Poison At The Pueblo Read online

  ‘Why,’ asked Lola, ‘is it that the English spend so much time talking of cups of tea, storms in teacups and so on and so forth? Also dogs?’

  Bognor closed his eyes and reminded himself that the Spaniards were here to learn English and the Anglos to teach it, if only by osmosis. He also remembered that George almost certainly wasn’t George, though he was unlikely to be Oliver O’Flaherty from Limerick either. Also that Leonel was as dull as he seemed, but played bass guitar and was keen on Johnny Cash and football. There was no accounting for taste. He also claimed an Opus Dei fabricated MBA from some university in Oviedo. Shades, he thought, of the da Vinci file, though Opus Dei was more interesting than that. You could also say the same about a pet food company executive with that sort of background, but exotic backgrounds did not always translate into an interesting, let alone exciting, reality. Leonel was dull despite his CV.

  ‘Tea is an important part of British culture,’ he found himself saying in response to the nun’s question. And we like dogs. He was wracking his brains, trying to think of something coherent to say to Leonel about either Johnny Cash or football. He supposed Leonel was a Seville supporter but he knew nothing whatever about the team and precious little about popular music. Mozart was about as low or middlebrow as he got, though he had once been rather keen on Manfred Mann. Something to do with an unattainable girl some time before Monica arrived on the scene.

  ‘Not in Spanish,’ said George, making an uncouth noise sucking soup from his spoon. ‘They don’t do tea the way we do. Just bags and hot water. It’s a coffee culture. Precious little in the way of biscuits. I could die for a chocolate digestive. Give me Australia any day. They understand tea and biscuits down there. Bloody good show. They still do elevenses and proper tea breaks. Civilized.’

  ‘Is different,’ said Lola, rather pointedly finishing her gazpacho with a fastidious flourish, ‘in España one drinks the coffee, not the tea. Also we take the long siesta in the middle of the day. Otherwise, we work. Not like England.’

  ‘The English work bloody hard these days,’ said George, with feeling. ‘One of the reasons I live abroad. All work and no play. You know the saying. Many a true word spoken in whatever they say, if you know what I mean. Same went for poor old Jimmy Trubshawe. Sense of perspective. That’s what the modern generation of Brits don’t have. Sense of bloody perspective.’

  A waiter cleared their plates. Bognor sensed George spoiling for a fight. Preferably with him. He could think of no proper reason for this and the feeling was uncomfortable. Part of him wanted to plunge into a sort of soft interrogation of George, who had, tacitly and perhaps unintentionally, admitted to knowing more about the late Trubshawe than he might have intended. Part of him wanted to ingratiate himself with Leonel by saying something affable and knowledgeable about pet food, Johnny Cash or football, and part of him wanted to follow up on the alluring nun because . . . oh well . . . he thought to himself, irritably. Just because.

  ‘I never actually got to a Cash concert,’ he said, knowing that he sounded feeble, ‘but I had some of the LPs. They’ve gone now, of course. Out of date technology.’

  ‘No such thing as out of date technology,’ said George. ‘Built-in obsolescence. That’s the name of the game. These Johnnies couldn’t make money if their gizmos lasted for ever. The whole basis of making money these days is to build in the need to replace whatever it is you’ve got with the latest fashion. Take razors.’

  ‘Razors?’ asked Leonel, seemingly incredulous, though Bognor wasn’t so sure.

  The waiter reappeared bearing meat on plates stacked impressively up one of his arms. Skills such as this impressed Bognor no end, particularly as he was singularly inept in matters such as this. Manual dexterity, hand-to-eye coordination, DIY and other traditionally attributes of the British male were not his bag. He had a nasty feeling that George would be a dab hand at DIY, even if he were not adept at stacking plates up his arm. He would probably regard such a feat as homosexual and foreign: ‘pansy, woofter, Johnny foreigner’. Bognor could already hear the bizarre combination of truculence and defeat which was, he believed, characteristic of men like George.

  ‘You know Jimmy Trubshawe?’ he asked, surprising even himself. It was much too obvious a question. He should have been oblique, playing his cards close to the proverbial, not laying them out for all to see. At the same time there was an instinctive trait in his approach, which led sometimes to a breaking of the rules, a statement of the obvious when something more obscure would have seemed appropriate. There was a considerable part of Bognor which defied the textbook.

  George didn’t seem unduly fazed by the question, direct though it was.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not.’

  And stuffed unseasoned meat into his mouth.

  Bognor retaliated with a garlicky mouthful of his own.

  ‘Well,’ he said, with an aggression which surprised even himself, ‘maybe or maybe not?’

  A mutual glower ensued. The two Spaniards recognized a shared hostility but were unable to be precise about it. It was clear that their Anglo friends and instructors were not getting on, but it was not clear to them precisely why. It was not clear to the protagonists either, which made the whole impasse more difficult to explain or even to understand. The mutual dislike was visceral. It was echoed in the mind but it stemmed from the gut.

  ‘Why,’ asked Lola attempting, perhaps to pour oil on troubled waters, ‘is the storm in the teacup?’

  This was not an easy question to answer.

  ‘It is a way of saying,’ he tried, ‘that the disagreement may seem to be very significant and upsetting, but it’s actually not as important as it seems.’

  ‘But,’ she persisted, ‘why teacup?’

  Bognor chewed on his meat and smiled at George.

  ‘Good question, eh?’ he tried, round grisly meat that might just have been horse but was probably just goat.

  Lola was determined to add milk to the stormy brew.

  ‘In España we have the Twining bag,’ she said brightly, ‘which is unusual, no? In España it is not common to use the convenience food. It is more usual to cook with the fresh ingredients. Like the mushrooms, for instance.’

  Mention of mushrooms reminded them all of death.

  ‘Yes. Well,’ said Bognor, ‘the meat is very tasty. Tell me, Leonel, is Lola right? Is it more common in your country to use fresh ingredients. For instance, do pet owners give their animals fresh meat?’

  Leonel seemed eager.

  ‘Is a problem for us, yes,’ he said. ‘We are anxious to sell the cans of processed food for the dogs and the cats because we add the vitamins and the good things that improve the diet for the pets. But most people are not understanding that it is better to have the food from the tin.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bognor.

  George chewed and looked daggers.

  Lola smiled sunnily.

  ‘Jimmy and I went to the same school,’ said George unexpectedly. ‘He was a year above me. Good at football. You wouldn’t say we knew each other. Not then. But he was a bit of a hero in those days. Always was, if you want to know.’

  Bognor wondered if this was halfway to a confession of guilt, but he said nothing, just cut another mouthful of tough but tasty meat and chewed thoughtfully.

  SIXTEEN

  The rest of lunch was sticky. Bognor floundered. Lola and Leonel smiled and trotted out phrases from text books. George glowered. The flan and the custard were acceptable and identical. The wine evaporated; the water likewise. And coffee arrived. It was as thick as glue and very sweet. Sticky as the conversation.

  Housekeeping followed on the agenda as an add-on to the coffee. Housekeeping meant Arizona Brown and Felipe Lee, who were staff. They were glib, suave, professional, good at their jobs and Bognor took a more or less instant dislike to both of them. They, for their part, spoke well of him, or at least bade him welcome, thanked him for joining the team at such short notice and called him Simon thro
ughout. Neither of them gave the slightest hint of an identity other than his simple given name. It made him feel like a Latter Day Saint or an Anonymous Alcoholic.

  The Brown girl had the willowy figure and unspotted complexion of someone who ate sensibly, worked out regularly, drank no alcohol but might conceivably have a dangerous drugs habit. Bognor had heard that her sexuality was ambiguous, which he could well believe, and he suspected that she had some native American blood. Navajo possibly. She also had perfect teeth, a characteristic Bognor had long associated with a certain sort of American nubility and Heath Robinson-esque wire mouth devices worn throughout adolescence.

  ‘OK guys and dolls,’ she said winsomely, after Bognor had been introduced and had stood diffidently to acknowledge that he was indeed he, ‘following walkies and the five o’clock tea break we will be splitting in to two teams for a not so simple game of charades. I will mentor one team and Felipe will do the same for the other.’

  She smiled a great deal and phrased everything as if it were a genuine request, whereas it was a command.

  ‘What we would like – though ultimately, of course, it’s for you to decide – channelling everything through your team leaders – who will, naturally, be Spaniards – and, so as not to prolong the suspense, let’s tell you that the team leaders for this exercise will be Lola and Leonel – so, what we would like is for the two teams to devise advertising and marketing strategies for two very characteristic products which is to say . . . sausages. One team will present the case for the British banger and the other will do the same for the Spanish chorizo. You can add in any typical ingredients like mashed potato or jalapeño peppers, but essentially we want to hear it for the banger on the one hand and the chorizo on the other. You’ll have the whole time up to and including supper to work on your scheme, and then we’ll do the presentation out in the bar after we’ve all had supper together. Any questions?’

  George had a question. He would, thought Bognor. He would.

  ‘What if we don’t like our product?’ said George. ‘May we change teams?’

  ‘No, George,’ said Arizona, smiling brightly through her pearly teeth, which were almost but not quite gritted for the gesture. ‘You can’t change sides. You just have to pretend. It’s what we do all through life: we pretend to be advocating one particular strategy while privately preferring another. It’s a necessary compromise.’

  If George were a dog he would have growled.

  Arizona sat down, crossing her leggy jeans and smilingly dared anyone else to attempt a challenge. No one dared. No one even got near.

  Once it was clear that Arizona was unchallenged, Felipe Lee rose to do serious housekeeping. He seemed something of a fusspot but this was, Bognor recognized, almost certainly a ploy. He was wearing a dark suit which seemed more Anglo than Spanish and a collar and tie. He seemed more like a merchant banker than an executive of a language school.

  ‘The bar,’ he said, ‘doesn’t take credit cards and they won’t let you run a tab. You have to pay as you drink. Old Spanish custom.’ He flickered a smile which was gone almost as soon as it was signalled. ‘Please make sure that any laundry is left in the bag outside your room by nine a.m. If any of you have problems understanding the code system for ordering meals, please contact me before supper this evening. If any of you are having trouble with your mobile phones, I have to advise you that the signal is weak and variable so you may have trouble. If so, I advise you to make use of the landlines provided for guests’ use in reception.’ He paused and stared round unblinking at his audience.

  ‘Any questions?’ he wanted to know.

  There were no questions. Felipe was not the sort of factotum who genuinely invited them. Like Arizona, he told. It occurred to Bognor that the Pueblo was an extraordinarily regulated and orchestrated place for one which people paid good money to attend. Both Felipe and Arizona were treating their guests like new boys in a boarding school. Bognor had endured such indignities many years ago and the experience was not lightly forgotten.

  Strange, thought Bognor, that sudden death, maliciously contrived, should so often take place in such well-ordered surroundings. In this, as in so much, appearances deceived. This expensive, exclusive language school was one of the last places on earth that he would have expected to be associated with murder. But then his entire career had been built on the premise that nothing was ever quite what it seemed.

  Arizona was back on her feet. She and Felipe were a well-synchronized, polished act.

  ‘You have fifteen minutes to finish your coffee, take a quick comfort break and generally do whatever it is that you want to do, then it’s onward and upwards. The weather forecast is fine so there should be no problem having a gentle stroll through the woods. Talk about anything you like but please, just remember, no Spanish. Everything you say must be said in English.’

  Bognor grinned. House rule. The other three got up and left. He was finishing his coffee and musing quietly, when Felipe and Arizona came and sat down either side of him.

  ‘Dolores has told us about you,’ said Arizona.

  ‘Dolores doesn’t know enough about me to be able to tell you,’ said Bognor, confidently.

  ‘Dolores is one of the richest women in the whole of Spain,’ said Felipe. He pronounced Spain with a slight lisp where the ‘s’ should have been, so that it came out sounding like a ‘th’. He also prefixed it with the slightest hint of an extra ‘e’. ‘Ethpain’. It was OK but not the way an Englishman would have said Spain. Just different enough to be Spanish. Like calling Mozart, M’sah. Bognor guessed that it was important for Felipe to be fluent but not bilingual. Subtle difference.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Bognor, ‘but you don’t entirely surprise me.’

  ‘She owns half the company,’ said Arizona, whose English was immaculate, though American, which bothered Bognor a smidgeon.

  ‘And what did she tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘That you like mushrooms,’ said Arizona. She wasn’t smiling. ‘Dolores doesn’t seem a hundred per cent happy about you. She wants us to keep an eye on you. We thought you ought to know.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Bognor, ‘good to know. I’m grateful.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Felipe. ‘We think you have a nice face. Trustworthy eyes. And there is a “quid” that we would like to request in return for our “quo”.’

  ‘Try me,’ he said.

  They looked at each other, exchanging complicit glances.

  ‘The conceit,’ said Arizona, ‘is that you came to us out of the blue. Just happened to be passing.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘how considerate of me. You’re a man short; I happen to be passing, hey presto, I’m helping you out. And you’re duly grateful. Good news all round.’

  ‘Life doesn’t work like that,’ said Arizona. ‘People don’t just appear out of the blue. They don’t just happen to be passing. Things don’t just happen. They occur because people make them happen. There is a purpose. You were passing on purpose. You were in the blue because you meant to be; you came out it for a reason. You’re not a coincidence.’

  He drank coffee, thought and shrugged.

  ‘So I emerged on purpose,’ he said. ‘So what?’

  ‘Not possible,’ said Arizona. ‘People like you don’t just arrive. Particularly not after the strange death of James Trubshawe.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not going to blow the whistle. The reverse. We’re just letting you know we know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you’re not what you seem,’ said Felipe. He seemed nervous, glancing over his shoulder at the door into the bar and reception area, where the group were due to gather before the next round of walks. ‘We want you to know that we have become wise to your deception, but that we won’t blow the whistle. In return, we just ask that you level with us, at least to an extent. Otherwise the two of us are in the dark, which is not a place we like to be.’

  Bognor could imagine. It was important for the way in w
hich Brown and Lee functioned that they knew more than their charges. It was quite clear, however, that all they knew about him was that they didn’t know enough. Their suspicions had been aroused but not allayed.

  ‘We’re not going to shop you,’ said Arizona. ‘We just want you to tell us something about what’s happening. We don’t think Trubshawe’s death was an accident. We believe your sudden arrival has something to do with explaining it, with solving the mystery, if you like. All we ask in return for remaining silent on your behalf is that you tell us at least a little of what is happening.’ She paused, then smiled at him. ‘Please,’ she said.

  He wasn’t expecting it and felt duly melted. Despite this, his cover was blown. Well . . . He frowned and tried getting his head round the idea. In a sense, he had no cover. He had neither heard nor told lies. Not consciously at least. None of the Anglos in the operation said more than they wished, and whether or not they told the truth was up to them. Vide Trubshawe and, as far as he could see, George. Both were extremely economical with the truth. By contrast he was virginal. He had said practically nothing. His silence wasn’t an admission of guilt or wrong doing. It was, after a fundamental right, under proper law. One did not have to give evidence which might condemn you. Thus he.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, hoping that this did not of itself constitute an admission. He didn’t feel he was revealing anything other than a simple and laudatory desire to please. But he wasn’t at all sure. It sometimes seemed as if everything he said was open to contrary interpretation. Better to keep your trap shut – the minute you opened it your listeners put their own spin on whatever you said, no matter what. Saying absolutely nothing was the first rule of being interviewed. Hence ‘No comment’. But he wasn’t in a ‘no comment’ situation; he was in a situation for which there was no precedent and no training. He had to wing it; which meant flying by the seat of his pants. Not a comfortable cliché.

  ‘To be friends,’ said Arizona, sounding disconcertingly as if she meant it, ‘we don’t need to know all your secrets; we just need to have you admitting that secrets are what you are dealing in; that you are not what you may seem or what you are pretending to be. We have to agree that the death of Jimmy Trubshawe was not an accident. You know. We know. And we behave accordingly.’