The percolator gave a final hiss and bubble, the turbulence subsided, and van Biljon, cigar clenched between his teeth, leant forward, holding the coffee cup beneath the small copper tap, his hand shaking so that the cup trembled on its saucer.
The Emperor Concerto was approaching the end of the first movement, the music swelling, chord upon chord, its grandeur overwhelming thought. He went across to the cabinet and switched off. Silence was essential to the tangle in his mind.
Putting down the coffee cup he leant back in the armchair in a conscious effort to relax, a haze of cigar smoke gathering about his head as he tried to recall what Calvi had said.
Van Biljon had long been on cordial terms with the Gobernador Delegado and the Jefe de Comisario, as he was with other senior officials on the island, and he knew he enjoyed their respect. But Capitan Calvi, who had come ostensibly for a donation to the Widows and Orphans Fund of the Guardia Civil, had clearly had something else on his mind. In the course of a long and often inconsequential conversation he had brought up the names of Manuela Valez, Black and Kyriakou. Van Biljon had not met Calvi before: indeed, the thin Spaniard had told him that he had not been on the island long, having served formerly in Madrid. Nor had he arrived unannounced: the Comisario had sent him a note explaining that although Calvi’s mission concerned a matter of small importance, it would be appreciated if van Biljon would see him personally.
When Calvi had asked if he knew Valez and Black—casually it is true and à propos of a remark he himself had made about Ibiza’s attraction for artists and writers—van Biljon had said, ‘I have met her. I do not know him.’
Calvi had looked out of the window and said quietly and without emphasis, ‘I believe they were guests in this house a few nights ago.’
At once van Biljon had explained the circumstances, adding with some warmth, ‘They are complete strangers to me. I do not have visitors here. I prefer a solitary life.’
The Spaniard had assured van Biljon that he understood perfectly what had occurred, but after some further small talk he had brought up the name of Kyriakou.
‘You do not know him, señor?’
‘I have recently met him,’ said van Biljon guardedly.
Calvi had gone to the window again and looked down over the terraces towards the sea. ‘And he—has he visited Altomonte?’
‘Yes,’ said van Biljon. ‘Once, a few days ago.’
‘Oh. Did he, too, come uninvited?’
‘He had expressed a wish to see me. A business matter. I wrote and asked him to call. He was not here long.’
Calvi came back from the window, the cheroot poking from the corner of his mouth at a jaunty angle, curiously out of keeping with the man’s quiet civility. ‘Señor Kyriakou is a rich man,’ he said. ‘He disposes much influence.’
‘So I believe,’ said van Biljon.
Calvi sighed. ‘And you do business together, señor?’
‘I would hardly call it that. I own a house in D’Alt Vila which he wishes to lease.’
Calvi changed the subject then to building activity in Ibiza, the rising demand for tourist accommodation, and the fortunes which land speculators were said to be making.
They discussed the tourist industry, its importance to the island, and the wide range of attractions Ibiza offered.
Calvi expressed the view that more and more yachts would visit the island and that harbour facilities should be expanded to cope with this. In these days of affluence, he said, the number of yachts in the Mediterranean ran into tens of thousands.
‘What Ibiza needs is a marina. Something on a really large scale.’
‘Probably you are right,’ said van Biljon. ‘But I for one do not welcome these developments. For me the attraction of Ibiza lies in what nature and history has provided. The climate, the terrain, the indigenous architecture. Above all the charm and integrity of the Ibizencans. The tourists and the developments they stimulate are to me excrescences. Tourists are parasitic. They leech on the island. I suppose I am selfish and old fashioned.’
Calvi smiled. ‘Do not think we Spaniards like tourists any more than you do, señor. But they represent an industry of immense importance to Spain.’
Van Biljon sighed. ‘I love this little harbour. I do not approve of the reclamations on the Talamanca side. It seems to me that they are making the harbour smaller. If this marina you speak of is built, there is going to be no room to move.’
‘You have a boat I believe, señor?’
The old man nodded. ‘The Nordwind. You have seen her?’
‘Yes,’ Calvi said. ‘A fine craft.’
‘You must come out in her one day.’
Calvi bowed. ‘I shall be delighted, señor.’ He paused before adding, ‘There is another fine boat in the harbour.’
‘Indeed?’
Calvi took the cheroot out of his mouth and examined it with a critical eye. ‘The Snowgoose.’
Something in the way the Spaniard said it made van Biljon feel that Calvi believed he should have some knowledge of the schooner. This puzzled him.
‘I have seen the Snowgoose in harbour,’ he said.
‘You know those on board, possibly?’ Calvi tapped with his fingers on an African drum and its taut resonances vibrated through the room.
‘No. I do not. My servants have told me they are cruising in the Mediterranean. Compiling a guide for yachtsmen. That is all I know.’
‘Where,’ said the Spaniard stroking the hide-bound sides of the drum, ‘does this come from?’
‘From the Congo. It is a Watusi drum.’
‘Have you heard the African drumming?’ Calvi’s voice was wistful.
‘Often,’ said van Biljon. ‘An unforgettable experience. It is as if the soul of Africa were throbbing.’
Soon after that Calvi had left, but his questions had nagged insistently throughout the day. It was not that they had been aggressively directed, nor had Calvi pressed him for answers. But the Spaniard had seemed to be searching for leads in a casual but persistent way.
At no time had he hinted at the reasons for his questions and in the end he’d switched the conversation to the weather and the small talk of the town.
And now, lying back in the armchair in the gallery, having recalled all that had been said, van Biljon was no wiser. He remained deeply disturbed: the coupling of Kyriakou’s name with those of Manuela Valez and Charles Black, all three recent visitors to Altomonte—a house which did not receive visitors—and the questions about the Snowgoose. Van Biljon couldn’t make sense of it, but he was left with the conviction that he’d been the subject of subtle cross-examination. What, he asked himself, lies behind this? What motive drives Calvi? And what is it these other people are up to which interests the police?
It was not in his nature to sit back and let situations develop. Too much was at stake. Resolving to find out more the next day, he left the armchair and began his tour of the gallery, moving slowly, savouring the pictures, knowing that it was for the van Gogh he was making. It would never have occurred to him to go straight to it, to vary the route he took, the order in which he viewed the pictures. When he reached it he stood before it, hands in the pockets of his velvet smoking jacket, rocking slowly on his feet, the cigar smoke spiralling above his head. The self-portrait had a macabre fascination. Was it, he often wondered, the self-inflicted mutilation, the bond of masochism? Or was it that van Gogh had been mad? There were times when van Biljon suspected that he himself was mad.
But always the van Gogh evoked another picture: white moonlight on a concrete path, a darkened villa in Bahia Blanca, slits of light edging the drawn blinds; the front door opening into a dark hall, a woman’s voice saying, ‘Pasa, señor,’ the door closing behind him and lights coming on to reveal a sharp-eyed, big boned woman—Torreta’s nurse/housekeeper, his mistress, some said; the cool white walls of the surgery at the back, the single-bedded ward adjoining it; over all the prophylactic smell of iodoform.
He had spent seven weeks there before going on to Santa Fé. Even now he winced with recollected pain.
And Torreta himself: cold, impassive, compassionless. Above all, as befitted a man whose fees were exorbitant beyond belief, discreet.