THE SPANISH WAITER: TWENTY-SIX

The final part Phew!

CONCLUSION

The officer’s uniform was smart and his silver buttons polished until they threatened to dazzle as he frowned at Ivan and shook his head. He was sitting at a plain table next to the Spanish policewoman Valentina/They were facing Ivan Maybe and his self-appointed advocate Geraldine Bonny.

“You do understand,” said the Spanish police officer in perfect English and without a trace of accent, “but because you have been in trouble regarding our victim in the past we must consider you as a suspect in this case? After all, he was knifed through the heart, skilfully I can assure you and obviously by someone who knew what he was doing, and the weapon that was actually left in him had your finger prints all over it.”

“That’s hardly surprising,” put in Geraldine, scowling at the accusing officer, “the knife was one from the Hotel restaurant where he worked as a waiter, for goodness sake and I imagine every knife in that place, if tested, would be found to have his finger prints all over them.”

“And you swear you were with this lady for the whole f the time when your greatest enemy was savagely murdered?” The glowering officer ground out, a hint of triumph in his voice, the sort of triumph that a man who has his finger on the absolute truth might display.

“He was with me,” confirmed Geraldine, “and I don’t want to have to provide a blow-by-blow account of those wonderful hours, but I will if you force me.”

“Sir, they were in bed together,” said Valentina, “and I can vouch for the honesty of Mr Maybe’s witness because I worked with her on a top secret mission that combined the Spanish and British police forces, and we succeeded in our investigation, but she unfortunately was wounded rather seriously in our effort. She is beyond reproach and we have become firm friends after her recovery.”

“But the man in custody at the research establishment was actually found dead!” snapped the officer, “somone therefore must have killed him!”

Ivan had heard enough. “If you don’t mind,” he said firmly, “but the truth is I didn’t leave Geraldine’s bed until weill after dawn that day, and therefore there is a real killer at large, someone with a reason to silence Mr Carter. I have no idea who that might be but I do know that it wasn’t me!”

“And so do I,” confirmed Geraldine.

“Madam,” grunted the officer with a scowl, “you wouldn’t be the first woman to leap in the defence of her lover! You must see the situation fror what it is and accept there was nobody else anywhere near with a motive to kill the man. Not even the two he was with in that cell could have done the deed as there is absolutely no forensic evidence to suggest they did, and in that foresic evidence is the toxicity report that suggests they had both been drugged and therefore remained unconscious until we found them next morning.”

“Listen, you can discuss the matter all you like and find as many reasons as there are grains of sand on the Sahara Desert for Mr Maybe to kave knifed Mr Carter, the actual truth is he didn’t do it and as I know him probably better even than he knows himself I can guarantee that the idea of murder is as alien to his personality as his innocence is to yours!” said Geraldine angrily. “I’ve had enough of this! I want to take him home to England!”

The officer was about to forget himself and charge Ivan with the murder, probably sneering as he did so, when the door was knocked rather timidly and a young Spanish fresh-faced officer peeped in.

“Sir,” he said in Spanish, “we have another witness…”

“Then bring him in and shut the door!” barked the officer.

“Yes, sir…”

And the woman known to them as Miss Jones walked in.

“If you think that Mr Maybe had anything to do with the death of mr Carter you are chasing a shadow,” she said, “because I know who did the deed! It was a good man whose only motive was one of rebalancing history!”

“What is this?” demanded the officer, leaping to his feet in order to achieve a greater presence in the room that seemed to be overflowing with people convinced that his prisoner was innocent.

“I work as a secretary ina very important office in London,” said Miss Jones, “and several years ago the deceased in your mortuary made a fatal error. In all truth, he was a minor agent running an even more minor team investigating something that was no more real that ice lying around in the middle of an African desert is real, and he messed up badly. It was his decision to disappear with the aid of two very young and inexperienced juniors, and to let it be known he was dead. In order to make that believable he needed a killer to be locked away in prison so that anyone looking into his activities would be convinced that he was no longer a risk to them, though in truth he never had been.

“One person was aware of this and he chose to back the story up, and this led to Mr Maybe here being locked away for something he had never done, for twelve long years. I only became aware of this recently or I would have been unable to stop myself from publicising what in my mind is a criminal abuse of power. And the one person who is gulty of that knowledge and who abused his position is my boss, known as Mr Smith. He thought that if it seemed that Mr Maybe had finally actually committed the crime he had served a prison sentence for then everything would be all right, so it was Mr Smith who took a knife from the hotel restaurant and, well, you know what he did!”

“This is preposterous!” snapped the highly medalled officer, “I have the guilty man here!”

“No you don’t, sir,” whispered Valentina sitting next to her senior officer, “Just think about it, sir, and don’t make the same stupid error as your British equivalents made all those years ago. You’re much wiser than them! So shall I send out an order that Mr Smith be apprehended?”

There folloed a long moment while the senior officer seemed to think, nd then he nodded.

“Then do that,” he said finally, and he added “And arrest him for murder,”

“He’s making an escape,” said Miss Jones, “He’s on his way to the airport, though I did try but I couldn’t stop him.”

The senior officer stood up, went to the door and barked some orders in his native tongue.

When he came back and sat down Miss Jones smiled rather nervously at him. “Don’t worry, he won’t get far: I’ve got his passport!” she said with a smile, and she fished it out of her handbag and waved it in front of him.

Ivan breathed a sigh of relief. What looked as if might be a duplicate of the events that had ruined a great part of his life seemed to be resolved. He turned to Geraldine who had been sitting next to him throughout the interview.

“I think I want to go home,” he whispered.

“Of course,” she said, “and shall we get married, or would you prefer to live with me in sin?”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson, 03.12.22

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