Murdered by Nature (6 page)

‘Have these facts led you to any possible conclusion?'

‘Because of the money, he may be in the drug or money laundering trade.'

‘Have you learned anything more which gives weight to either possibility?'

‘I'm not certain.'

‘Why not?

‘There was a notebook. In it was an address in Port Llueso. Why would Kerr have noted a personal address?'

‘You have not considered that he might have friends on the island?'

‘The address was Son Dragó, Roca Nesca.'

‘Have you thought to determine who lives there?'

‘Señor Ashton, until he died very recently.'

‘You are prepared to accept he might have had some criminal connection with the dead man?'

‘It's indicative Kerr should have that address . . .'

‘I should not expect you to appreciate the character of an English gentleman. I met Señor Ashton at a party he gave to aid charity, and he would have had no part in anything of a criminal or even morally doubtful nature.'

‘But . . . Señor, according to a book I have just read, English gentlemen are not as gentlemanly as we believe. It's not all that long since the owner of a mansion who invited guests to stay with him had their names put up on bedroom doors. This prevented male guests who wandered during the night disturbing the wrong lady.'

‘The nature of the books you read provides a lens into your character and explains how you could consider the impossible.'

‘I wondered if I should speak to his wife, though she will still be in mourning. I would do so very diplomatically.'

‘The devil smiles at man's mistaken pride. You will not question Señora Ashton until there is much greater and reasonable cause for doing so.'

Alvarez walked into the office of Nirvana Holidays. Anna was speaking to a client, trying to explain that if he had left his driving licence in England, the hire-car firm in Port Llueso could not allow him to have a car. There was no point in her speaking on his behalf to the Policía, the Guardia, or the British Consul.

Before the client left, he expressed his opinion of her behaviour when the firm's brochure had offered expert aid to any client who needed help.

‘Do you often get them like that?'Alvarez asked.

‘Every day. What do you want this time?'

‘To show you a photograph.'

‘Of you winning the over-sixties marathon?'

‘I'll need to wait thirty-five years before I do that.'

‘You need to look in a mirror.'

He brought the photograph out of a large envelope. ‘It's of the dead man, but only shows the scar so you don't need to worry.'

‘You think I'm the fainting type?' she asked as she took the photograph.

‘Do you identify the scar as similar to the one on Kerr's neck? As soon as I have an answer, we'll go to the nearest café and you can enjoy a restorative.'

She briefly studied the photo. ‘That's him.'

‘Can you be certain?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good.' He took the photograph back, returned it to the envelope. ‘So, let's restore.'

‘D'you mind waiting until I phone my fiancé to ask him to join us?'

‘I'm sorry. If I'd known . . . But you're not wearing a ring.'

‘The Hope diamond is being recut.'

Back in his car, he lowered the sunshade and studied his face in the small mirror on the back. Old enough to run in an over-sixties marathon? She was a bitch.

A
lvarez crossed the old square, went into Club Llueso and the bar, stared at the bottles on the shelves as his mind drifted.

Behind the bar, Roca moved and stood in front of him. ‘Have you had a heavy night, even by your own standards?'

‘Why ask?'

‘Because you haven't rudely shouted for a coñac.'

‘It's work.'

‘Disturbingly unfamiliar?'

‘My superior asks the impossible.'

‘Don't they all? So are you ordering or d'you want to pay a parking fee?'

‘A coñac.'

‘Ever heard of that little word “please”?'

‘Not in here.'

Alvarez carried a well-filled glass over to a window seat. Bitter thoughts were briefly banished when he saw a young brunette whose frock appeared to caress her as she walked towards the steps up to the old square.
She
would never confuse him with being in his mid-sixties.

He drank. Salas, unwilling to accept the worth of those under his command, had vetoed the questioning of Señora Ashton. But he had not mentioned the staff at Son Dragó. One of them might be able to understand if there was any significance in the address being in Kerr's notebook. And there was pleasure to be gained in uncovering evidence which would prove Salas had made a stupid decision . . . Yet was so ephemeral a pleasure worth the effort?

His glass was empty, and he took it to the bar to be refilled.

Dolores said: ‘You are troubled, Enrique?'

‘I'm trying to decide whether or not to follow up an idea,' Alvarez replied.

‘Was she telling you to get lost or giving you the catch-me-if-you-can routine?' Jaime queried.

Her tone became sharp. ‘As my mother used to say, a man's mind is always searching.' She spoke to Alvarez. ‘The problem is with work?'

‘If I take one course of action, I may gain the chance to prove to Salas he's been wrong.'

‘There is a preferable alternative?'

‘No, but it would mean having to undertake a hell of a lot of extra work.'

‘Without doubt, for you a problem without a solution.' She stood. ‘There is one decision you will take now.'

‘What?'

‘To help clear the table.'

He watched her carry plates through to the kitchen. Women had never been good philosophers, since their thoughts never rose above a domestic level.

He braked to a halt in front of Son Dragó, stepped out of the car into the sunshine. He looked across blue Llueso Bay, with its mountainous backing; at s'Albufereta de Llueso, now a nature reserve; at Port Llueso, saved from overdevelopment by those few who placed charm above profit; at the final thrust of the Serra de Tramuntana which reached eastwards to the lighthouse at Cap de Parelona and on which ran a road of endless, vertiginous twists and turns, bordered by plunging rock faces. A road to terrify someone who, as did he, suffered from altophobia.

In the long area that ran from road to house and from house to the end of the promontory grew, in no planned form, indigenous plants, or those which over very many years, sometimes since the time of the Moors, had become so. For him, a far more attractive sight than the multicoloured, highly cultivated plants in the gardens of most foreign owned properties. The palm trees appeared to have escaped the bug which was killing so many. Saved by the enveloping sea? In the spring, the many almond trees would provide clouds of white. Had he been a god, he would live here, not on Olympus.

He heard footsteps and turned, faced a squarely built man with a face sketched by sun, wind, and rain, dressed in working clothes.

‘Thought it must be you, seeing as you'd nothing to do but stand and stare.'

‘Felipe Salcedo!'

‘Felipe García.'

‘Of course. But as they say, call a rose a bramble and it will still smell sweet. What are you doing here?'

‘With a mattock in me hand, you need telling?'

‘I thought you were in building.'

‘So I was, even after I bloody near fell head first down the well we were deepening. But a foreigner cleared off leaving all the bills unpaid for a new house, the boss retired, and it was time to find a new firm. Only, work had become tighter than a Mestarian's pocket because of those sods in banks, and the old woman was bellyaching because I didn't bring home good money and still spent time in a bar.'

‘Women dislike bars.'

‘Dislike anything what gives a man a bit of fun.'

‘Had you previously done any garden work?'

‘No.'

‘How did you persuade the señor to take you on?'

‘Told him I wasn't no pansy gardener, but the stuff he wanted looking after, I'd known since I was a kid.'

‘It's an unusual garden.'

‘It's what he liked. Growing island history, he called it. Waste of money, a mate of mine says. If some plants are dying out, let 'em, there's plenty more. The señor wanted to conserve. See that tree?'

Alvarez looked at a very ordinary, spindly tree with dull green leaves.

‘He said there wasn't more than a dozen of them left and they only grow on the island.'

‘Don't recognize it. What's it called?'

‘Can't remember. Some Latin name which sounds like you're gargling.'

‘Can't be much you haven't got?'

‘There's palms, olives, oaks, carobs, almonds, lentiscs, mastics, pistachios, strawberry trees, heathers, buckthorns, myrtles, what he called the sacred tree of Venus, whoever she is, and a lot more.'

‘How did the señor regard your gardening skills?'

‘He told me more than once that it was just how he wanted things. And the señorita said as how, shortly before he died, she had to wheel him over to a window so as he could look out at everything.'

‘It was kind of her to tell you that.'

‘Came natural to her. Like when Juana was really ill.'

‘Your wife?'

‘Daughter. Doctor didn't know what was wrong. The señora said Juana was to go into a
clinica
, and they saved her. Ain't many, however rich, what would have paid the bills they did for an employee's child.'

‘You sound as if you have a great respect for her.'

‘Surprises you?'

‘D'you think she'll inherit the estate?'

‘Why shouldn't she?'

‘Rich men can act strangely. A billionaire in America died not long back and left his children nothing because he reckoned they should make their own way through life, same as he had to.'

‘Silly bugger.'

‘Did he get on well with the señora?'

‘Married to her, wasn't he?'

‘Doesn't mean everything was sweet.'

‘You've a miserable mind.'

‘Comes from the job.'

‘Find another one.'

‘Perhaps I should try gardening.'

‘When you look like you haven't the strength to pull out a bramble?'

‘Someone said the señor was keen on sailing.'

‘Often went out in his yacht.'

‘With the señora?'

‘If he wasn't going far. She told me she enjoyed it for a while, but not when it went on day after day and all you saw was the sea.'

‘Did he sail far?'

‘Menorca, Ibiza, France, Italy, Turkey, Morocco.'

‘Did you ever go on the boat with him?'

‘When he was having trouble with the motor.'

‘Thought it was a sailing yacht.'

‘Never heard of being trapped on a lee shore?'

‘Have you?'

‘He told me about it.'

‘Now tell me.'

‘A tide or a wind takes you in towards the shore and you can't put up enough sail to escape. Without an engine, you smash on to the rocks and likely drown.'

‘I'll stick to land. When the engine seemed to be uneasy, you were out with him if it needed to be put right?'

‘Weren't to haul the ropes.'

‘You're an engineer as well as a gardener and builder?'

‘I know enough about engines to get it going again.'

‘Did you ever go to Morocco with him?'

‘No.'

‘How often did he sail there?'

‘As often as he wanted.'

‘Did the señora go with him?'

‘Ain't I said, she didn't like long trips?'

‘Did he bring stuff back from there?'

‘You want to charge him duty?'

‘Not my problem. What kind of things did he bring?'

‘Herbs, spices, stuff like that and some kind of prepared food. Gave me and the wife some of that. She tried it and chucked it.'

‘Nothing else?'

‘Copper caskets. Collected 'em.'

‘Antiques?'

‘Might have been. Messed around in what he said was classical decoration. Some of them came from hundreds of years back.'

‘What sort of size?'

‘Thirty, fifty centimetres long.'

‘Were they heavy?'

‘Copper ain't made of feathers.'

‘The weight might have been what was in them?'

García shrugged his shoulders.

‘You never saw what was inside?'

‘Don't poke me nose where it's not wanted. Why are you going on about them?'

‘I'm interested in old things.'

‘Kind of family feeling?'

‘I want to know—'

‘I've finished with answering.'

‘You want another feather in your cap from hindering the law? Builder, gardener, mechanic, criminal?'

‘You're a daft sod.'

‘D'you get strangers wandering around the estate?'

‘On the two days when they're open to the public it's like Palma. Leave enough mess and damage for twice as many. But the señor takes a couple of euros from all of them and gives it to charity.'

‘What about people at other times?'

‘Because the garden's mentioned in guidebooks, there's some who think the place is public.'

‘Have you—'

‘I was mentioned in one of them,' García proudly interrupted.

‘Favourably?'

‘Said I was a real expert gardener.'

‘Fame indeed! You've heard about the body fished out of the bay?'

‘I can read.'

‘He had the name Roca Nesca written down in his notebook. So you could have seen him wandering around. Five, six centimetres taller than you, slim, wavy brown hair, kind of rat-faced good-looking, white skin because he hadn't seen the sun for a time, a very noticeable scar on his neck. Maybe he was in the garden, hoping to ask your advice.'