An Artistic Way to Go (11 page)

Almost as Delgado finished speaking, a man in a heavily dirt-and-sweat stained boiler suit entered.

‘You want something?' Hewitt asked, in inaccurate but recognizable Spanish, as he faced Delgado.

Alvarez said in English: ‘In fact, señor, it is I who wish to speak to you.'

He turned. ‘Yeah?' His thick features held sullen lines.

‘I have a message for you from Señora Rachael.'

‘Who? Don't know any bird of that name. And I never mess with marrieds. Not worth the aggro.'

‘Then I'm sorry, there seems to have been a mistake.'

‘Think nothing of it, squire. And if this Rachael has a younger sister who's not married, tell her I'm free between eight and nine tonight.' He swaggered out, a plebeian Don Juan.

‘What was he saying?' Delgado asked. ‘I couldn't understand much of it.'

‘He could spare an hour this evening in which to pleasure a young lady.'

‘Are you in the poncing business?'

‘Would I be poor if I were?'

‘Perhaps, since in this day and age few are willing to pay for what is freely available.' Delgado's tone became reflective. ‘We have seen life change, you and me. When we were young, if we looked at a woman twice we became her novio and her mother was always there to make certain life was not full of pleasure. So it had to be the caseta with green shutters on the edge of the village when we could get a few pesetas together. But now the beaches are filled with women who flaunt what before was secret, their mothers are nowhere to be seen, and a man has no need to visit the caseta with green shutters. The young of today are luckier than rats in an almond tree.'

‘Remember what the local priest used to tell us? Happiness lies through denial.'

‘Can you ever remember his kind finding out if that were true?'

The door opened and a second man entered. Tall, broad shouldered, Marlboro-country handsome, he carried the air of a man who would respect authority only for as long as he agreed with it. He came to a stop by the side of Alvarez, faced Delgado.

‘Señor Burns?' Alvarez said.

He half turned.

‘I have a message for you from Señora Rachael.'

He showed his surprise. ‘What is it?'

‘Señor Cooper has disappeared.'

Despite his chunky features, he had an expressive face. It was not difficult to judge the point at which his puzzlement turned into suspicion. ‘Who the hell are you?'

‘Inspector Alvarez, Cuerpo General de Policia.'

‘When did she give you the message?'

‘Perhaps I should confess that the señora gave me no message. My little stratagem was to discover if you know her.'

‘Your little stratagem is crap! What concern of yours is it if I do know her?'

‘Perhaps you have not yet learned that the señor's car has been found and the circumstances suggest that he has committed suicide? It has become my task to try to find out why he should have had cause to take his own life.'

‘Why should I be able to tell you anything about that?'

‘You are a friend of the señora.'

‘A casual friend.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘If we happen to meet, we have a coffee and a drink at one of the cafés. That's all.'

‘You do not visit her at her house?'

‘I went there once because her husband was thinking of buying a boat and needed advice.'

‘That's the only time you've been there?'

‘Isn't that what I've just said?'

‘Then it was not you who was swimming there when the señor was away and the staff were not present and only the señora was there?'

He tried, but failed, to hide his consternation.

‘I have been told that both the señora and you were without costumes.'

‘Whoever it was told you that is a bloody liar.'

‘Why should anyone lie about such things?'

‘How the hell should I know? Maybe that's how they get their kicks. And even if we'd been updating the Kamasutra, what business is it of yours?'

‘As I said earlier, my job is to try to discover why the señor might have committed suicide. If he had discovered that his wife and you were cuckolding him, that would be good cause.'

‘I wasn't.'

‘You are quite certain he did not discover the truth?'

‘It's not the truth. It's something thought up by a goddamn pervert. Why can't you understand what I'm telling you?'

‘I understand, but I have to consider whether I can believe it, because if the señor did not commit suicide, then…'

‘You've just said he did.'

‘I said that the circumstances suggest that he did. But circumstances can be carefully arranged.'

‘What are you trying to suggest now?'

‘That until I can be certain of the facts, I cannot uncover the truth. And that when a person lies, I have to wonder what can be his motive for doing so … Señor, let me ask you once more – did you visit Ca'n Oliver one Sunday when the señora was on her own and did she and you swim in the nude?'

‘No.'

Was he lying merely to protect Rachael? ‘Thank you for your help.'

Burns seemed to be about to speak, but then he turned and left the office.

‘You talked too fast for me to understand anything,' Delgado complained. ‘What was it all about?'

‘Just a routine matter,' Alvarez replied.

‘Since when would a man like him become so concerned over something that is routine? You were on about Señora Rachael, who is the wife of the man who has disappeared. What's Neil been up to – humping her when he gets the chance?'

‘You've got a one-track mind.'

‘Show me the man who hasn't.'

‘What's Burns's address?'

‘Why didn't you ask him for that?'

‘I forgot.'

‘Like hell! You just didn't want to let on that you were interested. You're a cunning bastard.'

Coming from Delgado, that was a compliment.

*   *   *

Alvarez drove down the harbour arm and then along the front road until he reached 157a. Here, half a kilometre from the centre of the tourist area, some of the older property remained and both 157 and 158 were two floors high, had outside staircases up to the top floors, and were in need of repairs to the exterior fabric. Outside 158, an old woman, dressed all in black, sat within the shade of the narrow, overhead patio. He crossed the wide pavement and came to a stop by the chair. ‘Good morning.'

She stared at him with rheumy eyes, chewing on nothing with toothless gums. He greeted her a second time; she continued to stare silently at him and make no reply. Old age, the one disease that was only escaped through premature death, he thought, with an inward shudder.

A younger woman hurried out through the ground-floor doorway. ‘She's deaf and away in the hills much of the time. What do you want?' She spoke with the nervous impatience of someone who was faced each day with a greater burden than she thought she could meet.

He introduced himself.

‘What's wrong?' She looked nervously at her mother, who was alternately mumbling and grimacing.

‘I just need to ask a couple of questions about someone else.'

She hesitated, finally said: ‘You'd best come inside.'

He followed her into the front room, which had the minimum of furniture, but was spotlessly clean. ‘You'll take a coñac?'

There would be little money in this house to spend on drink and it might have seemed kinder to have refused the offer, but had he done so it would have been an indication that he was aware of her relative poverty and that would have mortified her. ‘A very small one. I have an ulcer and have to be careful.'

‘My husband also had ulcers and before he died, God rest his soul, he couldn't take any alcohol.'

‘Then I must count myself fortunate.'

She went through to the back room, returned with a glass in which was a brandy as small, even, as those that were served in English bars. He wished her health, sipped the drink, encouraged her to tell him about the hardships of life, hoping that she would gain some slight, if illusory relief from them by doing so. It was not until many minutes later that he said: ‘Does an Englishman live next door?'

She nodded. ‘He rents the flat for thirty thousand a month. How can a man be so stupid as to pay that sort of money?'

How would she describe the foreigners who, at the height of the season, paid perhaps even as much as a million to rent the large villas with swimming pools and staff? ‘Do you see much of him?'

‘He has a chat now and then. Ma likes him, when she's in a state to like anyone, that is. Works in the boatyard. I told him, watch out for that one, Gregorio's a real fox! When I was young, he was the same as the rest of us, but now look at him. Lives in a palace and married to a forastero from the Peninsula. Like a stranger.'

The inrush of tourist money had bred such inequality, where before there had been the equality of poverty, that lifelong friendships had been sundered. ‘Is the Englishman married?'

‘Does any man marry when he can get what he wants and stay single?'

‘He has girlfriends?'

‘Call 'em that if you like. When I was young, we had a different name.'

‘You see them often?'

‘Me? I'm too busy to bother about such things, what with a job, the house, and Ma to look after. She sits out every day it's fine and if it's one of her good days she notices who goes up to his flat.'

‘Has she seen anyone in the last few days?'

‘Probably, but I wouldn't know for sure. Don't always listen too hard to what she's saying.'

‘Would she be able to describe the most recent visitors?'

‘Not today. Couldn't tell you who she is herself.'

‘And you've not seen anyone?'

‘Only the married one yesterday, when I rushed home for a bit.' She spoke with the scorn of a virtuous woman.

‘How do you know she's married?'

‘Got eyes in my head, haven't I? She's so brazen, she doesn't even take the ring off her finger.'

‘Can you describe her?'

She did so.

He was disconcerted by the fact that she thought Rachael looked like a tart.

CHAPTER 13

Twenty-five years before, Cala Xima had been no more than a beach; now that it was a summer resort which lacked any roots in the past, its only character was the one provided by the tourists – the mindless pursuit of pleasure. Probably there was not, throughout the season, one tourist who knew, let alone was interested in, the fact that three kilometres inland there was a five thousand-year-old talayot that intrigued and puzzled archaeologists because of its unique form.

Alvarez parked his car and walked along the pavement. He passed a shop selling T-shirts with obscene messages in English, French, or German; a group of teenagers who forced him into the road; a woman, so obese that even a kaftan might not have been sufficient to preserve the susceptibilities of others, who wore a bikini-top and shorts; a man who had drunk himself into near insensibility. This was the price that had had to be paid for the huge material benefits which tourism had brought to the island; it was a price that his generation, but perhaps not the next, would rather had not been paid.

Garaje Xima stood on a corner site, one road back from the front. In one corner of the large open area, in which the hire cars were stored, was a small glassed-in office. A man in his early twenties, sleekly handsome and with the eager, predatory gaze of a committed one-night stander, was working at a computer. As Alvarez entered from the road, he studied Alvarez's appearance, looked back at the screen.

‘I'd like some information.'

‘Prices are in the folder. No cars available for the next five days.'

‘I'm not after hiring a car.'

‘Then why bother me?'

‘Cuerpo General de Policia.'

He used his legs to swivel the chair round and stood to face Alvarez across the counter, watchful but not fearful, as he would probably have been in earlier times.

‘I want to know if this car was hired from you and if so, the name and address of the hirer.'

‘Has some stupid bastard crashed or tried to sell it?'

Alvarez passed across a slip of paper. ‘That's the number.'

The man sat, tapped out instructions on the keyboard, read the screen. ‘Ernest White. Hired the car on the thirteenth for eight days. Came in yesterday and extended the hiring for another week.'

‘What nationality is he?'

‘He's on an American driving licence and his passport's American.'

‘His address?'

‘We delivered the car to the Hotel Pedro.'

‘Whereabouts is that?'

‘Down to the front road, turn right, and it's just over half a kilometre along; you can't miss it. In some sort of trouble, is he?'

‘Aren't we all?'

Alvarez returned to his car and drove past the usual depressing mixture of tourist shops, cafés and restaurants to the hotel. Set back from the road and fronted by neatly trimmed palms, the large building had considerable style, suggesting the architect had not been Mallorquin. Ignoring a notice directing all cars to the rear, he parked in the turning circle, climbed the marble steps, and entered the spacious foyer that was luxuriously furnished and had in the centre a fountain whose splashing water recalled the influence of the Moors. A hotel, of which there were gradually becoming more as the island tried to improve its image, which catered for holidaymakers who were prepared to pay more in order to be separated from those who would only pay less.

Despite the air-conditioning, the desk clerk, who wore a uniform of tie and dark-blue suit, had beads of sweat on his face. He listened to Alvarez, then spoke over the internal phone.

Alvarez was shown into a small office, where he was introduced to the assistant manager, a Dutchman who spoke five languages fluently and a couple more reasonably well and who had a manner which suggested that after several years in the hotel trade, he had heard and seen it all. ‘There is some sort of problem?'