“Sorry,” Cade said. “I’ve got my living to think about.”
“You might give a thought to your dying too while you’re at it,” Alletson said, and rang off.
FOUR
THE PHOENIX
THE DAKOTA flopped down on the airfield like a tired old vulture. The airfield was hot and dusty and arid. To the east a few wispy clouds floated across the sky, high and thin as gauze. Away to the south mountains shimmered in the heat, intangible as dreams.
There were five other passengers in the Dakota besides Cade, as well as a quantity of freight. From Caracas the flight had been relatively uneventful, except that once or twice the pilot had come aft and argued fiercely with one of the passengers. It was an argument that seemed to have been going on since before the flight had begun; it could have been going on for years. The pilot was a plump young man wearing a red shirt and a baseball cap; the passenger was grey-haired, paunchy, with a voice like a crow. One of the other passengers informed Cade that the two were father and son, so perhaps the argument had been going on ever since the pilot had learnt to talk Cade was not bothered as long as it did not take his mind off his flying duties. The pilot did not inspire Cade with much confidence, but even at that he was better than the co-pilot The co-pilot looked like a junkie who was not getting his regular fix.
The Dakota bumped a little as its undercarriage hit the runway. It slowed, came to a stop, then turned and taxied towards the control buildings, leaving clouds of dust eddying behind it.
Cade released his seat-belt and passed a tongue over gummy lips. He wondered why he had come. It was probably a fool’s errand and he would find nothing. No doubt it would have been more sensible to have taken Superintendent Alletson’s advice and to have stayed in England; but it was a bit late to think about that now. He was here and he might as well go through with it.
Outside the plane the heat was oppressive. There was a low brick building with a control tower at one end and a wind-sock drooping from a pole. On the wall of the building was painted in large letters: San Borja. Below this in slightly smaller letters was the word : Aeropuerto.
It seemed to Cade a somewhat pretentious description for such an establishment
There were few formalities at San Borja Airport. On the other side of the control building a rusty minibus was waiting to take passengers into the town. They got in. The driver started the engine and the minibus shuddered. There was a noise like steel bolts being ground in a mill and the gears finally sorted themselves out and they were away.
It was about a mile on a rough road. The driver seemed to be possessed by the demon of speed and the minibus swayed like a ship in a storm, bouncing over rocks and potholes and sliding perilously into ruts. A large woman sitting next to Cade was thrown heavily against him and smiled an apology.
“Such a road, señor.”
“Why is it not repaired?” Cade asked.
She laughed as though he had made a joke. “In San Borja roads are never repaired. Who would pay?” She looked at Cade with some interest “You are a stranger to San Borja, señor.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“Yes,” Cade said.
“You have friends here perhaps?”
“No. No friends.”
“So? You come on business?” She was frankly curious. She had black, coarse hair combed back from her forehead and large, dark eyes which had a certain calculation in them. Her nose was prominent and on her upper lip there was a slight growth of hair. Her chin descended to her neck in a series of mobile curves and her ample bosom seemed only precariously contained by the cotton dress she was wearing. She was possibly between thirty-five and forty years old.
“In a way, yes,” Cade admitted.
“You have arranged accommodation of course?”
“No,” Cade said, “but I suppose I can find a hotel.”
“In San Borja,” the woman said, “there is only one good hotel—the Phoenix. I would not advise you to go anywhere else. At the Phoenix you will have a good room, good food, good service. And you will not be cheated.”
She seemed, Cade thought, to be pressing the virtues of the Phoenix with considerable enthusiasm. “You would not, perhaps, have some interest in this hotel?”
“But naturally,” she said. “I own it”
“Ah, I see.”
“I am Señora Torres.”
“I am Robert Cade.”
Señora Torres nodded. “You are not, of course, Venezuelan, Señor Cade. You speak Spanish very well but with a certain accent. You are perhaps American?”
“English.”
“So?”
Cade had the impression that an added flicker of interest appeared in Señora Torres’s large dark eyes, as though the mention of his nationality had touched some nerve; but he could have been mistaken.
“In this country,” she said, “we regard the English as our friends. We have not forgotten how many Englishmen fought beside us in our struggle for independence.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Some of us have long memories,” Señora Torres said.
The minibus bumped and rattled on its way and the first houses of the town appeared. They were not very impressive. Banner had described San Borja as a dump and perhaps he had not been far out in his assessment; at a first glance it did not look a very prosperous place.
After brief consideration Cade decided to try Señora Torres’s hotel. She had probably exaggerated its attractions, but at least he would be saved the bother of looking for alternative accommodation. And if it did not come up to specification there was nothing to prevent him from moving.
The Phoenix faced the Plaza, an open, unpaved square in the centre of the town where some children were playing and two old men were sleeping in the shade of a tree. The Phoenix was a white, two-storied building standing by itself. It had nine large windows in the Plaza side and a door that was wide open. The minibus stopped outside the hotel and Cade and Señora Torres got out. The señora’s feet had scarcely touched the ground before she began to shout in a voice that would have done credit to a town crier.
“Pancho! Pancho! Where are you, you scoundrel?”
After a few moments of this a dried-up wisp of a man appeared in the doorway and stared at Señora Torres without saying a word. He had a face like a pickled walnut and he was wearing faded blue denims and espadrilles.
“Don’t stand there like an idiot‚” she cried. “Take Señor Cade’s luggage.”
Cade had a suitcase and a holdall. Pancho took them from him. He also took Señora Torres’s bag.
“This way, señor,” the lady said, and she led the way into the hotel like a galleon under full sail.
The floor of the lobby was tiled and it was appreciably cooler inside. On the right there was a counter of dark polished wood with a key-rack on the wall behind, and there was also a wide stairway leading to the upper floor. There was no one behind the counter; in fact no one else in sight Señora Torres raised her voice again and sent it echoing through the hotel.
“Jorge!”
A door opened at the far end of the lobby and a man came in. He was younger than the woman and he was handsome in a swarthy, villainous kind of way. Immediately he saw Señora Torres he rushed to meet her, flung his arms round her splendid body and kissed her ardently on the mouth.
“Welcome home, Maria my love. It has been so long.”
“Nonsense,” Señora Torres said. “It has been only five days.” She was going through the motions of being annoyed by this effusive greeting, but it was apparent that she liked it nevertheless.
“Five days!” Jorge exclaimed. “Without the light of my life, an age.”
He looked and sounded, Cade thought, like a tenth rate actor in a Victorian melodrama.
Señora Torres freed herself from his enthusiastic embrace and turned to her guest “Señor Cade, this is my husband.”
Jorge Torres made a slight bow. He had a black moustache and long side-whiskers. His s
mile was like an advertisement for dental cream.
“So happy to meet you, señor. You intend to stay long at the Phoenix?”
“That depends on circumstances.”
“We shall be enchanted to serve you for as long as you care to be with us.”
Cade had a suspicion that there was a hint of mockery in Torres’s eyes and in his smile. He had a feeling that Torres would as soon have seen him in hell as he would have served him.
“What rooms have we, Jorge?” Señora Torres asked, cutting off any further professions of welcome.
“The same as when you went away. No one has left; no one has arrived. All is as it was.”
Señor Torres spoke to Pancho, who had been standing with the bags in his hands waiting patiently for instructions. “Take Señor Cade’s luggage to Room Seven,”
“Yes, señor.” He went away up the stairs.
It was Jorge Torres who showed Cade to his room. “The best room in the hotel, señor.” He thumped the bed, “Good mattress.” He moved to the window. “And what a splendid view, is it not?”
It was in fact a view of the Plaza; but Cade had not come to admire the view from a hotel window. His purpose in coming to San Borja was to try to find out how Harry Banner had come into possession of one hundred and forty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds and, if possible, why he had been murdered and by whom.
He wondered whether it would not be a good idea to make a start by questioning Jorge Torres. He might at least know something about the Gomara estate. He was still turning the idea over in his mind when Torres himself asked a question; it was one that Señora Torres had asked earlier on the bus.
“You are American, señor?”
“No,” Cade said. “I am English.”
“So?”
In Señora Torres’s eyes Cade had imagined a flicker of interest on learning his nationality; in her husband the interest was more obvious.
“We do not often have Englishmen in this hotel. San Borja is not, as you might say, a tourist resort. It is an honour of course.”
“Not often?” Cade tried to make his tone flat, casually conversational, no more. “Then you have sometimes had Englishmen?”
“One‚’ Torres said. “No others in my time. You know him perhaps?”
“It seems unlikely.’
“And yet perhaps not impossible. His name was Banner. Harry Banner. A strange name.”
Torres was watching Cade closely; it could have been that he was looking for some reaction on Cade’s part to the mention of Banner’s name.
Cade looked down into the Plaza. The old men were still asleep under the tree; a car went past, raising dust, the children threw stones at it in a half-hearted sort of way; they did not hit it.
“This man Banner,” Cade said. “Was he a tourist?”
Torres laughed. “Are you a tourist, señor?”
“No.”
“Neither was he.”
Two of the children in the Plaza had started to fight. The others were urging them on; their thin voices came up to the room like the chatter of starlings.
“Was he alone?”
“No, señor, not alone. There were two other men with him.”
“Englishmen?”
“No. South American.”
“Did they stay long?”
“Señor Banner did not stay long. He went to work for Señor Gomara. The other two stayed.”
“Señor Gomara?”
“He has an estate south of the town. Fifteen kilometres maybe. It is not a large estate. I think Señor Gomara has retired from business.”
“You have seen him?”
“No one sees Señor Gomara. He never comes into town. He is, as you might say, a very retiring man in every respect.” Torres smiled, teeth gleaming below the black moustache. “Perhaps he has reasons.”
“What reasons?”
Torres gave a lift of the shoulders. “Who knows? There are many possible reasons why a man should not wish to be seen. If he were being hunted by the police for example.”
“So you think Señior Gomara is a fugitive from justice? Is that so?”
“I did not say that. I do not know what he is. All I know is that he bought the estate six or seven years ago and that he never leaves it.”
“How can you be sure he never leaves it? Do you keep watch on him?”
“This is a small town. We all know who passes through San Borja, and he could not go any other way, except to the mountains. And who would wish to go to the mountains?”
Cade stroked his chin reflectively; he had shaved early in the day and already it felt a little rough. “Those two men who came with Señor Banner—are they still here?”
Torres shook his head. “No, señor. When Señor Banner left the Gomara estate they left San Borja too.”
“When did Banner leave?”
Torres made a rapid mental calculation. “I think it was maybe ten days ago. Perhaps more.”
“And the other men left with him?”
“Not with him, señor; after him. I do not think Señor Banner told them he was going. When they heard he was gone they were very angry. There was not another flight to Caracas for three days.”
“Three days!” Banner had had a good start on them, but they had made up the leeway. Perhaps he had been held up in Caracas or somewhere else on the way to London. But that was assuming that the two men who had accompanied Banner to his room at Mr. Solly’s hotel had been the same two men who had arrived with him in San Borja. There was no proof of that, of course, but it was all Lombard Street to a china orange that it was so.
“They were very impatient‚” Torres said. “They tried to hire a car to take them, but even if they had been able to get one it would have taken maybe longer than three days. The roads between here and Caracas are not good. I told them so, and in the end they decided to wait for the Dakota. But oh, señor, they were very angry. I wonder what it was that Señor Banner did to annoy them?”
Cade was wondering the same thing.
Torres was smiling again. “I think perhaps you know these men, señor.”
“No,” Cade said. “I don’t know them.”
“But you know Señor Banner perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” Cade admitted. It would have been futile to deny it. He had shown too much interest and Torres was shrewd enough to see that the interest was not mere casual curiosity.
“He is a friend of yours perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“For a friend of mine,” Torres said, “I should be worried with two such angry men following him.”
Cade looked again at the Plaza. One of the boys was an the ground with another sitting on him. The old men had not moved.
“Did one of these South Americans have a pockmarked face and a gold signet ring?”
“He did.”
“A thick-set man?”
“Yes, señor; that is the man.”
“His name?”
“He called himself Manuel Lopez.”
“And the other?”
“Luis Guzman. He was taller, thin, hard-faced, with a drooping moustache and a scar on his forehead, so.” Torres indicated with his finger a point on his own forehead, just above the left eyebrow.
Cade had turned away from the window. He looked steadily at Torres. “Can I trust you not to mention this conversation that we have had? To speak of it to no one?”
“You can trust me, señor.”
“Good.”
“Nevertheless,” Torres said, “it might be easier for me to remember that you do not wish me to talk of this matter if I had some small token to stir my memory. You understand what I mean?”
“I understand,” Cade said. He took out his wallet and extracted fifty bolivars. He handed the notes to Torres. “Perhaps this will serve to remind you. Please regard it as a small token.”
Torres accepted the money.
The dining-room of the Phoenix Hotel was large enough to have accommodated at least three times as m
any guests as appeared to be in residence. Cade had a table to himself; it was in a corner and from it he had a view of the whole room. A tall, lean man with pale yellow hair, trimmed short, was sitting at a nearby table with a woman in a blue dress. The man had that kind of hard youthful look that some men carry well into middle age with scarcely any noticeable change; he had light blue eyes and a curious habit of tapping his chin with his knuckles when making a point in conversation. He was wearing a brown lightweight suit and a rather jazzy tie.
The woman was, Cade reckoned, a little on the right side of thirty; she had raven black hair which came down to the level of her chin and then curved inward, making a kind of living frame for the oval of her face. There was a vivid brilliance about her that caught Cade’s attention; when she laughed at something the man had said her laughter was soft and vibrant, a sound to make the heart beat faster; so might Helen have laughed when Paris whispered to her.
The food, rather to Cade’s surprise, was excellent. It was served by a depressed-looking waiter who seemed to be doing it all under penance. He poured wine with the air of carrying out his last act on earth and he sighed gently when he put down the plates. He would have made a very good attendant at a funeral.
Señora Torres herself came to inquire whether Cade was satisfied. “It is as good as I told you it would be?”
“You were too modest, señora. It is the best.”
She looked pleased. “l am glad it is to your liking. And your room also?”
“Could not be better. You need have no fear that I shall be looking for other accommodation while I remain in San Borja.”
“I am happy to hear you say so,” Señora Torres said. Then she lowered her voice and added : “You had a very long talk with Jorge this afternoon. I should perhaps warn you, though he is my husband, it has to be admitted that he is a very great liar. You must not believe everything that he tells you. And do not give him money; above all, señor, do not give him money.”
“I will remember the warning, señora.”
She smiled and moved away, pausing at other tables, exchanging a word here and there, friendly, good-humoured, the perfect hostess. Only when the depressed waiter clumsily dropped a dish did her aspect suddenly change to one of anger. She spoke only one word to him but he seemed to cringe. The señora, it was obvious, was something of a spitfire on occasion.
The Rodriguez Affair (1970) Page 4