‘Ah!’ Martinez said.
‘And we also think that until a few days ago, she was living in Spain, and only arrived in Whitebridge shortly before she was murdered.’
‘You think she came here to visit someone?’ Martinez guessed.
‘Exactly,’ Paniatowski agreed.
‘And you think that person murdered her?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Paniatowski said cautiously, ‘but if we could identify her, we might have a better idea of why someone would want to kill her.’
‘And you’ve come to see me not because I’m your MP, but because you think that since I used to run the Whitebridge Hispanic Circle, I know more about the Spaniards in Whitebridge than anyone else?’
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski said.
And she was thinking, Please give me something I can use, so I can call Charlie off the investigation before he gets himself into trouble.
‘There aren’t actually that many Spaniards living here, you know,’ Martinez told her. ‘I haven’t done the calculation, but I doubt the number even reaches treble figures.’
‘Then it should be easy to track them down,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Do you have a list?’
‘Not as such,’ Martinez admitted, ‘but from the information I have collected from various sources on other matters, I’m sure I could get Marjory to compile one for you.’
The door from the outer office opened, and a man entered. He was around seventy, Paniatowski guessed, and the expression on his face could only have been described as stern.
‘They told me you were talking to a policeman,’ he said to Robert Martinez, and looked sweepingly around the room as if he expected to find one lurking in a corner.
‘For “they” read “Marjory”,’ Robert Martinez said to Paniatowski. ‘She’ll have sent my father here to chase you out as soon as possible. She thinks I spend too long with my visitors.’
‘She is the policeman?’ Javier Martinez asked, examining Paniatowski critically, as if he suspected someone was playing a trick on him.
‘She is the police officer – DCI Paniatowski,’ Robert Martinez replied.
‘When you are talking to the police, it is always wise to have witnesses,’ the older man said.
Robert Martinez laughed uncomfortably. ‘My father has lived in this country for nearly forty years,’ he said to Paniatowski. ‘He has run a successful business, and has dined at the mayor’s table at official banquets on numerous occasions.’ He turned to the older man again. ‘How are Valencia CF doing this season?’ he asked.
‘How would I know that?’ Javier Martinez replied indifferently.
‘Then let me ask you another question, Father,’ Robert suggested. ‘Do you agree with me that Whitebridge Rovers are likely to be relegated at the end of this season?’
The older man snorted with contempt at the very idea.
‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘We have had a few poor results – that is true – but the team is coming together, and the new centre forward has not yet shown half his talent.’
‘You see?’ Robert Martinez asked, smiling at Paniatowski. ‘My father is, in many ways, as English as the people who were born here. He likes warm beer, and adores steak and kidney pie. Yet a police officer – any police officer – is always, to him, just a member of the Cuerpo de Policía Armada in disguise.’
Robert had delivered the whole argument light-heartedly, and most people in Javier Martinez’s situation would have laughed – perhaps a little embarrassedly – at the way his son had exposed his inconsistencies. But Javier did not laugh – he didn’t even betray the slightest flicker of amusement.
Unlike his son, he seemed a very cold man, Paniatowski thought.
‘You did not know the Policía Armada as I did,’ the old man said. ‘If you had known them, you would never again …’ He stopped suddenly, and squared his shoulders. ‘You are right, Roberto,’ he continued. ‘Wariness of the police is no excuse for being discourteous to a lady.’ He bowed to Paniatowski. ‘I apologize, madam, for ever seeming to question your integrity.’
‘Apology accepted,’ Paniatowski said.
‘DCI Paniatowski would like to know if we recognize this woman,’ Robert Martinez said, holding up the sketch.
‘When I saw that in the newspaper, I thought, for a second, that I might possibly recognize her,’ Javier Martinez said. ‘But when I looked closer, I saw that she was just like the old women I pass on the street every day.’
Paniatowski checked her watch.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Could you get that list to me as soon as possible, Mr Martinez?’
‘Marjory will probably demand her pound of flesh for it, but I’ll see you get it within the hour,’ Robert Martinez promised.
The front parlour of Doña Pilar Crespo Torres’ farmhouse had exposed roof beams made of olive wood, and a floor paved with heavy stone slabs. The furniture was handmade, rustic, and smelled of beeswax, and the room was dominated by a huge stone fireplace – on which there was a spit for roasting meat – and the large wooden crucifix that hung to the left of it.
It was in this parlour that Doña Pilar had chosen to receive Woodend and Ruiz. And receive was the right word to describe it, Woodend thought, because sitting there, bolt upright, dressed entirely in black, and resting her old hands on her carved walking stick, she made it seem as if, after this experience, an audience with the pope would be an absolute doddle.
The old woman scrutinized the two men thoroughly, and then spoke to Paco in rapid Spanish.
‘Doña Pilar says she has seen you before,’ Paco translated.
‘That’s right,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I was the one who brought Louisa here for the party.’
More rapid Spanish followed, of which the only words Woodend could catch sounded like tío Echarlee.
‘She didn’t know who you were at the time, but she realizes now that you must be the Uncle Charlie who Louisa spoke of,’ Paco explained. ‘She says she is pleased to discover that Louisa had such a manly man in her adopted family.’
‘Ask her about this Elena woman,’ Woodend said, starting to feel a little hot under the collar.
Paco did.
‘She says the woman’s full name is Elena Vargas Morales,’ he told Woodend, when the old woman had finished speaking. ‘She comes from a village in the mountains called Val de Montaña, and until a few years ago, she worked in Melly’s Hotel, which is on the seafront.’
‘I know it,’ Woodend said. ‘Ask her if Elena seemed in any way strange at the lunch that she and Louisa went to.’
Another conversation followed, in which Doña Pilar lifted one of her hands from her stick in order to make extravagant gestures with it.
‘She says that Elena was behaving perfectly normally at first, but when she saw the photographs, a sudden change came over her.’
‘What photographs?’
‘Louisa brought some photographs with her, to show her Spanish family what her life was like in Whitebridge. The photographs were passed around the table. When they reached Elena, she seemed very shocked by them.’
‘Shocked? How?’
‘She went pale, and there was one particular picture that she appeared to be unable to tear her eyes away from.’
‘Who was in the picture?’
‘Doña Pilar does not know that, because Elena was right at the other end of the table from her. But she has absolutely no doubt in her mind that Elena was very upset by them.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Doña Pilar determined to have a quiet word with her friend – to find out what had upset her – but she did not want to appear rude to her other guests by ignoring them, and she decided to wait until lunch was over.’
‘But by then, Elena had gone,’ Woodend guessed.
‘Yes, that’s just what happened. Elena left without even thanking her hostess, which is both very discourteous in Spain, and very unlike Elena, who has impeccable manners. Doña Pilar sent her son – Don Jaime – rou
nd to Elena’s cottage the next morning, but she wasn’t there, and no one has seen her since.’
‘Ask Doña Pilar if she knows if Elena has done much travelling,’ Woodend told Paco.
The old woman laughed at the apparent absurdity of the question that tío Echarlee had put to her.
‘She says that women from Elena’s background don’t travel,’ Paco translated. ‘The men sometimes travel – to find work, or because they have been called up to serve in the army – but the women live their whole lives within a few miles of where they were born. They might perhaps visit Alicante, or even Valencia, once or twice, but for most of them, even that is too great an adventure.’
The old woman spoke again.
‘Besides,’ Paco continued, ‘she couldn’t leave the country without the permission of a male relative. And even if a male relative could have been produced from somewhere, the authorities would never have issued a passport to someone with her political background.’
If it had been anybody but Louisa who had made the identification, Woodend would already have started thinking that she must have been mistaken. But Louisa had been playing observation games with her Uncle Charlie since she started primary school, and she had one of the sharpest pairs of eyes – and best recalls – of anyone he had ever come across.
‘Thank Doña Pilar for seeing us, and tell her that she’s been very helpful,’ Woodend said to Paco.
‘De nada!’ said Doña Pilar, who clearly understood his tone.
‘She says it’s nothing,’ Paco translated.
‘I know,’ said Woodend, who understood hers.
‘If Louisa is right about it being Elena who was found dead in Whitebridge – and I’m sure she is – then it must have been her photographs that were the catalyst,’ Woodend said to Ruiz, as they walked back to Paco’s car. ‘But that doesn’t make any kind of sense, does it?’
‘Not a great deal,’ Paco admitted. ‘Perhaps we would be able to make the connection if we saw the photographs ourselves.’
‘I’ll ask Monika to post them to us,’ Woodend said. ‘But what are we going to do in the meantime?’
‘It might be useful if we found out more about Elena’s background,’ Paco suggested.
‘Just what I was thinking,’ Woodend agreed. ‘So first we’ll go to the village she came from, and then the hotel where she worked.’
‘That’s not a good idea,’ Paco said. ‘They would not trust you – a foreigner – in the village, and the owner of Melly’s Hotel would probably be much more comfortable talking to a fellow Englishman than to the Englishman and his Spanish associate.’
‘So you take the village, and I take the hotel?’
‘Yes, I think that would work best.’
They were dealing with the case of a woman who had never travelled before in her life, but had gone to England on the basis of a photograph shown to her by a girl she had only just met, Woodend thought, as he squeezed his large body into the passenger seat of Ruiz’s small car.
That same woman had been murdered in Whitebridge for reasons completely unknown, and her killer had attempted to hide her body, even though it was unlikely that anyone but he would recognize her.
If there was ever a case that was head-bangingly complicated, it was this one.
His knees jammed hard against the dashboard of Paco’s car, Woodend sighed contentedly.
It was starting to feel just like old times!
EIGHT
Paco hit the roadblock just after he turned off the N332. It was manned by young soldiers – probably conscripts – who were all attempting, with various degrees of success, to grow their first moustaches. The sergeant in charge of them was a middle-aged man with a hard, square body. He had no moustache – but then he had nothing to prove about his masculinity, either.
‘Identification card!’ the sergeant demanded, when Paco had wound down his window.
Paco handed it to him.
‘So you are Francisco Ruiz?’ the sergeant said.
‘Yes.’
‘And where are you going?’
Since the road he was about to take led to the village of Val de Montaña – and to nowhere else – there didn’t seem to be much point in lying.
‘I’m going to Val de Montaña,’ Paco said.
‘And why are you going there?’
‘May I ask why you want to know that?’ Paco said.
‘Why would you want to know why I want to know?’ the sergeant countered suspiciously.
‘Merely for professional curiosity,’ Paco replied.
‘Professional curiosity?’ the sergeant repeated, with a frown. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘When I was a sergeant myself – in the Army of Africa – I, too, manned roadblocks with my lads,’ Paco explained. ‘But I could never really see the point of them. Nobody I knew could see it either. So if there is a point – and you know what it is – I would be grateful if you could explain it to me.’
The sergeant frowned again. He was well aware that he didn’t have to answer questions put to him by an aged civilian, but he was also aware that if he didn’t answer this particular question, then his men – who were listening carefully to the conversation – might start to think that this roadblock was equally as pointless as the ones Paco had manned.
‘We are here, my men and I,’ he said, his chest expanding as he spoke, ‘to defend Spain.’
‘And am I a threat to Spain?’ Paco wondered.
‘You might be,’ the sergeant said. ‘An old man – especially an old man who has served as a sergeant in Morocco – can plant a bomb quite as well as any young man.’
‘I am flattered that you think that at my age, I might still be dangerous,’ Paco said.
The sergeant smiled indulgently. ‘Just tell me why you’re going to Val de Montaña, abuelo,’ he said.
‘I am going to see my mistress,’ Paco replied.
The young conscripts, who were standing just behind the sergeant, began to giggle.
‘Your mistress?’ the sergeant repeated, incredulously.
‘That’s right.’
‘And how old is this mistress of yours?’
‘Sixty-six,’ Paco said – and the young conscripts thought this was really hilarious.
‘That is very old for a mistress,’ the sergeant said.
‘How old are you?’ Paco asked.
‘Forty,’ the sergeant said – and then looked surprised at himself for answering the question.
‘And if you had a mistress who was only thirty, wouldn’t you be proud of yourself?’ Paco asked.
‘Well, yes, I suppose I would,’ the sergeant admitted.
‘And my mistress is ten years younger than me, so I, too, am proud,’ Paco said.
The sergeant grinned. ‘All right, it wouldn’t do to keep her waiting, so you’d best be on your way.’
As Paco slipped his little car into gear, the conscripts banged on the roof, and one of them shouted, ‘Good luck, old man – I hope you can find what you’re looking for among all the wrinkles.’
Arrogant little shit, Paco thought, as he pulled away.
The sergeant was laughing along with the rest of the soldiers, but that still did not stop him taking out his notebook and writing down the number of Paco’s car.
As the sergeant had pointed out, an old man could plant a bomb as well as a young one, Paco thought, as he left the roadblock behind him, but the soldiers had not checked the boot of the Seat 500 to see if there were explosives in it. And the reason for that, he decided, was that their real purpose in being there had nothing to do with checking on anything.
The roadblock was, in fact, like one of those billboards that were placed at the side of trunk roads. It was an advertisement – and that advertisement said, Don’t forget that though the Generalissimo has gone, we are still here, and we are more than ready to crush you if you attempt to step out of line.
And no doubt there were similar roadblocks all over Spain, he told himself, beca
use the army mistrusted the people quite as much as the people mistrusted the army.
As it started to climb, the Seat 500 found the twisty mountain road harder and harder going, but the little car seemed determined not to give up, and slowly but surely it drew closer to the village of Val de Montaña, where a woman called Elena Vargas Morales had once lived.
On one side of the road there was a sheer drop down into the valley. On the other side there were terraces, cut into the steep slope, on which cherry and almond trees were growing.
It must have been back-breaking work to carve out those terraces, Paco thought – and even maintaining them would be no picnic – but the people who lived in these mountains were as tough as the scrawny goats that they drove from thin pasture to thin pasture, and they took hard work in their stride.
It would not be easy to get the villagers to talk, he reflected. Mountain people had always been suspicious of strangers, and after thirty-six years of being continually punished by the Franco regime for being on the ‘wrong’ side in the Civil War – as so many other towns and villages in Spain had been – they had closed in on themselves even further.
The little car reached the crest of the road, and Paco could see the village spread out in the small valley ahead.
‘Well done, Rocinante,’ Paco said, and the engine snorted as if to say it was glad it had not let him down.
There were only two people in the Pig and Whistle Bar of Melly’s Hotel and Restaurant. One was Ted Melly himself (who was serving the drinks), and the other was Charlie Woodend (who was sinking them).
‘I used to have a couple of barrows on the old Petticoat Lane market in London,’ Melly was telling Woodend. ‘I’d sell anything. One week it would be crockery, the next one clothes, and the one after that, record players. It all depended what I could get my hands on cheap.’
‘It was a good business, was it?’ Woodend asked.
‘It was a great business, especially if you knew how to cook the books – and I was bloody brilliant at that. In fact, I’ve been told that they only assigned the smartest tax inspectors to my case, and even then, at least three of them found it so frustrating that they ended up taking sick leave.’
Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire Page 8