Relatively Dangerous (8 page)

‘Have you spoken to the consul and asked him about the money?’

‘Yes, I did; that is I phoned and spoke to someone who knew what I was talking about. She’ll contact the bank who issued the travellers’ cheques and tell them they’ve been stolen. One problem was, I couldn’t say which ones I’d cashed.’ He tapped the wallet. ‘But I’ve a note of them here and I’ll ring her again and give the numbers.’

‘I hope the refund will come through quickly.’

‘They always promise it will . . . You know, I’ve done a lot of thinking since I’ve been in here and I’m seeing things straighter. At my age, drifting around Europe won’t change anything or get me anywhere; I’ve got too old for the dream. I need to return home and find another job; and perhaps meet someone . . .’ He tailed off into silence and stared out through the window.

‘I am very sorry that your visit to the island has been so unfortunate.’

‘It has, hasn’t it? But even so, I’m going to come back as soon as I can. It’s so beautiful.’

‘Then next time, I hope that nothing happens to spoil your pleasure.’

There was a short silence which Alvarez broke. ‘Señor, I am sorry, but I have to ask you more questions. You see, because we did not know who Señor Thompson’s next-of-kin was, we sent the number of his passport back to England and asked them to give us what information they could. They have reported that his passport was one which had been stolen, along with others, before it was issued.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’

‘So now we are back to knowing almost nothing about him, but we need to trace his next-of-kin.’

‘I don’t see how I can help there.’

‘Perhaps he said something which at the time seemed of no importance, and so you didn’t bother to mention it when I spoke to you before, but which might help me now. For instance, where had he been driving from that morning?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And I think you told me, he didn’t say where he was going?’

‘He didn’t, no.’

‘Nor did he give you any hint of why he was on the island?’

‘I’m not so certain about that. You see, there’s something tickling my mind . . .’ There was a longish silence before Higham continued: ‘He mentioned something about having been driving around the island, seeing people. I asked him if he was on business. He laughed.’

‘Did you understand why he should laugh at that question?’

‘No. Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘So either for some reason the question held an amusing connotation or it was the answer that did—the answer he didn’t make.’

‘It must have been something like that.’

‘Did he ever mention the name of anyone on the island?’

‘No.’

‘Or any place?’

‘No.’

‘But he did tell you he’d visited the island before?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did he make any reference to the previous visits?’

‘No.’

‘Or talk about his home life?’

‘Not a word.’

‘So although he was a talkative man, he hardly told you anything about himself?’

‘That sums it up.’

‘D’you think he was being deliberately secretive?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say one way or the other.’

‘You didn’t gain any kind of an impression?’

‘Look, you’re asking me a whole load of questions I just can’t answer.’

‘No, of course not. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s just that sometimes one can look back and realize one gained an impression, even though at the time one wasn’t aware that one had.’

‘Not this time.’

‘So then it seems that maybe he’ll remain a man with no background. All we shall ever know about him is that he flew in from somewhere, he’d been here before, perhaps was here on business, enjoyed sailing, suffered from migraine, and it was an attack of this which indirectly killed him.’

‘In fact, not even that’s certain.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Because . . . Well, I’m damned!’ Higham’s voice expressed his astonishment. ‘It’s funny how the memory works, isn’t it? I’ve only this moment remembered that after he’d decided to take another pill—because the earlier one wasn’t doing any good—and we’d driven off and he started feeling ill, he said no migraine had ever been like that before; his mouth and throat were burning as if he’d chewed half a dozen of the vicious little peppers which grow on the island and on top of that he didn’t have any of the usual symptoms. He wondered if some of the food at the restaurant had been bad. But he’d only had steak and ice-cream . . . And then, like I said before, he was as sick as a dog, but would carry on driving. It’s funny how life goes, isn’t it? If he’d been more ill, he couldn’t have gone on driving; if less ill, he’d have been able to keep control.’

Alvarez’s mind flicked back over the years. If Juana-Maria had walked fractionally quicker or slower, the drunken Frenchman would not have pinned her to the wall with his car . . . He stood.

‘You surely don’t have to go yet awhile?’

‘I am afraid so. It is still lonely for you?’

‘And frustrating! There’s a new night nurse who could be fun, but she doesn’t understand a word of English.’

‘I have heard that in such circumstances it is possible to communicate the essentials with signs.’

‘I tried, but we don’t seem to speak the same sign language.’

Alvarez smiled. ‘How much longer will you have to stay here?’

‘I’m feeling fit enough to leave now, but the quack says he still can’t understand why I suffered a loss of memory at the beginning so he wants to make absolutely certain I didn’t suffer any brain damage. I told him, only softening of the brain. He didn’t see the joke and it took a hell of a long time trying to explain it . . . I guess the Spanish and English senses of humour aren’t very similar.’

‘That is very true . . . Señor, should you remember anything more, however unimportant it seems to you, will you get in touch with me?’

‘Sure. But how do I get hold of you?’

‘I will give you my home and office telephone numbers.

If you say my name, whoever answers will know to get hold of me if I’m around.’ He wrote out the numbers, handed the piece of paper over, said goodbye and left.

The telephone rang at six-thirty that evening, just as Alvarez was wondering whether it really was too early to leave the office and return home.

‘It’s Cantallops here, Inspector.’

‘Who?’

‘The undertaker from Fogufol. You must remember—I rang you the other day.’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

‘I want to know if it’s all right now to go ahead with the funeral?’

‘There’s no reason why not. What name are you going to use?’

‘Thompson, of course. What are you on about?’

‘He was travelling on a stolen passport so the odds probably are that that’s not his real name. But then I don’t suppose St Peter will keep the gates shut just because he’s buried under the wrong name.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I don’t see why. Surely by then the name’s quite unimportant?’

‘It’s ridiculous to say his name wasn’t Thompson.’

‘Why is it?’

‘His son would have told me if it wasn’t.’

‘His son? Here, you’d better tell me what’s been going on.’

‘Nothing’s been going on. Why do you people always suspect everybody and everything?’

‘Because that’s what we’re paid for . . . But just for the moment, I’m not suspecting you of anything specific. All I want to know is, how come you’ve heard from the son?’

‘There was this phone call. The son had just learned of the tragic death of his father and he wanted to know what arrangements there were for the funeral. I told him there weren’t any. He said his father was to be decently and honourably buried.’

‘When did you receive this call?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Why didn’t you get on to me right away?’

‘The money hadn’t arrived then.’

‘What are you talking about now?’

‘Until I had the money, I couldn’t go ahead and arrange the funeral, could I?’

‘Depends what kind of a man you are . . . How much?’

There was a slight pause. ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand pesetas.’

‘Has the son ordered a gold coffin?’

‘He asked me to prepare an honourable funeral.’

‘How are you getting in touch with him to let him know the time of the honourable funeral?’

‘I’m not. He said it was quite impossible for him to come over from England because of family problems . . . May I go ahead and arrange everything?’

‘Yes. And then get back on to me with all the details.’

Alvarez replaced the receiver. He stared through the open window. Thompson had been travelling on a stolen passport and so it was reasonable to assume that Thompson was not his real name. The report of his death had been in the local papers, but was unlikely to have appeared in the British national papers. Then how had the son learned that he had died in the car accident?

The present cemetery at Fogufol was three-quarters of a kilometre outside the village, reached by a narrow, twisting lane. From it, there was a view across the central plain of the island and, especially after rain, the sea to the south-east was clearly visible. The high surrounding stone walls had been erected in the eighteenth century, the chapel and room of remembrance in the late nineteenth. Originally, the graves had been marked merely by single headstones, but then the custom had arisen of spending on death more than had ever been spent on life and headstones had become large and elaborate, while those families with property had erected mausoleums. The land was stone, making excavation both difficult and costly, and therefore there were no single graves; always, there was a shaft and excavated out on either side of this were cubicles into which coffins could be fitted.

The cemetery was, of course, for Catholics and the first non-Catholic to die within the parish—a German botanist —had presented the priest and the council with a problem. The law said that the dead had to be buried within consecrated ground, the Church said that only a Catholic could be buried within the cemetery. In the end it was decided that just before he died, and even though he’d been alone when he’d fallen fifteen metres on to his head, the German had expressed the wish to become a Roman Catholic and therefore it was in order to bury him within the cemetery. Since then, the number of foreigners, many of them non-Catholics, had risen very considerably and it had become clear that since deaths must be expected, an elegant solution for one must become an inelegant, not to say absurd, solution for many. Eventually, it was decided to provide an area of consecrated ground outside the actual cemetery where all non-Catholics could be buried. A deep shaft, which accommodated six cubicles on either side, was blasted out of the rock and above this was built a sandstone edifice which resembled an old-fashioned steamer trunk; on the sides of this were plaques on which, for a suitable fee, the names of the deceased could be inscribed. When the last cubicle was filled, the first one was emptied and the bones were taken out and stored with the bones of those locals who had died well back in the past; in death there was no equality, in disintegration there was.

Religion raised one further question. Where was the burial ceremony to be held? The solution of the Fogufol priest, a traditionalist who viewed the spirit of œcumenicism in a less than happy light, was to ask that it be held under the archway of the entrance; after all, Moses had been allowed to view the Promised Land.

Alvarez parked next to the Citroen 2CV van, as battered as his 600, in front of a narrow flowerbed which ran the length of the cemetery wall. He walked slowly to the arched entrance to the cemetery. There were very few people present. The Anglican churchman was pacing backwards and forwards, a puzzled look on his ancient, lined, and toothy face; each time he reached the outer side of the archway, he came to a stop and stared up the path, seeking a press of people which never materialized. The undertaker and two assistants waited lethargically on one side, three men employed by the local council even more lethargically on the other. Taylor, his rugged face set in sullen lines, dressed in open shirt and cotton trousers, stood by the doorway into the chapel.

Cicadas shrilled, a hoopoe hooped, sheep bells clanged, and dogs barked. The clergyman cleared his throat as he looked at his watch. ‘Perhaps we should begin the service.’ He picked up a pile of printed sheets and handed these around; the council employees and the undertakers refused them. The clergyman announced the first hymn, la-di-dahed the tune, and then led the singing; it turned out to be a solo.

Alvarez studied the young man. He was casually dressed, as if he could not be bothered to offer the deceased any respect, yet his expression was unmistakably sad and, perhaps, resentful, in the sense that the living sometimes resented the fact that the dead had left them . . . The son had told Cantallops over the phone that he could not come to the funeral and this man’s face was bronzed, whereas almost all newly arrived visitors from Britain were white, yet if the son did live in England there was still no obvious answer to the question, how had he learned of his father’s death?

The clergyman announced that a last prayer would be said at the graveside and left. Taylor followed him. Alvarez returned to his car, opened both doors and sat, beads of sweat sliding down his cheeks and back to make him feel still more sticky and uncomfortable.

After a while, Taylor walked out of the archway and across to the Citroen van. As he opened the driving door, Alvarez called out. Taylor looked at him for a moment, climbed in behind the wheel, slammed the door shut. Alvarez crossed to the van as the starter engine engaged, but the engine refused to fire. ‘One moment, please, señor.’

‘What d’you want?’

‘First, to know your name.’

‘How the hell’s that any of your business?’

‘Cuerpo General de Policia.’

‘So?’

‘So I would like to know your name, please.’

‘Where’s your identity card?’

‘My what?’

‘Your card, proving you are a detective.’