Dead Clever (12 page)

‘Really.’

‘Do you see this other mark, señor?’

Bennett briefly stared down at the chart. ‘Yes.’

‘That is where the plane was when the last radio message was sent. The two positions are close together.’

‘Before you try to draw the slightest significance from that fact, let me point out something. If I steered even a slightly different course from the one you have decided that I did—on no evidence at all, as far as I’m aware—if my speed over the ground was slightly more or less than twelve knots because of a current or engine revs, or a dozen other variables were in operation, my position was many miles distant from where you’ve plotted it.’

‘All that is possible, but what is fact is that you were in a position to pick up the pilot after he had parachuted from the plane.’

‘I wonder if anything I can say will ever bring home to you the stupidity of the accusation?’

Alvarez placed his finger on the chart. ‘When you were there, were there any other craft around?’

‘Wherever I was at eleven that night, there were no other vessels in sight.’

‘Can you be certain, since it was dark?’

‘All vessels at sea carry steaming lights. And you have, perhaps, heard of radar?’

‘Of course, señor, and I believe your boat has a set. Would this have picked up a fishing-boat?’

‘If you were at all conversant with the subject, you’d again know that I’d need more information before I could answer. At what range was such boat, what was her size and shape, of what was she constructed, were there any cliffs behind her to mask the blip or obscure it with reflected scatter?’

‘Then what you’re really saying is that a fishing-boat might have observed you even though you had no idea it was there?’

‘I still can’t answer. If someone aboard this mythical craft could see my steaming lights (and how else would that person have known of my presence?) I would have expected to pick her up on my radar unless she lay very low in the water and had a very poor radar profile.’

‘I imagine that the lights you had to burn to guide the parachuting pilot down and to show him exactly where the surface of the sea lay would have been visible at a greater distance than any normal lights?’

Bennett lifted his glass and drained it, then checked his gold Audemars-Piguet. ‘Without wishing to appear rude, I do hope you’ve nearly reached the end of all these absurd questions since, as I said, I’m expecting a guest?’

‘I’ve only a few more, señor, and I’ll ask those as quickly as possible. Did Green parachute from his plane into the sea and did you pick him up?’

‘If you haven’t already gathered what my answer is to that ridiculous question, I think you must find your present job an onerous one.’

‘What do you say when I tell you that two fishermen saw you pick up a parachutist?’

‘That they were probably tight.’

‘We have traced the hotel in Stivas where señor Green stayed on the Sunday night under the name of Thomas Grieves. And I think that now he has returned to the island.’

‘In view of the fact that he’s dead, I can only applaud your imagination; it’s not given to everyone easily to envisage a second coming.’

‘You do realize something, do you, señor?’

‘If you are postulating it, I doubt that I do.’

‘When you sailed señor Green to the Peninsula, you became an accomplice to attempted fraud; if you know he is back on this island, but deny the fact, you may well become an accessory after the fact to murder.’

Bennett refilled his glass. Alvarez carefully stared out at the magnificent view, but for once failed to gain any sense of pleasure from it.

Bennett said, as he replaced the bottle in the ice-bucket: ‘I do wonder if something has occurred to you. If Green faked the crash and I sailed him to the mainland, his objective must have been to get as far away from here as possible. He’s hardly likely, then, to have returned.’ He drank.

‘There are times when the best hiding-place is where a person is known to have fled from, since no one will believe he could be so stupid as to return.’

‘You are clearly a man of great ingenuity as well as imagination.’

Alvarez stood. ‘Thank you for your help, señor.’

Bennett nodded. He could have been smiling slightly, but it was impossible to be certain.

Alvarez was halfway to the house when the sitting-room door opened and a woman stepped out. She was neatly dressed, but not stylishly, certainly not in her youth, and pleasant-looking rather than pretty. He was surprised. He’d have thought that only an exotic woman would have attracted Bennett. As she drew level with him she smiled a greeting and he inclined his head.

‘Hullo, Serena,’ Bennett called out.

“Morning, Pat. It’s even hotter than ever, isn’t it?’

She’d a warm voice, thought Alvarez; the kind a man liked to hear when he returned home after a hard day’s work. He went to open the door into the sitting-room, but it was opened for him by Cristina. He stepped into the cool room. ‘I meant to ask you how your mother is? The last time I saw her, she was having a lot of trouble with her back.’

‘It’s not got any better and none of the doctors seem to be able to do any good for her.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Will you give her my best wishes?’

‘Yes, of course I will.’

They entered the hall. He jerked his thumb behind himself.

‘Not the most friendly type, is he?’

‘Him! When he speaks to the likes of us, his words are covered with ice.’

He said goodbye to her and left the house. There was a white Seat 127 parked behind his car and on the rear nearside window of this was the form which every hire-car had to show. So the señorita was a tourist. Serena. Not a common name, he judged, and yet he had only recently come across it . . . He came to a stop, turned, hurried back to the door and rang the bell. When Cristina opened it, he said: ‘Can you tell me the surname of the señorita who’s just arrived?’

‘She told me what it was when she phoned before she came up here the first time. What was it?’ She frowned. ‘I know it sounded like someone who’s on the telly . . .’

‘Collins?’

‘How ever did you guess?’

As Alvarez waited for Salas to come on the line, he heard a screech of brakes from the road, but for once this was not followed by the thump of one car hitting another. Most of Llueso had been built when mule carts had been the only form of transport and the narrow, twisted streets and the large stones sunk into the ground at every corner to prevent the carts’ wheels from scoring the walls, reflected that fact. Now, Mallorquin drivers, who so often saw themselves as matadors of the wheel, bumped into each other with expensive monotony.

Salas said: ‘What is it?’

Tm ringing about the Green case, señor. There’s reason to think he may be on the island.’

‘Surely it’s only very recently that you assured me he was in eastern France?’

‘That is one of the reasons why I think he may well be here.’

‘Alvarez, can you appreciate that there is a certain lack of logic in what you’d just said?’

‘I know it may sound a bit like that . . . I suppose you could call it a paradox.’

‘I doubt I would. I’d have thought that experience had finally and painfully left me incapable of being surprised by anything you might do or say. I would be wrong.’

‘It’s because anyone with even a gramme of common sense would be certain that he’ll keep as far away as possible, since he might be recognized which would make it all too clear he’s not dead, that I reckon he’s chosen to return.’

‘You are saying, in effect, that you lack that gramme of common sense?’

‘I’m saying, señor, that this is the one place where he will know we’ll be most unlikely to look for him now we’ve confirmed that his death was faked.’

‘Even if it does make—according to you—for a possible hiding-place, there are very many safer. So why should he have returned?’

This was the question he had feared. To answer correctly and say that Green had returned to murder the Navarro brothers was to expose Miguel to the charge that he had been drug-running; as yet, there was no proof of his innocence; quite the reverse, really, since the circumstantial evidence against him was so strong that he’d find it very difficult to prove his innocence. The case had developed such complications . . . ‘señor, I cannot yet give a decisive answer. But Serena Collins, the woman who is his accomplice, is on the island.’

‘From which you deduce what?’

‘That she is here to be close to him.’

‘An even riskier move. How did you discover she was here?’

‘It was because . . .’ He stopped as he realized that once again he could hardly explain that he’d been pursuing inquiries aimed at clearing Miguel. ‘Because I wanted another word with Bennett,’ he said lamely.

‘Why?’

‘Something about his evidence worried me, but I couldn’t pin it down.’

‘Worried you in what way?’

‘Frankly, I don’t really know . . . I’m sorry, señor, but I’m afraid I’m not very good at explaining myself.’

‘Perhaps you are presenting yourself with an impossible task.’

‘Señor, we know that Green is using a false passport in the name of Thomas Grieves, but he won’t know that we know and all he’ll know is . . .’

‘For God’s sake, man, do try not to confuse the matter any further.’

‘Yes, señor. I’d like to ask for a check on all airlines and the ferries to see if Thomas Grieves entered the island on or before last Sunday and with all hotels and hostals to see if he’s presently booked in at any of them.’

‘And all that simply because you’re worried about something Bennett may or may not have said?’

‘Because señorita Collins is on the island. We mustn’t forget that we were asked by England to give all possible assistance to señor Ware. If they should learn that Green is here now, but we don’t know where he is, they might think us rather incompetent.’

‘As to that, their conclusions would undoubtedly depend on whom they spoke to,’ snapped Salas, before he bad-temperedly agreed to the request and rang off.

Alvarez drove past the No Entry sign and parked. He left the car and walked down to the front. The sandy beach was packed with sunbathers, the colour of their bodies ranging from white, through red, to brown; off-shore, several ski boats were churning white wakes and beyond them were yachts, with multi-colour spinnakers, ghosting along in the very light breeze; a firefighting seaplane dipped down in the middle of the bay and skimmed the surface, then rose with a sheet of water cascading from its hull as it began its short flight to a point where a fire, almost certainly set by an arsonist, was burning. He remembered his first sight of the bay—almost no sand on the beaches, perhaps half a dozen bathers, no power boats. Then, there had been peace as well as beauty. The peace had vanished, much of the beauty still remained. But how long before that was gone as well, banished by the press of people who sought it? It was acknowledged wisdom that one should never look back. Acknowledged wisdom did not go on to suggest how one avoided doing just that.

Along the front were a number of hotels and he entered the first he came to, one which had recently been converted into a number of self-catering units. He asked the young man at the reception desk whether a señorita Collins was registered. The receptionist checked and said that no, they had no one by that name staying with them. He left.

The front road at this point was closed to traffic other than buses, cars, and taxis, picking up or putting down passengers, and the sight of people drinking at the outside tables made him very thirsty, but the knowledge of the prices charged kept him walking—there was no Ware to pick up the tab. He came to the Regina, a hotel that was family run and which, even though most of its trade was with package tour operators, still offered courteous service.

Two men were behind the desk, the receptionist and the concierge. The younger, the receptionist, said he’d find out whether señorita Collins was staying at the hotel and he began to check through the registration book while the concierge, who knew Alvarez slightly, began to explain how difficult life was for a man who had his eighty-one-year-old mother—for whom nothing was ever right—living with him. The receptionist interrupted the monologue of complaints. ‘We’ve a señorita of that name staying here.’

‘Is she in?’ Alvarez asked.

He checked the keys. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

‘D’you want to get in touch with her?’ asked the concierge, his curiosity aroused.

‘Yes, but don’t bother her. I’ll come back later.’

‘I hope there’s nothing wrong? She’s a really nice person.’

‘Nice, but long in the tooth,’ said the receptionist.

The concierge spoke scornfully. ‘He reckons that anyone over twenty-five has one foot in the grave.’

‘He’ll learn that life favours fifty.’ Alvarez left and as he walked back to his car he reflected that concierges saw so much of human nature they were left with few illusions, yet the other had said what a nice person Serena Collins was. Ware had said the same thing. Clearly, she was a clever woman who knew how to manipulate susceptible men. It was her misfortune that soon she was going to come up against a man who would prove to be totally unsusceptible to her charms.

Alvarez ate the last slice of banana and two baked almonds. He reached across the table for the bottle of wine and refilled his glass. ‘I’ll be off in a minute.’

‘You’re going out now?’ said Dolores, surprised.

‘I have to have a word with someone down in the port; she wasn’t at the hotel earlier on.’

Jaime, who’d been about to drink, put down the glass.

‘She’s a foreigner? One of. . .’ He began to outline a shape with his hands, but stopped when Dolores glared at him.

‘One of what?’ asked Juan.

‘Never you mind,’ snapped Dolores. ‘And since we’ve finished, except for those who can’t stop drinking, you can start clearing the table.’

‘Why have I got to do it?’

‘Because I told you to.’

‘Why can’t Isabel . . .’

‘She did it yesterday. If there’s any more argument from you, you’ll do the clearing the whole of next week.’