Deadly Petard

by Roderic Jeffries

  CHAPTER 10

  The office was very hot, despite the fact that the window was wide open, the shutters were closed, and the fan on the desk was turned to its higher speed. Alvarez found such difficulty in keeping his eyelids open that in the end, and with a sigh of contentment, he no longer bothered as he slumped deeper into the chair. His thoughts drifted away into the inconsequential chaos which immediately preceded sleep.

  The telephone rang. He slowly, reluctantly reached out for the receiver, swearing as he did so.

  ‘Is that Inspector Alvarez?’ asked the woman with a plum in her mouth.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered sadly.

  ‘I have Superior Chief Salas on the line for you.’

  There was a pause. He closed his eyes once more: almost certainly, Salas was not held up on business, he was biding his time in order to underline his authority.

  ‘Are you there?’

  The rasping words caused him to start heavily. ‘Indeed, sen or.’

  ‘Do you remember señorita Dean?’

  He racked his brain, trying to place the person.

  Tor God’s sake, man, you interviewed her in Caraitx.’

  The mention of Caraitx identified her. ‘Yes, of course, señor. It was just that for a moment I . . .’

  ‘She’s been found dead, in circumstances which make it quite clear she committed suicide. Take charge of the matter.’

  ‘Señor, Caraitx is not within my area and although I did, of course, interview her in the past, this was only because Inspector Antignac was unusually busy at the time . . .’

  ‘He’s still extremely busy.’

  ‘I’ve also got an exceptional workload . . .’

  ‘I wouldn’t doubt for one moment that you should have,’ said Salas nastily. ‘However, in case you have forgotten, Inspector Antignac does not speak English and you do and so you will conduct the enquiry. Remember one thing. On no account are you to complicate the issue, as you have unfortunately done in the past.’

  ‘It’s never been me who’s complicated anything, but the facts . . .’ He stopped when he realized the connection had been cut. He sighed, replaced the receiver. ‘To the devil with the English!’ he said aloud. He leaned over, opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, and brought out a bottle of brandy and a tumbler. He poured himself out a very generous drink. There were times when a man needed comforting.

  The ancient, squeaking Seat 600 dragged itself up Calle Padre Vives, finally coming to a jerky halt in front of No. 15. Alvarez crossed the narrow pavement, found the front door unlocked, and stepped inside.

  ‘Who’s that?’ demanded a man.

  ‘The governor-general.’

  A squat, ugly, cheerful policeman, dressed in the summer uniform of the municipal police—white shirt and dark blue trousers—came out of the kitchen to stand in the arched doorway. ‘Are you the inspector from Llueso they said was coming?’

  They studied each other with instinctive reservation. It was a well-known fact in Llueso that everyone from Caraitx was a rogue: it was a well-known fact in Caraitx that everyone from Llueso was untrustworthy.

  The policeman jerked his head towards the ceiling. ‘She’s upstairs, in the bedroom.’

  ‘D’you know who found her?’

  ‘The woman who comes and does here, a few mornings a week.’

  ‘Where’s she now?’

  ‘Gone back to her own place. Wasn’t any use her hanging on here, was it?’

  ‘Has the doctor been?’

  ‘Yeah. And he said to tell you that he couldn’t wait around. The best thing for you to do is have a word with him later on at his place: that is, if you want to.’

  ‘I expect I’ll want a word with both of ‘em.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  The stairs, which had a half turn in the middle, led to a passage/landing off which were four doors. The only closed door gave access to the dead woman’s bedroom.

  The shutters were closed, but the curtains were drawn and there was sufficient light entering between the louvres for him to see the bed in rough detail. Gertrude, wearing pyjamas, lay without any bedclothes over her. Her head was encased in a large plastic bag. He crossed himself. Death was the final mystery and whatever the state of one’s faith, it was only prudent to respect it.

  As he went towards the window, his right foot kicked something small which skidded across the tiled floor. It was impossible to identify what that something was. He opened the shutters and clipped them back and the fierce sunlight shafted into the room. He turned and looked down to find out what he’d kicked and saw, in the middle of the floor, several pieces of what looked to have been an earthenware cazuela, or cooking pot: one of the pieces was now several feet from the rest.

  He crossed to the bed. Her eyes were shut and there was a twist to her mouth, rather as if she’d been ironically amused about something just before she’d died. To the right of the bed was a small table with a single drawer, and on this were two paperbacks, a box of tissues, a half full medicine bottle and, propped up against the bottle, a typewritten note on a sheet of headed notepaper.

  I’ve had the pain for a long time, but recently it’s been getting much worse. Pat’s sister wrote last week to say that Pat had died from cancer after months of agony because the doctors wouldn’t give her enough painkillers. I can’t face going through that. I’m just not brave enough.

  He replaced the note. The wording suggested she hadn’t consulted a doctor, so it was possible that in fact she hadn’t been suffering from cancer after all. But her fears had grown and grown until they’d overwhelmed her . . .

  Next to her bedroom was a studio. Three unframed canvases were leaning against a wall and a fourth one was on a large easel: paints, palettes, palette knives, bottles of unidentified liquids, brushes, stained rags, and paintboxes, were strewn haphazardly almost everywhere. He briefly studied the three canvases against the wall and found them conventionally attractive: the kind of paintings he wouldn’t have minded on the walls at home. He moved and looked at the fourth, and unfinished, one on the easel. A background of mountains, a distant finca with grey walls and roof of Roman tiles, a drystone wall, almond trees, and in the left foreground a gnarled, twisted olive tree whose trunk, largely hollow, was metres in circumference so that the branches growing from it seemed disproportionate . . . It was only as he left and was stepping into the passage that it occurred to him there’d been some quality to that unfinished painting which was disturbing.

  The third room was a spare bedroom, the fourth and last a bathroom. He returned downstairs. ‘Who’s got the front-door key?’ ‘I have,’ replied the municipal policeman. ‘You can hang on to it, then. You’ll have to let the undertakers in. And in the meantime, you can show me where the doctor and the daily woman live.’

  ‘I’ve a mountain of work waiting at the station.’ ‘That’s just going to have to wait, isn’t it?’ Alvarez was pleased to be able to upset someone else’s morning.

  Señora Garcia’s face was tanned and heavily lined, witness to all the hours spent out in the fields under the grilling sun when younger. She was garrulous and possessed a natural liking for histrionics.

  ‘I knew there was something wrong the moment I entered the house. I knew it.’

  Alvarez, sitting at the kitchen table, nodded, his round, stolid face showing no signs of impatience.

  She returned to chopping an onion. ‘You see, it was all so quiet. Like a tomb. Usually, the señorita had the radio or a record-player on. A great one for music, she was: and some of it was strange, I can tell you.’ She upended the knife and used the blunt edge to sweep the chopped onion into a cooking pot. ‘I shouted out, “señorita, it’s me. I’ve brought you an empanada.” She loved my empanadas . . .’ Quite suddenly, the tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘She was so kind and nice. To think she could kill herself. Sweet Holy Mother!’ She dried her eyes with the edge of her apron, reached across for a couple of carrots, and peeled them. Life was full o
f sorrow, but there was never much time for grieving.

  ‘D’you think she’d been depressed recently?’

  ‘Something was wrong: I know that much. When she first came to the village, she was sad, but soon . . .” She stared down at the chopping-board as she tried to find the words to express what she wanted to say. ‘She smiled and talked to everyone and made friends. She came into our homes for merienda. But just recently, she’d not been smiling any more. I said to her, “señorita, are you ill? Has something terrible happened?” But she never told me what the trouble was.’

  ‘When did she first become depressed?’

  She thought, her face screwed up in concentration, as she chopped the peeled carrots. ‘I suppose it was about when Ines started teething.’

  ‘And when did Ines start teething?’

  ‘Somewhere around the end of last month,’ she answered vaguely.

  Dr Méndez lived on the outskirts of the village, at a point where the hill had begun to level out so that the land dropped only gently. The house was faced with rock, not limestone blocks, and it stood in its own grounds, one of only a few to do so.

  Méndez’s face was thin and his expression harassed. His wife, who let Alvarez into the house, was considerably younger than he, was dressed very smartly, and wore a considerable amount of jewellery. The doctor’s harassment, decided Alvarez, was emotional rather than professional.

  The sitting-room faced south and, despite the fact the house was near the foot of the hill, offered much the same dramatic view across the central plain to mountains and sea as was visible from higher up. Méndez, once Alvarez was seated, began to pace the floor, deftly rounding a small table on which were three pieces of Lladro ware. ‘I was called to the house at roughly nine-thirty. By then, she’d been dead for quite some time.’ He rushed the words and clipped the sentences short, as if very pressed for time.

  ‘Roughly, when did she die?’

  His tone became impatient. ‘Not much point, surely, when it’s so obviously suicide? But if you must have a figure, call it twelve hours.’

  ‘And she died from asphyxiation?’

  He came to a sudden stop. ‘Yes. Will you be calling for a PM?’

  ‘I doubt it. I take it you read the suicide note?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  Alvarez said slowly: ‘It’s sad to think of someone committing suicide without ever finding out if her fears were justified.’

  ‘It happens,’ said the doctor grimly.

  Back in his over-hot, stuffy office, Alvarez telephoned Palma. He was very grateful to hear that Superior Chief Salas was out and he made his report to the woman with a plum in her mouth. The English señorita had committed suicide by pulling a plastic bag over her head, probably after taking some sleeping pills. Everything appeared to be straightforward and therefore there seemed to be no point in asking for a PM. However, in case the superior chief decided that as a foreigner was involved a PM was justified, the body would be held at the mortuary for forty-eight hours before arrangements were put in hand for the funeral.

  CHAPTER 11

  The intermittent noise broke through Alvarez’s sleep and scattered his dreams, but when it ceased he thankfully began once more to drift away . . .

  ‘It’s the station,’ Dolores shouted from downstairs.

  He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom, very dimly seen in the light which filtered through both shutters and curtains.

  ‘Are you coming down, then?’

  He slowly manoeuvred himself into a sitting position.

  ‘Are you dead up there?’

  No such luck. He dressed in shirt and trousers and, bare-footed, made his way downstairs.

  Dolores, as coolly handsome as a flamenco queen, said: ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘If you knew how I felt! . . . What lunatic at the station is ringing up this early in the afternoon?’

  ‘It’s only early to someone who’s drunk a bottle of coñac and been snoring like a matanza pig.’

  Before all that nonsense about women’s lib, he thought sourly, a woman had known her place and stuck to it. He crossed to the telephone. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Been on holiday, have you? . . . You’re handling the suicide case in Caraitx, aren’t you?’

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘There’s an Englishman been ringing up and creating.

  Inspector Antignac says you’re to see him and find out what in the hell he’s on about.’

  ‘The case is closed.’

  ‘You argue that out with the inspector. And in case you’re interested, the Englishman lives at Ca’n Noyeta.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Near Caraitx.’

  ‘How near?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  Alvarez replaced the receiver and walked into the kitchen where Dolores was beginning to prepare the supper. He slumped down into a handy chair. ‘I wouldn’t say no to a coffee.’

  She picked up the kettle, filled it from the cold tap, and placed it on the gas stove. The gas refused to light. ‘The bottle must need changing.’

  In the old days, he thought, no woman would have dreamed of asking a man to do a household chore. Reluctantly, he dragged himself to his feet and went through the small enclosed patio to the passageway in which they kept the gas bottles.

  Around Caraitx, the land was light grey in colour, very stony, and poor in heart. Almonds and algarrobas grew freely, but only where there was irrigation and there had been heavy fertilizing with dung or well-weathered seaweed was it possible to grow the kind of crops seen everywhere around Llueso. But there was one crop, which grew without the need of any irrigation, for which the district was justly famous: the Caraitx melon. How they grew, when they were never watered and no rain fell for weeks on end, was a miracle. And since any miracle needed to be celebrated and propitiated, on the first Saturday of every June a special service of thanksgiving was held in Caraitx church, when farmers gave thanks for miracles past and—although this was never actually stated aloud—pleaded for miracles to come. When the small, very dark green melons, white veined, were harvested, any man could join the gods and dine on ambrosia and nectar.

  When Alvarez came abreast of the first of the melon fields, he slowed the car and stared at the rows of plants, as yet bearing only small, rock-hard fruit, and as he conjured up the icy sweetness of the mature melon, he cursed the Englishman who was responsible for his having to be on the road when the heat was so stifling. He cursed the Englishman much harder when, twenty-three minutes later, a third set of direction to Ca’n Noyeta proved to be wrong.

  With considerable difficulty, he turned the car and bounced his way back along the dirt track to the metalled road. A mule cart, with squealing axle, driven by a man who was slumped in half sleep, came along. He shouted through the opened car window: ‘D’you know where Ca’n Noyeta is?’

  The cart stopped. The driver remained slumped, his face hidden by a wide-brimmed raffia hat.

  ‘Where’s Ca’n Noyeta?’ Alvarez shouted still louder.

  The man slowly lifted his head until his heavily stubbled chin and toothless mouth became visible. He considered the question for a long time before saying: ‘Is that the house of the Englishman who . . .’

  ‘Who what?’

  The man hawked and spat. ‘Up the road, first track on the left and keep going until you see the house of the Englishman who . . .’

  ‘In the name of the devil, who what?’

  The man grinned: it was the grin of a satyr. Then he shouted at the mule to continue and lowered his head.

  The dirt track wandered through the countryside: a hundred years previously, a traveller would have seen exactly the same scene as now. That Caraitx bastard, thought Alvarez, sending him into the blue for a laugh . . .

  Finally, after a sharp left-hand bend, a house came in sight. Initially, he was certain that this couldn’t be Ca’n Noyeta: in a bad state of repair, without electricity, telephone, gard
en, or swimming pool, it was inconceivable that an Englishman could be living in it. Yet as he drew nearer, he saw a nameboard which, in very artistic lettering, identified it as the house he sought.

  He parked behind a Renault 6 which looked as if it had escaped from a breaker’s yard. He crossed to the front door, knocked, and after a while heard a woman’s footsteps approaching. He pictured a dispirited, middle-aged wife who with her husband had come to the island when the cost of living was so much less and it had been possible to enjoy life on a small income . . .

  Liza opened the door. She was wearing a bikini, but only just. He realized he was gawking at her, but it was not often one actually met the centrefold from Playboy.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked in thickly accented Spanish.

  He pulled himself together. ‘I am from the Cuerpo General de Policia, señora,’ he replied, in English. ‘Is your husband inside?’

  She giggled. ‘I sure hope not! The last time I heard anything about him, he was in Manchester . . . You mean Bruno. Sure, he’s in. Come on through.’

  As he followed her through the house, he tried not to concentrate on the delightful way in which her largely visible buttocks moved as she walked.

  Bruno and Norah were sunbathing on rugs set out on the ground at the back of the house. He was wearing very brief trunks, she the bottom half of a bikini that somehow managed to be even briefer. They sat up. Norah flashed Alvarez a dazzling smile, said ‘Hi!’, picked up a glass and drained it. Only then, as an afterthought, did she bother to find the top half of the bikini and slip this on.

  Alvarez said, with great formality. ‘Good afternoon, señora Meade.’

  Norah giggled. ‘Grab that, Bruno! señora Meade!’

  It was obvious that she was not señora Meade. Alvarez began to feel as if he were caught up in an erotic dream. ‘Señor, I understand you’ve been speaking to the police in Caraitx about the death of señorita Dean?’

  Bruno came to his feet with athletic ease. He scratched his bronzed, hairy chest. ‘I don’t give a bugger what anyone says, the old girl didn’t commit suicide.’