Free Relatively Dangerous by Roderic Jeffries

other.’
    ‘You didn’t gain any kind of an impression?’
    ‘Look, you’re asking me a whole load of questions I just can’t answer.’
    ‘No, of course not. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s just that sometimes one can look back and realize one gained an impression, even though at the time one wasn’t aware that one had.’
    ‘Not this time.’
    ‘So then it seems that maybe he’ll remain a man with no background. All we shall ever know about him is that he flew in from somewhere, he’d been here before, perhaps was here on business, enjoyed sailing, suffered from migraine, and it was an attack of this which indirectly killed him.’
    ‘In fact, not even that’s certain.’
    ‘How d’you mean?’
    ‘Because . . . Well, I’m damned!’ Higham’s voice expressed his astonishment. ‘It’s funny how the memory works, isn’t it? I’ve only this moment remembered that after he’d decided to take another pill—because the earlier one wasn’t doing any good—and we’d driven off and he started feeling ill, he said no migraine had ever been like that before; his mouth and throat were burning as if he’d chewed half a dozen of the vicious little peppers which grow on the island and on top of that he didn’t have any of the usual symptoms. He wondered if some of the food at the restaurant had been bad. But he’d only had steak and ice-cream . . . And then, like I said before, he was as sick as a dog, but would carry on driving. It’s funny how life goes, isn’t it? If he’d been more ill, he couldn’t have gone on driving; if less ill, he’d have been able to keep control.’
    Alvarez’s mind flicked back over the years. If Juana-Maria had walked fractionally quicker or slower, the drunken Frenchman would not have pinned her to the wall with his car . . . He stood.
    ‘You surely don’t have to go yet awhile?’
    ‘I am afraid so. It is still lonely for you?’
    ‘And frustrating! There’s a new night nurse who could be fun, but she doesn’t understand a word of English.’
    ‘I have heard that in such circumstances it is possible to communicate the essentials with signs.’
    ‘I tried, but we don’t seem to speak the same sign language.’
    Alvarez smiled. ‘How much longer will you have to stay here?’
    ‘I’m feeling fit enough to leave now, but the quack says he still can’t understand why I suffered a loss of memory at the beginning so he wants to make absolutely certain I didn’t suffer any brain damage. I told him, only softening of the brain. He didn’t see the joke and it took a hell of a long time trying to explain it . . . I guess the Spanish and English senses of humour aren’t very similar.’
    ‘That is very true . . . Señor, should you remember anything more, however unimportant it seems to you, will you get in touch with me?’
    ‘Sure. But how do I get hold of you?’
    ‘I will give you my home and office telephone numbers.
    If you say my name, whoever answers will know to get hold of me if I’m around.’ He wrote out the numbers, handed the piece of paper over, said goodbye and left.
    The telephone rang at six-thirty that evening, just as Alvarez was wondering whether it really was too early to leave the office and return home.
    ‘It’s Cantallops here, Inspector.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The undertaker from Fogufol. You must remember—I rang you the other day.’
    ‘Oh yes, of course.’
    ‘I want to know if it’s all right now to go ahead with the funeral?’
    ‘There’s no reason why not. What name are you going to use?’
    ‘Thompson, of course. What are you on about?’
    ‘He was travelling on a stolen passport so the odds probably are that that’s not his real name. But then I don’t suppose St Peter will keep the gates shut just because he’s buried under the wrong name.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous.’
    ‘I don’t see why. Surely by then the name’s quite unimportant?’
    ‘It’s ridiculous to say his name wasn’t Thompson.’
    ‘Why is