Traffic reported late on Wednesday morning.
‘The Vespa’s an interesting little puzzle. There are no hard scrapes, no smears of foreign paint, as there normally are when two vehicles collide; the damage to the front mudguard and left-hand foot rest and the impacted earth are consistent with the Vespa sliding along the road, off on to the verge, and down the slope. The tyres, especially the front one, are badly worn and with very little tread. There’s a dent in the rear mudguard, but apparently of little consequence. So the picture seems to be of a bike that’s not looked after and a driver who loses control and skids. But the road was bone dry and the marks on it say the bike wasn’t moving fast. So why should the rider suddenly lose control?
‘Suppose it wasn’t an accident. The easiest way to ensure a powered bike crashes is to come up behind in a car and push hard against the rear mudguard at an angle. Get it right and the driver hasn’t a hope in hell. But with that scenario, there’s crushed and powdered paintwork on the bike and usually the mudguard is pushed hard into the tyre. The Vespa has no crushed paintwork, no scrapes down to the metal, and only a small dent in the mudguard. Which calls to mind the old dodge of lashing an old outer tyre on to the car’s front bumper. Then, if the driver is careful, there’s little or no crushing and powdering, no scraping, and only slight denting. Afterwards, the tyre is burned and so there are no traces on the car to identify it … We used special techniques to examine the mudguard and although it was very faint, we think we found a small piece of a tread pattern.’
‘You only think?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t be more definite.’
After the call was over, Alvarez settled back in the chair. If there had been a reason to murder Sheard, it was a hundred to one he had been murdered; but until that was established, there was no certainty that there was a reason.
He phoned the Laboratory of Forensic Sciences and asked if they had the results of their analyses of the whisky and the residues in the two glasses he had sent them. Their reply was to be expected. Did he think they had nothing to do but the work he sent them? Did he think they worked twenty-four hours a day? Did he believe …
Exhausted by their aggressive hostility, so clearly aimed at concealing their indolence, he leaned over and pulled open the right-hand bottom drawer of the desk and brought out a bottle of brandy and a glass.
* * *
One possible lead was to discover if there were any rumours on the streets of an English intrusion into the drug market. Alvarez drove down to the port and went into one of the backstreet bars. He was in luck. Capella sat at one of the tables, playing a game of draughts.
Capella was a small man, not quite as old as he looked; his pointed face and sharp, beady eyes had given him his nickname, Ferret. His right arm hung uselessly at his side. Thirty years before he had suffered a bad fall, but had been unable to seek medical help because the Guardia had ordered all doctors and hospitals to advise them if they treated a man of his description with an injured arm.
As Alvarez approached, both players looked up briefly; Capella muttered a greeting, Obrador merely nodded. They played on, but after three more moves, Obrador swore, accepted defeat, pushed a five-hundred-peseta coin across the table, and left.
‘He seemed to lose his concentration,’ Alvarez said.
‘What d’you expect, turning up and staring at him?’
‘Then how about recognizing my assistance by giving me half your winnings?’
Capella hurriedly pocketed the coin.
‘What are you drinking?’
‘Nothing.’
Alvarez picked up the glass in front of Capella, crossed to the bar and ordered two brandies. Filled glasses in his hands, he returned, sat. ‘So what’s he into these days? Cigarettes? I hear things have become very difficult, with supplies from Tangiers and Ceuta drying up and the authorities becoming sharper. Not like the old days, when you could make enough in one good run to build yourself a house and another for your daughter.’
‘The money was left me by an uncle.’
‘Tio Andrés? He never left anyone anything but curses.’
‘What gives you the right to slander the dead?’
‘His curses.’ Alvarez offered the other a cigarette, lit a match for both of them. ‘Tell me all about the drug scene here in the port.’
‘You think I have anything to do with that?’
‘No. But you’ll know what’s going on because you still keep your ear so close to the ground you have perpetual earache. Have there been any changes just recently?’
Capella drained his glass, put it down on the table with more force than was necessary. Alvarez carried both glasses to the bar and had them refilled. He returned. ‘Well?’
‘What d’you mean, changes?’
‘Are the English moving in?’
‘You think the lads would let ’em?’
‘Not without causing trouble.’
‘There ain’t been any.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘’Course I’m sure,’ Capella retorted, ignoring the fact that only a moment ago he’d claimed not to know what was happening.
‘You don’t think they could be working so quietly they’re even using their own boat?’
‘The day after it sailed, it’d be at the bottom and them in it.’
Capella had spoken with a perverse pride in the ruthlessness of the local mafia. He was, Alvarez thought, justified. Mallorca might be the Island of Calm, but those on the wrong side of the law could be every bit as vicious as anyone from the toughest of inner cities. Further, the community was relatively small and tightly knit and its members enjoyed the peasant’s ability to notice events so apparently insignificant that another would miss them, while even those who were completely law abiding – Mallorquin style – suffered from xenophobia which had merely been put on hold by tourist money.
Yet to assume that Clough was not in drugs was to promote unwanted questions. Why had Lewis come to the island unless to collect money from Clough? Why had Clough given him – assuming he had – a million pesetas? How had Sheard, who had not previously known Lewis, quickly become so involved in whatever was going on that he had had to be murdered?… Or were all these questions false because the supposition on which each was based was fallacious?
Capella again banged his empty glass down on the table. Another small brandy might just help him to sort out his own muddled mind, Alvarez decided.
* * *
Thursday was hotter and more airless than ever. Although it was early, the thought of an iced drink before the meal was an irresistible one. Alvarez left the office. The old square was filled with tourists who had nothing better to do than idle their day away. He looked at them with the resentment of envy, unlocked his car to find the interior was an oven because he had forgotten to leave the windows slightly open. Some became martyrs to their duty.
As he stepped into the house, the phone began to ring. He lifted the receiver.
‘It’s the lab here. I tried to phone you at your office, but there was no answer; they said you might be at home and gave me your number. We have the results of the analyses and I thought you’d like to hear them. Negative.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Pure Scotch in the one bottle, the hint of pure Scotch in the other bottle and the glasses.’
‘But … but that’s impossible!’
‘The impossible happens with regular monotony here.’
‘I was certain there was some sort of narcotic in the whisky.’
‘You could drink the bottle and not suffer anything but the usual hangover.’
He thanked the caller for ringing, stared unseeingly at a framed print of a stylized Mallorquin country setting. If one built a house of paper, one should not be surprised if it was blown down. If Lewis had not been drugged, the probability had to be that he had not been murdered, but had been so tight when he fell over the side he’d been unable to swim; Clough’s wife had spent a million pesetas on two dresses; Lewis had tapped a source of money that had nothing to do with Clough; it was one more coincidence that Lewis had mentioned the name ‘Larry’ to Cara; it was yet another coincidence that Sheard had been on one of the two routes to Annuig when he’d died in a fatal crash and Traffic’s theory of events was wrong … Like disasters, coincidences often did not come singly …
He wandered through to the dining/sitting-room. Isabel and Juan were arguing and Jaime was seated at the table, bottle and glass in front of him.
Isabel looked up. ‘Uncle, where’s Valparaiso?’
‘Argentina, silly,’ said Juan, with condescending superiority.
‘It isn’t.’
‘You don’t know anything.’
‘I know more than you.’
Dolores pushed her way through the bead curtain. ‘What’s all the noise about?’
Knowing how sharp she could be, they were silent, each waiting for the other to answer and thereby suffer the brunt of her annoyance.
‘Well?’
Isabel’s indignation overcame her sense of caution. ‘He says Valparaiso is in Argentina.’
‘It’s in Chile. Juan, you should know your geography better than that.’
‘I was just pulling her leg.’
‘Then do it more peacefully.’ She returned to the kitchen.
Jaime leaned across the table and spoke to Alvarez in a low voice. ‘Instead of giving them hell, she just asks them to be more peaceful; she saw the bottle of brandy, but didn’t have a go at me for drinking too much – I tell you, it’s worrying me sick, her being so reasonable.’ He picked up the bottle and refilled his glass.
Alvarez had too many troubles of his own to give much thought to Jaime’s.
* * *
He parked, walked along to the Hotel Alhambra. The younger receptionist said that Señorita Glass had left – obviously for the beach – roughly an hour before.
Alvarez returned to his car, drove to the front and searched for a parking space; since the local council had reduced the number of them for reasons which escaped anyone who relied on common sense, he ended by parking on a yellow line. He walked along until level with the point at which Kirsty would have reached the beach had she made directly for it and stepped on to the sand. As he searched for her amongst the dozens of sunbathers, he could not escape the bitter truth: age condemned. The young could display their bodies with happy conclusions, the older with only unhappy self-delusions.
Kirsty was young and therefore it was a pleasure – solely from an artistic point of view – to see her topless. He was sorry that she was in the company of a bronzed, slicked-down beach leech.
‘Good afternoon, señorita,’ he said as he came to a stop.
The young man looked up, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘You want?’ he asked in heavily accented, drawling English.
‘To speak to the señorita,’ Alvarez replied, also in English.
‘Some different time, man. Blow.’
‘Carlos, he’s…’ Kirsty began hurriedly.
He interrupted her. ‘An old man. He troubles more, I blow away.’
‘Don’t blow too hard,’ Alvarez said roughly in Mallorquin, bitter at the description of himself, ‘or you’ll end up very short of breath.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Cuerpo General de Policia.’
The young man tried to maintain a cocky air, but his tone was far less aggressive when he said: ‘What d’you want?’
‘To speak to the señorita. So it is up to you to blow.’
‘I was just going.’ He stood, brushed sand off his chest. ‘I be with you later,’ he said to Kirsty, before walking off with as much strutting pride as he could muster.
Alvarez sat on the sand and was careful not to look too openly at her shapely breasts.
‘I met Carlos yesterday…’ She became silent. She looked at him, then away. ‘I liked Bert a lot, I really did, and it was terrible what happened. Only, as Cara keeps saying, it’s no good going on and on being miserable as we’re on holiday. We’ve only three days left.’
‘Then I trust they are happier than those which have gone before.’
She scooped up some sand, let it trickle through her fingers. ‘Has … has something more happened?’
‘No.’
‘Then why…?’
‘I want to talk to you again about the night you were on the boat.’
‘Must you? I mean…’
‘Yes, señorita?’
‘I’ve been trying so hard to forget.’
And with the help of Carlos, succeeding. She looked so young and – if the word still had any meaning – innocent, that the degree of her amorality shocked as well as surprised him. ‘I will be as brief as possible. You have told me it was Señor Lewis who opened the full bottle of whisky. By then, had Señorita Fenn had too much to drink?’
‘I’ve told you, no one had.’
‘Can you be so very certain?’
‘When Cara’s had a skinful, she gets all giggly and mixes up her words. She wasn’t like that at all.’
‘Señor Lewis poured a drink for each of you?’
‘Yeah, even though I said I didn’t want one.’
‘Señor Sheard began to yawn and complain of dizziness. Were Señorita Fenn and Señor Lewis also showing signs of tiredness and dizziness?’
She leaned forward until her breasts were pressing against her raised legs, wrapped her arms around her legs and interlaced her fingers, rested her chin on one knee and watched a waterskier criss-cross the wake of a towing speedboat. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t thinking about what they were doing.’
‘But perhaps you noticed them just briefly before you fell asleep?’
‘They was both flat out. Asleep, I mean. And I can remember thinking that the way Cara was lying, if she wasn’t careful she’d end up on the floor. Which is what she did.’
The course of events suggested the full bottle of whisky had been drugged; the forensic evidence made it certain it had not been. ‘During the night, you seemed to hear someone moving about the cabin?’
‘It was a nightmare.’
‘The last time we spoke about it, you weren’t all that certain it was.’
‘Well, I am now.’
She found it far preferable to believe her memory to be the product of a nightmare than to live with the possibility that she had heard Lewis’s moving aft so that, if she’d pulled herself together, she might have saved him after he’d fallen overboard. ‘Can you describe what kind of movements they were?’
‘Nothing’s normal in a nightmare.’
He was not going to learn from her any facts that would confirm or deny the possibility that she had half heard – being less deeply drugged than the others – someone’s exchanging both whisky and glasses in order to hide evidence which would have shown Lewis had been murdered. He stood. ‘Thank you, señorita, for kindly recalling times you so wish to forget. I shall not be troubling you again.’
She unwrapped her arms and lay back, propping herself up on her elbows.
Her movement had, through no conscious volition on his part, caused him to shift his gaze. Her breasts were more silken and shapely than a ripe persimmon …
As he walked across the sand towards the pine trees, he wondered who was the fool who had first dubbed women the weaker sex.