Blood Red

Sixteen

Gerard had just gone when Tom returned. Remembering what I had promised Ben earlier, I called him and told him what had happened. He seemed genuinely shocked; if the fact that his problem had gone for good crossed his mind, he gave no hint of it. All I heard in his reaction was concern for Angel Planas.

That might have been all there was to it. Indeed I thought it was, for around twenty-four hours.

Tom and I had a small disagreement over dinner, when I told him he’d already had his ice cream allocation for the day, but otherwise we spent a quiet evening. There was a Spanish league football match on telly, Barcelona against Osasuna; Tom’s a Barça fan, as are most of the kids around here. The local L’Escala team even plays in the same colours. It was a late kick-off, with a school day looming, but I didn’t want two fights in one night so I let him stay up to watch it.

I had an eye on it too, but not too closely. My mind kept wandering back to the scene in Planas’s garden, filling with the sight of the swollen, flyblown corpse of the detestable little man with whom I’d had such a bitter confrontation, less than a day before he died. I thought about Angel too, and the look on his face when he’d arrived in the garden. His father might have cut him out of his life, but clearly, the animosity hadn’t been mutual. Just before half-time in the game I went into the kitchen, found his number in the telephone directory and called him.

I’d half expected his phone to be on answer mode, but he picked up. I told him who was calling, and how sorry I was.

‘That’s kind of you,’ he said. ‘I believe you mean that. I’m sorry also, for the trouble that my father caused you. I guess that will be resolved now.’

‘It had been anyway; an accommodation had been reached.’

I heard him gasp, then laugh softly. ‘You made my father compromise?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m impressed. You must be a formidable woman. How did you do it?’

‘We negotiated.’

‘Ah, then there was money involved. . or did you play cards for his approval?’

‘He laid down a condition; I don’t think he believed that I’d accept it, but I did.’

‘My poor old papa; his face must have been a picture. No wonder he had a heart attack.’

I was surprised. ‘You’ve had the autopsy result already?’

‘No, but the police officer came to see us earlier this evening. He said that it was almost certainly the cause.’

‘When will you hold the funeral? I’d like to attend.’

‘I can’t plan anything until the police release the body, but I’m hoping for Wednesday morning, at the latest.’ He chuckled. ‘Do you want to make sure that he doesn’t climb out of the coffin? I suspect that many of the mourners will be thinking that way.’

‘I’ll attend out of respect, nothing else; respect for you and your wife.’

‘She may not go herself. I’m trying to persuade her, but the choice will be hers. She has every reason to stay away. I won’t hold it against her if she does.’ He took a breath. ‘Senora, this problem you had with my father. . nobody’s going to hear of it, are they?’

‘Not from me, I promise you.’

‘That’s good. It’s my family name that he discredited, after all.’

‘Then I’ll do nothing to blacken it.’

I told him I’d see him at the funeral, and hung up. Then I remembered Mac’s call. I went into the study, switched on my computer and went online as soon as it was booted up. (Tom has his own, but I supervise its use.) I had three emails waiting for me, one from my sister, one from my friend Shirley Gash, who was on a cruise from Dubai to Singapore, and as he’d promised, one from Mac. I left the others for later, and went straight to his. It confirmed that he’d be landing at Girona late afternoon on the following Tuesday, and ended, ‘Remember, keep it a surprise for the wee man.’ I smiled, thinking that he might be surprised himself when he saw how much the ‘wee man’ had stretched since his last visit, then closed down.

The teams were on their way out for the second half when I went back to the television room. Barça were doing all right, but I couldn’t summon up any real interest. My mind was full of thoughts of wine fairs. . ‘Maybe I should find one and visit it, to understand better what they were all about’. . of wet weather plans. . ‘Is this house really big enough to hold all those stands, or should I try to persuade the mayor to let us have the old foresters’ house, on the other side of the church, as a back-stop in case it rains?’. . and inevitably, although I tried to push the awful image away, the scene in the garden of José-Luis Planas. . ‘After all that bloody drama, they’ve settled for the obvious. The old man was so pumped up by his battle with me, that his arteries seized up, he had a wobbler and he fell over the garden wall. And if that’s so, Primavera, does that mean that you were responsible for his death?’

‘Not bloody likely,’ I said aloud.

‘What?’ Tom asked.

‘Nothing. Sorry, I was talking to myself.’

He shrugged, as if that was normal adult behaviour and turned back to the game, leaving me back in old Planas’s garden, trying to put my finger on something about the scene that was not quite right.