky was like a sunrise. All the town went to watch it burn. We had a fire engine and some men, but it was useless. They couldn't get near to put the water on. Everybody inside was burned. It was terrible.'

‘You say it was like the sunrise?' Colin asked her. ‘You wouldn't remember the colour of the fire, would you? Was there a lot of smoke – black smoke?'

She paused, trying to think. ‘No,' she said. ‘No black smoke. Just yellow fire. And some blue. Big blue streaks in the middle of the fire. Somebody said it was like salt burning. It was terrible,' she repeated.

‘Yes,' Lomax muttered to himself. ‘I'll bet it was.'

They ordered drinks. Davina said, ‘I think I'll try tequila.'

The proprietress recommended a dish of salt and limes to be taken with it. ‘The Americanos get drunk,' she said. ‘They don't like to drink and take the salt. But that's the way it's done in Mexico.'

‘Did my friend the English lady drink it like that?' Davina asked casually.

Senora Veranez shook her head. ‘Oh no. The senora never drank tequila. She didn't drink anything at all. Sometimes a little wine, that's all.'

Davina smiled and picked up the glass. She dipped a finger in the salt, tasted it and sipped the tequila. It was a raw spirit and the salt burned. ‘Very good,' she said. ‘Thank you.'

The woman went away back to her desk. A few people drifted in and a boy came out to serve from the bar. Lomax looked at Davina.

‘Just a little wine,' he said.

‘I know,' Davina said quietly. ‘Within a year she's an alcoholic. Why did you ask about the fire – what difference would black smoke make?'

‘It would point to oil being the agent,' he replied. ‘There would have been a pall of black smoke over the flames. Instead –' he finished his tequila and grimaced. ‘Instead she sees blue. Which means that fire began with a G-42 substance. It burns blue like salt.'

‘Meaning it was deliberately started,' Davina said.

‘And not by an amateur fiddling around with petrol and rags. That stuff acts a bit like gunpowder. It ignites with a bang. It also generates intense heat. I saw six-foot beams that had been turned into charcoal in those ruins today. If he was outside when it happened, there was no way he could have got in to save Raffaella or anyone else. She was murdered all right, but I would guess not by him.'

‘Moscow Centre.' Davina said it very low. ‘But why?'

‘I wish to God I knew,' he answered.

‘Why don't we see the police now?' Davina said. ‘It's getting near seven o'clock.'

‘If they had an autopsy report on the bodies,' he mused, ‘it would probably bear this out. You wouldn't expect an ordinary coroner in a place like Cuernevaca to know the difference between a corpse burned in an ordinary fire and one that was subjected to the heat intensity of G-42. But we can try. Do you want to finish this stuff? I think it's filthy.'

‘So do I. Let's go.'

There was a duty sergeant in the police station. A young, alert man with the broad cheekbones and brown skin of Indian ancestry. No, he had not been on duty the night the Flemings' house was burned down. He couldn't give information without authority. Lomax nodded and produced a little card with a cellophane window and his photograph in it; the sergeant studied it, studied him and then said, ‘Excuse me. Come into the office. I will see what we have on our files here.'

There wasn't much data, just the time, date and the identity of three people who had lost their lives and whose bodies had been identified. One was so badly burned that the relatives couldn't find anything recognizable, but the remains corresponded to the maid working in the house who had not returned home. Her husband had identified the owner of the house by the remains of a medallion found inside the charred corpse. The cause of the fire was stated to be accidental. The firemen believed it was caused by a small fire reaching the oil tank at the back.

Lomax thanked him, refused a glass of beer, and guided Davina out into the square. The sun was almost set and the sky flamed pink and red behind the silhouette of the castle. Children played on the cobblestones and another yellow dog scrounged nervously round the perimeter of the two open cafes where people drank tequila or cold beer.

‘I saw the tank, or what was left of it,' Lomax said. ‘It wasn't a big one, and it certainly hadn't exploded. My guess is there wasn't anything but a dribble of oil in it. The so-called fire brigade couldn't think of any other reason why the house should catch alight, so they just said accident, and oil tank, like that. Someone banged a rubber stamp, sent the report to the local coroner who banged another stamp down, and that was that. Fleming got a death certificate and the will was probated. I don't think we need to come back here again, do you?'

‘Once more,' Davina said. ‘There's just one more thing I'd like to check, before we go to Tula. I want to meet someone else who knew Liz and saw her with Fleming.'

‘Ten out of ten for persistence.' Lomax grinned at her as he drove. ‘We'll come back tomorrow. Now I'm looking forward to taking you to dinner and forgetting all about the Flemings for tonight. Do you think you can manage that?'

‘I think so,' she smiled back at him. ‘I think I'd like that very much.'

She woke at the hour when the body is at its lowest ebb. Her watch face showed four a.m. on its luminous dial. She listened to Lomax breathing deeply beside her. She got out of bed and slipped through into the sitting-room, closing the door so that she could turn on the light. She found a cigarette and lit it, then lay on the sofa and smoked and let her mind range backwards and forwards over the day's events like a tiger pacing a cage, only to come up against its bars.

Next morning they reached Cuernevaca early. The same soft haze hung in the air, the yellow dog or its twin slunk flat-bellied along in search of scraps, and Senora Veranez was perched like a plump parrot behind the reception counter.

They exchanged civilities in Spanish, and then she talked English, glad to show off. She answered Davina's careful questions with disarming eagerness.

The English lady, her friend, yes, she used to visit the Herrendos family. They were very rich, important landowners. They were Germans with a name nobody could pronounce. Everyone called them Herrendos. She told Davina and Lomax how to get there. As they thanked her and turned to leave, she called out softly after them. ‘If you are from the government, senora, be careful. Senor Herrendos doesn't like to answer questions. People say he came to Mexico to hide.' She smiled a brilliant smile at them and waved.

They drove fifteen miles outside of Cuernevaca till they came to the tall white gates of a handsome estancia. The drive was free of weeds, its tarmacadam glinting in the sun. The low-built house was shaded by a long veranda, the porch colourful with flowers. Everything was neat and well-maintained. It seemed like an alien settlement in the wild Mexican landscape. They stepped under the shelter of the porch and rang a bell that hung on a brightly polished brass chain. After a short pause the front door opened and a woman in her late forties, dressed in an embroidered skirt and white blouse, looked at them and said in Spanish, ‘Good day. Can I help you?'

She had fair hair that had faded in the sun and blue eyes fanned by wrinkles that gave her a good-humoured expression.

‘Are you Mrs Herrendos?' Davina spoke in English. A few moments later they were seated in the cool, white-painted sitting-room. A Mexican girl brought a tray of glasses and fresh iced lemonade. Senora Herrendos sat opposite to them. Davina explained that she was trying to trace a friend of hers who had spent some time in Cuernevaca. When she heard Elizabeth's name, the German woman smiled. She had a charming manner, totally without stiffness.

‘Of course I remember her! You say you've lost trace of her? She went to New York – we were great friends, she and my husband and I. I was surprised she didn't write to us after she left. She promised to come back and stay.' She shrugged lightly. ‘To be truthful, we were rather hurt. But I suppose it was an interlude for her. For us, it was more important. We don't see that many Europeans here – only American tourists. My husband misses Europe. How did you know about us?'