Troubled Deaths (24 page)

‘You seem so certain Luis would have been too jealous to trust her. Why? Has he cause to be jealous, but doesn’t know it?’

Orozco pushed the bottle across. ‘Drink.’

Alvarez refilled his glass.

‘So?’

Alvarez looked at him and wanted to put his hands around his shoulders and tell him that while there were men who loved friendship and another’s honour more than life, the world could not be wholly rotten. ‘Does Matilde know or does she only wonder?’

‘Just wonders.’

‘Then only you and I can be certain.’ Alvarez drank. He put down his glass. ‘The foreigners come here and they buy the houses so that peasants can no longer live in them and they waste the rich soil on flowers so that the peasants can no longer grow vegetables. With their money they distort all values until the young want everything and no longer know how lucky they are to have anything. But worst of all they bring corruption with them so that instead of honouring innocence and faithfulness they try to defile and debauch it . . . Let them wallow in their corruption.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that the English señorita accidentally killed the señor, while he deliberately killed her. After all, what could be neater? Everything is taken care of.’ He was silent for a while, then he said: ‘Tell me, do you really believe that a younger wife who is not corrupted but is pure innocence will look at other men behind her husband’s back?’

‘Of course, if she is given the chance.’

‘How can you be so cynically sure?’

‘I was a young and handsome soldier. Once.’

Alvarez finished his drink. ‘What a dirty, stinking world it sometimes is,’ he muttered, with alcoholic despondency.

Ramon Mena was on the hard talking to one of his workmen when Alvarez came through the gateway of the boatyard. He greeted the other. ‘Well, Enrique, what can I do for you? Sell you that twelve-million-peseta yacht you were so interested in?’

‘Some other day. Right now I’d like a quick chat, if that’s convenient?’

‘Sure. Come along to the office so we can do our chatting over a drink.’

They walked into the main shed and passed between two boats, one of which was nearly completed. In his office, Mena pointed to the easy chair on the far side of the desk. ‘Grab a seat while I find the bottle.’ He looked in one cupboard, then turned to a second one. ‘Lucia asked me only yesterday if I’d seen you recently and how were you? I said you were just as dissolute as ever.’ He found the bottle he sought. ‘Ever since my brother died, Enrique, Lucia has been thinking about another husband. Women love dissolute men because it gives them the chance to try to reform them, but she weeps too easily for you.’ He filled two tumblers with brandy. ‘Here you are - drink that up and tell me the news.’ He sat down.

‘First off, you tell me something. How’s the Englishman getting on with you?’

‘If I had a dozen like him, I’d have the best boatyard in Spain.’

‘He’s still working here?’

‘Of course he is. Doing an ordinary bloke’s job until he becomes a partner.’

‘Oh!’ Alvarez slowly shook his head in perplexity. He drank, then shook his head again.

Mena spoke with some asperity. ‘Here, that’s not fifty-peseta coñac, it’s Carlos I, so why are you looking like that?’

‘The cognac’s velvet,’ acknowledged Alvarez, yet if anything looking a shade more gloomily worried.

‘Then what’s eating you?’

‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Me? I’m fine except when someone sits opposite me drinking my best coñac and makes like it’s homemade palo.’

‘But how are we going to keep you out of trouble for breaking the labour acts? That’s the problem.’

‘Who’s broken any labour acts?’

‘The Englishman’s a foreigner and he’s working for you, yet he hasn’t a work permit.’

Mena stared at Alvarez, disbelief slowly giving way to broad amusement. ‘You old bastard!’ he finally said. ‘You really had me worried there, with your ugly old mug looking like the end of the world had happened five minutes ago.’

‘But the work the Englishman is doing at the moment could as well be done by a Mallorquin, couldn’t it?’

‘Of course. D’you think I’m going to let him deal direct with the customers before he’s a partner? I’m not that soft.’

‘If a Mallorquin could do the work, then the Englishman wouldn’t be granted a work permit.’

‘Forget all this nonsense.’

Alvarez shook his head. ‘You’re breaking the law.’

‘So? Am I going to be sent to jail for the rest of my life just because I employ one Englishman without a work permit? Who worries about such technicalities?’

‘The law does.’

‘Then you know what you can do with the law, don’t you? Here, it’s not like you to go on and on this way, moaning about something of no consequence.’

‘Don’t you understand? I’m worried for your sake. These days the government’s making things really tough for someone who breaks the labour laws - because of all the unemployment. Call it a technicality if you like, Ramon, but I’ve seen real trouble come from no worse a breach of the law.’

‘There are foreigners all over the island still being employed without work permits.’

‘Because the law doesn’t officially know about them.’

‘And the law doesn’t officially know about this one.’

‘I know.’

Mena stared with sudden sharp enquiry at Alvarez.

Alvarez finished his drink. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘The big trouble comes afterwards. An employer commits a breach of the acts and gets fined a bit and he reckons that’s an end to it. But it isn’t, not by a long chalk. The inspectors start calling to make certain all the other million and one regulations are being observed and of course some of them aren’t because who ever knows what they all are? Is there enough light and heat, are there proper safeguards, changing rooms, lavatories, showers . . . Your boatyard isn’t all that up-to-date, is it? I’m worried that by the time the inspectors finish with it you’ll have a bill for three or four million in improvements.’

Mena sat very upright and aggressively thrust his chin forward. ‘What is this? A shake-down?’

‘You surely know me better than that.’

‘Then if it isn’t, why go on and on telling me how disastrous things can get?’

‘I’m trying to work out how best you can avoid them.’

‘Tell me.’

‘There could be a way, you know. Make Señor Anson a partner right off and then it’s all over and done with. No one’s going to get hot and bothered over what happened yesterday.’

‘When he comes in this door with a million and a half, he’s a partner.’

‘Sure. Only he hasn’t a million and a half and it looks like now he won’t be able to get it.’

‘He won’t? Then he’s unlucky.’

‘Ramon, you know he’s a first-class bloke and will bring a lot of new work to the yard. Why not give him the partnership now and let him pay you back over the years out of his income? With a proper rate of interest added, naturally.’

‘Impossible! I must have the million and a half to expand and I must expand if I am to have a partner.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’ Alvarez sighed. ‘Life is never as easy as it should be, is it?’ Then he brightened. ‘But here there is one way round the trouble.’

‘Sure. He pays me the million and a half.’

‘You say you need the money. But aren’t you forgetting you already have it? Wasn’t your wife left a finca? The one I’ve been told she’s just sold to a German?’

‘That’s her money.’

‘Understood. But surely she got more than she reckoned on because the German was a fool and didn’t bargain? She’ll have extra money that she won’t have expected.’

‘Who said she sold so well?’

‘Is it a lie, then?’

Mena fiddled with his nose. ‘There was, perhaps, a very little more than she originally thought she’d get.’

‘Not the two million that people are saying you are boasting about?’ Alvarez smiled companionably. ‘Now what could be a better place to invest such extra money than in the future of your boatyard?’

‘Listen, Enrique, I told Eduardo a million and a half and that’s the price. I’d look soft if I climbed down now.’

‘Generous, not soft. And who would hear about it if you didn’t tell?’

‘Why the hell should I do such a thing?’

‘Because I reckon that at heart you like helping people. And also because you would be well advised to avoid the possibility of having to pay out three, could be as much as four, million on all those extra lights, heating, windows, lavatories . . .’ Alvarez became silent.

Mena owed some of his success to the fact that he could make up his mind quickly. He made it up quickly now. He drained his glass, refilled it, then pushed the bottle across the desk. ‘If I had to to do business with you, I’d sew up all my pockets first,’ he said, a note of reluctant admiration in his voice. He studied Alvarez curiously. ‘You must like Senor Anson a hell of a lot?’

‘I hate his guts.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s young.’

‘Well, not even you can do anything about that. Here, fill your glass and drink up. Know something, Enrique? Face to face with you, I begin to feel quite virtuous.’

Alvarez filled his glass and drank.

THE
END