An Enigmatic Disappearance (2 page)

‘I don't feel it.'

He was showing his age; all sixty-eight years of it. His complexion was grey, his cheeks were sunken, the lines in his face had deepened, and stubble added an air of old-man slovenliness. ‘Poor darling, what a nightmare it's been. It was so nearly…' She was unable to finish.

‘Perhaps it would have been better if I had died.'

‘Don't say such a ghastly thing,' she said, pandering to his desire for excessive sympathy. ‘If you knew how I prayed and prayed for you…'

‘A waste of time.'

‘Something worked the miracle. I've brought you something to help cheer you up.' She went over to the settee to pick up the shopping bag, handed this to him. He brought out a bottle of red wine and another of whisky. He dropped them at his side, leaned back, closed his eyes, and groaned.

‘Shall I pour you a whisky?'

‘No.'

‘Then how about some wine? It's the special Lan you like. And people keep saying how good it is to drink red wine; makes one live longer.'

‘The sooner I die, the better.'

‘You mustn't go on and on saying things like that.'

‘If you felt as I do, you'd understand.'

She leaned over to place her cheek against his. ‘Poor, poor bunnikins. But when you're better, which I know will be soon, we'll enjoy ourselves so much you'll want to live for ever.' She left the bedside and went over to the settee to sit. ‘What did the doctor say this morning?'

‘How would I know? Why are they so stupid that the doctors don't speak English? I told him, my cheeks still hurt, my throat's agony, and my stomach feels as if it's being minced up. All he could do was gabble away in Spanish, not caring whether or not I understood.'

‘Couldn't you catch anything he said?'

‘No. You know what's really going on, don't you?'

‘What?'

‘He doesn't give a damn how I am because all the time he's laughing at me.'

‘That's impossible. Doctors never laugh at their patients.'

‘Maybe they don't in England. Here, everything's different.' He stared through the window, looking at, but not seeing, the distant range of mountains that were topped by an intensely blue sky in which one small orphan cloud was drifting towards the east. ‘I took every possible care. I made certain it was always less than a gram. You told me the wrong amount.'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Then how did it happen?'

‘D'you think that perhaps…' She stopped.

‘What?'

‘Well, maybe you could have mixed up the weights because you'd had a little too much to drink…'

‘Of course I couldn't, even if they do have such a bloody silly system of weights.' He chewed his lower lip for a few seconds. ‘The bastard was laughing at me! He won't find it funny when he's my age.'

He was, she thought, suffering as much from a sense of humiliation as from physical pain. A few weeks before their marriage, she'd been having lunch with Nina, who had been her best friend from time to time. ‘He's a pompous old fart,' Nina had said in her husky voice which had so captivated a visiting American colonel, ‘but that'll mean he'll never see what's going on under his nose so you'll be free to do your own thing. A recipe for the perfect marriage.'

‘What are you thinking?' he asked.

‘I was remembering how I was with Nina one day and she collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital. To begin with, the doctors were very grim-faced, but then she surprised them by taking a sudden turn for the better. I was so relieved when I heard what had happened, but it was as nothing to when the doctor told me you'd live. That was like … like being reborn.'

‘I couldn't stand Nina.'

‘I know. It was such a pity because she could be very amusing.'

‘At other people's expense.'

‘She could be a bit naughty with the things she said. But she could also be very complimentary. She knew you didn't like her and that made her sad, but she still said what a nice man you were and how she was sure we'd have a great time together.'

‘She said that?'

‘Yes.'

‘You surprise me.'

‘Quite recently I read that the perfect wife tries to give her husband a little surprise every day.'

‘What if it's a nasty surprise?'

‘It can't be if she's the perfect wife.'

‘You're bright and breezy today,' he said with fresh resentment.

‘Because you're going to be leaving here soon and I can have you back at home … Bunnikins, have you everything you need?'

‘I want the television.'

She looked across at the set on a small table.

‘Everything's in either Spanish or Mallorquin,' he said angrily. ‘They don't stop to think about people like me.'

‘I thought there was a local station which showed the news in English?'

‘Only a short news. And then it's almost all about Spain. Who's interested in what goes on in this place?… Get someone to fit up a dish for me and bring in our card and then I can watch some decent programmes on satellite.'

‘I don't think that's possible…'

‘What is it? You can't be bothered?'

‘Bunnikins, how can you say anything so hurtful?' She sounded close to tears.

‘I can't understand why you won't do it.'

‘Because this room faces north and a dish has to face south.'

He swore. ‘Typical! They deliberately put me in a room facing the wrong way. But they'll take my money quicker than I can hand it to them.'

‘You'll soon be home and then you can watch what you want.'

He scratched the side of his stubbled cheek. ‘I suppose no one's bothered to ask after me?'

‘Everyone has been, and wishing you well.'

‘Who's “everyone”?'

‘Edna rang and said I was to give you her love; Iris was in the supermarket near the cloisters and she hopes you'll very soon be out of hospital; Cora and Clive were in the post office when I collected the mail and they asked how you were and hoped you'd soon be fighting fit.'

‘She asked or he did?'

‘She did, as a matter of fact.'

‘That's not surprising. He wouldn't give a damn if I'd died. Supercilious bastard! You didn't tell him what was the matter with me, did you?'

‘Of course I didn't. I told him and Cora the same as everyone else. You've suffered severe food poisoning, but we can't work out what you ate that caused it. That's right, isn't it?'

‘I suppose he can't make much out of that.'

‘Oh … I nearly forgot. Ada rang last night to ask how you were.'

‘Not like her to bother about anyone else when she's so wrapped up with that little spaghetti gigolo.'

‘Why are you always so nasty about him?'

‘D'you expect me to say what a fine, upstanding man he is when he lets himself be trailed around like a pet dog? It's obscene. She's three times his age.'

‘But…' She stopped, then continued in a troubled tone: ‘I thought you always said that a difference in ages doesn't matter?'

‘When the man's older, it doesn't,' he said hastily. ‘But it's totally different when it's the woman.'

‘I suppose that's right,' she said meekly.

Twenty minutes later, she stood. ‘I really must go, my darling.'

‘What's the rush?'

‘I wish I could stay longer, but there's a special concert on in the cloisters and you've always said we must go to that sort of thing, even if it's as boring as hell, to show the locals we've got cultural taste.'

CHAPTER 3

It was the height of summer, a time when a reasonable man accepted that stress was potentially fatal. As Alvarez made for the door of his office, the phone began to ring. He ignored it. The call might be important.

Downstairs, he passed the duty cabo, who was reading a girlie magazine, and continued through to the road. Keeping on the shade side, he made his way to the old square and the Club Llueso. The barman did not bother to ask him what he wanted, but poured a large brandy and then filled a scoop with ground coffee and fixed this into the coffee machine. Alvarez carried the glass across to a window table, sat, and sipped the brandy as he stared at the swirling crowd of tourists. A very stout woman, wearing the tightest of T-shirts and the shortest of shorts, climbed the steps up to the levelled section amidst a constant wobble of flesh.

‘Fair takes the appetite away,' said the barman, as he put a cup of coffee on the table. ‘D'you think she parades around like that in Berlin?'

As she reached the top, two much younger and slimmer women, equally sparsely dressed, passed her as they came down the steps. ‘That's more like it,' said the barman appreciatively. ‘I wouldn't mind showing them my orange trees.'

‘You'd have to shed several years before they'd accept.'

‘Speak for yourself.'

‘I'm mature enough not to want to pluck every fruit I see.'

‘You're a bloody hypocrite.' The barman left.

That was unjust, Alvarez thought. He watched the two young women until they became lost from sight and assured himself that he had admired them solely on account of the grace with which they had moved …

To his surprise, he found his glass was empty. He had it refilled. As he drank some of the brandy, preparatory to pouring what was left into the coffee, he heard the church clock strike the hour. Time had the annoying quality of always moving at an unwanted pace; enjoy oneself and it raced, suffer and it loitered …

Back in his office, breathless and sweating from the climb up the stairs, the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.

‘I've been trying to get hold of you for the past hour,' a woman said angrily.

His tone became one of patient authority. ‘In my job, I cannot spend my time in the office, just sitting down.'

‘From all accounts, you do your best.'

‘Who's talking?' he demanded.

‘Concha Marti.'

She was not a woman to be treated cavalierly. ‘I've only this moment returned from a very difficult and exhausting investigation.'

‘I saw Dolores yesterday morning and she said you're completely out of condition. I told her, that's because, like all men, you eat and drink far too much. She should feed you on simple food, like chickpeas, and throw every bottle into the dustbin.'

The Marti family had always been regarded as peculiar, not to say downright insane. ‘I am a very busy man. Do you want something?'

‘Would I be talking to you if I didn't?… The señor's more difficult to understand than a two-year-old, so it's me doing the phoning. D'you understand?'

‘You're phoning in connection with what?'

‘I'm trying to tell you, aren't I? Why d'you keep interrupting?'

He hadn't interrupted her once, but he was not prepared to point that out. Not only was she an aggressive woman with a tongue edged with steel, she and Dolores were friends. ‘Someone is in trouble?'

‘The señora.'

‘What has happened to her?'

‘If he knew that, he wouldn't be going on so, would he?'

‘She's missing?'

‘Went out yesterday afternoon and never came back.'

‘What is the señor's name?'

Her answer was a jumble of sound, and he asked her to spell out the name. Ogden. Since English pronunciation was often a mystery even to the English, he'd no better idea how to say Ogden than she had. ‘Has he asked his friends if they know where she is?'

‘He's been on the phone a lot. Can't understand what he says, of course.'

‘Why not?'

‘Sweet Mary! but you ask stupid questions. He speaks in English, that's why not.'

‘Why's he asked you to phone me?'

‘Haven't I said?'

‘What I mean is, do you work for him?'

‘Of course I do, even if they're a couple of skinflints. When I asked for nine hundred an hour instead of eight hundred, the señora tried to tell me they couldn't afford that much.' There was a snort of derision. ‘She's a fool to think I would go on working for eight hundred when down in the port it's now over a thousand. And what is an extra hundred to the likes of them? You tell me that.'

‘It does mount up over time…'

‘Listen to him! It mounts up. You think a foreigner has to worry like that when they're as rich as a mayor who's enjoyed ten years of brown envelopes?'

He thought few foreigners could be that rich. ‘What's the address?'

‘Ca'n Nou.'

‘Which is where?'

‘Cami de Polso.'

In the past couple of years, reputedly at the European Union's expense – this seemed likely since the exercise had been unnecessary – every lane in the countryside had been given a name and posted; this was not one he recognized, but he was not going to give her the satisfaction of admitting so. ‘Tell the señor I'll be along as soon as possible.'

Having replaced the receiver, he studied the files and paper which littered the desk and sighed at the thought of all the work involved if ever he decided to sort them out and clear them up. He checked the time. It should be possible to speak to Ogden about his missing wife before it would be necessary to stop work for lunch. Lunch. Dolores hadn't cooked Cocido Andaluz for quite a while so perhaps she was doing so now. In her hands, beef, bacon, beans, potatoes, pumpkin, chorizo, morcilla, garlic, tomatoes, and spices, became miraculously transformed into ambrosia … But what if the unthinkable were thought? What if Dolores had listened to Concha's ravings? Lunch then might be so plain and uninteresting that even a starving pilgrim would hesitate to eat … He left the room a troubled man.

Downstairs, the cabo was still reading; his resentment at Alvarez's interruption was clear. ‘Never heard of the road.'