He said in English: ‘I am very sorry, señorita, to have to trouble you at such a sad time.’
She nodded, crossed to the fireplace and stood in front of this, her hands clasped.
‘Are you able to answer a few questions?’
‘I suppose so,’ she answered dully, her voice holding an accent which he could not place.
‘Why not sit down?’
She unlocked her hands and went over to one of the armchairs. ‘What is it you want to know?’
‘What exactly happened yesterday morning and why you believe it was not just a most unfortunate accident?’
She was silent for so long that he was about to prompt her when she suddenly said: ‘We were driving to Palma in the afternoon. Roger was going to see the dentist. After that we were having a picnic supper on Puig Craix. I was making the ham sandwiches when the policeman came here and told me what had happened. I remember, when the doorbell rang I was just telling myself everything would be all right in the end . . .’ She stopped.
‘Was something wrong, señorita?’
She ignored the question. ‘Roger didn’t really like picnics. He said one always got so sticky. That always made me laugh. I mean, half the fun of picnics is getting sticky . . . But I said we had to have one. You see, I was hoping . . . Christ, I need a drink!’ She stood, gestured with her hands, crossed to a mobile cocktail cabinet in the far corner of the room. She opened up the top flaps and this action, through counterweights, brought up a shelf on which were several bottles and half a dozen glasses. ‘Would you like something?’
‘A coñac would be very pleasant.’
She poured out two brandies. ‘Do you like soda and ice?’
Just ice, thank you.’
She added soda to one glass. ‘I’ll go through to the kitchen and get some ice.’ She left.
Silently, he cursed the world which brought bitter sorrow to so many. Priests often said that sorrow ennobled the soul, but he had never believed this was anything other than an attempt to explain away something that was all too clearly unmerciful.
She returned with an insulated ice bucket. Using tongs, she dropped three ice cubes into one glass and then came over to hand the drink to him. When she’d added ice to the second glass, she returned to the armchair. ‘My dad won’t have alcohol in the house. When my sister and me had drinks out, we had to suck peppermints before we returned back home. Mum always knew why we’d been eating peppermints, but Dad never seemed to guess. Or maybe he took care not to. He was always strict, but he was human.’
‘Which part of Britain do you live in, señorita?’
‘New Zealand. South Island. Out in the foothills of the McKerrows, the most beautiful country in the world. When I remember it, there’s a lump in my throat the size of a house and I wonder just what in the hell I’m doing here . . . I needed to go for a picnic on Puig Craix because it’s like Barrats Hill, on Dad’s place: on its own and kind of sugar loaf. When I was a kid I used to climb to the top and think myself queen of the world and when anything really serious went wrong I went up there and petitioned for it to be put right. Not that I can remember who I was petitioning. Maybe it was my fairy godmother.’ There was a brief, forlorn smile that flickered and then was gone. ‘God, that’s a whole lifetime ago!
‘I’d never told Roger about Barrats Hill because that was a personal secret, but I’m sure he understood there was some special reason for driving to Puig Craix and it wasn’t just to have a picnic. That’s why he agreed to go when he’d so much rather have eaten here or gone to a restaurant . . . The ham sandwiches I was making are in the fridge now. After the policeman had gone, I wrapped them up in film because I just couldn’t believe him and I was so sure Roger would be back and we’d be off . . .’ She stared into space for several seconds, then drank.
‘Señorita, it cannot seem to you now that time will heal the wounds, but it will. I promise you that.’
She said angrily: ‘How in the hell can you know what time will do?’
‘Many years ago, my fiancee was killed by a car,’ he said quietly. ‘Her wedding-dress had been made and although I never saw it I know it would have made her the most beautiful woman in the world . . . In time, my memories of her became precious, not open knives. Last night, Pedro, a very great friend of mine, died. Now, my memories of him are open knives, but gradually they also will become precious.’
Tears welled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. ‘God, I wish . . . .’ Her tone became almost fierce. ‘We both need Barrats Hill.’
‘Señorita?’
‘Will you drive us to Puig Craix?’
He hesitated, but only for a second. If he could help ease a little of her sorrow, perhaps she could help ease a little of his. ‘Of course,’ he said.
The hill rose out of the island’s central plain with all the suddenness and symmetry of a child’s drawing. Pine trees grew up its sides for two-thirds of its height, then the rock became bare except for the occasional clump of weed grass or cistus bush. For two hundred years there had been a hermitage on the crown, but in the twentieth century few men felt the call and the last resident had died nineteen years before. There was only a mule track leading up to the hermitage and largely because of this—to convert the buildings into a tourist restaurant would, in the absence of a road, be ridiculous—the buildings had been left to decay.
They reached the summit and sat just outside the shadows of a square building whose roof had fallen in. For a while neither spoke, Tracey because her thoughts were obviously far away, Alvarez because he was so short of breath, his heart was thumping, and his legs were shaking from exhaustion; if the climb had been only fifty metres longer, he felt certain he would have collapsed.
Tracey, who now lay on her stomach, her head resting on her crossed arms, broke the silence. ‘I left home because I couldn’t stand things any longer. Life had to be something more than doing the same thing day after day. Mary, my sister, never ever felt like that. She’s always hated change. She’s married to a bloke she’s known since she was a kid and if she was given one wish it would be for things to go on just as they are. Sometimes, like now, I wish to God I could have been like her. But what should life be? Should it be just living and not being hurt too often, or the excitement of exploring but being hurt over and over again?’
‘I don’t know, señorita.’
Tor Pete’s sake, I’m Tracey.’ She turned her head round until she could look at him. ‘And now you’re going to tell me your name?’
‘Enrique.’
Enrique—is that Henry? I’ve always like Henry: it’s the name of kings—but you’re much too nice to be a king. You’re one of the kindest men I’ve ever met.’
In his embarrassment, he smiled briefly.
‘You must do that more often: it makes you stop looking sad and as if you’ve learned that nothing’s real, it’s all an illusion . . . I’m talking absolute nonsense and d’you know why? It’s because we’re on Barrats Hill and everything that’s said is secret so I can be as nonsensical as I want. You do know it’s all secret here, don’t you, Enrique?’
Yes.’
‘That’s why I’m going to tell you . . .’
‘Tell me what?’
Her momentary vivaciousness was gone and her voice became once more sad. ‘Something I don’t want to confess even to myself . . . Things were often difficult between me and Roger. We kept having rows. They started quite a time back, when he went to Liechtenstein and wouldn’t take me. I accused him of going after another woman . . . When he came back he’d brought me such a lovely present I said it was conscience money . . . Then things kind of came all right again. But we still had rows. He was undemonstrative and only a fortnight ago I shouted at him that love had to be a two-way operation. I don’t think he understood what I was really trying to say . . . I remembered home and all of a sudden I wanted to be back where nothing changes and tomorrow’s going to be the same as today. To tell the truth, I’d decided to leave him if ou
r picnic here didn’t really change things . . . And then yesterday morning . . . It’s made me feel . . .’ She stopped.
‘As if you were somehow to blame?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t have any doubts and wasn’t fed up with me, but knew I was feeling like I was and that upset him so much that he did go and drink too much. And because he’d drunk so much, he crashed . . . . So if I hadn’t almost decided to leave him, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘After any tragedy it’s always possible to look back and say perhaps this and perhaps that and to work out how the tragedy could have been avoided. But if at the time you were doing what you thought was right and weren’t trying to hurt someone, then in truth it couldn’t have been avoided.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt him: I was trying all I could not to. I thought maybe leaving him would make it easier for both of us . . .’
‘Then you’re not in any way to blame for his death, Tracey.’
She shifted her head on to her left arm, stretched out with her right and briefly touched his forearm in a gesture of gratitude.
CHAPTER 3
Alvarez reached his office at five past nine and the telephone rang before he had had time to sit and recover his breath from the walk up the stairs.
‘Alvarez,’ said Superior Chief Salas, in his typically abrupt manner, ‘I have been waiting for your report.’
‘Which report, señor?’
‘Good God, man, are you still asleep? On the car crash near the monastery of San Miguel, of course.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact . . . I haven’t yet been able to investigate the matter.’
‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘When I saw señorita Newcombe I decided she was much too distressed to be questioned.’
‘And since when have you been qualified, or required, to determine a witness’s state of mind?’
‘It was just that knowing there was no very great urgency in the matter . . .’
‘No very great urgency? Will you never learn that there’s a very great urgency in every case until it’s solved?’
‘What I was trying to say . . .’
‘But not succeeding. You’re to return and question the woman this morning and kindly remember you are not being called upon to pass any judgement whatsoever on her mental state. Is that quite clear?’
‘Quite clear, sen or. As a matter of fact, I did tell her . . .’
Salas cut the connection.
Alvarez sighed as he replaced the receiver. People from Madrid seemed always to believe that each minute of every day had to be turned inside out instead of being left to mature with dignity.
He looked at his watch. He’d arranged to meet Tracey again this morning—as he would have told Salas had he been allowed to—but there was no point in leaving for another three-quarters of an hour. And three-quarters of an hour was too short a time to start any other work. He relaxed. He closed his eyes the better to do so.
The front door of Ca’n Renaldo was opened by Tracey. ‘Come on in, Enrique,’ she said, as she held the door fully open. ‘Let’s have some coffee—come on into the kitchen and talk while I fix up the machine. Matilde doesn’t come in on a Wednesday, so I’m on my own.’
He followed her into the tiled, elaborately equipped kitchen. She crossed to the gas stove and picked up a saucepan which she half filled at the sink. ‘The water’s supposed to be perfectly drinkable, but Dad always told us that if you boil all water and milk and throw away all liquor, you’ll live to be a hundred. I don’t want to be a hundred, so I just boil water.’
‘Didn’t you say your father is a farmer?’
‘Sheep. Thousands of the stupid animals. Dad’s a first-class sheepman,’ she said proudly. ‘Gets top prices for his fleeces and lambs.’ She put the saucepan on the stove and lit the gas. ‘But if only just once he’d become curious about the world beyond the farm . . . Am I sounding like a prize bitch?’
He was startled and showed this.
‘Well, he’s the most wonderful father yet all I seem to be able to do is criticize him. He didn’t like me leaving home, but when Mum said it would do me good to get rid of the flicks in my feet, he stopped arguing and gave me the money to travel. I suppose my real trouble now is, he’s been so kind he makes me feel a bit ashamed of myself . . . Tell me something. Why the hell is it that normally I keep my problems to myself, yet ever since I met you yesterday I’ve been going on and on as if you were an agony aunt?’
‘An agony aunt?’
‘One of those women in a magazine one writes to with all the questions one’s too ashamed to ask one’s parents . . . And before you came here this morning I was full of good resolutions about not bothering you any more and thanking you for everything you did for me yesterday.’
‘You helped me every bit as much as I helped you.’
‘The perfect mutual aid society! . . . I’ll confess something. Until now, I’ve always thought the people on this island hated us foreigners.’
‘You needed help.’
‘Are you saying that if I hadn’t, then you would have disliked me as a matter of principle?’
‘You have to understand, Tracey. We’re a very small island and always used to lead our own lives, poor as we were. Then the foreigners came, first in their hundreds, then their thousands, then their hundreds of thousands. Everything became changed. And because we suddenly were better off and had more, we learned to want still more: the young grew up to despise their parents for being illiterate, to drive cars instead of riding bicycles, to walk in the streets with their arms about their girls when in the past not even married couples would have behaved so badly.’
‘Progress!’
The coffee was made and she filled two cups. As she put these on a tray and then picked out of a cupboard a silver sugar bowl, she said: ‘Earlier on, I suddenly realized the strange fact that I won’t be living here much longer. That got me to wondering who’ll be using the kitchen? I hope she’s happier than I’ve ended up being.’
‘You don’t imagine señor Clarke will have left the house to you?’
‘Not a chance and if there were I’d refuse it. No, he’ll probably have left it to his wife.’
‘He’s married?’
‘His wife lives back in England . . . You look shocked? I suppose this is the kind of change you so hate. And they’re even bringing in divorce in Spain, aren’t they? But Roger and Helen never could get on, so wasn’t it better for them to part than live together and fight all the time?’
‘I only know that when people can’t get divorced, they usually learn to accept each other.’
‘And be miserable.’
‘Do we have a right to expect life to be happy? . . . Did you know he was married?’
‘When I first met him, no. But when it became a question of moving in here with him, he told me. He was very straight like that. A lot of men would have kept their mouths tight shut.’ She picked up the tray. ‘Last night, I dreamt Roger and I were out in his boat and he told me we mustn’t ever fight again. When I woke up I reached across the bed to touch him and promise I’d try not to be bitchy again and . . . and only when my hand met nothing did I remember.’ She shivered. ‘Am I going to dream like that a lot?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Did your dreams frighten you?’
‘They made me very sad.’ After Juana-Maria had died, he had often had dreams from which he had awoken with tears. He hoped her dreams were not so cruel.
She led the way through to the sitting-room. ‘Shall we go out on to the patio?’ She noticed his hesitation. ‘Don’t you like it in the sun?’
‘It’s not that,’ he confessed. ‘I’m one of those idiots who’s scared of heights and out there I feel as if I’m on the edge of a precipice.’
‘Then we stay in here.’ She put the tray down on an occasional table. ‘I’d never have suggested going to Puig Craix yesterday if you’d told me that . . . But it didn’t seem to upset you?’
<
br /> ‘The climb left me so exhausted I didn’t have enough energy to be frightened.’
She smiled at him.
Ten minutes later, he said: ‘I am sorry, Tracey, but I must ask you some questions.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Her expression tightened. ‘All right, let’s get it over and done with.’
‘Do you know where the Señor was driving to the day before yesterday? The road he was on when he crashed doesn’t lead anywhere but the north coast and it would have taken him another three-quarters of an hour to get over the mountains and just as long to get back, yet he had a dentist’s appointment in the afternoon.’
‘I’ve no idea what he was doing there.’
‘Does he have friends in Sa Calobra, or perhaps round the coast to the west?’
‘He’s never talked of anyone and certainly we’ve never gone anywhere in that direction. As a matter of fact, Roger didn’t have many friends. He was a bit of a loner, really.’
‘So you can’t suggest why he was on that road?’
‘Not unless the reason had something to do with the phone call.’
‘What call was that?’
‘I can’t tell you except the phone rang and he answered it and when the call was over and I asked him who it had been, he shouted at me to mind my own business and stop prying into his life . . .’ Her expression became strained. ‘I’ve got quite a temper and that made me see red and . . . Well, we had a right old row.’
‘Didn’t he give any sort of a hint as to who the caller had been?’
‘None at all.’
‘What kind of a mood was he in before the call?’
‘Very pleasant. We both were because, I suppose, we’d reached the point where we were consciously doing all we could to avoid any more trouble.’
‘Then it was the telephone call which upset him?’
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