An Air of Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘They can’t do nothing because’it’s murder.’

  ‘How can they know it is?’

  ‘Because I told ’em.’

  ‘You are an expert criminologist?’

  ‘I don’t reckon a man bashes in his own head. But maybe you know different?’

  ‘He’s probably a foreigner who was stupid enough to go rock climbing and fell.’

  ‘When the field’s in the middle of the valley?’

  ‘Where exactly are you talking from?’ Alvarez asked angrily.

  The mobile signal faded twice before the answer was clear enough to be understood. ‘Ca Na Echa.’

  ‘Whereabouts in the valley is that?’

  ‘At the end.’

  ‘It would be.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’ll be along as soon as I can make it.’ He cut the connection, dialled Palma.

  ‘Yes?’ said the plum-voiced secretary.

  ‘It’s Inspector Alvarez. I need to speak to the superior chief.’

  ‘He’s not here. What do you want?’

  ‘I have to report a serious incident.’

  ‘Would it not be an idea to report it, then?’

  It was small wonder she had never married. ‘I have just been informed that the body of a man has been found in a field in Vail d’en Fangat and wounds to his head suggest a second party was involved in his death.’

  ‘His identity?’

  ‘Unknown at the moment.’

  ‘I will inform the superior chief as soon as possible.’

  He sighed as he replaced the receiver. His problem no longer was how long he must wait before he returned home; now it was, how long was it going to be before he returned home?

  Fifteen

  THE VALLEY RAN NORTH TO SOUTH, CUTTING INTO THE SERRA DE Tramuntana, which ran west to east the length of the island; in sharp contrast to the often dramatically weather-sculptured bare rock sides, the bottom was level and the land good enough to grow fig, olive, and almond trees and, where there was irrigation, vegetables and some of the sweetest melons on the island. In the past, the few families had lived there in what had been virtual isolation because it was accepted that after puberty, the women could cast the evil eye on beast or human. Everyone knew the story of Julia Caimari. She had left the valley to visit the village of Mesquida and there had had an argument with the owner of a small shop; two days later, the owner had died suddenly and in great pain. Six men from Mesquida, one of whom had been the owner’s cousin, had courageously entered the valley, caught Julia, bound her, and thrown her down the deepest well. When in the course of time each of the six died, relatives blamed his death on the witch’s curse.

  It was odd, Alvarez reflected as he drove into the valley, how short a time it was since there had been people so ignorantly superstitious . . . He passed a woman who was irrigating several rows of sweet peppers and carefully smiled at her.

  Ca Na Echa was a typical, unreformed Mallorquin farmhouse. Oblong, walls of stone, roof tiles laid on bamboo, windows small, it offered shelter, but little comfort; family lived on the top floor, animals on the ground one.

  As he braked to a halt in front of a rusting wire trellis over which an extensive vine grew, a man came out of the house, stopped, and silently watched him climb out of the car. ‘Are you Bautista?’ he asked as he shut the car door.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Inspector Alvarez of the Cuerpo.’

  ‘Was it you what I spoke to?’

  ‘Why d’you think I’m here?’

  ‘How do I know why you’re here?’

  Most would have been annoyed by this apparent stupidity, but Alvarez was not; stupidity had for centuries been almost the only defence a peasant had against authority. ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘Marta.’

  ‘Is she your wife?’

  ‘Think I’ve a bit on the side?’

  ‘You both live here?’

  ‘In the village.’

  ‘So who does live here?’

  ‘Ain’t no one.’

  ‘But it is your property?’

  ‘Why d’you think I’m here?’ Bautista replied, relishing the chance to repeat Alvarez’s words.

  Times changed, even in a ‘forgotten’ valley. Only a few years before, Bautista and his wife would have lived in Ca Na Echa, accepting discomfort and lack of any amenities as their lot in life. But circumstances, and particularly television, had encouraged them not to remain content and when they had had the chance – probably one of them had inherited a village property – they had quickly moved to enjoy a modern life. Now, they worked the land, but left the house empty. Sooner or later, a foreigner, seeking dramatic beauty and solitude, would offer them so high a price for the property, they would be unable to refuse it, even though a peasant valued land almost beyond gold. The new owner would have electricity brought into the valley, the house would be reformed and its character lost, his friends would envy him his life amidst this rustic idyll and in consequence would buy and reform other houses, and before long the memory of Julia Caimari would be forgotten.

  ‘Maybe you ain’t nothing better to do but stand there, but I have,’ Bautista said.

  ‘First, you can show me the body.’

  Bautista led the way down the dirt track to the road where he turned right, to face the end of the valley and a thousand-metre mountain whose lower slopes were covered with pine trees. His pace was such that Alvarez was soon sweating. ‘Why didn’t you say it was so far away? We should have come in the car.’

  ‘Ain’t fit, is you?’ Bautista answered with scorn.

  ‘Fit enough.’

  ‘For sitting on your arse?’

  Alvarez was convinced Bautista was walking more quickly than he would normally have done in order to humiliate him.

  They stopped at a field in which were irregularly spaced olive trees whose gnarled, twisted short trunks and relatively long branches spoke of past pruning, but recent neglect; around those on the right, there was thick garriga – the typical island brush, a mixture of plants which included grass, brambles, wild lavender, rosemary, thyme, gladioli, irises, rock roses, and a very occasional orchid.

  ‘By that tree.’ Bautista pointed to an olive, a hundred metres in from the road.

  Alvarez walked across. An objectionable smell, at first slight, became very much stronger before the body of a man initially became only partially visible because of the masking effect of the garriga in which it lay. Visually examining the ground before each step, he stopped half a metre from the body. The man, probably in his late twenties, was dressed in a T-shirt on which was printed in English, ‘Let’s see if we fit’, jeans, and trainers. He had dark, curly black hair and a noticeably broad nose; his wide mouth was partially open, his eyes closed, and his lips were tensed as if a call for help had been begun, cut short and ‘frozen’; he had either been trying to grow a beard or favoured long stubble; his right cheek was stained with blood. Amongst the hair on the crown of his head was a scalp wound in which a small section of shattered skull was visible.

  The garriga was undisturbed except in the immediate area of the body, so a struggle seemed unlikely; there must have been considerable bleeding, but there was no blood on the vegetation. Almost certainly, Alvarez judged, the body had been dumped there in the hope that if ever found, this would not be before the forces of decay made it unidentifiable.

  ‘Do you know him?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Bautista replied.

  ‘What brought your wife over here?’

  ‘What d’ you mean?’

  ‘It’s not a corner of the field to which anyone normally comes, judging by the look of the vegetation, so I wondered why she did?’

  ‘She was searching for a lamb.’

  ‘You run sheep here?’

  ‘Ain’t you got eyes?’ Bautista pointed up at the lower slopes of the nearest mountain.

  Alvare
z studied the rising, rock-strewn land and finally identified several sheep, their colour making them not readily visible against the background. ‘I’ll need to talk to your wife. Is she back at the house?’

  ‘Picking the vegetables for the market tomorrow.’

  After finding a body, a townswoman would probably be too shocked to do anything useful; for a peasant, violent death was little more traumatic than the violence of birth. ‘I’ll want to use your mobile.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To call the police doctor to certify death.’

  ‘If you can’t see he’s dead, you’re a useless sort of detective.’

  ‘There’ll be those who agree with that.’

  Bautista was annoyed that he had failed to anger Alvarez. ‘Where is your mobile?’

  ‘Why ain’t you got one?’

  ‘The Cuerpo doesn’t provide it.’

  ‘Then it ain’t up to me to do their job for them.’

  ‘That’s fair enough. So I’ll drive to the village and make the call from there. Of course, you’ll have to wait until I return and everything’s sorted out; I hope that won’t be too long after it’s dark.’

  Bautista muttered angrily before he led the way out of the field and along the road, now walking so quickly that Alvarez no longer tried to keep up; better to be humiliated than to suffer a heart attack.

  Marta was by the base of the outside stone steps up to the top floor of Ca Na Echa. Small, thin, her face darkened and leathered by sun, wind, and rain, she looked several years older than her husband, but was a year younger.

  ‘D’you show him?’ she asked, her voice deep and throaty. ‘Yes,’ Bautista replied.

  ‘What’s he say?’

  ‘Don’t know if the man’s dead.’

  ‘Is he blind?’

  ‘Likely.’

  Alvarez asserted his presence. ‘I have to call the doctor to examine the body, not to confirm death, but to give an opinion on the circumstances of it, so I need to use your mobile.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Your husband said it’s in the house.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘Unless you reckon we keep it with the animals.

  He waited for one of them to move, but neither did. He climbed the steeply pitched stairs – more quickly than he would have done had neither of them been watching – and opened a battered door to enter a square room with bamboo and tile ceiling and bare concrete floor. A large aspidistra in a heavily worked copper bowl stood in the centre and the only furniture was a square wooden table and three arm chairs which had had a hard life. On one wall hung two large framed photographs of parents or grandparents, taken many years before. The man wore a wide-brimmed hat, white shirt without a collar, black waistcoat and short coat, voluminous plus-fours, socks and shoes; the woman, a blouse, a longsleeved sweater with a neckband of intricate crochet work, and a high-waisted, very long skirt. He appeared embarrassed, she stared directly at the camera with a look which made one wonder if she had possessed . . . The mobile was on the table. He picked it up, returned outside and stopped on the top step. ‘What’s the pin number? he called out.

  The Bautistas looked uneasily at each other.

  They were afraid to give him the number for fear he would use it to his advantage and their disadvantage. He made his way down the steps, handed the mobile to Bautista. ‘Put it in.’

  When the mobile was handed back to him, he dialled the post, spoke to a cabo and asked him to send the police doctor, photographer, and undertaker to Ca Na Echa. He handed the mobile back and Bautista switched it off.

  ‘Shall we go inside for a chat?’

  For a while neither of them moved, then as if to an unspoken command, they made for the stairs. Alvarez followed at a more leisurely pace, but was breathless when he sat on the only unoccupied chair.

  He took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mopped his forehead. ‘It’s unusually hot for May.’

  ‘Not for them what ain’t as fat as a matança pig,’ Bautista said.

  Rather than cause further resentment, he said lightly: ‘Fat or thin, it’s thirsty weather.’

  ‘You want a drink? There’s water down in the well.’

  A humorist, he thought sourly. He spoke to Marta. ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘I found him,’ she answered.

  ‘What about before you found him?’

  ‘I didn’t know he was there.’

  Was she mocking him under the guise of peasant stupidity? He wasn’t certain. There were limits to his sympathetic understanding and when he next spoke, his voice was much sharper. ‘I need to know why you went into the field, what you did before you saw the body, what you did then and afterwards. And I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay here until I do.’

  She spoke in a toneless voice as she stared at the concrete floor. The sheep were free to roam the field and the lower slopes of the mountain. Each day, either she or her husband looked them over to make certain they weren’t becoming flyblown or suffering from foot rot, or had injured themselves on one of the rocks which littered the land. The previous day, she’d noticed one of the lambs had seemed hunchy, so she’d kept a special eye out for it – failing to see it, she’d crossed towards the far corner of the field because animals went there for the shade. She’d smelled death and, believing the lamb had succumbed, had gone forward expecting to find its corpse . . . Instead, there had been the dead man.

  ‘How close to him did you go?’

  After considerable thought, she said: ‘Two metres, maybe.’

  ‘Then you didn’t touch him?’

  ‘You think I’m daft?’

  ‘When was the last time you were in that part of the field?’

  She looked at her husband, shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Yesterday, the day before?’

  ‘Ain’t no need to go there when there ain’t nothing missing.’

  ‘So it could be several days?’

  She did not respond.

  Alvarez looked at his watch. It was almost seven. The doctor, photographer, and undertaker would be at least another fifteen to twenty minutes before they arrived and there was no judging how long they would take. He was not going to be home in time for a drink before supper, perhaps not even for supper. He could be certain that somewhere about the building would be many bottles of homemade wine which might taste more of earth than the mountain dew beloved of wine critics, but would be far preferable to the water he would be offered if he again remarked what thirsty weather it was . . . Abstinence made the imagination run faster. Perhaps Dolores had bought a bottle of Imperial as an unexpected present and even now was preparing Entrecote amb albercocs to accompany it . . .

  The doctor straightened up. ‘I can’t add much that isn’t obvious.’ He was a tall, thin man with a round face that would have better suited a short, fat man. ‘He was hit probably more than once on the head with something heavy and must have lost consciousness, if not died, immediately. No other signs of injury are visible. Time of death is as imprecise as ever, but the absence of rigor and the slight degree of decomposition suggest a couple of days ago. The lack of lividity in parts of the body which were in contact with the earth suggests he did not die where found, but was left there after death; this would seem to be confirmed by the absence of any blood on the ground or the vegetation. As you’ll know, it’s surprisingly difficult for one person to move a dead body of any size and weight and so either more than one person or some form of carrying instrument is usually necessary; there is a strand of coloured wool stuck to his T-shirt by dried blood, which might have come from whatever he was carried in. I can’t tell you any more than that.’

  Photographs having been taken, the body was removed in a bodybag. As the undertaker’s van drove away, Alvarez crossed to his parked car and opened the driving door.

  There was a shout from Bautista. ‘You owe for the call on me mobile.’

  ‘Send the bill
to the superior chief in Palma.’ Alvarez settled behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. Would Dolores have been in a good mood and put his meal in the oven to keep warm?

  Sixteen

  AS ALVAREZ ENTERED THE POST SOMEWHAT LATER THAN USUAL, the duty cabo looked up from the newspaper he had been reading. ‘Someone’s been shouting for you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘By asking.’

  ‘Wasn’t me took the call.’

  Feckless, Alvarez thought as he crossed to the stairs and climbed them. In his room, he settled in the chair and noted with pleasure there was no post. He closed his eyes, the better to decide on his priorities for the day . . .

  The phone awoke him. Teresa Jiminez spoke with such nervous haste that at times it was only with difficulty he understood her. Her son, Francisco, had not been to see her for many days . . .

  ‘You would have expected him to?’

  Francisco was a wonderful son, the best a mother ever bore; he visited or phoned her almost every day to make certain she was well. Yet she had not seen or heard from him for days.

  ‘Have you spoken to any of his friends to ask if they know where he is and if he’s all right?’

  She’d spoken to Jacobo Beltrán who was like a brother, but he knew nothing. She was certain something terrible had happened to her beloved son . . .

  He tried to calm her fears by saying that most youngsters who went missing turned up within the first few days. ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘He shares a place with Jacobo. I have said to him, many times, why pay a fortune in rent when there is a bedroom here that costs nothing . . .’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Casa Jasumella, in Carrer Talaia, which is in the port. . .’

  ‘I know the road. Does Francisco have a job?’

  As if he would be a layabout! Both he and Jacobo worked for Carlos, the builder. She’d begged him to find another job because building was so dangerous – Cousin Jorge had fallen to his death when scaffolding collapsed because no one had made certain it had been properly erected. And everyone knew what kind of a man Carlos was. He built houses for the foreigners and always smiled to make them think he was a good man, but he charged them far more than he should. Of course, all foreigners were so foolish, they allowed themselves to be swindled . . .