Five minutes before the start of the concert, the flow of arrivals had slowed to a trickle. The persistent rain was beginning to penetrate the thick canopy of the kapok tree, several large drips finding their mark on the back of my neck. A small group turned in at the gates. One of them was holding up an extra large multi-coloured umbrella of the sort much favoured by golfers. I stepped out of the semi-shelter provided by the kapok tree and peered through the dark and the rain.
‘Not so fast! Slow down, for Christ’s sake,’ wailed a bedraggled figure trailing behind the others. Unmistakably Zara. She was tottering along on impossibly high heels that could have been designer-made to catch and skid on the wet cobbles.
‘You’ve only yourself to blame with those silly shoes.’ Celia’s voice issued from beneath an enveloping oilskin slicker.
Seemingly oblivious to his soaked shoulders, Charles was holding the umbrella in a chivalrous and totally unnecessary gesture over Dorothy Winterton’s old-fashioned transparent raincoat and hood.
‘Ah, there you are, Deborah. I’m afraid we’re a lot later than you suggested. Put it down to young madam here.’ She glowered in the direction of Zara’s limping figure.
‘The sodding taxi stopped miles away. And then someone,’ – Zara shot a vicious look at Dorothy – ‘someone said they knew a shortcut that turned out to be a dead end and—Aaaagh.’
Charles had tilted the umbrella, sending a cold douche down her neck. ‘Well she got us here, didn’t she?’ he snapped. ‘Which is better than you did, dragging along behind us whining and moaning. And anyway, who kept the taxi waiting at the hotel?’
Things were going according to plan. And now that the doors were about to close, those overflow chairs at the back of the church were sure to be ours.
‘Never mind, you’re here now.’ I ushered them into the porch, and handed over the tickets.
‘Quickly please.’ The girl at the ticket table held open the side door. ‘The concert begins. These seats here.’ The girl indicated five cane-seated chairs lined up behind the wooden pews. Perfect.
Celia surged along the row to the end seat, then hesitated. ‘These chairs are a leetle miniscule, not at all comfortable for normal people, though they might suit a stick insect.’ She glanced sideways at Zara.
‘Stand, if you like, Celia.’ Dorothy settled herself on the next seat.
Zara hesitated. Decision made, she stepped forward, and with a smirk claimed the seat next to Dorothy.
Charles pushed past me. ‘Hey, I wanted to—’
‘I’ll take the end seat,’ I said, leaving him no choice but to sit next to Zara. I had the feeling that it was only a matter of time before pent-up resentments exploded. They might sit out the concert in glowering silence, but if I kept the party together afterwards, I’d see results.
An air of expectancy rippled through the audience as the orchestra filed in and took their places. The conductor raised his arms in a signal of readiness, the faces of the young musicians tensed in anticipation. Zara Porter-Browne studied her coral-pink fingernails and yawned.
‘Manners!’ Dorothy dug her elbow hard into the culprit’s ribs.
Charles sniggered.
The loud thrumming chords of In a Persian Market filled the church. Impervious to Dorothy’s frowns and disapproving looks, Ms Porter-Browne yawned and sighed throughout the highly polished performance. Charles Mason didn’t seem to be enjoying the concert either. Sideways glances, furrowed brow and the couple of seconds delay in joining in the appreciative applause after each item on the programme, showed that his thoughts were elsewhere. Things were simmering nicely. It would all come to a head when we walked back together through that maze of narrow streets.
We were amongst the first out when the concert ended. The rain, though not as persistent, was still heavy enough for umbrella and raincoats. Zara had neither, and almost immediately my plan started to unravel.
‘I’m going to bag myself a taxi,’ she whined, and stepped out from under the shelter of the porch.
To keep the group together I’d have to act now. ‘Hold on a minute, Zara,’ I put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘You won’t get one. The taxis out in the street will all be pre-booked. You can share my raincoat.’ I turned to the others. ‘I suggest we all walk down to the avenida near Blandy’s Wine Lodge. It’ll take less than ten minutes and we’ll be sure to get a taxi there.’
Celia adjusted the hood of her oilskin. ‘Well, count us out. One of those pre-booked taxis outside will be ours. I had a word with the driver when he dropped us. We’re going to have dinner in the Old Town…. Dinner’s on you, Dorothy,’ floated back as they set off towards the gates.
At a stroke I’d lost two of the group, but I consoled myself that there was still the chance of Charles and Zara having a blazing row. All it needed was a little spark, and I was sure I could provide that. In the event, however, I didn’t have to.
With Charles and his umbrella in the lead we came out of the gates and turned left into the cul-de-sac, lit only by the occasional globe lamp on a wall-bracket. The distinctive Haxby silhouette was making its way down the line of parked yellow taxis interrogating each driver with a booming, ‘Taxi for Haxby and Winterton?’ Dorothy, hunched in her clear plastic raincoat, trailed behind radiating impatience and complaining querulously, ‘If you’d made a note of the number, Celia, we’d be on our way to the restaurant by now, instead of getting drenched. I’m going back to the church. There’ll be a phone there.’
She swung round and cannoned into Zara and me. Joined like Siamese twins under the protection of my raincoat, we performed an awkward little dance and just managed to keep our feet.
Zara lost her temper. ‘Watch what you’re doing, you crazy cow!’
I had to admire how Charles swiftly turned the occasion to his advantage. As Dorothy staggered and almost fell, he steadied her and said smoothly, ‘Can I offer you my arm, Mrs Winterton?’
Zara’s face contorted with rage. ‘You’re always sucking up to her, you prick. You strung me along when you thought I was an heiress, but I saw through you. All that talk about wine’s as fake as that so-called Rolex of yours. C’mon, Debs. Let’s go.’ She moved off dragging me after her. ‘You’re only after the old bag’s money,’ she yelled over her shoulder.
This dramatic storming-off was somewhat marred by a sideways lurch and a sharp cry as her spiky heels skidded on the wet cobbles. Gripping the raincoat, I stumbled after her. As we left the cul-de-sac I glanced back. People were now streaming out of the church gates, filling the narrow street, threading their way between the parked taxis. All I could see of Charles was the multi-coloured umbrella forcing its way after us through the crowd.
We turned into the narrow Rua dos Aranhas, more a lane than a street. With its peeling stuccoed walls, dilapidated shutters and gridded windows it was a decrepit survivor of old Funchal. The rain, the soft golden glow from the Victorian-style lamps, the cobbles, the tiny shops, the storeyed houses – we could have been in the England of Dickens. Zara, oblivious to ambience, was treating me to a vicious character assassination of conman Charles. I made the appropriate noises and listened with half an ear, hoping to tune in on something that would help me to come to a decision about Mason. Conman, yes, but was dealing in drugs another of his little enterprises?
‘Hey, hold on a minute.’ The shout came from behind.
Recognizing Charles’s voice, I slowed down, Zara speeded up. As we tussled to retain our due share of the raincoat, he caught up.
‘Right, you bitch. Take back what you said about me, or—’
‘Or what?’ Zara sneered. ‘You’ll sue me?’
Fifty metres away, headlights sent shadows flitting across the shuttered façades as a car turned into the street.
As Charles advanced towards her, I tugged hard at the raincoat. ‘Car coming. We’d better keep in.’
The twin beams caught us. I tugged again at the raincoat and Zara allowed herself to be pulled towards a doorway.
He showed no sign of moving, didn’t seem to hear me. He was glaring at Zara. ‘Sue you? I’ll—’
But he never completed the sentence. Afterwards I pieced together the sequence of events, but at the time it was a confusion of scrambled images and sensations: in my ears the roar of an accelerating engine, a woman’s scream; the multi-coloured umbrella soaring into the air like an exotic bird in flight; a vicious blow to my back that sent me staggering forward into the path of the car; a sickening stab of pain shooting through my injured shoulder as I slammed onto the cobbles.
I might have blacked out for a moment, for the next thing I was aware of was a heavy weight pinning down my legs and a babble of English and Portuguese voices.
‘It didn’t stop! It didn’t stop!’
‘I’ve phoned for an ambulance.’
‘This one’s dead.’
Who was dead? Where was I? Couldn’t remember, couldn’t remember. For a confused moment I was back in Monte Gardens. I forced my eyes open … glistening cobbles and a forest of legs. Not Monte Gardens, then.
Trousered knees knelt on the wet road and a moustachioed face loomed close to mine. ‘Don’t try to move, senhora, in case there are injuries. The ambulance will soon be here.’ Someone patted my hand reassuringly.
The weight on my legs shifted and a shaky voice that I only just recognized as Zara’s wobbled, ‘Somebody pushed me … somebody pushed me … somebody pushed me,’ as if the gramophone needle had stuck on an old vinyl record.
A woman’s voice, authoritative, professional, ‘You must stay calm, senhora.’
‘Calm, calm?’ Zara’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘You expect me to be calm when someone’s just tried to murder me! I was pushed, I tell you. I was pushed!’ Hysterical sobs rendered the rest of her words unintelligible.
That violent shove between my shoulders … I saw again in the stark illumination of the headlights, Charles Mason holding aloft the umbrella in a ghastly imitation of the Jack Vettriano’s painting The Singing Butler.
‘This one’s dead.’ Not Zara. Mason? The wail of sirens, at first so faint that they’d barely registered, was now loud, very loud. The forest of legs shuffled out of my field of vision to be replaced by two pairs of navy trousers tucked into military-style leather boots. Blue strobes flickered on the green-shuttered façades of the houses on the other side of the street, colour-washing the pale plaster. Gentle hands eased me onto a stretcher and carried me to the waiting ambulance. As the stretcher tilted, I caught a glimpse of a still form sprawled on the cobbles. A limp hand stuck out from underneath the covering sheet. Circling the wrist was the metal strap of an expensive-looking watch, its face starred and crazed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Somebody wanted me dead, and if Charles Mason hadn’t been with me, he would still be alive. I feel responsible. I—’ The catch in my voice took me by surprise. I trailed to a halt. I hadn’t even liked the slick conman who preyed on vulnerable females. But burnt into my memory was the image of the still form, the broken watch. I swallowed hard.
The comandante stared at me thoughtfully. ‘Like that cat of yours, it seems you have the nine lives. You have received no serious injury. But you are in shock and must not blame yourself. You were not the driver of the car.’ Long red fingernails drummed a tattoo on the desk. ‘Have you considered that perhaps this Charles Mason had played the confidence trick once too often and his victim decided to eliminate him, to take him out?’ She seized one of the flowers and whipped it out of its vase. ‘This is the rotten apple, the bad egg hiding under the cover of its so beautiful companions.’ I hadn’t noticed before, but this flamboyant orange and blue crest had withered to brown shrivelled tufts standing up at a rakish angle in a dishevelled Mohican hairdo. ‘You see, my dear Sshmit, when something is intolerable, it has to be disposed of.’ Crack. Crack. The snapped-off head and two pieces of stalk vanished into the waste bin beneath her desk. ‘Now, Sshmit,’ – she dusted one palm off against the other – ‘just, perhaps, you and that silly girl were attacked to create a smokescreen, lead us up the garden path, as you say. Yes, what we have to consider is, who among your little group of suspects might have wanted to get rid of Mason?’
‘Porter-Browne couldn’t possibly know that Mason would be in position for a hit-and-run “accident”, and she was almost a victim herself, so that leaves Grant, Haxby and Winterton,’ I said, ‘but I don’t really think any them would go as far as to—’
‘Ah, Sshmit, too much thinking, that is your trouble.’ Frowning, she rearranged the remaining blooms, inspecting each closely for signs of possible deterioration. ‘To expose the rotten heart of a fruit, you must peel off the unblemished skin and cut down to the canker. Yes, my dear Sshmit, you must act. How, I leave to you.’
Towards the back of the garden, half-hidden from the road, there’s a ramshackle trellised arbour, a favourite retreat for Gorgonzola and myself on a hot day. I stroked her soft fur and mulled over my latest interview with the comandante. ‘It’s all very well, G, but thinking is important, isn’t it? How can I act if I haven’t thought it all out first?’
Her moth-eaten tail swished a drowsy agreement.
‘Which of us was the intended target, G? Me, Zara, or Charles?’ That car had made no attempt to avoid Charles, though he must have been clearly visible in the headlights; somebody had definitely shoved me into its path; and Zara too – I heard again those screams of, ‘I was pushed, I tell you. I was pushed!’
Yes, who was the intended target? If I could figure that one out, I could perhaps set a trap that would expose the ‘rotten heart under the unblemished skin’ as the comandante had so picturesquely put it.
Assuming that she was right and Mason was the target, who would want him dead? I’d seen him try out his wine scam on David Grant and get the brush-off, but there’d been no animosity on Grant’s part, only boredom. No motive there.
Could Dorothy Winterton have wanted him dead? Mason had pestered her on several occasions. She’d appeared to be listening intently, so intently, in fact, that at the time I’d thought about stepping in to save her from a financial mugging. But even if, privately, she thought he was a boring pest, she’d hardly go as far as organizing an attempt on his life. There were one or two things about her that didn’t add up, but as for her being a cold-blooded murderer….
Celia Haxby had a motive. She didn’t have much time for Charles, had made her dislike plain on several occasions, but dislike doesn’t normally lead to murder.
I’d originally ruled out Zara as being behind the hit-and-run, on the grounds that she was a fellow victim of attempted murder. But she had motives enough – anger, resentment, revenge. Her screams had been convincing – but was it all just a clever act? Now, that was a thought. I’d been deliberately pushed into the path of that car, no doubt about that. But had she? We only had her word for it. Eyewitness accounts of the incident had been so conflicting as to be totally unreliable, and all had focused on the car’s impact with Mason.
‘Am I on the right trail, G?’
There was no help from that quarter. G’s furry sides rose and fell in sleepy rhythm. I detected something very like a snore. Stretched out on the soft cushion, G’s legs twitched in pursuit of dream prey.
I continued with that train of thought. Nobody, but nobody, had come forward to say they’d seen either of us being pushed into the path of the car, though some eyewitnesses had reported a rowdy gang of youths barging their way down the street. So Zara could have organized Mason’s death. Had I been expendable, the attack on me a convenient smokescreen giving credence to her story?
But what if I had indeed been the target? I thought back to that night – the darkness, the rain, Zara and I sharing the same raincoat – from behind it would have been impossible to distinguish who was who … so Zara could have been pushed. She could very well be speaking the truth. I was back to where I’d started.
G, too, seemed to be ha
ving her problems. Once again her body quivered, her paws lunging in hot pursuit of a rapidly escaping victim.
It was all very well for the comandante to wave her hand with the flourish of a conjuror about to produce a rabbit out of a hat. She had demanded that I track down the culprit, but how, just how, was I to set a trap that would expose the bad egg, the rotten apple in the barrel? Grant, Winterton, Haxby, Porter-Browne – there was no hard evidence against any of them, yet one, I was sure, had masterminded Charles Mason’s death. I stared at the clump of Madonna lilies, at the crystalline texture of their unblemished white petals and eased my stiff shoulder into a more comfortable position against a cushion.
Clang clank clang clank clang clank. Faint but familiar, clang clank clang clank clang clank. A blue light strobed through the tangle of magnolias, camellias and other greenery that obscured my view of the road. With a screech of brakes, what could only be Raimundo’s wreck of a car pulled up across the driveway. Silence descended as the hideous metallic clatter ceased. The blue light was still flashing as the eeeeeee of the driver’s door being wrestled open was followed by a thwunk as it banged shut.
Alarmed by these indications of an emergency, I carefully lifted recumbent Gorgonzola off my knee and rose to my feet as Raimundo burst into view and panted to a halt in front of me. This surprising flurry of activity from someone so laid-back could only mean there’d been a major development. Luís dead? Mason’s murderer arrested?
‘I–hhh–I–hhh—’ The seriously unfit Ribeiro struggled for breath. ‘I–hhh–have to tell you—’
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