Medusa полностью

Back at Cala Figuera I found two plain-clothes detectives waiting for me, their car parked outside the chandlery. They were in the office, an inspector and his assistant, both of them drinking coffee while Soo, her dressing gown over her nightie, sat across the desk from them, looking pale and angry. ‘I keep telling them where we were sitting we couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it. They came just after you left. They wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know where you’d gone, how to get in touch with you, so they started asking me questions, then this man — ’ she jerked her head at the inspector — ‘said they must search the house and they have been over everywhere, including the store.’ All this she said in a rush, the words tumbling over themselves. ‘Now they’re waiting for you, so I gave them some coffee.’ And she added, ‘They want to search the boat, too. They seem to think we’re hiding something.’

By then they were on their feet, their behaviour very correct. ‘Some questions please. Then we go to this catamaran you have acquired.’ The inspector was the taller of the two, a dark, hook-nosed man, his Spanish markedly Catalan. ‘You have been down to this catamaran this morning?’

‘Si.’ And I told him why. ‘It is due in Malta shortly to pick up some American tourists.’

‘So you are getting it ready.’ He nodded. ‘You go with it, or you stay here — which?’

I hesitated. It hadn’t occurred to me until then. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Senor Carpenter may take her with just one other man, but if the weather is bad — ’ I left it at that and he began questioning me about where I had been, what I had done after we had been allowed to leave the Albufera hospitality pavilion the previous afternoon.

‘I’ve already told him,’ Soo said.

He understood English, even if he did not speak it, for he said, ‘Si, si, but, señor, I wish to hear it from you.’

So we went over it all again, an interrogation that took about quarter of an hour. Then suddenly he seemed to get bored with it. ‘Now we go and inspect your ship please.’ He called it a barco, so avoiding the word catamaran. ‘You want to come, señora?’ He turned politely to Soo.

She smiled. ‘Not unless you insist.’

‘No, of course not. I do not insist.’ He bowed politely as she took her cue and left the office. ‘May I use your telephone please?’ He lifted the receiver and when he got through he spoke to somebody who was obviously his superior, reporting that he had discovered nothing new and telling him that they were on their way now to search the boat. ‘Si, Jefe. Señor Steele will be accompanying us.’

It took them a good hour to search the boat, and when they had finished, having failed to find what they were looking for, they settled themselves at the saloon table, the inspector taking out a notebook and beginning to scribble a report. Knowing from the phone call he had made in the office that they would stay here until their chief, an inspector jefe, arrived, I asked them whether they would like a drink. The inspector hesitated, then declined somewhat reluctantly. I told him I had work to do and would he excuse me, but he shook his head, becoming suddenly quite excited and making it very clear that I was to stay here on board.

‘For how long?’ I asked him.

‘As long as is necessary.’

‘And if I go ashore now?’

‘I shall be forced to stop you.’ He used the word detentión.

I went up on deck then and gave Carp a hand. He needed to go up the mast to reeve a new spinnaker halyard and wanted somebody else besides Luis on the winch. It was while we were hoisting him up in the bo’s’n’s chair that the Inspector Jefe arrived. As soon as Carp was at the top, we made the hoist fast and I went aft to welcome him.

‘Garcia Menendez.’ He gave a little bow as we shook hands, his manner polite, but at the same time assertive, his sharp eyes, almost black in the sunlight, staring at me full of alert curiosity. ‘Inspector Molina, is he still here? … Good. Then we go inside where there are no distractions.’ He made a gesture with his hand that seemed to embrace the sunshine, the water, all the movement of Mahon harbour at noon on a fine spring day. He had an engineer with him. He did not introduce him to me, but he did ask my permission before telling him to go ahead with a search of the engine compartments.

We went below and I offered him a drink. He shook his head, taking the inspector’s place on the banquette and waving me to a position opposite him. The engineer was already slipping into a pair of white overalls. I watched him as he folded back the steps to the starb’d hull accommodation and probed the interior of the engine compartment with his torch. I felt slightly sick, knowing that somebody must have told them where to look. ‘Some questions please,’ the jefe said. ‘Matters that have arisen in the course of our investigation. First, the ownership of this yacht which arrive here from Marseilles. There is a passenger on board. You know him?’