Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6)

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s my brother.’

  She looked at him with scorn.

  CHAPTER 4

  Matas was sixty and at times looked well over seventy: a lifetime of working on the land, often bent double and in a heat which sucked the last drop of moisture out of a man even before he had stopped work for his merienda, had left his once stocky frame bowed and his skin tanned to the texture and appearance of old, cracked leather.

  ‘I asked you to put those chrysanthemums there,’ said Dolly, keeping her voice low and sweet as she pointed.

  He shook his head. They had, over the past years of a tumultuous relationship, evolved a method of communication which was a miracle of tongues. She spoke almost no Spanish and he spoke no English whatsoever, yet they managed to understand each other sufficiently well to be infuriated frequently and irritated always.

  ‘I told you very clearly last Friday to plant the chrysanthemums in that bed so there’d be some colour in the early autumn.’

  He chewed at something as he leaned against the heavily corrugated trunk of an almond tree.

  ‘I want them dug up from here and put there.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  Her voice became a shade less sweet. ‘It is perfectly possible and you’re to do it.’

  He hawked and spat, knowing how much she loathed his doing that. ‘It’s impossible,’ he repeated, with growing satisfaction.

  ‘If you can’t do what I tell you, there’s little point in your continuing to work here.’

  He stared up at the mountains.

  ‘Either you move them now or you finish working for me.’

  ‘Impossible,’ he said for the third time.

  ‘Very well.’ There were now two spots of red (not artificial) on her cheeks. She hated the Mallorquins for their independence and could never understand why, since they loved money to the exclusion of most other things, they could not understand that to earn it they must be ready to lose their independence. ‘I’ll pay you to the end of the week.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s all the same to me what you do.’

  She left and crossed the lawn to the covered patio.

  He had collected up a number of stones from the flower-bed and put these in a rubber trug — one of the two-handled carrying containers which were used for a hundred and one jobs, from building houses to collecting seaweed. He tipped the trug on to its side and spilled out the stones, then kicked them about the flower-bed with his shoe. That done, he went round the house to the garage and put the trug with the rest of the gardening tools, kept beyond the second car and up against the wall. He picked up a plastic carrier bag, in which he had earlier packed a couple of kilos of tomatoes picked off the plants when certain no one was watching him, put the bag in the wooden box fixed on the back of his Mobylette and carefully arranged a piece of sacking to cover the bag. He wheeled the Mobylette out into the drive and started it.

  He rode the kilometre to the eastern side of Llueso, crossed the first bridge over the torrente which was dust dry, and took the third turning on the left.

  His wife was sitting on a chair in the road immediately outside the front door of their house, crocheting a bedspread which would form part of their daughter’s dowry. With her sat the woman who lived next door. Neither said anything to him as he wheeled the Mobylette into what had been the stable and left it propped against a wall. He picked up the bag of tomatoes and took it through to the kitchen. Then he sat in the sitting-room, dim because it was without windows, and thought about nothing very much.

  After a while — he’d no idea how long a time had elapsed — his wife came through.

  ‘She fired me,’ he said.

  She nodded, continued on through to the kitchen.

  He shouted: ‘I fixed things so the señora fired me.’

  ‘So now you’ve no work to do?’ she shouted back. ‘Then you can mend the chest-of-drawers.’

  Since when had he been a carpenter? … What fools the rich foreigners were! Had he gone to the señora and said, ‘Señora, the price of everything has gone up yet again. Because of this, the builders have been given more money, the electricians have been given more money, and surely it is only right that you should give me more for the very great work I do?’ she would have refused to increase his wages. She’d have said she couldn’t afford to pay him any more money. Couldn’t afford to, when she lived in a palace, wasted a fortune on watering grass which wasn’t even fed to animals, and bought new cars so often he’d lost count of their numbers! … So he had decided what would annoy her the most and then had done that thing. As planned, she had lost her temper and had fired him. In a few days’ time, but certainly not more than four in such heat, the grass would begin to look tired and the plants would droop because no one would be able to make the automatic sprinklers work (they’d never find that piece of wood in the back of the control panel) and the señora would panic because if she truly loved anything other than herself it was her garden … And either Victoriana or Ana would come along to this house and say, ‘You old bastard, come and make the sprinklers work. The señora says to tell you it was all a misunderstanding and she’ll up your money to five hundred pesetas an hour …’

  He knew a slow, warm pleasure. Life had become good in the last few years. Those days of poverty, when a man could not feed his own family since there was no work, and those days of terror when a man was forced to take up arms and then might be shot because he was fighting for the wrong side, although he had had neither choice nor the knowledge on which to make a choice, had become a distant, confused memory. Now, there was plenty of money to buy food. His wife did not have to spend all her days in the fields, breaking her body to earn a few pesetas. Their daughter, Rosa, could both read and write, which was a miracle because neither he nor his wife could do either … Rosa was grown tall and very beautiful and the young men were like bees around the honey pot. (Let one of them take a step too far and his cojones would be forfeit.) One day she would have a novio who would marry her and the wedding feast would be at a restaurant: mountains of food and barrels of liquor. She would take to her marriage bed her virginity, two crocheted counterpanes, sheets, blankets, and presents galore. As much as any princess could have taken to her marriage bed when he was young …

  Perhaps he would demand from the señora five hundred and twenty-five pesetas an hour before he agreed to return to Ca Na Nadana. The future was going to require much money.

  *

  Steven Kenley turned into the drive of Ca Na Nadana and thought, once again, that it must have been quite difficult to design a house in such ostentatiously bad taste. He parked near the double garage, crossed the drive to the front door, and rang the bell. Ana opened the door. He liked her. She had the kind of face in which ugliness became almost a virtue, perhaps because she was always happy.

  She showed him into the sitting-room, then left to call the señora. He remained standing and stared through one of the side windows at the pool. Mark Erington was swimming with a stylish, powerful crawl. He could be an amusing man: but it was impossible to forget the position he occupied in this house.

  Dolly, wearing a trouser suit and managing not to look ridiculous in it, a diamond horse brooch on her bosom, a double rope of pearls about her neck, diamond and ruby rings on her fingers, entered the room, followed by a panting Lulu. ‘Good morning, Steven, how nice to see you.’

  He murmured the usual pleasantries and told her how his wife was as they both sat. An honest man, he would never have said that he liked her. But she had helped him when he’d been in trouble and for that he was most grateful and, old-fashioned in outlook, for him gratitude became a fair substitute for friendship.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my calling in like this?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ she answered. ‘You know this is open house to my friends.’

  ‘I came because it’s the twenty-third.’

  ‘The twenty-third — is t
hat in some way significant?’

  Kenley naively accepted that she had forgotten. ‘It’s six months ago today you lent me the money and I promised to start repaying you now.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ she said, with indifference.

  ‘I always stick to my word.’ Lettie often teased him about his righteousness, but he was proud to know that in a world of rapidly declining values, his remained fixed.

  ‘I know you do, which is why I didn’t have the slightest hesitation in helping.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I think we might have a drink, don’t you?’

  He was the kind of man who would never drink before midday, come hell or high water. ‘Not for me, thanks all the same.’ He was not looking at her and so he missed her brief expression of annoyance. He coughed. ‘I want to thank you again for your wonderful kindness.’ He knew he sounded stiff, but discussing money always embarrassed him.

  ‘It was absolutely nothing.’

  At the time it had been a miracle. Lettie had tripped over a step in their house — traversed hundreds of times before without trouble — and had fallen on to a wooden box. Her thigh-bone had been badly fractured. Rushed into one of the Palma clinics, she had undergone a long and complicated operation immediately, and a second one a fortnight later. Even before the second operation, he had received the bill for the previous one and for the first week’s stay in the clinic. The total had appalled him. Of course, Lettie and he had held medical insurance, but they’d never been very well off, they’d always been healthy, and somehow he had failed to appreciate how far behind the potential costs the cover of the insurance had fallen. (There was, it was true, a so-called reciprocal agreement between the Spanish and British authorities concerning national health, but to the British expatriates it was difficult to identify even a hint of reciprocity about it.) He had gone to his bank to borrow money and they had been very pleasant as they had pointed out that since he didn’t own any property in Spain — he and Lettie had only a life lease on their house — he could offer them no security and therefore they could not help him. After the second operation, the clinic had, with florid Spanish politeness, pointed out that by now a great deal of money was owed to them and if he wished his wife to continue to receive the very necessary treatment he must surely understand that they must be paid. He had gone to the British Consulate to see how they could help him: they told him, in that official manner which is not to be confused with rudeness, that they could not help him in any way because he was not presently destitute. Desperate, he had swallowed a lifetime’s principle and approached one of two of their wealthier friends to ask them to lend him the money. He discovered the worth of some friendships and failed to borrow a peseta. Then, so frantic nothing was too ridiculous to try, he had come to Dolly: she had lent him what he asked.

  ‘I’ve brought you a cheque,’ he said.

  ‘How very kind of you, Steven.’

  He stood and took from the inside pocket of his lightweight jacket — he never dressed casually when visiting — his wallet from which he brought out a cheque. ‘I’m afraid it’s not for quite as much as I had hoped, but I’ve had to have a physiotherapist along three times a week to treat Lettie and he does charge such a lot of money.’

  ‘They’re all robbers. My hairdresser in Palma is now charging me four thousand pesetas.’

  He crossed the carpet and handed her the cheque.

  She read the figure. ‘And this is the interest, isn’t it? I’m afraid I haven’t worked out the figure, but I’m sure you’re right.’

  He stared at her. ‘Interest?’

  She might not have heard him. ‘Although to be truthful, you know it does seem just a little bit less than I’d expected.’

  ‘But … but that’s repaying you a proportion of what you lent me. We never talked about interest.’

  ‘But Steven, dear, we did agree, didn’t we, that the only way of managing this between friends was to make it a business agreement?’

  ‘Yes, but …’ He had signed a statement to say that she had lent him 310,000 pesetas. Until now, he had presumed that that alone had been what she had meant by a ‘business agreement’.

  ‘When one borrows money under a business agreement one always has to pay a little bit of interest.’

  He stared at her bejewelled fingers as she stroked the snuffling Lulu. His mind was threatening to panic. Suppose she asked for five per cent? On 310,000 pesetas that would come to 15,500 pesetas a year. Not very much, perhaps — except that their budget was now stretched to their last peseta …

  She said sweetly: ‘I think twenty per cent would be very fair, don’t you?’

  ‘Twenty?’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘I know you’ll appreciate that as this is a business agreement I have to be partially recompensed for the loss I’ve suffered in not having the money working.’

  ‘But I thought …’ He’d thought she’d been wanting to help him in his desperate need. Twenty per cent. 62,000 pesetas a year. 31,000 already owed for the past six months. More than the cheque he had just handed to her …

  She said: ‘I really am sorry that it’s so high, but it’s all the fault of those beastly socialists.’

  ‘But … but the banks here aren’t charging that much.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me, though, that the banks wouldn’t lend you any money?’

  ‘It’s money I had to have for Lettie. She was in hospital …

  ‘D’you remember, Steven, you did tell me all about that? As I’ve always said, you can’t spend too much on health. After all, once you’ve lost it, it’s gone for ever.’

  ‘I … I don’t think I can afford twenty per cent.’

  ‘Oh dear, that is difficult, isn’t it? After all, you did agree to make it a business agreement and we typed out that little note to make certain. And I know that if you’d borrowed the money in London you’d have had to pay more than twenty per cent …’

  CHAPTER 5

  Erington heard a car door slam and then the car drive off. What a soft fool Kenley was, he thought. Letting her browbeat him into paying twenty per cent on the grounds that he’d given his word. Didn’t he know that the Victorian age was over and that the only thing to do now was to worry about number one? Erington stood — he’d moved on to the patio to hear what was said — and looked through the nearest window. Dolly was still on the settee. Call her what you would, you had to hand it to her! Put her to work in the City and watch the sharks swim to cover. He went inside. ‘Who was that who’s just gone?’

  ‘Steven. He called in to say hullo.’

  ‘And when you offered him a drink I bet he refused it.’ He mimicked Kenley’s earnest, pedantic voice. ‘I never drink before midday. My dear father told me that only alcoholics and loose women did that … D’you know, I’ve never understood what Pater meant by loose women.’ He leaned over and kissed her neck. ‘You’re looking a million dollars.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ she said archly.

  ‘But not flattering to deceive.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Darling, do you think I would ever try to deceive you?’

  ‘I hope not,’ she answered. Her tone was not as light as it had been.

  ‘I may not be bright, but I know my limitations.’ He nuzzled her neck for a little, then stood up. ‘I thought I’d just nip out to the post. Is there anything you want?’

  ‘Tell Ana to go to the post office. You stay here and have a little drinkie with Dolly.’

  ‘I’d really love to, but I also want to buy a lottery ticket.’

  ‘She can get that as well.’

  ‘But it’s bad luck to get someone else to buy it for me.’

  ‘I’ve never heard that before.’

  ‘Which is why you’ve never won a prize worth much.’ He smiled, said he wouldn’t be a second longer than necessary, and left before she could object any further. He went through the kitchen, winking at Victoriana on the way, and out into the garage. He settled in the driving seat of the blood red open Seat 124 Sp
ort, whose hood was folded back, started the engine, blipped it a couple of times, and then backed out at speed: he was a skilled driver, though not as skilled as he believed.

  As he drove past fields in which crops were being intensively grown, thanks to the plentiful supply of water which came down in stone channels from a spring up in the foothills of the mountains, the wind curled round the sides of the raked windscreen to flick at his hair and ease away a little of the heat of the burning sun. His thoughts were confused. Ever since he’d been old enough to judge what kind of a place the world was, he’d rightly prided himself on being smart. Yet now, when he’d everything to lose, he was in danger of acting so stupidly …

  He crossed the Laraix road and entered the village — so called, despite its 10,000 inhabitants — and drove through the maze of narrow streets to the public call-box on the west side. He parked in front of a carpenter’s workshop and as he tried to make sense of his thoughts there came from inside the workshop brief bursts of tooth-tingling noise as a band saw bit into wood.

  One thing was for certain. However much Dolly was enamoured of him, if ever she became convinced that he was betraying her she’d throw him out of the house so quickly he wouldn’t even have time to think up an excuse. So why risk such a catastrophe? Why put in jeopardy all that he had so carefully earned for himself …?

  All cats were the same under the skin. And he’d known women more beautiful, much more sensual, than Carol. Yet here he was, parked outside a telephone kiosk, hesitating about phoning her to ask if she’d have a meal with him — knowing this would be to risk everything. In God’s name, why? Mockingly, contemptuously, he answered his own question. He, who had taught himself that good and evil were the same thing, only seen from different financial viewpoints, was so strongly attracted to her because it was impossible not to realize that she would always recognize and differentiate between the two and unhesitatingly choose good. It was this quality of judgement which so attracted him, as the negative of one magnet was attracted by the positive of another … Far from being emotionally self-sufficient, as he had so prided himself, he was like a little boy on his first day at school, desperately longing to be noticed by the teacher so that he might gain her approval. A bloody fool.