A Necessary Action (27 page)

Exactly half an hour had gone by when the civil guard with the grey moustache came out into the porch, bareheaded and with his jacket unbuttoned. He grasped Willi Mohr’s arm, lightly and in a friendly way, and led him the few steps across the porch, opened the door without knocking and pushed him into the interrogation-room.

Willi stood inside the doorway.

The door was closed at once and the guard’s footsteps faded away.

The ceiling light was on and under the green glass shade a coil of grey cigarette smoke was just spreading out and dissolving.

In the circle of light below sat Sergeant Tornilla writing.

He had been there all the time.

He put down his pen, rose and held out his hand. Willi Mohr took it apathetically and thought: You can tell him everything except one thing. One single thing. One single thing.

Sergeant Tornilla pointed to the bench, but did not repeat all the old phrases, making something of this, as if wishing to emphasize that even a very small joke is spoilt if you use it once too often.

His uniform looked more perfect and newly-pressed than ever. His white shirt-collar was fresh and he must have shaved at the most an hour ago. He politely continued to stand until the other man had sat down, and then he drew the armchair up, sat down behind the desk, pressed his fingertips together and slowly shook his head.

‘You should have taken my advice,’ he said with a sorrowful smile. ‘You should have stayed here at the post. It would have saved a lot of valuable time.’

Willi Mohr said nothing.

‘Excuse me saying so, but you really ought to have washed and changed. And shaved. You’ve eaten, I hope?’

‘You’re much too thoughtful.’

‘Not at all. On the contrary, it is my fault that you are in this
state. I should have made the position clear earlier, and been more definite about you staying here. I can’t think what I was thinking about.’

He sighed reproachfully and frowned.

‘But you’ve slept, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

Willi Mohr sat waiting for a cigarette, but he was not given one.

He could see a corner of the green packet of Bisontes lying in its place behind the telephone. He was so used to being offered cigarettes that quite a long time went by before he thought about using his own. He had a box of Ideales in his pocket but as usual no matches. When he thought about it, he remembered putting them down beside the candle a few hours earlier, as he always used to do before going to bed.

‘Could I have a light?’

‘Soon,’ said Sergeant Tornilla.

He smiled, but made no move towards getting out his lighter.

Instead he went on looking at Willi Mohr, who was waiting with the unlit cigarette between his lips. The only sound in the room was that of flies buzzing round the light and the small dry blows of them hitting the green glass shade.

A minute went by, perhaps two. The smile slowly died away from Sergeant Tornilla’s mouth and the next time he spoke, his voice was clear and business-like.

‘So you left Spain on the second of April on board the yacht
Monsoon
together with Colonel and Mrs Thorpe and Ramon Alemany?’

‘Yes.’

‘To sail to Corsica?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go straight there?’

‘No.’

‘You went into another port on the way?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it called?’

‘Port Vendres.’

‘Quite right. Port Vendres in France, just north of the border. Why did Colonel Thorpe go into this port?’

‘He wanted some spare parts, which he couldn’t get here.’

‘You didn’t know you were going to visit this port before you sailed from here, did you?’

‘No.’

‘So it was a surprise for you when Colonel Thorpe did not sail directly to Corsica?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go ashore in Port Vendres?’

‘Yes.’

‘Together with Ramon Alemany?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you go ashore for?’

‘Nothing special.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing. Went into a bar, looked around.’

‘Did you go on board any other boat in the harbour?’

‘No.’

‘Who did you go to see?’

‘No one at all.’

‘Were you together the whole time?’

‘Yes, more or less all the time.’

‘What do you mean by more or less?’

‘Ramon Alemany went away for a while, while I was sitting at a bar.’

‘How long for?’

‘A hour perhaps.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘He went to see a woman, he said afterwards.’

‘What did he say before he went?’

‘Nothing. He just vanished and was away for a while.’

‘Have you any reason to believe that he was not telling the truth?’

‘No, none at all.’

‘Was Ramon Alemany interested in women?’

Willi Mohr took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and rolled it between his fingers.

‘Did you hear my question? Was Ramon Alemany interested in women?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He often talked about women.’

‘And you then? Weren’t you interested?’

‘Not in the same way.’

‘How could you sit for hours at a bar without any money?’

‘I only drank a glass of mineral water.’

‘Was that all you did? In Port Vendres? Drank mineral water?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, and then you went to Corsica?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have good weather for the trip?’

‘Almost too good. We were becalmed and we had to use the auxiliary engine all the way. The Englishman was very dissatisfied.’

‘As he was with you?’

‘Yes, but this was meanness.’

‘And then you got to Ajaccio. How many days were you there?’

‘Six or seven, while I was on board.’

‘And during that time, Ramon Alemany disappeared.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which day?’

‘Twenty-first of May.’

‘How do you know it was that day exactly?’

‘I simply remember what the date was, that’s all.’

‘I meant this: it was discovered that he was not on board on the morning of the twenty-second. How did you know that he left the day before and not on the morning of the same day that he was missed?’

Willi Mohr squeezed his cigarette out between his fingers. He said nothing and stared sullenly and defiantly across the desk.

‘You knew his plans of course, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

He had been preparing himself for so long for this part of the interrogation that Tornilla’s next question was an anti-climax

‘Do you think you were badly treated on board?’

‘No, it was all right.’

‘Did you get good food?’

‘Relatively.’

‘Where were your quarters on board?’

‘In the fo’c’sle.’

‘Together with Ramon Alemany?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it like in this fo’c’sle?’

‘It was a small triangular space below deck with room for a table and two bunks.’

‘So it was very cramped there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were the bunks opposite one another?’

Willi Mohr hesitated for a moment.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Yes.’

‘Strange,’ said Sergeant Tornilla.

He stretched out his hand, took a file from the filing-cabinet, opened it and pushed a paper across the desk.

‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Read it out aloud.’

It was another typed page with a reference number in the top right hand corner. The text was quite short. Willi Mohr cleared his throat and read:

‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Sergeant Tornilla.

He put out his hand, took the paper and placed it back in its file.

‘The person who wrote that is probably an even worse seaman than you are,’ he said jokingly.

He smiled in a friendly way and let his fingertips play against each other for a while.

‘But it doesn’t matter all that much, as you can understand what he’s saying, can’t you?’

Willi Mohr did not bother to reply, and anyhow the question could be regarded as a rhetorical one. Instead he silently contemplated the result of his first direct lie.

The man in uniform went on smiling.

‘Who was it who did the cleaning? Was it you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you clean up after Ramon Alemany too, when he had left?’

‘Yes.’

His fatigue began to come back. Naturally he should not have answered. Thought Willi Mohr.

Sergeant Tornilla picked up the packet of Bisontes, tapped it against the edge of the desk so that a cigarette shot half way out and politely handed them across. Then he took his lighter out of his pocket and lit it.

‘Smoking before the siesta is a bad habit,’ he said. ‘I fall into it myself sometimes, especially when I’ve got some hard work to
do. But when I’m at home, my wife usually keeps me in order. As I said before, from many points of view one should marry. You should have a family.’

He played with the lighter and smiled at Willi Mohr, who was drawing long, deep drags on his cigarette.

‘So,’ he said, summing up, ‘you don’t know where Ramon Alemany went to, or in what way he left the boat. You didn’t notice when he left the fo’c’sle and took all his possessions with him, but you’re sure he went on the evening of the twenty-first and not on the morning of the twenty-second. The dinghy, which he obviously used, was not found until two days later, drifting outside the harbour. Naturally you don’t know how it got there.’

Willi Mohr smoked.

‘On the other hand, you’re certain that Ramon Alemany has not returned to Spain and is not here now, as you’ve said several times before.’

He opened the file and took out another paper, and this time did not hand it over, but simply absently eyed through the typed text.

‘This is your own account which you gave to the French gendarmerie in Ajaccio on the twenty-fourth of April,’ he said. ‘I presume you remember it so well that you don’t need to read it? Briefly, it says that when you woke up on the morning of twenty-second, Ramon Alemany and all his possessions had gone. As you had no rowing-boat left on board, no one knew about this until Colonel Thorpe and his wife came back that evening. Where had they been, by the way?’

‘At a friend’s somewhere out of the town. Maretti, or something like that.’

‘Quite right. Mazetti was the name of the friend, Lieutenant-Colonel, to be precise. You’ve a good memory. Otherwise then, you didn’t know anything either about why Ramon Alemany had run away or where he had gone to. Well, it’s of no great interest.’

He slipped his lighter into his pocket with a swift movement, as if preparing to go on to something else. When he spoke again, his bantering tone had gone.

‘There are two dates that interest me considerably more than this twenty-second of April. Namely, one the day before, and
two, a day two weeks later, the fifth of May, to be exact. Let’s try to reconstruct both those two days. First the twenty-first of April, the day before you discovered that Ramon Alemany had gone. What did you do that day?’

Willi Mohr drew the back of his hand across his face, as if to wipe away his fatigue and confusion. He was at a decisive point and knew he would have to be very careful.

‘We had been there three days, I think,’ he said hesitantly.

‘Quite right. You came into Ajaccio on the eighteenth of April. When did you go ashore for the first time?’

‘The day after we got there.’

‘With Ramon Alemany?’

‘Yes.’

‘And on the twenty-first, what happened then?’

‘In the morning, I rowed the Englishman and his wife ashore. They were going to visit those Mazettis.’

‘Did you know that they were staying there overnight?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were they usually away from the boat so long?’

‘No, that was the first time.’

‘Shouldn’t someone have stayed on board when neither the Colonel nor his wife was there?’

‘Yes, someone had to be there to be able to fetch them when they wanted to come on board again. We were lying out at a buoy just inside the breakwater. The Englishman used to blow a whistle from the pier when he wanted fetching.’

‘So it had been decided that either you or Ramon Alemany was to stay on board?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet you both went ashore as soon as it was certain Colonel Thorpe had left the town?’

‘Yes.’

‘And left the yacht unguarded?’

‘Yes.’

‘It doesn’t sound very conscientious, does it?’

‘No.’

‘Did you perhaps have an important errand that demanded that both of you were present?’

‘No.’

‘Was it your idea to go ashore?’

‘No.’