Free A Question of Motive by Roderic Jeffries Page B

give an answer.’
    â€˜Never met him.’
    â€˜Not when you strolled through the peaceful woods?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜He reckoned someone was after birds, and that infuriated him because he wanted them to have peace.’
    â€˜It ain’t nothing to do with me.’
    â€˜Not if he reckoned you were netting thrushes.’
    â€˜Don’t know what you’re on about.’
    â€˜The row you had with the señor made you very, very angry.’
    â€˜I said, ain’t never met him.’
    â€˜You aren’t helping yourself by lying. Do you know Juanito Santos?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Does the garden at Aquila. He heard the row and recognized the two voices. Señor Gill’s and yours.’
    â€˜He’s a liar.’
    â€˜Or it’s a wrong vocal identification? I don’t think so.’
    â€˜Don’t matter what you think. It wasn’t me. Never met the señor, and I ain’t ever gone after thrushes.’
    â€˜Then where do you get the ones you sell?’
    â€˜Don’t sell none.’
    â€˜I’ve heard from several villagers that they’ve bought thrushes from you, even though you charge a fortune.’
    â€˜They’re lying.’
    â€˜Seems there’s a lot of liars around. Look, I don’t want to take you in, but go on like this and I’ll have to.’
    â€˜Take me where?’
    â€˜To one of the cells at the post.’
    â€˜You can’t prove nothing.’
    â€˜Then where do the thrushes you sell come from?’
    â€˜I don’t sell any.’
    â€˜Then you will have to come along with me.’
    â€˜For catching thrushes when I ain’t?’
    â€˜On suspicion of murdering Señor Gill.’
    Velaquez suffered uncomprehending fear. ‘You can’t . . . I didn’t . . . I’ve never . . .’
    â€˜If he was murdered, why? There’s no one else with any reason to do so. He caught you in the woods and aggressively accused you of illegal trapping. Likely said he was calling the policia local. You’ve been in trouble before,’ Alvarez guessed.
    â€˜Not for anything serious. Never been in jail.’
    â€˜Count yourself lucky. Only, your luck’s kind of running out. Trapping thrushes gets all those love-life people very angry. For a bloke like you, living free, being stuck in a cell for months couldn’t be worse. So to save yourself a living purgatory, tell me what did happen. You went up to Aquila—’
    â€˜I didn’t.’
    â€˜Maybe you originally thought you’d just apologize and ask him to be generous and forget what happened. He was at the end of Barca, tending his orchid. He wouldn’t listen to you, said he hoped you’d be jailed for years. In a desperate attempt to save yourself, you pushed him over the edge.’
    â€˜That’s crazy. I’ve never been up there. You’ve got to believe me.’
    â€˜You lied about selling thrushes, didn’t you?’
    â€˜That don’t mean I killed him.’
    â€˜You now admit you trapped thrushes there?’
    After a while, Velaquez muttered an admission.
    â€˜Then where were you at thirteen hundred hours on the fourth?’
    â€˜How would I know? Don’t mean nothing to me what the time is, or the day.’
    â€˜That is when the señor fell to his death. And you had reason to wish him dead.’
    â€˜Kill a man just because . . . Here, wasn’t that a Friday?’
    â€˜Days do suddenly mean something to you?’
    â€˜I was in hospital having me shoulder X-rayed.’ Velaquez spoke with the breathless haste of someone seeking continued life when in sight of the gallows.
    Alvarez phoned the hospital. As was to be expected, he had to flaunt the superior chief’s name before he could persuade someone to check the records. Lorenzo Velaquez had had his shoulder X-rayed at thirteen hundred hours on the fourth.
    The sun had set behind