Relatively Dangerous by Roderic Jeffries

original licence and not a photostat copy?’
    Taylor did not answer.
    ‘Do you have a residencia?’
    ‘Yes. And to save the question, it’s at home.’
    ‘You should carry that with you as well.’
    ‘Look, if I did everything the law demands, I’d be schizophrenic’
    ‘Why have you come here this morning?’
    ‘I’d have thought that was obvious, even to you.’
    ‘Señor, I can quietly ask questions here, or I can demand that you come to the nearest guardia post where I’ll ask them rather more loudly.’
    Belatedly, Taylor realized that his sullenly provocative attitude was hardly a sensible one. ‘I came to the funeral.’
    ‘You knew Señor Thompson?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did you know him well?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Yet you have come all the way from Puerto Llueso to attend his funeral?’
    ‘I reckoned there ought to be someone here to see him buried.’
    ‘Then you knew there would not be anyone else—how?’
    Taylor shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘Was it because you were aware that he was being buried under a false name?’
    ‘I met him a couple of times and that’s it. I’ve no idea what his private life was about.’
    ‘When did you last speak to him?’
    ‘I don’t really remember.’
    ‘How did you know the funeral was to be today?’
    ‘Someone said it was.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘I don’t remember whom.’
    Alvarez stared at the ground for several seconds, then looked up as he stepped back. ‘Thank you for your help, señor.’
    Taylor was clearly surprised, and relieved, at this sudden termination of the questioning. He engaged the starter again and this time the engine fired. He drove off, the engine emitting the typical high-pitched scream.
    Alvarez returned to the 600. He sat, switched on the fan. Sweet Mary, but it was hot!
    Dolores poured out a second cup of coffee for Alvarez, then went over to the doorway and shouted to Juan and Isabel that if they didn’t get a move on, they’d be late for school. Safe from immediate chastisement, Juan replied that he didn’t care.
    ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ she grumbled, as she returned to the table. ‘When I was young, I wouldn’t have dreamt of speaking to my mother like that.’
    ‘When we were young, things were very different.’
    She recalled a life so hard that in comparison with the present it seemed as if her memory must be playing her false. Had there really been times when her parents simply could not properly feed the large family; had there been so much fear on the streets that only a fool ever said what was in his mind?
    He spoke slowly. ‘If only some of the things which were worthwhile had not been destroyed along with so much that was bad.’ It might be utterly futile, but nothing could prevent his regretting the present lack of inner discipline and inner pride which together had kept a poor man’s head held as high as a rich man’s.
    She was unconcerned with these aspects of past and present; not for her the problems which lay outside the family. ‘No matter, I’ve no time to stand about and chatter, like a cluck hen. And you ought to have left for work half an hour ago.’
    ‘Would you have me kill myself from overwork?’
    She laughed scornfully, picked up a duster, left and went through to the dining-room. He drank the coffee and thought about Taylor. It was easy to mistake most emotions, but surely sorrow was difficult to misread. Taylor had been sorrowing. Then the relationship between himself and the dead man had surely been son and father and it had been he who had paid for the funeral . . .
    Twenty-five minutes later, he telephoned Cantallops from the office.
    ‘Where did the money come from?’ said Cantallops. ‘Where the hell d’you think?’
    ‘Was it paid in cash, by cheque, or by bank draft?’
    ‘I can’t remember.’
    ‘Then go and look.’
    Cantallops swore, put the phone down. When he next spoke, he said: ‘It was transferred direct into my account.’
    ‘From which bank?’
    ‘I