Classic Mistake (2 page)

Now Carlos was dead and Eva was my problem. I parked by the incident vans in the side lane leading to the towpath opposite Allington Lock, intending to walk down to the river. It was hardly surprising to find my way barred by police cordon tape, and the PC guarding the entrance showed no inclination to let me in. Instead I was directed back to the vans where, sure enough, I could hear Eva’s all too familiar voice in full throttle. Outside the van DCI Brandon was conferring with a couple of white-suited SOCOs. Brandon was stationed locally in Charing but was part of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate. He’s a cool customer. He doesn’t throw his weight around but makes his presence felt, and so it’s easy to underestimate him. He’s no great chum of mine, although we have reached a working arrangement for the times when our paths cross. This usually occurs through my freelance work for the Kent Car Crime Unit under Dave Jennings, during which, on occasion, I clash with the SCD.

Brandon glanced up briefly. ‘I may need you later, Jack. Are you around at Frogs Hill all day?’

At least I was ‘Jack’ now. ‘Yes.’ No point in any other answer.

‘I presume you’re here to see your wife.’

‘Ex wife,’ I pointed out.

‘Of course.’ His expression was as impassive as police faces often are. Sometimes I think they’re handed out with the uniform. At that moment the van door was flung open and Eva herself was framed dramatically in the doorway. I took a deep breath and walked over to her.

When I first met Eva she was twenty-one, very, very beautiful, passionate and sexy. She was still all of these, save for the twenty-one. The decades had filled her out, and matured but not lessened her startling looks. Her dark hair, her complexion, her figure all commanded attention, and even from where I was standing at the foot of the van steps she exuded a confidence that life had received special instructions to look after her.

It was at least five years since I had last seen her, and today, naturally enough, she was white and drawn. I felt contrite at my unloving thoughts about her. She still seemed in command of her formidable presence, however. She was clad in black, with a black shawl and coat over a long skirt. Fashion was irrelevant for Eva as whatever she wore suited her style. Even today that had not deserted her. I realized that Brandon had followed me over, and I was glad of his presence.

Me? Scared of Eva? Yes.

She came gracefully down the steps and threw herself into my arms, which somewhat surprised the young female PC behind her. No doubt she had just heard Eva give an entirely different account of our relationship.

‘You have come, Jack,’ she sobbed. ‘I feared you would not – knowing how badly you still feel about my poor darling Carlos.’

So that was the game we were playing. Two could play this one, however. ‘I met him once for five minutes,’ I said mildly – and loudly, ‘twenty years ago.’

‘And yet –’ throaty voice now employed – ‘you have not forgotten. Not him, not me. It is growing always in your mind. I know that.’

Deflect the blows quickly. ‘Have you called Cara? She’s our daughter,’ I added for Brandon’s benefit, as he was taking a great interest in the proceedings.

My question took Eva aback, but she rallied. ‘I could not bear to hurt her by telling her that her beloved stepfather lies dead. How could I sadden my precious child?’

‘I’ll do it,’ I told her.

‘It is a mother’s job.’

OK. Play her game. ‘You’re in no state to do it, Eva,’ I said gently. ‘I’ll call her from home.’ I felt the body in my arms tense. I’d made a mistake, but it was too late. ‘Where are you staying?’ I asked warily.

‘The Penenden Palace Hotel. But I know you will wish me to come to your home …’

I froze. ‘No, Eva. You would be sad there. You will want to be close to the investigation. To find out how this happened to your dear husband. You can help the police by staying here.’

This high-flown conversational style was hard to keep up, especially as for one insidious moment the sexual attraction that years ago had bound us as unlikely partners returned, even in these ghastly circumstances. I fought it away as she disentangled herself from my arms and shot a random arrow.

‘But you will not desert me, Jack. Not like last time.’

Eh? When was that? I wondered. ‘I’ll help the police all I can. Though I doubt they will need it.’ I was aware of Brandon’s cynical eye upon me. I meant it though. I would help – anything to get this solved quickly. ‘Tell me what happened. Why were you and Carlos here in Maidstone?’

She replied just a little too quickly. ‘For business – for my darling Carlos. He work with his music in the north of England for six months but then he say we must come here. It is recession. He needs money.’

Don’t we all, I thought, and I wondered just how Carlos had planned to get it.

‘I say no, Carlos,’ Eva continued. ‘I do not like to be near where once we were so happy, Jack.’

‘You walked out rather quickly, Eva.’ Mistake, mistake. That’s what she’d been waiting for.

‘Love, Jack.
Love.
I loved my darling Carlos, and now he is
dead.
Who could have done this? Only someone who was envious of me, who loved me and wished to hurt me. Who, Jack?’ A soulful look at Brandon. I thought I saw the glimmer of a grin on his usually deadpan face.

Keep cool, I told myself. ‘When did the murder happen?’ I asked Brandon, but it was Eva who replied.

‘This gentleman –’ a little coo for Brandon – ‘says in the night.’

‘Early days,’ ‘this gentleman’ replied. ‘But it looks like well before midnight. He was found early this morning by a dog-walker.’

‘Were you there, Eva?’

‘Me?’ She looked shocked. ‘It was a business matter, Jack. I was at the hotel waiting for poor Carlos to come back to me, but he did not.’

‘Business on a towpath?’ I queried. ‘At night?’

‘Or possibly on a boat,’ Brandon said laconically. ‘There are no signs that the body was moved, but we won’t know that for sure until—’

He broke off, and I quickly said: ‘When did you notice he was missing from your hotel room, Eva?’

That wide mouth gaped. ‘Oh,
Jack
!’ Tears now, and a glance at Brandon. ‘I did – I didn’t. I couldn’t—’ A furious look. ‘We had separate rooms,’ she said sulkily. ‘For business, you understand. Carlos so kind, he not want to disturb me. Not until the police ring hotel did I find out this morning.’

Tears overcame her now, and the policewoman moved in to take her back to the van. I was alone with my favourite cop.

‘How did Mendez get here?’ I asked Brandon. ‘Any car around?’

‘Your wife –
ex
-wife – told us he went off from the hotel in their old Ford Granada estate and we found it parked just over there.’ He pointed to the line of cars where I’d just left the Alfa. Odd that Carlos hadn’t gone into the large pub car park, the entrance to which he must have passed.

‘Had he been robbed?’ I asked.

‘No. Full identification on him, including the hotel welcome card. That’s how we contacted Mrs Mendez.’

Not robbed – that was a bad sign. It removed casual theft as a motive for Carlos’s death. ‘Any witnesses?’

‘Nothing so far.’ Brandon paused. ‘Want to see him? I’m just about to have him moved out.’

I’m not partial to corpses, but I steeled myself and followed him down the lane to the riverside, having been hastily kitted out with scene suit and shoes. Coming from Brandon, the invitation could be seen as a compliment, although I suspected a test here. I was uncomfortably close to having a motive for wanting Carlos dead, and my reactions would be noted.

Brandon turned on to the towpath and led me away from the pub along a narrow stretch on the far side of the bridge. The bridge only crosses the river as far as a halfway island, from which pedestrians then take the lock bridge to the far river bank and the lock controls; so the island, although lit, was not likely to have been swarming with people at the time Carlos was killed. Nevertheless it was hard to see a ‘business meeting’ taking place on the towpath that Brandon and I were now walking along; it was hemmed in between the river and a row of straggling bushes and trees. For a murder, however, it must have held possibilities. It would be too late and too gloomy for there to be casual walkers along here, and even if there were light enough to be observed from the central island or the far river bank I knew that the lock-keeper was only on duty in person until seven p.m. Thereafter he was on call, and although he probably lived nearby he would not be aware of what was going on on this side of the river. The same would apply to the Malta Inn which was too far back beyond the bridge. Nothing faced the towpath at this point but the walled central island, but even so, I thought it was a curious choice for a planned murder.

Carlos lay to one side of this narrow towpath, almost hidden by shrubbery. I forced myself to look down at the pitiful remains of the man who had saved me from Eva, although I admit I didn’t see it in that light at the time. I was flaming with anger that evening, not at him, true, but at Eva, and the cocky little runaway twerp had got up my nose. My fury only came a week later when I found Cara missing, although when I calmed down I had to admit Carlos must have some saving graces. It was unlikely that a ‘cocky little twerp’ would have landed himself with a child to support when what he really wanted was only the wife. Now a casually dressed balding middle-aged man, in linen trousers, T-shirt and jacket, lay on one side, spatters of congealed blood on the grass around him and all too obvious on his cream-coloured coat. I made myself take a brief glance at what remained of his head and face – which registered, or so I imagined, surprise at life’s unfairness – and I turned away.

‘Pistol?’ I said abruptly to Brandon, for the sake of saying something.

‘Not yet found. Does your ex-wife have a gun?’

I wasn’t prepared for that. ‘I don’t know, and I doubt it. Not here.’

He pounced on that. ‘So she can use one.’

I didn’t answer, but he nodded as though I had.

I drove away, my mind whirling and a sick feeling in my stomach. There was something very odd here and I was all too glad that the case was on Brandon’s desk. Eva was doing herself no favours, whatever she might imagine. Was she really at the hotel at the time of Carlos’s death, I wondered.

Driving through the lanes back to Frogs Hill gave me a breathing space. Spring was here now in full force. Trees, birds, crops were all coming to life in the eternal pattern that had little to do with the urban nightmares that man has concocted for himself. Through the open windows of my Alfa the smells of May were strong and a million miles away from violent death.

As I arrived at the farm, it looked a paradise of calm and order, and I needed both. As I closed the front door behind me, the invidious thought came right back: where was Eva at the time of his death? And with that thought came others. The funeral – that would have to be arranged. Were Carlos’s parents alive? Quite possibly. Such stray thoughts continued to rush through my head, perhaps because I had no clue on the real question: should I begin to look for the truth?

Thinking of Carlos’s parents took me back to the day I married Eva, where I had met them, but that reminded me of our wedding night, and that sexual memory stirred me again. One outward sign of that, however, and Eva would move in for the kill. Perhaps it was the very inappropriateness of that phrase that steadied me. Cara, not Eva, was my responsibility now, and I rang her as soon as I was inside the door. I was aware that both Len and Zoe were at the door of the Pits expecting to hear what had happened, but I’d report to them later.

Cara is in her mid twenties now. She’d had a job with a magazine based in London, but had thrown it up to help run a smallholding in Suffolk with a nice guy called Harry, who like her seemed very sure of his path in life, even though their business could hardly be without its problems in this day of supermarket tyranny. Nevertheless, it suited them both, and Cara seemed happy. I’ve never pried into her relationship with Eva, but it couldn’t be that close because she saw her mother only slightly more often than I did. There must be a bond there, however, and I usually hesitate to impinge upon it. Today I had to do so. What was the real reason Eva had not rung Cara herself? That was not only odd, but possibly ominous.

Cara took the news on the chin – or appeared to do so. ‘Not that surprised,’ she said. ‘Carlos wasn’t always too careful about his business associates.’

‘Were you fond of him, Cara?’

‘He was OK if you didn’t rely on him or stand in his way. Kind, in an offhand way, but slippery. You know the sort, Jack.’

By the time Cara and I had got reacquainted, when I came back to Frogs Hill from foreign parts and the oil business, she was in her late teens and a student in London, and she was naturally wary of me. I was ‘Jack’ not Dad – and, more oddly, her mother was ‘Eva’. This might have been Cara’s way of distancing herself after a lack of training in relationships, or perhaps she’d had too many bad ones, so I try to take life onwards, not probe into her past. It seems to work and we get on well, although I tread with care.

‘I’ll come down right away,’ she told me briskly. ‘I take it she’s trying to pin this on you?’

‘Got it in one, I suspect.’

‘Leave it to me.’

‘Don’t let her mess up—’

‘My life?’ Cara cut in. ‘No way.’

Thankfully, Eva comes from a large family in Spain who are all too willing to close ranks when required. I was an only child and during our marriage had been somewhat overwhelmed at the constant stream of family members who stayed with us for endless paellas and monopolized the phone before the days of Skype and Facebook. It was all very jolly – until things turned sour and from having been my in-laws’ best mate I became public enemy number one.

I sank down in the farmhouse after the call. Frogs Hill is indeed a refuge. It is set on the Greensand Ridge looking down towards the Weald and is about two miles (via winding single track lanes) from Pipers Green, our nearest village, and five from Pluckley, reputed to be Kent’s most haunted village. In addition to my Alfa, I have two classic cars, my Gordon-Keeble and my Lagonda, which together with the Pits keep me sane at the worst of times. There is a solidity about classic cars that helps their owners withstand the unexpected shocks of life. Essentially, they are there for you, like the best of families. Like pets you feed them and keep them in good condition and you will get your reward. In times of trouble they bring comfort. I needed that now.