Majorcan Affair , livre ebook

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150 pages

English

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Description

If the child killed in the Majorcan car crash was not Anna Martinez then who was it? And more to the point, at least as far as her mother Patience Jameson is concerned, where is she? To find the answers, private eye Matt Bentley is hired and sent over to the popular holiday island. It does not take him long to get some answers and that brings Patience out to join him, to begin an adventure that takes them to the mainland and on a road trip throughout southern Spain.

Informations

Publié par	eBook Versions
Date de parution	09 décembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781843960409
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0240€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published in the UK by
Coatsgrange Publishing

Copyright © 2013 Keith Giles

Keith Giles has asserted his
right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified
as the author of this work.

ISBN-13 978-1-84396-040-9

A CIP catalogue record for
this ebook edition is available
from the British Library.

ePub ebook edition production
www.ebookversions.com

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic,
photomechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without
the prior written permission
of the publisher. Any person who
does any unauthorised act in
relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution.
THE
MAJORCAN
AFFAIR

Keith Giles

COATSGRANGE PUBLISHING
Contents

Title Page
Copyright Credits

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Prologue

The twelve-year-old BMW 3 series motored along the Ma-11 towards Port de Soller, a small town on the north west coast of Majorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands. It was the twenty seventh of April.
After leaving the Ma-11 the driver, a dark haired Spanish woman of about thirty, slowed as she approached the narrow winding roads that led the motorist down into the picturesque little seaside town.
The woman, who had shoulder length black hair which ringed her rather attractive features, appeared on edge, continually shifting her small but well proportioned body in her seat so as to allow her to see, through the interior mirror of the car, both the road behind the BMW and the child who was sleeping in the rear of the two door silver car.
She had been checking the road behind her ever since she steered the BMW off the main road, almost as if she were looking out for any other vehicles using the same stretch of road. Even though it was a warm and sunny April day, the road was quiet, no other vehicle was insight, either in front of or behind the BMW.
As the car rounded one of the numerous sharp bends the road had to offer, it fell away to the right, to a drop of about a hundred and fifty metres.
Without warning, the driver lost control of the car despite the fact that she was not travelling quickly. The BMW slid, almost in slow motion, towards the edge. At the very last moment, the driver s door flew open and, literally as the front wheel on the passenger side found thin air, the driver threw herself from the car. As she hit the ground, the BMW went over the edge.
By the time the driver had got to her feet and gone to look over the edge, the car had bounced down almost to the bottom of the ravine. When it hit the rocks at the bottom, the car burst into flames. The driver appeared almost stunned as the car began to burn. When the flames reached its fuel tank, the BMW exploded.
As the Spanish woman stood and looked at the burning wreckage below, she became aware that a car had stopped on the road behind her. She heard doors open and people rush to her. The people from the car, a young couple, were able to tell the police when interviewed later that as they got to the driver, they both clearly heard the distraught woman call out the name Anna . The couple, fearing that the driver could either collapse or try to reach the burning car, took hold of her and moved her away from the edge. As they moved her back to their car, the driver, whilst crying hysterically, called the name Anna over and over. As his wife tried to comfort the distressed driver, the young man called the emergency services on his mobile telephone.
Whilst the call to the emergency services was being made, the driver of the BMW was able to tell the young woman who was trying to comfort her that her fianc s daughter, Anna, was in the back of the car. When he discovered that there was a child in the car, the young man immediately looked for a way down to the inferno, feeling he had to try to save the child. He was unable to see a safe way down to the burning wreckage and reasoned that there was no point in trying to scramble down and risk falling into the flames, so wisely he decided to wait for the trained professionals, after all, no one could have survived what had quickly become an inferno.
The police were the first to arrive on the scene, some twelve minutes after the emergency call, they were followed moments later by the fire service. The BMW, which was by now, totally unrecognisable as one, was burning ferociously, out of control. The young man had notified the police, on their arrival, of the child trapped in the rear of the car and added that he had tried to find a way down but had not been able to identify a safe route. The senior of the police officers was able, to the relief of the young man, to state that it was his opinion borne out by long experience that it would have been impossible for anyone to survive the fire and that he need not chastise himself because he had not been able to get to the car.
By this time, the young man s wife had brought the woman over to where the police stood with her husband, she kept a tight grip on the hysterical woman as the driver managed to tell the police about the child in the car. She was also able to say that she had filled up the car at the last service station that she had passed on the main road. The two policemen exchanged a glance; that would explain why the car was burning so fiercely.
Whilst the police, driver and young couple were talking, the firemen had gone about their job quickly and efficiently and soon had their hoses trained on the fire. As they did so, one of their number was being rigged up in a safety harness and when the chief gave the go ahead, was lowered, along with a foam hose, down to the floor of the ravine. At the bottom, the fireman trained his foam on the still smouldering car until he was sure it would not flare up again, by the time he had finished, the water and foam ran away like washing up water.
Then, and only then, did he permit himself a look in the wreckage, what he saw caused him to turn away, murmuring a prayer before he fell to his knees and was violently sick. Once he had composed himself, he used his radio to contact his chief to confirm that the passenger in the rear of the car was most certainly dead. He also said that he was unable to give any clue as to the age or sex of the deceased person.
When he was told that the body was that of an eight-year-old girl the fireman, a fifteen-year veteran of the island s service, was unable to stop the flow of tears from his eyes.
In due course, cutting equipment was lowered and the body removed from the wreckage. Once clear, the child s remains were strapped on to a stretcher and hauled up the cliff. As the stretcher came over the top, the cover that the firemen had used to hide the body slipped off leaving the charred remains in full view of everybody. The BMW s driver along with the young wife who had stopped with her husband to try to help, fainted at the sight. Her husband and one or two of the policemen present turned away to be sick.
When the BMW s driver had recovered sufficiently, the police, while feeling sorry, had their duty to do and breathalysed her. The test was negative to the relief of the policeman conducting the test.
The woman was then taken to hospital in the town of Inca, and told by the police that they would be along to see her later to obtain her statement. Once the ambulance had pulled away, the police obtained statements from the young couple who had stopped to help before sending them on their way. Then they looked closely at the surface of the road. No skid marks were visible, leading the police to believe that the car had not been travelling too fast thereby causing the driver to loose control. A crime scene investigator had arrived to photograph and measure the scene of the accident. It was the opinion of the first policemen at the scene that this had been a tragic accident made worse by the recent filling of the BMW s fuel tank.
Later that evening, the police attended the hospital in Inca to speak to the woman they now knew to be one Inez Castillar of Santa Ponsa from the south coast of the island. When they arrived, Senorita Castillar was not alone, the man with her introduced himself as Raul Martinez, fianc of Inez Castillar and the father of Anna Martinez, the little girl who had died in the crash. The policemen offered their condolences for their loss though both of them recognised the name of Raul Martinez, a man well known to the police in Mallorca.
Martinez then explained to the police that Inez was not in fact the child s mother, her mother was actually his former wife Patience, an Englishwoman from whom he was now divorced and had been for some five or six years. Anna was staying with him as she was on holiday, it had been the first time that her mother had allowed her to come. It was clear that Martinez and Castillar had been crying, both had red ringed eyes and looked distraught but the police had a job to do and took a detailed statement from Inez, within which she confirmed that the passenger who was in the rear of the car had been Anna Martinez.
Making use of the fact that Martinez was present, the police obtained a statement from him confirm