Undertow

by Desmond Cory

  “What d’you mean, one of those?”

  “Well, the body’s naked and it’s all cut about and the blood’s just everywhere. . . . It turned me up, it really did.”

  “It turned you up? But yow’ve seen a few, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, but nothing like this. Look,” said Trout, holding out his right foot with repugnance. There were red sticky smears over the instep and running up his shin; Fedora stared at them as though mesmerised. “You mean it’s still wet?” he said. “The wound’s still open?”

  “It’s in the pool. The pool’s full of it.”

  Johnny opened the hall cupboard and took out a torch, then opened the front door. The night outside was filled with the scent of mimosa. “I suppose it was too dark for you to see if it was anyone we know?”

  “I can’t be sure. She hasn’t any head.”

  “No head?”

  “Well, I couldn’t find it. But I didn’t hang around to hunt. If it happened in the pool, maybe a head by itself would sink. I don’t know.”

  Fedora nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It would.”

  They followed the beam of the torch down the crazypaving path to the pool. It gleamed then on polished tiles, on rubber matting, on the steel and concrete of the diving-ramp; and on something small and white and wet and glistening that lay at the edge of the pool, half-in and half-out the water. “Is that how you found her?”

  “No. She was floating. I pulled her in a bit . . . not all the way because I had to stop and be sick. Got rid of all that blasted cognac, anyway.”

  They stopped. The torch beam focused steadily on the thing at their feet, and Johnny felt his own stomach lurch uneasily. “God,” he said. “I’m not surprised.”

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it? You ought to turn her over and see . . . underneath. You’d say an animal did it.”

  “Knifed?”

  “Knifed? Gouged, more like it. Cut right open . , . you know. Oh, it’s one for the textbooks all right, it really is.”

  “Sex maniac,” said Fedora between his teeth. “How frightfully jolly for us. I suppose we’d better look for the head, Tiddler.”

  “Can’t we leave that to the police? It’s got nothing to do with us, has it?”

  “It’s our damned pool,” said Fedora.

  “Yes, but—”

  “And besides, I think I know who it is.”

  “You do?”

  Fedora knelt down, lifted the girl’s cold right hand and touched the ring on her third finger. The tiny white chip of stone winked derisorily against the dull band of copper. “It’s Carmen,” he said. “The maid.”

  “Carmen? But aren’t there two of them?”

  “The other one’s not here tonight. She went to see her family in Estepona. Of course, a lot of girls wear rings like this, but it looks like Carmen to me. The build’s about right.”

  “Carmen, but hell, I liked Carmen.”

  “So did I,” said Johnny. “Even if I didn’t, I still wouldn’t have cared for anything like this to happen to her. Come on. Help me lift her out.”

  “Oh Lord. No, leave her as she is.”

  “You said you liked her.” Fedora looked up. “You really feel like leaving everything to the police?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Trout stooped down, felt for the girl’s naked shoulders with his big blunt fingers. The body didn’t weigh very much. They heaved once together, and she was out, lying on her back on the cool colourless tiles of the parquet flooring. Fedora’s breath began to rasp at the back of his throat. “Yes,” he said thickly. “Yes, I see what you meant.”

  Trout straightened up again and walked away, wiping his hands automatically against his bathing shorts. Fedora took the torch in his left hand, leaned down over the corpse. His eyes were glazed over now with a kind of impassive intentness, were almost cruel in their total concentration on the object before them. The torch beam moved steadily over the girl’s body, from pathetically twisted feet to truncated neck. In the end, Fedora reached down to pull apart the limp, narrow thighs, began to explore with his fingers the gaping pink mouths with grey edges that radiated from the shadows of her underbelly. Trout came back and stood at his side, but didn’t try to look at what he was doing.

  “You were right,” said Fedora suddenly. “It wasn’t a knife.”

  “No?”

  “No. No cutting edge. These aren’t slashes. The belly’s been torn open from inside, as far as I can see. Four times, in four different directions. That must take a bit of strength. She was dead first, that’s the only consolation.”

  “You think so?”

  “These wounds haven’t bled. Hardly at all. So it must have been when he cut her head off . . . though that’s just the same. Tearing, more than cutting. Sort of ripped.”

  “Yes. That word has unfortunate conno-connotations.” Trout was beginning to feel the cold; his teeth were chattering lightly.

  “There has to be a lot of blood about somewhere, Tiddler.”

  “There is. In the pool. I told you. I was swimming along in there, couldn’t make out what the hell it was.”

  “Yes. Well, look at this.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “This is a clean cut. You can see where the ripping commences. I can tell you what he did it with.”

  “All right, what?”

  “Something like a chisel.”

  “A chisel?”

  Fedora measured the macerated flesh with his bent thumb. “Yes. A one-inch chisel, I’d say. Allowing for a degree of muscular contraction. That’s about the only thing that’d make a mess like this.”

  Trout nodded. “Funny thing for someone to be carrying round, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes. True.” Fedora looked up sharply. “We’d better go back to the house. And you’d better get changed. Unless you want a go of pneumonia.”

  “It’s not that cold. Besides, what about the head?”

  “Never mind the head,” said Johnny. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  THE Provincial Judge was a pleasant-looking middle-aged fellow, with greying hair and the commencement of a jowl; he had met Fedora several times before and his attitude now was cautiously amicable. He sat in one of the grey-and-red Knoll armchairs in the sitting-room and talked about this and that while the police doctor was examining the corpse and while the police sergeant was hunting for clues—more particularly for the head. His manner suggested that the finding of dismembered cadavers in the swimming-pool was just another of the minor inconveniences attached to life in the deep south, along with the mosquitoes, the levante and the water shortage. But he was really perplexed and, at times, his guard slipped and he showed it.

  When both the doctor and the sergeant had returned to make their reports (the head had been found in the short grass a few yards from the pool, where it had presumably been either dropped or thrown), he questioned Johnny and Trout briefly as to the circumstances of their discovery and as to their previous movements throughout the evening. He didn’t seem to expect that their answers would help in any way to elucidate his problem, and though he kept his notebook open on his lap, he didn’t use it at all.

  “Bueno,” he said, at the end. “That’s all very clear. Not much doubt as to your alibi, anyway.” And he closed the notebook and put it away in his pocket. “Not, of course, that I’m suggesting you could have had anything to do with it. But offhand, to be frank, we’d be inclined to suspect foreigners, just because of the method. This kind of . . . of business is very rare in these parts, it really is. Whereas the Americans seem to go in for it wholesale, if the magazines one reads are anything to go by. And the Germans, of course. A very thorough-going race, the Germans. Well, we’ll have to make inquiries, won’t we? . . . and see what results we get. Her parents live in Fuengirola, I believe. We’ll notify them. Yes, I’ll get in touch with you later. No need to worry. A very sad business, very regrettable, but no need for you to worry. None at all.”

  . . . The police
doctor was waiting outside in the car. The judge got in beside him, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “That’s that,” he said. “Que canallada.”

  “Messy,” said the doctor. “Very messy. Vamonos.”

  The driver rolled the car forward down the drive, and they set off for the village. It was almost two o’clock. The doctor yawned.

  “We’ll manage a formal identification in the morning,” said the judge. “Meantime I’ll take your word as to who it is. Or rather, was. D’you know anything about her? She been seen out with anyone lately?”

  “She’s got a novio. Juanito Garcia.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Fisherman. You know the Garcias. Three brothers, they own that boat down by the Faro.”

  “Ah.”

  “I never heard anything against her. Or against him, either.”

  The judge took out his handkerchief again, this time to blow his nose. “Working for foreigners, though.”

  “Lots of ’em do.”

  “I know. But I’ve noticed that it often leads to a certain weakening of the moral fibre. This Garcia, he probably wouldn’t have liked it over-much.”

  “You think she. . . . ?”

  “It seems likely enough.” The judge shrugged. “We’ll have to be careful how we go, all the same. That house belongs to the Senorita Tocino, and she has all manner of connections in the government. And money—caramba—that’s obvious. You notice anything else about the Englishmen?” i “Well, they seemed very calm.”

  “Exactly. You’d think they turned up mutilated bodies every damned day of the blasted week. I know Englishmen are phlegmatic and all that, but I’ve never seen anything like those two. Inhuman, I call it.”

  “I don’t know,” said the doctor slowly. “The dark-haired one—he was angry. Very angry. Maybe he was the one who slept with her. Either way, I wouldn’t much care to be in Juanito Garcia’s shoes right now—unless I had a very good alibi.”

  “I didn’t notice that he was angry,” said the judge, after a thoughtful pause.

  “He was angry inside.”

  They had reached the village now, and the car swung sharp left to head for the Plaza Central; the narrow whitewashed street it entered was silent, deserted. The judge lit a cigarette and the lighter flame etched out his face’s reflection sharply in the window. “Well, I’ll see Garcia in the morning,” he said. “Maybe well have no trouble. But unless it clears itself up right away, it’ll have to go to Malaga. One can’t be too careful where foreigners are concerned.”

  “Very true,” said the doctor.

  THERE was no early-morning coffee the next day, because there was no Carmen to make it and serve it Trout and Johnny, all the same, were both up early. Trout went to the kitchen to experiment with grinders and percolators, while Fedora put on his shirt, trousers and sandals and went round to the servants’ wing. Trout found him there ten minutes later, sitting morosely on Carmen’s truckle bed and investigating the contents of a brown cardboard suitcase lying open on the floor at his feet. The servants’ quarters at El Anteojo were much more comfortable than most, but as bare as Spanish tradition demanded. A coloured picture of the Giralda at Sevilla and another of the Virgin Mary, both cut out of a cheap magazine and pasted on plywood, hung on the wall above the bed and seemed to be about the only adornments that Carmen’s room had to offer. There were a couple of photographs, however, under the glass top of the bedside table; one of a fat, elderly lady dressed entirely in black—presumably her mother—and another of a black-haired youth in Spanish military uniform, leaning on a rock and squinting cheerfully into the sun. Trout put the coffee-pot down on the dresser and mooched idly around for a few moments without speaking; then sat down on the bed beside Fedora. “Had any bright ideas, Johnny?”

  “I was just wondering what she wore last night. That’s all.”

  “What she wore?”

  “Well, she wouldn’t have gone out naked, would she?— the way you found her? Still, that’s what she was wearing yesterday.” Johnny pointed to the chair at the end of the bed, where a calico print dress and a cotton slip lay neatly folded. “Both her uniforms are in the wardrobe, and her nightdress is right here under the pillow. So I think she must have been wearing a swimsuit.”

  “Likely enough,” said Trout, “if it happened at the pool.”

  “Yes. Let’s say she went out for a swim, then, last thing at night. Down at the pool. Now either she’d arranged to meet somebody there, or else somebody just happened to be around. The first idea isn’t very likely.” Johnny glanced shortly towards the photographs on the table, looked away again. “If she fixed up anything like that, I doubt if it was with her novio. Girls don’t do that sort of thing around these parts, not with the men they’re going to marry. She might have arranged to meet someone else, but I doubt that, too. If she had, she’d almost certainly have worn something else apart from just a swimsuit. Which leaves us with j the question of what a complete stranger would have been doing round here at that time of the night.”

  “Rubbernecking,” suggested Trout.

  “You think so?”

  “Why not? There are people like that, you know. Who hang round private swimming-pools in the hope of catching some woman or other in the nude. My God,” said Trout forcefully, “there has to be something pretty seriously wrong with whoever it was who did it. You’ve got to remember that.”

  “It was pretty dark last night, though, wasn’t it? He couldn’t have hoped to see very much that way.”

  “I don’t know. With a good pair of night-glasses. . .

  “And a chisel?”

  “What? Well, but you can’t be sure it was a chisel.” Fedora sighed. “I got up before you did, this morning,” he said. “Quite a long time before.” He pushed himself up to his feet. “Come on. I’ll show you something.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Trout followed him out into the open, privately thinking that it was still a little early in the morning for this kind of brainwork. They rounded the pergola and set off down the path towards the pool, Fedora whistling under his breath. “She’d have come this way,” he said, “to get to the pool. Not that it matters a lot.”

  They reached the tiled surrounds of the pool and came to a halt by the diving-ramp. The pool was empty. “Did you do that?” asked Trout, staring.

  Johnny nodded. “That’s what I meant when I said that I’d got up early. It took me all of fifteen minutes to find out how the hydraulics worked. It dried out in no time, though, once I’d got it going.”

  “Good idea,” said Trout, sniffing the air dubiously. “The thing could do with a real scrubbing-out, if you ask me. They say there’s only ten pints of blood in the human body. . . . All I can say is, if you’d been swimming in there with me last night you’d find it pretty hard to believe, too.”

  “That wasn’t why I did it, though.”

  “No? Then why?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “Curiosity?”

  “Look,” said Fedora. He pointed.

  The sun was as yet hardly risen and the lower parts of the pool were in deep shadow; Trout had to lean forward and stare hard to see what Johnny was indicating, and even after he had seen it he was by no means sure just what it was. “What the hell is it?”

  “It’s a hole.”

  “I can see it’s a hole, but . . . Is that where the water runs out?”

  “No, that’s the drainage pipe. Over there.”

  “Well then, what’s that hole doing there?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” said Johnny. “Let’s go down there and see if you have any brainwaves.”

  They clambered down the steps and walked across the cool smooth floor of the pool. The hole was at the deepest part of the pool, near where they had been standing and almost directly under the diving-ramp. Two of the tiles in the wall, not in the lowest row but in the next lowest, had disappeared, leaving behind a deep cemented recess. Trout go
t down on hands and knees to peer into it. “Anything inside?”

  “Nothing. I’ve looked.”

  “Well, but then. . . .” Trout suddenly reached out to finger the chipped cement of the tiles immediately below the recess. “Now I see what you meant.”

  “Yes. That’s where it slipped.” Johnny pointed to a sharp-edged scratch on the surface of one of the tiles. “And cut through the glaze. A one-inch chisel, near as makes no difference. I measured it.”

  “It looks like some kind of a hiding-place.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “And a good one, at that. You’ve got to let all the water out to get at it, haven’t you?”

  “Or work under water.”

  “Would that be possible?”

  “For a good diver, yes. That’s how I think it happened. ^ He was down here working when Carmen went in. She wouldn’t have seen him or noticed anything that way, not until she was actually in the pool. And then it was too late. Poor kid.”

  “He killed her . . . just because she found him there?”

  “I think so,” said Johnny.

  “But then why the . . . the refinements?”

  “Maybe he wanted to make it look like another kind of crime altogether. To put people off the scent, so to speak, I’ve got the idea that the way he killed her in the first place was kind of recognisable . . . and so he had to disguise his handiwork a bit. Make it look messy, when it was really as neat as you like. Of course,” said Johnny, “he didn’t have to be so thorough. There’s something wrong with him all right —that’s true enough.”

  Trout was no fool; he was aware of the implications of what Fedora was saying long before Fedora had finished speaking. “When you said recognisable,” he said slowly, “. . . ?

  “Somebody’s been doing some very recognisable killing around Malaga lately,” said Johnny.

  “Moreno.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what would Moreno be mucking about in our swimming-pool for?”

  “I’d like to know that, too,” said Johnny. He stood up, and they began to mount once more the steps of the pool. “Up to a point I can put two and two together, but it doesn’t make four yet or anything like it. Still, something was hidden there. That seems obvious. And you know who this place belonged to before Adriana’s father got hold of it?”