“And how did he find her?”
“When he opened the door, he found her sitting cross legged on a rug in the sitting room. He asked if she was OK. She seemed extremely calm. She smiled at him and said that he wasn’t to worry. That everything would sort itself out.”
Gurtha shook his head in disbelief.
“Oh dear. I wonder what that means.”
Angelina pleaded, “You must talk to her. I think you are the only one who can get through to her.”
“The most important thing which we have to do is to keep her calm. We have the ‘fiesta’ this evening, which is good because Stephanie and Todd will be there, with other people. It sounds like she doesn’t lose control when there are other people around – only when it’s a one-to-one situation. I can talk to her but I don’t think it will make the situation easier if she knows that we know how she has behaved and what she said and did to Barry last night.”
♥
Gurtha phoned Andy Finn to update him about Cornelia’s outburst.
“Thank you, Mr Maloney. This is exactly what you need to be doing – keeping us informed. She certainly sounds unstable. It also sounds as if she may be obsessed by you – so you could be at risk if she feels that there are any signs of rejection from you. However, as she currently appears to be protecting you, I would say that the person most at risk at the moment is Angelina. Her anger outburst appears to be driven by her jealousy of Angelina and the fear that she will lose you. This does not shed any light on why she would have wanted to kill Nuala but we are proceeding with our investigations at this end. The forensic team have been back in Nuala and Paddy’s house. Unfortunately, as you did a good job cleaning the house when Paddy was in hospital, we may have lost some circumstantial evidence, but we are not giving up hope.
The important question is – how confident are you that she has returned to a state of emotional stability?”
Gurtha was unsure how to reply.
“I haven’t seen her since the visit to the Gallery. However, we are planning to be together with a group of friends this evening. I will be able to gauge the situation then. I can ring you tomorrow, if that helps?”
“Sounds like a good idea. I also agree with you that she is unlikely to do anything to discredit herself whilst with others – so if you can do your best to ensure that Angelina, in particular, is not left alone with her – that will be not only important, but essential. Again I would recommend that you do everything within your power to defuse the situation. I have been promised the forensic update on Monday and am planning to be with you on Tuesday 10th September. That’s only three days away. I will update the Soller Police of the situation and provide you the contact details of the Officer there who is our key contact. What questions do you have. Mr Maloney?”
Gurtha tried to think of a question but there was nothing. He merely repeated.
“So your advice is to keep everything low key until next Tuesday. Don’t let Angelina be alone with Cornelia and try to keep as much as possible within a group?”
“Yes, Mr Maloney. That would be my recommendation. We are not saying at this moment that Cornelia has murdered Nuala. She is innocent until proven guilty but we do need to minimise any risks. It is quite common for people to display volatile behaviour in these romantic twists in relationships. We also have to be aware that one moment of madness can have severe consequences which destroy many lives. I think you are handling the situation well. Until tomorrow then.”
♥
Gurtha decided to ring Cornelia and check out how she sounded ahead of the ‘fiesta’. She answered the phone within three rings. He ensured that his tone of voice was gentle. His strategy was to make no reference to anything which could inflame her.
“Hi Cornelia – I wanted to make sure that you are OK for this evening. Do you and Barry need a lift? I would be happy to drive down and collect you”
Cornelia replied, “That’s more than kind of you Gurtha – thank you – but Todd and Stephanie have already offered to give us a lift. Looking forward to it. See you around eight then?”
“Perfect. It will be beautiful. We’re expecting a starry night.”
Gurtha sighed with relief.
♥
Gurtha had met Toni briefly in his first week in La Torretta. Toni had knocked on the door and, speaking a few words of English, invited him to visit his house. He guided Gurtha through a gap in the fencing between the two houses, and showed him the barbeque area outside, including a large fridge, which he opened. It was filled with Cava. There were at least twenty bottles, laid neatly side by side. Toni turned to him.
“This is your house. You help yourself any time to the champagne. Here I put the key to the house.” He placed a copper key under the mat in front of the door.
“If you need to go into my house – you take the key.” He smiled at him, collected the key, opened the front door and showed him around. As Gurtha left to return to La Torretta, Toni slapped him on the back.
“Dinner. We have dinner together soon. Fiesta. Party time. Come to my birthday party on Saturday 7th September – bring your friends – all welcome.”
♥
Gurtha walked down the path to Toni’s house carrying one of the unsold paintings from the art exhibition and a Magnum of champagne as a present.
As he approached the candlelit table, a man and woman were standing around a microphone on a paved patio singing a Julio Iglesias song ‘Por el amor de una mujer’ – ‘For the love of a woman’. There were three couples dancing a waltz around the patio.
Toni shook Gurtha’s hand, accepting his presents.
“No need to bring a present. You are my present – 1,000 euros for your presence – thank you.” He smiled and gestured to the table where people were buzzing with conversation and laughter.
“Where are your friends?”
He invited Gurtha to sit beside an elderly man who sat with his leg resting horizontally on a stool with a bag of ice on his knee.
“They’re on their way. Thank you so much for the generosity of your invitation to include them. They are delighted.”
Toni shook him again by the hand, “It’s my pleasure. This is Paco. He had his knee replaced two weeks ago. Recovering. He’s eighty years old.”
Toni’s outdoor table was made of stone, the upper half swivelled around so that people could choose what they wanted to eat.
Toni, the owner of the oldest bakery in Soller, poured Gurtha a glass of champagne.
“There are three things important in life. In order of priority they are … a good horse … a good bottle of wine … a good woman. We have two out of three here tonight.”
Everyone laughed as the ceramic table top swung around offering a selection of jamon iberica, pimientos de padron, queso de Mahon and gambas de Sóller.
Paco talked to Gurtha about his work as a mechanic repairing the boats owned by the wealthy who docked them in the Port of Soller. He explained how he would crawl into small corners to reach the faulty parts of the engine and how, in the heat of the day, the spanners he needed were so hot that they burnt his hands. He kept a bucket of cold water to one side into which he would drop the spanners before using them. He said that his knees were worn out by kneeling and crawling through the small crevices of the boat. Gurtha joked,
“Do you mean that you didn’t wear them out by praying?”
Paco laughed, leaned forward and poured Gurtha a glass of red wine.
“There was no time for praying. Catalina …” He pointed to his wife across the table, “At the age of seven had to go collecting carob pods on a farm. She worked from seven in the morning until eight in the evening. She had a bowl of ‘sopas mallorquinas’ for breakfast and a glass of milk and that was all she ate until the evening when, at eight, she had another bowl of sopas. Do you know what sopas are?”
Gurtha shook his head.
“It’s a poor man’s soup, made from cabbage. If you were lucky there might be a few more vegetables like cauliflo
wer but in those days it was usually cabbage and bread soaked in a broth. That was what people ate for breakfast, for lunch, for ‘cena’ – the evening meal. Look at this table – what have we got now? Are we any happier?”
With that question, Cornelia, Barry, Stephanie, Todd and Angelina arrived.
After kissing Toni and handing their present to him, Cornelia walked quickly to where Gurtha was sitting, kissed him and pointed to a free seat on Gurtha’s left.
“Can I sit there?”
“Of course you can.” Gurtha straightened a cushion on the circular stone bench.
She was wearing a long white silk dress beaded with pearls and pink flowers. Her hair was threaded with cerise bows and roses.
Gurtha poured Cornelia a glass of champagne and tried to work out what looked different about her. Then it was obvious. The plait had gone. He held his hands in the air,
“What have you done, Cornelia?”
She laughed at him.
“Glad that you noticed. I asked Barry to cut it off.”
“Why?”
“I felt it was time for a change. A change is good for you.”
She swung the table to reach the ‘pimientos de padron’.
“Careful with those,” Paco laughed.
“There are some so picante that they will blow your head off.”
Cornelia tried one,
“So far … so good. I like picante.”
Toni tapped a spoon on a bottle of wine and the table fell silent.
“When we have the good times like now – we know it’s good because we lived through the times of hardship. You appreciate it. You see that it doesn’t matter having all of this.” He swept his hands around the table.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
Cornelia asked across the table, “What means anything?”
Toni raised his glass in the air holding Cornelia’s gaze,
“Friendship. That’s the only thing that means anything. Finding real friends.”
He twisted open another bottle of red wine and popped open a bottle of cava as the suckling pig twisted on a spit above the charcoal barbeque.
As the table swirled, laden with food and wine, barbeque smoke drifted into the darkening sky, corks popped and Toni’s son, Rafael, played the Chimbomba. Holding a small drum between his legs, he pushed a small stick through a hole in the skin where it repetitively droned creating the sense of a medieval banquet. Drifting back in time and sinking into something changeless.
On the other side of the table Barry sat beside Todd while Angelina laughed with Stephanie. There was more laughter from the shadowy figures sitting around the table. Gurtha looked up into the inky blackness of the sky. The stars were flickering in and out of existence. Mars was a steady orange like an unexpected dot on a Paul Smith shirt. A warm breeze ruffled Gurtha’s hair like a friendly hand.
Then he felt Cornelia move beside him. All eyes turned to watch her as she glided towards the microphone and had a word with the man and woman who had just finished a song. They nodded, handing the microphone to Cornelia, who cradled it with both hands and then began to sing ‘The Whisper of Love’. Everyone fell silent. Cornelia sang powerfully and emotionally, reminiscent of Amy Winehouse or Billy Holiday. She moved and flowed, embodying the sound, stretching her arms towards the table, bending forward like a swan as she circled before reaching both arms to the stars, pausing and singing the last phrase of the song with the purity of a violin.
Gurtha was the first person who applauded. Furiously. He pushed his chair back, stumbled to his feet and everyone else followed. Cornelia bowed, blew a kiss towards the table and handed the microphone to the man and woman who immediately began another song. Cornelia waved at the group smiling, then walked towards Gurtha, holding her hand out to him.
“Let’s dance.”
♥
Before the party ended, Cornelia had danced with Barry, Todd and Gurtha and had chatted to Angelina and Stephanie. She pulled them all into a circle where they held hands.
“Let’s do the walk we said that we would do – to the cave of Ramon Llull near Valdemossa. It’s stunning at sunset. There’s a little path which weaves its way towards the cave with a sea view all the way.”
Barry asked, “When?”
Cornelia answered, “Why not Monday – the day after tomorrow? We can close the Gallery for one day – after all there are only four unsold paintings. Let’s take a long weekend and celebrate the Exhibition’s success.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. The mood was elevated. Angelina gave Gurtha a thumbs up and smiled. This was the Cornelia Gurtha remembered. The Cornelia who had been lost for a year and a half. It was wonderful to see her so happy, so full of spontaneity and fun. They broke their circle and went in search of Toni to give their thanks and then finally said goodbye to one another.
Later that night, Gurtha listened to thunder rumbling in the distance. Sheet lightning lit up the bedroom – the white mosquito net over the bed shivered as winds from the unexpected storm pushed their way through the persianas.
Gurtha was soaked in sweat. He turned onto his side and curled into the recovery position. He found it difficult to breathe. He tried seven-eleven breathing, the technique that he had taught Miriam a few weeks earlier. But his mind wouldn’t stop racing. He rolled onto his back, then onto his stomach, pulled the pillow down to place his head on it and then pushed it away to lie on the sheet. There was no relief.
How could he let Cornelia’s perfect performance for one evening at a party, take away the reality that she was under suspicion of killing Nuala?
DAY 29
SUNDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER 2013
“EXPLANATION BY THE TONGUE MAKES MOST THINGS CLEAR, BUT LOVE UNEXPLAINED IS CLEARER.”
J RUMI
GURTHA WAKENED early. It had been a troubled night’s sleep. The storm had continued for several hours. It wasn’t the storm that had kept him awake – in fact he was glad of the noise of the growling thunder as the lighting cracked around La Torretta. What had kept him awake was wondering how this was all going to work out. Since Nuala had died, the world had become chaotic. By coming to Mallorca, he had taken away the comfort and security of everything he knew. It felt as if he had thrown himself into the middle of a fast moving tornado which was cutting a path through his past and present and obliterating any sense of controlling the future.
After a quick breakfast, he rang Andy Finn.
“She seemed to be ‘normal’ last night – well more than that – happy – the life and soul of the party. She reminded me of the way she was when I first knew her. For a few hours, to be perfectly honest, I forgot that there was an unresolved murder. I can’t believe that happened because since Nuala died, I have been thinking about her virtually all of the time.”
Andy listened. His tone of voice in reply wasn’t stern, but cautious.
“It is good news that there is no obvious emotional instability, but we must not be fooled. We know that her erratic behaviour is only witnessed when with one other person. She may be a good actress. She knows you well. If she is intelligent, which you say that she is, she will have the potential to be a Mistress of Dissimulation. She may also be able to manipulate your unconscious energies – tapping into your personal weaknesses. She may know them more than you do. How did she react to Angelina?”
Gurtha tried to visualise what happened with Angelina at the party.
“Angelina acted like a frightened cat that had been poisoned and shot at. She tried to distance herself from Cornelia, mostly by spending the evening talking with Stephanie. I noticed that on several occasions Cornelia attempted to talk with her – in fact I heard her ask Angelina if she would like to dance. Angelina shook her head and said that she was tired. She scurried away to the toilets inside.”
Andy sounded concerned.
“That is worrying. It is what I mean by dissimulation. There is no consistency between this behaviour and with what was reported by Barry to Angelina. We need to s
tay with our plan. You have the contact details of Ramon Gonzalez in the Police in Soller. He knows to expect a call from you at any time. What are the plans before Tuesday when I arrive?”
Gurtha replied confidently, “Today, Angelina has been invited to lunch with Stephanie and Todd. Barry and Cornelia will be alone. Tomorrow we have all been invited on a walk near Valdemossa.”
Gurtha heard papers shuffling.
“Let’s speak tomorrow evening, then, and we can confirm where I can meet with Cornelia. If anything happens before that which is of concern, give me a call. I’m glad to hear that everything is holding reasonably steady.”
♥
Cornelia made Barry pancakes for breakfast with maple syrup and brought him a mug of steaming milky coffee.
“It was a good party last night. Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes. Toni was very generous, the food and wine were superb. It was good to meet a few new friends. Did you enjoy it?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve never heard you sing before. You have a beautiful voice.”
“That was our song. I sang it for you. We listened to it together when we first met.”
“I remember the song.”
“I wanted to apologise for my behaviour the other night. I’ve been a little stressed, as you have experienced.”
Barry wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to say that perhaps they should reconsider their relationship together and take a break from each other, but was worried that would send Cornelia into another ‘episode’. He also wanted to be more honest and explain that it wasn’t a break from Cornelia that he really wanted but a total seismic shift away from her – to have a total gap open up between them which would allow him to be with Angelina for the rest of his life. He did not know how to make this happen in a way which would be safe way for Angelina and so he nodded.
Cornelia continued, “Tomorrow will be fun – the walk with everyone. Why don’t you prepare the picnic now so that we are not rushing tomorrow? I will do the paperwork for the Gallery. Then we can watch a film together later. How does that sound?”
Barry looked at his watch.
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