Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire Page 3

  ‘What happened to her husband and baby?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘She never saw either of them again,’ Doña Pilar said, wiping away a tear with her handkerchief. ‘But enough of that – let me tell you about cousin Mauricio, who once shook hands with a big American film star.’

  The first customer who came into the shop after Luis Ibañez returned from his coffee was an old man who was looking around in amazement, as if he had suddenly and unexpectedly found himself in an alien world.

  But as out of his depth as he might be, he probably had a fat wallet – Luis could smell money at a hundred metres – and when Antonio, one of the junior salesmen, started to approach this new customer, the manager quickly cut in ahead of him.

  ‘How can I help you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to buy a gramophone for my granddaughter,’ the old man said uncertainly. ‘It’s for her birthday, and I want the best you have.’

  Oh, he’d certainly get the best they had, Luis promised, already calculating how much extra commission he could make from the little ‘add-ons’.

  And then, much to his disgust, he saw that the delivery man had finished his lunch earlier than expected, and had entered the shop with a trolley packed high with music centres.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the customer, turning and intercepting the ever-helpful Antonio before he had time to reach the delivery man.

  ‘I will assist with unloading the new stock,’ the manager said to the young salesman.

  ‘But you’ve got a customer,’ Antonio pointed out.

  ‘You deal with the customer,’ Luis said, ‘and …’ he swallowed hard, ‘you can have the commission.’

  ‘All of it?’ the assistant asked, open-mouthed.

  ‘All of it,’ Luis snapped. ‘Well, get on with it, then.’

  The assistant went over to the customer, and launched straight into his sales patter. A Dolby unit was a must, he said. He had one himself, and the sound filled the room.

  The customer was not really listening. Instead, he was watching as the delivery man and the manager pushed a cart containing the new equipment across the shop floor to the cash desk, where Sr Garcia carefully counted the boxes before signing the invoice.

  ‘So what do you think, sir?’ the young salesman asked eagerly.

  ‘Do you know, I think I’ve rather lost interest in the whole idea,’ Paco Ruiz replied.

  The last of the paella had been eaten, and the plates cleared away. Now, everyone was sipping coffee, and most of the men had a brandy as well.

  ‘Louisa has brought us some pictures of her life in England, Mother,’ Don Jaime said. ‘Do you think that this would be a good time to look at them?’

  ‘It would be an excellent time,’ Doña Pilar said.

  Louisa reached under the table for her satchel.

  She had thought long and hard about which postcards and photographs to include in what her mother had, slightly sarcastically, called her ‘Welcome to Sunny Whitebridge Package’. The problem was that she did not want to paint a rosily dishonest picture of a town which was in industrial decline, but nor did she want to besmirch the place which was her home, so in the end she had chosen a selection of pictures, and left it to those viewing them to reach their own conclusions.

  She opened the satchel and took her carefully selected exhibits out.

  Aunt Pilar liked the pictures of the moors which surrounded Whitebridge.

  ‘Good for sheep,’ she said approvingly.

  But she was not at all impressed by the factory chimneys.

  ‘We Valencianos have too much respect for good clean air to allow such monstrosities in our region,’ she commented, with some disdain. ‘We leave that sort of thing entirely to the money-grabbing Catalans and the Basques.’

  ‘We mostly leave it to them,’ Don Jaime said in fairness – and almost under his breath, ‘but there are factories in the Valencia region.’

  ‘But not in Calpe,’ his mother countered.

  ‘No,’ Don Jaime agreed, ‘not in Calpe.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ his mother said, as if she had just demolished his argument.

  Doña Pilar showed great interest in Louisa’s personal photographs.

  ‘Now that is a fine figure of a man,’ she said, looking at a picture of DI Beresford. ‘Do you like him, little Louisa?’

  ‘Yes, I call him Uncle Colin.’

  ‘Then your mother should marry him.’

  The picture of DS Meadows did not meet with the same approval.

  Doña Pilar ran her eyes over the short skirt and the pixie haircut, and then said, ‘This one could learn a little modesty from the women of Spain.’

  One of the last of Louisa’s exhibits was a newspaper article which had a photograph of three people in it. Two of them were men – and the third was Louisa herself. She and the younger of the two men were in the foreground, and smiling self-consciously at the camera. The older man was standing a little behind them, and if he was aware he was being photographed, it didn’t show in his expression.

  Louisa had been in two minds about whether to bring the article with her. On the one hand, she had argued with herself, it did seem just a little like showing off. But on the other hand, she had never had her picture in the paper before, and she was secretly quite proud of it.

  ‘This is a newspaper story about the Whitebridge Hispanic Circle,’ she explained. ‘It’s only a small group of people, but we manage to do all sorts of interesting things.’

  ‘Such as?’ Uncle Jaime asked.

  ‘If there’s an exhibition of Spanish paintings, or a concert of Spanish music, we organize a trip to go and see it. And we have a stall at the Whitebridge May Fair, which sells Spanish food.’

  ‘What is wrong with buying the food from ordinary shops?’ Aunt Pilar asked, puzzled.

  ‘Nothing,’ Louisa said. ‘But you can’t buy Spanish food in the ordinary shops.’

  ‘You’re being silly, child,’ Doña Pilar said. ‘You can buy chorizo and morcilla everywhere.’

  ‘Not in Whitebridge.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Aunt Pilar said firmly. ‘Even just after the war – at the time of the great hunger – there was still chorizo and morcilla. If you look hard enough, you will find it.’

  Uncle Jaime gave Louisa a smile which said that she should understand that his mother had very definite views which were based on very limited experience.

  ‘Who are the other two people in the picture?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s Mr – I mean, Sr – Martinez and his father,’ Louisa said. ‘The younger Mr Martinez was the founder and president of the Hispanic Circle, but now he’s been elected as our member of parliament, he’s had to give that up.’

  ‘Your member of parliament!’ Don Jaime said, clearly impressed. ‘You see, Mother, England is such a land of opportunity that even a foreigner – a Spaniard – can become part of the government.’

  ‘I spit on all politicians,’ his mother replied.

  It was time to put her photographs away, Louisa thought, but when she turned to where she had carefully placed them, she saw that they had vanished. Then she realized that they had not disappeared at all, but were being passed around the table.

  Her Uncle Jaime smiled again. ‘In this family, when one person hears or sees something, everybody else has to hear and see it,’ he said. ‘It is something about us that you will just have to get used to.’

  THREE

  It was late afternoon, and the inside of Paco Ruiz’s little car – which was parked out on the street, opposite Sr Garcia’s electrical shop – was thick with the smoke of black tobacco.

  ‘The longer Luis Ibañez waits before making his move, the more risk he runs,’ Woodend said, ‘so my guess is that he’ll do it as soon as the boss goes out for his next coffee.’

  As if he was waiting for just this cue, Sr Garcia came out of the shop and started to walk down the street.

  A minute passed, and then three young men in
boiler suits appeared out of nowhere, one of them carrying a large, empty sack in his hands. Two of the men immediately disappeared into the alley at the side of the shop, but the third remained at the head of it.

  ‘That’s the lookout,’ Paco said. ‘How long do you think we should give them?’

  ‘Two minutes at the most,’ Woodend replied. ‘They’ll have got this whole process down to a fine art by now, and if we leave it any longer, we might not actually catch them in the act.’

  It was exactly two minutes later when Paco Ruiz strode to the head of the alley, only to find his way blocked by the lookout.

  ‘You don’t want to go down there, Grandad,’ the youth said, shifting every time Paco did, in order to stop the older man from looking down the alley. ‘There are some men at work, and you might get hurt.’

  ‘Hurt?’ Paco repeated, mystified. ‘How could I possibly get hurt?’

  ‘Ah, well, you see, these men I told you about are handling some heavy materials.’

  ‘Heavy materials?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Are you deaf or something?’

  ‘No, I’m not deaf – and I wouldn’t have described polystyrene and cardboard as heavy materials,’ Paco said mildly.

  ‘How did you …?’ the young man asked, shocked. ‘I mean, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The game’s up, son,’ Paco said. ‘So now you’ve only two choices – you can stand here and wait for the police to arrive, or you can run away. Not that I think running away will do you much good, because I’ve been studying Luis Ibañez, and I imagine that the moment the cops start questioning him, he’ll rat on the lot of you, without a second’s thought.’

  Luis Ibañez was hard at work in the storeroom when he heard the loud banging on the steel door.

  ‘Go away, whoever you are!’ he called, as he ripped another box to pieces. ‘I’m busy.’

  And then he heard the key turn in the lock.

  But that was impossible, he thought. There were only two keys to this door. He had one himself, and the boss – who had gone out for a coffee, and was never away for less than half an hour – had the other one.

  And yet, as impossible as it might seem, the door swung open, and he found himself looking in horror at a very big man in a hairy sports coat, and a blonde woman with a figure that – at any other time – he would have given his entire attention to.

  ‘It was a clever idea,’ Woodend said. ‘You couldn’t get the music centres out of the window, but if you flattened the boxes they came in, you could get them out. So all you had to do was arrange with the delivery man to remove the machines from the boxes before delivery. It looked like they’d arrived – they were signed for as if they’d arrived – but they were already being stored somewhere else, waiting for you to sell them on later.’ He paused. ‘You haven’t understood a single word I’ve said, but you still know what I mean, don’t you?’

  And Luis Ibañez – who did know what he meant – merely nodded.

  The police had already taken Ibañez away. There was nothing more for the private detectives to do now but collect their money, and as Sr Garcia was writing out the cheque, he delivered a monologue which sounded to Woodend suspiciously like a speech.

  ‘Our client thinks you have done a brilliant job,’ Paco translated, when Garcia finally finished talking.

  ‘I can’t claim all the credit,’ Woodend said awkwardly. ‘You and me are a team.’

  ‘He knows that, but he also knows that you were the one who spotted the vital clue lying beneath the window,’ Paco replied, ‘and he said that even if he’d seen that clue himself, it would have meant nothing to him. In conclusion, he thinks you are a great detective.’

  Woodend sighed. ‘Maybe I was once,’ he said.

  Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he started to feel a little ashamed of himself, because – even to him – they sounded a little self-pitying.

  And he didn’t need pity – from himself or anyone else. He enjoyed his life in the sun – the walks in the mountains, the drinks in bars overlooking the beach, the games of dominoes with the local domino sharks. And he had been right to retire when he had – while he was still among the best – rather than clinging on and slowly sliding into decline.

  And yet …

  And yet he couldn’t help wishing that someone would hand him just one more juicy murder.

  Garcia spoke again, and this time he was looking directly at Monika, and smiling warmly and enticingly.

  ‘Our client would like to show you the town’s nightlife, and wonders if you are free this evening,’ Paco translated, deadpan.

  ‘Is he married?’ Monika asked.

  ‘I believe he is,’ Paco answered.

  Monika turned her fullest and most promising smile on Garcia.

  ‘Tell him I’d love to see the nightlife with him,’ she said to Paco, ‘but unfortunately, it can’t be tonight, because my husband’s having a bare-knuckle fight with the local champion, and I’ve promised I’ll attend. Ask him if we can do it tomorrow night, instead.’

  As Paco translated, the smile on Garcia’s face quickly disappeared, and when he replied, there was a hint of both disappointment and concern in his voice.

  ‘He says he’s busy tomorrow night,’ Paco told her. ‘In fact, now he’s had time to think about it, he realizes, he’s busy tonight too – and every other night for the next three weeks.’

  ‘Now that is a shame,’ Paniatowski said.

  Paco pocketed the cheque, and everyone shook hands.

  As they walked to the door, Woodend, Paco and Monika had their arms around each others’ shoulders. They were feeling good, and well they might – they had solved the case, got their money, and had a little well-deserved fun at Sr Garcia’s expense.

  Then they stepped out into the street, and what they saw there made all feelings of well-being evaporate.

  Some people were standing on street corners, engaged in earnest, whispered conversations. Others were wandering around aimlessly, as if they had quite forgotten why they had come into town. Several cars had pulled into the side of the road, and their drivers just sat there, staring at their steering wheels. And even the cars which were still moving were doing so at a snail’s pace.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Paco said heavily. ‘General Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, Caudillo of Spain by the grace of the devil, is dead.’

  Ted Melly was surprised when Elena turned up at his hotel that afternoon, and positively shocked at the state she seemed to be in.

  ‘Forgive me for coming here, Don Eduardo,’ the woman said, as they stood in the lobby next to the reception desk where she had once worked. ‘Believe me, I do not wish to get you into trouble with the authorities, but …’

  ‘Now just calm down, Elena,’ Melly said soothingly. ‘And don’t worry about the authorities. If they want to cause me trouble over seeing an old friend, then let them – because I can only be pushed so far.’

  ‘You are a good man, Don Eduardo,’ Elena said.

  ‘And you are a good woman,’ Melly told her. ‘What can I do to help you, Elena?’

  ‘I need some money,’ the woman said. ‘I will pay you back – I promise I will pay you back.’

  ‘I know you will,’ Melly said. ‘How much do you want?’

  When Elena told him, Melly whistled softly.

  ‘That is rather a lot,’ he said.

  ‘I know it is,’ Elena replied miserably, ‘but I have added up how much it will cost me, and I cannot do it for any less.’

  ‘Can’t do what for any less?’ Melly wondered.

  ‘Leave the country.’

  ‘Is this all to do with the fact that Franco died this afternoon?’ Melly asked. ‘Because if that is the reason, then you’re panicking unnecessarily. You’ve no cause to run away. You’ll be safer here now that he’s gone than you ever were when he was alive.’

  ‘It is nothing at all to do with Franco,’ Elena said. ‘No,’ she corrected herse
lf, ‘it is to do with Franco, but not in the way that you seem to think. Please do not ask me any more.’

  ‘Have you even got a passport?’ Melly asked.

  ‘No, I have not, but my comrades in the party will provide me with one,’ Elena said.

  ‘A false one?’

  ‘Yes, it will be a false one, but it will be good enough to fool the immigration police.’

  ‘It seems to me that you should wait a few days before doing anything, just to give yourself time to think this through properly,’ Melly said, ‘then if you still want the money …’

  ‘I have been waiting for thirty-six long, bitter years,’ the woman said desperately. ‘A few more days would seem like a lifetime to me. A few more days would kill me.’

  ‘It all sounds very mysterious, and I really would like more details before I make a decision,’ Melly said.

  Elena looked up at him through tear-filled eyes.

  ‘I am asking you to trust me, Ted,’ she said. ‘I am asking you to give me the money because you know me and because you have faith in me.’

  Melly sighed. ‘Let’s go into the office and see how much cash there is in the safe,’ he suggested.

  The three of them were sitting on Woodend’s terrace. Woodend and Ruiz were drinking beers with brandy chasers; Monika Paniatowski – as always – was sticking to vodka.

  ‘I suppose I should have been expecting that Franco would die today,’ Paco said.

  ‘Why is that?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘Because it’s the twentieth of November, the date on which José Antonio Primo de Rivera – the leader of the fascist movement – was executed by the Republicans in 1936. It’s widely believed that Franco could have saved him through a prisoner exchange, but his death ensured that all the power went to the Generalissimo, so it is hardly surprising the exchange did not take place.’

  ‘I still don’t see… .’ Woodend began.

  ‘Though they disliked each other intensely while José Antonio was alive, it was convenient – once he was dead – for Franco’s propaganda machine to turn him into a martyr of the fascist cause. So it is not surprising that Franco’s doctors kept him alive until this symbolic date. Or maybe,’ Paco shrugged, ‘he has actually been dead for days, and they have only just announced it.’