A Corpse on the Beach

by Benedict Brown

  The group walked up to the bar and, with a click of the fingers from Marco, Ramesh set to work preparing him the usual. This turned out to be a Negroni with a slice of orange in a short glass. Ramesh really did make an exceptional barman.

  The elderly Spanish couple headed upstairs to bed but the whole noisy Dennison family took a table for some snacks. I was amazed that Cook didn’t mind serving them so late.

  “This isn’t late,” she told me in typically blunt Spanish when I relayed the order. She grimaced and pointed at the clock above the sink. “Who eats dinner before ten o’clock?”

  I watched the new arrivals to work out what had upset Romanelli but whatever it was soon passed. With the help of Ramesh’s refreshments, the man of the hour appeared to calm down. His wife was dangling off his arm, positively beaming at him, as he got busy entertaining his fans.

  With the Dennisons, the Austrians and even Delilah Shaw hanging on his every word, he told the story of his days on the streets and the time he’d had to fight his way through three young punks who wanted to steal his last hundred lira.

  Just as he was really getting into the story, a switch flicked inside him. “Of course, I left that life behind me a long time ago.” He’d gone from being a barroom raconteur to an evangelist in the space of a sentence. I had no doubt that these were two personas he regularly made use of in his public speaking. “I was twenty-four when a young priest discovered me passed out in the street and told me about a better life. He taught me what it meant to be a good Christian and I became more involved in the church in Genova. But it wasn’t until a trip he organised for young people to this very region of Spain that I think I really found myself. And six-months later, I discovered I’d inherited a fortune…” with a twinkle in his eye, he delivered the punchline. “…so that helped too.”

  His audience broke out in giggles just as Álvaro appeared in the entrance. In a single moment, Marco’s face dropped and his glass flew from his hand to smash into the wall, a few feet from its intended target.

  “Get out of here,” he screamed. “And, if you come anywhere near me or my family again, the thing that flies at your head will be faster, sharper and deadlier.”

  Álvaro hadn’t moved from his spot by the door but a smile slowly formed on his face. In reply to the threat he said nothing. Instead, he waved one hand to me at the far end of the bar and turned to walk up the grand staircase in the lobby.

  Marco Romanelli retained that furious, bloodthirsty look for a few moments before ironing his face flat once more. He peered around at his companions and began to laugh, in the friendly, nothing-is-the-matter-here manner he usually employed. “Sorry everybody, but I really can’t stand that guy. Now, what was I saying?”

  I’d made another promise to myself to go to bed early, so I could get to the beach before everybody else. But there was no way I was going to let the evening pass without talking to Ramesh to dissect what had gone on. Sadly, that meant waiting another half hour until everyone had gone to bed.

  “I told you, these people are all crazy.” I was helping him load dirty glasses into the dishwasher. Even Cook had left by this point.

  Ramesh seemed less excited. “Who do we know that isn’t crazy?”

  “Yeah, but this is serious. The guy is rich and powerful. He’s the leader of an ideological organisation and he just threatened to shoot somebody in front of ten witnesses. Add that to what we found in his wardrobe earlier and he’s clearly not the kind of bloke you’d want to cross.”

  Ramesh let out a world-weary sigh and shut the dishwasher door. “Izzy, you really have to get beyond this fantasy that, wherever we go, some dark crime is about to take place.” He sounded like a man who’d been up since six that morning working in a hotel.

  Feeling a bit stupid for getting so worked up, I accompanied him out of the kitchen. We said goodnight in the foyer, where he left me to do a shift in reception and I went upstairs to my luxury penthouse suite.

  Chapter Eight

  I kept one half of my promise and woke up at eight thirty the next morning. I decided to skip breakfast before the returning sun got too strong. The walk from the hotel to the beach was a pretty one. On leaving the hotel gardens, soft, platinum sand cushioned my path and that special pointy grass, which only seems to grow near the coast, poked up out of the ground all the way to the cove.

  Gulls screamed from on high and the sound of the gently breaking tide called me forward. I had a brief feeling of exaltation as I stepped onto a beach that was all mine. For a little while, as I sat on my towel watching the sea, the whole, wide universe seemed infinitely wonderful.

  So it was a shame when that perfect morning was disturbed by my least favourite part of my new career. I have to admit that, to achieve my goal of Poirot-like excellence in the field of detective work, I will require plenty of corpses, but that doesn’t mean I like it when people die.

  The girl in the sand was only a few years younger than me. Her eyes sparkled even after death and she was pretty in a way that seemed effortless. She had a beauty spot on one cheek and strong, dark features. The open wound on her forehead had been washed clean by the tide, but the bruise around it was a nasty shade of black. Around her neck, a small cross on a chain, with a purple stone in the centre, danced about in the water.

  There were tears in my eyes as I searched on my phone for the Spanish emergency number and eventually dialled one one two.

  “Hay una chica muerte en la playa,” I said when the operator answered my call, then had to ask them to slow down as I’ve always been terrible on the phone in Spanish.

  I was tempted to search her pockets for ID but decided I’d pushed my luck enough with the police recently and didn’t think I could get away with it in a different country. I called Ramesh to stay with the body and make sure it didn’t get pulled out to sea so that I could be there when the Policía Nacional arrived. Fifteen minutes later, three blue and white cars pulled up at the hotel.

  I wasn’t sure how good Kabir’s Spanish was (it turned out to be perfect) or whether the officers would be able to speak English (most of them could) but at least I could explain what I’d found and lead them to the beach when they arrived. I’d been reading up on crime scene preservation recently and had already told Kabir to make sure that no one left the hotel before the police had spoken to them.

  “I know her,” one of the officers said as soon as we got there. He was young and eye-meltingly handsome. I was trying to be sombre and serious but, in his tight, summer uniform, which appeared to have been painted onto a body that was rippling with muscles from the tip of his finger to-

  Izzy, a girl has been tragically murdered. Your boyfriend is back in London going through hell. Stop perving and get on with your job.

  Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.

  There were four officers present, in addition to the two who’d stayed back at the hotel. The most senior was a tall, thin woman with an angular face and body who looked permanently unimpressed by the world around her. The other two instantly returned to the hotel in search of supplies and the young, deeply tanned agente had knelt down to look at the dead girl, showing the impressive muscular definition in the back of his throbbing-

  Izzy, snap out of it! You’re making this sound like a Mills and Boon novel.

  Sorry, won’t happen again.

  “She’s from my village,” Officer Sexy declared. “Her name’s Maribel Ruiz.”

  “Put some gloves on and look for ID,” his superior barked. “It’s no good making assumptions.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for forensics?” He was clearly pretty choked up at the discovery.

  “No time for that, the sea could wash away any evidence that’s left. We have to seize the moment.”

  Is that really what she said? Do you really know the Spanish for “seize”?

  Well, it was something like that.

&n
bsp; As if she’d just remembered I was there, the senior officer turned and addressed me in English. “You said there was no one near the body when you first saw it, yes?”

  “That’s right,” I replied, clearing my throat a little as the emotion was getting to me again. “It was just me here.”

  She turned away and muttered in Spanish. “A strong swimmer could have made it round the headland. The sea was calm last night.” It sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of this theory more than anyone.

  “It’s no good, Inspector. She’s buried in deep.” The junior officer was excavating the girl as much as he could with the tide still washing around us. Every time he moved a handful of sand out of the way, water would well up and fill the space he’d made. “She would have washed out to sea otherwise.”

  As he moved the sand, I caught glimpses of the red summer dress that the dead girl was wearing, and, unless the killer had left a handbag with the body, it seemed unlikely there would be any ID to find.

  At that moment, Kabir appeared with one of the officers carrying a spade and a large metal board that looked like it could have been used as a wheelchair ramp.

  “I thought these might help,” he shouted to us in a melancholy tone. “Terrible thing. Just terrible.”

  The two young officers made use of the supplies. The first attempted to dig a trench, though the sand kept shifting, while the second pushed as hard as he could on the metal screen to protect the crime scene from the tug of the water. They eventually succeeded in their task, but, by the time they’d finished, the tide was almost out and the forensics team had appeared to take over the immediate investigation.

  “Miss Palmer,” Officer Lovely said. “Perhaps you should go back to the hotel and we’ll come to talk to you once we’re done here.”

  I wanted to reply, perhaps even tell him how sorry I was for the loss of his friend, but then I caught sight of his pretty brown eyes and the gold chain that picked out the nape of his neck, just above that strong masculine chest with its well-defined-

  Izzy!

  I got distracted and the only words that came to mind were, “Perdona, dónde está la catedral?” It was the first sentence I remember learning in high-school Spanish class and didn’t quite express my sympathy as I’d been hoping. It could have been worse, I could have just mumbled a list of Spanish ingredients at him.

  He looked at me like I was one egg short of a tortilla. “Sorry?” He replied in English.

  I closed my eyes to try to focus on the task at hand, but when I opened them again he was still just as beautiful. “Mi gato es blanco.”

  I turned around and started towards the hotel, “Sorry for your loss.” I shouted back over my shoulder, as I cursed myself for coming across as a complete, raging moron.

  When I got to the dining room, everyone had already heard the terrible news. The Romanellis were sitting in silence near the buffet, the Dennisons were dressed for the beach and making a fuss that they weren’t allowed to go out and the two Austrian girls were discussing the situation with the police. I was actually a little relieved to see Lio. When I’d first found the body, I’d mistaken it for the pretty Next Phase groupie.

  It’s so sad that we lose our humanity as soon as we die. A body is “it”, not he or she but it; like any other lifeless object.

  The wretchedness of the situation was making my brain surprisingly poetic.

  Kabir, Ramesh and Cook were the only employees present that day and were doing their best to maintain the high level of service people had come to expect from The Cova Negra.

  “It’s just not on,” Ian Dennison was telling whoever would listen, as his typically mute wife remained silent. “We’re supposed to be here to relax. This is just the kind of thing that ruins a holiday.” He was clearly not concerned about the body on the beach.

  As I arrived, Álvaro Linares came over with some questions for me. “Did you recognise the girl, Izzy?”

  “No, of course not,” I replied absentmindedly. I was trying to watch the reactions of the assembled guests.

  “Was Inspector Bielza in charge?” He wasn’t giving up.

  I turned to look at him and suddenly questioned what his interest was. “What do you want, Álvaro? You keep interrogating me but I haven’t a clue who you are.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself properly. I’m a journalist. I’m based in Santander but I’ve been following Next Phase for the last couple of months as they’ve campaigned around Europe.”

  Marco Romanelli’s anger from the previous evening suddenly made sense. If there are two kinds of people that nobody likes, it’s politicians and journalists. Well, and dentists and used car salesman.

  And estate agents. Don’t forget estate agents!

  “So, I’m guessing you haven’t been giving Mr Romanelli the best write-ups.”

  He smiled, clearly proud of the effect he’d had on the man. “Then your famous talent for deduction has triumphed again.”

  “What made him so angry at the conference yesterday?”

  His smile became a smirk. “I took the opportunity to ask him some pertinent questions. I’d kept a low profile until then, but I guess you could say that I ambushed him.”

  At that moment, the senior detective returned to the hotel.

  “Your attention please.” She raised her hands in an authoritative gesture.

  “That’s Inspector Nerea Bielza del Toro,” Álvaro explained. “She’s hard as a nail and twice as sharp.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid that I have to inform you we have found a body on the hotel beach.”

  “Do you suspect foul play?” The journalist immediately asked.

  Bielza’s bird-like gaze twitched to land on Álvaro and she replied in her native language. “I’m not ready to discuss that at this moment, Linares. And you would be wise not to interfere in the investigation.” Apparently unflustered by his question, she addressed the crowd once more. “I expect you all to stay inside the hotel so that my officers can gather information and talk to you when the time is right.”

  “Hey, you listen here.” Ian Dennison inevitably stood up to complain. “My family and I have paid for a week at the beach, not a week shut up in some crumbly old hotel.”

  “What is your name?” The Inspector’s words were like a ninja star, thrown straight at Dennison’s head.

  “My name is not the issue right now, what I want to know is-”

  “You will sit down and listen.” A spark fired and Bielza was enraged. “A young woman is dead, and it’s my job to find out what happened. You will be able to return to the beach when interviews have been carried out and the body has been removed. Now, what is your name?”

  The Brit abroad had lost all his fire. “Ian Dennison, ma’am. I didn’t mean nothing by it. It’s the kiddies, you see. If they can’t go to the beach, they’ll make our lives a nightmare.”

  As if in confirmation, the Dennison brood glared at the Inspector and Mrs Dennison flinched.

  I watched the reactions of the other guests. The old Spanish couple were taking fifteen minutes to choose which type of ham they wanted for breakfast and didn’t seem too concerned. The Austrian girls had lost all their usual bubbly positivity and were sitting at their table with their heads solemnly bowed. But it was Marco Romanelli I was most interested in. It looked like the world had been pulled out from under his feet and he was left falling through space. His face was scarred with fear, horror, dread.

  “Based on the preliminary evidence, we believe it is necessary to keep you here until further notice.”

  Gianna Romanelli spoke up to say her piece. “We were supposed to be leaving today.” She looked around the other faces as if searching for supporters. “We have another conference to prepare for in Madrid.”

  Bielza had her response cued up ready. “We’ll be as quick as we
can but, if necessary, you’ll have to stay another night. I’ve spoken to the hotel management and there are plenty of rooms.”

  There was some murmuring around the dining room as she said this, it was clearly not a popular decision. It occurred to me that she wasn’t telling the whole story. She’d never have thought of locking the hotel down if she wasn’t sure it was murder.

  Ramesh shimmied over to me, pretending to offer a drink from his tray. “Okay, Iz. I take it all back. Wherever you go, there is a dark crime just about to unfold.” He went back to work, clearing plates and glasses.

  As Inspector Bielza recommenced her announcement, the young officer who made me feel oddly warm and queasy inside walked into the dining room and mumbled something into his superior officer’s ear. Her previously blank expression changed as he spoke. Her eyes cast down and her pointy chin jutted out a little more. He stepped aside and her gaze flitted around the room vaguely.

  “I have to attend to the scene of the crime now,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “I’ll leave you in the hands of Agent Torres and his colleagues.”

  Despite being sparsely populated, the room suddenly ignited with the sound of angry voices.

  The brawny young officer came to talk to me. He let out a deep sigh before saying anything. “How am I going to tell her family? They are good people. I know them since I was a child.” He looked at me as if he hoped I could make it better.

  I thought about putting my hand on his arm but knew that, if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to form a sentence again. The journalist had gone over to the breakfast area so I could speak freely. “She was murdered, wasn’t she?”

  “We’re not sharing this information,” he replied, in a way which communicated, yes, that’s exactly what happened. This was only reinforced when he said. “It’s good you’re here. You know, I read about you in the paper. They called you Señorita Marple.” He started to smile at this and then, presumably remembering the terrible situation we found ourselves in, frowned in distaste.