The Ambiguity of Murder (3 page)

Moya stared with exaggerated concentration at Pons's stake. ‘I don't see that.'

‘Lawyers are born three parts blind.'

‘There's no bet without the money.' Moya reached out to collect the pot.

‘You don't swindle me as easily as you do the foreigners. There's my property. So up fifty thousand.'

Moya fingered his weak chin that suited his scrawny, pockmarked face. ‘You're putting your house and land up as security for your bet?'

‘Ain't that what I said?'

He leaned back in his chair, looked around the table. ‘D'you all hear him?'

No one spoke.

‘We'll do this the proper way so as there's no room for complaint later on. I'll draw up the agreement and you'll all witness it.' He turned to Belmonte in whose house they were playing. ‘Something to write on, Andrés, and a pen.'

Belmonte left the room, returned with a single sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. Moya wrote rapidly, checked what he'd written, then read out: ‘I, Santiago Pons Bonet, hereby testify that on the twelfth of February I pledge part or all of the property I own, known as Ca'n Ibron, as security against any debt I incur in the course of the game of cards played on the date in question. Further, I agree to settle any such debt when so requested after an interval of twenty-four hours and if unable to do so immediately will pay interest on the amount due at bank rate plus twenty per cent…'

‘Twenty?' shouted Pons, outraged.

‘Credit is always expensive.' He pushed the paper across. ‘Sign and we will all witness.'

Despite the burning need to win to make a fool of Moya and the effects of the wine he had drunk, Pons hesitated. The building trade was suffering a downturn, his company was cash-light, the mortgage repayments on the house were making life difficult, and he was in no position to suffer even a moderate financial loss …

‘I always said your tongue's bigger than your cojones,' Moya sneered.

The slur on his manhood swept away all Pons's caution. He grabbed the pen and signed.

When the paper was returned to Moya, he examined it carefully before placing it under his pile of counters. He counted out ten notes. ‘There's your fifty thousand and another fifty.'

‘And another hundred thousand.'

‘Your hundred and another hundred.' He counted his remaining money and found it to be insufficient for the bet.

Pons gleefully thumped a fist down on the table. ‘I can't see two hundred thousand, I can't, not even with my eyes wide open. Seems like your tongue is a sight bigger than your pocket!'

‘I can cover the bet a thousand times over.'

‘Not without security, you can't.'

‘Security? I've enough of that to buy the lot of you out and just wonder what's happened to my small change.'

‘Because you're a swindler. But you're not swindling me. Security, or the game's mine.'

Moya swore at some length, but with little variety. Then he told Belmonte to bring him another piece of paper. When he had this, he wrote rapidly. ‘There you are!'

Pons reached out and picked it up. ‘Let's see the one I just signed.'

‘Why?'

‘To make certain this is the same and you ain't trying anything.'

Moya threw the first agreement across the table.

Pons took a long time comparing the two. Finally, he said: ‘The signatures ain't the same.'

Moya suggested he did something generally considered to be impossible.

Pons passed the paper around for it to be witnessed. When it was returned to him, he said: ‘Your hundred thousand and another hundred thousand.'

‘And another.'

‘And another.'

‘And half a million.'

‘And a million.'

The onlookers were gripped by the same feverish tension – occasionally referred to as the curse of the Mallorquins – as the two players; Belmonte began to breathe rapidly through his mouth, as if he'd been running, Cerdo was sweating …

Moya's legal work had taught him that, no matter how emotionally involved he became, he must always retain sufficient self-control to be able to see where his own interests lay. He could afford to increase the stake almost indefinitely. But Pons had been having bad cards all night and so his present confidence argued that he finally had a good hand, perhaps even a full house or four of a kind. In which case, he would never fold, however high the stake was raised. And he – Moya – might lose a fortune to an oaf who never lost the chance to insult him. ‘See you.'

There was a collective sigh – an expression of relief that the tension would not increase, of regret that it would not.

Pons exposed his three jacks with a hand that trembled.

‘You're that good!' Moya sounded overwhelmed.

‘That's right. Gets a bit painful playing with the big boys, don't it?' Pons reached out to take the pot.

‘Hang on.'

‘What for?'

‘Doesn't a straight beat three of a kind?'

‘You ain't got a straight!'

Moya exposed his hand. ‘Just not your lucky night! How much does it all add up to? Was it something over two million?'

*   *   *

Completed just over two years previously, Ca'n Ibron lacked no luxury other than planning permission. Set in the middle of a couple of hectares of good land, it provided the perfect home for a family.

Pons drove into the garage too quickly and had to brake very hard to avoid ramming the end wall. He climbed out of the car before he realized he'd left the lights on, leaned back in and lost his balance to collapse across the driving seat. Concentrating very hard, he switched off the lights, stood, weaved his way between the car and the wall to the outside where he came to an unsteady stop. Much wine had been drunk after Moya had left Belmonte's home; had words been daggers, Moya would have arrived home a bloody corpse.

The moon was almost full and the sky was cloudless. He stared at the rock-faced house and remembered the party they'd given days after they'd moved in. A whole salmon, two suckling pigs, ham, chorizo and sobrassada delicacies, three different types of Spanish omelettes, brawn … Friends had said they'd never seen such a spread. He turned to look at Cristina's garden, in the moonlight a place of mysterious forms, and thought of the pleasure she gained from tending it and the fun Rosa and Lucía had in the summer in the splash pool beyond the shade tree. An inner voice began to shout. No one was going to take all this away from him, least of all a runt of a thieving lawyer …

He crossed to the covered patio. He opened the heavy, panelled wooden door, went inside and almost forgot to close and lock it. He climbed the stairs to their bedroom, which he tried to enter silently, an attempt which failed when he became entangled with a chair and crashed to the floor. The overhead light went on.

He struggled to his feet. ‘The chair moved and made me fall,' he said, his speech heavy.

‘It simply won't stay still.' Cristina sat upright.

His parents, bewildered by her vivacious sense of humour and light-hearted approach to life, spoke about her as their son's foreign wife. It was true that her mother was French, but her father was Mallorquin and she had been born and lived all her life on the island.

He picked up the chair, almost overbalancing in doing so.

‘Did you drive back?'

‘You think I walked?'

‘It looks very unlikely … I do wish you wouldn't drive when you've drunk so much.'

Many would have shouted at her to keep her trap shut and what her husband drank was his affair. But she was emotional and became very upset if he spoke roughly to her.

‘Do you want something to eat?'

‘No.' He began to undress.

She settled back and turned on her side.

After some confusion, he managed to put on his pyjamas and climb into bed. As he switched off the light, a hand briefly rested on his chest. ‘Sweet dreams, my love,' she said.

He stared into the darkness and suffered black thoughts. How could he have been such a fool? Had he not promised himself at the beginning of the game that if he lost all his chips, he'd quit? How could he have put Cristina's, Rosa's, and Lucía's future happiness at risk? What kind of a bastard husband was he?

He tried to ease his misery. The bank would lend him the money to pay his gambling losses. Yet no sooner had he assured himself of that than he accepted it was virtually certain they would not. Building was in the doldrums and that made things very difficult for his company which, as did so many these days, ran on borrowed money and the current overdraft was too high – as the bank kept reminding him. The house would have provided very good security, but for Carlos … He cursed his brother who had always been weak and had become mixed up with a bunch of no-gooders. A year before, he'd defrauded a family friend of many millions of pesetas. The victim had generously said he wouldn't call in the police provided he was repaid the money. Carlos couldn't repay it as he had already squandered it. His parents couldn't repay it because they had little capital. They had come to their ‘rich' son and begged him to find the money because they could not contemplate the thought of Carlos's being sent to jail. He'd mortgaged the house to raise the money. He'd not told Cristina because he was certain she wouldn't, couldn't, understand how he could risk his own family's happiness for a brother he held in contempt, too emotionally upset to realize it was his parents he was protecting … He'd just have to find work. A rich foreigner who wanted a house built quickly … Zavala! That mega-rich, snake-smooth Bolivian who'd wanted an extension to his already palatial mansion and to whom he'd given an estimate. It had been an honest estimate – for a foreigner – but Zavala, with the miserly instincts of the really wealthy, had gone on and on trying to beat down the price until he'd finally said to find someone else who'd do the job at a loss. But if he now went back and meekly agreed a revised estimate, perhaps he could still secure the job. He'd save on labour by working on site from dawn to dusk. That would be a start. And Zavala, who must mix with the other rich on the island, would say he was employing a builder who worked like a demon and did a first-class job at a very reasonable price. They, in turn, would call on him to do work for them since the rich never suffered downturns …

Optimism, aided by the wine, prevailed. His firm would prosper until he had paid off Moya and the overdraft, cleared the mortgage. He'd buy Cristina a little red Ford Ka and throw a party for Rosa's First Communion that would arouse the envy of all their friends …

He fell asleep and began to snore.

CHAPTER 4

July was so hot that many tourists on the beaches sought shade. Alvarez sat at his desk, sweated, and stared at the unopened mail, some of which dated back several days. Dolores was in one of her bad moods and neither Jaime nor he could work out what had so upset her – a question of importance since the impact on their lives was considerable. Only that morning, he had come down to breakfast to be offered only half a yesterday's barra to accompany the hot chocolate. When he'd asked her, very pleasantly, why she hadn't earlier bought him an ensaimada, she'd hissed that she wasn't working herself into the grave for someone so lazy that the only thing he was good at was telling other people what to do …

The phone rang.

It was a time of the morning when people frequently tried to pass on their troubles …

The phone ceased ringing. As the old adage said, Forget trouble and trouble will forget you.

Except that some troubles were too serious to be forgotten. Neither he nor Jaime had said anything to Dolores that could have offended – they had long since learned to keen their opinions of women's strange foibles to themselves. Isabel and Juan had recently been unusually well-behaved …

The phone resumed ringing. Trouble may forget you, but never for long enough. It could, of course, be the superior chief – a typically suspicious Madrileño – checking he was hard at work … He answered the call.

‘Are you the inspector?' a woman asked, her speech hurried. ‘The doctor says you're to come right away.'

When a man became a doctor, he often thought himself ennobled. ‘What gives him that idea?'

‘What idea?'

‘That he can order me around.'

There was a long pause. ‘The señor's dead.'

The speaker's distressed confusion was clear and his tone became more friendly. ‘Tell me his name.'

‘Señor Zavala.'

‘And the doctor who's examined him believes there is cause for doubting he died a natural death?'

Another silence. ‘All I know is, he told me to ring the Cuerpo.'

‘Are you speaking from the señor's house?'

‘That's right.'

‘Where is it and what's its name?'

‘Son Fuyell. It's in Cardona Valley.'

‘That lies outside my area,' he said with satisfaction. ‘If you ring Inspector Catany…'

‘But I did. He said to get in touch with you because you'd deal with things.'

Catany was one of those men who was forever trying to avoid doing his duty. ‘The best thing to do is to get back on to him and explain that Cardona Valley lies within his area.'

‘He said this was your responsibility because the house is on the east side of the valley.'

He'd forgotten that the line dividing the fiefs ran along the centre of the valley. ‘What's the doctor's name?' he asked, his tone expressing his annoyance.

‘I … I've forgotten. I mean, it's all been such a shock. There was me and Susana doing the work as usual and Lorenzo comes in and says the señor's dead. I thought it was just one of his nasty jokes and –'

He interrupted the breathless flow of words. ‘Tell the doctor I'll be along as soon as possible.'