Death Trick

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘I just don’t believe that in one afternoon even you can telephone me to say that Oakley is the murderer and has fled to England and then, within two hours, that Oakley isn’t the murderer and hasn’t fled to England, he has been murdered.’

  ‘The thing is, when I first spoke to you I hadn’t heard from Forensic regarding the blood types . . .’

  ‘Then why the devil did you say anything until you had?’

  ‘Señor, you insisted that I advise you immediately of every development and . . .’

  ‘Do you begin to realize just what you’ve done.’

  ‘In what particular respect, señor?’

  ‘You’re now going to have to ring the English police to say there is no need for them to search for Oakley since he is not in England and is not a murderer, he has been murdered. That will brand you a fool.’

  ‘But if I explain . . .’

  ‘Far worse, it brands me as a superior chief who, albeit unwillingly, commands a fool.’

  ‘If you remember, señor, I did suggest to you that we should not contact England until we’d had confirmation from Forensic . . .’

  ‘You said no such thing. On the contrary, I counselled caution, a counselling which you chose to ignore with inevitable results.’

  The bitter injustice of this made Alvarez reach across for his glass, only to find it was empty. He looked down at the waste-paper basket, but the bottle of Soberano he’d previously emptied had not been miraculously refilled.

  After a long pause, Salas continued in a voice of gloom: ‘What do you intend to do after you’ve phoned England?’

  ‘Continue my investigations, señor. While, as I said earlier, I lean to the motive for the two murders being connected with the development at La Portaña, I feel we cannot overlook the alternative possibility.’

  ‘I wish that . . .’ The superior chief cut short his words.

  Alvarez tried not to speculate on what that wish might have been.

  When Alvarez arrived home, the family, with the exception of Dolores who was in the kitchen, was watching television. She appeared in the doorway. ‘You’re late and I’ve had to do everything I can think of to try to keep the meal from overcooking.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said contritely. ‘I had so much work . . .’

  ‘And that, of course, is so much more important than arriving back in time for the meal.’

  Juan spoke petulantly. ‘Mama, we’re trying to listen to the telly.’

  Her voice sharpened still further. ‘Which, young man, you’ll find very hard to do if I send you upstairs for being rude.’ She had been studying Alvarez and now her attitude changed and she became concerned instead of imperiously annoyed. ‘Enrique, is something the matter?’

  ‘No, not really. It’s just that I feel worn right out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The superior chief’s been going for me. He says I’ve made him look a fool.’

  ‘God did that, not you. A drink will cheer you up and make you forget him.’

  ‘It certainly would, but I don’t want to delay the meal any more and ruin it.’

  ‘Nothing will come to any harm for waiting a few moments longer,’ she replied, grandly ignoring what she had said earlier. She turned and disappeared from sight.

  Jaime stood, crossed to the large cupboard, and brought out of it a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He spoke in a low tone so that his voice would not carry to the kitchen. ‘I was going to have one earlier, but she told me I’d been drinking far too much and ought to go without.’ He poured out two very generous drinks and passed one glass across. He winked. ‘Come back tired more often.’

  Alvarez drove cross-country to Casa Gran; the route was slower, but it took him through countryside he loved, not least because it was so unchanged—few foreigners lived there and the destructive tide of tourism had completely passed it by. The rolling land was seldom irrigated and many of the fields grew almond trees; underneath these, flocks of sheep searched for sustenance among the sun-scorched grass and weeds. To the north were the mountains; some slopes grew pines, others were bare, and it was difficult to pick out any features to account for the difference. Above the mountains there could still occasionally be seen a black vulture, riding the sky as it searched for carrion.

  He parked, crossed to the arched entrance passage and opened the door to the right. He stepped inside and called out and from a distance a woman answered. He waited patiently and eventually Julia came into the hall. When he saw her wrinkled face, leathery skin, and bowed back, he was reminded of his mother even though the two women did not look alike; a lifetime of toil on the land, stretching back to the days when meat had been a luxury enjoyed only after a matanza, had marked them both with a similar stigmata. ‘Señora Monserrat?’

  She nodded.

  He introduced himself and then, to overcome her nervousness on learning he was a detective, chatted to her about matters that interested them both: the growing lack of water even in wells which in the old days had never once dried up, the ridiculous regulations which laid it down that in street markets cheese could no longer be sold alongside vegetables . . . Soon she was completely at ease and she asked him in for a coffee and brandy.

  He introduced the subject of the murder after she’d made the coffee and poured him out a large brandy. ‘What was the señor really like?’

  She settled on a high stool, added sugar to her mug of coffee. She spoke about Roig, often having trouble in finding the words to express exactly what she wanted to say but, with his sympathetic help, always managing to make it clear what she really meant. Roig had been a man who seemingly could never forget or forgive. When she’d been young, her family had been better off than his—by today’s standards, of course, both families had been living in poverty and it would now be difficult to identify any meaningful difference —and this was why, when he’d bought Casa Gran, he’d made a point of searching her out so that he could employ her as his servant and thereby revenge himself. . .

  Most men were, as every woman knew, ready to betray their marriages if given half a chance, but normally they did so with as much decorum as possible. But he had betrayed his time and again and never once tried to conceal the fact—in a hazy way, she’d wondered if this was just another expression of his contempt for her. Neither had he hidden the emotionally brutal way in which he’d dismissed each woman in turn when he became bored with her. Why such a succession? What could one woman offer that the previous had not? The only possible answer seemed to be the novelty of a fresh conquest. And while that was perverted enough even when the woman involved had seen more of life than a respectable woman could have done, when his disgusting appetite led him on viciously to corrupt innocence . . . She came to a stop, now quite unable to express her feelings.

  Alvarez spoke with, apparently, no more than a lazy, casual interest. ‘I’ve had a chat with Señorita Raquel Oliver—I don’t know that I’d call her particularly innocent.’

  ‘Another whore,’ she said contemptuously.

  ‘Then why d’you talk about him corrupting innocence?’

  She did not answer.

  ‘Was one woman different?’

  She finished her coffee.

  ‘There was one, wasn’t there? Then I need to talk with her. She will be able to tell me more about him because she will have loved him, not his cheque-book.’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘He was murdered, señora.’

  ‘He deserved to die.’

  ‘The man who came that afternoon in the white Seat 127 has also been murdered. He didn’t deserve such a fate.’

  ‘She’d never kill anyone.’

  ‘I wouldn’t suggest for one moment that she might.’

  She looked uncertainly at him.

  ‘Señora, this woman who loved him may have learned something that will tell me why he was murdered and when I can be certain of the motive, then I will be closer to knowing who was the murderer.’ He spoke even more earnes
tly so that it was impossible to miss his sincerity. ‘She has no reason to fear speaking to me. When I have heard what she can tell me, it will be the end. No one but she and you need ever know we’ve met because of him . . . Who is she?’ He waited, knowing that a wrong word now would ensure that she’d decide to remain silent whereupon nothing, certainly nothing he could say or do, would ever make her talk.

  She spoke slowly, again searching for words. Eulalia had come from Bodon, on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada on the mainland. The village was perched above a valley in which the land which could be tilled was of poor quality and the rest which couldn’t—either because of outcrops of rock or the degree of slope—would support only goats. The climate was unusually harsh. Due to the shape and formation of the encircling mountains, the valley was searingly hot for much of the year; occasionally there were storms so fierce that the rain flushed the growing crops out of the ground. The best land—best only in the sense that it was better than the worst—was almost all owned by absentee landlords who still demanded a full fifty per cent share from those who sharecropped it. Without any form of industry, very few could hope to work at anything but farming, however poor the returns that this offered. There was no outright poverty, but there was considerable hardship. A priest came once a fortnight from ten kilometres away and often castigated them for not repairing the church; but how were they to afford even the smallest repair? There was one bar, in which was the only telephone available to the ordinary villagers, one general store which charged too much for everything, one poorly stocked chemist, one baker, and one hardware store.

  Life on a tourist island was so different from life on Bodon that it might have been taking place in a different world. Years ago, the people would have heard stories of what life was like on Mallorca, but they would not really have believed them; fairytales were for those who could afford to believe in fairies. But television had changed everything. Now they could see with their own eyes how the farmers on the island grew as many as three crops a year, lived in grand houses, and drove shiny new cars. Their own hardships became much greater because of the comparison.

  Eulalia came from a family of nine children, all girls. Her father had demanded a son and had insisted on his wife having child after child in the hopes that the next one would be male (not, however, that any modern and efficient form of contraception would have been open to her even if she had borne a son early on). After the ninth daughter, he had been killed in a rock fall. Her mother (incredibly, remembering all those children) was still fit and strong and she might well have married again had the custom not been that a widower might remarry, but a widow might not. As it was, she was left to try to wrest a living from the poor land which they sharecropped. Hard times became harder. Eulalia, the eldest daughter, had decided to leave Bodon, find work on the island of flowing milk and honey which they’d seen on television, and send money back home.

  She’d come to Mallorca and after a short while (short in terms of actual days, not as she at the time and in her nervousness had measured it) had found work as a chambermaid in one of the hotels on the outskirts of Palma Nova. In the following days, she’d discovered more about life than in all the preceding years. She learned that foreigners had so much money they drank all day long, careless of what excesses they then committed, and knew nothing of the prideful respect for others which came instinctively to any Spaniard; that foreign men considered every female an easy lay and they had not the slightest idea how shocked and humiliated she felt when their hands reached for her breasts and buttocks; and that foreign women expected to be laid, preferably by a Spanish waiter who confided that in reality he was a bullfighter, temporarily down on his luck . . . And yet, despite everything, she did not lose her conviction that good always eventually overcame evil. It was this naivety which had initially attracted Roig; that, and her innocence.

  On first meeting Eulalia, Julia had known that here was an innocent, totally different from all the others, who had no conception of the true nature of Roig and who was making the terrible mistake of believing everything he said.

  She’d tried again and again to make Eulalia open her eyes and her heart to the truth, but to no avail. Proudly, Eulalia had refuted all the allegations. Yes, of course Roig had told her he was married, but he’d also explained that he’d never loved his wife and had married her only out of a mistaken sense of compassion. How many men had that nobility of soul? Now his wife was ill, with a complaint that could only be fatal, and after she had died and a decent period of time had passed, he’d marry Eulalia and give her all the things of which until now life had so unfairly deprived her. She’d be able to send enough money back to her family to make their lives easy; she’d have fine clothes and beautiful jewellery; she’d have servants; never again would she have to wonder where the next peseta was coming from . . . A woman of any experience would have laughed in his face at such a shopsoiled approach, but she’d been so naive that she’d believed every word. So when he pleaded with her to prove that her love for him was as great as his for hers, she’d surrendered her virginity in a mood of exalted pleasure which owed little to plain passion . . .

  ‘Is there such a fool as a woman in love?’ she demanded bitterly.

  Only a man in love, he thought. ‘What ended things between them?’

  She got up from the stool and went over to the stove, came back with the coffee maker and refilled their mugs. She passed him the bottle of brandy before settling back on the stool. ‘He got bored with her.’

  ‘Because she was no longer innocent?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Had she been living in this house?’

  ‘He never lets any of them actually live here. She hasn’t a car or anything, so he used to bring her and take her back.’

  ‘Which hotel does she work in?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘You do, because you’ll have kept in touch to try to help her get over what’s happened.’

  She added brandy to her coffee.

  ‘What’s the name of the hotel?’

  She drank. For a moment it seemed she was going to continue to refuse to answer, but she then suddenly said: ‘The Bahia.’

  ‘I won’t forget my promise. No one at the hotel will know why I’ve spoken to her.’

  Fifteen minutes later, he left and returned to his car. He was driving along the dirt track when he saw a man working in the right-hand field and he stopped. He left the car, climbed over the low drystone wall, skirted a large area of melons, and came up to the man who was using a mattock to hoe between the rows of staked beans. ‘Ignacio Ferriol?’

  Ferriol straightened up.

  ‘My name’s Inspector Alvarez, cuerpo general de policia. Have you time for a word?’

  ‘I can make it.’

  ‘Then let’s get into some shade.’

  They walked across to an algarroba tree and sat.

  Alvarez said: ‘You told Inspector Jaume that you left here before the white Seat 127 did—is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jaume had also noted, in his meticulously neat handwriting, that Ferriol’s manner had suggested he’d been lying, but Jaume had not then pressed the matter because of lack of time. ‘Then you’ve no idea when it drove away?’

  ‘Couldn’t have, could I?’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’

  They were silent. From close by, a couple of cicadas began to shrill, the notes reaching an intensity so piercing that the ear-drums of the two men momentarily vibrated.

  ‘Are you quite certain you didn’t see the car leave?’ Alvarez persisted.

  Ferriol cleared his throat, spat. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘I did see a car come away.’

  ‘Was it the white Seat 127?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It were dark.’

  ‘You don’t live close to here, so what were you doing around at th
at time?’

  ‘I was . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Picking some beans and tomatoes.’

  ‘Do I look so stupid I might believe that?’

  ‘I tell you, it’s bloody true.’

  ‘Then you pick ‘em in the dark because they’re better flavoured?’

  ‘I picked ‘em in the dark because then the old bastard couldn’t see me.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Alvarez.

  Having made the initial admission, Ferriol found it easier to continue. He worked day in, day out, for a man who’d started life the same as everyone else, yet who now strutted about the place as if he’d that moment come down from heaven. And just because he had money, he treated people like Julia and himself as dirt, always criticizing and complaining. One day—last year, it was—he’d come along in his big car just as Ferriol was cycling home. He’d demanded to know what was in the sack balanced on the handlebars. When he’d discovered that it contained newly dug potatoes, he’d threatened to call the police. Stupid bastard. Everyone knew that it was customary for anyone who grew vegetables for someone else to help himself for his own use. And Roig could have afforded to buy whole mountains of potatoes . . .

  ‘So you nipped along after it was dark and while you were busy you saw a car leave Casa Gran—but being dark, you couldn’t make out whether it was the same one you’d seen earlier?’

  Ferriol nodded.

  ‘Didn’t you even get an idea of its colour?’

  ‘I weren’t really looking.’

  Alvarez pictured the scene. The car’s headlights sweeping across the field at each turn or bend in the track, Ferriol crouching low so that he would not be sighted . . . ‘Can you tell me anything at all about the car? You must have stood up after it was past and watched it carry on.’

  ‘Nothing to tell except one of its rear lights wasn’t working.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I reckon it was the right-hand.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  Ferriol considered the question and then muttered to himself as he worked out the answer. ‘Near enough eleven,’ he concluded.