Poison At The Pueblo (12 page)

The phone conversation was obviously more important than him, for it continued despite his presence. La Calderon was shouting, something that, in Bognor's experience, almost all mobile users did without seeming to realize it. She also seemed to be angry, a fact which added to the decibels. Bognor had ample opportunity to examine her charms, which were, he realized to his dismay, definite and considerable. He was not going to be immune from them and despite his age and condition, well, maybe because of his age and condition, he was perfectly capable of making a fool of himself. If that was what she wanted.

The car park was virtually empty. He reckoned it would be busy in the tourist season, which this wasn't. Dolores Calderon's nostrils flared and her breasts heaved. It was incorrect, he knew, but he always found real fur on a woman disturbingly sexy. Anger too. His stomach lurched in a way that he had almost forgotten. He was old enough to be the woman's father; he had no children and to concede lust for her should have made him feel like a paedophile. He didn't and even more alarmingly felt no guilt. It was all to do with parts of himself ageing at different speeds. Many aspects of the essential Bognor felt way past retirement; others, of which the libido was the most obvious, seemed not to have moved on from the late teens. It was all very disconcerting.

Suddenly she spat out a final phrase which sounded to Bognor like a command wrapped in an expletive and then snapped the mobile shut, tossed it on to the driver's seat, removed her dark glasses and gave Bognor a dazzling smile. She had Cambridge-blue eyes and high cheekbones. Bognor thought she was stunning.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘the phone call was necessary. Not pleasant but essential. You must be Simon, Mr Trubshawe's replacement. It is good of you to come at such short notice. We are very grateful. The village is a half-hour's drive from here. May I assist with your bags?' And without waiting for a reply she hefted Bognor's ancient leather overnight case and his much newer computer-container and deposited in them in the back of the vehicle. ‘Jump in,' she said, ‘or should I say “hop”?' Her English was self-conscious and heavily accented.

The car smelt of leather and disinfectant, though his chauffeuse was wearing a strong and expensive-smelling scent.

‘We were very sad about the accident to Mr Trubshawe,' she said, changing gear crisply.

‘Accident?!' Bognor was unable to suppress the note of surprise in his voice. Then he remembered who he was supposed to be – or more accurately who he was not supposed to be, and said, ‘Sad! Yes, very.'

She looked at him sharply. Not, he thought to himself, just a pretty face.

She braked to avoid a man in a beret, on a bicycle, making heavy weather of a hill.

‘You believe that Mr Trubshawe's death was not accidental?' she asked.

He was not supposed to know anything about Trubshawe, least of all the circumstances of his death and even less the cause of it. There suddenly flashed before him some words from as pompous internal briefing document he had recently received from a government department, of which he had previously known nothing. It opined, pompously in Bognor's view, that crime was no longer resolved by such outmoded things as ‘clues, red herrings and least likely suspects'. It was no longer a question of puzzles but of serendipitous confession. Madness not method, in his own opinion, but the document seemed to believe, as was the way with such pieces of paper, that this in some way represented progress. Dolores Calderon, however, made his antennae bristle. In forensic terms, she seemed to represent all the old-fashioned enigmas: clues, red herrings and least likely suspects. None of which, naturally, had anything to do with sex.

‘Absolutely,' he said, nervously, as they swerved past a horse and cart. He thought horses and carts had passed away with the Generalissimo, were not part of the new Spain, with its glorious pan-European aspirations and Gehry-inspired architecture.

‘As I already said it is good of you to come,' said Dolores, turning to face him, eyes not making the least concession to looking at the road in front of her.

‘No worries,' he said. ‘Glad to be able to help out.'

‘How did you hear about us?'

‘Oh, friends,' he said, as vaguely as he could and tried to change the subject, ‘I have to admit I'm a bit apprehensive about stepping into a dead man's shoes. In such a literal manner, if you see what I mean. I have to confess I know very little about the circumstances of poor Mr Trubshawe's death. Something to do with mushrooms, I believe.'

If he been Dan Brown, grappling with the
Da Vinci Code
, he would have said that Dolores now ‘gunned' the Land Rover past a smoke-belching articulated lorry, narrowly avoiding a similar monster coming in the opposite direction. He was, however, not entirely sure what the verb ‘to gun' meant in this or any other context, so he preferred the word ‘accelerate'. This was what the girl did, jamming her foot hard on the appropriate pedal. He inferred the gesture to be as much a response to him as to the lorries.

‘Your friends,' she said, not to be deflected, ‘had they been guests at the village? Participated in one of our programmes? Perhaps they were known to me.'

She was driving fast but not unnervingly so. Bognor almost relaxed.

‘Um . . . er . . . I'm really not sure,' he coughed and held on to the door handle as they swung hard round a corner. Dolores glanced across and grinned. ‘Mushrooms,' he said fatuously, ‘You said “mushrooms”.'

‘No, Mr Bognor,' she said, ‘I didn't mention mushrooms. It was you who said something about mushrooms. However, I am not here to beat about bushes. Mushrooms it was. Which did for Mister Trubshawe. A mushroom disagreed with him.'

‘Violently,' said Bognor. ‘In fact, terminally.'

She smiled and changed down with a gratuitous double-declutch. Showing off, he thought. Not that there was any need.

‘Do we know where the mushrooms came from? Who cooked them? Whether everyone else ate the same mushrooms?' He paused.

‘You sound like the Guardia Civil,' she said.

‘
Oreja del gato
,' he said, ‘
Oreja de judas, hongo comtesino, ninja, tricolonia, rodellon, canterolo cabrito, colmanilla, armilaria, rebellon
.'

He paused and smiled with self-satisfaction.

‘
Rebellon
,' he repeated, ‘I'm particularly keen on “
rebellon
”.'

‘I'm impressed,' she said, flashing him a smile which disappeared as rapidly as it had emerged.

So was he. He had no idea there were so many different kinds of mushroom. Even in Spanish.

A rabbit ran across the road and she served and swore. They were still climbing and the woods were thicker. Conifers. Occasionally they passed a dwelling. These were looking progressively more alpine, with more shutters, a propensity towards timber. Thin blue smoke eddied up from chimneys. It felt like ski-country and not what he associated with Spain, which he realized guiltily was all Costas and Hemingway: an Englishman's cliché. Not the real Spain at all.

She braked hard and swung a sharp left between the stone pillars of an ancient gateway. The drive was rough and bumpy, but she made no effort to slow down, instead attacking the potholes and ruts with a panache that was obviously intended to unsettle her passenger. She glanced sideways to see what effect this rough passage was having. Bognor, recognizing that this was a form of initiation rite was resolutely relaxed.

‘So this is it,' he said, through teeth which were more gritted than he hoped they seemed.

‘
Sí
,' she said. ‘This is the Pueblo. We take it for about twenty weeks of the year. The proprietors have promised to have the drive fixed. Until then we do have four-wheel drives, SUVs, whatever you prefer to call them in English.'

‘Land Rover will do,' said Bognor, patriotically. At home he drove a Mini, which was, he believed, still made in Oxford, though only under licence from some foreigner. Some of his best friends were foreign, of course, but you knew what he meant.

The drive was long as well as rudimentary. It curved and swirled through more woods until, without warning, it emerged into a clearing of half a dozen or so chalets grouped around a larger and more substantial house with a large, planked deck outside the front door. Two enormous mountain dogs came barking towards the vehicle.

‘That's Marks and Spencer,' said Dolores. ‘The village dogs. Actually they're father and son but they behave like twin brothers, which is how we treat them. They are very friendly unless, of course . . .'

Bognor cocked an eyebrow at her as she braked hard, sending a spume of mud and gravel in the general direction of the dogs, who were now on their hind legs, snuffling their muzzles against the cab window.

‘Unless – how shall we say? – you get on the wrong side of them.'

‘Shouldn't be any worries,' said Bognor, faux-nonchalant. ‘I like dogs. They like me too. As a rule.'

He opened the door, leaped down and was almost knocked flying by Marks or Spencer, who jumped up on him, a paw on each shoulder, and gave him a preposterous lick. Bognor responded with a rough rub of the hand behind one ear.

‘You and I are going to be friends, old shopkeeper,' he said.

Dolores was watching appraisingly. Bognor knew she was and responded accordingly.

‘You're in Cervantes,' she said. ‘The chalets are named after great Spaniards. I'll show you, then you can have a quick wash and brush-up before your first assignment at noon. A walk with Lola in the woods.'

‘A walk with Lola in the woods.'

‘Yes.' She patted the dogs. Bognor didn't think she had a sense of humour. ‘Follow me.' She took his overnight bag and computer case from the Land Rover and set off towards one of the chalets, sashaying like an Irish Guardsman on parade. Bognor reckoned it was deliberate. He fell in beside her, carrying his briefcase with its self-important files and papers.

‘Mushrooms,' he said. ‘You were telling me about mushrooms.'

‘On the contrary, Mr Bognor,' she said. ‘It was
you
who was telling
me
about mushrooms. You seem to know so many Spanish words to describe them. But, of course, you won't be needing them here. It is English all the time. There are penalties for anyone caught speaking Spanish. Even when describing the mushrooms.'

She smiled coquettishly but unconvincingly.

‘But there are mushrooms growing around here? In the woods and fields?'

‘Of course, I'm sure Lola will tell you. But only in English please.'

‘Not even Latin?'

‘Not even Latin,' she said, and took a key from the pocket of her fur jacket. They had arrived at Cervantes.

‘Home.' she said. ‘“Home sweet home,” as you English say. Or to be a little more accurate: “Home sweet home from home.”' She laughed and opened the door on to a dark panelled room with a sofa, chairs, kitchenette, smouldering wood-burner and stairs leading up.

‘The convention is that an Anglo has the downstairs while one of the Spaniards lives above,' she said. ‘I am not sure. It will naturally be a man.' She smiled meaningfully and mirthlessly. ‘And now I will leave you for the wash-up. Please come to the main house just before noon in order to meet with Lola.'

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that actually he was no longer Mr Bognor but Sir Simon, actually. Instead, however, he smiled feebly and said, ‘Please don't call me Bognor. I much prefer, er, just Simon. And, if you don't mind, I shall call you Dolores, Dolores.'

She looked at him rather blankly, then smiled again, in automatic response.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘I will see you in a little while. And welcome to the Pueblo . . . Simon.'

FOURTEEN

A
walk in the woods with Lola was exactly that – no more, no less, and certainly didn't resemble the innuendo laden art film from an obscure Baltic or Balkan state which that description might have implied, at least to the imaginative, of whom Bognor was one.

Lola herself was wholesome, eager, attractive and even picturesque in an understated thirty-something way. She made Bognor feel tweedy and avuncular which was, he conceded, probably no bad thing. He tried to remember the briefing from the
teniente
earlier in the morning, but failed to recall more than the fact that she was a nun who danced the Charleston. And one of us. The figure in the blue jeans, tan boots, Barcelona anorak and silk headscarf did not seem remotely nunnish nor Charleston dancing. It seemed more than likely that the Spanish police had muddled the files and botched the identities. Bognor decided that it would be better if he began with the metaphorical blank sheet and made his own portrait up as they went along.

‘Hi,' he said, identifying her by the nametag they all sported in their lapels, ‘I'm Simon.'

‘Hi,' she said, ‘I'm Lola. You like to walk?'

There was no sign of Dolores Calderon or of anyone else official. There were just the eight of them in the large beamed entrance hall which had a well-stocked but unmanned bar running along one wall and an open fire smouldering with huge logs at another. Marks and Spencer lay in front of the hot logs, half asleep and unbarking.

‘You're taking the place of Billy?' said Lola managing the correct inflection to turn an apparent statement of fact into an actual question.

‘You could say that.' There was a brisk wind. All four couples – each one a Spanish speaker and an English speaking partner – headed along the same forest track that led eventually to the bare, treeless hills at the edge of the woods. The path was holed and rutted, pebbled and stoned, so that you negotiated it rather than walked it; hopping, skipping and jumping, rather than proceeding in the placid stroll that Bognor had anticipated, and which would lead, he believed, to a mutually rewarding conversation. As it was, one had to devote most of one's attention to staying upright. He shivered and noticed that his breath was steamy. In the distance a dog barked and was answered by another some way off. Or were they wolves howling? His imagination was becoming fevered and he imagined killer mushrooms in every forest clearing, clinging to every trunk. This was Dracula country: Transylvanian in all but . . . well, not Transylvanian at all, but, nevertheless, having a threatening menace redolent of savage wilderness, nature red in tooth and claw, evil monks, man-eating wolves . . . Dan Brown would have had a field day.