Quintin Jardine - Blood Red

I kept that thought with me through the evening, even after I’d called Father Olivares and been depressed by his pessimism over Gerard’s prospects, especially when I told him that he’d rejected Josep Villamas’s offer of representation. ‘He is accepting his situation, my dear,’ the old cleric sighed. ‘If that is the case, then perhaps we should also.’

‘I’ll never do that,’ I insisted. ‘Father, do you know how to get in touch with Santiago Hernanz, Gerard’s brother?’

‘I’m afraid not. I was away on both his visits to L’Escala, so I’ve never met him, and Gerard rarely speaks of him.’

That was true enough, I had to concede.

I found relief from one problem by concentrating on another. Should I go to Dolores Fumado’s funeral? After all, I’d met the woman as often as I’d met Justin Mayfield, and on one of those occasions she’d been dead. Still, Justine had been pretty square with me. On balance I decided that non-attendance might be seen as a snub, so next morning I dug out a black dress, left Tom with Ben Simmers, in charge of the dogs, and drove into L’Escala. Parking wasn’t a problem; there’s an official area behind the church. In the winter it’s free, so it’s full, but in the summer you have to pay, so it’s half-empty; the locals don’t use it then, on principle, even though it only costs a few cents. See Catalans; see money?

I bought a new shawl in a shop at the top of the hill, not because I wanted one, but to comply with convention. It wasn’t as nice as my old one, but the police still had that, and anyway, going to a funeral wearing the murder weapon would have set a new standard in political incorrectness.

As I had at Planas’s send-off, I tried to make myself invisible in the middle of the congregation, but I could only find a seat at the end of a row, right on the aisle. Hah! If the ghost of John Paul II had appeared at the altar to conduct the Mass he wouldn’t have attracted much more attention than I did. For all the discretion that the police had shown in bandying my name around when I was on the run, I must still have been the talk of every hairdressing salon in L’Escala. . and believe me, that’s a lot of shampoo and set; anyone parachuted into the town and asked to name its main industries on the basis of a quick walk round would probably say anchovies second, hairdressing top of the list.

Just about every head in the place turned to look at me, and a buzz of conversation started. It was only stilled when the mayor, her sister, looking more ghostly than ever, and Angel entered the church and walked slowly up the aisle; they were followed by two other men, of an older generation. Justine stopped beside me. She put her hand on my arm, kissed me on the cheek and said, in a voice loud enough to carry for several rows in every direction, ‘Thank you for coming, Primavera. I know you’ve had an ordeal too.’

That took care of the chattering classes, I’m happy to say. I was forgotten as the Mass progressed. It didn’t seem to last as long as the previous one had. . Father Olivares was acting alone; that may have accounted for it. . before we were making our way outside, into the square with the vast palm tree, full of noisy birds, in the centre. I would have left straight away, but Justine came across to me. She’d been talking to the two older men, but detached herself. One of them, the taller of the two, moved on to talk to Angel, but the other followed her with his eyes, until they settled on me. ‘My uncles,’ she explained. ‘My parents’ brothers. What have you heard?’ she asked me quietly.

‘Nothing that I believe,’ I told her. ‘I’m going to Girona this afternoon to see the new head honcho. He wants to interview me.’ I stopped, and reminded myself that I was talking to a woman who’d just lost her mother in terrible circumstances. ‘But how are you? I haven’t had a chance to tell you how sorry I am.’

‘I’m as shocked and disbelieving as everyone else in this town,’ she replied. ‘The man you’re going to see, he visited me last night. Primavera, I’m like you. There are things I find it almost impossible to accept. When Gomez told me you were a suspect, I laughed at him. I was ready to laugh at the man Valdes too, but after he’d spoken to me. . I still find it hard to conceive of such a thing, but. . You go see him; maybe you’ll spot a flaw in his argument. My God, I hope you do.’

I followed the cortège to the cemetery on the edge of town. They bury their dead differently in Spain, not in the ground as a rule. . for much of the year you’d need to use explosives to dig a grave. . but in a space in a wall, a vertical mausoleum, which is then sealed. I watched Justine’s mother’s sad little box being slid into hers, then slid off quietly myself and headed for Girona. I’d looked up the address of the Mossos headquarters. It’s in a street called Vista Alegre, near the river that flows through the city. I didn’t know it, but my satnav took me straight there.

Commissioner Valdes was ready for me, in a utilitarian office with one-way windows and cream-painted walls, a tall slim man with a high forehead and black hair that was cut fairly long. He reminded me very much of John Cazale, the actor who played Fredo Corleone in The Godfather series. I suspected that he’d adopted the hairstyle after seeing the movies. I wondered whether he’d made a special trip, or whether he always worked Saturdays. That was unlikely, I decided, for someone of his rank; I didn’t know whether to be flattered, or worried. ‘What do you want to discuss?’ I asked him, bluntly.

‘Why did you run after you found Dolores Fumado’s body?’ he retorted, as if to show he was better at bluntness than I was.

‘Because I was scared. I’d had a tip that my DNA had been found on the murder weapon; when I found Dolores dead in my wood store I flipped.’

‘Who told you that you should go?’

‘In those circumstances, do you think I needed telling? If it had happened to you, Commissioner, you’d have been out of there like Speedy Gonzalez.’

A gleam in Valdes’ eyes suggested that he might not have liked being compared to the fastest mouse in all Mayheeco, but he let it pass. ‘One never knows how one will react until such a thing happens,’ he conceded. ‘And in your case, Senora Blackstone, you may as well have vanished into a mouse hole. For there was no trace of you to be found when Intendant Gomez put out a call for your apprehension and arrest. You must have had help; there’s no question. Nor is there any question in my mind that the person who helped you was Father Hernanz.’

I shrugged. ‘What makes you think that?’ I asked, casually.

‘I’m helped by the fact that we found your passport, your credit cards and a bicycle, later identified by Inspector Guinart as yours, in a garage in L’Escala, rented by Father Hernanz. We searched it on Thursday evening, before his arrest. Now why would he have those?’

‘Maybe I left them at his residence,’ I suggested, ‘and asked him to keep them for me.’

Valdes laughed. ‘When you started to run, I can’t see you dropping anything off. He made you leave them behind when he sent you off, with your dyed hair. No point in changing colour if you were carrying documents that identified you.’ I didn’t see any point in commenting on that, since he’d got it dead right. ‘Do you know what I thought when I found those things, senora?’ He picked up an envelope and tossed it across the desk. ‘They’re all in there, by the way. You can have them back.’

I picked it up. ‘Thank you. No, what did you think?’

‘I thought you were dead, I honestly did. I thought that your friend the priest had killed you too, and that we’d find charred remains of you in the boiler below the church. I thought I was going to have to tell your little boy that his mother was gone. I was afraid, senora; afraid I was going to have to do that.’ Valdes frowned, and I saw that he was serious. ‘Even when I went to arrest him, I thought that was the case. It was only later that morning when I asked Guinart to identify your bike that he told me, no, that you had come back. Do you still want to deny that he helped you?’