Dead Clever

by Roderic Jeffries

  He must, he thought, somehow find a way to persuade her that there had to be a limit even to loyalty. But how, in the face of a character as steadfast as hers? He knew both irritation that she could be so deliberately blind and warm satisfaction that this was so. Not everyone was concerned only with looking after himself. Yet one thing was certain. The longer she insisted on deceiving herself, the more heartbreaking would be the moment when it became impossible to continue to do so . . . He sighed. If only she had been able to lie a little more convincingly, he would not now be so certain she had been lying, in which case he would not be taxing his brain to find the solution to a problem for which there was no solution . . . His mind moved at a tangent. It was strange that her beauty only slowly revealed itself; but once it had, she made the moon brighter and the stars more brilliant. He remembered wondering why, after so short an acquaintance, Ware had spoken about her as he had; now he knew the answer.

  Alvarez stopped the car in front of the elaborate wrought-iron gates, climbed out and pressed the red call button on the speaker box. A man’s voice, abrupt in tone, said: ‘Yes?’ ‘Is that señor Bennett? This is Inspector Alvarez. I would like to speak with you, please.’

  ‘Perhaps some other time. I’m extremely busy.’ ‘I’m sorry, señor, but the matter is important.’ There was a short silence before Bennett said: ‘Very well. But you’ll have to be brief There was a wait before the gates opened. Was the delay Bennett’s way of putting him in his place? He drove through and up the winding road, past land burned brown, to the green lawn and the colour-filled flowerbeds. Beyond the raised, circular rose-bed was a white Fiesta with the usual car-hire certificate stuck on the right-hand rear window. Was Serena here again? Then he realized that the registration number did not contain a 7 and he had noticed that that of her car did.

  He walked over to the front door and pressed the bell. The door was opened by Bennett.

  ‘Come on in, Inspector. I’m sorry to have been a little abrupt and for the delay in opening the gates, but I was on the phone, long distance, and the call was urgent as well as important.’

  Alvarez tried to hide his astonishment at the apology and at the friendly way in which it had been made. He stepped into the cool hall. Bennett, dressed casually yet as unmistakably expensively as usual, indicated the open doorway into the sitting-room. ‘Let’s go through to the patio. And since here on the island it’s officially drinking time—when isn’t? —let’s have a drink. I can offer most things, including a genuine pulque from Mexico.’

  ‘A brandy, if I may.’

  ‘Neat, on the rocks, or with soda?’

  ‘Just with ice, thank you.’

  ‘You carry on through while I get ice for you and champagne for myself.’

  Alvarez crossed the patio, seemingly twice as hot because of the contrast with the air-conditioned house, to the table by the far end of the pool; he moved one of the chairs until he could sit in the shade of the umbrella.

  A couple of minutes later, Bennett came out of the house with a tray on which were an insulated ice container and a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket. He put the tray down on the table, then went over to the pool complex and wheeled back the mobile cocktail cabinet. He poured out a very generous brandy—Carlos I, Alvarez noted approvingly— and filled a flute with champagne. ‘How does the Mallorquin toast go?’ he asked, as he raised his glass. ‘To an easy life and many pesetas?’

  That is right.’

  ‘A cynic would surely say that, given the latter, the former inevitably follows since little brown envelopes play such an important part on this island. Would you agree with that?’

  ‘I do not understand, señor.’

  ‘No, of course not. Very correct.’

  It was difficult to make out whether Bennett was inadvertently being obnoxious while trying to be pleasant, or whether his remarks were wholly malicious. ‘señor, the last time I was here I mentioned certain facts which had been established concerning your trip to Stivas.’

  ‘And I replied that they weren’t facts, they were fiction.’ He drank.

  ‘Since then I have spoken with Miguel Navarro, the brother of Carlos.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be of any significance?’

  ‘You knew Carlos.’

  *I don’t remember meeting anyone with that name. Is he somehow connected with the plane crash?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Then I’ll try once more to make something clear. You insist I sailed out to pick up Green and to take him to Stivas. That is utter nonsense. He was a business associate, not a personal friend, and therefore not someone for whom I’d be prepared to act illegally. Far from it, in fact. He was a good salesman, but there was something about his character that always made me a shade wary so that. . . Let’s just say that I kept a very close watch on any business deal with which he was concerned. Because I never found the slightest thing wrong, I continued to employ him, but I made certain that socially we never became close. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but there was something suspect, something weak, about him; morally he had rather a casual outlook.’

  ‘How exactly are you using the word “morally”?’

  Tm not certain that I understand the question.’

  ‘Are you saying that his sexual habits were unusual?’

  ‘I was talking purely from a business point of view; in business, a man’s sexual proclivities are of no account There are two kinds of people who work in the City; those whose word is their bond and those whose bond becomes their word. He was one of the latter. He believed that the ends always justified the means.’

  Then you cannot have been surprised to hear from him that he was intending to fake his own death in order to defraud an insurance company?’

  ‘Had he told me that, I would not have been surprised. He never told me.’

  ‘Carlos and Miguel Navarro saw a man parachute into the sea, after which he was picked up by your boat. When no announcement was made of the rescue of the pilot of the missing light aircraft, Carlos realized that something funny was going on and he determined to profit by the knowledge. He came here to try and blackmail you.’

  Bennett made no comment.

  ‘But you were too smart for him and taped everything he said and then refused to pay him a single peseta. He realized he couldn’t expose you and Green without also exposing himself to a charge of attempted blackmail and decided he daren’t take the risk. Yet having destroyed this threat, a day or two later you sought out the brothers and offered Carlos money on condition that he kept his mouth shut. That money came from Green, not you. You had little reason to be scared by Carlos’s threats, but he had every reason.’

  Bennett topped up his glass. ‘As I’ve had reason to remark before, you have a very ingenious imagination. Unfortunately, it is also absurd.’ His tone changed slightly and now contained a hint of mockery. ‘I did not assist Green in any attempt to defraud an insurance company for the very simple reason that that would have been criminal and although I regard some law as being as much of an ass as did Dickens, I have a developed sense of survival and so take great care to observe it.’

  ‘As I believe, back in England you always managed to keep within it even while defrauding a large number of people?’

  Bennett’s anger was immediate. ‘What the devil d’you mean by that?’ His expression and manner had become ugly, very different from earlier on.

  ‘I understand that before you retired your business ethics —or should I say, business morals?—were ambiguous, to say the least.’

  ‘I did nothing illegal and I’ll bloody well have you up for slander if you try to say that I did.’

  ‘I know nothing about the English law, señor, but under Spanish law there can be no slander unless there is a third person to hear what is said.’

  Bennett drained his glass, put it down on the table with such force that it might easily have shattered. ‘Get this straight. Every penny I made was legal.’

  ‘Unless or until it can
be proved that you were deliberately and repeatedly rigging the market so that your clients lost money to you. Green can prove that you did. So from the beginning he has stood between you and a criminal charge which explains how he is able to blackmail you into doing what he wants . . . I think that maybe he sees as much weakness in you as you see in him?’

  Bennett said with vicious anger: ‘Clear out.’

  Alvarez stood. ‘I’ve one last thing to say, señor. If you help Green to hide, then you risk becoming guilty of being an accessory after the fact to murder.’

  Alvarez left the patio, walked through the house, and returned to his car. He sat, opened the glove locker, searched among the litter of car papers, screwed-up aides-memoires, a torn map, toffee papers, string, and paper handkerchiefs for something to write on and with. He noted down the number of the hire car on the far side of the raised flowerbed. Once back in the office, he dialled Traffic. He asked for the name and address of the hire company who owned the car, the registration number of which he gave them. They seemed surprised he should have rung them so late in the morning; they said they’d ring him back after lunch.

  The call came through just after five as Alvarez, still a little drowsy, stared down at the papers on his desk and wondered how to work out where to start on them.

  ‘Regarding your inquiry. The firm’s name is Bon Viatge and their offices are in Calle General Larranaga, Cala Blanca.’

  ‘Do you know anything about them?’

  ‘Only that they’re completely incompetent when it comes to records—but that’s usual.’

  He thanked the other, rang off. Cala Blanca was on the south coast, roughly an hour and a half’s drive away. If he went there now, not even the superior chief could blame him for not making a start on the paperwork.

  It was just after seven when he drove down the gently shelving road into Cala Blanca. Like so many places, it had once been an unnamed stretch of coast with sandy beaches and crystal clear water and there had been only one large house, built in the ‘twenties for a South American tin millionaire eccentric enough to like solitude. Then it had been ‘discovered’, named, and developed; now it was a flourishing resort with hotels, hostals, apartments, restaurants, cafes, shops, and discotheques.

  The car hire firm’s premises were on the front. The office was small, separated by a wooden counter from the rest of the considerable space available for storing cars; this was empty except for a blue Fiesta with a stove-in front wing. The owner, in his middle fifties, his ferrety face pitted from childhood acne, his gold teeth flashing in what passed for a smile, watched Alvarez approach.

  Alvarez came to a halt in front of the counter and read a notice, in English, German, and French, which regretted that there were no cars available for hire that day. He said, as he looked up: ‘Business is booming?’

  ‘With idiots wrecking every car I own?’ The owner indicated the damaged Fiesta.

  ‘But you manage to keep your head above water?’

  ‘What’s it to you if I do?’

  ‘You can tell me something. Guerpo General de Policia.’

  ‘You didn’t bloody think I reckoned you a tourist, did you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you reckoned. D’you keep proper records?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly like the government says, even though they’re a pack of bloody fools who know nothing about business.’

  ‘Isn’t that like all governments?’

  ‘I only know about ours . . . Look, I’m a busy man, so let’s stop horsing around. You want to know if I’ll offer you a spare-time job. All right. Any time I’ve a customer who wants to find a car waiting when he comes into the airport, or has left a car there which needs collecting, I’ll remember you. It’s only a two-hour job unless the bloody customer’s forgotten to leave the keys with the gatekeeper, but I’m soft and I’ll call it a three-hour one, which means a thousand pesetas.’ He smiled rapaciously. ‘And for your part, any time there’s a spot of trouble with one of my cars, you’ll help it out. Understand?’

  ‘Perfectly. But the problem obviously is that you don’t.’

  ‘Get one thing straight. I’ve more of you blokes looking for hand-outs than I need and some are high enough up to take care of anyone who tries to cause trouble, so it’s no bloody good thinking to screw me for more than a thousand a trip.’

  ‘Where you’re going wrong is that I’m not looking for a hand-out.’

  ‘Then what the bleeding hell are you after?’

  ‘Information.’

  One of the two telephones rang. The owner answered the call in Mallorquin, switched to French and accepted a booking. He replaced the receiver, swivelled round in his chair until he could note the booking on a systems chart pinned to a wooden frame.

  ‘You own the white Fiesta with this number.’ Alvarez passed a slip of paper across. ‘Who’s the present hirer?’

  ‘Why the interest?’

  ‘I’ve seen the car around and want to know who’s driving it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve secrets in your business and I’ve got ‘em in mine.’

  The owner looked at Alvarez with dislike. ‘You know something? You sound like you come from the north.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I had a cousin from Mestara who couldn’t get a job up there and so came here begging me for one. Had to sack him.’

  ‘For honesty? Who hired that Ford.’

  The owner searched through a pile of slips, swore, opened a drawer and brought out another pile, secured by a rubber band, and looked through them. ‘An Englishman, name of Terence Galloway.’

  T.G. again, thought Alvarez with satisfaction. Strange how even intelligent criminals so seldom learned the danger of sticking with the same initials. ‘What address did he give you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why not? You’re required to put it on the hiring form.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So find the right book and tell me his address.’

  The owner still hesitated.

  ‘Start becoming any more difficult,’ said Alvarez pleasantly, ‘and I’ll begin to think it my duty to find out if you’re keeping two sets of hiring and insurance forms so that when a car is returned undamaged and there’s no need to claim on the insurance, you can decide whether to make the hiring official or keep the good news to yourself and pocket all the money.’

  ‘They may do that sort of thing up north, but we don’t bloody do it down here.’

  ‘There’s some who say that you lot always have been slow.’

  His expression bitter—the owner prided himself on being far too smart for anyone in authority—he unlocked a drawer and brought out a book of forms in triplicate.

  ‘I’ll do the checking.’

  ‘You’re saying you can read?’

  The book covered the dates from July 21st to August 12th; originally there had been a hundred and fifty top and two copy pages for each hiring; now, only a hundred and fifty copy pages remained. It was, thought Alvarez, impossible to judge whether or not this was the official book, but it was a safe bet that whichever it was, a hundred and fifty hiring and insurance fees had gone straight into the owner’s pocket during the period. He looked through the copy pages. On August 3rd Terence Galloway had given his address as Hotel Llureza. ‘What do you remember about him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on, think.’

  ‘I can think from now until tomorrow and it’ll still be nothing.’

  Alvarez took the passport photograph of Green from his pocket. ‘Now d’you recognize him?’

  The owner shrugged his shoulders. ‘You don’t seem to understand; I’m too busy to remember.’

  ‘Especially the demands of the tax inspector . . . Where’s the Hotel Llureza?’

  ‘Along the front.’

  ‘Thanks. You’ve been a great help.’

  The owner plainly found that the most unkindest cut of all.

  CHAPTER 18

  Th
e hotel was already showing signs of poor construction; rising damp had stained the walls up to two metres above the ground, old cracks had been filled in but new ones were appearing, and there were rust streaks running down from the wrought-iron railings on many of the balconies. Most builders on the island were cheerful men, as well they might be since they had a job for life—every building erected in the past twenty years was going to need very extensive repairs before the next twenty years were up.

  The receptionist was young, smart, and pleasant. He checked through the entries in the register, using the unsharpened end of a pencil as a marker. He looked up. ‘You can’t say what day he booked in here?’

  ‘Not for certain, but it was probably on or just before the third of this month.’

  The receptionist checked again. He shook his head. ‘Sorry. There’s no one of that name stayed here recently.’

  ‘Then would you go back to July 16th.’ Perhaps Green had come here very soon after leaving Stivas.

  A few minutes later the receptionist said: ‘Still no booking.’

  Alvarez thanked him, returned to the car. The fact that Galloway had given a false address to the car-hire firm was proof that he had not been a straightforward tourist; that his initials were T.G. and his car had been at Bennett’s house was as near proof as he was going to get for the moment that Galloway was Green . . .

  Alvarez arrived home late for supper, but Dolores’s annoyance only surfaced when he had finished his brandy, stood, and said he had to go out.