Death Trick

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘The knife used is shorter than the depth of the wound which suggests the upward blow was delivered with considerable force, compressing the wall of the body just below the ribs. In addition to this, the very ragged nature and width of the wound suggest that the knife was withdrawn, probably only partially, and then thrust home again at least once. In our opinion, this rules out any defence that death was not intended.

  ‘One more thing. I’ve had a word with the lab boys and they’ve asked me to pass on to you the fact that it’s confirmed that the only prints on the knife are those of the daily woman.’

  ‘Was the murderer wearing gloves, then?’

  ‘I gather, not necessarily. The knife has a thin handle, considering the length of the blade, and so the murderer’s fingers may well have wrapped right round it and the tips rested on the flesh of the hand.’

  ‘Anything to make things more difficult.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed the assistant unsympathetically.

  Alvarez stopped the car by a large hoarding on which blue letters against a bright red background declared that La Portaña was the finest urbanization on the island, and stepped out on to the road. The land, which had been well wooded, sloped gently upwards from the sea in a wedge shape; it was roughly fifty hectares in all. Beyond, on either side, although this was screened by the shape of the land and narrow belts of trees, was heavily developed and so it was obvious that this land had been owned by someone who had held on to it long after the start of the building boom; equally obviously, he or she had finally decided it was impossible any longer to forgo the immense profit to be had by selling it.

  As was required by law—although often carefully forgotten—roads had been built, electric cables run to junction boxes, water pipes laid, and street lights installed, before any building had been started. Now, several houses and two blocks of flats were under construction; the houses were obviously going to be large and the blocks of flats no more than four storeys high and—most unusually—of an attractive design with flowing curves. In the centre of the urbanizacion was a public garden and this was ringed with mature palm trees, transplanted from near Valencia; there were also grass, green from generous watering, and flowerbeds bright with colour.

  Alvarez returned to the car and drove down to the wooden building which was being used as the sales office, close to the main entrance of the urbanizacion. He went inside. A narrow room ran the length of the building and in this were two desks, a counter on which were set out sales brochures and reprints of an article which had appeared in an international glossy magazine, and a frame on an easel on which was a large-scale plan of the development.

  A young man who had been seated at the desk nearer to the counter finally came to his feet. He had a spiky hairstyle and a very prominent Adam’s apple and his pink shirt did not rest comfortably with his puce slacks. He eyed Alvarez with supercilious disdain, correctly judging it unlikely a sale was in the offing.

  ‘Cuerpo general de policia.’

  The young man’s expression became watchful, though perhaps even more supercilious.

  ‘I’d like a word with whoever’s in charge.’

  Vich’s office lay behind the general room and was half the size of that. He was a small, slightly built man, with an outgoing manner. He shook hands, then moved a chair away from the wall to the front of the desk. ‘So how can I help you?’ he asked as he sat behind the desk.

  ‘I need to know who owns the urbanizacion?’

  ‘It’s a company—Andreu y Soler.’

  ‘Was Pablo Roig connected with it?’

  Vich was surprised. ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I, then?’

  ‘Well, I’ll put it like this—it’s not a secret, but his name doesn’t appear in the general literature . . . It was one hell of a shock to hear he’d been murdered. That’s why you’re here now?’

  Alvarez nodded.

  ‘Then you reckon there may be some connection between the murder and this company?’

  ‘There’s the possibility. What I want to try and find out is if there’s a probability.’

  Vich shook his head. ‘I don’t see how there can be.’

  ‘Let’s start by you giving me a broad picture of the set-up here.’

  Vich spoke briskly, suggesting a well-informed, decisive man. Andreu y Soler had been formed specifically to buy the land and develop the urbanization of La Portaña. Roig had been the company’s legal adviser and it was he who had managed to obtain planning permission even though the land had originally been classified green belt. In addition, all the original working capital had come through his hands, although there was no suggestion that he had personally provided it.

  ‘I gather that recently finance has become a problem?’

  Vich’s expression changed. ‘What makes you say that?’

  Alvarez smiled briefly. ‘We all have our secrets. Yours is how planning permission was given, mine is the source of my information.’

  Vich picked up a pencil and fiddled with it. ‘Suppose I tell you that any report about a financial problem is an exaggeration?’

  ‘Then I’ll know that the company is in deep trouble.’

  ‘No, not deep . . . Look, I suppose everything I tell you is confidential?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, there are problems. Once we obtained planning permission we needed extra capital and went to the banks for it—that, in fact, was the intention from the beginning. All the sums had been done, but almost inevitably costs have risen above the estimates—for one thing, the latest wage rise was twice what we’d projected. Oil sheiks have become very thin on the ground and that leaves a big hole in the number of people willing to pay ten thousand pesetas a square metre.’

  ‘Is that what the land costs?’ asked Alvarez in astonishment.

  That’s right.’

  ‘I wonder you’ve sold any at all . . . So what’s been happening about this?’

  ‘There’s been a search for fresh capital.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘The holding company, I guess.’

  ‘What holding company?’

  ‘Ashley Developments. It’s registered in the Cayman Islands. Obviously, the original capital came through them. They set up Andreu y Soler here with the Spanish directors holding only the minimum number of shares required by Spanish company law.’

  ‘It sounds as if there’ll be one hell of a job unravelling the knots if the urbanizacion goes bust.’

  ‘There’s no call to talk about going bust, Inspector,’ said Vich hastily. ‘All that we have is a temporary cashflow problem. When that’s solved the banks will be happy and the development will go right ahead as planned and will be highly profitable. I know I said a bit earlier on that the plots haven’t been selling all that quickly, but that doesn’t mean the outlook’s gloomy. We’re in a very strong position, really, because we’re offering something which is becoming rarer and rarer: exclusiveness.’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like a salesman!’

  Vich laughed. ‘Nonsense—I’m telling you the truth . . . It’s like this. When the rich buy a home, whether it’s to live in or just for holidays, they demand two things: that the property tells everyone else they’re rich and that they’re well protected from the non-rich. Here, we can offer them both. Anyone who buys a plot of land of a minimum size of four thousand square metres at ten thousand a metre, on which the house that is built must cost at least forty million, has to be rich; and in the near future, the whole urbanizacion will be surrounded by a security fence in which there’ll be only two gates, each of which will be manned twenty-four hours a day. The rich may not find it easy to get through the eye of a needle, but the poor will sure as hell find it impossible to enter here.’

  ‘Sounds more like a prison.’

  ‘Aren’t we all, in fact, in some sort of prison?’

  ‘If I listen to you much longer, suicide will come as a relief Vich smiled.

&n
bsp; ‘Let’s leave the rich to enjoy their exclusive riches. What can you tell me about the company in the Cayman Islands?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come off it.’

  ‘That’s the plain truth. The only contact I’ve ever had with them is through cheques; and the signature on those has always been an illegible scrawl.’

  ‘How much d’you reckon they’ve invested?’

  Vich leaned back in his chair and joined the tips of the fingers of his two hands together. ‘That’s a very sensitive figure.’

  ‘So’s my continuing goodwill. I told you, the conversation is confidential.’

  Vich picked up the pencil and wrote down a series of figures, did a few quick calculations, then said: ‘Call it five billion pesetas and you won’t be far out.’

  ‘That’s excluding borrowings from the banks?’

  ‘That’s right. Makes the mind boggle, doesn’t it? Teaches you how the other half of the world lives.’

  ‘Not a very edifying lesson. Does the name of Gerald or Gerry Oakley say anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then that’s that.’ Alvarez stood.

  Vich looked up. ‘I’ve given you a fair bit of information, but not received any at all in return. Who is Oakley and how could he be connected with here? How could Andreu y Soler have anything to do with the murder of Roig?’

  ‘At the moment, I’ve not the slightest idea.’

  Vich’s expression called him a liar.

  London telephoned at five twenty-five that afternoon. Reference the request for information concerning an Englishman, Gerald Oakley, who had travelled first class from Palma to London on flight IB 628 on the ninth of the month. Regretfully, on the scant information provided, it had proved impossible to trace him.

  ‘It would,’ said the inspector, who spoke very passable Spanish, ‘help considerably if you could furnish us with something more definite—say, the number of his passport.’

  ‘At the moment,’ replied Alvarez, ‘we don’t have any details. He’s a casual visitor, never staying for very long, and so he’s not had to apply for a permanencia or residencia; he’s a sub-tenant and neither he nor the man who owns the lease has ever bothered to have any legal agreement drawn up; he’s never used any of the local banks. So we’ve no record of his passport number or, for that matter, of any other documents. On top of that, friends seemed to have learned very little about him.’

  ‘Would you say he’s been deliberately covering his tracks?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that and in this connection I’m sure it’s significant that in his house there isn’t a single piece of paper with any personal information on it.’

  ‘This is beginning to look interesting! When your request reached us, we naturally circulated the details through all departments and county forces in the usual way. In the past few hours, I’ve heard from the Fraud Squad. They’ve nothing definite against Oakley, but his name has surfaced in a current investigation and they wanted to question him, but discovered he’d left no trace of his present whereabouts . . . Can you give me a fuller breakdown of his possible connection with the murder case?’

  Alvarez detailed what was known ‘If he’s in business in Mallorca, that ties up—speaking very generally—with things here. The Fraud Squad’s interested in a heavy case of insider dealing. D’you know what I mean by that?’

  ‘Isn’t it something to do with shares?’

  ‘It’s using confidential information to buy stock that’s about to rise. On the Exchange they say it’s clever buying if you’re not caught, insider dealing if you are. Anyway, the crux of the matter is that recently a couple of clerks from different firms were chatting and they discovered that on several occasions there’d been heavy orders to buy shares in a company which had soon afterwards been the subject of a takeover bid, whereupon the shares had soared upwards. It smelled like insider dealing, so they reported their suspicions to their bosses. The Department of Trade and Industry were called in and after a while their investigators alerted the Fraud Squad. A suspect was turned up who works in one of the merchant banks concerned in the contested takeover bids. Unfortunately, there is so far absolutely no direct evidence of his involvement. The information can be shown to have been available to him, if never exclusively to him, but not that he’s ever done more with the information than he was supposed to. The share dealings were isolated, of course, but none of them was carried out in his name or in the name of anyone with whom he can be shown to have the slightest connection. His financial affairs have been very closely investigated and there’s not been a penny spent or invested which he can’t legitimately account for. So to date it’s a case of probability without proof.’

  ‘Surely the name of the buyer or buyers of the shares helps?’

  ‘In every case it was a company, registered in the Cayman Islands. Under their present laws, no bank, company, or other financial institution, can be forced to reveal any evidence to a third party except in circumstances in which there has been an action committed which amounts to a crime both there and in the country seeking information. In the Cayman Islands, insider dealing is not a criminal offence. Which is hardly surprising since they don’t have a stock exchange.’

  ‘What’s the name of the company?’

  There was a pause. ‘I did read it, but dammit, I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Ashley Developments, by any chance?’

  ‘I’ve an idea that that’s precisely what it was! How have you come across it?’

  ‘Andreu y Soler is developing an urbanization here and the original capital was provided by Ashley Developments, which set up the Spanish company. Roig, the murdered man, was legal adviser to Andreu y Soler and it was also through him that much of the money passed. Oakley had a heated row with Roig in the late afternoon of the day of the murder.’

  ‘The Fraud Squad is going to like this!’

  They spoke for a couple of minutes about other matters —in particular, the weather—and had begun to say goodbye when the inspector interrupted himself. ‘I almost forgot. I don’t know if it’s of any direct importance to you, but one of the first-class passengers never showed on that flight.’

  ‘Can the passenger be identified?’

  ‘Not a hope this end. It’s the usual situation. The airline had a list of passengers, but there was no check on the names of those who boarded.’

  ‘Well, I’d say there’s one thing that’s certain—it wasn’t Oakley who failed to turn up!’

  ‘Not if you’re right in your surmises. He’d have flown the plane himself in order to escape from the island.’

  A couple of minutes later, the call was concluded. Alvarez hesitated, then phoned Salas.

  ‘So far as we’re concerned, then,’ said Salas, ‘there’s nothing more we can do and it’s up to England to find Oakley?’

  ‘That’s the way it looks, señor.’

  ‘Then that’s the way it’s damned well going to stay.’

  Palma telephoned at seven-fifteen, shortly before Alvarez had decided to finish work.

  ‘Forensic lab here. We’ve examined the interior of the Seat 127, registration number PM 12050. The stains on the steering-wheel are dried blood. In addition, further stains, though very much fainter, were found on the back seat and on the rubber mat on the floor at the back—attempts had almost certainly been made to wash both seat and mat. All three stains were of group O which is, of course, the commonest.’

  Alvarez fiddled with a strand of hair as he tried to picture the scene. In stabbing Roig to death, Oakley had got blood on his hands. But while it was easy to see how he then transferred this to the steering-wheel, how had there come to be blood in the back of the car? Had Oakley also got blood on his clothes and shoes and had he for some reason climbed into the back of the car? Why, when every second counted if he was to escape from the island? And why hadn’t he also stained the front seat of the car? . . .

  ‘Are you still there?’

  �
��I’m sorry,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘There’s one other thing. The blood of the deceased is group B.’

  ‘But . . . but that’s impossible.’

  ‘Sorry. There’s no room for any doubt.’

  The full meaning of what he had just been told swept through his mind and with sinking heart he realized he was going to have to telephone Salas. He reached down to the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk and brought out the bottle of brandy and glass which he kept there for emergencies.

  CHAPTER 12

  Alvarez tried to speak with calm confidence. ‘I think that after Oakley was murdered, his body was bundled into the back of his car and then the murderer drove off to hide it, probably in one of the remoter parts of the mountains where it is unlikely ever to be found. Inevitably, he got some blood on his hands and it was this which stained the steering-wheel. The next morning he drove the Seat to the airport and left it in the car park, went into the terminal and booked a late ticket in Oakley’s name. Obviously all this was designed to make it seem that Oakley had murdered Roig and had then fled. Rightly, the real murderer reckoned that the risk of his being remembered at the airport was virtually nil.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Salas shouted.

  ‘Señor, I have just tried to explain . . .’

  ‘Why should Oakley be murdered?’

  ‘As I see it, for one of two reasons. Either because he inadvertently witnessed the murder of Roig, and so in turn had to be eliminated, or else because both he and Roig were involved in something which had to do with the development of La Portaña. I think the latter is the more probable, although I have to admit that I’ve no idea why their involvement should have proved so deadly.’

  ‘I just don’t believe it.’

  ‘Señor, it is a fact that in the case there have been small, but significant, questions which haven’t been answered. For instance, his position in the setting up of a development that big shows Oakley to have been an intelligent and sharp businessman. So wouldn’t he have realized that to murder Roig on the same evening that he must have been overheard having a row with him was bound . . .’