Quintin Jardine - Blood Red

And they danced for us; three girls, two men, with three guitarists playing behind them and singing the sort of songs that makes it worth learning Spanish just to understand them.

When Lavorante looked at his watch and nodded to us that it was time, I didn’t want to leave. But I remembered what we were there for. I reached for my money clip in my bag, but the big man shook his head. ‘These people are friends of mine; don’t offend them.’

Outside, night had all but fallen. Our driver was waiting, as ordered. To take us down one hill and then up another, the one on which the Alhambra stands. By the time we got there, it was just short of ten, and buses were starting to arrive at the top of the rise above the entrance. We went straight there; Lavorante badged the guy on the gate and he let us in.

‘Over here,’ the cop said, leading us into the one dark corner of the square, in front of the great ramparts of the Alcazabar, the citadel. Even in the gloom I was afraid that his bulk would give us away, but he seemed to have the gift of making himself smaller, for as the visitors began to arrive, not one of them looked in our direction.

There were more than I’d expected, enough for someone to hide in their midst, if she was worried about being spotted. But she wasn’t.

Alex saw her first, bringing up the rear of a group of about thirty. He nudged me and pointed. Lavorante whistled softly in the darkness. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘a looker and no mistake. What’s she done, this lovely woman?’

‘Murdered her mother and her mother’s lover, after she found out that they killed her father.’

‘In L’Escala? But this is the thing that Gerard did. You heard yourself, he said so.’

‘Now that I think about it very carefully, Jorge, he didn’t say any such thing. All he did was acknowledge the so-called brilliance of Valdes’s theory, and said that he would sign his name to it. Actually, he admitted nothing.’

We waited until the group was inside and followed them, moving slowly, keeping to the shadows in case Justine should glance behind her. We followed the stone path that leads to the courtyard of the citadel, slowly, for the guides were taking their time, but eventually it opened out, into a big rectangular space.

‘Here,’ said Lavorante. We followed him and stood behind a yellow floodlight, against a wall, completely invisible even to someone who was daft enough to stare straight at it. We watched Justine as she slipped into the shadows also, looking about herself, as the parties made their way round, back towards the way they had come, and on to the next stage of the tour. I checked my watch; it was just luminous enough: ten thirty.

She began to move, not worried about concealment any more, stepping out of the shadows and on to the path that led to the great square battlements of the highest point in the city, the watchtower of Granada.

We hung back until she had reached the enclosed stairway that leads to the very top, and vanished from our sight, before we followed, moving quickly along the path, and as silently as we could. Lavorante never made a sound. He led the way up the stairs, I followed and Alex brought up the rear. We were in no hurry, for there’s no other way out.

The soft light flooded the square summit of La Torre de la Vela as we reached the last of the steps. The captain stood aside, to let Alex and me go ahead.

He’d slipped in ahead of her. I’d seen him, but I’d said nothing; it was enough that Alex and Jorge were looking for Justine. They were standing in the corner to our left, against the ramparts with an inadequate, incongruous little rail on top, beyond the bell tower, at least thirty metres away, and maybe more, but we could see them clearly. They were kissing, and I do not mean once on each cheek, Spanish style. His hands were by his side, and her left arm was wound around his neck, her palm on his shoulder. Her right hand, though, was moving up slowly, from his waist. We watched as it stopped, fingers splayed, in the very centre of his chest.

She’d have pushed him then, I know it for sure, over the edge and down to his death, if I hadn’t shouted when I did.

‘Justine!’

She broke away from him and spun round, staring at us as we stepped out from the doorway and into the light.

He looked at us too. . no, he looked directly at me. . but in a different way, with a serene resignation that I’d never seen before.

‘Gerard?’ a bemused Alex murmured beside me.

‘Santi!’ I screamed, for I knew what he was going to do.

He smiled at me, the lovely man, then leaned backwards over that useless rail, and disappeared, making not a sound as he plunged into darkness.

We all stared at Justine, and she stood looking back at us, regaining her composure with every second.

‘Primavera,’ Alex whispered, ‘what. .’

I was shivering with horror at what had just happened. At least thirty seconds must have passed before I was able to speak. ‘You didn’t know they were twins, did you?’ I said at last. ‘Nobody on your team did, and Jorge here never mentioned it. As for me, it took me too long to work it out. Gerard and Santi were monozygotic; identical twin brothers. That means, Alex, that they were born with identical DNA. It wasn’t Gerard’s you found, it was his brother’s; Gerard knew that right away, and he confessed to protect him. He even forbade Valdes from contacting Santi, to stop him finding out and making the connection.’

‘And was he protecting her too?’

‘I don’t know, but I suspect that he was, if only because he didn’t think he had a choice. Santi only came to L’Escala a couple of times; he and Justine must have met on one of those visits. The priest’s identical brother, the airline pilot with pads in Madrid and Granada: I’ll bet he was a trophy to her. Just like Angel Planas is.’

‘Angel?’

‘Yes. When Elena was with Ben, Justine took his scalp, so to speak. Remember the story about her fainting during her sister’s wedding? That wasn’t because of the heat, it was because she was pregnant. By him, by Santi? She’ll never say, but Angel believed it was his. She had a termination in a clinic in Barcelona, she made Angel pay for it, and the poor guy’s been under her control ever since.

‘He called me yesterday evening and told me all of it, after his wife had given him a real grilling about where he was on the night his father was killed. He’d spun her a story about a business conference, but he was really with Justine, on her insistence, in the Hotel Bon Retorn in Figueras. To be her alibi, if necessary, I guess. Only she wasn’t with him all night. She drugged him, probably with the same stuff she used on me, then slipped out to kill Planas and kidnap her mother; he woke up when she climbed back into bed, once Santi had taken Dolores to wherever they kept her, till Justine was ready to get rid of her.

‘Santi was a really nice guy, you know; he had everything going for him. He must have been completely besotted to have done what he did for her. I don’t believe he killed anyone. I’m sure Justine did that, but he helped her to set up the accident scene and to get Dolores out of there, then later to plant her at my place. Yet she was going to dispose of him too, as you’ve just seen.’

‘You knew him,’ Lavorante said, more a statement than a question.

‘Yes. Gerard asked him to go to Granada and look after me. Ironic, isn’t it?’ I thought about our time together. ‘And yet I never felt threatened by him. I should have guessed much earlier about the twin thing, but it never occurred to me for a moment, because Santi was so nice.’

‘Yeah,’ the big cop whispered. ‘He was all that.’