Three and One Make Five (2 page)

‘Never did,’ muttered Alvarez.

‘They don’t do anything to me. I reckon it’s all in the mind.’

‘So my mind prefers firm ground.’

They were standing in full sunshine and Alvarez was beginning to sweat from the heat. He moved a couple of metres to his right, into the shade of an evergreen oak. ‘Is it certain Clarke was on his own?’

‘Must have been. If there’d been anyone in the car with him, they’d not have got out, that’s for sure.’

‘Have you turned up anyone who saw or heard the accident?’

‘It’s not the centre of Palma here, you know.’

Alvarez looked down the road to the point where, fifty metres on, it rounded a spur of rock. There would always be a certain amount of traffic, but it would never be great and a long time could pass between vehicles. ‘How far away’s the nearest house?’

‘A couple of kilometres back, so they won’t be of any help . . . Look, what’s got you so concerned?’

‘He was living with a woman and she swears he can’t have been tight and that there wasn’t a bottle of whisky in the car an hour earlier when he left home. On top of that, he didn’t like whisky.’

‘If he wasn’t tight, why’d he leave the braking for so long?’

Alvarez looked up the road towards a right-hand turn two hundred metres away. The black rubber lines, marking panic braking, only started twenty metres from the edge of the road. They suggested that the driver had come round the comer fast and the car had gathered speed on the downhill run: then, too late, he’d realized he’d built up too much speed for the next comer and he’d braked, so fiercely that the car had gone into a dry skid which had taken it over the edge. What but alcohol would so fatally impair a driver’s reactions on a road which was so obviously potentially dangerous?

‘I searched the car,’ said the policeman, ‘and whatever his woman says there’s a smashed bottle of whisky in it, all mixed up with a one-franc piece. If you don’t believe me, go down and look for yourself.’ He noted the expression on Alvarez’s face and added jeeringly: Til hold your hand on the way down.’

Thirty years before, the bay hadn’t officially had a name although the locals had always referred to it as Bahia Mocamba. Low hills surrounded and led down to it, leaving between them a funnel of ever-widening flat, rocky soil. Only one dirt-track had passed through the land and this had not been used very much: the farmers and their families had been known as dour and inhospitable—in fact, they had merely been sturdily independent. Then the valley and its sandy beach had been ‘discovered’ by developers and the dirt-track became a wide metalled road which carried earth movers, bulldozers, cranes, and concrete mixers. Electricity advanced over the hills, to be followed immediately by the telephone. Fields vanished under concrete and the shoreline rose into eight- and ten-storey blocks of flats and hotels. At night, coloured lights advertised discotheques and, after the precipitate arrival of the permissive age, topless bars. Many men became rich. But the bee eaters no longer arrived in May to fill the air with their whistling calls and flashes of brilliant colours.

Clarke’s house was in an up-market urbanizacion which was spread out over the lower slopes of one of the hills to the north of the valley. The garage and parking area in front were at a lower level than the house and to reach the front door one had to climb several stone steps. These caused Alvarez to breathe far too heavily and they reminded him just how out of condition he was.

He rang the front doorbell. A heavily built, middle-aged woman, wearing an apron over a patterned cotton frock, hair swept tightly back into a bun, opened the door and said in Mallorquin: ‘What d’you want?’

‘I’d like a word with Señorita Newcombe. Cuerpo General de Policia.’

‘You know about the señor?’

He nodded.

‘Then don’t you understand she’s not in a state to see anyone? She had to identify the body. It’s been terrible for her.’

‘Of course it has,’ he answered, with obvious sympathy.

‘Then come back another time.’

‘I’m sorry, but I must speak to her now. I’ll be as brief as it’s possible.’

‘She’s already said all she’s got to say.’ ‘Señora, I have to hear her story from herself.’ She studied him, her chunky face expressing uncertainty and then she pulled the door fully open. ‘I suppose you’d best come in. But señor . . . be kind.’

She led him across a square hall and into a large sitting-room. After she’d left, he crossed to the French windows and stepped out on to the patio, which was shaped in a semi-circle and ringed with attractive wrought-iron railings. Being well up on the side of the hill, the view was magnificent, stretching across the town to the bay, with its enclosing hills, and the open sea beyond. But the drop immediately beyond the patio was sheer and this gave the effect of being suspended in mid-air so that he was immediately affected by vertigo. He hurriedly returned inside, cursing his weakness.

Calmer, he examined the sitting-room more closely than before. The furniture was Spanish and of good quality: the two large carpets looked, to his untutored eyes, to be Persian: four paintings hung on the walls and he tentatively identified one of them as being by a Mallorquin artist whose work was now commanding very high prices: to the right of the open fireplace was a stacked music centre, to the left, on a double table, a large colour TV and a video: beyond the music centre was a long bookcase, four shelves high, filled with books. Plenty of money, he thought.

He briefly heard footsteps, staccato on the tiled hall floor, and then Tracey Newcombe entered. In many ways he was an old-fashioned prude and so he believed that while it was natural for men to sow their wild oats ladies, to remain ladies, must sow nothing but decorum. Because Tracey had been living with Clarke, he had automatically thought of her as a whore. Now, face to face, he was astonished to discover that his assumption had been totally wrong.

She was tall and wore a printed cotton shirt and jeans that admitted to, but did not underline, a graceful figure. She had light, curly red hair, cut short and sufficiently unruly that however much she brushed it she still looked as if she’d just stepped in from a windswept moor. Her eyes were cornflower blue and set wide apart, at times giving her a slightly quizzical expression: her nose almost turned up at the tip: her mouth was made for laughing: her chin was both round and square, even if that was impossible. Her face could never be truly described as beautiful, yet it would be remembered long after the memory of a truly beautiful face was gone.

He said in English: ‘I am very sorry, señorita, to have to trouble you at such a sad time.’

She nodded, crossed to the fireplace and stood in front of this, her hands clasped.

‘Are you able to answer a few questions?’

‘I suppose so,’ she answered dully, her voice holding an accent which he could not place.

‘Why not sit down?’

She unlocked her hands and went over to one of the armchairs. ‘What is it you want to know?’

‘What exactly happened yesterday morning and why you believe it was not just a most unfortunate accident?’

She was silent for so long that he was about to prompt her when she suddenly said: ‘We were driving to Palma in the afternoon. Roger was going to see the dentist. After that we were having a picnic supper on Puig Craix. I was making the ham sandwiches when the policeman came here and told me what had happened. I remember, when the doorbell rang I was just telling myself everything would be all right in the end . . .’ She stopped.

‘Was something wrong, señorita?’

She ignored the question. ‘Roger didn’t really like picnics. He said one always got so sticky. That always made me laugh. I mean, half the fun of picnics is getting sticky . . . But I said we had to have one. You see, I was hoping . . . Christ, I need a drink!’ She stood, gestured with her hands, crossed to a mobile cocktail cabinet in the far corner of the room. She opened up the top flaps and this action, through counterweights, brought up a shelf on which were several bottles and half a dozen glasses. ‘Would you like something?’

‘A coñac would be very pleasant.’

She poured out two brandies. ‘Do you like soda and ice?’

Just ice, thank you.’

She added soda to one glass. ‘I’ll go through to the kitchen and get some ice.’ She left.

Silently, he cursed the world which brought bitter sorrow to so many. Priests often said that sorrow ennobled the soul, but he had never believed this was anything other than an attempt to explain away something that was all too clearly unmerciful.

She returned with an insulated ice bucket. Using tongs, she dropped three ice cubes into one glass and then came over to hand the drink to him. When she’d added ice to the second glass, she returned to the armchair. ‘My dad won’t have alcohol in the house. When my sister and me had drinks out, we had to suck peppermints before we returned back home. Mum always knew why we’d been eating peppermints, but Dad never seemed to guess. Or maybe he took care not to. He was always strict, but he was human.’

‘Which part of Britain do you live in, señorita?’

‘New Zealand. South Island. Out in the foothills of the McKerrows, the most beautiful country in the world. When I remember it, there’s a lump in my throat the size of a house and I wonder just what in the hell I’m doing here . . . I needed to go for a picnic on Puig Craix because it’s like Barrats Hill, on Dad’s place: on its own and kind of sugar loaf. When I was a kid I used to climb to the top and think myself queen of the world and when anything really serious went wrong I went up there and petitioned for it to be put right. Not that I can remember who I was petitioning. Maybe it was my fairy godmother.’ There was a brief, forlorn smile that flickered and then was gone. ‘God, that’s a whole lifetime ago!

‘I’d never told Roger about Barrats Hill because that was a personal secret, but I’m sure he understood there was some special reason for driving to Puig Craix and it wasn’t just to have a picnic. That’s why he agreed to go when he’d so much rather have eaten here or gone to a restaurant . . . The ham sandwiches I was making are in the fridge now. After the policeman had gone, I wrapped them up in film because I just couldn’t believe him and I was so sure Roger would be back and we’d be off . . .’ She stared into space for several seconds, then drank.

‘Señorita, it cannot seem to you now that time will heal the wounds, but it will. I promise you that.’

She said angrily: ‘How in the hell can you know what time will do?’

‘Many years ago, my fiancee was killed by a car,’ he said quietly. ‘Her wedding-dress had been made and although I never saw it I know it would have made her the most beautiful woman in the world . . . In time, my memories of her became precious, not open knives. Last night, Pedro, a very great friend of mine, died. Now, my memories of him are open knives, but gradually they also will become precious.’

Tears welled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. ‘God, I wish . . . .’ Her tone became almost fierce. ‘We both need Barrats Hill.’

‘Señorita?’

‘Will you drive us to Puig Craix?’

He hesitated, but only for a second. If he could help ease a little of her sorrow, perhaps she could help ease a little of his. ‘Of course,’ he said.

The hill rose out of the island’s central plain with all the suddenness and symmetry of a child’s drawing. Pine trees grew up its sides for two-thirds of its height, then the rock became bare except for the occasional clump of weed grass or cistus bush. For two hundred years there had been a hermitage on the crown, but in the twentieth century few men felt the call and the last resident had died nineteen years before. There was only a mule track leading up to the hermitage and largely because of this—to convert the buildings into a tourist restaurant would, in the absence of a road, be ridiculous—the buildings had been left to decay.

They reached the summit and sat just outside the shadows of a square building whose roof had fallen in. For a while neither spoke, Tracey because her thoughts were obviously far away, Alvarez because he was so short of breath, his heart was thumping, and his legs were shaking from exhaustion; if the climb had been only fifty metres longer, he felt certain he would have collapsed.

Tracey, who now lay on her stomach, her head resting on her crossed arms, broke the silence. ‘I left home because I couldn’t stand things any longer. Life had to be something more than doing the same thing day after day. Mary, my sister, never ever felt like that. She’s always hated change. She’s married to a bloke she’s known since she was a kid and if she was given one wish it would be for things to go on just as they are. Sometimes, like now, I wish to God I could have been like her. But what should life be? Should it be just living and not being hurt too often, or the excitement of exploring but being hurt over and over again?’

‘I don’t know, señorita.’

Tor Pete’s sake, I’m Tracey.’ She turned her head round until she could look at him. ‘And now you’re going to tell me your name?’

‘Enrique.’

Enrique—is that Henry? I’ve always like Henry: it’s the name of kings—but you’re much too nice to be a king. You’re one of the kindest men I’ve ever met.’

In his embarrassment, he smiled briefly.

‘You must do that more often: it makes you stop looking sad and as if you’ve learned that nothing’s real, it’s all an illusion . . . I’m talking absolute nonsense and d’you know why? It’s because we’re on Barrats Hill and everything that’s said is secret so I can be as nonsensical as I want. You do know it’s all secret here, don’t you, Enrique?’

Yes.’

‘That’s why I’m going to tell you . . .’

‘Tell me what?’

Her momentary vivaciousness was gone and her voice became once more sad. ‘Something I don’t want to confess even to myself . . . Things were often difficult between me and Roger. We kept having rows. They started quite a time back, when he went to Liechtenstein and wouldn’t take me. I accused him of going after another woman . . . When he came back he’d brought me such a lovely present I said it was conscience money . . . Then things kind of came all right again. But we still had rows. He was undemonstrative and only a fortnight ago I shouted at him that love had to be a two-way operation. I don’t think he understood what I was really trying to say . . . I remembered home and all of a sudden I wanted to be back where nothing changes and tomorrow’s going to be the same as today. To tell the truth, I’d decided to leave him if our picnic here didn’t really change things . . . And then yesterday morning . . . It’s made me feel . . .’ She stopped.