Suspects All !

by Helen Mulgray

  I scrabbled forward and snatched at the package. For a few seconds we tussled for possession. Brute strength won. His fist slammed into the side of my head and I found myself flat on my back staring dazedly up at the sky. I heard the scrape of metal on metal, saw him towering over me with a heavy metal cross raised above his head. Another second and it would come smashing down on me.

  But it didn’t. There was a gingery blur of movement. Metal clattered on stone. With a scream he tottered back, arms semaphoring wildly as he tried to protect his face from a scratching, clawing cat.

  A door banged open, a woman’s scandalized voice shrieked, ‘Mãe de Deus! Deus me livre! Heaven forbid that there is such a happening on holy ground!’ I sat up, groggily aware of running footsteps and the shrill voice screaming, ‘Silvestre Gonçalves, God sees all the evil you do. You cannot run away from God.’

  A small body rubbed itself against my side and I looked down to see G staring anxiously up at me. I gathered her into my arms and sat there pressing my throbbing face into her soft fur.

  ‘The senhora is hurt? That no-good Gonçalves has robbed you? I call police.’ The woman plucked a mobile phone out of her apron pocket and stabbed at a button.

  ‘No, please, I—’

  Ignoring my protests, she put the phone to her ear, ‘Esta? Raimundo? Yes, it’s Maria. I was right. That scoundrel Silvestre Gonçalves is up to no good and I have seen it with my own eyes. He has just attacked a tourist, Mãe de Deus, in the cemetery. Sacrilégio!’ The hand holding the phone touched forehead and breast in a rapid sign of the cross. ‘No, I didn’t actually see the attack, but—’ A look of exasperation crossed her face. ‘How do I know? I was in the church trimming the candles when I heard—’ She listened for a moment. ‘Where is he now?’ The sque-a-k and cla-ng of the cemetery gate gave the answer. ‘He has just run—’

  I got unsteadily to my feet. ‘Excuse me, senhora. You are speaking to your second cousin, Senhor Raimundo Ribeiro?’

  Her excited outpouring stopped abruptly, her lips still forming the word she was about to utter. After a moment she said slowly, ‘Sim, Raimundo Paulo Ribeiro. You know him, senhora? How is this?’

  ‘I am also police, English police.’ Not quite the truth, but near enough. ‘Senhor Ribeiro and I are working together. May I speak to him?’

  Dark eyes full of speculation, she held out the phone. On the road above, a two-stroke engine stut stut stutted into life, followed a moment later by the high-pitched rasp of an over-revved engine as a scooter sped away.

  ‘Raimundo? Deborah Smith. Yes, I found what I was looking for, but Gonçalves has it now. No, no, I’m not hurt.’ Which was true, if I ignored my bruised and swollen cheek. ‘No arrest, please. If we can catch him handing it over…. Yes, yes, I know, but Comandante Figueira doesn’t have to be informed. Who’s going to tell her? Gonçalves isn’t, is he? Leave it to me to put in a report.’ Both of us understood that a report was never going to appear in the comandante’s in-tray. ‘Now this is what I suggest we do.…’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Needless to say, by the time Maria had administered first aid in the shape of a pack of frozen peas and a cup of tea, the four o’clock bus had come and long gone. That a pet cat would accompany an Englishwoman on police business, she seemed to put down to the eccentricity for which the English are well known.

  On my way to the bus stop I purchased a traditional Madeiran woollen hat with trailing earflaps, ideal for concealing my swollen face, and Gorgonzola, sensitive to shocks to the system, slept off the recent traumatic event in the dark security of the rucksack, so neither of us excited any comment on the bus journey back up the mountain.

  I was in buoyant mood by the time I got home. Despite the attack on my person, I felt the journey to the cemetery in the Curral had been worthwhile. The loss of the package, far from being a set-back, could be the chance to bring the Madeiran operation to a successful conclusion. This time when Gonçalves handed over the package to that mystery woman in the grounds of the Massaroco Hotel, we’d be monitoring the CCTV and be ready to swoop. I was convinced that the woman would turn out to be Dorothy Winterton.

  ‘Thanks to you, we’ve got it cracked, G,’ I said, and poured myself a generous measure of poncha.

  Modestly she raised her head from the chunks of prime espada fish and purred agreement.

  I should have remembered that too hard a congratulatory pat on the back can make you fall flat on your face. As I found out when I walked briskly into Police HQ on Sunday morning. The first intimation that not all was well was Raimundo’s doleful expression.

  ‘Alas, senhora, when I went an hour ago to Massaroco garden to check why the CCTV camera does not give picture, I find it is gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ I repeated.

  ‘Sim, it is gone. There is no camera, only the cables are left.’

  I stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words, reluctant to acknowledge that along with the camera had gone the chance of wrapping up the case before I was due to leave the island. Worse still, the theft of the camera pointed to the fact that someone suspected the police were taking an active interest in what was recorded on that particular tape.

  Raimundo swivelled his eyes in the direction of the comandante’s office. ‘Today,’ he hissed, ‘she has the face like the storm.’

  This was not good news. The last time she had come in at the weekend had been to deal with the furore over my break-in at David Grant’s laboratory. It would be politic to keep out of her way by beating a hasty retreat from the building – but first there were those files to tidy up in readiness for my departure on Tuesday. Swivelling my head like a meerkat on watch for danger, I scuttled off to my office.

  My heart sank. From the doorway I could see that another Explain, Smith!! memo had landed on my desk. Gingerly I approached. It bore the ominous heading YESTERDAY’S INCIDENT IN THE CURRAL CEMETERY. As I scanned the page, it became clear that the story had snowballed, gathering accretions, each more sensational than the last. Evidently Raimundo’s second cousin Maria was an incorrigible spreader of gossip. Within hours, therefore, it had come to the comandante’s ears that a tourist and a strange-looking cat had been involved in an unseemly brawl in the cemetery at the Curral. These reports, the comandante had meticulously set down. I’d just reached the foot of the page where she had scrawled spikily Don’t even try to explain, Smith!! when there was a tentative knock at the door and Raimundo sidled in.

  Avoiding my eyes he mumbled, ‘The comandante say to give you this.’ He handed me an envelope and hovered as if waiting for a reply.

  The envelope contained two air tickets to London – the first in the name of Deborah Smith, the second for the transportation of one cat (Persian).

  He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. ‘It is my fault, senhora. I should have told Maria that everything was top secret and she must not tell anyone anything.’ In an attempt to cheer me up, he added, ‘However, the comandante did not suggest the handcuffs when I take you and the cat to the airport on Tuesday.’

  I stared thoughtfully at the one-way tickets. An idea was forming in my mind.

  DJ Smith was out. But definitely not down.

  The view from the 757’s window was limited, but not so limited as to prevent me from making out the triumphant sneer on the face of David Grant, Exotic Cut Flower Exporter. Elbows on the low rail of the terminal’s observation terrace fifty metres away, he was savouring the public deportation of DJ Smith, client liaison for Agençia de Viagens Madeira. The comandante had stage-managed it with maximum publicity – a police car with blue flashing light had drawn up in front of the terminal building; a policeman in uniform (Raimundo) gripping me tightly by the arm had escorted me through the airport to the very foot of the aircraft steps. David Grant was to be left in no doubt that the full weight of the law had descended on my hapless head.

  The engines whined into life and the 757 began its pushback. As the observation terrace slid slowly past, David Grant straighten
ed, smirked, and raised his fingers in an unmistakable two-finger gesture. A few metres behind him, Raimundo raised an arm, and gave a conspiratorial thumbs-up. I smiled and waved back vigorously, taking not a little satisfaction from the fact that the Exotic Cut Flower Exporter would think this action was directed at him.

  The engine noise rose to a roar; the 757 strained against its brakes. We surged along the runway, the green hillside dotted with red-roofed houses skimming past the wings; a steep climbing turn over the sea and my last view of Madeira was a cloud-shrouded glimpse of the knobbly sea-horse-shaped São Lourenço peninsula.

  I was not in the least downcast. I was leaving, but I had already set in motion plans to return: yesterday morning I’d phoned Mrs Knight to tell her I would have to leave for a few days on an emergency visit to England. As I’d hoped, she had immediately offered to look after Gorgonzola. ‘Delighted,’ she’d said. Blackie wouldn’t be at all delighted, but he hadn’t been consulted.

  I’d phoned again this morning for a last minute bulletin. The news was good – there’d been no pining for me and no attacks on the rightful resident, Blackie. G, it seemed, was purring happily on Victoria’s lap while a no doubt disconsolate black Persian cat was making do with a pillow on the sofa.

  ‘Blackie’s still a bit shy,’ she’d confided, ‘but I’m sure they’ll soon be the best of friends. Now, don’t you worry, dear, everything will be fine.’

  And everything was. When I had checked-in the empty cat-carrier as part of my normal luggage, Raimundo had turned a blind eye to the fact that the designated occupant was conspicuous by her absence. Indeed, a slightly raised eyebrow was the only sign that he had noticed. When we reached the aircraft steps, he’d said, ‘Now I can report to the comandante that both you and the cat box were on the plane.’ Lurking behind that moustache, the trace of a smile. ‘Till we meet again, senhora.’

  My abrupt departure from the Massaroco had been efficiently handled. The comandante had made arrangements with the Agençia, and by now my replacement would have held her first office hour, informing Winterton and Haxby and the others that I’d been summoned home due to serious family illness. That suited me very well. Believing that I’d gone for good, Winterton and Haxby would relax. If they felt secure, they would perhaps become a little careless….

  And with my departure, the timebomb of Zara Porter-Browne’s bungling attempts to be a PI had been defused. I settled back in my seat. As soon as I got back to London, I’d chase up the answers to these emails I’d sent on Saturday in an effort to gain something incriminating on Haxby – and Grant. Gut instinct told me I was onto something with them both, and that’s why I’d left Gorgonzola behind. I knew I’d be back.

  Jim Orr, senior investigating officer for HM Revenue & Customs, wasn’t too pleased at my sudden ejection from Madeira and consequent appearance in the London office. No smile, no warm greeting, just a brusque, ‘Take a seat.’

  He got straight down to business. ‘Comandante Figueira, it seems, is rather upset, Deborah. Single-handedly you have somehow managed to sour three hundred years of cordial relations between England and Portugal – an offence, I believe, on a par with the episode when Captain Cook fired on Funchal’s fortifications.’ Selecting a sheet of paper from a file open on his desk, he fixed me with a stern look. ‘While seconded to her department, you contrived to … break and enter the premises of a respectable businessman … conceal and fail to inform her of the existence of a suitcase of Class A drugs … engage in an unseemly brawl in a village cemetery. It may be,’ – he regarded me steadily for a few seconds – ‘it may be, that you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for this conduct?’ I hitched forward on my chair, but before I could reply, he continued, ‘Suppose you run it past me for credibility.’

  I relaxed. This was a pet saying of his, always employed in jocular fashion, a sort of in-joke. It was a signal that this dressing-down was more bark than bite – confirmed by the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  I flipped open the pocket file I’d brought with me. ‘As a matter of fact, I have three good explanations.’ I held up the replies I’d received to the emails I’d sent from Madeira. ‘And here’s the proof that I’m close to bringing home the goods.’

  ‘If not your cat, eh?’ This time he permitted himself the faintest of smiles.

  How did he find that out? For a moment it threw me – exactly as he’d intended. Jim Orr prided himself on not letting anyone slip something past him.

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense, Deborah.’

  ‘Er, er, yes … well….’ Hoping to dodge further questioning on the whereabouts of Gorgonzola, I held up the reply from DEFRA. ‘You see, I broke into the premises of that outwardly respectable businessman thinking I was going to find a heroin or crack cocaine laboratory. When I opened the door and saw all those lights, I ditched that theory in favour of a cannabis factory. But on closer inspection, the seedlings bore no resemblance to cannabis plants.’

  ‘Get to the point, Deborah.’ He held out his hand for the DEFRA email.

  I passed it over. ‘You see, I knew that with all that security, Grant was obviously up to something. So I sent an email to DEFRA. According to them, there’s a considerable amount of money to be made from the illegal propagation and sale of rare orchids.’ I sat back and waited for his reaction.

  ‘Hmm. I think you might be on to something there.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and muttered something that sounded like ‘sites’.

  ‘Sites?’ I repeated. What on earth did he mean?

  ‘C-I-T-E-S,’ he spelled out. ‘The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Also known as the Washington Convention, it restricts or bans the trade or movement of rare plants from the wild. You can’t just stroll into the jungle and pick orchids from trees, you know. And if you try to pull a fast one and smuggle them in, you don’t get off with just a slapped wrist and a caution. Nowadays it’s up to seven years in the clink and an unlimited fine.’

  ‘But Grant’s plants aren’t—’

  ‘Yes, yes, they’re laboratory grown. But the regulations apply to artificially propagated plants as well as those from the wild. We’ve a specialist Customs’ Cites team at Heathrow to catch people who smuggle in prohibited plants – and animals – for personal gain. Anyone carrying a pet carrier, occupied or not, Deborah, is the focus of attention.’ He leaned back, his expression that of a poker player holding the winning card.

  So that’s how he’d known about Gorgonzola. I’d been under discreet surveillance at the airport. ‘Er, yes,’ I said, again hurriedly changing the subject. ‘But I just can’t believe it would be worth risking imprisonment for a flower.’

  ‘Believe me, Deborah, when it comes to acquiring a rare item, the sky’s the limit as far as some collectors are concerned. They’re prepared to pay any price for something others don’t have. Passions can run pretty high.’

  Something was stirring at the back of my mind. I closed my eyes in concentration trying to recall that time on the terrace at the Massaroco when Grant was threatening me with Rottweilers and pit bulls … Zara had made some remark to Grant. That was it, something on the lines of, ‘There must be something pretty damn valuable in that orchid farm of yours.’ And Grant’s reaction had been to sweep my papers off the table onto the ground, shouting … shouting, ‘Bloody sights!’ At the time, that’s what I’d thought he’d said. He’d actually let slip what he was up to.

  ‘We’ve got him!’ I punched the air in exhilaration.

  Jim Orr was looking at me with raised eyebrows. ‘Just had a eureka moment, Deborah? Care to share it with me?’

  I did. ‘So,’ I finished, ‘that’s the case against D. Grant, Exotic Cut Flower Exporter, sewn up.’

  ‘Celebration a little premature, I’m afraid, Deborah.’ Jim Orr tapped the email. ‘A raid on the laboratory will certainly wrap up the Madeira end and put the gentleman in question behind bars, but what I’m interested in is the bigger picture �
�� how he is smuggling the plants out, and where they are going. Any ideas on that?’

  ‘How about if he conceals them in one of his above-board shipments to a nursery or wholesaler?’

  ‘Poss-ib-ly.’ He frowned. ‘But there’d have to be someone in the know at the receiving end to spirit away the prize. And in a box of orchids, all very similar, just how is our special orchid to be singled out without drawing attention to it?’

  Three weeks ago while I’d been waiting for G’s plane to land, I’d watched home-bound passengers putting their cardboard boxes of plants on the dedicated trolley waiting to be wheeled into the specially heated hold on the plane. ‘It would be quite easy,’ I said, confident that I was on the right track. ‘Nobody would remark on a box slipped onto the plant trolley in Departures, or during loading. And there are, of course, those who will, for payment, take a box to England, or France, or Germany, pretending it is theirs.’ People like Celia Haxby and Dorothy Winterton.

  Orr nodded thoughtfully. ‘OK, we’ll not make an issue of that breaking and entering of yours. But we still have the little matters of your concealment of that suitcase of class A drugs and the – er–unseemly brawl in the cemetery, do we not?’

  I filled him in with the details and waited while he mulled them over. In the silence a plane droned overhead carrying holidaymakers to some far-flung destination. Some thousands of miles away in Madeira, no doubt Gorgonzola was snoozing in the shade while Victoria prepared a light lunch; Raimundo would be tinkering with his car or, if he had angered the comandante, wrestling with a recalcitrant computer; David Grant, Exotic Cut Flower Exporter, would be calculating his profits from illegal propagation and celebrating my expulsion from Madeira and his life. And Winterton and Haxby – what would they doing?