The Angst-Ridden Executive Read Free Page B

believe that things are as simple as they seem.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well, we’ve all seen enough detective films to know that criminals lay false trails to conceal the motives of their crimes. . . Now, what’s the classic false trail scenario?’
    ‘Pouring a bottle of whiskey or brandy down the dead man’s throat so that it looks as if he was drunk.’
    ‘Exactly, señor Carvalho. And, if you ask me, something similar happened in Jauma’s case.’
    ‘Why? Did he smell of drink?’
    ‘No. He smelt of women’s cologne. As I say, intimate cologne. As if he’d been soused in a barrel of the stuff. You take my meaning?’
    ‘Did you tell this to the police?’
    ‘I prefer not to have dealings with the police. I spent many years in exile in the Eastern Bloc, and my legal status in Spain is not what you’d call clear. I persuaded Concha to tell the police, though, and to get a lawyer on the case. Neither the police nor the lawyer have shown the slightest interest. So she decided to look into things herself. At that point I remembered that Jauma had mentioned your name a few times—specifically with a view to bringing you in to investigate possible instances of industrial espionage. Jauma was a very important figure. Petnay is a vast multinational, and he was their number one executive in southern Europe. They also used to send him on inspection tours of Latin America.’
    ‘What I don’t understand is why such an important person should remember someone like me—a pretty crazy chance meeting over Death Valley, followed by dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. And then a trip up country. And what I find even stranger is the fact that you’ve been able to find me, and that you know that I’m a private detective. When Jauma met me, I was still living in the States.’
    ‘Jauma made it very easy for us. We found your phone number in his desk diary, together with three possible addresses, and instructions for one of his secretaries to get in touch with you as quickly as possible.’
    ‘Three addresses?’
    ‘This one, the address of your office on the Ramblas, and the address of your girlfriend, Rosario Garcia Lopez, aka Charo.’
    ‘Why did he want to see me?’
    ‘That’s another mystery. I suspect that it was probably something to do with his company.’
    ‘Was he the jealous sort? Maybe he thought his wife was having an affair?’
    ‘Concha?’
    For the first time the middle-aged youth in the sweater showed signs of surprise.
    There had been a third party at the San Francisco dinner, one Rhomberg—Petnay’s general overseer in the US. Carvalho took the Power Street cable-car to Fisherman’s Wharf, and arrived sufficiently early to be able to spend some time exploring pavements that were peopled with underground newsvendors, folk singers and long-haired practitioners of a variety of cheap and pointless crafts: manufacturers of sunflower seed necklaces, brass jewelry makers, Xerox poets, and spaced-out painters who ventured beyond the Golden Gate as if by an act of voluntary self-immolation. Carvalho resisted the temptation to try a portion of crayfish from a street stall. He could feel the tension in his stomach mounting at the prospect of serious eating. There were all kinds of stalls offering the passer-by a variety of ready-packed seafoods, either as consolation for the fact of not being able to afford to eat in the plush restaurants that stood nearby, or by way of an incitement to move on to greater things. Carvalho didn’t have time to decide. Out of a taxi stepped Jauma, in the company of a man who was clearly a German. His feet had barely touched the ground when he frightened the life out of the aforementioned hippies with a loud display of histrionics and a cry of:
    ‘Carvalho—For lobsters, and for the Love of God!’
    The German was also introduced with a characteristic Jauma flourish:
    ‘Dieter Rhomberg. Petnay’s number three man in the sectors that I’m involved with. In