Suspects All !

by Helen Mulgray

  I was feeling pretty gloomy myself, after that meeting with the comandante. Eighteen days was very little time in which to justify my presence by nailing Luís’s murderer or proving the existence of a Massoroco-linked drug ring. At the moment I couldn’t even be sure that Luís’s death was tied up with a drug ring. Drug wars are usually waged in mean back streets away from the tourist eye, but whoever had silenced Luís had dumped his body in the busy working harbour.

  Why? This was an angle I hadn’t considered before. Was it to stop him speaking to me? It would mean my undercover role had been compromised, that I’d somehow given myself away. In that case I’d have to watch my back…. For the moment I should be safe enough. The last thing they would want was to have the police and security services buzzing round the hotel interrogating those connected with it.

  I stirred my coffee thoughtfully. I could continue the slow process of ‘peeling away the layers’. I had five suspects – four if I discounted Charles Mason – and that meant that I could devote less than five days to each of them. Barring a miracle and I didn’t believe in those, I hadn’t a hope of bringing things to a satisfactory conclusion before the comandante unceremoniously booted me out.

  Or, if my cover had not been blown, I could fast-track my investigations by deliberately setting myself up as a target, just as a goat was staked out to lure the tiger to the hunter. I was as certain as I could be that those behind Luís’s murder were part of a drug network. If they thought I was onto them, they’d take steps to remove me. And, hopefully, expose themselves.

  The time factor made the latter course of action the only feasible one, but it had one huge, possibly fatal, drawback – the tiger often killed the goat. My first step must be to narrow the field of suspects. If I knew the direction the danger was coming from, I could take precautions, stacking the odds in my favour.

  From the end of the bar the muted notes of Land of Hope and Glory rose above the hum of conversation. Grant put down his glass and launched into his phone-answering routine, ‘Grant here …’ delivered at the usual full volume.

  He was my prime suspect. If I could engineer a visit to that orchid farm of his, I’d let him give me the guided tour and, while oohing and aahing at the orchids, I’d suss out security measures in preparation for a little unofficial trespassing of my own. Of my own, but not quite on my own. I’d have Gorgonzola with me to sniff out the presence of drugs. If she found any, I’d bag my tiger.

  The focus of my thoughts got off his stool and, phone clamped to ear, strode from bar to terrace doors and back shouting, ‘Bloody hell, what am I paying you for? Can’t you buggers bloody well handle it on your own?’ He snapped the phone shut with a final, ‘I’ll be up at the farm in fifteen minutes and if you’re still arsing about, you’ll be up shit creek.’

  This strong language elicited a muttered ‘Tut tut,’ from Dorothy Winterton, a not so muttered, ‘Well, really!’ from Celia Haxby and a secret smile of satisfaction from me. He’d played right into my hands. Now was the time to make my move. As he stormed towards me, I slipped off my stool. If Grant was behind Luís’s death, by showing interest in the farm I was putting my head in the tiger’s mouth, really upping the ante.

  ‘Hi there, Dave. Did I hear you say you had an orchid farm? How absolutely fascinating. I’d just love it if you would show me round.’

  Though it didn’t appear to be the right moment to make the request, I was gambling on the fact that that kind of man wouldn’t be able to resist a macho demonstration of kicking arse with his employees. I was right.

  ‘Well now, Debs, I thought you’d never ask. Told you I was available twenty-four/seven, didn’t I?’ The slight but unmistakable emphasis on ‘available’ hinted that he had something other than murder in mind.

  That, or he was a very good actor.

  Located in the hills above Funchal town, the orchid farm was approached via steep, narrow, twisting roads. Funchal is a vertical city, not of skyscrapers, but of houses seeming to grow out of the roofs of those below, on hillsides that would be considered too steep for building in most European countries. As we left the hotel zone on the coast, modern blocks of multi-storeys gave way to shuttered old villas sleeping behind ornate wrought-iron gates and high stucco walls half-concealed in rampant greenery. Higher still, we looked down on the red pantile roofs of white bungalows scattered across the hillside. At an uncultivated grassy patch thickly spattered with yellow and red nasturtiums and the white trumpets of convolvulus, Grant braked to a halt.

  ‘Great view from here. I always make a point of stopping.’ He pressed a button and the window on my side slid smoothly down. ‘Can you see, down in the harbour there?’ Under the pretext of pointing out the tiny replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria, he leant across me. One arm encircled my shoulders, the other pressed heavily on my breasts. I now realized that narrow twisting roads had one big advantage – Don Juans had to keep both hands on the wheel.

  I’ve developed a technique for extricating myself from such unwelcome attentions – a subtle version of what I believe in Scotland is called The Glasgow Kiss, a vicious and devastating technique of street fighting involving a sudden ramming of the head into an opponent’s face.

  ‘Really, where?’ I leant forward and flicked my head sideways, with gratifying results.

  ‘A-uh.’ Both arms were smartly removed.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…. Oh dear, was that your nose?’ A somewhat redundant question as both his hands were clasped to that facial feature.

  A muffled, ‘My fault, clumsy of me. Just pass me a tissue from the glove compartment.…’ A drop of blood trickled from behind the hands.

  I twittered apologies and proffered a succession of tissues while he dabbed at what could only be termed a self-inflicted injury.

  This little episode did nothing to improve his temper. It flared up five minutes later at the electronically operated gates of the orchid farm. Beeeeeeep. A furious blast on the horn was followed two seconds later by another strident BEEEEEEEEEEEP that bounced its way round the surrounding hills and valleys.

  ‘Christ, where is everybody? He jabbed at the horn again. ‘Have the buggers fallen asleep over the bloody CCTV screen?’

  That was interesting. Orchids are ten-a-penny in Madeira, beautiful, but not rare – or worth their weight in gold. Nobody was going to bother to raid the place and load a van with pots of orchids. There’d be the difficulty of selling them on, shipping them off the island without detection in a place where everybody knows everybody else and everybody else’s business. So, what was he protecting? Why did he need to know who was at his gates?

  The gates swung silently open. We shot through and bumped along a cobbled drive curving left through a tunnel of dark-leaved trees and bushes. I blinked in the sudden glare of sunlight as we drove out of the gloom and screeched to a halt in front of an old cottage with clumps of grass and houseleeks growing out of its faded pantiles. Through its open door I could see a computer and a fax machine. The adjoining open-sided concrete shed held only a stack of flat-pack cardboard boxes covering one end of a battered galvanized metal table and bins of discarded flower stems and heads. A line of wheeled trolley-carts contained strap-leaved plants in black plastic pots.

  I must say that I was a trifle disappointed. I’d somehow expected a showy display of orchids. On my arrival in Madeira, as part of the standard familiarization procedure at the start of a new mission, I’d visited Jardim Orchídea, a commercial orchid nursery. To draw in the visitor the sales area at the entrance had offered a tempting display of orchids and a stand of air plants, their flower spikes like red and yellow flames licking up from their pots. I’d spent a fascinating hour wandering through a mass display of orchids of every kind and colour. Tall-stemmed cymbidiums (I read the label) carpeted the ground in peach, pink, terracotta and cream. Exquisite yellow, orange, or white orchids clung to artificial-bark trees draped with Spanish moss. In one tree, a waterfall of white blossom tumbled down from a cre
vice and, from another, a spectacular blue orchid dangled long spaghetti-like roots.

  But there was nothing like that here, no trees with dainty orchids roosting on their branches like exotic birds, no colourful massed cymbidiums, no cobweb draperies of Spanish moss.

  ‘Gosh, this isn’t at all like Jardim Orchídea,’ I said somewhat tactlessly, considering the state of his temper. ‘Where are all the flowers?’

  Grant stopped dabbing his nose long enough to grind out, ‘This is a working farm, not a poofy flower shop, my girl.’ He flung himself out, slamming the door with a force that made the windows rattle, and strode across to the cottage-cum-office.

  Oh dear, off to a bad start. I got out and stood irresolutely beside the car listening to Grant spluttering profanities at increasing volume. Offensive to the ears, but while he was thus engaged it gave me the chance to have a little snoop around. I wandered casually over to the shed, sizing up the office door as I passed. That door was fairly new and of solid modern construction, certainly not of the same vintage as the cottage. Interestingly, in addition to the usual mortise lock, there were another two, top and bottom. Under the eaves, a shiny red burglar alarm box and CCTV cameras stood guard. Supplier and client records can, of course, be valuable, irreplaceable, but it all seemed a bit excessive. Was commercial espionage such a threat in the orchid business? Was he merely protecting his computer from industrial espionage?

  Or, was it a clever distraction from the real treasure house? If there’s a locked drawer, the general assumption is that there are valuables inside. The best way to keep something under wraps is to conceal it among ordinary objects that nobody would look at twice. I had a feeling that if I was going to find evidence of narcotics, it would not be in that heavily fortified office, but somewhere else on the farm. And that somewhere else was definitely not the packing shed. Any criminal activity would take place elsewhere, well out of view of workers who might talk out of turn.

  An overhead pulley system ran the length of the metal table. I put up my hand and gave the cable a tentative chug.

  ‘That carries the individual flower stems to the packers.’ Grant was standing behind me.

  I swung round. Busy with all those thoughts and theories, I hadn’t noticed that he’d got tired of inflicting verbal bloody noses on his minions. As if I had nothing else on my mind, I said, ‘I’d love to see this in action. When do the packers come back from their break?’

  ‘You’re too late. They finished a couple of hours ago.’ He saw my surprise and added, ‘Everything must be packed and sent off by midday.’

  ‘So that’s why you were at the market at six,’ I said.

  There was a short pause, both of us busy with our own thoughts. Was he thinking about what he’d really been up to?

  ‘That’s me, early to rise, early to bed.’ His eyes roved slowly over me.

  A shout of, ‘The vents are open now, boss,’ from the doorway at the far end of the shed distracted Grant, sparing me from what he was inevitably about to propose – a jolly romp in that early bed of his.

  ‘Open now, are they? That’s three bloody hours too late.’ He set off at a pace that had me trotting to keep up. ‘The flower spikes will be well and truly open by now. And it’s going to hit the bastards’ wage packets. That’s for sure.’

  I dodged round a trolley-cart that had been left in the middle of the floor. ‘What’s gone wrong, Dave?’

  He didn’t slacken his pace. ‘The lazy buggers didn’t check that the vents had opened in greenhouse number four. One thing cymbidiums don’t like is heat. And if they’re forming their spikes, that’s next season’s flowers done for.’

  A narrow dirt alleyway separated the packing shed from a terraced row of six huge greenhouses, each door crudely painted with a white number. Outside house number four, a pony-tailed man and a skinny youth in grubby T-shirt and shorts were shifting nervously from foot to foot waiting for the axe to fall.

  ‘Christ, the temperature’s sky high! The moisture’s bloody well running down the glass.’ Grant strode forward and slid open the greenhouse door. Hot humid air engulfed us. ‘Don’t just stand there, you cretins. Create a through-draught. Stir your arses and open the door at the other end.’ As the men scuttled past him, he planted a kick on the said arses.

  I hadn’t expected the greenhouse to be so big, about the length of a football pitch, at a rough guess. Rows and rows of cymbidiums, a sea of yellow, pink, and maroon, above strap-like green leaves stretched into the distance. Here was no attempt to prettify for the public with artificial bark branches. Practical metal staging and black plastic pots were the order of the day.

  While he charged up and down the rows examining the state of the flower spikes, I strolled casually towards the back of the greenhouse, stopping now and then to admire a particularly large and colourful bloom.

  ‘Do you mind if I take a photo of this one, Dave?’ I called. ‘It’s such a wonderful shade of green. I’ve never seen a flower that colour.’

  ‘Fine by me, Debs,’ he sounded pre-occupied. ‘We don’t keep things under wraps on this orchid farm.’

  I glanced in his direction. He was peering closely at a white-flowered plant, paying no attention to me. I raised the camera, positioned a stem and two flower heads artistically on the screen and pressed the button. If Grant took an unwelcome interest in my photographic activity, it would be something to show him. A general shot carefully featured the two employees who had staggered in with an enormous fan and were manhandling it to point at an angle across the greenhouse. I’d email it to London. Criminal records might dig up something.

  Behind them through the open doorway was a flat-roofed low building with no visible windows. If I was correct in my theory that the office dripping with security gadgets was a clever decoy to lure the inquisitive and distract attention from somewhere else, this just might be that somewhere else.

  Grant was making his way towards me carrying the white-flowered cymbidium. Even at a distance I could see damaged brown areas on the petals. I’d ask him some innocent questions, then slip in a loaded one, like a bowler sending the batsman some deceptively easy balls and then delivering a googly. His reaction to that loaded question might tell me a lot.

  I gestured towards the sea of flowers. ‘I was just wondering how you increase your stock. Besides buying in, I mean. Do you grow from seed or take cuttings?’

  His smile faded. Had I irritated him by betraying my ignorance of orchid propagation? To show him I wasn’t totally ignorant, I rattled on, ‘When I went round Jardim Orchídea I saw a laboratory for growing new orchids in test tubes. You can look through a window and see all the equipment – microscopes, ultra-violet lights, that sort of thing. Do you have anything like that, Dave?’

  Behind me a loud vibrating hum was followed by a blast of cool air as the fan started up. It seemed to startle Grant too, for he dropped the pot of cymbidiums he was carrying. He stood there scowling down at the precious specimen, at the snapped-off flower stems and chunks of bark scattered across the floor. It was as if I’d bowled the googly and uprooted the stumps.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I cried, rushing forward, ‘that must have been – er, must be – a valuable plant.’ I crouched down and attempted to gather up the broken stems. ‘I shouldn’t have been asking you all these questions and taking your mind off what you were doing.’

  He took a deep breath, pulling himself together with a visible effort. ‘Not your fault, Debs. Nothing you said. Those bloody ham-fisted layabouts nearly toppled the fan onto that bench of orchids.’ He grabbed the empty pot and hurled it at Pony-tail’s head. ‘Don’t just stand there, you lazy bastards. Get a brush and sweep up this mess.’

  As the employees took the opportunity to beat a strategic retreat, I got to my feet, not quite sure what to do with my sorry bouquet.

  ‘Er, what will I do with these?’

  Grant stared at me, his mind elsewhere, then with a brusque, ‘Just throw them on the floor. They’re no use to me,’ h
e turned away. ‘Keep them. Stick them in a vase. Do what you bloody well like with them.’

  Something had struck a raw nerve, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  ‘C’mon, I’ve got to get back to Funchal.’ He walked briskly back through the greenhouse.

  I took a last look at that nondescript, windowless building framed in the doorway at the rear. That, not the office with its high-tech security, would be my objective when I paid the orchid farm a second visit. And when I came, it would be with Gorgonzola.

  On the drive back to Funchal, Grant was uncharacteristically silent, unnervingly so. Where was the chat-up routine, where the yawn-making anecdotes of one-upmanship, the endless tales of how he had scored over business rivals? Was he still brooding over whatever had upset him in the greenhouse?

  I certainly was. I didn’t for one minute believe that his outburst had been provoked by his employees’ clumsiness with the fan. Was it something I’d said? I’d brought up once again the name of the rival nursery, Jardim Orchídea. Was it just a case of business jealousy? He’d certainly been a bit touchy earlier when I’d made that innocent comparison between his place and the Jardim. ‘Poofy flower shop’, he’d called it. But if it wasn’t simply a case of warring businesses.… I leant my head against the headrest and thought about it….

  ‘Where do you want me to drop you? It’s the second time I’ve asked.’ The irritation in his voice was unmistakable.

  I jolted awake. ‘Sorry, must have been day-dreaming. Anywhere near the market will do. I need to buy some fruit and vegetables before it closes.’ And I did. One of the cardinal rules of undercover work is never to let your guard drop. You must behave as if the enemy has you under surveillance 24/7.