Suspects All !

by Helen Mulgray

  I waited impatiently for enlightenment.

  He drew a deep breath. ‘Senhora, I have to tell you that—’ A hacking smoker’s cough engulfed the rest of the sentence.

  Disturbed from her slumbers, G opened a disapproving eye. Mystified, I watched as he fumbled for his handcuffs and whipped them from his belt.

  ‘I have to make an arrest of a dangerous female criminal, senhora.’ He struggled to suppress another bout of coughing.

  So there had been a major development. At last, a breakthrough. Who was about to be arrested – Haxby, Winterton or Porter-Browne?

  ‘Who is it? Where is she? Let’s go.’ In my excitement the words tumbled out.

  Raimundo Ribeiro pulled himself up to his full one metre seventy. ‘She is here, she is you, Deborah Smith. Heh, heh, heh.’ He brandished the handcuffs.

  I stared at him, not quite taking it in, then sat down heavily on the arbour seat. Just in time, Gorgonzola took hasty evasive action, streaking off to claw her way up the wisteria to the safety of the veranda.

  The handcuffs clinked as they swung slowly to and fro in front of my eyes. ‘Heh, heh, heh. Your accomplice has made her escape, I see.’

  ‘I’m under arrest? But, but, but …’

  He grinned, ‘But I think we not be needing these.’ He tucked the handcuffs back into his belt, extracted a pen and notebook from his top pocket and flicked through the pages. ‘Comandante Figueira said, “Ribeiro, bring in the inglesa. There has been an accusation”.’

  ‘Accusation? What accusation?’ I squawked.

  He scribbled in his notebook. ‘Now, senhora, I read out what I am writing. When arrested on suspicion of breaking into the premises of Senhor David Grant, Exotic Flower Importer & Exporter, the suspect said nothing.’ Several horizontal strokes heavily underlined the last word. One eyelid drooped in a slow exaggerated wink.

  So not only had the break-in been discovered, the identity of the perpetrator was known. This latest evidence of my incompetence must have infuriated the comandante, especially as she’d have to think of a way of getting me off the hook. Even more disturbing was the thought that the easiest way out for the comandante would be for her to send me straight home to England. Afterwards, she’d inform Grant that I’d got wind of my impending arrest and fled the country.

  Raimundo snapped shut the notebook. ‘Come, senhora. The more the comandante waits, the angrier she will be.’ He wagged a roguish finger. ‘She is a woman who does not like to be kept waiting, eh?’

  I followed him to the car. At the gates I looked back. Like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, Gorgonzola’s disembodied face was peering out from among the racemes of purple-blue wisteria. But she wasn’t grinning.

  ‘The back seat for prisoners! Heh, heh, heh.’ Raimundo slammed the door shut and got behind the wheel, but didn’t start the engine.

  We sat there, blue strobe light flashing, while passers-by cast curious glances into the car. All sense of urgency seemed to have evaporated. He fished for his battered pack of cigarettes, selected one and took a long slow drag.

  ‘Like Senhor Holmes your famous English detective, I know how the guilty one is thinking, inglesa. You are thinking how does Senhor Grant come to know about our – your little excursion to his orchid farm.’ He pursed his lips and exhaled. A perfect smoke ring drifted upwards and hung between us.

  I nodded. That was exactly what I was wondering. I was sure nobody had seen me as I crawled under the fence and worked on the lock of the hut door. Had perhaps an electronic ray in the hut activated a remote alarm? No, someone would have come rushing to investigate, and they hadn’t. That left a hidden CCTV camera linked to a tape, but a tape only reviewed every few days.

  ‘There was a hidden camera?’ I said.

  ‘Sim, you are correct.’ His shoulders drooped a little, like a boy whose childish riddle has been too quickly guessed. ‘It takes the pictures of you and the cat in a place where you should not be. Senhor Grant shouts on the telephone at Comandante Figueira. She is not pleased. And she is not pleased now, if I keep her waiting.’ He flicked a switch, and siren howling, blue light flashing, we hightailed it into town.

  The interview with the comandante went badly. As I’d surmised, my sin of omission – the failure to take precautions against the possibility of a hidden camera – was a hanging offence.

  ‘Sshmit, I despair.’ She brought the flat of her hand down on the desk with such force that the strelitzias on her desk trembled and quivered as if their heads too were waiting for the chop. ‘If you must go breaking and entering, to hide your face is the most elementary of precautions. Even the most recently recruited undercover officer knows that.’

  She was right. My halting explanation seemed lame even to my own ears. A face-concealing balaclava was indeed an integral part of my all black, disappear-into-the-night outfit. Yet I hadn’t been wearing it in my prowl around the hut. Hot and sweating after my struggles to get under the fence, I’d pulled it off and stuffed it in my pocket. With no one around, wearing it had seemed a pointless discomfort. But now I was paying for that fatal lapse in security.

  ‘This morning I advised you against too much of the thinking, but it seems’ – she glared at me with narrowed eyes – ‘that on occasions, Sshmit, you do not do enough of the thinking. Senhor Grant has influential friends and is making a lot of trouble. I remind you, that until Officer Ribeiro reported back, I had no knowledge of your visit to the senhor’s place. To be frank, Sshmit, I would not have wanted to know. Though once I had been informed, I said to myself, “If the end justifies the means, Justinia, you can conveniently forget what Ribeiro has just told you”.’

  For a long moment there was silence.

  ‘But did the end justify the means? No. Did you discover evidence of criminal activity? No. All you found was little plants. Plants, I say.’

  ‘But, Comandante,’ I ventured in a last ditch attempt to avert the inevitable, ‘why does he have all that security? He doesn’t need high fences, special locks, and CCTV cameras to protect plants. Not in Madeira, anyway. The man’s got something to hide. And if I—’

  ‘Enough, Sshmit!’ With the crack of a pistol shot, the flat of her hand smacked down once again on the desktop. The strelitzias shifted uneasily in their vase, their sharp beaks swinging towards me like the rifle barrels of a firing squad. ‘After the Gomes murder I gave you the ultimatum. You had twenty-one days to solve the case.’ She strode over to the wall-planner and stabbed a blood-red fingernail on day 25. ‘In ten days you leave the country. I can delay proceedings, stall Senhor Grant only till then. Ten days, Sshmit.’

  When the door of the comandante’s office closed behind me, I was astonished to note that barely fifteen minutes had passed. I went in search of Ribeiro to ask him for a lift home. His wreck of a car would be a bit of a hell-ride, but cadging a lift was my only option since the comandante’s summons had been so peremptory that I’d been carried off with no cash in my pockets to buy a bus ticket. I found him in the entrance hall as I’d expected, but he wasn’t slouched on a bench puffing away on one of his vile cigarettes, he was behind the desk at the public counter.

  I waited in the small queue till it was my turn. ‘Olá, Raimundo, I didn’t expect to find you here.’

  No response.

  I tried a little cough to attract his attention. ‘Standing in for a sick colleague again, are you? I was hoping you’d be able to give me a lift home.’

  He didn’t meet my eye. ‘Alas, senhora, that will not be possible.’ One finger tapped slowly and randomly over the keyboard. ‘It was not quite accurate when I said I am taken off the traffic to work behind the desk when someone is sick.’ A furious burst of typing conjured up Uff4orm,b.@.c.;lhjsjjzlkf. ‘Alas, senhora, you are not the only one who has brought on their head the anger of The Ogre.’ ;k;k;, hdhh; ;skzkjk’ ’dfmbzlb;x .dzjih appeared on the computer screen.

  ‘But why is she angry with you?’ I said indignantly. ‘What have you done?’


  ‘Guilt by association, senhora,’ he said grimly. A vicious two-fingered stab downward, and on the monitor blossomed blue, the Microsoft Windows’ Screen of Death.

  ‘Oh dear, buggered,’ I said, and unsure whether his muttered oaths were directed at myself or the comandante, beat a hasty retreat.

  The long hot walk back to the house on the Estrada Monumental gave me plenty of opportunity to ponder over what to do next. The only conclusion I reached was that time was running out.

  ‘I’m back, G,’ I called, as I walked up the drive.

  No familiar gingery face peered out from the racemes of wisteria twining round the veranda.

  I advanced up the path. ‘Wake up, lazybones.’

  The arbour was empty, the only sign that she’d ever been there, the long indentation in a cushion. I smiled to myself. Hide-and-seek was one of her subtle ways of letting me know I’d fallen from grace. Raimundo’s noisy arrival in the middle of her power nap, added to my abrupt departure, would have been more than enough to precipitate a little bout of huffiness.

  I wandered round the garden, peered up into tangles of palm fronds, poked under the magnolia and camellia bushes, parted the luxuriant fronds of ferns. Not a sign of her. Could she have scaled the thorny-trunked kapok? I tilted back my head and scanned the canopy of the giant tree. No cat crouched on a branch among the cotton wool pods.

  Playing possum on the veranda, that’s where she’d be. I felt in my pocket for the house keys, then remembered that in the flurry of my departure I’d completely forgotten to take them. Fortunately I’d also forgotten to lock the front door.

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ I muttered.

  I let myself into the house and tiptoed up the stairs. The louvred doors to the veranda were standing ajar.

  I pulled them open. ‘OK, G, game’s up!’

  I’d been so sure that I’d find her stretched out on one of the chairs, that for a moment I couldn’t take in that she wasn’t there. I craned over the rail. No twitching wisteria foliage, no cat. It was then I felt the first stirrings of unease.

  I stood gripping the rail, gazing out over the sunlit bay of Funchal. Away to the right, just visible, was Cabo Girão, and beyond, the hazy blue mountains where I’d gone to seek out Senhora Gomes at Boa Morte – Senhora Gomes who had revealed to two men that the English lady’s cat had found the suitcase they were seeking.

  They couldn’t have—They couldn’t have—! I turned back into the room, crossed it at a run, and raced down the stairs. I knew with a leaden certainty that G’s vanishing act was no game. Mouth dry, I stood in the hall.

  ‘Gorgonzola, where are you?’ I whispered.

  Stolen, killed.

  In the silence, from the kitchen came a faint sound. I let my breath out in a long sigh of relief. I’d worked myself up into a frenzy for nothing!

  ‘Snacking again, G? If you get too fat, I’ll have to put you on a diet!’

  Hchaahch. The sound came again, louder. Hchaahch. The retch, the rasp, the choke of a cat being sick. Very sick. In two strides I’d reached the half-open door. I flung it wide and stopped dead. Trails of vomit and diarrhoea led to the dark space under the old kitchen dresser. Hchaahch. Again, that awful retching. I dropped to my knees and peered underneath. Gorgonzola was crouched in the gloom, a shivering mound of ginger fur, eyes closed, mouth slavering.

  Poison. I’d seen similar symptoms in a police dog that had eaten meat doctored with some toxic substance. It had suffered horribly and died within a few hours. I reached in, grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and hauled her out. With shaking hands I wrapped her in a towel. What was the right thing to do? Dilute the poison by spooning some water into her? Induce more vomiting? Or would that be entirely the wrong treatment? Panic paralysed any rational thought.

  I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. Phone a vet. One arm cradled G as I fumbled for the phone book and scrabbled through the pages. T … U … V … Veterinário There were several. Senhor Jorge Ramos, Senhor Carlos Sousa, Senhor Artur Spinosa … I stabbed in the number of the nearest surgery, and bent my head to murmur soothing words in G’s ear while I listened to interminable ringing at the other end of the line.

  Click. The answering machine activated. The surgery is closed at the moment. Surgery hours are 9 a.m. till 2 p.m., and 5 p.m. till 8. Anyone requiring urgent advice, should phone the emergency number. A rapid fire, instantly forgettable, nine-figure mobile number followed.

  Another hour to wait before the surgery opened. I slammed down the receiver. Should I redial and attempt to note down that emergency number, or phone another vet? I stroked G’s head and tried to come to a decision. Her body jerked in violent spasm. That decided me. To phone another vet would only be wasting precious time – all of them would have similar hours, so I’d just hear a series of answering machines.

  With my free hand I dragged up a chair and collapsed onto it. I gently positioned G on her side on my lap, and punched in the numbers again. It took me two attempts to jot down the emergency number in full. Mouth dry, I waited to be connected.

  ‘Spinosa speaking. There is a veterinary emergency?’

  ‘Sim, senhor. My cat has been poisoned.’ My voice cracked. ‘I have just come into the kitchen and found her vomiting. There is much diarrhoea. And … and I….’ The sentence ended in a strangled sob.

  ‘Compose yourself, senhora, for the cat’s sake. I will do what I can to help you.’ The calm voice radiated reassurance. ‘You say you found her in the kitchen. Now tell me, could she have eaten something harmful there?’

  In my panic I hadn’t given a thought to what could have caused these symptoms.

  ‘Something harmful?’ I echoed.

  ‘Spilt powders or liquids, senhora.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing like that. There’s only her food bowl.’

  ‘And that contains?’ The voice betrayed no hint of impatience.

  I gathered up the swaddled G and went over to examine the bowl. I expected to see the remnants of the substantial lunch that she’d polished off before that postprandial session in the arbour. Cats always leave a little something of their meal to come back to, something to ward off that imaginary pang of imminent starvation, so there were indeed flakes of fish and crumbs of biscuit.

  ‘Just what’s left of the fish that I—’ There was something else in the bowl, something I hadn’t put there. Something that shouldn’t have been there.

  ‘Yes, senhora?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘she’s been eating fish, but there are a couple of what look like hard, black seeds. I don’t know how they got into her bowl.’

  ‘Large, black and shiny? Bring the bowl with you, so that I can confirm what I suspect is the toxin.’

  The bundle in my arms shuddered and twitched, the prelude to spewing up more fishy vomit. I fought down rising bile and coped with the whole stomach-churning episode without adding my own contribution to the contents of the plastic box I had in readiness.

  ‘She’s just been very sick,’ I reported.

  ‘The cat, she has vomited again? That is good. Now you must make her swallow water, as much water as you can, a little at a time on a small spoon by gently lifting her lip. I will stay on the line while you do this.’

  I did my shaky best to follow the vet’s instructions and managed to spoon a few drops into G, but I had to call a halt as she became more and more distressed. I laid her down on the worktop and picked up the phone again.

  ‘She took some water, but not very much.’

  ‘You are doing well. Now see if she will take some milk. That will coat the intestines and slow absorption of any toxin.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that. She’s very distressed and seems much weaker.’ The tears welled up in my eyes.

  ‘Then I think you should call a taxi and bring your cat here immediately. Do not attempt to drive here yourself. That would not be wise. Keep her warm and her head low. Courage, senhora. I will be at the surgery to meet you.’

  The ne
xt few hours were the longest of my life – that frantic dash to the surgery, the traumatic handing over of Gorgonzola, the interminable waiting…. When they had carried G off, I sat on a chair in the empty reception room listening to the loud tick tick tick of an old-fashioned wall clock, as infinitesimally slowly the large black hands kicked their way round the Roman numerals on the dial.

  At last the tap tap tap of footsteps in the corridor roused me from my gloomy thoughts. The door swung open and a tall, slim girl in whites poked her head round.

  ‘Senhor Spinosa has identified the plant seed in the cat’s bowl. Toxicity depends on how many the cat swallowed. He will have a better idea in an hour or two how she is responding to the treatment.’ The door closed softly behind her.

  Plant seeds in her food bowl…. Nothing with seeds like that grew in the garden, so somebody had pre-planned this, come to the house, watched and waited till they saw me leave. Then they’d gained entry by forcing a window or climbing up to the balcony-veranda, or picking the front door lock—But they wouldn’t have had to do any of these things. I myself had made it easy for them. I’d gone off in such a hurry with Raimundo that I’d left the front door unlocked. I tried unsuccessfully to comfort myself that they’d have got into the house somehow.

  In sombre accompaniment to my thoughts the clock ticked on….

  Drug dealing had to be behind this. The men who had paid that visit to Senhora Gomes knew about Gorgonzola and her talent for sniffing out drugs, though I didn’t have a clue as to the identity of the shadowy figure who had sent them. Luís was the only definite lead I had, so it was more important than ever that I make contact with him. And how was I going to do that? I stared at the black hands of the clock, and found no answer.

  At last the door opened. As Senhor Spinosa crossed the room towards me, I tried to read his face. No reassuring ‘Everything’s going to be all right’ smile. But equally, no evasive sliding away of the eyes, the telltale sign that G’s condition was deteriorating. I swallowed hard and rose to meet him.