Blood Red

by Quintin Jardine

  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?

  Forty-nine

  I didn’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.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘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 th
at 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.

  Fifty-one

  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.’