An Artistic Way to Go (10 page)

He drove through the narrow, winding roads of the village, intending to park in the old square, only to find that this was closed to traffic because workmen were preparing it for the festival. He swore.

Every side street seemed filled with cars, but eventually he found an empty parking spot by the health centre, only to lose it to a tourist. He swore again. Ten minutes later, he was forced to park on the outskirts, which left him with a long walk to the post, a prospect that left him too exhausted to swear yet again.

Breathless, sweating heavily, he slumped down in the chair in his office. He must, he finally accepted, give up smoking, reduce his drinking, and take up regular exercise.

He phoned Traffic. Would they trace the ownership of the car number he was about to give them …

He was interrupted. It had very recently been decreed that all such requests had to be made on the appropriate form and be countersigned by a superior officer. Forms were available only from Palma. Perhaps it would mean delay, but rules were rules … In turn, he interrupted. The identity of the car's owner was urgently needed in order to pursue an important investigation and the superior chief, who was a Madrileño and therefore extremely short tempered, had declared that he would personally have the cojones of anyone who delayed the investigation …

‘Ring back in an hour's time,' snapped the other, annoyed to find himself outflanked.

Alvarez replaced the receiver, leaned back in the chair. White had to offer the most promising lead, but this could not be followed up for the moment. So what was the identity of the man who had swum naked with the señora?

Such heat as the island was now suffering sapped a man of all energy. His eyelids closed …

*   *   *

He left the post and walked across the square, now almost completely criss-crossed by white streamers, and up past the church. Slowing as the ground rose, he reached Carrer Almas, in the oldest part of the town. Outside the first house, an old couple were sitting in the shadows, enjoying the opportunity of conversing with passers-by as much as searching for a cooler freshness than they could find indoors. He chatted with them for a while, as custom dictated, before asking in which house Jorge Amoros lived. They directed him to one at the end of the road.

He stepped through the bead curtain into the front room, furnished to receive visitors, and called out. After a moment, Teresa came through from inside. She studied him briefly and said, her voice muffled because she did not have her teeth in her mouth: ‘You're Enrique, Dolores's cousin.'

‘That's right.'

‘I saw her last week and she said…'

He listened patiently. For people of Teresa's generation, gossip, not television, was the staff of life. Eventually, however, he had the chance to ask her where Jorge was. ‘In the Bar Iberia,' she answered, surprised he should need to ask.

Amoros was seated at the far table in the bar, talking to a man whom Alvarez recognized, yet could not immediately identify. He ordered a brandy, paid, said to the owner: ‘Who's that with Jorge? Know the face, but can't place the name.'

‘Eduardo Serra.'

‘Of course! His brother was Narcis.'

‘That silly sod!' was the other's sour comment.

Alvarez carried his glass across to the table. Amoros and Serra stared up at him with the blank, mindless expression with which they would face any situation until they had judged it. ‘Have you time for a word?' he said.

They hesitated. ‘With me?' Serra finally asked.

‘With Jorge.'

Amoros drained his glass. ‘What d'you want?' he demanded with the antagonism towards authority, common to most islanders, that he could now express without fear of the consequences.

‘To hear about life at Ca'n Oliver.'

Serra stood. ‘The señor's still missing, then? Bloody good riddance.' He eased his way out from the table and left, not bothering to say goodbye.

Alvarez sat. ‘What's made him more bitter than an unripe persimmon?'

Amoros peered into his glass.

‘How about another?'

He pushed his glass across. ‘And tell that bastard behind the bar to pour a proper sized coñac this time.'

Alvarez went to the bar, returned, passed a glass across, sat. ‘I've been up at Ca'n Oliver a couple of times. There can't be a better garden this side of Palma and maybe not the other side, either.'

The praise had the desired effect. Amoros's initial antagonism melted, its final disappearance helped along by another brandy. Alvarez brought Serra back into the conversation.

‘'Course, he doesn't like the señor.'

‘Wouldn't have thought he'd have much to do with him.'

‘Call yourself a detective? Don't know much about anything, do you? When the father died, the land was left to the two of 'em. Narcis, being a stupid bastard, gambled his half away and a German bought the land and had a palace built. All the time the building was going on there was no garden, so there wasn't any need for water apart from mixing the cement and concrete. Eduardo diverted the German's share down his channel. After the house was finished, he forgot to change things.' Amoros sniggered.

‘And when the owner moved in?'

‘He was a German, so money meant nothing. When there was no water arriving, he told me to buy. Three lorryloads a week at this time of the summer; fifteen thousand pesetas and he never worried! When God made foreigners, he made 'em dafter'n women.'

‘Then Eduardo continued to enjoy all the water?'

‘And went around boasting how smart he was and how he grew the best fruit and vegetables on the island. Everyone knew it was only because of the extra water. Then the German sold the house and the Englishman bought it.'

‘Things changed?'

Amoros studied his empty glass. Alvarez took it and his own to the bar and had them refilled.

‘The English señor is different. Rich, but if he'd a flock of sheep, he'd go round plucking the wool off the brambles to make certain he didn't lose a strand. Like when I plant out bulbs, he counts how many come up to see none have gone missing. Came up one day and asked why I was buying water when the land was entitled to it from the aqueduct. I tried to explain things, but he's difficult. Called in some smart abogado from Palma who said the land was entitled to the water and if Eduardo didn't stop pinching it, he'd find himself in court. 'Course, Eduardo said I was to tell the señor I was switching the water, but to continue to let it run through to his estanque. But the señor's such a suspicious bastard, he checked up and when he found it wasn't running, made me alter the baffles … So now most times Eduardo only gets the water that's rightly his. People are laughing.'

Only a peasant, Alvarez thought, could fully appreciate the measure of humiliation Serra would be suffering. To be outwitted by a foreigner was bad enough; to be jeered at by his fellows was worse. His sense of bitter, angry resentment might well have reached the point where the need to gain revenge far outstripped all sense of proportion or logic. Unexpectedly, a new possibility had opened up … Alvarez changed the subject. ‘I met Señora Cooper yesterday. She's very lovely.'

‘If you like 'em like that.'

‘You're dead if you don't. I heard she's a bit of a handful?'

‘The likes of you won't never get the chance to find out.'

‘But some lucky lad did one Sunday?'

‘If he didn't, he must be slower than a blind mule.'

‘What exactly did you see?'

‘She was showing her tits. Then she climbed out of the pool and showed all the rest.'

‘And?'

‘She and the bloke lay down on towels and sunbathed.'

‘Have you any idea who he is?'

‘Can't name him, but I've seen him around.'

‘Where?'

‘Down in the port, working on boats.'

‘Did you mention what you saw to the señor?'

‘Take me for that much of a bloody fool? He'd have asked her if it was true and she'd have said I was a dirty-minded liar and he'd have believed her, not me, because it's her what's got him by the short and curlies. I'd have been sacked. In any case, what them lot get up to, doesn't concern me.'

‘I reckon that's fair enough.' Alvarez drained his glass.

‘D'you know what's happened to the señor?'

‘Right now, it looks like he may have committed suicide.'

‘Why'd he want to be that daft?'

‘That's what I'm trying to find out. D'you think he could have discovered the señora was planting horns on his head?'

‘He's the great hidalgo. His kind take out their troubles on someone else, not themselves. Maybe his disappearing is something to do with the other man?'

‘What other man?'

‘The one what was watching the house through binoculars.'

‘How long ago?'

‘Something short of a week.'

‘You saw him?'

‘Wouldn't know about him if I hadn't, would I?'

‘What did you do?'

‘Didn't do nothing. He saw me looking at him and started moving the binoculars around as if he was one of those barmy foreigners what spend their time looking at birds. Like the one what asked me if I'd seen a black vulture recently and I told him I'd seen four that very afternoon.' Amoros stared into the past. ‘That cheered him up so much he gave me a couple of coñacs from a bottle in his rucksack. If I'd've known four vultures would have got him that excited, I'd have made it a dozen.'

‘Perhaps this man you saw really was looking for birds?'

‘Until he saw me, he was looking at the house.'

‘Can you describe him?'

‘Taller than you and not nearly so fat.'

‘I am not fat,' Alvarez said sharply. ‘What about colour of hair and eyes, shape of ears and nose?'

‘He was wearing some kind of a hat with a wide brim, and so what with the binoculars up to his eyes as well, I couldn't see nothing but the scar.'

‘Where was that?'

‘On his cheek.'

‘Right or left?'

Amoros intently studied his empty glass.

Alvarez decided that it was not worth the cost of another brandy to discover that Amoros probably couldn't remember on which cheek the scar was.

*   *   *

He phoned Traffic from the office.

‘The car's owned by Garaje Xima, in Cala Xima. And there's a message from my jefe. The next time you submit the request on the proper form, countersigned, or you won't get the information.'

Alvarez settled back in the chair. Cala Xima. A place to be avoided whenever possible.

He looked at his watch. Dolores would have started cooking supper. Small point, then, in starting anything fresh.

CHAPTER 12

In the brilliant sunshine, the bay was at its most beautiful, the water a dramatic blue, the mountains looking benign. It was Alvarez's hope that when St Peter opened the gates and he walked through, he would find himself on the shores of Llueso Bay once more. (With all tourists having been consigned to the other place, of course.)

The harbour had changed as greatly as had Port Llueso (the campaign to rename every place on the island with its Mallorquin form was being encouraged, to the confusion of everyone). When it had merely served the fishermen, it had consisted of two stone breakwaters, now it was a network of jetties at which were moored a bewildering variety of yachts and motor boats. Only a few years before, the water had been crystal clear, now it was virtually opaque and not even a starving Andaluz gitano would willingly eat any fish that came out of it.

Alvarez walked along the main western arm, past a restaurant whose prices were such that even if someone else had been paying the bill he would not have enjoyed the meal, to reach a boatyard. Two men were cleaning the keel of a yacht with very high-pressure water hoses. He asked where Delgado was. Not bothering to turn off his hose, shouting to overcome the noise, one man said the other was in the office.

Delgado was rich because he had the ability to impress a client with the belief that he put excellence before profit. That was why he dressed poorly, went to work in a rusting Panda and left the Mercedes at home, and frequently spoke of impending bankruptcy. Indeed, one yacht owner who boasted about the size of the debts he'd left in ports from Bridgetown to Suva, was so moved by the sad story that he'd paid his account on the day it was presented.

When Alvarez walked into the small, cramped office, equipped with ancient battered equipment, Delgado was on the phone. After a moment, he replaced the receiver, leaned across the desk to shake hands. ‘It's a difficult world,' he observed mournfully.

‘Is the government increasing the wealth tax?'

‘Probably, since they've increased every other one until a man can't afford to live, and can't afford to die.' He indicated the stained chair in front of the desk. ‘What brings you here?'

‘I'm looking for an Englishman.'

‘Sadly, there's no lack of them.'

‘Do you employ any?'

‘Now that the rules have changed and it's no longer necessary to fake the work permits, I've three. So many boat owners don't speak Spanish that it's useful to have someone who can communicate. None of 'em does a proper day's work, of course.'

‘That's fair enough, since you don't pay 'em a proper wage.'

‘Always the humorist … What's the name of the Englishman you're looking for?'

‘I don't know. Which is why I want you to call each one in turn in here so I can have a word with him.'

‘Who pays for the lost time?'

‘Charge it up to entertainment.'

Delgado stood, left. He returned a couple of minutes later. ‘Bradley is out in the bay with a client, trying to find out why one of the engines is badly down on power, Hewitt and Burns are here. I've told 'em to come along one at a time, Hewitt first.'