Dead Clever Read Free Page B

out.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked thickly, confusedly wondering if catastrophe had overtaken them all.
    ‘I’ve called you twice already. Aren’t you working today?’
    ‘Of course I am.’
    ‘Then you’d best get up before it’s time to start tomorrow.’
    After a while he reluctantly climbed out of bed, crossed to the window, drew the curtains, undipped and opened the shutters. Sharp sunshine engulfed him and he felt the heat on his bare chest. He stared over the rooftops of the village houses at Puig Antonia. The buildings on the top of the sugar-loaf mountain had originally been a hermitage, but now nuns from a contemplative order lived in them. Hermitages in many parts of the island had fallen into desuetude, as hermitages, at around the time when the tourist industry had begun to bring prosperity. Presumably it was easier to renounce the material world when that offered little to be renounced . . .
    Dolores called from the foot of the stairs: ‘If you’re not down inside five minutes, you’ll have to get your own chocolate.’
    ‘I’m just coming.’ Dolores, he thought as he began to dress, was becoming sharper with every day. Jaime should have read her the riot act a long time ago. Threatening to leave the house before she had prepared his breakfast!
    She spoke even more aggressively when he entered the kitchen. ‘You know why you couldn’t get up when you should, don’t you? You drank too much last night.’
    ‘I did not.’
    ‘Then why were you snoring so loudly in the middle of the night that you woke me up?’
    ‘Because you’re a light sleeper. In any case, snoring has nothing to do with drinking . . . And if you must know, I had dinner with an English señor who would never drink too much and all we had was a little wine. After we’d finished the meal, I came straight home.’
    ‘I doubt very much it was straight.’ She carried a mug of hot chocolate over to the table and put it down in front of him. ‘I’m off now. You’ll be the last to leave the house, so don’t forget to lock up.’
    ‘Just before you go, where’s the coca?’
    Her tone was scornful. ‘You think I have the time to make a coca for a man who demands his breakfast when it’s almost lunch-time? . . . If you want something to eat, there’s bread in the bin.’ She walked out of the kitchen with her head held high, her expression one of haughty disdain.
    He drank some of the chocolate, then went through to the dining-room and across to the large and ornately carved cupboard from which he brought out a bottle which he used to top up the chocolate with brandy. Breakfast was an important meal for a busy man.
    Alvarez and Ware met at the airport, outside the new control tower. The guard on the main entrance directed them over to a lift and this took them to the lower of two floors which were immediately below the main control area. There was a central, octagonally shaped lobby and off this radiated offices. They entered the one on the door of which was printed ‘Co-ordinator’.
    Murillo was only in his middle forties, but a receding hairline and a heavily lined face, in which one eyelid drooped, made him look considerably older. He shook hands briefly, as if he found prolonged physical contact distasteful, returned to his seat behind a large and rather ugly desk. The roar of a jet caused him to look through the large window and he watched an Aviaco 727 climb, leaving a dirty trail of exhaust smoke, then he turned back and said:
    ‘How can I help you, Inspector?’ Both his tone and manner asked them to be as brief as possible.
    ‘Señor Ware has come from England to make inquiries about the crash last Saturday night.’
    ‘So I understood from your telephone call.’
    ‘He’d be most grateful if now you’d give him all the known facts regarding that crash.’
    Murillo nodded, turned over some papers on his desk and found the one he wanted, read quickly, then said, clipping his words short: ‘The plane was