A Maze of Murders by Roderic Jeffries Page B

wined to perfection, and taken a little more brandy as a digestif, one retired to the bedroom, stripped off and lay down on the bed, knowing one did not have to return to the office, shut one’s eyes and allowed one’s mind to go walkabout. Image drifted into image, each becoming that little more abstract …
    Downstairs, the phone rang.
    Jerked awake, Alvarez cursed the caller with all the crude viciousness of which Mallorquin was capable. As the ringing continued, he wondered why Dolores was not hurrying downstairs. Should he stir himself to go along the corridor and hammer on her bedroom door to alert her … The ringing ceased.
    He reached across to adjust the fan slightly so that the draught of air struck higher up his side, snuggled his head down on the pillow. He was just about to fall asleep when the phone rang again. Clearly, after it had automatically disconnected because the call had not been answered, the fool at the other end had dialled again …
    Footsteps passed his door. Dolores had at last decided to go down. He hoped she would, despite her present sunny humour, tell the caller what she thought of someone who rang during the siesta …
    The bang on the door was so unexpected – he had not heard her return upstairs – that he started. ‘It’s for you,’ she called out.
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    There was no answer.
    Reluctantly, he sat up, swivelled round, stood, put on his trousers – she insisted that no member of the house walked around in underclothes – and went downstairs.
    â€˜It’s the post…’
    He interrupted the speaker. ‘What’s the idea of phoning at this time of the afternoon?’
    â€˜Have to do my duty, you lazy bastard.’
    â€˜It’s Agustin, isn’t it? I’ll see you get a conduct report that has you spending the next ten years in some godforsaken village in the centre of Andalucia.’
    â€˜You reckon the teniente will listen to anything you have to say?… The port’s just been through. A motor cruiser’s come into harbour to say they’ve sighted a body floating five kilometres off the bay.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So they marked it with a buoy and now you can go out and help recover it.’
    â€˜My job can’t start until the body’s landed.’
    â€˜If they made a mistake and dropped you off at the pearly gates, you’d wait for St Peter to open ’em.’
    â€˜Each man to a job; each job to a man.’
    *   *   *
    The open fishing boat, built to traditional design, approached the curving shore midway between the port and the small, ugly holiday village – a point of the bay where there was the least likelihood of there being any tourists. The helmsman put the single-cylinder diesel into neutral, then reverse, to cut the boat’s way and prevent her running her bows on to the shingle. Two cabos, trousers rolled up, cursing everything and everybody, waded out, lifted up a body-bag and carried it ashore.
    If there were anything Alvarez disliked more than looking at death, he could not readily name it; to look at it was to see the image of one’s own precarious mortality, to be reminded that even that brief prick of pain as one had climbed out of bed could be the first call to join the victim. Mentally bracing himself, he pulled back the edge of the bag until he could gain a clear view of the face. Death was often described as merciful; its aftermath never was. He recognized Lewis from the passport photograph, but it required a considerable degree of imaginative reconstruction to do so.

CHAPTER 13
    On the Tuesday, Alvarez returned to the post to be informed by the duty cabo that the Institute of Forensic Anatomy had telephoned and wanted him to call back. He went up the stairs, into his office, and sat. After he’d regained his breath, he dialled Palma.
    â€˜The cause of death was drowning,’ said