Quintin Jardine - Blood Red

‘How do you think? You saw, he got through the funeral Mass today, but he’s devastated.’

‘And you, Primavera, how are you taking it? I can see that Tom’s hurt, but can you deal with it?’

‘Chum, I can deal with anything. Tom’s hurt, but not the way you are, because you feel let down. He’s hurt because he sees a great injustice being done. But he hasn’t heard the tape, he didn’t hear Gerard confess. The thing I’ll find hardest to deal with is the thought that if he did it, it was because of me.’

‘You’re still saying “if”, I notice.’

‘Yes, because a part of me’s like Tom, refusing to believe. I love that man, Alex, and I have faith in him. It’s very hard for me to accept that I’ve misplaced that faith, and for all the apparent facts of the matter, I don’t think I ever will, not completely.’

‘And he loves you. We’ve both heard him say so. We’ve both heard him acknowledge the truth of Valdes’s brilliant deduction. He saw a way of having you, he took a chance. . and he lost. Now he’s willing to pay the price.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe I can see nobility in that. Many crimes are about greed, many are about hate; these seem to have been about love, anger yes, but anger fuelled by love.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry; you can’t argue that about Dolores. She was in the way; that was why she died. That wasn’t rage, it was cruelty. Didn’t the autopsy show that from the time she was captured to the time she was killed, she was starved? That’s the part that’s out of kilter. Even if everything else is true, that’s what disturbs me the most. It’s what makes me think that maybe I didn’t really know the man at all.’

‘I’m afraid that none of us did,’ he murmured, as our starters arrived.

I was glad of the break; in truth, the discussion was tearing me apart. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to see a plate of linguine Napolitano. We changed the subject as we ate, not least because Tom was back with us. Gloria asked him what he was going to do during the school holidays.

‘I’m going to London,’ he told her. ‘With Mum. Next week. It’s about her new job.’

‘New job?’ she exclaimed, puzzled. Alex said nothing, which more or less confirmed my assumption that he’d heard of it already, although he’d never raised the subject.

‘I’ve been appointed to the staff of the British Embassy,’ I explained, ‘on a part-time basis. It has to do with representing Scotland in Spain. It was a big surprise; someone in London put me up for it.’

‘Congratulations. It doesn’t mean you’ll be leaving us, does it?’ she asked, anxiously. ‘We’d all miss you, especially Marte.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her. ‘We’re not going anywhere. They’ve still got to tell me exactly what I’ll be doing, but I suspect that a lot of it will be in Barcelona. I’ll still be around to keep an eye on my goddaughter.’

‘What about me?’

I looked at Tom, surprised by his direct question; but he was in that sort of mood, slightly rebellious. It wasn’t the moment I’d have chosen, but the issue couldn’t be dodged. ‘I think we’re going to employ somebody, full-time, to look after the house,’ I announced.

‘Like Ethel?’ He fixed me with an unblinking stare. It was a loaded question. Ethel Reid looks after Janet and wee Jonathan, his half-siblings, Oz’s kids by Susie Gantry; she’s very efficient, very nice, but she’s Mary Poppins, no messing. That is not what Tom wanted to hear.

‘No,’ I replied, meeting his gaze with a wink. ‘A lady, yes, but more like Conrad.’

Conrad Kent was recruited by Oz and Susie as property manager or some such, but actually he’s a minder. He still works for Susie at her place in Monaco, even though she has a new man, of whom I know very little, so far. Conrad is half Jamaican, half Welsh, ex-military, and Tom is one of his biggest fans.

He said nothing, but when he nodded, I knew I’d scored.

The main courses arrived. They do a damn good Four Seasons there; the artichokes are always the best. Mine kept me quiet for the best part of fifteen minutes. I let Alex and Gloria do most of the damage to the Vina Sol; nothing against it, but I wasn’t in the mood.

Perhaps I should have had a glass, to shake off my moroseness. . or how about my morosity? (I know the word isn’t in the dictionary, but maybe it should be.) We were at the coffee stage when Alex and I drifted back into our funk. ‘How long will the court proceedings take?’ I asked him, quietly.

‘No idea. Our courts work in varying degrees of slowness. The prosecution will present its case, even if Gerard chooses not to defend it. They’ll proceed when they’re ready, not before. If Gerard had a lawyer. . and at the moment, he’s refused all offers. . he could apply for habeas corpus, but he wouldn’t get it, not against the evidence. I don’t know the new prosecutor, how quickly he works. The previous one, the one who leaned on Hector, he was no ball of fire. . but of course he’s out of the picture now. He has to be.’

Something in his tone made me ask ‘Why?’

‘Because he’s Javier Fumado, Dolores’s brother. He was at the funeral today; the small man, with Justine and Elena’s Belgian uncle. He could hardly prosecute the killer of his own sister.’

‘Maybe that’s why he frowned at me after the service,’ I said. ‘I wondered about that.’ I paused, for thought. ‘Earlier, you said there are no losers in this. When you think about it, of course there are. There’s Angel Planas; even if the old man had threatened to disinherit him, he’s still lost his father.’

‘I suppose,’ Alex conceded, ‘although that was an empty threat. Spanish law won’t let you disinherit your eldest son.’

‘Whatever,’ I said dismissively. ‘Then there’s Justine and Elena; they’ve lost their mother, poor girls.’

‘True, and it’s doubly hard for them. Our parents are supposed to die in their beds, not violently, as they lost both of theirs.’

‘What do you mean?’

He stared at me. ‘Didn’t you know? The father, Henri Michels, he was out walking, was taken ill and fell off a cliff path. It was a long way down. He was killed.’

I blinked, twice, hard, and saw myself back in Granada with the mad fortune teller. What was it she’d said?

‘ I see evil, I see a fall, I see tears, I see separation. The father, the father. He dies .’

Well , I thought. Is that not as weird as a bottle of potato crisps?

Ididn’t sleep very well that night. It had nothing to do with my snooze in the afternoon, or with my lack of interest in the white wine. No, I was still thinking of the nutty white heather lady, trying to recall the rest of the stuff she’d come out with.

‘ I see difficult times, but you come through them .’ That had been the woman’s other prophecy. I took some heart from that.

After all, she’d been right about the tears, she’d been right about the separation; most of all she’d been right about the evil. On top of all that she’d been right about a father dying in a fall, Henri Michels, Justine’s dad, Elena’s dad. . Dolores Fumado’s husband.

Hard as I tried, I couldn’t get that out of my head. In fact, it had taken such a grip of me that as soon as Tom, Charlie and I had breakfasted, I called Alex.

‘Henri Michels,’ I said. ‘Tell me again what happened.’

‘He was found at the bottom of a cliff,’ he replied, patiently, ‘in the area between the marina and Illa Mateu, the bay at the foot of the hill the Brits call the Garbinell. They did an autopsy on him; it showed that he’d had a heart attack.’