The Butcher Beyond (24 page)

‘I don't know what you mean,' Sutcliffe countered.

But it was plain that he did.

‘He'd come to the conclusion that with all the security surroundin' Durán, it was goin' to be impossible to get to him, so he saw no choice but to go about matters another way entirely.' Woodend paused for a second. ‘It's not too difficult to trace the lines his mind must have run along, you know. He'll have argued that Durán had hoped that by killin' Medwin he'd scare you all into leavin', but since that hadn't worked, the
Alcalde
would have no choice but to kill again. An' this time, Mr Sutcliffe –
this time
– Mitchell decided he was goin' to make it easy for him.'

‘Why would he have done that?'

‘Because there was always a chance that Durán would make a mistake an' get caught. An' that would mean that even if he couldn't be punished for what he did to your comrades on the beach – or for what he did to Medwin – he could at least be prosecuted for killin' someone else – a man who was dyin' of cancer anyway.'

‘You're guessing,' Sutcliffe accused.

‘I know I am,' Woodend agreed. ‘But I'm right, aren't I?'

‘Yes, you're right,' Sutcliffe said heavily. ‘He told me his plan in confidence. I tried to talk him out of it. I told him to put his faith in God. But he wouldn't listen to me.'

‘Of course, he wouldn't have to make the sacrifice at all if somebody got to Durán before Durán got to him,' Woodend said. ‘And somebody did! Did you kill Antonio Durán, Mr Sutcliffe?'

‘No, I did not.'

‘To your knowledge, did any other member of your group kill Antonio Durán?'

‘No, they did not.'

The denials were flowing far too easily, Woodend thought. Perhaps that was because he was not asking the right question.

‘Did
God
kill Antonio Durán, using one of you as His chosen instrument?' he demanded.

‘I have said all I intend to say,' Sutcliffe told him. ‘You may flay my skin or cast me into the lion's den, but I will say no more.'

Captain López and his two uniformed constables stood in the spacious grounds of Don Antonio Durán's luxury villa. In front of them was the crystal blue sea. Behind them towered the majestic brown mountains of the
sierra
. But they had not come to admire the view.

‘We found nothing of any importance in any of the
brigadistas
' rooms,' the Captain said. ‘That is regrettable. But perhaps we will have more luck with our search of the
Alcalde
's garden.'

The two constables glanced furtively at each other, and reached an unspoken agreement that the senior of the two should ask the question that they both wanted answered.

‘We are not quite sure what it is we are looking for, my Captain.' the constable said.

‘You are looking for anything which will tie the foreign
hijos de puta
in with the murder of Don Antonio.'

‘For example?'

López sighed heavily. ‘I would have been better served by a team of trained donkeys,' he said. ‘Or monkeys! Monkeys have brains. You, it seems do not.'

‘If you could give us a hint of what you want, my Captain …'

‘Find me a footprint or a scrap of clothing, for God's sake. Something –
anything
– that belongs to one of the
brigadistas
.
Now
do you understand what I want?'

‘Yes, my Captain,' the constable said. ‘I am sorry to have been so stupid, my Captain.'

‘I will put in a requisition for a troupe of monkeys in the morning,' López said. He looked around him. ‘Start your search with the rose bed. And go carefully. I do not want you to damage any of the flowers.'

The constables walked over to the rose bed and – wishing they'd thought to bring gloves with them – began to gingerly part the prickly stems and peer between them.

‘Have you found anything yet?' López called out impatiently.

‘Not yet, my Captain.'

‘Then keep looking. I have a strong instinct about that particular spot.'

He had no sooner spoken than the senior constable
did
notice something – an object gleaming in the sunlight, at the very centre of the rose bed.

‘My Captain!' he called. ‘My Captain! Come quickly.'

‘D
o you know what makes you different to your comrades, Mr Roberts?' Woodend asked.

The thin-faced man grinned. ‘There are many things which make me different,' he said. ‘I'm a freer spirit than they are. I'm prepared to take chances they're not. If any of the others had run the risks I ran in the war, they'd be dead. But I have a charmed life.'

‘You're not just saying that, are you?' Woodend asked, with genuine curiosity. ‘You really do believe it.'

‘A gambler has to believe it if he is to continue to gamble,' Roberts replied. ‘But what's the thing that
you
think sets me apart from the others?'

‘They're all travelling under false names,' Woodend said. ‘An' I can see why they would be. A man plannin' a murder wants to be as anonymous as possible. But you're
not
using an alias.'

‘Aren't I? What makes you so sure of that?'

‘
Sutcliffe
makes me sure of it. He was prepared to swear he hadn't known the others under the names they're usin' now, but he wasn't willin' to do the same for you.'

‘So you're right, and I really am called Roberts,' the other man admitted. ‘What of it?'

‘Why didn't you bother to take the same precautions as the rest of your mates did?'

‘I thought that would make the whole thing far too easy,' Roberts said. ‘Where's the thrill in staking all you have in a game of poker against a man you
know
you can beat? What's the point of taking a bend in the road at speed – and on the wrong side of the road – if you're certain there is nothing coming in the other direction? Life without the element of chance – without the possibility of failure – is no life at all.'

‘Did you kill Durán?'

‘It's a waste of time your asking that particular question.'

‘Why?'

‘Because if I had, I wouldn't be likely to admit it, would I?'

‘Murderers have surprised themselves by confessin' before now,' Woodend said.

‘Ah, I see what you're after!' Roberts said. ‘You want to
hear
me deny it. Or rather, you want to study me as I say it, to see if I'm lying. But that wouldn't work with me. I have a poker face.'

‘Try it anyway,' Woodend suggested.

All expression drained from Roberts' face, and he looked Woodend straight in the eye. ‘I did not kill Durán,' he said. ‘Correction – I did kill him. I'm the murderer. No, I'm not. It was somebody else.'

‘You're right, I can't tell when you're lyin' or when you're not,' Woodend admitted. ‘Tell me one more time.'

‘I did not kill Durán,' Roberts said.

Woodend sighed. ‘You spent the night Durán died in the same room as Sutcliffe, didn't you?'

‘That's right.'

‘An' did either of you leave the room at any point?'

‘I didn't.'

‘What about Sutcliffe?'

‘You surely don't think Sutcliffe killed Durán!'

‘It's a possibility.'

‘You're on completely the wrong track. Sutcliffe's very good at talking about violence – he can quote every gruesome death in the Old Testament at you chapter and verse – but that's not the same as saying that he killed Durán.'

‘Are you tryin' to tell me he went through the whole Civil War without spillin' blood?'

‘No, he will have killed some of the enemy. It was hard not to, if you weren't to be killed yourself. But he'll have done it with a rifle. From a distance. He doesn't have the stomach for close-quarter fighting.'

‘What about you? Do you have the stomach for it?'

‘I could do anything I set my mind to.'

‘
Could
do? Not could
have done
?'

Almost miraculously, Roberts started to look uncomfortable. ‘I bayoneted a man once,' he said.

‘In the guts?'

‘That's what they always tell you to aim for.'

‘An' how did you feel when it was over?'

Roberts skin was slowly acquiring a slightly green tinge. ‘I didn't feel
anything
,' he said. ‘It was a job I had to do, and I did it. Then I moved on to something else.'

‘I bayoneted a man once, myself,' Woodend said.

‘So why did you need to ask me what it felt like?'

‘To see if our experiences matched.'

‘And did they?'

‘Not exactly. I kept on fighting, because there wasn't much choice about that. An' when the battle was over, I told myself that I could put it all behind me – that I could forget the look of agony on his face, an' the squelchin' sound as the blade sank in. The man I killed couldn't scream, you know. He wanted to, but he didn't have the air left in his lungs for it.'

‘What's any of this got to do with me?' Roberts demanded angrily.

‘I was quite calm until we camped for the night,' Woodend said. ‘Then I started gettin' these terrible pains in my stomach. An' before I knew what was happenin', I was spewin' my ring up. Of course, you'll never have experienced anythin' like that, will you?'

‘No,' Roberts gasped. ‘Nothing like that. As I said, it was all in a day's work.'

‘It's interesting that you don't seem to think
Sutcliffe
was involved in any fighting at close quarters,' Woodend said. ‘After all, he was a scout behind enemy lines. I would have thought he'd have found himself in any number of situations when a rifle would have been too noisy to use, an' he'd have to resort to a knife instead.'

‘He … he would have told me if anything like that had happened to him,' Roberts said.

‘Oh, close friends, were you? Confidants?'

‘Yes.'

‘Funny, that. I can't really see the man of God an' the professional sinner bein' close mates. But let's go back a bit, shall we?
Did
Sutcliffe leave the room that night?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘But you're not sure?'

‘I was asleep.'

‘Asleep?'

‘That's what I said.'

‘You fell asleep on the very night when you were afraid that Durán would send one of his men down to the hotel to deal with you in the same way as he'd dealt with Medwin?'

‘I wasn't
afraid
.'

‘Of course not. You're Roberts the Gambler. You don't know the meaning of fear. So let me put it another way. You felt some
concern
that your lives might be in danger?'

‘That's more like it,' Roberts agreed.

‘An' in order to increase your chances of survivin' the night, you decided to sleep two to a room?'

‘Yes.'

‘But you didn't take it in turns to stand guard? You just
fell asleep
. You put yourselves in a position where anybody could have walked into your room and slit your throats!'

Roberts bit his lower lip. ‘The door was locked,' he said.

‘Locks can be picked,' Woodend pointed out. ‘You knew that. If you'd thought a locked door was all the protection you needed, you'd never have doubled up.'

‘All right,' Roberts agreed reluctantly. ‘The plan was for us to take it in turns to stand guard. Sutcliffe took the first watch, but fell asleep himself, and the first thing either of us knew, it was morning.'

‘You mean the first thing
you
knew, it was mornin'?'

‘Like I said, Sutcliffe fell asleep as well.'

‘Are you a heavy sleeper, Mr Roberts?'

‘Not normally, no.'

‘But you were that night?'

Roberts grinned awkwardly. ‘Must have been the sea air.'

‘Or else you were drugged.'

The very idea seemed to offend Roberts. ‘Drugged!' he repeated. ‘What do you take me for? An amateur?'

‘Anyone can be drugged.'

‘I'm a professional gambler,' Roberts said angrily. ‘Gambling's not just dealing the cards and placing a bet, you know. It's a whole approach to life. There are always some toe-rags on the gaming circuit who'll try to slip you a Mickey Finn to take the edge off your play. You learn how to avoid it. If I'd been drugged, I'd have known about it. You can believe me on that.'

Captain López burst into the room without knocking. ‘You must come up to the
Alcalde
's villa immediately,' he told Woodend.

‘An' why should I want to do that?'

‘I have found vital evidence, and I do not want to touch it until you, too, have seen it where it lies.'

‘What “vital evidence” are we talkin' about here?' Woodend wondered.

‘The murder weapon,' López told him. ‘My men and I have found the murder weapon.'

‘L
ook there,' López said, pointing into the centre of the
Alcalde
's rose garden. ‘What do you see?'

Woodend peered through the bushes. ‘I see some kind of dagger,' Woodend said. ‘Is it lyin' exactly where it was found? Or have you moved it?'

‘Neither I, nor my men, have laid a finger on it,' López said. ‘We leave that task to the “expert” from England, who did not find it himself, but will no doubt claim all the glory.'

Ignoring the comment, Woodend took a step forward and examined the ground around the knife.

‘I don't see any footprints,' he said. ‘An' none of the bushes look as if they've been trampled. Now why do you think that is, Captain?'

‘Perhaps the killer
threw
the knife into the bushes,' López suggested.