Suspects All !

by Helen Mulgray

  ‘I look at the engine, I curse and swear and kick the car. They think that old Raimundo has broken down again. If they offer to help, I tell them I am waiting for the garage truck. They go away. They forget they have seen me. So you see, senhora, no problema.’

  I climbed out of the car, feeling for the rucksack, but it edged out of reach as Gorgonzola’s shoulders heaved and one paw scrabbled to get a grip on the opening. Another heave of the shoulders exerted pressure against the zip.

  ‘You’ll get your chance to explore when we get near that storeroom of Grant’s.’ Hard-heartedly I stuffed her back in. ‘Too many temptations out there.’ I closed the rucksack and slung it onto my good shoulder.

  Raimundo flung open the driver’s door as if about to join me on my expedition, then slammed it shut again. ‘The Ogre say, “Do not let that one out of your sight, Ribeiro. I wish to know everything she does”.’ One eye closed in what I could have sworn was a conspiratorial wink. ‘But I think it is better that you tell me everything when you return.’ He produced a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Someone has to remain here in case there is need for a quick speedaway, yes?’

  I tried to make amends for my earlier irritation. ‘Yes, it is better that I tell you things when I return. We make a good team, Raimundo. I’ve no idea how long I will be. Could be an hour, could be two.’

  Fifty metres up the road, I glanced back. The only evidence that the car was there was the glowing red tip of Raimundo’s cigarette.

  On my previous visit with Grant I’d noted a dirt track running roughly in the direction of where I judged the greenhouses and the mysterious building to be. On checking it out on the aerial survey map, obtained courtesy of the police department, I saw that the track curved in a circle close to the grey rectangles of the greenhouses and the dark rectangle of the shed, before continuing to an abandoned forestry clearing. On the map the narrow strip separating track from shed was fuzzy and indistinct. I could be faced with an electric fence or impenetrable thorny hedge – or anything. I wouldn’t know till I got there.

  First things first. I had to find the over-grown entrance to the track. That wasn’t going to be easy with no moon to provide even the faintest light. I began picking my way uphill. After about five minutes my irritation with Raimundo returned. What the hell had he meant by ‘a little way’ before the farm?

  In the end, I found the track by chance. I’d stopped to listen for sounds that could mean somebody else on the prowl, and stood, eyes closed in concentration, ears straining. Only the sshhh of the wind in the trees, a faint hum of traffic on the motorway far below, the smell of damp earth.

  I peered into the darkness at the side of the road wishing for G’s night vision, and took another tentative step forward. On that first visit I’d noted that the track began beside a patch of white Arum lilies and wild garlic growing in a nearby ditch. Now, the pungent smell of crushed garlic rose from the ground at my feet. I risked a quick flash of the pencil torch. In the beam, over to the right, was my marker patch of arum lilies. First obstacle overcome, all I had to do now was follow the track.

  It took a lot longer than I’d expected to pick my way over the rutted surface and emerge cautiously from the belt of trees. From this point, scrubby bushes struggled for life in a tangle of tall grass on either side of the dirt road. A short distance ahead, glass glimmered greyly in the faint light from the now rising moon. If I left the track as it approached the end of the greenhouses, I’d be close to that mysterious building with its secrets.

  When I was level with the last of the glasshouses, I stepped off the track and waded through the tangle of grass and scrub towards the black rectangle of the building I’d dubbed ‘the laboratory’. In front of me was a rusty chain-link fence. I hooked my fingers in its links, tilted my head back and assessed it for climbability. Four metres high, I estimated, with no possibility of a toehold. Shit. I hadn’t brought wire-cutters. In the hope that there might a padlocked gate, I made my way along the fence. Picklocks are something I always carry with me. But in the strengthening moonlight I could see that the fence ran on uninterrupted by a gate. I stared through it at the concrete wall of the ‘laboratory’. So near but yet so far. Stymied.

  If I made my way back to the road and the main entrance, I’d be faced with electronically operated gates and the cameras at the cottage-office. Even if there wasn’t a security guard to raise the alarm, there’d be a filmed record of my visit. I pondered my next move. The chainlink fence was the only option, as in keeping with the shed’s lowly status, there were no such CCTV cameras covering it. But without wire-cutters.…

  The rucksack on my back heaved. Paws scrabbled none too gently. Gorgonzola had had enough of inactivity.

  I put the rucksack on the ground. ‘OK, G, head only. I’m not letting you out.’ I pulled open the zip a few centimetres.

  Like an underground missile leaving its silo when the doors slide open, G launched herself skyward. Caught off balance, struggling to stay on my feet, I clutched at the chain mesh. Pain stabbed through my shoulder. G had made a neat four-point landing at the base of the fence. I made a grab for her. Too late.

  On the principle that she might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb – or for the feline equivalent, a blackbird as for a sparrow – she made a bolt for it and shot through a rabbit-sized hole in the mesh at the base of the fence.

  ‘Come here,’ I hissed.

  She scratched at one ear, then the other, signifying the onset of deafness.

  ‘At once,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  She stared at me, pupils wide, as if trying in vain to read my lips, then began a meticulous brush-wash of her face with her foreleg.

  ‘If I could get through that hole, G, I’d—I’d be on the other side of the fence,’ I finished slowly.

  I knelt down and scraped at the earth. It was soft and crumbly, and there was already a gap of several centimetres between mesh and soil … so if I managed to scoop out a shallow depression, I’d be able to wriggle under the wire. Unfortunately, another omission from tonight’s breaking and entering kit was a collapsible spade. I rummaged through the outer pockets of my rucksack and came up with a knife and a plastic bottle of water. If I cut up the bottle to make a scoop…. No sooner thought than done.

  The earth shifted easily and when I reckoned that the depth and width of the hole were sufficient, I pushed the rucksack under the wire. Now to squeeze myself after it. I dug in both elbows, ignored the pain in my shoulder and began to wriggle through. For several heart-stopping moments, when only my head and shoulders were on the other side, it seemed that I’d misjudged. I clawed at the long grass trying to pull my body forward. After several attempts I gave up, exhausted.

  No doubt about it, I was stuck. I lay still, damp grass tickling my nostrils, red earth smearing my cheeks, trying to keep calm, trying to block out of what would happen when I was discovered by Grant’s men once daylight came.

  G’s rough tongue licked my ear. That was enough to steady me. I took a deep breath, arched my back, rammed my toes into the ground, and heaved. I was through.

  I lay there for a moment, biting back the pain, trembling with relief, then gathered up the rucksack. G twined herself round my legs, purring softly, consumed, I’d like to think, by guilt.

  ‘No use being sorry after the event,’ I murmured not too sharply. After all, without her I wouldn’t have found the hole, so I had her to thank for getting to the other side of the fence.

  I stood listening for any indication that my presence had been detected. G’s body tensed against my legs, her ears pricked as she tuned into faint rustlings in the long grass. I pulled her lead out of my pocket and clipped it on.

  ‘Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin,’ I whispered, giving the lead a sharp tug.

  We made a slow circuit of the windowless building, checking the far side, unseen on my previous visit, for alarms, wires, floodlights. Nothing. The only entry point was the
door. Shielding the lock with my body, I risked a quick flash of my torch. My heart sank. I’d been expecting a keyhole padlock, one that my picklocks could deal with, no matter how intricate. But this was a four-number combination type. My only hope was that repetition breeds carelessness – often it’s just the middle two numbers that are moved up or down one or two positions. I held the pen torch between my teeth so that the beam played on the figures 1246. I pushed the middle two numbers anti-clockwise one position and tried the hasp. No luck. I pushed them anti-clockwise again, on the off-chance that Grant had flicked the numbers twice for ‘security’. I tugged at the hasp once more. Still no luck. There wasn’t time to work through all the numbers. This time I’d try moving clockwise from 1246, but if that didn’t work, I’d have to call it a day. I flicked the tumblers once and pulled, twice and pulled. It didn’t open. I’d failed.

  I tugged at the hasp in frustration and detected a slight movement. There was just the chance that one of the tumblers was slightly out of line. I turned it back a fraction. Success. I swung the hasp sideways, lifted the padlock from its metal hoop and eased open the door.

  As the door cleared the frame, a thin line of light seeped through the widening gap. Someone was in there. I froze, then relaxed. The padlocked door was a sure sign that there couldn’t be anyone working inside. I stepped quickly in, yanked Gorgonzola after me and shut the door. If anybody had seen the light and came to investigate, I was trapped.

  My first reaction was disappointment. The shed was merely a horticultural lab. Suspended from the ceiling by short chains, powerful fluorescent tubes with intensifying reflectors shone down on metal shelving containing rows of glass jam jars. Out of each white plastic lid sprouted a blob of blue cotton wool. I lifted up a jar for a closer look. Tiny plantlets, probably orchids of some kind, jostled for growing space in a greyish jelly.

  Behind me a small refrigerator hummed into life, the sound startlingly loud in the enclosed space. I put down the jar, opened the fridge door and peered inside. Lidded specimen tubes filled every shelf. I unscrewed one and tipped out the contents. On my palm lay a tiny glass phial full of microscopic seeds. I returned it to its container and sent G off on a sniff-around while I had a closer look at a filtered-air cabinet of the type I’d seen at the Jardim Orchidea. In it was a cotton mask such as surgeons use, and a few jam jars, some empty, some lidded, containing a couple of centimetres of the jelly substance. On one end of the adjoining bench, a honeycomb of closed tubes rotated almost imperceptibly in a strange circular machine. The other end of the bench was fitted up as a mini kitchen with a pressure cooker, a blender, a hot water urn and an electric ring. Next to these were more jam jars, a bottle of bleach and a pair of green kitchen gloves.

  With a soft thump Gorgonzola landed beside the kitchen gloves. There’d been no croon that signified a drug find.

  I tickled behind her ears. ‘No luck, eh.’

  No luck for me either. I took a last look round. The building was a laboratory, all right, but it looked as if all Grant was up to was propagating his orchids. It had been a complete waste of time.

  I clipped on G’s lead in case she took it into her head to go AWOL again, flicked round the padlock tumblers, and we trotted back to the fence. I tied the lead to my ankle while I spent a minute or two deepening the hole, then squeezed under the mesh.

  ‘Your turn now, G,’ I said and rolled over, expecting her to stroll through the DJ-sized gap.

  She stood stiff-legged and mutinous, with clearly no intention of moving.

  ‘Come on.’ I tugged sharply at the lead.

  Her response was to stick her rear in the air, brace her forelegs and narrow her eyes.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ I hissed. ‘Why are you behaving like that? No, you can’t investigate all these intriguing sounds and smells. OK, I know you’ve had a nightmare car journey. OK, you’ve been put on a lead and set a boringly simple task. But we can’t risk being here any longer.’

  None so deaf as those who don’t want to hear.

  Then, I’m ashamed to admit, stress got the better of me. A mighty tug of the lead dragged G under the fence by force majeure. With one quick movement I bundled her into the depths of the rucksack and zipped it firmly closed. Before I started back, I filled in the hole as best I could and camouflaged the disturbed soil by uprooting a large clump of grass and dumping it on top. That would have to do.

  While I’d been gone, Raimundo had been assiduously working his way through his endless supply of evil-smelling cigarettes, filling the car with noxious fumes. As soon as I flung myself onto the back seat and pulled the door closed behind me, he gunned the engine into ear-shattering life.

  He twisted round. ‘Mission accomplished, senhora?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ I coughed as the smoke caught at my lungs.

  ‘The comandante, she will ask me, “Ribeiro, where did she go? What did she do?” so we must please the comandante, eh? You must tell me what you want her to know. Heh, heh, heh.’

  I gave him a carefully edited account of my night’s work. ‘… but I didn’t find anything that would interest the policía. Only rows of orchid plants,’ I finished.

  ‘She will be disappointed,’ he shouted above the din. ‘That is when we tiptoe on the eggs.’

  He spun the wheel in a tight U-turn of the getaway-type much favoured in American movies. The car lurched as a front wheel mounted the low bank separating the road from a water-filled ditch. He didn’t seem to notice.

  As we jolted back onto the road and clang-clanked our way down towards Funchal, I reviewed my actions from the moment I’d entered the lab … I’d left no trace that anyone had been inside the building, put everything I’d touched back in its place, taken care to flick round those padlock combination numbers exactly twice. Yes, I was confident I’d covered my tracks.

  Then came a disquieting thought: I had turned those tumblers anticlockwise, hadn’t I? Well, it wasn’t important. Grant himself wouldn’t be sure which way he’d turned them. I settled back against the upholstery.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Celia Haxby picked up the leaflet on the table. ‘This looks interesting. The meaning of orquestra is clear enough, but what exactly is a bandolin?’

  ‘That’s Portuguese for mandolin,’ I said. ‘A mandolin concert’s held most Fridays in the English Church. The musicians are very young, some of them barely teenagers.’

  She turned to Dorothy. ‘Shall we give it a go then? We aren’t doing anything else on Friday night, are we?’

  Furrowed brow and pursed lips signalled the answer. ‘I’m not in favour of these amateur affairs, Celia. Just because children are involved, we’re supposed to suspend all our critical faculties. Fifteen euros are fifteen euros.’

  ‘Old skinflint,’ Zara muttered under her breath.

  ‘I’ve already got one booking for tonight,’ I said hastily. I flipped open my organizer. ‘Charles has bought a ticket. This will be the last concert for some time, because they’re off on tour round Europe.’

  ‘Well, that settles it.’ Celia delved for her purse in a newly purchased ethnic tote bag.

  At the mention of Charles’s name Zara’s eyes had narrowed. She sipped at her smoothie and studied Dorothy thoughtfully.

  Celia counted out her euros. ‘Why don’t the two of us make a night of it, Dorothy? Concert first, then dinner in the Old Town.’

  After a moment’s hesitation Dorothy nodded slowly. ‘We-ell, I suppose dining out would be a change from hotel food. But if the concert’s nothing to write home about, the meal’s on you.’

  I noted down their names. ‘That’s another two, then,’ I said, but not quite loudly enough to cover up Zara’s, ‘Grumpy old bat!’

  ‘That’s quite uncalled for!’ Dorothy snapped. ‘The less I see of you the better, young woman!’

  Zara reached into her skimpy shorts and produced a twenty euro note. ‘That’s just too bad ’cos I’m coming too.’

  Celia rolled her eyes. ‘Youth
nowadays! They should be—’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I broke in. ‘I’m sure we’ll all enjoy it. All the seats are unreserved. I’ll order a taxi to pick you up early so that you’ll arrive just before the doors open.’

  I hadn’t originally intended to go to the concert, but I couldn’t miss the chance to study these intriguing undercurrents. For instance, I was sure Zara had spent her euros solely in a desire to keep tabs on Charles Mason. And it was obvious that Charles’s sole interest in Dorothy Winterton was to charm that old lady into buying into his latest scam.

  Rain had been threatening all day. Now the fine drizzle had turned to a heavy downpour. Already water was coursing its way in a mini torrent along the gutters. I shrugged deeper into my raincoat, and quickened my step. I’d set off early to ensure I was in place to meet the taxi at the church door and hand out the tickets. The English Church was to be found in a maze of narrow streets lined with picturesquely distressed two-storey houses, the pavements so narrow that two people couldn’t pass.

  I turned off Rua da Carreira into a cobbled cul-de-sac. On my right, behind a high wall topped by railings entwined with a thick old vine, lay the extensive grounds of the English Church. The brass plate inscribed The Parsonage, the pillared portico of the church entrance, the neo-classical Georgian dome of the church itself, all evidence that English residents of Madeira in the past had done their best to make this corner of a foreign field a piece of Home.

  Though it was forty minutes before the concert was due to begin and the doors had not yet opened, taxis were already queuing to drop off their passengers. I joined the huddle of those sheltering from the rain under the spreading branches of the giant kapok tree in front of the church and looked round for my little group, but there was no sign of Celia and the others by the time the doors opened at 8.30 and the crowd surged in. At 8.45, they still hadn’t appeared: there was little chance now of finding five seats together. In fact, it would suit my plans perfectly if they arrived really late, as then we’d be assigned the overflow chairs at the very back. In the jostle for the seats I had a hunch that Charles would manoeuvre himself next to Dorothy. That would undoubtedly precipitate an interesting reaction. When tempers are lost, tongues are unguarded; some onion layers might well be unpeeled. And if I could narrow the field by eliminating Mason and/or Porter-Browne from my list of suspects….