Death Trick (8 page)

Despite the heat, Elena Roig was dressed in full mourning, as had been customary until recently. She accepted Alvarez’s condolences and his apologies for worrying her at such a time and then cleared away any hurdle of embarrassment by saying: ‘I knew my husband owned this house in the country and that he entertained women there. But I don’t think he ever realized that I knew.’ She briefly touched a large mole on her right cheek. Age had softened her ugliness, and for that she was grateful, but it could not hide it; and for her, that unsightly mole had always epitomized her unfortunate appearance.

‘Did you by any chance meet any of these women, señora?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘So you obviously cannot give me any of their names?’

‘I cannot.’

‘Did you often meet his friends?’

‘If now you are referring to his male friends, only when he hoped they’d be able to persuade me.’

‘In what way?’

‘When I was very much younger, I inherited considerable land and some property. Part of that I immediately put in his hands as a sign of trust—one can be very naive when one is young—the rest I retained in my own name. The land especially has appreciated greatly in value and he was forever trying to make me agree to let him have some or all of it to sell. His friends, who were always in the business of developing, were introduced to me in order to lend weight to his pleas. My response was always the same and it always angered him.’ She spoke with such detachment that he might have been no more than the most casual of acquaintances. ‘The trouble was that he could never understand why I should turn down the chance of such enormous profits. But if I have enough money to live on, why should I allow even more land to be destroyed merely in order to become unnecessarily richer?’

‘I would that more people had thought like you over the past years, señora.’ As he finished speaking, she turned and looked directly at him and in the subdued light—the house still retained the original small windows—her large brown eyes were lustrous and he was suddenly struck by how beautiful they were and how at variance with the rest of her face.

‘You’re about the same age as me. Then you can also remember the island before the foreigners came. Everything was so beautiful then,’ she said sadly.

Indeed, the island had been very beautiful. But the people had known poverty and he could remember his mother crying because she could not give him a decent meal.

‘What are you thinking?’

He told her.

‘That’s true. Must it always, then, be either beauty with want or ugly prosperity?’

It was a question he had often asked himself and to which he had never found an answer.

‘Pablo could never think like that.’ Her tone had scarcely changed, but now there was no mistaking her contempt. ‘For him, beauty was success and money. And young women.’ She touched the mole.

‘Señora, have you ever met an Englishman called Gerald Oakley?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m reasonably certain he visited Casa Gran on Monday.’

‘It’s possible. On Sunday, Pablo once more tried to persuade me to let him have some of the land; he was even more insistent than usual. Perhaps the Englishman was interested in the development of it.’

‘But he didn’t actually mention Oakley’s name?’

‘No, he did not.’

‘Has he sold all the land you gave him?’

‘A long time ago. And for very much less than it would be worth now, as I frequently pointed out, much to his annoyance.’

‘Was he ever concerned in the actual developments?’

‘I can’t say. He never discussed money or business with me, unless he wanted something; and even then, like any husband, he’d speak as if I were a fool.’

Few Mallorquins, Alvarez knew, had yet come to terms either with the proposition that a marriage was a partnership rather than a takeover or that women could be as intelligently capable of dealing with financial matters as they.

He stood, apologized once more for having troubled her, and said goodbye. As he stepped out of the cool interior of the house into the hot, dusty street, he thought that it was like returning to the present.

On Monday, Alvarez drove again to Palma and parked under the Plaza Major. From there, he walked to Roig’s office, on the first floor of a building in Rey Jaime III.

The reception area was large, close-carpeted, and hung with several attractive coloured prints; the single desk was kidney-shaped. Marta had been working at a large electronic typewriter and she immediately began to moan. ‘I just don’t know what to do. I mean, who’s employing me? There’s a lot of work needs doing, but who’s going to pay me for doing it? And the phone’s been going all the time with questions I can’t answer.’

As if on cue, the telephone rang. She told the caller that just for the moment she couldn’t say definitely what was happening, but that the delay wouldn’t affect the case; she promised to get in touch the moment something certain was known.

She replaced the receiver. ‘I’ve tried asking the señora, but I don’t think she can be bothered. Between you and me, she and the señor didn’t get on very well together.’

‘I gather he was fond of the ladies?’

‘All I know is, he’d wandering hands.’

‘D’you remember the Braddons?’

‘Not likely to forget ‘em.’

‘Why not?’

‘If you’d been here the last time, you wouldn’t ask.’

He did not immediately pursue what she’d said. ‘Were they frequent callers?’

‘Never stopped.’

‘They were trying to make Señor Roig expedite their action over the house they bought, weren’t they?’

‘That’s right.’

‘D’you have any idea why he didn’t press their claim harder?’

‘Because he was stringing ‘em along until it was all but too late for them to sue.’

‘You knew he was doing that?’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘Then why didn’t you warn them?’

‘I was working for him, not them; besides, they’re foreigners.’

‘Going back to their last visit here, what happened?’

‘There was a row like no other I’ve heard in this office; leastwise, the English señor was shouting his head off.’

‘What was it all about?’

‘It must have been to do with the letter I’d typed out a couple of days before, saying the señor wouldn’t be able to act for them any longer.’

‘Could you understand what Señor Braddon was saying?’

‘Not really. He was shouting too fast and a lot of the words I didn’t know.’

‘So you wouldn’t be able to say if he’d made any threats?’

‘It sounded as if it was nothing but threats.’

‘But you can’t be certain?’

‘No,’ she said reluctantly.

‘I’ve been chatting to various people and it seems Señor Roig was interested in property as well as doing his job here. D’you know for sure if that’s correct?’

‘It’s dead right.’

‘Presumably, it was only in a small way?’

‘Would you call La Portaña small?’

He whistled. ‘I certainly would not. How deep was he in that?’

‘I can’t say. I mean, I never had anything really to do with that kind of work. But sometimes there’d be a telephone call and I’d hear . . .’ She stopped. ‘Well, I’d hear something before I could put the receiver down after switching the call through.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Alvarez sounded as if he accepted that anything she’d overheard had been done so inadvertently. ‘So you heard La Portaña mentioned—can you remember what was said?’

‘Only roughly, because they were talking in English and although I’m all right when people speak slowly and don’t get too complicated, I can get lost—like I was with Señor Braddon that time . . . The person on the other end of the line was saying something about the banks becoming worried over the money they’d lent on La Portaña and he couldn’t understand.’

‘Couldn’t understand what?’

‘I don’t really know. He began to speak really quickly. But it was something to do with where money had got to. And then Señor Roig said he’d have to get a folder and that meant his coming through here.’

Alvarez pictured her hurriedly replacing the receiver before she was caught eavesdropping. ‘Do you know who the caller was?’

‘He didn’t give me his name; just said he wanted to speak to Señor Roig.’

‘And when he was put through, he didn’t identify himself?’

‘Yes, he did, but I don’t remember what he said; it wasn’t a name I’d heard before.’

‘Think back hard.’

After a moment, she shook her head. ‘It’s no good. I mean, foreigners have such difficult names . . .’ She stopped.

‘Yes?’

‘Isn’t that odd? It’s funny how one’s mind works.’

‘You have remembered?’

‘Not exactly, but it was something like . . .’ It took her three attempts to say, ‘Gerry.’

The telephone rang and Alvarez lifted the receiver.

‘Forensic here, Inspector. Thought you’d like a preliminary report on the autopsy. The deceased was killed by a stab wound delivered by knife—not that there was ever any doubt on that score. Although we can never be certain, death was probably virtually instantaneous.

‘The knife used is shorter than the depth of the wound which suggests the upward blow was delivered with considerable force, compressing the wall of the body just below the ribs. In addition to this, the very ragged nature and width of the wound suggest that the knife was withdrawn, probably only partially, and then thrust home again at least once. In our opinion, this rules out any defence that death was not intended.

‘One more thing. I’ve had a word with the lab boys and they’ve asked me to pass on to you the fact that it’s confirmed that the only prints on the knife are those of the daily woman.’

‘Was the murderer wearing gloves, then?’

‘I gather, not necessarily. The knife has a thin handle, considering the length of the blade, and so the murderer’s fingers may well have wrapped right round it and the tips rested on the flesh of the hand.’

‘Anything to make things more difficult.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the assistant unsympathetically.

Alvarez stopped the car by a large hoarding on which blue letters against a bright red background declared that La Portaña was the finest urbanization on the island, and stepped out on to the road. The land, which had been well wooded, sloped gently upwards from the sea in a wedge shape; it was roughly fifty hectares in all. Beyond, on either side, although this was screened by the shape of the land and narrow belts of trees, was heavily developed and so it was obvious that this land had been owned by someone who had held on to it long after the start of the building boom; equally obviously, he or she had finally decided it was impossible any longer to forgo the immense profit to be had by selling it.

As was required by law—although often carefully forgotten—roads had been built, electric cables run to junction boxes, water pipes laid, and street lights installed, before any building had been started. Now, several houses and two blocks of flats were under construction; the houses were obviously going to be large and the blocks of flats no more than four storeys high and—most unusually—of an attractive design with flowing curves. In the centre of the urbanizacion was a public garden and this was ringed with mature palm trees, transplanted from near Valencia; there were also grass, green from generous watering, and flowerbeds bright with colour.

Alvarez returned to the car and drove down to the wooden building which was being used as the sales office, close to the main entrance of the urbanizacion. He went inside. A narrow room ran the length of the building and in this were two desks, a counter on which were set out sales brochures and reprints of an article which had appeared in an international glossy magazine, and a frame on an easel on which was a large-scale plan of the development.

A young man who had been seated at the desk nearer to the counter finally came to his feet. He had a spiky hairstyle and a very prominent Adam’s apple and his pink shirt did not rest comfortably with his puce slacks. He eyed Alvarez with supercilious disdain, correctly judging it unlikely a sale was in the offing.

‘Cuerpo general de policia.’

The young man’s expression became watchful, though perhaps even more supercilious.

‘I’d like a word with whoever’s in charge.’

Vich’s office lay behind the general room and was half the size of that. He was a small, slightly built man, with an outgoing manner. He shook hands, then moved a chair away from the wall to the front of the desk. ‘So how can I help you?’ he asked as he sat behind the desk.

‘I need to know who owns the urbanizacion?’

‘It’s a company—Andreu y Soler.’

‘Was Pablo Roig connected with it?’

Vich was surprised. ‘How d’you know that?’

‘Shouldn’t I, then?’

‘Well, I’ll put it like this—it’s not a secret, but his name doesn’t appear in the general literature . . . It was one hell of a shock to hear he’d been murdered. That’s why you’re here now?’

Alvarez nodded.

‘Then you reckon there may be some connection between the murder and this company?’

‘There’s the possibility. What I want to try and find out is if there’s a probability.’

Vich shook his head. ‘I don’t see how there can be.’

‘Let’s start by you giving me a broad picture of the set-up here.’

Vich spoke briskly, suggesting a well-informed, decisive man. Andreu y Soler had been formed specifically to buy the land and develop the urbanization of La Portaña. Roig had been the company’s legal adviser and it was he who had managed to obtain planning permission even though the land had originally been classified green belt. In addition, all the original working capital had come through his hands, although there was no suggestion that he had personally provided it.

‘I gather that recently finance has become a problem?’

Vich’s expression changed. ‘What makes you say that?’

Alvarez smiled briefly. ‘We all have our secrets. Yours is how planning permission was given, mine is the source of my information.’

Vich picked up a pencil and fiddled with it. ‘Suppose I tell you that any report about a financial problem is an exaggeration?’