Cocaine Nights

9 The Inferno

An ashy dust cloaked the hill slopes as the nearside wheels of Cabrera's car raced through the verge, a chalky pall that swirled between the palms and floated up the drives of the handsome villas beside the road. When it cleared we could see the Hollinger house on its fire mountain, a vast grate choked with dead embers. Teeth clenched, Paula worked the gear lever, chasing the policeman's car around the bends and only slowing out of respect for my injured throat.

'We shouldn't be here,' she told me, clearly still shocked by my assault and the thought that such violence existed in Estrella de Mar. 'You aren't resting enough. I want you to come to the Clinic tomorrow for another X-ray. How do you feel?'

'Physically? I dare say, a complete wreck. Mentally, fine. That attack released something. Whoever seized me had a light touch-I once watched professional stranglers doing their stuff in northern Borneo, executing so-called bandits. Extremely nasty, but in a way I…'

'Know how it feels? Not quite.' She slowed down to give herself time to look me over. 'Cabrera was right-you're slightly euphoric. Are you strong enough to go round the Hollingers' house?'

'Paula, stop playing the head girl. This case is about to break, I sense it. And I think Cabrera senses it too.'

'He senses you're going to get yourself killed. You and Frank – I thought you were so different, but you're even more mad than he is.'

I leaned my orthopaedic collar against the head-rest and watched her as she crouched over the steering wheel. Determined not to be left behind by Cabrera, she peered fiercely at the road, putting her foot down at the smallest opportunity. Despite her sharp tongue and brisk manner, below the surface lay a strain of insecurity that I found pleasantly attractive. She affected to look down at the expat communities along the coast, but had a curiously low estimate of herself, bridling whenever I tried to tease her. I knew that she was annoyed with herself for having concealed from Cabrera her presence at the apartment, presumably for fear that he might assume some personal involvement between us.

Miguel, the Hollingers' morose chauffeur, was opening the gates when we caught up with Cabrera. The wind had disturbed the ash that lay over the gardens and tennis court, but the estate was still bathed in a marble light, a world of glooms glimpsed in a morbid dream. Death had arrived at the Hollingers and decided to stay, settling her skirts over the shadowy pathways.

Cabrera greeted us when we parked, and walked with us to the front steps of the house.

'Dr Hamilton, thank you for giving up your time. Are you ready, Mr Prentice? You are not too tired?'

'Not at all, Inspector. If I feel faint I'll wait out here. Dr Hamilton can describe it to me later.'

'Good. In fact, your first sensible idea.' He was watching me closely, eager to see my reactions, as if I were a tethered goat whose bleats might draw a tiger from its lair. I was sure that by now he had no wish to see me return to London.

'Now…' Cabrera turned his back on the heavy oak doors, still sealed by their police tapes, and pointed to the gravel path that led around the south-west corner of the mansion to the kitchen and garages. 'The hall and the downstairs rooms are too dangerous for anyone to enter. I suggest therefore that we follow the path taken by the assassin. This way we will see events in the order they took place. It will help us to understand what happened on that evening and, perhaps, read the psychology of the victims and their murderer Enjoying his new role as stately home tour guide, Cabrera led us around the house. The Hollingers' blue vintage Bentley stood outside the garage, the only clean and polished entity in the estate. Miguel had washed and waxed the limousine, buffing the huge wings that flared above its wheels. He had followed us up the drive and now stood patiently beside the car. Still staring at me, he took up his leather and began to rub the high radiator grille.

'Poor man…' Paula held my arm, eyes avoiding the debris of charred timbers around us, and tried to smile at the chauffeur. 'Do you think he's all right here?'

'I hope so. It looks as if he's waiting for the Hollingers to return. Inspector, what do you know about the psychology of chauffeurs…?'

But Cabrera was pointing to the flight of steps that led to the housekeeper's quarters above the garage. A wrought-iron gate beside the entry door opened on to the blighted hillside where the lemon orchard had once flourished. Cabrera sprinted up the steps and stood by the gate.

'Dr Hamilton, Mr Prentice… you will notice the gate from the orchard. We can now imagine the situation on the evening of 15 June. By seven o'clock the party is well in progress, with all the guests on the terrace beside the pool. As Dr Hamilton will remember, the Hollingers appear on the top-floor veranda and propose the toast to your Queen. Everyone is looking up at the Hollingers, glasses raised to Her Majesty, and no one notices the arsonist when he opens the orchard gate.'

Cabrera skipped down the staircase and stepped past us to the kitchen entrance. He took a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. I appreciated his tactful use of the term 'arsonist', though I suspected that the tour was designed to rid me of my faith in Frank's innocence.

'Inspector, Frank was mingling with the other guests on the terrace. Why would he leave the party and hide in the orchard? Dozens of people talked to him by the pool.'

Cabrera nodded his sympathy at this. 'Exactly, Mr Prentice. But no one remembers speaking to him after six-forty-five. Did you, Dr Hamilton?'

'No – I was with David Hennessy and some friends. I didn't really see Frank at all.' She turned away and stared at the gleaming Bentley, pressing the faded bruise on her mouth as if willing it to return. 'Perhaps he didn't go to the party?'

Cabrera firmly dismissed this. 'Many witnesses spoke to him, but none after six-forty-five. Remember, the arsonist needed to park his incendiary materials close at hand. No one would notice a guest walking up the steps to the orchard. Once there, he collects his bombs-three bottles filled with ether and gasoline that he buried the previous day in a shallow excavation twenty metres from the gate. As the Queen's toast begins he sets off to enter the house. The nearest and most convenient door is this one into the kitchen.'

I nodded at all this, but asked: 'What about the housekeeper? Surely she would have seen him?'

'No. The housekeeper and her husband were by the terrace, helping the temporary staff to serve the canapés and champagne. They were raising their glasses to Her Majesty and saw nothing.'

Cabrera pushed back the door and beckoned us into the kitchen. A brick-built annexe to the main house, it was the only part of the structure undamaged. Saucepans hung from the walls, and the shelves were crowded with spices, herbs and bottles of olive oil. But the yeasty stench of sodden carpets and the acrid odour of charred fabrics filled the room. Pools of water lay on the floor, soaking a walkway of wooden boards laid down by the police investigators.

Cabrera waited until we found our footing and then continued. 'So: the arsonist enters the empty kitchen and seals the door. The house is now closed off from the outside world. The Hollingers preferred their guests not to enter their home, and all the doors on to the terrace were locked. In fact, the guests were completely segregated from their hosts – an English tradition, I assume. Now, let us follow the arsonist when he leaves the kitchen…'

Cabrera led the way into the pantry, a large room that occupied a section of the annexe. A refrigerator, washing-machine and spin-drier stood on the concrete floor, surrounded by pools of water. Beside a deep-freezer cabinet an inspection door opened into a head-high chamber that contained the central heating and air-conditioning system. Cabrera stepped through the inspection door and pointed to the partly dismantled unit, a furnace-sized structure that resembled a large turbine.

'The intake manifold draws air from a pipe on the kitchen roof. The air is filtered and humidified, then either cooled during the summer or heated during the winter, and finally pumped to the rooms around the house. The arsonist switches off the system-for the few minutes he needs no one will notice. He removes the cowling of the humidifier, drains off the water and refills the reservoir with his gasoline and ether mixture. All is now set for a huge and cruel explosion Cabrera ushered us through the service corridor that led into the mansion. We stood in the spacious hall, looking at ourselves in the foam-smeared mirrors, visitors to a marine grotto. The staircase rose a dozen steps, then divided beneath a large baronial fireplace that dominated the hall. Tags of scorched cloth lay in the iron grate, and the ashes had been carefully sifted by the police investigators.

Watching me closely, Cabrera continued: 'Everything is ready. The guests are busy with their party outside, eager to drink the last of the champagne. The Hollingers, their niece Anne, the Swedish maid and the secretary, Mr Sansom, have retired to their rooms to escape the noise. The arsonist takes his remaining bottle of gasoline and ether and soaks a small carpet he has laid in the fireplace. The flames leap swiftly from his match or lighter. He then returns to the pantry. As the fire on the staircase begins to rage he switches on the air-conditioning system…'

Cabrera paused, waiting as Paula gripped my arm to steady herself, knuckles between her teeth.

'It's terrible to imagine. Within seconds the gasoline mixture is driven through the ventilation ducts. Ignited by the flames on the staircase, the rooms of the upper floor turn into an inferno. No one escapes, even though there are emergency steps that lead down to the terrace from a door on the landing. Mr Hollinger's film library, in a room next to his study, adds to the blaze. The house is a furnace, and everyone inside it perishes in a matter of minutes.'

I felt Paula stumble against me, and put an arm around her trembling shoulders. She had begun to cry to herself, and her tears stained the lapel of my cotton jacket. She seemed about to collapse, but rallied herself and murmured: 'Good God, who could do such a thing?'

'Certainly not Frank, Inspector.' Still supporting Paula, I spoke as calmly as I could to Cabrera. 'This dismantling of the air-conditioning system and turning it into an incendiary weapon – Frank could barely change a light-bulb. Whoever carried out this attack had the skills you find only in people trained as military saboteurs.'

'Perhaps, Mr Prentice…' Cabrera watched Paula with obvious concern, and offered her his handkerchief. 'But skills can be learned, especially dangerous ones. Let us continue our tour.'

The staircase was strewn with charred timbers and ceiling plaster, but the police investigators had cleared a narrow ascent. Cabrera climbed the steps, hands holding the scorched banisters, feet sinking in the sodden carpet. The oak panelling around the fireplace had turned to charcoal, but here and there the outlines of a heraldic shield had been preserved.

We paused on the landing, surrounded by blackened walls, the open sky above our heads. The bedroom doors had burned down to their locks and hinges, and through the empty frames we could see into the gutted rooms with their incinerated furniture. The forensic team had laid a catwalk of planks along the exposed joists, and Cabrera stepped warily towards the first of the bedrooms.

I helped Paula along the rocking timber and steadied her against the doorway. In the centre of the room were the remains of a four-poster bed. Around it stood the carbonized ghosts of a desk, dressing-table and a large oak wardrobe in the Spanish style. A line of framed photographs stood on the stone mantelpiece. Some of the glass had melted in the heat, but one frame, surprisingly intact, showed a florid-faced man in a dinner jacket, standing at a lectern inscribed with the legend: 'Beverly Wilshire Hotel'.

'Is that Hollinger?' I asked Cabrera. 'Speaking in Los Angeles to some film industry audience?'

'Many years ago,' Cabrera confirmed. 'He was much older when he came to Estrella de Mar. This was his bedroom. According to the housekeeper he slept for an hour before dinner.'

'What an end…' I stared at the mattress springs, like the coils of a huge electric grill. 'I only hope the poor man never awoke.'

'In fact, Mr Hollinger was not in the bed.' Cabrera pointed to the bathroom. 'He had taken refuge in the jacuzzi, probably to spare himself from the flames.'

We stepped into the bathroom, and gazed down at the semi-circular tub filled with tarry water. Roof-tiles lay on the floor, and the blue ceramic walls were streaked with smoke, but the room was almost intact, a tiled execution chamber. I imagined the elderly Hollinger, roused from sleep as the flames leapt from the masts of his four-poster, unable to warn his wife in her nearby bedroom, and driven into the jacuzzi as a fireball erupted from the air-conditioning vents.

'Poor devil,' I commented. 'Dying by himself in a jacuzzi. There's a warning there 'Possibly.' Cabrera moistened his hands in the water. 'Actually, he was not alone.'

'Really? So Mrs Hollinger was with him?' I thought of the elderly couple reclining in the jacuzzi before dressing for dinner. 'In a way it's rather touching.'

Cabrera smiled faintly. 'Mrs Hollinger was not here. She was in another bedroom.'

'Then who was with Hollinger?'

'The Swedish maid, Bibi Jansen. You went to her funeral.'

'I did…' I was trying to visualize the old millionaire and the young Swede in the water together. 'Are you sure it was Hollinger?'

'Of course.' Cabrera turned the pages of his notebook. 'His surgeon in London identified a special type of steel pin in his right hip.'

'Dear Jesus…' Paula released my arm and stepped past Cabrera to the wash-basin. She stared at herself in the cloudy mirror, as if trying to identify her reflection, and then leaned on the ash-strewn porcelain, her head lowered. Already I could see that the visit to the house was a far greater ordeal for her than it was for me.

'I didn't know Hollinger or Bibi Jansen,' I said to Cabrera. 'But it's hard to imagine the two of them together in a jacuzzi.'

'Technically, that's correct.' Cabrera was still noting my responses to everything. 'It would be more accurate to say there were three of them.'

'Three people in the jacuzzi? Who was the third?'

'Miss Jansen's child.' Cabrera helped Paula to the door. 'Dr Hamilton will confirm that she was pregnant.'

As Cabrera surveyed the bathroom, measuring the walls with a steel tape, I followed Paula out of Hollinger's bedroom. Crossing the catwalk of planks, we entered a small room along the corridor. Here the fire had raged even more fiercely. The blackened remains of a large doll lay on the floor like a charred baby, but the torrent of water hosed on to the roof had obliterated all other traces of the room's occupant. In one corner the fire had spared a small dressing-table, which still supported a CD player.

'This was Bibi's room,' Paula told me flatly. 'That heat must have been… I don't know why she was here at all. She should have been by the pool with everyone else.'

She picked up the doll and placed it on the remains of the bed, then dusted the black ash from her hands. Pain and anger seemed to compete within her face, as if she had lost a valued patient as a result of a colleague's incompetence. I put my arm around her, glad when she leaned against me.

'Did you know she was pregnant, Paula?'

'Yes. Four or five weeks.'

'Who was the father?'

'I've no idea. She wouldn't tell me.'

'Gunnar Andersson? Dr Sanger?'

'Sanger?' Paula's fist clenched against my chest. 'For heaven's sake, he was her father-figure.'

'Even so. When were you last here?'

'Six weeks ago. She'd been swimming at night and caught a kidney chill. Charles, who would start a fire like this?'

'Not Frank, that's for sure. God knows why he confessed. But I'm glad we came. Someone obviously hated the Hollingers.'

'Perhaps they didn't realize how fast the fire would burn. It might have been a prank that went wrong?'

'It's too deliberate for that. The re-jigged air-conditioning system… this was a serious business.'

We rejoined Cabrera in a room across the landing. Its door had vanished, sucked into the night air by the vortex of flame and gas.

'This was the room of the niece, Anne Hollinger,' Cabrera explained, staring bleakly at the gutted shell. He spoke more quietly, no longer the police academy lecturer, as drained as Paula and I by the experience of visiting the death-rooms. 'The heat was so intense, she had no way of escape. Since the air-conditioning had been supplying cool air, all the windows were tightly closed.'

The forensic team had dismantled the bed, presumably to detach the niece's carbonized remains from the debris of mattress.

'Where was she found?' I asked. 'Lying on the bed?'

'No – she too died in the bathroom. Not in the jacuzzi, however. She was sitting on the toilet – a macabre posture, like Rodin's "Thinker".' As Paula shuddered against my arm Cabrera added: 'At least she was happy when she died. We found a hypodermic syringe 'What was inside it – heroin?'

'Who can say? The fire was too fierce for analysis.'

Below the window, perhaps cooled by the inrush of cold air through the shattered glass, a television set and video-recorder had survived intact. The remote-control unit lay on the bedside table, melted like black chocolate, blurred numerals still visible in the plastic.

Despite myself, I said: 'I wonder what programme she was watching? I'm sorry – that sounds callous.'

'It is.' Paula wearily shook her head as I tried to turn on the TV set. 'Charles, we've seen the news. Anyway, the current isn't on.'

'I know. What was Anne like? I take it she was a heavy drug-user.'

'She definitely wasn't. Not after her overdose. I don't know what she was injecting.' Paula stared across the sunlit rooftops of Estrella de Mar. 'She was great fun. Once she rode a camel around the Plaza Iglesias, swearing at the taxi-drivers like a haughty torera. One evening at the Club Nautico she picked a live lobster from the restaurant tank and had it brought to our table.'

'She ate it raw?'

'No. She took pity on the thing, waving its claws at her, and released it into the salt-water plunge pool. It took them days to catch the beast. Bobby Crawford was feeding it at night. And then she died here…'

'Paula, you didn't start the fire.'

'And nor did Frank.' She wiped her tears from my jacket. 'Cabrera knows that.'

'I'm not sure if he does.'

The Inspector was waiting for us outside the largest bedroom in the west wing of the house. The windows looked out over an open veranda to the sea, veiled by awnings that hung like black sails. It was from here that the Hollingers had proposed the Queen's birthday toast before retiring. Shreds of burnt chintz clung to the walls, and the dressing room resembled a coal scuttle in a rage.

'Mrs Hollinger's bedroom.' Cabrera held my arm when I stumbled on the catwalk. 'Are you all right, Mr Prentice? I think you have seen enough?'

'I'm fine-let's complete the tour, Inspector. Mrs Hollinger was found here?'

'No.' Cabrera pointed along the corridor. 'She had taken refuge at the rear of the house. Perhaps the flames there were less intense.'

We made our way down the corridor, to a small room with a single window overlooking the lemon orchard. Despite the destructive effects of the fire, it was clear that a sophisticated sensibility had devised a refined if faintly precious private world. A lacquered Chinese screen separated the bed from the living area, and what had once been a pair of handsome Empire chairs faced each other across the fireplace. Two of the walls were lined with books, whose spines peeled from the charred shelves. Above the bed was a small dormer window that contained the only intact glass I had seen on the upper floor of the mansion.

'Was this Hollinger's study?' I asked Cabrera. 'Or Mrs Hollinger's sitting room?'

'No-this was Mr Sansom's bedroom. He was the male secretary.'

'And Mrs Hollinger was found here?'

'She was on the bed.'

'And Sansom?' I searched the floor, almost expecting to find a body against the skirting-board.

'He was also on the bed.'

'So they were lying together?'

'In death, certainly. Her shoes were still in his hands, clenched very fiercely Surprised by this, I turned to speak to Paula, but she had left to make a last circuit of the other rooms. I knew almost nothing about Roger Sansom, a bachelor in his fifties who had worked for Hollinger's property company and then accompanied him to Spain as his general factotum. But to die in bed with his employer's wife showed an excessive sense of duty. It was too easy to visualize their last moments together as the lacquered screen burst into a fiery shield.

'Mr Prentice…' Cabrera beckoned me to the door. 'I suggest you find Dr Hamilton. She is very upset, it's a big strain for her. Meanwhile, you will have seen enough-perhaps you'll speak to your brother. I can oblige him to meet you.'

'Frank? What is there to talk about? I assume you've described all this to him?'

'He too has seen everything. On the day after the fire he asked me to take him around the house. He was already under arrest, charged with possessing an incendiary device. When he reached this room he decided to confess.'

Cabrera was watching me in his thoughtful way, as if expecting that I, in turn, would admit my role in the crime.

'Inspector, when I meet Frank I'll say that I've seen the house. If he knows I've been here he'll realize how absurd his confession is. The idea that he's guilty is preposterous.'

Cabrera seemed disappointed in me. 'It's possible, Mr Prentice. Guilt is so flexible, it's a currency that changes hands… each time losing a little value.'

I left him poking into the drawers of the bedside table, and made my way along the catwalk in search of Paula. Mrs Hollinger's bedroom was empty, but as I passed the niece's room I heard Paula's voice on the terrace below.

She was waiting for me by her car, talking to Miguel as he tried to clear the blocked vents of the swimming pool. I walked to the window and leaned out between the shreds of charred awning.

'We're through now, Paula. I'll be down in a minute.'

'Good. I want to go. I thought you were watching television.'

She had recovered her self-control, and smoked a miniature cigar as she leaned against the BMW, but her eyes avoided the house. She strolled towards the pool and wandered among the chairs on the terrace. I guessed that she was searching for the exact spot where she had stood at the moment the fire erupted.

Admiring her, I rested against the sill, and tried to loosen the orthopaedic collar around my neck. Looking down at the TV set, I noticed that a cassette protruded from the mouth of the video-recorder, ejected by the mechanism when the intense heat confused the circuitry. Dismayed by the destruction around them, and the grim task of removing bodies, the police team had missed one of the few objects to survive both the blaze and the deluge of water that followed.

I held the cassette and drew it carefully from the recorder. Its casing was intact, and I raised the shroud to find the tape still held tightly between the spools. The TV set was visible from the bathroom, and I imagined Anne Hollinger staring at the screen as she sat on the toilet and injected herself with heroin. Curious to see this last programme she had watched before the fire seized her life from her, I slipped the cassette into my pocket and followed Cabrera down the stairs.