Relatively Dangerous

by Roderic Jeffries

  They reached the palm trees. She pointed at the several tables and chairs. ‘They’re new. I set them out to see what they look like. We could have made do with the old ones, but they were beginning to look shabby and the British worry more about that sort of thing than the food . . . Sit down and I’ll get the drinks. Are you still drinking brandy or would you prefer something else?’

  ‘A coñac would be fine, thank you.’

  She left and went into the restaurant through the main doorway. He stared at the bay, enjoying the view of which he never grew tired . . . He heard the shrill whine of the van before he saw it turn on to the track and come down,

  to pass out of sight. Helen returned with a tray on which were two glasses. ‘I think the señor has just arrived,’ he said.

  ‘I love it when you call him the señor; it sounds so very grand.’ She chuckled as she sat. ‘I told him yesterday that at night he ought to wear tails to give us a little touch of class. His reply was interesting but unrepeatable!’ She passed one glass across. ‘And speaking of the devil . . .’

  Taylor came up to the table. ‘Drinking again?’

  ‘I fear so,’ replied Alvarez.

  ‘I told him he had to stay and celebrate,’ said Helen.

  ‘Quite right. And since two’s a celebration, but three’s an orgy, I’ll join you. Just get myself a drink.’ He went back into the restaurant. When he returned, he raised his glass. ‘To our opening day. May it not be completely shambolic’

  ‘Why should it be?’ she asked with mock indignation.

  ‘Because, my darling cook, as I’ve tried to explain before, we are by the dictates of local custom obliged to offer free food and drink to all potential customers. And if there’s a hungrier and thirstier man than a Mallorquin on a free tuck-in, it’s a Britisher.’

  ‘You’ll have to make certain that there’s never too much around at any one moment.’

  ‘Easier said than done, especially with some of the free-loading Brits who live here. They can smell out an unopened bottle at half a kilometre.’

  Alvarez said: ‘The señora tells me that Javier has promised the work will be completed before the end of the month?’

  ‘He has. And I’ve made it very clear that unless this promise is a damned sight more reliable than all his previous ones, I’ll personally shoot him.’

  ‘I’m very glad you managed to sort out your problems.’

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Helen. ‘It was . . .’

  Taylor cut in. I was lucky enough to meet an old friend who loaned us the money.’

  ‘And you were always trying to say that you’d been born under an evil star.’

  ‘Maybe that star’s regressed.’

  ‘Will you put that down in writing and sign it? . . . Mike, when you say it was an old friend who lent you . . .’

  He cut in a second time. ‘In this case, I literally did bump into him. I was rushing to buy some washers, tripped, and all but sent him flying. Took us a second or two to recognize each other, then it was a case of commemorating the reunion at the nearest bar. He wanted to know what I was doing out here and I told him and being down in the dumps, I filled in most of the sordid details. He said his father had died a year or so back and left him a fortune and why shouldn’t he lend me the money for as long as I needed at nil interest? . . . I know one shouldn’t borrow from friends, but I just didn’t have the courage to turn it down.’

  ‘Who would, in such circumstances?’ said Alvarez. He wished Taylor’s interruptions had been more subtle and that Helen had not allowed her puzzled surprise to be so obvious. Then, he would not have started asking himself questions.

  There were times when Alvarez wondered how he could be such a fool as not to leave well alone when he had the chance? If he’d reached a solution that seemed obviously correct, why worry about one small conflicting detail that was probably totally immaterial? What did it really matter if Taylor had given Helen a different version of events? He might have wanted to avoid admitting to her that he had borrowed the money from a friend. And yet it was somewhat difficult really to believe that . . . He sighed as he drove back to Puerto Llueso.

  He parked in the square, close to the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Las Baleares, went inside, and asked to speak to the manager.

  The manager said: ‘You want to know about a large cheque he may have received in the past few days?’

  That’s right.’

  ‘Could it be bad?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Then why . . .?’ The manager waited, but Alvarez said nothing. ‘All right, I’ll find out.’ He used the internal telephone to speak to someone, replaced the receiver. ‘It won’t be a moment.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You wouldn’t like to tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘I’m not certain.’

  ‘He’s not been banking very long with us.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he has.’

  ‘He’s bought Las Cinco Palmeras, round the bay.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s modernizing it and hopes to open quite soon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was a problem about money for repairs and alterations.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Goddamn it, Enrique, you’re being closer than a bloody oyster!’

  ‘An oyster without a pearl.’

  A man in his twenties, with a neatly trimmed, very dark beard, entered and put a sheet of paper down on the desk. The manager read what was written. ‘Is that all we know?’

  ‘At the moment. The cheque went to head office in the usual bag.’

  The manager spoke to Alvarez. ‘Last Saturday, he paid in a cheque for seven hundred thousand.’

  ‘Who drew the cheque?’

  ‘I can’t answer. As you’ve just heard, it’s gone to head office for clearing.’

  ‘Will you find out?’

  The manager nodded at the cashier, who dialled the main branch in Palma. He spoke briefly, replaced the receiver. ‘They’ll get back on to us.’

  Thanks.’

  The cashier left. The manager asked how Alvarez’s family was and for several minutes they chatted amiably. Then, the expected call came through.

  ‘The cheque was on the Banco de Bilbao in Corleon and was signed by Señorita Benbury,’ said the manager.

  CHAPTER 23

  Alvarez walked into the supermarket in Corleon and asked one of the two cashiers where Agueda was; he was directed through to the bread counter. There, he waited until the last customer had been served with a barra, then said: ‘D’you remember me?’

  Agueda was dressed even more flamboyantly than before and her fingers sparkled with jewellery; her make-up was less than subtle. ‘Of course—the detective from Llueso who enjoys a good brandy. Let’s go through to the office and see what we can find.’ She called over an assistant—there was now another customer wanting bread—and came round the counter. ‘So how’s the tourist trade on the island this summer? Down a bit on last year?’

  Speaking rapidly and commenting sarcastically on government policy, the greed of shop assistants, and the iniquities of IVA, she led the way into the office. She produced a bottle of Carlos I and two glasses, pushed the bottle across. ‘I always leave the man to pour.’

  He half filled the glasses, passed her one.

  She drank, put her glass down on the desk. ‘Now you can tell me what’s brought you back here?’

  ‘I’m trying to tie up a few loose threads.’

  ‘It’s a long way to come just to do that.’

  ‘My boss is a very tidy-minded man . . . I wanted to have a word with Señorita Benbury, but when I went to her house I couldn’t get an answer. The maid wasn’t in and the dog seems to have gone. Is she not living there any more?’

  ‘I haven’t heard she’s left.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  She opened a drawer and brought out a box of cigars; she lit a match for both of them. ‘It must have been the end of last
week.’

  ‘Was she on her own?’

  ‘Pierre was with her, as usual.’

  ‘She’s still thick with him, then?’

  ‘It’s a funny thing about that.’ She drew on the cigar, exhaled slowly and with pleasure. ‘Like I told you before, she began by throwing herself at him. But recently, damned if it didn’t look as if the boot’s on the other foot.’

  ‘How sure of that are you?’

  ‘I don’t reckon to have lived forty-one years without knowing who’s doing the chasing.’

  He thought it was probably more than forty-one years. ‘Perhaps she’s got fed up with him. Or else she’s decided to play hard-to-get.’

  ‘After what’s happened?’

  ‘Then what’s the answer?’

  ‘She’s a bitch.’

  ‘Whatever she is, I need a word with her.’

  ‘One flutter of her eyelids and you can’t keep away?’

  ‘Maybe Pierre can say where she is now—where’s he live?’

  ‘Right at the back of the urbanization in a grotty little bungalow, although if you listened to him you’d think he owned the biggest house on the main canal. But at this time of the day, he’ll be in a bar.’

  ‘Any particular one?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Wherever the most foreign women are . . .’

  * * *

  Alvarez found Pierre Lifar in El Pescador, a large bar on the front road whose walls were decorated with many of the implements which the fishermen had used before the tourists had arrived and destroyed their trade. He had expected Lifar to be an Adonis, but found him to be a medium-sized man, knottily built, with a rugged face that spoke of strong living, strikingly blue eyes, and his only ostentation an unbuttoned shirt which displayed his hairy chest.

  ‘I’m Pierre Lifar. So who are you?’ He spoke Spanish fluently, rolling his R’s with Gallic freedom.

  ‘Inspector Alvarez, from Mallorca, of the Cuerpo General de Policia.’

  ‘We’ve all got our problems.’

  ‘Indeed. Shall we sit outside?’

  ‘Is that an order?’

  ‘A request, señor. You will have a drink?’

  ‘I’ll have a Ricard, even though my mother taught me to be beware of policemen who offered me drinks.’

  Alvarez carried the glasses out to one of the tables which was in the shade of an overhead awning.

  Lifar added water to his drink. ‘What d’you want from me?’

  ‘I need to speak to Señorita Benbury and I’m told you know where she is.’

  ‘Then you’ve been told wrongly.’

  ‘But you are very friendly with her?’

  ‘And if I am?’

  ‘Then you can probably tell me where I can find her.’

  ‘I probably can’t.’ He sipped the milky liquid, put the glass down. ‘What’s your angle? Something to do with the car crash?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why? It’s history.’

  ‘Not yet. Señor Thompson was poisoned.’

  ‘Christ!’ Lifar stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘Is that on the level?’

  ‘He was poisoned with colchicine. This did not directly kill him, but because it seriously affected him, he crashed and was killed.’

  ‘Are you suggesting Charlie knew anything about all that?’

  ‘If you’re asking me if I suspect her of having administered the poison, I know for certain she did not.’

  ‘Then how does she come into it?’

  ‘It is what happened after the accident that now interests me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There is no need for you to.’

  ‘You’re bloody sharp, aren’t you?’

  ‘Just rather sad.’

  ‘What the hell . . .?’ He drank, bewildered and irritated.

  ‘I need to know about your relationship with the señorita.’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘It is also mine.’

  They stared at each other with silent hostility. Lifar, who had begun by despising the shambling inspector, realized that he was dealing with a far more determined character than he had imagined. He also remembered that he had not applied for a residencia, being unable to bring into the country the minimum amount of money that was necessary. ‘What d’you want to hear about?’

  ‘Everything.’

  He spoke with surly resentment. He hated having to admit to a defeat and by referring to it he was reminding himself of the possibility that from the beginning she had been using him while all the time he’d believed he had been going to use her.

  He’d marked her out the first time he’d seen her—which was hardly surprising since she was extravagantly beautiful. He’d been surprised that she could appear to be so in love with a man noticeably older than herself, but had been satisfied that this could only work in his favour; certain women initially were attracted by older men, but it was an attraction which seldom, if ever, managed to meet the determined challenge of someone young, vigorous, and irresistible, and then their passion was all the greater. So when her man was killed in a car crash, he’d been about to go after her when she’d thrown herself at him like crazy. Only . . .

  ‘Only she wouldn’t hop into bed with you?’

  ‘I got all I wanted,’ he answered defensively.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘How the hell would you know?’

  Alvarez stared at the passing traffic for a time, then said: ‘Did you know she’s left?’

  ‘Left where?’

  ‘Corleon.’

  ‘Who says she has?’

  ‘So she just used you until the last moment, then cleared off without a word.’

  Lifar finished his drink.

  CHAPTER 24

  As always, Alvarez was reluctant to enter a hospital, but he told himself he was being stupid and walked across to the reception and inquiry desk in the Clinica Bahia with what he hoped was an air of resolution. He told the middle-aged woman he wanted a word with someone in accounts and she directed him down the right-hand corridor.

  Several patients were waiting to pay their accounts, or give the details of their medical insurances, but he was able to attract the attention of a man who took him through to the office behind the general area.

  ‘You’re inquiring about Señor Higham’s account—what exactly is it that you want to know?’

  ‘Whether he made any phone calls while he was here. You’d have a record of them, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. They go on the bill.’

  ‘Would anyone here know where he was calling?’

  ‘Our only record is the number of pulses.’

  ‘They should be enough. Can you find out the details?’

  It took less than two minutes to turn up the details of the account.

  ‘Señor Higham made three calls and they added up to seventy-one pulses.’

  ‘You don’t have the number for each call?’

  ‘No, only the total.’

  ‘What rates were they at?’

  ‘One at full, one at normal, one at cheap.’

  ‘If they were all local calls, they must have been long ones?’

  The man smiled. ‘Interminable, I’d say.’

  ‘Thanks very much . . . There’s one last thing. D’you mind if I telephone the British consulate?’

  He spoke to the assistant consul and asked if Señor Higham had requested anyone in the consulate to help expedite the repayment of his stolen travellers’ cheques? There had been no such request. To the best of anyone’s memory, there had been no communication of any sort from Señor Higham.

  Alvarez left the hospital and walked back to his car. He sat behind the wheel, lowered the windows, and switched on the fan to try and clear the heat. He knew exactly what Superior Chief Salas was going to say. An intelligent detective would have realized the truth long ago . . .

  For several days after the crash, it had been im
possible to know who the two victims were—their papers had been stolen, one of them was dead, the other was suffering from loss of memory. The doctors had been puzzled by that loss of memory because there had been no obvious head injuries serious enough to account for it; but what doctor could ever speak too dogmatically about the human brain?

  Some days after the car accident, Higham’s passport and wallet had been thrown into a street refuse container. This was a normal way of getting rid of incriminating evidence. But why had not the thief, or thieves, taken the opportunity to dispose of Thompson’s things at the same time?

  Back in the UK, Higham’s wife had left him and he’d no relatives to whom he’d be able to turn for comfort or help. It was his first visit to the island. So whom had he been phoning from the Clinica Bahia? How had he paid his account in cash when all his money had been stolen and he’d not called on the consulate to help him gain a refund on the travellers’ cheques?

  There could be little doubt that Charlotte Benbury had been very much in love with Taylor. Yet within days of his death, she had thrown herself at Pierre Lifar. Only a bitch could act like that. Yet when he, Alvarez, had met her, he’d been sufficiently surprised and shocked that she should have acted as she had to begin constructing excuses for her; one might be shocked by the actions of a bitch, but surely seldom surprised, so somewhere within him there must have been doubt. A bitch would not have kept the photograph of the dead man on the dressing-table in her bedroom. Yet a woman who had loved deeply would surely have had a much better photograph than the one he had seen?

  How had Charlotte known that Mike Taylor was so desperate for money? Why should she send him seven hundred thousand pesetas when she had never met him and might, such was human nature, easily be jealously resentful of him? And why had he tried to hide the fact that it was she who had given it to him when on the face of things there was no reason to do so?

  Steven Taylor had been a man of charm and a golden tongue, with an inability to understand normal moral values. He’d made money by swindling people, been caught and convicted, yet by luck had escaped a prison sentence.

  Even his conviction had not taught him discretion and later, after an impossible second marriage, he’d resumed his swindling ways. Disaster had threatened. The police were gathering the evidence to arrest him again and now he could be quite certain that he would be imprisoned. So he’d planned his ‘death’, successfully blackmailing his wife into financing it because his arrest and conviction would have shrivelled her snobbish soul.