Disappeared: MANTEQUERO BOOK 2 (4 page)

“No, nothing untoward. The owner said she came and went at the proper time. Oh, but…”

“What?” Alison leant forward, trying to see the screen. Heather turned it towards her and they read the email together.

             
She said Miss Blacker arrived on Saturday the twenty-third of December and left very early on Saturday the sixth of January. But what is strange is she has just cancelled two other bookings I had for the house and said it is no longer for rent. I asked why and she said it was being renovated.

Alison and Heather looked at each other. “What does it mean?” Alison asked.

“I don’t know, but it feels wrong. If you were planning on renovating a house, wouldn’t you schedule a time to do it and not take bookings in the first place for that period?”

Alison grinned. “We’re talking Spain here. It’s very rare for them to plan in advance.”

“You sound as if you’re speaking from experience.” Heather gave her a sharp look.

“I am. I lived in Granada for a few months when I was doing my degree. The Spanish people I knew mainly did business when they happened to bump into each other. And that’s in a major city. I bet it’s even more laid-back in the villages.”

“You’ve not been to the villages, then?”
Alison shook her head. “Sadly, no. I’m ashamed to say I spent my days pretending to study and my nights hanging around in bars.”

Heather looked slightly shocked.

“Tapas bars,” Alison explained. “The tapas are free in Granada. All the students live on them. You just order the cheapest, smallest drinks and get a free tapa with each. I don’t know how much it costs now, but a couple of years ago you could dine like a king for three pounds. It wasn’t worth cooking at home.”

Heather nodded. “Of course. I read that about the tapas being free. I think I didn’t quite believe it. I don’t do much in Granada. Most people want to go to the costa.”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “So you don’t think it’s odd that the house has been taken off the market?”

“Not in itself,” Alison mused. “But something feels wrong somewhere, don’t you think? And if she just followed her original plan and left on the Saturday morning, what happened after that? Why didn’t she come home? What explanation could there be?”
Heather sat back and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Well,” she said, “she could have met a man, had a whirlwind romance and decided to stay in Spain forever.”

Alison gave her a withering look.

“Yes, yes, I know. It’s unlikely, but let’s consider every possibility. She could have been offered a great job and decided to stay on.”

“There’s something wrong with both those ideas,” said Alison. “If she decided to stay, for
whatever
reason, she would have contacted people to let them know. Hell, she’d have come back to put her affairs in order. She’d have worked her notice. And what about Patsy? She loves that child. She would never have left her high and dry like that, without even a message.”

Heather’s expression had darkened as Alison said this, then she nodded. “OK, so are we decided that it’s
not
voluntary?”

Alison nodded.
“So that leaves us with . . . what? She was taken ill, had an accident, was kidnapped or murdered. Have I covered all the possibilities?”

“
Jesus!
” Alison whispered.

The two young women stared at each other in mute horror.

Finally Alison said, “I think it’s time we reported it to the police.”

Heather shook her head. “No, wait till tomorrow. I’ve had an idea. I’m going to call my friend in Orgiva.”

****

Alison called in at the supermarket on the way home and bought dozens of little trays of luxury cat food, then hesitated and added half a dozen tins of tuna, half a dozen of salmon and half a dozen of chicken. “I must be mad,” she said to herself. She, who was usually so careful with her money, was spending more on cat food than she spent on herself in a month. But she smiled when she thought about how pleased Jessica would be.

She got home to find her mother had filled the cupboard with similar purchases.

“I got her some raw liver as well,” she said. “Pickles used to love raw liver.” Alison cracked out laughing. “And I see there are some additions to the play area,” she said, indicating Jessica’s bed, which now contained various dangly things, jingling balls, toy mice and something long and thin in a cardboard box. “What’s this?” she began, but before her mother could reply, Jessica had bounded into the room and leapt into Alison’s arms, where she began furiously licking her face. “I think she’s pleased to see me,” Alison said, delighted.

Her Mum watched in amazement. “I’ve never seen a cat do that before,” she said, sounding slightly disgruntled.

“Apparently she always greets Miss Blacker that way. Miss Wetherspoon says – Oh my God I promised to ring her.”  Alison thrust Jessica at her mother and picked up her phone.

****

At break the next morning she had a text from Heather.
Call round. Car hire weird.

“What, what is it?” She demanded as soon as she opened the door. Heather once again had a customer sitting in front of her. She put a finger to her lips, pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it across. It was a print-out of an email.

             
Dear Miss Jones

             
We are pleased to say that Miss June Blacker collected the car on Saturday 22
nd
, as scheduled. However, did not return on the agreed day. It found itself parked outside on Monday 8
th
of January. We are not knowing if Miss Blacker she returned herself.

A salute

Carmen Maldonado

Alison suppressed a smile at the abysmal translation into English, then frowned as she thought about what it actually meant.

Heather was saying goodbye to her customer, a young woman with a lot of shopping bags, who looked rather flustered, and Alison waited until they had shaken hands and the woman was on her way out of the door.

“So she didn’t return it.”

Heather gave a quick, perfunctory smile. “Well, not on the right day, anyway.” She waved Alison into the chair and tidied away the papers from the previous customer.

“Why is it so busy?” Alison asked. “In January? I would have thought it would be the dead end of the year.”

“It’s our busiest time,” Heather said. “Christmas is over. Nothing to look forward to except cold and damp for months and months. People cheer themselves up by booking their holidays. What do you think it means?” She was pointing at the print-out.

“I think it’s very likely she didn’t return the car herself,” Alison said. “Oh Heather, I really think she’s in trouble.”
Heather bit her lip. “So do I. I called my friend last night and he says he’ll go up to Caserones tomorrow, well, today now, and sniff around. He’s also going to check nothing has been reported to the local police. He said it’s really weird, though. There’s hardly any crime in these mountain villages.”

“Or not
reported
crime,” Alison said, meaningfully.

“Yeah, right.” Heather sighed. “But I really don’t see what we can do. If something
has
happened to her, that woman, the one who owns the house, is in on it. Or at least covering it up.”

“First things first,” Alison said. “See what he comes up with and we’ll report whatever we get to the police and see if they can do anything.”

“I bet they don’t do anything,” Heather said, gloomily. “They’ll say she’s a grown woman and if she decides not to come back from holiday, that’s her business. Just another Shirley Valentine.”
 

Miss Wetherspoon was of the same opinion. “I thought about reporting it myself,” she said, “but I was afraid they’d just laugh at me. Silly old woman with ridiculous fancies. It will carry much more weight if you and the travel agent report it. More official, don’t you know.”

Then, with a change of tone, “How’s Jessica getting on?”

“Jessica,” said Alison, glad of the change of subject, “is living the life of Riley. She is being regaled with treats all day long and my Mum and Dad spent the whole evening playing with her last night.”

She didn’t mention the fact that Jessica had slept in her bed the previous night. She had a feeling Miss Wetherspoon would not approve.

****

Alison stared at her phone the next lunchtime. It said.

             
Village weird. No reports to police. Come round after work.

Why after work?
she wondered. Perhaps it was just too busy at lunchtime. She had a hard time containing her curiosity, but on the other hand it was nice to have time for more than a snatched sandwich. She settled down in the common room and indulged herself reading.

The four o’clock bell saw her busily stuffing books in her briefcase and heading off for the High Street once again. She saw Patsy once more waiting by the gate and felt a stab of pity for her.
Poor kid. 
She obviously adored her Auntie June. What was it Miss Wetherspoon had said? June had been more of a mother to her than her own mother had been. She was tempted to go over to her, but what could she say? Nothing they had found out had been very reassuring. She decided to leave it till she’d spoken to Heather.

“I wanted you to come after work,” Heather said, “because I’d like to go and report it to the police as soon as I shut up and there wouldn’t have been time at lunchtime.

“Johan rang me back this morning. He said he’d checked with the local police and nobody had reported anything that could possible relate to a school teacher on holiday.”

“Johan speaks fluent Spanish, then?” Alison asked.

“Oh yes, he’s lived there for years. He’s got a little complex of holiday villas on his ranch, which is how I know him. Until I discovered him, he used to rent exclusively to Spanish people. His wife is Spanish as well.”

Alison quietly put the lid on her idea that there may have been a love interest there.

“Anyway, to cut to the chase, he went up to Caserones last night and went in the bar just to sort of listen to what people were saying, you know. And he said it was like one of those old Wild West films where the gunslinger walks in the bar and everything goes quiet. They all just stopped talking and stared at him. He said he felt like just turning round and walking out again, but he’d promised me he’d do what he could, so he ordered a beer and sat at the bar and waited for them to forget about him. After a while he could pick up snatches of conversation.”

He must be better at Spanish than me,
Alison thought.
I’ll be damned if I could follow a conversation in Andalusian Spanish unless it was face to face and they went slowly.

“He said they were all frightened of something. He said you could feel it in the atmosphere. And when they spoke it was in whispers. He heard someone say something about ‘the Englishwoman’ but the rest of it was about someone called ‘the Grocer’. What do you make of that?”

Alison looked blank. “A nickname?”

“Maybe. Anyway, they were all worried this Grocer person had come back and he
thought
he heard someone say that the Englishwoman had called him. It was very difficult for him. He said he felt quite threatened. Every so often someone would shush someone and they’d all stop talking and stare at him again. He finished his beer and left.”

“Grocer,” Alison repeated, mystified. It occurred to her that she didn’t know the Spanish for grocer. The only word she could think of was ‘tendero’ which just meant shopkeeper, rather than specifically grocer. She decided to look it up when she got home.

“Well, do you think we’ve got enough?”

“What?” For a moment Alison couldn’t imagine what Heather was talking about.

“Enough to go to the police.”

Alison sighed. “Probably not. But I think we should report it anyway. Even if we just get laughed at. At least we’ll have registered it.”

****

The policeman behind the desk listened politely to what they had to say and then said, “But I don’t know what you want us to do. I mean, she’s a grown woman, isn’t she? If she decides not to come back from holiday there’s not a lot we can do about it, is there?”
“But that’s just it,” Alison said, tears of frustration in her eyes, “She didn’t decide. Something has happened to her.”
“With all due respect, Miss -”

Alison sighed.  Any sentence beginning
with all due respect
was bound to be the opposite.

“-you don’t know that and we can’t go starting a police investigation because some young woman-”