Layers of Deceit (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 9)

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘D’you have ’em in Llueso?’ asked Artich.

  ‘Do we have what?’

  ‘Foreigners, of course.’

  ‘Many more than you have in this part of the island.’

  Artich shook his head, hawked, and spat.

  ‘Where’s the body?’

  ‘Down on the right. The best way to get to it is to climb down — if you try to get along the terrace you’ve got to push past bushes with spikes long enough to spear your liver.’

  They walked along the edge of the lawn, and the first drystone retaining wall, for ten metres, then Artich came to a stop. He pointed. The body of a man lay sprawled out between a rubber tree and a datura with orange-red trumpet flowers.

  ‘Slipped and fell,’ said Artich. ‘Boozed.’

  The head had presumably struck one of the stones of the next retaining wall. He’d fallen in a surprisingly wide arc …

  ‘D’you reckon you’re up to climbing down?’ asked Artich doubtfully, as he studied Alvarez’s slack, in parts pudgy, frame.

  All his life, Alvarez had suffered from altophobia and even this three metres depth was enough to dry his mouth. But he wasn’t going to confess his weakness to a man who’d laugh about it in the bars of Santa Victoria. He knelt, took hold of the largest rock, and very carefully began to lower himself over the edge. Immediately, he became certain he was going to fall and he scrabbled desperately with his shoes for a toe-hold.

  ‘D’you need a hand, then?’ asked Artich, highly amused.

  Alvarez found one toe-hold, then another. With a courage which only he could evaluate, he released his right hand and took a fresh grip half a metre down jamming his fingers between two rocks …

  When he reached the bottom he was breathless, sweating profusely, and his arms and legs were shaking. Sourly, he watched Artich descend without trouble and apparently without effort.

  He walked past the datura and stared down. The dead man’s expression seemed to be more one of puzzlement than fright or agony. His eyes were half open and they were reflecting the sharp sunshine. The wound was not as extensive as Artich had suggested, nevertheless it seemed safe to assume that the man had not lived for any appreciable time after he’d suffered it. There had been considerable bleeding and the soil about the head was stained; in addition, two of the top rocks of the next retaining wall were bloodstained and on one of them was also some matter that had probably come from the interior of the head.

  The ground was dry and hard except where the blood had soaked into it and at one point here something had pushed into it and lifted out a little of the soil; whatever that something was, it hadn’t left an identifiable impression, but it was reasonable to assume it had been a shoe. There were no traces of anything lying around or caught up on the nearby bushes and trees.

  Alvarez turned and faced the retaining wall he’d climbed down. If someone were standing on the edge there and he fell, it seemed probable that when he landed he would do so well short of where the body now lay. So he could only land sufficiently far out to strike his head on the next retaining wall if he had jumped outwards, at the run, and then had turned half a somersault. Who, knowing the edge was there and unguarded, would have been running?

  ‘The doctor’s going to have to get down here, likewise a photographer and two or three chaps to lift him. So it would be best to get a ladder fixed up. D’you have one?’

  ‘We’ve one up in the shed.’ Artich grinned. ‘Will you climb up and get it?’

  Alvarez maintained a dignified silence.

  Ten minutes later, after Artich had lowered a large Mallorquin triangular ladder, Alvarez climbed up to the lawn. He led the way to the shade of a fig tree and produced a pack of cigarettes. The air was so still that as they smoked the smoke rose and only very slowly began to waver.

  ‘They told me on the phone he owned this place,’ said Alvarez. ‘So I take it he was rich?’

  ‘More money than sense.’

  ‘Was he married?’

  ‘Wasn’t no need for that, was there?’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Couldn’t count all the women if I tried. There’s one of ’em up there now.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the house. ‘I’ll say this for her, though: she’s not the right bitch some of ’em have been.’

  ‘Is anyone else staying here at the moment?’

  ‘His brother.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘A lot younger. He comes and goes and never stays for long.’

  ‘How do they get on together?’

  ‘Not so bad, considering one had money and the other hasn’t.’

  ‘There was trouble over money?’

  ‘He was always on about it, thinking he was being done. Went for me, more’n once.’

  ‘Maybe with reason?’

  ‘He couldn’t prove nothing — and it’s no good you saying otherwise.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t … Have you heard them rowing about money?’

  ‘I’ve heard ’em rowing a couple of times, but what they was on about I wouldn’t know. But María’s told me they’ve been on about money.’

  ‘I take it she works in the house?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He scratched the back of his neck.

  ‘D’you know who inherits this place?’

  ‘All I can tell you is, it won’t be me.’

  ‘What good would it be to you — you wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I? I’d tell you just what I’d do with it. I’d pull out all them hundred thousand peseta palms and all the stupid plants and bushes, I’d plough up this lawn, and I’d grow things.’

  Alvarez stubbed out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe, automatically taking care because of the risk of fire. ‘I’d best go inside and talk to ’em. You’ll be around when the doctor turns up, won’t you, to give a hand?’

  ‘I ain’t goin’ anywhere.’

  Alvarez turned to leave. Artich said: ‘Does it matter about the dog?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘The dog’s missing. It wasn’t around when I got here and María says it’s not in the kennels and she hasn’t seen it. I’m wondering if it could maybe have got loose and it’ll cause trouble. There’s a lot of sheep in the area and I don’t know what it’s like with them.’

  Alvarez asked him about the dog. There’d been a burglary when the señor had lost quite a lot and because of that he’d had the whole estate ringed with a chain-link fence and had bought a guard dog in England … Two hundred thousand pesetas. When a man with any sense could buy a dog for five hundred in the market! … Last thing every night the dog was released and left to guard the grounds. In the morning, either Artich or María put it back in the kennels. And although it was all right with someone it knew, towards anyone else it could be really savage …

  ‘Have you asked the farmers round about to find out if they’ve seen it?’

  ‘That ain’t my job.’

  ‘It is now.’

  Grumbling, Artich followed Alvarez up to the house. As they reached there, a Renault 11 drove up and the police doctor brusquely introduced himself to Alvarez.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘It’s … it’s such a terrible shock,’ said Susan.

  Alan Cullom watched two men through the sitting-room windows; they crossed the lawn and, in turn, disappeared from sight as they climbed down to the first terrace.

  ‘It’s only last night … ’ She stopped.

  ‘That he tried to get into your bedroom again?’

  ‘I … Perhaps I ought to have … ’

  ‘Let him in?’ He turned round. ‘That’s just being bloody silly.’

  ‘But afterwards, he must have gone on drinking. If he hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t have gone out during the night and fallen over and killed himself.’

  ‘So now you’re blaming yourself for his drunkenness?’

  ‘How can you talk like that? He was your brother.’

&n
bsp; He walked across to one of the armchairs and slumped down in it. ‘In other words, I’m sounding like a prize bastard? But it’s just that I don’t believe death changes the facts and it’s hypocrisy to make out that they do. We were half-brothers, but beyond that we hadn’t much in common. Things were better before his wife died and he came into all the money. That really changed him. People always do change when they’re rich. They can buy whatever they want and that gets them to thinking they’ve suddenly grown tall. And superior people, like politicians, can’t stand being laughed at.’ He suddenly came to his feet and walked across to the cocktail cabinet. ‘What’ll you have?’

  ‘I don’t want anything, thanks.’

  ‘It’ll help ease the tensions.’

  ‘I’d still rather not.’

  ‘Pretend it’s midday so that in the eyes of the true blue Brits it’s a legitimate and even exemplary occupation.’

  ‘Must you jeer at everything?’

  ‘Haven’t you understood that most times I’m really jeering at myself? A drifter, living for today, never for tomorrow, shutting his eyes to the fact that what one does today is payment for tomorrow.’ He opened the top of the cocktail cabinet and this, through a system of counterweights, brought up a rack of bottles and half a dozen glasses. ‘I’ve met me, thirty years on, in bars and doss houses all over the world.’

  ‘Then why don’t you settle down?’

  He poured out a gin and tonic and opened the ice-bucket to find that it was empty; he shrugged his shoulders and drank. ‘If ever I start to ask myself that, I give myself the answer that I’m the exception, that when the time’s right I will have the power and the will to break away from the life of the lotus-eater, Circe won’t capture me and cap me with a snout.’ He drank. ‘I’ve always known I’ve been lying to myself, of course, but I’ve never recognized that I know this. Double-think has a much longer history than Orwell. Ten more years of drifting, maybe five, and I’ll have had it.’

  ‘Then why not stop double-thinking and get out of it?’

  He looked at her across the top of his glass. ‘Is this a good moment for confessions?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil? Rather, tell the truth and shame oneself. I started drifting in the name of independence and truth; I was romantic and was certain life wasn’t to be found in a nine to five office. Steve told me I was a fool and that life meant a secure job, a neat little surburban house, respectability. Then his wife unexpectedly came into all that money and died and he was rich. He was independent. He could have made his own rules and found out what’s truly worthwhile and what isn’t. But instead he set his sights on buying himself into so-called society, sucking up to all that’s meanest in others. It made me laugh, remembering how he’d pontificated at me. And the easiest way of showing him I was laughing was to continue drifting, certain it embarrassed him every time he had to admit to a brother who sometimes didn’t know where he was going to sleep the next night … So, you see, although I claim a motive of independence, in fact I’m showing a Pavlovian reaction.’

  ‘I think you’re talking nonsense because you’re far more shocked than you want to admit.’

  He finished his drink and poured himself another. ‘Have you always looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses?’

  ‘And if I have?’

  ‘It becomes very painful when you have to take them off.’

  ‘One doesn’t have to if one doesn’t want to.’

  ‘Not even when Steve hammered on your bedroom door?’

  ‘All that did was make me recognize I’d been lying to myself.’

  ‘So there is one time when you don’t wear them — when you look at yourself?’

  She said in a small voice: ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t like talking like this.’

  He returned to the chair and sprawled out in it.

  There was a silence which she broke. ‘Alan … I’ll move as soon as I can.’

  ‘What d’you mean, move?’

  ‘I can’t go on staying here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Surely you can understand?’

  ‘I can understand one thing. It’s time you learned to think a damned sight more about yourself and a damned sight less about other people.’ He wished he could teach her to become selfish. Then she’d be better able to survive in a world which seldom favoured those who were emotionally generous.

  *

  The doctor was a small man, round-faced, with a neat moustache, dressed in a linen suit. He spoke as if he were already late for his next appointment. ‘You’ll have the body taken to the mortuary right away?’ He opened the door of his car.

  ‘It’s been arranged, señor,’ said Alvarez.

  He climbed in, fixed the seat-belt, started the engine, and accelerated sharply up the rising drive.

  Alvarez walked slowly towards the outside door of the utility room. The body, the doctor had said, had cooled by eight and a half degrees, which suggested a figure of less than seven hours since death, but it was necessary to remember that it had been a very warm night and that the moment the sun had risen the day had become hot. Rigor had appeared in the face, jaw, and neck muscles, but had not spread to arms and trunk. In view of these facts, he placed the time of death at between two and four in the morning. This estimate was not to be accepted as any more accurate than was normally the case.

  The injury to the skull was considerable and consistent with an instantaneous death, but this could only be confirmed by a post mortem. Within the wound were traces of what could be grease. Both stones on which there were bloodstains were rounded, the one which also bore some cranial matter being the more rounded of the two, yet the wound looked as if it had been caused by something fairly pointed. A further point for the PM to consider …

  Alvarez reached the door. There’d been no grease on either of the stones. They’d have to be carefully photographed and then be equally carefully removed, packed up, and sent to the forensic laboratory. If the evidence continued to come together to suggest that this hadn’t been the accident it had at first appeared to be, a test would have to be devised to show how far out on the terrace a body would land as the result of a straight, simple fall rather than a jump … He opened the door and went inside.

  The utility room, which was large and tiled, was equipped with washing-machine and tumble-drier, two chest deep-freezers, together with a large air-conditioning unit from which led two large trunks, presumably to serve the whole house. When you were rich you could even defy nature and stay cool in the summer.

  María was in the kitchen and her eyes were red from weeping. It was not, she admitted, that she had liked the señor, but when a man died, particularly when he did so unexpectedly, it did not matter whether one had disliked or liked him, one wept. Perhaps as much for this reminder of one’s own mortality as for his death.

  ‘He wasn’t a very nice man?’ Alvarez asked, as he settled on a stool.

  She began to prepare the coffee-maker. ‘Rest his soul, but he didn’t speak our language and he could be terribly unreasonable sometimes.’

  ‘Reinaldo told me his brother’s staying here?’

  ‘Señor Alan? He arrived a few days ago and brought me some material from Cyprus. I’m going to have a dress made from it.’

  ‘He’s all right, then?’

  ‘He’s … Well, he could be a Mallorquin.’ She plugged in the electric coffee-maker.

  ‘How did the two brothers get on together?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she answered, trying, and failing, to sound convincing.

  ‘It seems as if Steven Cullom liked the women. Did they like him?’

  ‘They liked his money.’

  ‘It was like that, was it?’

  ‘Isn’t it mostly? I’ve had ’em in this kitchen, looking round, deciding what to change when they became the señora.’

  ‘But he never got round to marrying any of ’em?’

  ‘Why buy in the
market when you can pick for free?’

  ‘Why indeed! … One of his women is staying in the house now, isn’t she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? But Reinaldo told me there was a woman here.’

  ‘Reinaldo Artich is a fool, just as his father was a fool before him. Neither of ’em with the wit to know a good woman from a bad one.’

  ‘How d’you do that?’

  ‘What’s the use of me trying to explain to you?’ she asked contemptuously. ‘For you men, there’s only one way to judge a woman.’ She crossed to the large refrigerator and opened the right-hand door to bring out a bottle of milk.

  ‘Are you saying that the woman who’s here wasn’t after his money?’

  ‘Of course the señorita wasn’t.’

  ‘Yet she is staying here, in his house?’

  ‘In her room, not his.’

  ‘How can you be so certain she never moved?’

  ‘Didn’t I hear Señor Alan and him arguing … ’ She stopped.

  ‘Arguing about the señorita?’

  ‘Perhaps. What does it all matter now?’

  ‘I’m just trying to get a picture of the people in the house.’

  ‘Let the dead keep the picture.’ She went over to the far cupboard. ‘I bought some ensaimadas for their breakfasts, but because of all the terrible trouble no one’s eaten any. Would you like a couple with the coffee?’

  Thanks.’

  ‘And a coñac?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘I’m married, aren’t I?’

  *

  Alvarez introduced himself to Alan Cullom and was in turn introduced to Susan. Her eyes, he thought, were the deep blue of the bay on a cloudless day: in them was the warmth of a ripened cornfield. He said he was very sorry about the death of Steven Cullom, apologized for having to ask them some questions, and promised he’d be as brief as possible. Alan Cullom excused himself and went into the house. Alvarez and Susan sat, she in the shade of a sun umbrella.

  He looked at the distant view. ‘It’s very beautiful here.’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured.

  ‘But perhaps for both of you at the moment that is not a kind thing? It can make sadness seem so much more bitter and difficult to bear.’