Blood Red

by Quintin Jardine

  I’d done six kilometres of the ten I’d set for myself, when I was aware of a figure climbing on to the static bike next to me. ‘Good morning, Senora Primavera,’ said the newcomer. I glanced to the side and saw Angel Planas.

  I was running smoothly; I can go faster than the pace I’d chosen, so I had the breath to reply. ‘And to you,’ I replied. He had spoken Spanish, as we had in our previous encounters, but I chose to reply in Catalan. ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’

  He switched languages. ‘Normally, I come during my afternoon break, but I’ve closed the shop until after the funeral.’

  ‘As a mark of respect?’

  ‘Of course. It wouldn’t have been seemly to do otherwise. Besides, my father may have been at odds with me, but . . .’

  ‘He was still your dad. I understand. Has Gomez given you any indication about the funeral?’

  He set himself a programme, and started to pedal slowly. ‘He’s told me that after the examination this morning, he will ask the public prosecutor for authority to release the body. Unless something unexpected comes up, that will happen tomorrow, so it will be on Thursday morning.’

  ‘Doesn’t give you much time to let people know.’

  ‘We have a very good informal system for spreading the word. We put the details on notices in shop windows and on lamp posts, all through the old town. It works.’

  ‘What about the other parts of L’Escala?’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a smile on his face. ‘To my father, the modern areas barely existed.’

  He set to pedalling, and I cranked up my speed a little, putting further discourse beyond either of us. I finished my programme with a sprint, then wound down for a couple of minutes, before stepping off the treadmill. As my heart rate settled back to normal I did some stretching exercises, until finally I reckoned I had burned off most of my raging hormones. I waved goodbye to Angel and went back to the changing room.

  By the time I made it back to L’Escala, looking presentable and fit for the day . . . I tend to use very little make-up, just Garnier sun cream as a base and a little lippie, and keep my hair shortish and spiky, the straight from the shower look . . . I had worked off breakfast and was fairly hungry. It was still well shy of eleven, but Meson del Conde’s tables were out and ready for the day, so Charlie and I sat down and I asked Cisco for a cortado . . . a café solo with milk . . . a bottle of Vichy Catalan, a croissant and a dish of water for the dog.

  I had just killed the coffee and was tucking into the crab-like roll when Ben Simmers came into the square, looking neither right nor left but heading straight for my house, his distinctive gait so brisk that it was almost a trot.

  ‘Hey!’ I called to him, between bites. ‘If you’re looking for me, try here.’

  He spun round, saw me and came across to my table.

  ‘Want a coffee?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no time.’

  He seemed more than a little agitated. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘quit acting like the white fucking rabbit and tell me what’s up.’

  ‘My mum,’ he blurted out. ‘She’s down at the shop, and she’s in a hell of a state. Can you come?’

  ‘Of course.’ I picked up the bottled water, stuffed the rest of the croissant into my mouth, tossed a ten on the table for Cisco, and followed him. Charlie wasn’t best pleased, but he came too, perking up at once when he realised that he was going to see his pals.

  Ingrid Reid was standing beside Ben’s counter when I got there. As soon as I was inside, her son closed the door and flipped the sign round to read ‘Shut’ in three languages. I looked at her; her eyes were red, and she was chewing at her bottom lip.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked again.

  ‘It’s Matt,’ she replied in a quiet, scared voice. ‘He’s been arrested.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Half an hour ago. They arrived at the house, demanded to see him and told him, not asked, mind you, to come with them. He asked them what it was about, but they wouldn’t tell him. I asked if I could come, but they said no.’

  ‘Which police, Ingrid, the Mossos or the locals?’

  ‘The Mossos; the serious ones.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  ‘Both dark-haired. The older one, the one who did the talking, he was in his early forties, I’d have said, quite bulky. The other one was younger and slimmer. He at least had the good grace to say “Sorry” to me as they took him away.’

  She had described Gomez and Alex. ‘What language did they speak?’

  ‘Spanish. I understood some of it.’

  ‘Did they tell you where they were taking him?’

  ‘No.’

  Ben stared at me. ‘It has to be connected,’ he murmured.

  I nodded. ‘Must be.’

  ‘Connected with what?’ Ingrid wailed.

  ‘Planas.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man Matthew and I went to see on Friday; José-Luis Planas.’

  ‘Him? Matthew was livid when he got back from that meeting. He was muttering about going back down there to sort him out; Matt has a temper on him, you know.’

  I let out a great, gasping breath. ‘Jesus, Ingrid, don’t ever say that to anyone else.’

  ‘Why not?’ she retorted, crossly. ‘What’s this man done that the police have arrested Matt?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Ben asked.

  ‘No, we’ve hardly been out of the house since Saturday. Matt had a bit of a head in the morning. He went out with a pal on Friday night.’

  ‘When did he get in, Mum?’

  ‘God knows. I was asleep by that time. He confessed that they wound up in JoJo’s bar. But forget about that. What about this man Planas?’

  ‘He’s dead, Ingrid,’ I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. ‘He was murdered.’ I paused. ‘Matt didn’t go back to see him on Friday, did he?’

  ‘No. I talked him down. He was still angry, though.’

  ‘Too much information, Mum.’

  She glared at him. ‘Don’t be silly.’ Then the centivo dropped, and her mouth fell open with it. ‘They don’t think he . . . Oh my God, that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Don’t let’s go that far,’ I said. ‘I know these people. They’re formal, but they’re very correct.’

  ‘But what can we do? He’s in there all alone. His Spanish is OK, but he’ll be vulnerable if they question him.’ She looked at me, hopefully. ‘Primavera, could you go and ask if you can translate for him?’

  I sighed. ‘I don’t think they’d let me. I was in the room with him when he met Planas.’ I thought about the situation. She was right, and I was kicking myself. He did need somebody in there, and I’d probably made it worse by neglecting to tell Gomez that he’d come with me to the Planas meeting. Through a detective’s rheumy and jaundiced eye, I might be seen to have been covering up for him.

  ‘Do you know any lawyers?’ Ingrid asked.

  ‘Not this kind,’ I admitted, ‘and anyway, he might not be entitled to one under Spanish law.’ Then an idea hit me. ‘But there is someone they’d have difficulty keeping out of there.’

  Twenty

  I was right; Gerard told me that when he presented himself, in uniform, at the Mossos office, asking to speak to Intendant Gomez, the desk officer was so taken aback that she didn’t even think to ask why. Instead, she asked him to wait for a moment, disappeared through a door behind her, and returned a minute later with the detective.

  But Gomez wasn’t alone. Matthew Reid was with him, free to leave. Gerard asked no questions; he drove him straight to St Martí, where I’d told him that Ben, Ingrid and I would be waiting. His wife burst into tears as soon as she saw him; once she had calmed down I took them and Gerard up to my place, leaving Ben to reopen the shop. The square was busy as we walked through. I hoped he hadn’t lost too much business.

  As he sat on one of my kitchen chairs, Matthew seemed almost as bemused by the experience as Ingrid had been. I offered them a drink,
but they both settled for coffee. ‘First time in my life I’ve ever been arrested,’ he muttered, as he took his from me, ‘and it has to be here. And you know I’m still not entirely clear what it was about.’

  Gerard leaned forward in his chair, forearms on his knees. ‘What did they ask you?’

  ‘The older one wanted to know why I’d been to see Planas on Friday. I told them that I’ve been looking around for property for my son.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘They didn’t mention you, Primavera, and neither did I. That was what I said when I arranged the meeting, so I didn’t lie.’ He took a sip from his mug. ‘Then the young one asked what we’d argued about. He said that one of Planas’s staff, the guy, had told them he could hear the noise in the outer office, for all that the door’s pretty thick. I told him that I’d taken exception to his manner.’

  ‘You didn’t tell them it was Planas and Primavera who had the argument?’ asked Gerard.

  ‘Why bring her into it?’ he retorted.

  ‘Because I am in it,’ I sighed, ‘because they already know I was there. Jesus . . . sorry, Gerard . . . you’re as bad as me. I didn’t tell them that you were there when I saw Planas. They’ll think we’re covering for each other . . . they’ll be right too . . . and they’ll wonder why.’

  ‘The old bastard must have made a complaint against us, Primavera,’ Matthew declared. ‘Mind you,’ he continued, ‘that doesn’t explain why they were so keen to know what I’d been doing on Friday night . . . unless my mate and I got a bit outrageous and somebody made a separate complaint about that. They wanted to know everywhere I’d been; I told them that we’d started in Escalenc and wound up in JoJo’s, then . . .’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Mike Regan and me. He’s a guy who used to be in the same business as me; he’s in town on holiday and he looked me up.’

  I thought it was time to lighten the mood. ‘Two ex-PR consultants out on the piss,’ I said. ‘No wonder they took an interest in you.’

  Matthew glanced at his wife, then shook his head. ‘I was never in PR, Primavera; that’s a cover story I use to avoid endless questions.’

  ‘And for personal security,’ Ingrid intervened.

  ‘To an extent,’ he agreed. ‘I was a career soldier: I served for over thirty years in the Parachute Regiment, but that included a couple of spells on secondment to the SAS, during the Falklands War and at the height of the Irish trouble, then again during the first Gulf War. That’s how I came to speak Spanish, much better than I ever let on, and Arabic. Those are the times I have to be careful about; not even Ben knows about it, so keep it to yourself, please.’

  ‘I will, promise. Did the police ask you about your career?’

  ‘No, they just looked at my passport, saw that it describes me as “retired”, and seemed to be satisfied with that. I wish I’d had occasion to learn Catalan, though,’ he mused. ‘That’s what they spoke between themselves, and I’m useless at that.’

  ‘If they check up in Britain . . .’

  ‘They won’t find out anything about that side of my career. All they’ll come up with is Brigadier Matthew Reid, retired.’

  ‘DSO, MC,’ Ingrid added, quietly.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Gerard.

  ‘The Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross,’ I told him. ‘They mean that our friend here’s a retired hero.’

  ‘Who should know better than to go out on the batter at his age,’ Matthew muttered. His brow knitted into a frown. ‘Nonetheless,’ he declared, ‘I reckon I’m beginning to get annoyed. Yes, I was a senior army officer and I’ve done nothing to warrant being taken from my house without a word of an excuse. I could have pulled rank on those guys, you know. Hell, I think I still might. Where’s the force command based, Barcelona?’

  ‘Yes, but before you head off there with all guns blazing, you’d better know the whole story.’ I looked at my watch. ‘People, I have to go and pick up my son from school. Gerard, maybe you could explain to Matthew exactly what Gomez and Alex are after.’ I headed for the door that leads down to the garage. ‘And once you’ve done that,’ I said, as an afterthought, ‘maybe you could take a look in the fridge and the larder and whip up some lunch for Tom, me and anyone else who fancies it.’

  Twenty-one

  Ingrid and Matthew had gone when Tom and I got back, so Gerard was fixing chicken salad for only three of us. He turned out to be pretty good in the kitchen.

  We didn’t talk about the morning’s excitement until we’d eaten and Tom had gone to check his emails. Gerard told me that once he knew the whole story, Matthew’s demeanour had changed. He’d become all business, and had gone through his movements on Friday night and Saturday morning, step by step. After Escalenc, he and Regan had indeed gone to JoJo’s, as Ingrid had said. The proprietrix knows all her customers by name and keeps everybody’s tab in a book; she wouldn’t have noted down that they’d left at one thirty, but she’d remember it. The two old soldiers had walked back along the Passeig Maritim, until they’d reached the Hotel Nieves Mar, where Regan had said good night. But Matthew hadn’t gone straight home; he had dropped into a night bar called La Taverna de la Anxova . . . yes, anchovies are everywhere in L’Escala . . . for a chat with the owner, and one last beer that had stretched out until after three o’clock. There had been one final witness to his whereabouts. Ingrid had put their alarm on night set before going to bed, as he had insisted that she do. He had forgotten and had tripped it when he came in. He’d cancelled it before it could wake his wife, then waited by the phone for the inevitable call from the monitoring station. It came within a minute, and he’d given the code word that confirmed there was no problem.

  Gerard told me that once he had worked out that he was covered, Matthew had made a decision: he had phoned the British Consulate General in Barcelona and had made an appointment for that afternoon with the vice-consul, to whom he intended to report the matter and to make a full, formal statement of his dealings with the late José-Luis Planas and his whereabouts at the time of his death. They’d left straight away.

  ‘Did he tell you why the police let him go?’

  ‘They didn’t tell him either. All he said was that a woman officer came into the room and said something. Alex Guinart smiled and said something to Gomez. It was in Catalan, but your name was mentioned. Gomez laughed and said, in Spanish, “We’d better let him go then,” turned to Matthew and told him that was all for now. Then he led him outside and handed him over to me.’

  ‘He’s a dark horse, isn’t he?’

  He looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘What?’

  I’d forgotten the phrase doesn’t translate directly into Spanish. ‘He’s got hidden depths,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes indeed. He disturbs me, Primavera. Men like him disturb me. Even before he’d told us anything about himself, I had a feeling about him. I sensed that he’s a man who’s seen much darkness, who’s capable of great violence, and who’s probably known it at some time in his life.’

  ‘And you were right. You don’t get those two medals for being company quartermaster; you earn them on the battlefield, with a gun in your hand, and bodies scattered around.’

  ‘What is this SAS thing he spoke of?’

  ‘British special forces; the kind who operate behind enemy lines, and take no prisoners. The Spanish military has its own, the Special Operations Group; it’s modelled on ours.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ he asked, sharply, taking me by surprise.

  ‘I live here, I read newspapers. I have a son who’s getting interested in big boy things.’

  ‘I suppose. Sorry. As I say, I find such things distasteful.’

  ‘In that case it’s as well he’s gone. You can avoid him in the future.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that; the man’s in pain. He’s seen things that he’ll carry with him to the grave.’

  So have I, I thought. But I wasn’t telling any of that to Gerard.

 
‘Maybe you should go back to see the police,’ he said, suddenly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make a full, formal statement, just as Matthew’s going to do. Get your version of the meeting with Planas on the record.’

  ‘Including the part where I had to step between him and Matthew?’

  ‘Yes, he’s in the clear, so why not?’

  ‘Maybe I will. I’ll call Alex and see if he’d like me to do that.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘But only after I’ve taken Tom back to school. And that I must do now. So go on, back to whatever it is you do on a Tuesday . . . unless you want to man my information booth for an hour or so?’

  He smiled, and touched his collar. ‘Not in these clothes. Anyway, it’s too much like a confessional.’

  When I thought about it, I realised that there was something in what he’d said. Complete strangers have told me the most personal things in my box, on the basis of a few minutes’ acquaintance.

  I showed him to the door, then rounded up my son, who was finishing his reply to an email from his cousin Bruce in California. I could sense his growing excitement, in the car. ‘Where are we going after school, Mum?’ he demanded, just as we got there.

  ‘Be patient,’ I told him. ‘That’s a good virtue to acquire. You’ll find out in a few hours.’

  Back in St Martí, I thought again of Gerard’s advice, and decided that he was right. I called Alex on his mobile. ‘It’s Primavera,’ I said. ‘Are you busy?’