Troubled Deaths (2 page)

Thank God Rose hadn’t had the chance to come with him. She’d have messed everything up because there was a limit to what money could do. Look at the Zacaries, for example. She often entertained the local peasants, even to the extent of sitting down in the kitchen and drinking tea with them . . . Rose would have for ever been uneasy, wondering what was the correct etiquette for each situation, trying too hard to do the right thing and so ending up doing the wrong thing. He remembered how she’d looked the last time he’d seen her. Her dress had been faded and frayed at the hem, her apron torn, her face flushed, and her hair untidy.

She’d looked at him with that half antagonistic, half fearful expression which he’d come to know so well. ‘You’ve not returned for lunch, have you? I’ve nothing in the house.’

‘Stop panicking. I’m not eating here.’

‘Then why have you come back?’

‘I wanted my case.’

‘Case? What case?’

‘Suitcase.’

‘What d’you want that for?’

Before he’d married her, he’d found her frequent air of bewildered puzzlement attractive, but after a few years of marriage it had become irritating because he realized it was simply the outward sign of an inability to cope with life. ‘I need a suitcase to put a few things in. I’m leaving.’

‘But where are you going and for how long? Why’s the firm suddenly sending you away like this? They’ve never done it before.’

‘The firm isn’t sending me anywhere.’

‘Geoff, I don’t understand. What’s happening?’

‘I’m clearing out of a house which always smells of cabbage.’

‘I haven’t cooked cabbage in weeks,’ she’d said, typically missing the point.

A movement on the looping road in the urbanizacion caught his interest and snapped his train of thought. Sun glinted on the glass of a car and he watched this ball of light continue on up to Cassel’s house, where it stopped. That bastard! he thought with bitter anger. An internationally famous financier. Famous for what? Gassell had talked so knowingly of investing in options and commodities and making a fortune as the market rose. He’d invested heavily but had not gained a fortune because the silly bastard Cassell hadn’t correctly identified the movements of the markets . . . Fifteen million it had cost him.

He saw Matilde come out of the courtyard and walk past the dog, which she patted, towards Orozco. She was from peasant stock, of course, but even so she was attractive in the overripe, sensual way that peasants sometimes were before they coarsened and went to seed. Under those tasteless clothes there must be a shapely body, ready to be fired up. Her husband Luis, couldn’t do much firing. What had made her marry a man twice her age?

As she approached Orozco, he put his mattock on the ground and leaned on the handle. Give a Mallorquin a quarter of a chance to stop work and he seized it with both hands - provided the effort wasn’t too great.

They talked for a while and Orozco laughed, which was a rare occurrence. Then she turned away and went back to the house. Orozco, still leaning on the mattock, watched her.

Freeman crossed the lawn and went along the gravel path. Orozco, although he must have heard the footsteps, made no effort to look as though he were busy.

Freeman stood in the centre of the path, hands on hips. ‘Have you finished, then? Nothing more to do?’ he asked roughly in English.

‘Please, señor?’ said Orozco, in his heavily accented English.

‘I said, have you done all the work that needs doing?’

‘No, señor.’

‘Then why don’t you bloody get on and do some of it?’

Orozco looked gravely at him and Freeman had the infuriating thought that Orozco was silently criticizing him for speaking so crudely. As if there were any other way of getting through his thick skull.

He turned round and walked towards the house. When he reached the courtyard the dog, tied to a chain, came out and barked at him. ‘Shut up,’ he shouted. He kicked a largish stone which was lying on the ground and more by chance than skill the stone hit the dog, which yelped.

He crossed the courtyard and went into the kitchen. Matilde was pounding something in a mortar and there were beads of sweat on her forehead: he watched the movement of her breasts. ‘What’s for lunch, then?’

‘Pork chops with ali-oli, señor. I’m making the ali-oli.’

‘There’s nothing like the ali-oli you make. The only trouble is, after eating that much garlic I have to lay off kissing for a few hours.’

She concentrated on what she was doing and he became convinced she had not understood him. ‘I said, after I’ve eaten your ali-oli with so much garlic in it I must try not to kiss a girl until the smell of garlic has gone.’

She picked up a plastic container of olive oil and added a few drops to the mixture.

They couldn’t even understand if you spoke in words of one syllable, he thought, with brief contempt. ‘Where’s Luis, then?’

‘He has to shop, señor, in Llueso.’

In other words, Luis was boozing at his favourite bar.

She worked the pestle once more and after a pause he left the kitchen and went along the hall to the sitting-room.

This was L-shaped, with the shorter arm separated from the longer by two archways. He’d bought the furniture with the house and that had been money well spent because even old Lady Glass, after a third brandy, had praised it in no uncertain terms. He crossed the Santa Barbara carpet to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a gin and tonic. That reminded him that he’d half promised Mabel he’d have a drink with her and Caroline in the Port. Her real name was Mabel Striggs - which just about suited her since she looked the dried-up old spinster she was.

He sat on one of the softly upholstered armchairs. Some people couldn’t take a hint if it was spelled out to them and Mabel was one such. Nothing he could say or do would stop her fluttering around him, to become all coy whenever the occasion warranted it. . .

He finished the gin and poured himself out another. Caroline could have been fun if only she’d been more sophisticatedly experienced - the world was made for the sharp, not the sweet.

As he sat on one side of a table in a back bar - here the prices were less than half those in the front bars - Edward Anson ran his fingers through his tangle of tight, curly brown hair. ‘Yes, I saw Ramon this morning.’

Caroline studied his face. ‘Well - aren’t you going to tell me what it was all about? I’ve been so excited thinking about it.’

‘You could have saved yourself the trouble.’

‘Stop being so mournful. Really, Teddy, sometimes you try to paint everything so black. Where did you see him?’

‘In his office. Being Ramon, he produced a bottle of expensive brandy and poured out a drink big enough to float a yacht.’

‘But did he offer you any kind of a job? For heaven’s sake, that’s what I want to hear about. He’s such a nice man and I’ve been hoping and hoping on your behalf.’

‘He didn’t offer me a job. He offered me a partnership.’

She stared at him, utterly amazed. ‘A. . . a partnership?’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s much more than you ever dared hope for. Why, it’s even more than I ever dreamt about! How can you sit there with a face a mile long, looking as if you’d just heard bad news?’

He shrugged his shoulders. He had a broad, very strongly-featured face, with light blue eyes that could often express more of his emotions than he wanted, and his complexion was weathered. It was easy to imagine him at sea, challenging wind and wave. ‘It’s not as simple as it sounds. Ramon will take me on because he reckons I’m good at the job and I’m English and so can deal with all the English-speaking people who want work carried out. He says I’d get a work permit because he can truthfully say I’d be doing a job no Spaniard could do because I’ve English contacts.’

‘Then what isn’t simple about that? I can see the nameplate on the side of the boatshed. “Mena and Anson, yacht designers and builders.” You’ll build a whole lot of super yachts and win all the big races and every rich yachtsman in the world will be rushing to you to get you to build him one.’

‘Carrie, there’s just one small condition to me being a partner. Ramon wants a million and a half pesetas to pay for the partnership.’

‘Oh!’ She stared at him. ‘A million and a half. . . Is it worth that much?’

‘Every time. If he’d doubled it to three million I’d still say it would be worth it. That place is a potential goldmine and he’s a bloke who one can trust all the way . . . But a million and a half or three million, it doesn’t make any difference. I don’t know what that sort of money looks like.’

‘You’ve just got to find it.’

‘Under my pillow?’ His tone became bitter. ‘Carrie, I’d have to scratch around really hard to find ten thousand right now. A million and a half is like talking about me getting a degree in Greek.’

‘Stop being so defeatist. There’s always a way.’

‘Not always, not in real life.’

‘I just won’t listen to you being gloomy. When an offer you’ve dreamed and dreamed about like this turns up it’s because it’s meant to happen. Therefore, it’s going to happen.’

‘It’s a pity you don’t run the world for it would be a much happier place if you did.’

She laughed. ‘I don’t know about that - I think it would most likely blow up in total confusion . . . But one thing’s for sure. It’s all arranged that you should join Ramon as a partner.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe nothing.’ She reached across the table and put her hand on his. ‘Something will turn up, I can feel it in my bones. And they never, ever lie.’

At the time of their sudden deaths, Caroline’s parents had been married for twenty-four years and during the whole of that time they had found no cause to regret anything. She had never heard them have a row and even their arguments had always been reasonably light-hearted. For years, she had thought all marriages were more or less like theirs and she had been quite shocked to discover that most weren’t: shocked because she knew that happiness was more important than anything else in the world.

To be ready to, even to want to, believe the best of anyone and everyone was, in an age of growing cynicism, not only unusual but also not without possible dangerous consequences. But she was protected from such dangers by a keen sense of humour, a fund of common sense which allowed her to recognize rottenness when she met it, and an inner strength not immediately apparent. When the PC had called at the house to break the news that her parents had been killed in a very bad crash, she had naturally been totally shocked. But instead of giving way to her grief and demanding help, the kind of help which comes from accepting support from the strength of others, she had fought her own battles and, dry-eyed, had faced the world which had suddenly turned so black.

When it was all over, she’d decided to give herself a complete break by returning for the winter to where she and her parents had had the happiest of their many holidays. As any cynic would have told her, this must prove disastrous - the one unvarying rule of travel is, never return . . . And on top of that, there would be all the painful associations . . . She returned and found the peace and beauty she had remembered and when she thought about her parents it was not with a throat-tightening sorrow, but with a sense of thankfulness that they had been permitted to die together after having known so much love together.

She’d first met Mabel Cannon at a cocktail party given by an ex-property tycoon between wives. She’d noticed the lumpy, awkward, badly-dressed woman who sat in a cane chair at the far end of the immense sitting-room and typically she had immediately felt sorry for this person to whom nobody could be bothered to speak. She’d gone straight over and introduced herself. Initially, Mabel had been suspicious of Caroline’s motives, but her sincerity had been too obviously genuine to be misinterpreted, even by a very lonely woman who was always, in the company of the rich, the successful, the good-looking, and the well connected, all too painfully aware of her own very limited attractions.

Her suspicions allayed, Mabel had responded to the younger woman’s friendship with a gratitude that could have been embarrassing. Had it been directed towards anyone else, there would undoubtedly have been speculation whether there was a lesbian base to it, but not even the sharpest tongue in the area - and few came sharper – suggested such a thing. So great was Mabel’s gratitude that had Caroline gone to her and asked for a loan of one and a half million pesetas for herself, she would have given it without question. But, knowing this, Caroline felt in honour bound to explain precisely what she wanted the money for.

Mabel shifted in the armchair and crossed her legs, careless about the way in which the pleated skirt revealed her thick thighs. She riddled with the arm of the chair, where one of the cords of the material had frayed. She was no more concerned about the way in which the house was furnished than the way in which she dressed: most of the furniture had been bought in a second-hand shop or from people leaving the island and nothing matched, much was dingy. ‘Who told you about this partnership?’

‘Teddy did, of course. You can’t think what a wonderful chance it is for him, Mabel. All his life . . .’

‘Why should Mena offer him a partnership?’

‘He’s a first class worker and knows everything about boats.’

‘But does he ever work? Whenever I see him, he’s lounging around the place, doing nothing.’

‘Of course you haven’t seen him actually working as you’ve never been in the boatyard and hardly ever go along the harbour. When you see him in the Port, he’s taking a break.’

‘Seven hours’ break and one hour’s work a day.’ Caroline laughed. ‘You’re just prejudiced! I’m sure you don’t believe anyone works who isn’t in an office. Teddy’s not cut out for that sort of life. He’s always loved boats and his one burning ambition has always been to have his own business. Now Ramon’s offered him the chance and he’s over the moon with excitement.’

‘He’ll never be given a work permit.”Yes, he will. All Ramon has to prove is that Teddy will be doing a job a Mallorquin can’t and since he’ll be dealing with the English-speaking foreigners that’s obvious. Another thing, the business employs several Mallorquins so it’ll be even easier . . . Look, why don’t you come along to the boatyard with me and see what he’s doing now. It’s fascinating to see the kind of work he does.’ ‘I don’t like boats. They make me seasick.’ Caroline laughed again. ‘The one he’s working on now would have a bit of a job! It’s in a cradle up on dry land. Come on, let’s go and see him when we’ve finished our drinks.’