Relatively Dangerous by Roderic Jeffries Page A

don’t know. You’ve more damn questions than a dog’s got fleas.’
    ‘Which, I can assure you, are no less irritating. Will you give me your authorization to find out from your bank where the money came from?’
    ‘If I have to.’
     

 
CHAPTER 10
    Calle Llube had, twenty years before, been the last road in Puerto Llueso; now there stretched beyond it one large urbanization, completed, and a second one under construction. It was a road of one-floor buildings, all with simple,
    bleak exteriors in which the only hint of beauty was in the window-boxes filled with flowers. However, behind their road fronts there was considerably more space and comfort than a casual observer would have thought; some had enclosed patios in which grew flowers and, occasionally, orange trees.
    Alvarez stepped through the bead curtain of No. 15 and called out. A short, fat woman with an ugly but humorous face came into the room. He asked to speak to Taylor.
    ‘He’ll be at the restaurant.’
    ‘But he does live here?’
    ‘Rents the two rooms at the back.’ She indicated with a quick wave of her pudgy hand the far side of the patio. ‘Lives there with his woman.’ She spoke with open disapproval. Had he been a Spaniard, let alone a Mallorquin, she would never have let him stay in her house with a woman who was not his wife.
    ‘Where’s the restaurant?’
    ‘D’you know Las Cinco Palmeras?’
    ‘Along the bay road?’
    ‘That’s it. Bought it and spent a fortune on it, by all accounts, but it’s still not open.’
    ‘Has he been with you for long?’
    ‘Since last summer. Look, is something the matter?’
    ‘It’s only a question of papers.’
    She was relieved—everyone had trouble with papers— since she liked the two of them, even though they weren’t married.
    He left, drove down to the front and then round the bay to the restaurant. He parked by the side of the patio and climbed out. Behind the buildings were marshland and farmland, some of it incredibly under the Philistine threat of development, which stretched to the encircling mountains; in front was the bay. The perfect site.
    A few chairs and tables were stacked to one side of the nearest palm tree; the main door of the restaurant was shut and there was a notice in English and Spanish which stated that the restaurant would be opening at the end of the month. He walked round to the back. The battered Citroen van that he’d seen at the cemetery was parked near a shed. A woman was hanging up chequered tablecloths on a long line and when she saw him she dropped a tablecloth into the bucket and came across. ‘Are you from the builders?’ she asked in inaccurate, but understandable, Spanish.
    ‘No, I’m not.’
    ‘Blast!’ Exasperation forced her into speaking English. ‘I suppose that was much too much to ask for since it’s only this morning they promised once again to come immediately.’
    He said in English: ‘We have a saying. A man waits for death and the builders and only death knows which will arrive first.’
    ‘Oh, you understand! Then it’s a good job I kept to ladylike language . . . Your saying suggests it’s not only the foreigners who suffer.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘I know it shouldn’t, but that cheers me up a bit . . . If you’re not the builder, who are you and how can I help?’
    He told her.
    She said curiously: ‘Mike should be back any moment. He just nipped into the port to buy some paint . . . Is something wrong?’
    ‘I need to ask him a few questions.’
    She was about to say something more when they heard the puttering of an approaching Vespino. ‘That must be him now.’
    Taylor entered the yard and braked the Vespino to a halt, cut the engine, drew the bike back up on its stand, picked out of the wire basket a four-litre tin of paint. It wasn’t until he was a third of the way across that he recognized Alvarez; when he did, he came to a stop. Noting his expression, Helen’s curiosity and perplexity changed to