Quintin Jardine - Blood Red

‘Yes, that would be right. So?’

‘So, that was when Planas’s wife died. Does your mother-in-law recall what went wrong with her?’

‘As a matter of fact, she does; she says that she had breast cancer. She fought it for a while, but eventually she lost.’ He glanced at me. ‘You’re suggesting that maybe Henri Michels had good reason to move his wife a little distance away?’

‘I’m floating the idea, that’s all. Let’s see what the diaries tell us.’

Alex nodded and selected one from the pile. ‘Two years ago,’ he announced, then flipped it open. He frowned as he looked through the first few pages.

‘What’s up?’

‘It’s only appointments, council meetings, various business dates.’

‘Too much to hope for, that he kept a daily journal. See what you can find, though.’

‘Okay, be patient.’ He thumbed his way to a particular page, then made his way back, day by day. He was halfway through turning one more when he paused. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘take a look at this. Wednesday, May the twenty-third. He’s had a busy day, three meetings with clients in the estate agency, two council committees, and a session with Angel in the furniture shop. There’s no room left on the page, but look what’s written in the margin.’

He held it up for me, pointing at a note in a neat, clear hand; I read aloud. ‘H M, El Burro, 8:30. H M being Henri Michels?’

‘Let’s suppose that it was.’ His forehead wrinkled. ‘But El Burro? Why the hell would they meet there?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Everything. It’s closed now; it went broke before the public health people could shut it down. It was a dirty little Brit bar up in Riells de Dalt. Planas was a patron of the Miryam, and Henri Michels drank in El Golf Isobel; they weren’t the sort of guys who’d have been seen dead in El Burro.’

‘So they met somewhere they wouldn’t be recognised. Who do you think set it up?’

He scratched his chin. ‘Michels built some houses on a plot not far from there. I doubt if Planas had even heard of the place. I’d say Henri.’

‘And the agenda. . I wonder who set that?’ I took the diary from him and looked at the next page; again, business meetings, council meetings, but nothing else. I flicked on to the next; more estate agency stuff, but at the foot of the page, the last entry read, ‘F. Rhodas, P-S. 2:00.’ I showed it to Alex. ‘Who’s this F, d’ you think?’

‘I’d only be guessing,’ he said. ‘But from that I’m pretty sure I know where they were meeting. There’s a restaurant named Rhodas, in a place called Palau Saverdera. I know it quite well; once a year a few friends and I, all Mossos, have dinner there. It’s famous for its lamb. Let me make a call.’

He wandered across to the window, mobile in hand. ‘Hey, Chico,’ I heard him say after a while, ‘it’s Alex Guinart. Yes, I know it’s Sunday and I know you’re busy, and you know I’m a cop so listen to me, okay.’ Then he lowered his voice a little and I couldn’t hear what he was saying any more, until finally, he laughed. ‘Good customer?’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, chum, if I were you I’d go out and find another to take his place, for you won’t be seeing him again, or her for that matter.’ He ended the call and turned to face me. ‘I just described Planas and Dolores to my friend Chico, the owner. He says they’ve been customers there for as long as he can remember, and he goes back twelve years; they went there for lunch, last Friday of every month. But the weird thing is he didn’t know their names. . although he did say he overheard him calling her “Flora” a couple of times. The table was a standing reservation, and Planas always paid cash.’

‘Ask your mother-in-law if Dolores had a nickname when she was younger, and see if she says it was “Flora”. Bet?’

‘There’s no danger of me taking that one on. But I wasn’t finished. My pal told me a story about them. Their regular lunch date, a couple of years ago, May, he reckons, they were mid-meal and a guy walked in, big guy, white hair; he went right up to their table, shouting at them, something about having warned him, but Planas being too fucking arrogant to listen. Spoke Catalan, but with a foreign accent. Planas stood up, and the man decked him, grabbed the woman by the arm and hauled her out of there. Chico offered to call us, but Planas told him not to.’

‘And two days later Henri Michels had a heart attack and fell over a cliff?’

‘And one month later, Planas and Dolores were back there, and it was as if the whole thing had never happened.’

I whistled. ‘That’s what I call a result. What does the diary say,’ I asked, ‘about the night Michels died?’

He looked up that page. ‘Nothing. No appointments. No alibi.’

‘What do we do next?’

‘You take your son back home,’ he said. ‘I call Hector Gomez and tell him what we’ve found here. Then he and I might decide to have a word with the guy who was so keen to write off Michels’ death as a suicide.’

‘If you do,’ I asked, ‘can I come?’

He stared at me, in disbelief.

There wasn’t a cat’s chance of that, and I knew it; still, I persuaded Alex to make his call from my house, so that I could be on hand to defend him if the intendant blew a gasket over our search of the Planas place, and threatened to send him on night patrol in the no-go areas of Barcelona. . and there are some, trust me on that.

But Gomez took the news calmly; I know this for sure because we used the office phone, which has a hands-free facility, and so I could hear him. ‘You know, Alex,’ he said, when the story was told, ‘I always thought the Michels investigation was irregular. I was going to take it on myself, but Javier Fumado brushed me off. His angle was that it was a family tragedy and should be handled quietly for the sake of his sister, and his nieces. I fell for it too. Christ, if I had known this stuff about Planas. .’

‘There’s no evidence that Fumado knew either,’ I pointed out.

‘You’re right, Primavera, there isn’t. But it’s come to light now, and it’s put the power in my hands. Thanks to you two, I can walk into his office tomorrow with this new evidence about Dolores and reopen the investigation.’

‘Even though both she and Planas are dead?’

‘Henri Michels doesn’t know that, though. If his death wasn’t accidental, and wasn’t caused by a heart attack, he deserves justice. This too,’ he added. ‘I’ve never liked that little bastard Fumado and I’ve never trusted him. Over the years he’s taken a few decisions against prosecution that have struck me as odd. So we’ll pay him a visit.’ He paused, and then he surprised me, totally. ‘Would you like to come, Primavera? You’ve earned it, I reckon. If it wasn’t for you we’d never have established that Michels knew about this triangle. And there’s a second reason: you being there will unsettle him, make him uncertain.’

‘But how will you explain me?’

‘I’ll tell him that our regular secretary’s on vacation and that we’ve taken you on as a temp. You take the note of the meeting.’

‘I don’t know shorthand,’ I said, lamely. (I had to use the English word.)

‘What’s shorthand?’ he replied. ‘You know how to switch on a recorder, don’t you? Come to Girona, tomorrow morning, ten. We’ll go to his office from there.’

‘How do you know he’ll be there?’

‘I have an appointment with him already, to discuss another case. He’ll find that the agenda’s been changed.’

As it happened, Tom had an appointment of his own next morning. One of Ben’s neighbours was running a summer sailing school for kids, and I’d enrolled him. I dropped him off at the marina, in front of Café Navili, with instructions to meet me when the session finished, at two o’clock, at a restaurant called La Clota, just around the corner, then I headed off for Girona.