Relatively Dangerous (10 page)

Steven Taylor had been a cuckoo in the respectable nest. People agreed that it was a mercy of providence that he had not been born the elder son since then he would have inherited the estate and to earn the respect of the staff and tenants it would have been necessary to conform, because they, being countrymen, were great traditionalists, yet from the beginning he had refused to conform. He was born five hours after an eminent gynaecologist had given it as a firm opinion that he wouldn’t be for at least forty-eight hours. At his first prep school, the honours system had been in force; pupils were put on their honour not to cheat in their work and were not prevented from doing so by supervision, because this taught them to be true to themselves. When caught cheating, he had tried to explain to the headmaster that under such a system, anyone of intelligence was impelled to cheat because only a fool could ignore the advantages to be gained by so doing. The headmaster had been looking for repentance, not intelligence, and he had been so outraged that he had expelled Steven Taylor even though names from four previous generations of the family were on the Eton Scholarships board. His second prep school, chosen on the grounds that since it was only twenty years old its philosophy would be far more attuned to the sons of the middle class than those of the aristocracy and county, held that every pupil would commit every crime in the book unless prevented from doing so by either force or fear. The three years he’d spent there had taught him that survival called for an ability to think quickly, a gift for lying, and luck.

He went on to Eton, once more back in the mainstream of family tradition. At sixteen and a half, he was found in bed with one of the whores who worked from a house in Gleethorpe Road. The headmaster might, in view of his family history, have found some way of avoiding expelling him had he not, in answer to the question why had he done so degrading and socially dangerous a thing, replied that if degradation was a nineteen-year-old blonde, it was a difficult thing to resist, and honest fornication was surely far less physically dangerous than illegal homosexuality.

Australia no longer quietly received drop-outs from the wealthier families, so it became necessary for the family to decide what to do with him. In view of his known weaknesses —an eagerness to gamble, a disregard for convention, a tendency to lawlessness, the ability to concentrate on the ends and not the means, and an absence of any sense of shame—it was decided to use family influence to get him into a commodity broking firm.

The firm into which he was introduced had one rule that was absolute; no member might trade on his own behalf. At the age of twenty, he used some highly confidential information concerning frost damage in the Brazilian coffee plantations to set up a futures position which netted him half a million pounds. Unfortunately, he paid so much attention to his own affairs that he neglected the firm’s and he lost them just under a million in sugar. The senior partner’s final words on his departure were that, dishonest and incompetent, he was clearly far better suited to the stock market.

He spent the half million in just under seven years. He sampled everything life had to offer and frequently went back for more. His motto might have been: How could one possibly appreciate what was good without sampling what was evil?

When the last of the money was gone, he was faced with the problem of living. Lacking any sense of shame, he didn’t hesitate to approach his elder brother and suggest he join the family trust which ran the land and the growing number of business interests. His brother, a sobersides, a roundhead, a pillar of the establishment, made it quite clear that in his view the father of the prodigal son had been guilty of a grave misjudgement.

Lacking any obvious means of gaining immediate and profitable employment, Steven Taylor accepted that he was left with only one course of action open to him, a course pioneered by the members of the aristocracy. To marry the daughter of a rich man. Even straits more desperate than those he now found himself in would not have persuaded him to marry the majority of such daughters, but Prudence was not only eligible, she was not noticeably spotty. Naturally, he was faced by considerable opposition from other indigent younger sons, but he had one asset none of them possessed, a golden tongue. Three weeks after coming to the decision, when her father was in Florida buying or selling some sort of property, he proposed and was accepted.

When her father returned home and heard about the marriage, he commented angrily on the insolent neck of penniless adventurers who were stupid enough to think he was a soft touch. Nothing more clearly illustrated Steven Taylor’s subtlety of tongue (or perhaps it was the naivety of property tycoons) than the fact that at the end of a two-hour interview, her father had agreed not only to the wedding, but also to continuing and even increasing Prudence’s already very generous allowance.

The marriage had not lasted long. She was, even by the standards of her contemporaries, shallow-minded and to his chagrin he’d discovered that not even all her money compensated for her overriding ambition, to appear regularly in the more mindless upmarket social magazines. They parted soon after their son was born and she remarried, this time to a man of substance—notable head of house at Harrow, a first in Greats, one of the few Lloyds underwriters who had never perfected a scheme to fleece his names, on the invitation lists of all the best hostesses in London. Strangely, the marriage soon bored her and after a while she realized that this was because it was so bland and she had been taught the taste of spice. In angry rebellion, she’d emptied a bowl of rice crispies over her husband’s head. He never did understand why. Not long afterwards, she’d been driving back to her flat in London when a drunken youth, in a stolen Jaguar, had crashed head-on into her car and killed her.

Steven Taylor had read about her death in a newspaper and the article reminded him that he had a son.

Mike went to live with his father. Life changed abruptly and then went on changing, with often heartbreaking rapidity. One day they’d be rich, the next they’d be poor; a large house in January, a terrace two up and two down in July; a new Rover in February, a clapped-out Mini in August. But far more bewildering than these swings were those occasioned by his moves from one school to another, from the private sector to the state one and then back again. Each time he managed to make friends, it was only to be wrenched away from them; each time he changed sectors, he was jeered at by his peers and, until he learned to fight ferociously, bullied because he came from an alien world. School taught him that only the strong survive . . .

Then, without any warning, his father had married again. He’d seen this as a betrayal, even though he was now more than old enough to have realized that his father was searching for security. Muriel was the attractive and very wealthy widow of a much older husband who had originally employed her as his private secretary and had then discovered that, unlike the previous ones, her price was not to be computed solely in pounds.

For a time, life had stabilized. A large house near the small village of Middle Cross, a few miles from Dover, a Philippine couple to run it, a Daimler and a Rover, holidays in exotic places which had not yet been overtaken by hoi polloi . . . Sometimes he wondered if his father and he would have settled down if Muriel had not been such a ridiculous snob who had deliberately set out to use her money to humiliate his father because his background was all that hers was not? But such a question was profitless. She was as she was and his father was as he was and life became too painful for him to stay any longer at Keene House . . .

‘Did you often see or hear from your father after you left home?’ Alvarez asked.

‘Never.’

‘But you must have had some contact with him?’

‘I’ve just said, never.’

‘I find that difficult to understand.’

‘Lucky you! No bloody mixed-up feelings towards your own father? You can’t see what it was like for me. He was my father, but it was he who was responsible for me having had to keep changing schools. Ever had a crowd of kids jeering at you simply because you speak with a different accent from them; and feeling so alone you wanted to die then and there? It was he who married Muriel and gave her the chance to humiliate him because she’d got the money and he hadn’t.’

‘You’re saying that you hated him?’

‘It’s not so simple that one word can describe it. I loved him even as I was humiliated because he allowed himself to be humiliated by Muriel. I looked up to him, but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘Leave him alone,’ said Helen fiercely. ‘Can’t you see how it hurts to talk about it?’

Alvarez changed the line of his questioning. ‘But you did meet your father on this island?’

‘Yes.’

‘How often?’

Twice.’

‘Roughly when was this?’

Taylor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Three or four months ago, then a month.’

‘Didn’t you see him at the beginning of last week?’

‘I didn’t even know he was back on the island.’

‘How did he first learn you were living here?’

‘Through Muriel; she lives on the island now.’

‘You’d kept in touch with her?’

‘When Helen and I decided to try to buy this restaurant, I was fool enough to go to her to borrow the money.’

‘She refused?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Imagine the blot on her social escutcheon if her stepson were to run a tourist restaurant.’

‘She’s so wrong,’ said Helen.

‘Of course she’s bloody wrong,’ he said bitterly. ‘But she won’t even consider heaven until she’s convinced that only the right people are admitted.’

‘Did you know that your father was travelling on a false passport?’ Alvarez asked.

‘I knew he’d changed his name.’

‘Did this surprise you?’

‘Nothing he did surprised me.’

‘Why did he change his name?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You didn’t ask him?’

‘No.’

‘You weren’t at all curious?’

‘I’ve learned to mind my own business and leave other people to mind theirs.’

‘He never gave even a hint of what the reason was?’

‘No.’

Alvarez was certain that Taylor was lying, but equally certain that for the moment nothing would persuade him to tell the truth. ‘Thank you for all your help, señor. And I am very sorry if it has been painful for you, but I promise you that I had to ask the questions.’

Taylor made no reply, nor did he look up when Alvarez stood. But Helen followed Alvarez out into the yard and his car. ‘He didn’t mean to be rude,’ she said earnestly, worried that he had taken offence at the aggressive way in which Taylor had spoken. ‘It’s just that he’s had such a difficult life and he normally hates talking about it. Today’s the first time I’ve heard some of the things he’s just told you.’

‘I understand.’

She studied him. ‘Yes, you really do. Thank you.’

As he opened the car door and climbed in behind the wheel, he thought how strange it was that she should think it necessary to thank him for understanding that no man could ever separate himself from his past.

Alvarez spoke to Superior Chief Salas over the telephone. ‘His real name was Steven Arthur Taylor. He’d been married twice and was clearly a bit of a rogue, but by default rather than intention.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, that . . . What I’m trying to say is that I’m certain he didn’t have vicious motives, he just didn’t find the same dividing line between right and wrong that you and I do.’

‘The practical difference escapes me. Send the information to London.’

‘I’ve already done so.’

‘You have?’ Salas sounded surprised. ‘Then the matter can be closed and you can return all your energies to your normal work.’ He cut the connection.

Alvarez settled back in his chair and stared resentfully at all the accumulated paperwork on his desk.

As so often happened, the line from England was clearer than from Palma. Every word the Spanish-speaking chief inspector said came through undistorted. ‘About your message concerning Steven Thompson. You say that his real name was Steven Arthur Taylor and he was married to Muriel Taylor and used to live in Middle Cross, near Dover. You’ll be interested to learn that, in fact, he died in a car crash in Kent roughly three years ago.’

‘I suppose,’ said Superior Chief Salas, ‘it is now your contention that Taylor died twice?’

‘No, señor,’ replied Alvarez.

‘Not? But surely the idea appeals to your sense of the dramatic? And since when have you ever allowed your imagination to be constrained by impossibilities?’ His anger finally surfaced. ‘Goddamnit, why should I, of all people, be forced to suffer an inspector who is presented with a simple, straightforward car crash and within no more than ten days turns the incident into a second resurrection?’

‘Señor, I don’t see how I can be blamed for the fact that the Steven Taylor who died on this island appears also to have been the Steven Taylor who died in England.’

‘Did you say “appears” to have died in England?’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Then you really do appreciate that it is impossible for the same man to have died twice?’

‘Of course . . .’

‘Experience suggests, Inspector, that in any case in which you are concerned the use of the words “of course” is irresponsible . . . In view of the fact that you accept that one or other of the reports of death must be inaccurate, what do you suggest doing?’

‘We need to exhume the body of the man buried in Fogufol and Michael Taylor must be asked to identify it. If he does identify the deceased as his father, we will know that England made a mistake; if not, then the mistake is ours and we will have to discover the true identity of the man who died here.’

‘Very well.’

‘Shall I apply for permission for exhumation, or will you, señor?’

‘It will be best if I do. Otherwise, there’s every chance that the exhumation order will name Tutankhamen.’

A sectional ladder had been eased inside the mausoleum and then down the shaft; two men, working with great difficulty in the confined space, had coupled up the four hooks of the rope sling to the coffin which had been eased into the shaft and then hauled up by block and tackle. Boards had been slid underneath the coffin, across the mouth of the shaft, and it had been lowered on to these. Four men lifted and eased it out into the open and the harsh sunshine.