Quintin Jardine - Blood Red

‘What did he die from? The MI?’ (Myocardial infarction, the posh name for a coronary; my nursing vocabulary’s still there, I just don’t use it very often.)

‘No, he died from multiple injuries, more or less instantly.’

‘So he could have had the heart attack on the way down?’

‘Jesus, Primavera, I suppose, but. . It was an accident, and not the first up there. It’s a dangerous place.’

‘Was it investigated?’

‘Of course, and that was the finding.’

‘Were you involved? “You” as in the Mossos?’

‘Initially, but the public prosecutor’s office took it over. Because it was the mayor’s father, they said, and we were happy to hand it over, to let them sign off on it.’

Somewhere I sensed ducks forming into a row. ‘Who in the prosecutor’s office?’ I asked.

‘Javier Fumado.’

‘And now we find out that the widow, his sister, has been making the two-backed beast with José-Luis Planas. Alex! Be a cop; trust your nose.’

He sighed. ‘I’ll grant you that’s of interest. . but only,’ he added, ‘in respect of Henri Michels’ death. It has nothing to do with the current situation.’

‘Maybe it hasn’t, but you’ll never know that for sure until it’s investigated. Are you up for it?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Could we get into Planas’s house, to have a look at his papers? He was a councillor and he had various business interests; he must have been an organised man, and he must have kept a diary of sorts.’

‘Yes, easily; technically it’s still a crime scene. But Primavera, what’s with the “we”?’

‘Humour me. There’s a fortune teller’s reputation riding on this.’

Fifty

Alex was nervous about it, but since Valdes had gone back to Barcelona, taking Gerard with him to the long-term remand wing in the prison, and since technically what we were doing had nothing to do with the commissioner’s investigation, he went along with my brazen proposal, and he took me along with him. He picked Tom and me up after church. Father Olivares had been subdued. He had not referred to Gerard, or the reason for his absence; he had simply conducted the Mass, and preached no sermon. Tom had been sombre too, but he had performed his duties admirably, earning a pat on the head and a smile from the old man when he was finished.

We parked at the front gate; it wasn’t a secret mission, since Alex had signed the keys to the place out of the Mossos’s L’Escala office. We left Tom in the car, with plenty of water and his PlayStation, and went inside. I have to admit that once we had opened some shutters to let the light in I really liked Planas’s villa. His housekeeper had been doing a good job; yes, there was a film of dust, since she hadn’t been in for a couple of weeks, but the place still smelled of furniture polish, the floor and wall tiles were spotless and shiny, and the bathrooms were immaculate, apart from a facecloth that had been tossed into a bin in the downstairs toilet and lay there, dried out and crumpled. Remembering the traces the scientists had found on Planas’s person and clothing, I made a fair guess about its last use.

‘Does Angel inherit all of this?’ I asked as we looked around. ‘You said his old man couldn’t have cut him off if he tried.’

‘At least half,’ he replied. ‘We won’t know about the rest until the will’s published.’

‘Hypocritical old bastard, wasn’t he? The fuss he made about Ben and Elena, the grudge he carried against the guy, and all the time he was porking her mother on the quiet.’

‘He was Spanish,’ said Alex, as if no other explanation was needed. He opened a door, on the first floor. ‘Hey, this is it; this must have been his office.’

Unlike the rest of the place the room looked as if a woman had never set foot in it. I found myself thinking back to The Godfather again, not to poor old Fredo this time, but to that dimly lit, smoky study, where Don Corleone himself held court and took tribute. There was a big twin-pedestal desk, made of a dark wood that had grown even darker with age, with carved features that marked it out as a valuable piece, a high-backed leather-upholstered chair behind it that looked as if three generations of Planases might have left their marks on it, and two single Chesterfields that fitted my mind picture of a classic London gentlemen’s club. There was a small sideboard against one wall, with a decanter sat on top, surrounded by four brandy goblets, and a cigar box beside it.

Alex moved behind the desk and began opening doors and drawers. ‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘Look at this.’ He reached into the drawer that would have been at Planas’s right hand and produced a revolver, with a barrel that looked to be around six inches long.

‘I thought those were illegal here,’ I said.

‘They are, without a permit. . and I don’t recall him having one.’

‘It didn’t do him much good.’

‘No, but it shows the kind of man he was; not to be taken lightly. Like Gerard.’

‘Don’t.’ I shuddered. ‘What else have you found there?’

He squatted beside the desk, rifling through its contents. ‘Personal accounts, tax papers, bills, bank books,’ he listed; then his face broke into a smile. ‘And diaries,’ he added, ‘oldfashioned page per day diaries. Going back five years. You told me to trust my nose, Primavera; I’ll trust yours from now on.’ He took them from their shelf in the left pedestal, and laid them on the desk. ‘Should we start at the beginning?’

‘Eventually, but for now, let’s go back just two years, to when Henri Michels was killed. Can you remember the date?’

‘I looked it up in the office, among our incident reports; the body was found on the twenty-eighth of May, a Monday. It was called in at eight twelve by a fisherman; he was out checking his pots near Saltpax rock when he spotted the body at the foot of the cliff. But there was an earlier note from the municipal police, timed at eleven thirty the night before, letting us know that Dolores had reported that her husband hadn’t come back from a walk.’

‘It was a long walk to where he died, since they lived in the old town.’

‘They didn’t, not then; they had a house in Carrer Muga, up in Puig Sec, not far from your friend Shirley’s place. Henri bought the land. . oh, must be seven, eight years ago now. . and built the house himself.’

‘I thought he sold carpets.’

‘So he did, when he came to Spain. But like a lot of people here he went into property development in the boom years, and made a lot of money. Dolores sold the house right after he died, and went back to her old family home. Nobody was surprised; to someone from an old L’Escala family, moving to Puig Sec’s like moving to L’Estartit, or Begur.’

‘So she couldn’t have been too happy, living up there?’

‘Well,’ he began, ‘as a police officer I don’t like to go on rumour. .’

I laughed at that. ‘Bollocks! The cops I’ve known all told me that gossip is where it starts. You keep your ears open, you hear what’s being said, you investigate and you find out whether it’s true or not.’

Alex smiled. ‘That’s crime; I’m talking domestic here. My mother-in-law said the other night she heard that Dolores was furious when Henri built that house. When he bought the land she assumed that it was for a project for sale, but he told her that he’d always wanted a view of the sea and the mountains and that they were moving in.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘What is?’

‘The time frame. Henri bought the land seven or eight years ago; let’s say it took him a year or so to build the house. They must have moved in around six years ago.’