Poison At The Pueblo (15 page)

Bognor grinned. House rule. The other three got up and left. He was finishing his coffee and musing quietly, when Felipe and Arizona came and sat down either side of him.

‘Dolores has told us about you,' said Arizona.

‘Dolores doesn't know enough about me to be able to tell you,' said Bognor, confidently.

‘Dolores is one of the richest women in the whole of Spain,' said Felipe. He pronounced Spain with a slight lisp where the ‘s' should have been, so that it came out sounding like a ‘th'. He also prefixed it with the slightest hint of an extra ‘e'. ‘Ethpain'. It was OK but not the way an Englishman would have said Spain. Just different enough to be Spanish. Like calling Mozart, M'sah. Bognor guessed that it was important for Felipe to be fluent but not bilingual. Subtle difference.

‘I didn't know that,' said Bognor, ‘but you don't entirely surprise me.'

‘She owns half the company,' said Arizona, whose English was immaculate, though American, which bothered Bognor a smidgeon.

‘And what did she tell you?' he asked.

‘That you like mushrooms,' said Arizona. She wasn't smiling. ‘Dolores doesn't seem a hundred per cent happy about you. She wants us to keep an eye on you. We thought you ought to know.'

‘Thanks,' said Bognor, ‘good to know. I'm grateful.'

‘Don't be,' said Felipe. ‘We think you have a nice face. Trustworthy eyes. And there is a “quid” that we would like to request in return for our “quo”.'

‘Try me,' he said.

They looked at each other, exchanging complicit glances.

‘The conceit,' said Arizona, ‘is that you came to us out of the blue. Just happened to be passing.'

‘So,' he said, ‘how considerate of me. You're a man short; I happen to be passing, hey presto, I'm helping you out. And you're duly grateful. Good news all round.'

‘Life doesn't work like that,' said Arizona. ‘People don't just appear out of the blue. They don't just happen to be passing. Things don't just happen. They occur because people make them happen. There is a purpose. You were passing on purpose. You were in the blue because you meant to be; you came out it for a reason. You're not a coincidence.'

He drank coffee, thought and shrugged.

‘So I emerged on purpose,' he said. ‘So what?'

‘Not possible,' said Arizona. ‘People like you don't just arrive. Particularly not after the strange death of James Trubshawe.' She smiled. ‘Don't worry. We're not going to blow the whistle. The reverse. We're just letting you know we know.'

‘Know what?'

‘That you're not what you seem,' said Felipe. He seemed nervous, glancing over his shoulder at the door into the bar and reception area, where the group were due to gather before the next round of walks. ‘We want you to know that we have become wise to your deception, but that we won't blow the whistle. In return, we just ask that you level with us, at least to an extent. Otherwise the two of us are in the dark, which is not a place we like to be.'

Bognor could imagine. It was important for the way in which Brown and Lee functioned that they knew more than their charges. It was quite clear, however, that all they knew about him was that they didn't know enough. Their suspicions had been aroused but not allayed.

‘We're not going to shop you,' said Arizona. ‘We just want you to tell us something about what's happening. We don't think Trubshawe's death was an accident. We believe your sudden arrival has something to do with explaining it, with solving the mystery, if you like. All we ask in return for remaining silent on your behalf is that you tell us at least a little of what is happening.' She paused, then smiled at him. ‘Please,' she said.

He wasn't expecting it and felt duly melted. Despite this, his cover was blown. Well . . . He frowned and tried getting his head round the idea. In a sense, he had no cover. He had neither heard nor told lies. Not consciously at least. None of the Anglos in the operation said more than they wished, and whether or not they told the truth was up to them. Vide Trubshawe and, as far as he could see, George. Both were extremely economical with the truth. By contrast he was virginal. He had said practically nothing. His silence wasn't an admission of guilt or wrong doing. It was, after a fundamental right, under proper law. One did not have to give evidence which might condemn you. Thus he.

‘What do you want?' he asked, hoping that this did not of itself constitute an admission. He didn't feel he was revealing anything other than a simple and laudatory desire to please. But he wasn't at all sure. It sometimes seemed as if everything he said was open to contrary interpretation. Better to keep your trap shut – the minute you opened it your listeners put their own spin on whatever you said, no matter what. Saying absolutely nothing was the first rule of being interviewed. Hence ‘No comment'. But he wasn't in a ‘no comment' situation; he was in a situation for which there was no precedent and no training. He had to wing it; which meant flying by the seat of his pants. Not a comfortable cliché.

‘To be friends,' said Arizona, sounding disconcertingly as if she meant it, ‘we don't need to know all your secrets; we just need to have you admitting that secrets are what you are dealing in; that you are not what you may seem or what you are pretending to be. We have to agree that the death of Jimmy Trubshawe was not an accident. You know. We know. And we behave accordingly.'

‘I don't think I have a huge problem with that,' he said thoughtfully. ‘Except that you have absolutely no proof and you're denying the possibility of coincidence in a way that is statistically unsound. Trust me, I know. When I say that I just happened to be passing by and that my presence is entirely fortuitous, you have absolutely no grounds for not believing me.'

‘You're saying you really just tick the boxes and it's all a happy chance,' said Arizona, looking as near-outraged as her demure self-controlled façade allowed.

‘Well,' said Bognor, ‘I could. And I'm saying that you completely lack the ammunition to contradict me. You can't conceivably prove I'm wrong.'

‘Intuition,' said Felipe Lee, ‘is a vital part of the game. There is always an element of magic that defies explanation. If we could explain everything then everything would be explained and life would lose its mystery.'

‘This is all very metaphysical,' protested Bognor, wishing that life were simpler. He didn't believe that Felipe or Arizona had killed Trubshawe, though, he conceded ruefully, he had no proof of their innocence and was simply acting from the same sort of intuition that they were professing themselves. His intuition was more professional and better attuned, as was only to be expected of one in his position. But it was still, when all was said and done, just intuition. Nor did he think that they were acting on any outside authority. They were simply taking what was laughably described as their own ‘initiative'. But they could be a nuisance. And/or possibly a help.

‘Maybe,' agreed Arizona, ‘but there's a concrete side too. We're straight with you; you're straight with us. We tell you what's up and you do the same for us. Deal?'

Bognor considered. He did not understand too clearly the nature of the proposed deal. Neither did the other two. It would make them allies in a loose, ill-defined sense, and he was feeling exposed and knew that he could use allies. In return, he would communicate in a relatively unspecified way that would acknowledge some, but not all, of his true identity. He couldn't see that it presented any great problem and it would make sense to have Arizona and Felipe at least marginally on side.

He studied his fingernails, appeared to think deeply and genuinely about the offer, looked up, smiled at both, and in a manner that would have won plaudits on popular daytime television, said, simply:

‘Deal.'

SEVENTEEN

T
he first walk of the afternoon was much like the last walk of the morning.

Walks were like that and like each other. That was part of the point. The infinite variety of each individual encounter was coated in a veneer of predictability. Within a strictly controlled routine, eccentricity and experiment could flower. That was the theory.

That afternoon Bognor had Eduardo. Eduardo was the shipping magnate who liked to strum along to Paco Peña. At least that was what Bognor recollected from the briefing. The photograph in the smoke-filled room in Salamanca had shown a raw-boned, intensely blue-eyed, square-jawed, clean-shaven blokey bloke. In real life, he seemed to have shrunk a couple of sizes, gone saggy at the jaw and lost much of the intense lustre of the eyes. They still had something marginally fanatical about them, but it was shiftier, less piercing and self-confident.

There was something of Opus Dei about him when he introduced himself. Not in any dramatic hair-shirt or concealed scourge sort of a way; more shiny black suit, dandruff on the lapels and an aura of pasty-faced slug-under-stoneware. Bognor associated Opus Dei with Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and others who came unbidden to his front door when he and Monica were having one of their self-indulgent weekend lie-ins. He did not subscribe to da Vinci code fantasy theories, but was not keen on organized religion, especially in its more regimented and extreme forms.

Despite Eduardo's mildly disturbing dark suit; shiny at knees and elbows; drizzled with dandruff around the neck and lapels; polished shoes and pasty complexion; Bognor felt strangely at peace. The sun shone, birds sang; some sort of vulture or other bird of prey was effortlessly ascending a spiral of miraculously hot air; the trees were still green; a vulpine animal howled in the distance, and all seemed pretty right with the world. For a man staring at almost imminent retirement and the prospect of a not too distant death, Bognor felt happy and relaxed.

Eduardo was not just a fly in the ointment.

He struck about five minutes in to the walk, when they were out of sight and earshot of the other marching couples.

‘SIDBOT,' he said, lisping the ‘s'. ‘You are the man from SIDBOT?'

It took Bognor a moment to register the danger of the phrase which hovered between a statement and a question but had a horrid certainty about it. Eduardo was clearly not expecting the answer ‘no'.

‘You what?' he asked, obviously flustered but trying to retain a composure that was eluding him.

‘SIDBOT,' repeated Eduardo. ‘You are the man from SIDBOT. Camilla told me to say that we had been informed and we were to tell you.'

The vulture was still twisting upwards, a small black speck in the distant sky.

‘I'm sorry,' said Bognor, ‘but I don't understand. You are in shipping. You are here to practise English. I understand you like Paco Peña.'

‘That is correct,' said Eduardo. ‘Classical guitar. Very good. But you are from SIDBOT because you believe that Jimmy Trubshawe has been the victim of foul play. Camilla has asked me to tell you that it does not matter, that the world is better off without Mr Trubshawe. He is gone and that is good. You should go home quickly. Or, if you must stay, you must keep what in English you call the low profile.' The forest was as idyllic as it had been a few moments earlier, but it did not seem like it to Bognor. He shivered. Eduardo seemed such an insignificant slug of a person. How come he knew that Bognor was the man from SIDBOT? How come he even knew that the Board of Trade had a Special Investigations Department? Let alone that it boasted such an ignoble acronym? And what did it all have to do with Camilla? Bognor remembered that she seemed faded, save for the gash of scarlet lipstick; that she had a butterfly tattooed near a shoulder-blade; that she was probably older than she claimed and that she said she ran a B. & B. in Byron Bay.

‘Fruit,' said Bognor, ‘I understand you're in fruit.'

‘I ship exotic fruits around the new Europe,' confirmed Eduardo. ‘My company would naturally be of interest to your Board of Trade.'

Bognor shrugged. ‘Maybe so,' he said, ‘I wouldn't know. What sort of fruit?'

A twig snapped under Eduardo's foot. A dog barked in the distance.

‘What sort of fruit?' he repeated, parrot-like.

‘Yes. Oranges? Bananas? Mangosteens? Papayas?' Bognor tried to keep the irritation out of his voice.

Eduardo frowned. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘oranges, bananas, mangosteens, papayas. All sorts of fruit.'

‘And vegetables too?' Bognor was floundering and wondered if it showed, ‘Mushrooms for instance.'

If Eduardo knew what the Englishman was talking about he made a convincing pretence of incomprehension. It had never occurred to Bognor that Eduardo would have had any inside or expert view on mushrooms, but then it had never occurred to him that there was any connection between Eduardo and Camilla. Much less that either of them would have known about SIDBOT. Much less his position at its head.
Who's Who
included an entry under his name because of his new knighthood. It did not however identify him as the head of the Special Investigations Department at the Board. His status was supposed to be a secret – an open one in the corridors of power, but closed to those not ensconced in the upper echelons of the establishment.

‘Principally fruit,' said Eduardo, ‘and most of the fruit is what you . . . or we . . . would call exotic. That is strange, expensive, out of the ordinary, unusual.'

Bognor was not good on fruit. Nor classical guitar. He was floundering.

‘Why fruit?' he asked, helplessly.

‘It is a commodity.' said Eduardo. ‘In Spanglish we say “there is money in movement”. If fruit stays where she is grown there is no profit to be made. If you move the fruit there is profit. The further the move, the more the money.' He smiled.

‘What about the carbon footprint?' Bognor wanted to know. He had read the papers, watched TV, been briefed. The world mania for shuffling commodities around the globe for the financial benefit of the few, threatened the very existence of the many. Every schoolboy knew that.