‘That’s right,’ said Orozco.
‘A real man will always fight for what he knows to be essential. So you’d kill for possession of a hole, a filled water-bottle, a hunk of bread, or to protect a friend.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Who is your friend?’
Orozco shrugged his shoulders.
‘He doesn’t have to be someone who fought on the same side, does he? Just someone who fought, who felt death pass close by, who realized that the real cowards in any war are those who started it and keep it going with words. Luis fought for the other side. Maybe you even faced each other across no-man’s-land and shot, hoping to kill. But that didn’t make you enemies, that made you friends.’
Orozco stood up and walked over to the cupboard. He opened the right-hand door and reached inside to bring out a half-filled litre bottle, unlabelled. He put this down on the table. ‘D’you want some?’
‘I’ve drunk too much already this afternoon.’
‘Only a ten-year-old who pisses his pants talks like that.’
‘I’ll never see forty again, so pour me one.’
Orozco went over to the sink and brought back two glasses. He dried them on a dirty cloth, pushed one glass and the bottle across the table. Tour your own.’
Alvarez half-filled his glass. ‘The dog barked that first Thursday night. Barked and went on barking and howling. I reckoned it was kicking up a row because Señorita Cannon was creeping about the place, but she used to fuss it and feed it and if it had seen her it would maybe have barked a couple of times, but no more. So who was it barking at?’
Orozco poured himself out a drink.
‘It was barking at Señor Freeman. He hated the dog and the dog hated him.’
They drank.
‘Why didn’t Matilde cook supper that night as it was a Thursday? Her day off was Monday. So why wasn’t she there to cook the señor his esclatasangs after she’d checked them to make certain there wasn’t a Uargsomi among them?’
Orozco had already emptied his glass. He refilled it.
‘Who knew she wasn’t going to be there, so that a llargsomi could be put in among the esclatasangs and wouldn’t be noticed since the Englishman would be doing his own cooking and he didn’t know one from t’other? Señorita Cannon couldn’t have known Matilde wasn’t there and so she could never have believed she could poison the señor with a llargsomi.’
They were silent for a while. The room was beginning to darken so that Orozco’s face, which was against the light, was no longer sharply featured.
‘You had a row with the señor that Thursday. What was it about?’
‘Seeds.’
‘Don’t be so bloody silly,’ said Alvarez, as he gave himself a second drink. ‘The Englishman had laid on a big seduction scene so that Señorita Cannon would walk in in the middle of it and be so shocked and disgusted that no one would be at all surprised when she committed suicide. It all worked out to begin with. Señorita Cannon was shocked and disgusted and did rush off in a hell of a state. But the other woman was also in a state and he hadn’t reckoned on that. Veronica demanded to be taken back to her hotel, which left him very frustrated . . . I suppose he’d had his dirty eyes on Matilde for quite a time?’
Orozco muttered something.
‘He was the kind of man who thought that just because he was rich and she was poor, she was fair game. So since Veronica had left him high and dry, he’d make do with her . . . She told you that afternoon that she’d had to fight him off, didn’t she? And you promised her you’d deal with the trouble?’
‘Luis had asked me to look after her,’ said Orozco in a harsh voice.
‘So how did you go about dealing with the situation?’
‘I spoke to the señor in the garden. Understand this, I was polite, even though he had behaved like a dog which has scented a bitch. “Please,” I said, “do not try to be friends with Matilde. She is married to Luis and is a good wife and it upsets her very much to be treated as a whore.” He shouted and swore at me. Said it was no business of mine and to keep my dirty nose out of it if I wanted to keep my job.’ He slammed his clenched fist down on the table. ‘He spoke to me as if I were not fit to be spat on.’
‘What happened next?’
‘I saw Matilde and I told her I had spoken to the señor. I did not tell her how he had answered, but truly I thought he would now keep away from her because no man could act so shamefully as not to.’ He slammed his fist down on the table again and the glasses rattled. ‘I was here, eating, when Catalina from the store on the corner of the road came and said there was a telephone call for me from a woman who sounded very upset. I knew then what had happened. I ran to the shop and Matilde told me he had come again to the kitchen and had tried to kiss her and his hands began to tear at her dress. She cried to him to leave her alone and prayed to the Virgin Mary and when he became so busy pulling off her dress she escaped and ran up to her bedroom and locked herself in. I told her I would go to the house and take her to her cousin’s. When I went with her to her cousin’s, I told her it would never happen again.’
‘Because you were going to kill him?’
‘I did not tell her that,’ he said simply.
‘Why did you not just get in touch with Luis? Then he could have taken her away from the house and there would have been no need to kill.’
‘Listen. Luis is much older than her and she is beautiful so always he keeps his eyes open in case a young man comes visiting. Hasn’t it always been so with old husbands?
Suppose she had said, “The señor chased me twice and the second time he tore off my dress before I could escape”? Luis would have asked himself, why did the Englishman chase her once? And why did he return a second time even though she says she fought him off the first time? Did she perhaps not fight hard enough? Has she smiled at him because he is rich and young and her blood is hot? Is the truth this, that they have spat on my bed?’
‘He wouldn’t have begun to think like that if he really loved her.’
Orozco spoke with angry sarcasm. ‘So how big a fool can a policeman be? Do you think an old husband with a young and beautiful wife doesn’t look at each young man who comes near her and wonder? If Matilde had told Luis everything, he would have listened and believed today. But tomorrow there would have been a little worry in his mind, and the next day that little worry would have become a big one. And he would accuse her and she would swear by the Holy Mother that she had never smiled at the Englishman and he would believe her and all would be all right. Until the next day when there would be a little worry in his mind and as he stroked her breasts he would wonder if the Englishman had stroked them with warmer hands . . . Luis is my friend. I cannot let him suffer this.’
‘You seem so certain Luis would have been too jealous to trust her. Why? Has he cause to be jealous, but doesn’t know it?’
Orozco pushed the bottle across. ‘Drink.’
Alvarez refilled his glass.
‘So?’
Alvarez looked at him and wanted to put his hands around his shoulders and tell him that while there were men who loved friendship and another’s honour more than life, the world could not be wholly rotten. ‘Does Matilde know or does she only wonder?’
‘Just wonders.’
‘Then only you and I can be certain.’ Alvarez drank. He put down his glass. ‘The foreigners come here and they buy the houses so that peasants can no longer live in them and they waste the rich soil on flowers so that the peasants can no longer grow vegetables. With their money they distort all values until the young want everything and no longer know how lucky they are to have anything. But worst of all they bring corruption with them so that instead of honouring innocence and faithfulness they try to defile and debauch it . . . Let them wallow in their corruption.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that the English señorita accidentally killed the señor, while he deliberately killed her. After all, what could be neater? Eve
rything is taken care of.’ He was silent for a while, then he said: ‘Tell me, do you really believe that a younger wife who is not corrupted but is pure innocence will look at other men behind her husband’s back?’
‘Of course, if she is given the chance.’
‘How can you be so cynically sure?’
‘I was a young and handsome soldier. Once.’
Alvarez finished his drink. ‘What a dirty, stinking world it sometimes is,’ he muttered, with alcoholic despondency.
CHAPTER XXV
Ramon Mena was on the hard talking to one of his workmen when Alvarez came through the gateway of the boatyard. He greeted the other. ‘Well, Enrique, what can I do for you? Sell you that twelve-million-peseta yacht you were so interested in?’
‘Some other day. Right now I’d like a quick chat, if that’s convenient?’
‘Sure. Come along to the office so we can do our chatting over a drink.’
They walked into the main shed and passed between two boats, one of which was nearly completed. In his office, Mena pointed to the easy chair on the far side of the desk. ‘Grab a seat while I find the bottle.’ He looked in one cupboard, then turned to a second one. ‘Lucia asked me only yesterday if I’d seen you recently and how were you? I said you were just as dissolute as ever.’ He found the bottle he sought. ‘Ever since my brother died, Enrique, Lucia has been thinking about another husband. Women love dissolute men because it gives them the chance to try to reform them, but she weeps too easily for you.’ He filled two tumblers with brandy. ‘Here you are - drink that up and tell me the news.’ He sat down.
‘First off, you tell me something. How’s the Englishman getting on with you?’
‘If I had a dozen like him, I’d have the best boatyard in Spain.’
‘He’s still working here?’
‘Of course he is. Doing an ordinary bloke’s job until he becomes a partner.’
‘Oh!’ Alvarez slowly shook his head in perplexity. He drank, then shook his head again.
Mena spoke with some asperity. ‘Here, that’s not fifty-peseta coñac, it’s Carlos I, so why are you looking like that?’
‘The cognac’s velvet,’ acknowledged Alvarez, yet if anything looking a shade more gloomily worried.
‘Then what’s eating you?’
‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Me? I’m fine except when someone sits opposite me drinking my best coñac and makes like it’s homemade palo.’
‘But how are we going to keep you out of trouble for breaking the labour acts? That’s the problem.’
‘Who’s broken any labour acts?’
‘The Englishman’s a foreigner and he’s working for you, yet he hasn’t a work permit.’
Mena stared at Alvarez, disbelief slowly giving way to broad amusement. ‘You old bastard!’ he finally said. ‘You really had me worried there, with your ugly old mug looking like the end of the world had happened five minutes ago.’
‘But the work the Englishman is doing at the moment could as well be done by a Mallorquin, couldn’t it?’
‘Of course. D’you think I’m going to let him deal direct with the customers before he’s a partner? I’m not that soft.’
‘If a Mallorquin could do the work, then the Englishman wouldn’t be granted a work permit.’
‘Forget all this nonsense.’
Alvarez shook his head. ‘You’re breaking the law.’
‘So? Am I going to be sent to jail for the rest of my life just because I employ one Englishman without a work permit? Who worries about such technicalities?’
‘The law does.’
‘Then you know what you can do with the law, don’t you? Here, it’s not like you to go on and on this way, moaning about something of no consequence.’
‘Don’t you understand? I’m worried for your sake. These days the government’s making things really tough for someone who breaks the labour laws - because of all the unemployment. Call it a technicality if you like, Ramon, but I’ve seen real trouble come from no worse a breach of the law.’
‘There are foreigners all over the island still being employed without work permits.’
‘Because the law doesn’t officially know about them.’
‘And the law doesn’t officially know about this one.’
‘I know.’
Mena stared with sudden sharp enquiry at Alvarez.
Alvarez finished his drink. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘The big trouble comes afterwards. An employer commits a breach of the acts and gets fined a bit and he reckons that’s an end to it. But it isn’t, not by a long chalk. The inspectors start calling to make certain all the other million and one regulations are being observed and of course some of them aren’t because who ever knows what they all are? Is there enough light and heat, are there proper safeguards, changing rooms, lavatories, showers . . . Your boatyard isn’t all that up-to-date, is it? I’m worried that by the time the inspectors finish with it you’ll have a bill for three or four million in improvements.’
Mena sat very upright and aggressively thrust his chin forward. ‘What is this? A shake-down?’
‘You surely know me better than that.’
‘Then if it isn’t, why go on and on telling me how disastrous things can get?’
‘I’m trying to work out how best you can avoid them.’
‘Tell me.’
‘There could be a way, you know. Make Señor Anson a partner right off and then it’s all over and done with. No one’s going to get hot and bothered over what happened yesterday.’
‘When he comes in this door with a million and a half, he’s a partner.’
‘Sure. Only he hasn’t a million and a half and it looks like now he won’t be able to get it.’
‘He won’t? Then he’s unlucky.’
‘Ramon, you know he’s a first-class bloke and will bring a lot of new work to the yard. Why not give him the partnership now and let him pay you back over the years out of his income? With a proper rate of interest added, naturally.’
‘Impossible! I must have the million and a half to expand and I must expand if I am to have a partner.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’ Alvarez sighed. ‘Life is never as easy as it should be, is it?’ Then he brightened. ‘But here there is one way round the trouble.’
‘Sure. He pays me the million and a half.’
‘You say you need the money. But aren’t you forgetting you already have it? Wasn’t your wife left a finca? The one I’ve been told she’s just sold to a German?’
‘That’s her money.’
‘Understood. But surely she got more than she reckoned on because the German was a fool and didn’t bargain? She’ll have extra money that she won’t have expected.’
‘Who said she sold so well?’
‘Is it a lie, then?’
Mena fiddled with his nose. ‘There was, perhaps, a very little more than she originally thought she’d get.’
‘Not the two million that people are saying you are boasting about?’ Alvarez smiled companionably. ‘Now what could be a better place to invest such extra money than in the future of your boatyard?’
‘Listen, Enrique, I told Eduardo a million and a half and that’s the price. I’d look soft if I climbed down now.’
‘Generous, not soft. And who would hear about it if you didn’t tell?’
‘Why the hell should I do such a thing?’
‘Because I reckon that at heart you like helping people. And also because you would be well advised to avoid the possibility of having to pay out three, could be as much as four, million on all those extra lights, heating, windows, lavatories . . .’ Alvarez became silent.
Mena owed some of his success to the fact that he could make up his mind quickly. He made it up quickly now. He drained his glass, refilled it, then pushed the bottle across the desk. ‘If I had to to do business with you, I’d sew up all my pockets first,’ he said, a note of reluctant admiration in his voice. He st
udied Alvarez curiously. ‘You must like Senor Anson a hell of a lot?’
‘I hate his guts.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s young.’
‘Well, not even you can do anything about that. Here, fill your glass and drink up. Know something, Enrique? Face to face with you, I begin to feel quite virtuous.’
Alvarez filled his glass and drank.
THE END
Troubled Deaths Page 19