Presumption of Guilt Read online

  *

  Mateo’s Bar was half way along the front, separated from the sand by a cobbled track. The actual bar — which served tapas at weekends — was on the inside of the track, but it owned a concrete square, set under the pine trees, on the sea side and during the season tables and chairs were set out on this. Drinkers had the pleasure of a superb view — the large, semi-circular bay, the mountains which ringed it, the blue sky and even bluer sea, the yachts with their multi-coloured sails, and the topless sunbathers.

  Evans traced a pattern in the frosting on his glass. “A friend of mine’s arriving at the end of the week. Mike’s a yachtsman who’s really only happy when he’s frightening himself silly in a hurricane, but most summers he goes soft and enjoys a cruise. I often go with him — Italy, the Greek islands: depends what time there is. I was wondering if you’d like to join in? Bring a friend along, of course. We’ll have company.”

  “It sounds great, but I’m returning home.”

  Evans drank. He watched a long-legged red-head, wearing a monokini which only an optimist would have described as adequate, walk along the sand, hips swinging, proudly conscious of the attention she was generating. “As Mike always says, sun, sail, and sex in a slow swell are an unbeatable combination. So put off your return for a couple of months.”

  “I doubt I’ll have the chance. I’ve got to start earning a living.”

  “Two months won’t make any difference to that and it’ll give you some memories to live on when the rain’s pissing down twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Right now, two months would make one hell of a difference.”

  “Skint?”

  “Not quite,” said Sterne tightly.

  “I’ll lend you a stake.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’re a difficult bastard.” Evans laughed. “Not just honest, but proud with it! You realise that if you don’t pay Hugh what’s not due to him, you could come cruising?”

  “I’m paying him.”

  “I know a brunette who could bring a dead man back to life.”

  Sterne said nothing.

  “Stubborn to boot! Well, thank God there are some honest, proud, stubborn people left in the world and not everyone’s like me. Maybe there’s hope for the human race yet.” He drained his glass. “Right, let’s move on. I thought we’d try El Pescador for some grub.”

  Sterne was surprised. El Pescador was the most expensive restaurant in Cala Survas.

  *

  The restaurant was on the eastern harbour arm: the bar was downstairs and the tables above. The décor was in overpoweringly bad taste, but the view through the windows was of the bay and the food was nearly as good as the prices suggested it should be.

  Evans said: “This is one of the few places in Spain which serves decent sweets. The chocolate mousse is as smooth and rich as anything you’ll get in France.”

  Sterne wondered how often Evans ate here. And where did the money come from? “I’ll settle for that, then.”

  Evans gave the order. “And I think we’ll have a bottle of bubbly with the pud…”

  “I’ve about had enough to drink,” Sterne intervened.

  “If you know that much, then you haven’t.” Evans called the wine waiter across. “A bottle of Castellblanch, brut.”

  The champagne arrived in an ice bucket, the cork was removed with professional ease, and their glasses were filled.

  Evans said: “Here’s luck to us and to hell with the rest of the world.” He drank, put his glass down on the table. “I’ve been thinking, Angus…” He was interrupted by the table waiter who set their sweets in front of them.

  The chocolate mousse was smooth, rich, and flavoured with a tangy taste which Sterne tentatively identified as a mixture of orange and lemon: the whipped cream on top had been laced with Cointreau.

  “How about a cigar?” Evans asked.

  “I don’t, thanks.”

  Evans ordered a cigar. When it arrived, he lit and smoked it in a strangely intense manner, as if savouring something of which he’d been deprived for a long time. “As I started to say, I’ve been scratching my head to work out a way of helping you.”

  “There’s no need to bother.”

  “Honest, stubborn, and not just proud, but very, very proud.”

  “I didn’t mean to be ungracious.”

  “Forget it. For God’s sake, if friends can’t pull each other’s leg once in a while… How are you getting back to England? Anything booked?”

  “Not yet.” And nothing could be booked until Ralph sent the money.

  “So how would you feel about a trip back where all expenses are paid? And a hundred and fifty quid bonus at the end?”

  Sterne said nothing.

  “A bloke I know came along with the proposition, but I’m too busy — got to make that cruise. But I’m wondering if it mightn’t help you.”

  “What kind of a trip?”

  “Taking a car from here to England. And the expenses will be generous.”

  “Why isn’t the owner driving the car back?”

  “It’s all right, the car won’t be hot or anything like that.”

  “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

  “I’m not going to answer it, Angus, until you say whether or not you’re interested.” He drew on the cigar, blew a smoke ring which shimmered as it slowly rose. “No need to decide here and now. Think about it. But don’t be too long.”

  *

  Sterne stood on the balcony of his studio room and stared along the road at the segment of bay which he could see: a shaft of moonlight across the water added a touch of poetry.

  Evans, jokingly, had called him a very proud man. If the wish to be independent was to be proud, then he was… When his parents had died, they’d left a considerable amount of capital which his uncle, one of the trustees of the trust set up by their will, had invested with great acumen so that the value of the trust had, over the years, considerably increased. It had been a complicated trust, aimed at making certain neither Ralph nor he came into the capital too young: his parents had been quite certain that too much money too soon ruined any man. When Ralph had reached 28 the original trust was broken and Ralph’s share had vested absolutely, but his own share had become the subject of a fresh trust, of which Ralph was a trustee. (Perhaps right from the beginning his parents had identified the streak of reckless adventure in him, just as they’d identified the conservative, cautious approach to life Ralph would always take.) Inevitably, Ralph had done all he could to suggest that his income from the new trust be spent wisely and with a view to the future, but all the time it was his money he’d felt he’d a perfect right to use it in the pursuit of living. Now, however, he needed more money to get him home and Ralph had told him a month before that there’d be no further income from the trust for three months, so he’d be asking Ralph to lend him money, not hand over what, subject to Ralph’s approval (and Angela’s disapproval), was legally his. His pride balked at the necessity…

  He’d heard of people being offered a trip back to the UK by car in return for driving the car there, or sharing the driving, but in such cases it was normal for people to have to meet their own hotel and other expenses. Yet Evans had said that not only would all expenses be paid on a generous scale (the implication being that there was profit to be made here), there would also be a hundred and fifty pounds at the end…

  Evans had also called him honest. He was. Which meant that he was honest enough to acknowledge the fact that ‘honesty’ was a word which could not always be defined by the same set of standards. What if this proposed drive was in some respect an unusual one, but there was nothing inherently illegal about it…?

  Chapter 3

  Evans’s flat was on the top floor of one of the front apartment blocks. On the rooftop patio, four chairs were set round a cane table and Sterne stared out at the bay and saw a large yacht, having just cleared the harbour, break out her multi-coloured spinnaker. It reminded him of the
cruise Evans had proposed: days of sun, nights of love…

  Evans, who’d left to get the drinks, returned carrying a tray on which were two glasses and a bottle of champagne. He held the cork and twisted the bottle around it: the cork came free. He filled the two glasses and placed the bottle under the table in such shade as there was. “The one advantage of this heat is that you have to drink quickly in order to prevent the champagne in the bottle becoming warm.”

  “There is an alternative — put the bottle back in the fridge.”

  “And waste good drinking time getting there and back?”

  He was being judged, Sterne suddenly thought. But why and for what?

  Evans offered a pack of Lambert and Butler cigarettes and, when Sterne shook his head, lit one.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you mentioned yesterday,” Sterne said abruptly. “It can’t possibly be as simple as you made out.”

  “Why not?”

  “The offer’s too generous.”

  “A cynical approach. I’m delighted. There’s hope yet that you’ll survive in this shark-infested world…”

  “If you’re not prepared to be serious, forget it.”

  “Hang on. I’m only being a bit facetious.” Evans studied Sterne. “Things must be a lot tighter than you let on. So why in hell did you pay the extra sixty-five thousand over and above what you needed to? …Still, that’s past history. And now you want to know why someone’s willing to pay over the odds to have a car driven back to the UK. All right, I’ll tell you. How much d’you know about the machinations of the Common Market?”

  “No more than the next man.”

  “In other words, the whole thing is just a sour joke… So you wouldn’t know what the regulations are concerning the importation of used cars, with special reference to the re-importation of a car into its country of origin?”

  “You’re right — I wouldn’t.”

  “Suppose you’re an Englishman who’s fed up with the English weather and you decide to live abroad. Initially, you take your British registered car on which all proper taxes were paid when it was first bought. You settle in a Common Market country. Then, after a bit, you decide to get rid of the right-hand drive car and buy a left-hand, locally produced one. No native of your new country is going to, or probably is allowed to, buy it, so you’ve the option of driving it back to sell it yourself or finding a returning Englishman who’ll take it from you or buy it on the spot. You’re lucky. You find someone who buys it and gives a fair price and he drives off. When he reaches Britain the odds are the car no longer has a current excise licence so he declares himself to the Customs and explains what’s happened. Their first question is — where did he buy the car. He tells ’em — France. Fine, they say. Fill in this and that form, here’s our certification that you’ve made all the proper declarations in case you should be stopped by a copper for not displaying the appropriate tax disc, and welcome back to a civilised country. But now let’s change the scenario. He tells ’em he bought the car in Spain. They shake their heads. Spain wasn’t in the Common Market when he bought the car so now he’s got to pay taxes on importing it.”

  “You said it was British built and all the taxes due had originally been paid.”

  “Right.”

  “Then there can’t be anything to pay on its return into Britain.”

  “Wrong. Under the Common Market regulations, there are — quite heavy ones in the case of a luxury car… Have some more champagne to help overcome the shock of discovering the depths to which the bureaucratic mind can sink.”

  Evans refilled their glasses. “You’ll have the picture by now. The people with luxury cars are the rich tax exiles who mustn’t return to the UK until they’ve established beyond any shadow of a doubt that they’re ordinarily non-resident in the UK for tax purposes. Someone like that can’t just drive his car back. That seems to leave him with only two choices. One, he can pay someone to drive it back and sell it for him — but being very rich he expects to be swindled at every turn: two, he can sell it locally, but only at the kind of discount which gives him ulcers. That’s why a bit of trade’s sprung up — a trade which gives him a third option.

  “A third party comes along and makes an offer for the car that’s less than he’d get in the UK, but more than he could hope for from a local sale. He doesn’t like the money being less than it would be in the UK, of course — the rich are the only people left who still count their pennies — but he’s paid in the local currency and cash always soothes.

  “As for the third party, he has the car driven back to the UK where it’s sold for the market price, so he’s in pocket.”

  “How can he be if the car has to pay the Common Market tax on re-entry into the UK?”

  “That’s an interesting question.”

  “Then what’s the answer?”

  “It enters the UK with papers proving that it was bought in France and is therefore not liable to the tax.”

  “Fakes?”

  “If a bunch of clowns think up such bloody stupid rules and regulations, what else can they expect? …How’d you like to take a car back?”

  Sterne hesitated, then said: “I need to think about it.”

  “Sure. But things are a bit sharper than I thought they were and I’ll need the answer inside twenty-four hours. A car’s turned up, so the sooner it’s in the UK, the sooner the capital’s back in circulation.”

  *

  The red Mercedes 380SEL might have come out of the showrooms the previous day: the registration number said it was a year old.

  “Mercedes are all right,” said Evans, as he stared at the parked car, “but give me a Porsche. I had a turbo nine-eleven not so long back. Put my foot down and every other car on the road started going backwards.”

  “What about papers?” Sterne asked.

  “They’re all in the glove locker.”

  “And what happens after I cross the border?”

  “Let’s go up to the flat so I can give you the details.” They took the lift up to the sixth floor. In the large sitting room, which offered the same uninterrupted view of the bay as the patio above, Evans crossed to an occasional table made from a section of very ancient, gnarled olive wood. He spread out a map. “D’you know the roads through to France?”

  “Only vaguely.”

  “If I were you, I’d stick to the motorway as that’s the easiest and quickest route to the border. Once in France, make for Lençon and aim to be there by Friday evening. Lençon’s here.” Evans used his long forefinger to indicate a town in the Lot et Garonne department. “Leave the town on the Bergerac road and keep going for eight kilometres until you come to the Trois Etoiles motel. A room will be reserved for you. Don’t be misled into thinking the grub’s good there. When you want to eat return to Lençon and go to the Bourgogne. And if you’ll take my advice, you’ll start with their truffle omelette.

  “On Saturday morning you’ll be contacted and handed fresh papers for the car, proving you bought it in France — a notarised letter of sale, insurance green card… the usual bumph.”

  “And then?”

  “Lençon will tell you where to take the car in the UK.”

  “What if something goes wrong?”

  Evans laughed. “No need to get your knickers in a twist. Nothing’ll go wrong.”

  It was unlike Sterne to worry, but the knowledge that he’d be breaking the law left him feeling on edge, even though he could be certain that few people would censure him for breaking so ridiculous and inequitable a law as this one.

  Evans stood upright. “That leaves just one thing. Expenses.” He picked up an envelope. “There’s five hundred dollars in here, in dollars and francs.”

  Sterne took the envelope and pushed it into his trouser pocket.

  “Aren’t you going to check it’s all there?”

  “No.”

  Evans looked quizzically at him. “You’ll never stay rich.”

  “That’s a sure bet.”
/>   “Have a good trip, then. And don’t forget, the Bourgogne. Their truffle omelette will tell you why the French all have bad livers by the time they’re forty.”

  *

  Sterne stood on the balcony of his studio room and stared along the road at the bay. The cynics said, never return. So perhaps he’d never return to Cala Survas, but it was a sad thought despite the concrete developments, package-tour amenities, memento shops, and Sonia’s Levantine.

  He returned into the room, picked up his suitcase, and left. The landlady was waiting on the ground floor and she kissed him on both cheeks and told him that he was like a son to her and his going away was breaking her heart. Her grief was genuine — she came of an emotional people. Additionally, a number of flats in the town had not been let this season because of a slight decrease in the number of tourists and she might not find another tenant by September.

  He left the house and went over to the Mercedes, put the suitcase on the back seat, and settled behind the wheel. To reach the nearest access point on the motorway, sixteen kilometres away, he needed to drive towards the west and then turn inland: he drove to the east. He wasn’t a fool and knew that cars were used for smuggling and he judged, not least from the certainty with which Evans had said that he’d not have paid Smedley the full bet, that Evans would never hesitate to take advantage of someone if it would be to his financial advantage.

  The one-man garage stood on the outskirts of the town, next to a section where an apartment block had been begun but then the finances had failed. Fernando, the owner, was an ardent windsurfer, which was how Sterne had come to know him. He was working on the engine of an old and very battered Seat 600.

  “Can you do something for me?” Sterne asked in his workable Spanish.

  Fernando straightened up. “Anything to get away from this old pig of a car.” He rubbed the small of his back. “What’s the trouble?” He moved to his left to look through the opened doorway of his garage. “That’s not your job, there?”