Alvarez accepted his cowardice, but this did not bring the relief that confession was supposed to offer. He tried to assure himself that Salas had to be correct and the unknown men would continue to apply an ever-increasing pressure rather than wreak quick revenge for his lack of cooperation, but remembered reading that Bolivians had trigger-quick tempers …
For the fourth time in a quarter of an hour, he crossed the bar, on the ground floor of the hostal, and stared through the window at the people on the lower and the visible upper part of the square. Was there anyone who worked so hard at being inconspicuous that to a trained observer he became obvious …
He left the hostal and crossed the lower square to turn into the road which led down to the post. When halfway along, he heard the sound of rapid footsteps and swung round, arms raised to try to defend himself. A bearded tourist hurriedly stepped into the road in order to pass him at a safe distance …
When he reached the post, he was sweating freely.
‘You look like you’re just back from a six-day fiesta,’ the duty cabo said, and laughed.
As soon as he was seated in his office, he phoned Palma.
‘The superior chief is very busy,’ said the secretary with the plum voice.
‘I must speak to him. It’s a matter of life and death.’
She was unimpressed. ‘It will have to wait.’
‘My life or death? Tell him –’
‘He may be free in half an hour’s time. I suggest you phone then to find out.’
During the next half-hour, Alvarez repeatedly crossed to the window and looked down at the street, searching for the inconspicuously conspicuous watcher. He phoned as the last half-minute ticked away.
‘I’m very busy,’ was Salas’s greeting.
‘Señor, have you learned anything?’
‘In connection with what?’
‘With me, of course,’ Alvarez replied, bemused by such indifferent stupidity.
‘If there had been any development, following the phone call from Cala Beston, you would have been informed.’
‘Are inquiries being made at hotels and hostals?’
‘Plans to carry these out are being prepared.’
‘They ought to be in progress.’
‘Haste is the enemy of efficiency.’
‘Maybe, but it’s my friend. The men are on the island, they know where I work and live, what car I drive…’
‘Concern is understandable, panic is not.’
‘If you sat where I’m sitting, you might find things were different.’
‘It is a form of insolence to suggest I might ever occupy your position … How many more times must I assure you that I am judging the tempo of the proceedings and when the right moment arrives, all necessary steps will be taken.’
‘What if your judgement proves wrong?’
‘Your attitude is in danger of raising the question whether you are even less qualified to hold the position you do than has hitherto appeared to be the case.’ He rang off.
If fate were even half kind, Alvarez thought, when the men came to kill him there would be the chance to explain that it was not he who had defied their demands, it had been Salas. Let the superior chief discover the strength of his character in the face of a death threat.
* * *
Frightened, bewildered, yet angrily defiant, Dolores had slept badly and by the time she got up, she had a thumping headache and her temper was very short. Jaime was glad to leave for work; Juan and Isabel hurried away to play with friends.
She sat, rested her elbows on the kitchen table and her chin on the palms of her upturned hands, stared with unfocused gaze at the tiled wall above one of the marble working surfaces. Men liked to believe they were in control of home, country, the world, but the truth was that they were incapable of controlling even themselves. Full of bombast, when directly challenged their instinct was to duck – but always with an excuse for ducking …
Should she travel to Palma, face the superior chief and demand he provide a regiment of bodyguards to defend Alvarez? But one had to remember that the higher a man rose in position, the more he believed in his own worth and the more he did that, the stupider he became …
Should she persuade Alvarez to leave the island and stay on the Peninsula so that those who wished to kill him could not find him? But when a man was thwarted, he became childishly vindictive and they might vent their feelings by killing Juan and Isabel …
She sighed. She would have to take matters into her own hands. Women were forever having to clear up men’s mistakes.
* * *
Beatriz, a distant relation, was in her middle twenties and still single, through choice, not neglect. ‘I’m sorry, but I must leave. If I’m late, the little wall-eyed rat from La Coruña causes trouble. You’d think the hotel was his, the way he goes on.’
‘I need to talk, so he’ll have to control himself. You work at the Hotel Monserrat in Cala Beston, don’t you?’ Dolores asked.
‘Yes. Look, I really must go…’
‘Are all the guests on package holidays or are some travelling independently?’
‘The management tries to keep five per cent of the rooms free for casuals. Javier, the manager – very different from Alfonso – says they’re so much more profitable that it’s worth risking them not being occupied all the time.’
‘Then ask all the staff if there are two South Americans, perhaps from Bolivia, who are staying there. Enrique says that as they phoned from Cala Beston that’s the last place they’ll be, but men are so lazy that they never move a step further than they have to; if that’s where they made the call, that’s where they’ll be.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to. They’ll look and act tough and make trouble just to show what great men they are.’
‘I’ll do what I can. Now I must leave…’
‘How many hotels are there in Cala Beston?’
‘Dozens. And then there are the hostals and self-catering flats…’
‘Men are far too lazy to look after themselves if they can get anyone else to do the work for them, so they’ll be staying in a hotel. You must know people who work in the other hotels?’
‘Of course.’
‘Speak to them and ask them to look out for the two South Americans and to tell their friends to do the same.’
Beatriz moved towards the door, hoping this would persuade Dolores to leave.
Dolores stayed where she was. ‘One more thing. I want you to introduce me to a puta.’
‘My God!’ Beatriz’s voice was high. ‘What are you saying?’
‘You will know some.’
‘I will not. How could you ever think such a thing?’
‘Then how about someone who makes extra pesetas from the tourists? Are you going to tell me that working in a hotel you do not know any such person?’
‘That’s different. It’s only in the summer.’
‘Name someone.’
‘I don’t know what she’ll say if she learns I told you.’
‘Nothing, when I explain why I need her help.’
‘You’re not telling me that Jaime –’
‘This has nothing to do with Jaime,’ Dolores said furiously.
Beatriz quailed before such anger. ‘There’s Sofia’s Carolina.’
Dolores’s anger changed to uncertainty. ‘Are you sure? She looks so young and pure.’
‘She wouldn’t be very successful if she was fat and fifty, would she?’
Dolores sighed. It had become a wicked world. But then it was precisely that fact of which she intended to take advantage.
* * *
Carolina had little difficulty in attracting the attention of the two men, one older than the other, both marked by their antagonistic attitude, earlier identified as Bolivians by the porter who had carried their luggage from the taxi into the foyer and been badly tipped. They suggested drinks on the patio which overlooked the bay.
She had mastered the art of discouraging encouragement. She responded to their initial advances with sophisticated amusement, but at the same time subtly suggested that she was not really intent on rejecting their attentions; when they became more explicit, she expressed her dislike of crudeness, while intimating that she spoke from a well-bred sense of propriety, not the heart. Three-quarters of an hour after their meeting, the younger man had gained sufficient alcoholic confidence to suggest they had some real fun. She showed hesitation before remarking that the hotel was very decorously run and with little sympathy for modern amusements, so would it not be better if she drove them to her flat where no one would object to anything? The younger man said that was a great idea, but he’d drive because he never allowed himself to be driven by a woman. She replied that it was obviously time he let a woman do something unusual to him and he ceased objecting.
When they began to head inland, the older man became uneasy, for no specific reason, but responding to an instinct honed by years of living dangerously. He demanded to know where they were going and his tone scared her, but she drew courage from Dolores’s words – A man will believe the moon is made of blue cheese until he gets what he wants. She told them she lived inland because there the rents were half what they were on, or very near to, the coast; the house had been turned into two flats and Veronica lived in the lower one; Veronica was just wild and only the previous week had held a party …
They turned off the road on to a dirt track which led up to an old farmhouse. Just before she braked to a halt and switched off the lights, it was possible to make out the fact that the building was in a sufficient state of disrepair to be uninhabitable.
‘What are you up to, you bitch?’ the older man shouted as he tried to grab her before she could leave the car, but just failed. He swore violently as he wrenched open his door and jumped out, determined to run her down and beat the truth out of her. He heard a movement from behind him and began to turn, but his eyes were not adapted to the dark and he made out nothing before he was hit on the head with sufficient force to send his senses reeling. Almost as tough as he boasted, he struggled to fight back, but a second blow blasted him into unconsciousness.
* * *
Ringed by six women, Dolores held a torch so that its wide beam covered both men who were now conscious but helpless because their wrists and ankles had been secured with surgical tape, their mouths gagged with dusters, and their waists secured by cord to iron rings, once used to tether horses.
‘You came here to kill my children; to blow them apart with a bomb.’ Dolores’s voice crackled with hatred.
Life had hardened the two men, but she really frightened them.
‘I have lain in the dark and trembled at the thought of you robbing me of what I love most in this world. So now I am going to leave you in the dark to tremble, knowing that when I return, you are going to be robbed of what you, like every man, love most in this world. I will slice them off and feed them to the dogs.’ Dolores swung the torch away from them and led the way out.
In the darkness, the men’s imaginations reduced them to snivelling cowards.