An Enigmatic Disappearance

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Oh … I nearly forgot. Ada rang last night to ask how you were.’

  ‘Not like her to bother about anyone else when she’s so wrapped up with that little spaghetti gigolo.’

  ‘Why are you always so nasty about him?’

  ‘D’you expect me to say what a fine, upstanding man he is when he lets himself be trailed around like a pet dog? It’s obscene. She’s three times his age.’

  ‘But…’ She stopped, then continued in a troubled tone: ‘I thought you always said that a difference in ages doesn’t matter?’

  ‘When the man’s older, it doesn’t,’ he said hastily. ‘But it’s totally different when it’s the woman.’

  ‘I suppose that’s right,’ she said meekly.

  Twenty minutes later, she stood. ‘I really must go, my darling.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘I wish I could stay longer, but there’s a special concert on in the cloisters and you’ve always said we must go to that sort of thing, even if it’s as boring as hell, to show the locals we’ve got cultural taste.’

  CHAPTER 3

  It was the height of summer, a time when a reasonable man accepted that stress was potentially fatal. As Alvarez made for the door of his office, the phone began to ring. He ignored it. The call might be important.

  Downstairs, he passed the duty cabo, who was reading a girlie magazine, and continued through to the road. Keeping on the shade side, he made his way to the old square and the Club Llueso. The barman did not bother to ask him what he wanted, but poured a large brandy and then filled a scoop with ground coffee and fixed this into the coffee machine. Alvarez carried the glass across to a window table, sat, and sipped the brandy as he stared at the swirling crowd of tourists. A very stout woman, wearing the tightest of T-shirts and the shortest of shorts, climbed the steps up to the levelled section amidst a constant wobble of flesh.

  ‘Fair takes the appetite away,’ said the barman, as he put a cup of coffee on the table. ‘D’you think she parades around like that in Berlin?’

  As she reached the top, two much younger and slimmer women, equally sparsely dressed, passed her as they came down the steps. ‘That’s more like it,’ said the barman appreciatively. ‘I wouldn’t mind showing them my orange trees.’

  ‘You’d have to shed several years before they’d accept.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘I’m mature enough not to want to pluck every fruit I see.’

  ‘You’re a bloody hypocrite.’ The barman left.

  That was unjust, Alvarez thought. He watched the two young women until they became lost from sight and assured himself that he had admired them solely on account of the grace with which they had moved …

  To his surprise, he found his glass was empty. He had it refilled. As he drank some of the brandy, preparatory to pouring what was left into the coffee, he heard the church clock strike the hour. Time had the annoying quality of always moving at an unwanted pace; enjoy oneself and it raced, suffer and it loitered …

  Back in his office, breathless and sweating from the climb up the stairs, the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the past hour,’ a woman said angrily.

  His tone became one of patient authority. ‘In my job, I cannot spend my time in the office, just sitting down.’

  ‘From all accounts, you do your best.’

  ‘Who’s talking?’ he demanded.

  ‘Concha Marti.’

  She was not a woman to be treated cavalierly. ‘I’ve only this moment returned from a very difficult and exhausting investigation.’

  ‘I saw Dolores yesterday morning and she said you’re completely out of condition. I told her, that’s because, like all men, you eat and drink far too much. She should feed you on simple food, like chickpeas, and throw every bottle into the dustbin.’

  The Marti family had always been regarded as peculiar, not to say downright insane. ‘I am a very busy man. Do you want something?’

  ‘Would I be talking to you if I didn’t?… The señor’s more difficult to understand than a two-year-old, so it’s me doing the phoning. D’you understand?’

  ‘You’re phoning in connection with what?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you, aren’t I? Why d’you keep interrupting?’

  He hadn’t interrupted her once, but he was not prepared to point that out. Not only was she an aggressive woman with a tongue edged with steel, she and Dolores were friends. ‘Someone is in trouble?’

  ‘The señora.’

  ‘What has happened to her?’

  ‘If he knew that, he wouldn’t be going on so, would he?’

  ‘She’s missing?’

  ‘Went out yesterday afternoon and never came back.’

  ‘What is the señor’s name?’

  Her answer was a jumble of sound, and he asked her to spell out the name. Ogden. Since English pronunciation was often a mystery even to the English, he’d no better idea how to say Ogden than she had. ‘Has he asked his friends if they know where she is?’

  ‘He’s been on the phone a lot. Can’t understand what he says, of course.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Sweet Mary! but you ask stupid questions. He speaks in English, that’s why not.’

  ‘Why’s he asked you to phone me?’

  ‘Haven’t I said?’

  ‘What I mean is, do you work for him?’

  ‘Of course I do, even if they’re a couple of skinflints. When I asked for nine hundred an hour instead of eight hundred, the señora tried to tell me they couldn’t afford that much.’ There was a snort of derision. ‘She’s a fool to think I would go on working for eight hundred when down in the port it’s now over a thousand. And what is an extra hundred to the likes of them? You tell me that.’

  ‘It does mount up over time…’

  ‘Listen to him! It mounts up. You think a foreigner has to worry like that when they’re as rich as a mayor who’s enjoyed ten years of brown envelopes?’

  He thought few foreigners could be that rich. ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Ca’n Nou.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘Cami de Polso.’

  In the past couple of years, reputedly at the European Union’s expense – this seemed likely since the exercise had been unnecessary – every lane in the countryside had been given a name and posted; this was not one he recognized, but he was not going to give her the satisfaction of admitting so. ‘Tell the señor I’ll be along as soon as possible.’

  Having replaced the receiver, he studied the files and paper which littered the desk and sighed at the thought of all the work involved if ever he decided to sort them out and clear them up. He checked the time. It should be possible to speak to Ogden about his missing wife before it would be necessary to stop work for lunch. Lunch. Dolores hadn’t cooked Cocido Andaluz for quite a while so perhaps she was doing so now. In her hands, beef, bacon, beans, potatoes, pumpkin, chorizo, morcilla, garlic, tomatoes, and spices, became miraculously transformed into ambrosia … But what if the unthinkable were thought? What if Dolores had listened to Concha’s ravings? Lunch then might be so plain and uninteresting that even a starving pilgrim would hesitate to eat … He left the room a troubled man.

  Downstairs, the cabo was still reading; his resentment at Alvarez’s interruption was clear. ‘Never heard of the road.’

  Alvarez left the post and made his way to a shop near his parked car which sold electrical goods, including computer equipment. The young woman behind the counter was too busy concentrating on a computer game – set up to attract customers’ attention – to notice him, until he said: ‘Do you know where Cami de Polso is?’

  ‘No.’ She zapped a couple of aliens.

  ‘Where’s the boss?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’

  ‘Would you see if he’s around?’

  She zapped a couple more. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want a w
ord with him. Cuerpo General de Policia.’

  ‘And there was me thinking you was Arnie!’ She reluctantly left, to go around a display of television sets into the back of the shop.

  He wondered who Arnie was. Having watched which controls she’d used, he set out to zap the oncoming aliens. He failed ingloriously and a notice came up on screen to tell him he’d been eliminated.

  A voice from behind him said: ‘You need to be under twenty to survive.’

  He had known Valverde long enough to remember a skinny, snot-nosed boy from a family so poor that he had always worn cast-off clothing. Now he was sleekly plump and dressed in the height of casual fashion. They shook hands. Valverde, uncertain why Alvarez wanted to speak to him – the assistant had not bothered to explain – and therefore fearing it might be the wish to buy a piece of equipment at a heavy discount, complained about the rise in the cost of living, the drop in the numbers of tourists and the miserly spending of those who did arrive, and the rapacity of the tax collector who was rapidly reducing him to penury.

  ‘It’s a cruel world,’ Alvarez agreed. ‘You own a lot of property about the place, don’t you?’

  Valverde, ever careful, said: ‘Just the odd field, bought for old times’ sake seeing as the old folks used to farm.’

  ‘Then you may know where Cami de Polso is?’

  ‘That’s what you want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He prepared to be more helpful. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever come across the road, but there are so many new names these days it’s impossible to keep up with ’em.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve dealt with the bloke who lives in a house along there – Señor Ogden?’

  ‘We’ve certainly done business with a foreigner called something like that.’

  ‘Tell me what his house is named and I’ll know if it’s the man I’m after.’

  ‘Can’t give it offhand, but he bought a video and Julio fitted that, so it’ll be in the records. I’ll have a look.’

  He was gone less than two minutes. ‘Ca’n Nou.’

  ‘That’s the place. How do I get there?’

  ‘Take the old road to Playa Neuva. Four to five kilometres along there’s a property been bought by a foreigner with too much money and he’s had all the stone walls rebuilt and added a pair of wrought-iron gates that wouldn’t disgrace a castle. Just past there, turn left and carry on for a couple of kilometres. Julio says it’s a new villa, on its own and close to the road.’

  ‘I thought all around there had been declared a conservation area and so no building was allowed?’

  ‘What a droll man you can be.’ Valverde patted Alvarez on the arm.

  CHAPTER 4

  Alvarez turned off the Playa Neuva road into a lane that twisted and turned like a snake in torment. He slowed, from choice as well as necessity. Here, despite its nearness to the coast, was the true Mallorca, preserved because foreigners were interested only in the froth of life. Here were sheep and goats, figs preparing to ripen, stubble that marked crops harvested and stored …

  As he rounded a bend, a nameboard listing Ca’n Nou came into sight. He braked to a halt and looked across a field to see a large, newly built villa. The true Mallorca, at least beyond the mountains, could exist only in a nostalgic mind, he told himself sourly. Foreigners had money and money corrupted the past as well as the present and the future.

  He drove up the dirt track and came to a halt in front of the house. As he stepped out on to the gravel, the door opened and a man came out, eyes puckered to counter the glare of the sun. Middle to late sixties, Alvarez judged; beginning to bald, noticeably overweight, heavily featured face showing signs of ill health. He said in English: ‘Señor Ogden? My name is Inspector Alvarez. Your maid rang me at the post to say your wife is missing…’

  ‘There’s no sign of her. What can have happened? Where is she?’

  ‘Perhaps I might enter?’

  Ogden stepped to one side and Alvarez went past him and into the hall. Two doors led off this and one was open to show a large sitting-room, colourfully decorated and luxuriously furnished. Since Ogden made no further move, Alvarez went through. The room was cool, thanks to air conditioning. ‘Señor, I will need to ask you questions, but first I should like to see a photograph of your wife – can you provide me with one?’

  Ogden left. When he returned, he handed across a photograph. Alvarez studied this. Sabrina was clearly very much younger than her husband. Significant? She had an oval face, long blonde hair, blue eyes, a pert nose, a sensuously formed mouth, and a shapely body – few men would look at her with neutral thoughts. ‘May I keep this for a while, señor?’

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘I will take great care of it.’ He sat and after a moment, Ogden did the same. ‘Will you tell me exactly what has happened recently, remembering that something unusual that occurred even days ago may be significant.’

  Ogden spoke disjointedly. He’d been very weak since returning from hospital and had spent every afternoon in bed. The previous day, after lunch, Sabrina had come into the bedroom to say she was going out for some fresh air. He’d heard her drive off in her car. He’d read for a very short while, then drifted off to sleep. When he’d got up, it was to find she had not returned home.

  ‘Did that worry you?’

  ‘Not really. It was getting on, but I just thought she’d either lost count of the time or stopped off to see a friend.’

  ‘When did you begin to worry?’

  ‘I suppose as it got later and later and she still didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Did you phone all your friends to see if she was with them?’

  ‘I … No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  There was a long pause. ‘She believes marriage is all about trust. I didn’t want her to think I was checking up on her.’

  ‘But surely you were far more concerned for her safety than what she might think?’

  ‘Yes. Only in the end … I couldn’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t what?’

  ‘Phone.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’d had a drink or two to calm myself down so…’

  In the end, he’d become too calm to phone. Could the photograph, Alvarez wondered, explain the otherwise inexplicable – a man who was worried by his wife’s disappearance, yet instead of doing all he could to find her, drank himself silly? ‘When did you recover consciousness?’

  Ogden mumbled: ‘In the morning, just before Concha arrived.’

  ‘Did you then phone your friends?’

  ‘Well, of course I did,’ he answered, with a pathetic attempt at indignation.

  ‘The señora left here in her car. Presumably, you’ve no idea where that is now?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘What is the make, colour, and registration number?’

  ‘It’s a green BMW. I can’t remember the number.’

  ‘Are the papers in the house?’

  ‘We were told we had to keep them in the car … What’s happened to her?’

  ‘You have no idea?’

  ‘D’you think I’d just be sitting here if I did?’

  ‘Is it possible that she might be staying away of her own will?’

  ‘What kind of a suggestion is that?’

  ‘The relations between you are not under any kind of a strain?’

  ‘We couldn’t be happier.’

  ‘You told me you’d recently been in hospital – what were you suffering from?’

  ‘Very severe food poisoning.’

  ‘What had you eaten to give you that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was your wife ill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So she visited you in hospital?’

  ‘Of course she did. Every day. And stayed for as long as she possibly could.’

  Ogden had spoken with such emphasis that Alvarez was reminded of the old Mallorquin saying, If a man swears too loudly that he has not seen your missing lamb, look first
in his stew pot.

  * * *

  Back home, Alvarez walked through the front room, used only on very formal occasions, into the next one that was both sitting- and dining-room. Jaime was seated at the table, a bottle of brandy, a bowl of ice, and a glass in front of him. Alvarez leaned across to open the right-hand door of the Mallorquin sideboard, brought out a glass, sat. Jaime pushed the brandy and ice across.

  ‘Any idea what’s for grub?’ Alvarez asked, as he poured himself a generous brandy.

  ‘She’s not said anything.’

  He savoured the faint aroma that was creeping through the bead curtain. ‘Doesn’t smell like chickpeas.’ He added three cubes of ice to the brandy.

  ‘I should bloody well hope not! If she tried to give us that sort of muck, I’d have something to say –’ Jaime realized he’d been speaking quite loudly and he came to an abrupt stop, stared uneasily at the bead curtain. Dolores did not appear to ask him to tell her exactly what he would say. He relaxed. ‘What the hell makes you think she might be?’

  ‘Concha Marti told her that if we were out of condition, she ought to feed us on simple food like chickpeas and throw every bottle out of the house.’

  ‘The whole family are just troublemakers … Bruno – he’s married to Concha’s sister – says that after living with her, hell will be heaven. Why be so stupid as to have anything to do with any of ’em?’

  ‘She rang the post to say she works for an English family and the wife’s vanished.’

  ‘Any idea what’s going on?’

  ‘He must be more than twice her age, he’s pot-bellied, and he’s balding.’

  ‘She’s taken off with someone else?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  The bead curtain swished as Dolores came through from the kitchen. She was perspiring freely and her dress was creased and stained, yet she still possessed the haughty air of superiority that falsely suggested Andaluce ancestry. ‘Ha!’

  They stared at her, not understanding the significance of that exclamation, yet nervously certain it would reflect to their disadvantage.

  ‘So! Even the most foolish of men can finally open his eyes to the truth!’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Jaime muttered.