Blood Red

Twenty-seven

I could, of course, By going to the consulate, Matthew had done what any Brit should do in the circumstances, but he couldn’t have foreseen the consequences. From the level at which the apology had been offered, I guessed that his military record had been disclosed to someone higher up the pecking order in the Catalan government than a mere chief of police, and that buttons had been pushed. Chances were that Gomez had been told who and what he had hauled into his nick, and that he had decided to get out of town before the locals started calling him ‘Brigadier Reid’, which would not have been good.

We were halfway through lunch when I was proved right. The phone rang; I answered to find Alex on the other end. ‘What do you know about Ben’s stepfather?’ he asked.

‘Enough,’ I replied, ‘but I was told in confidence. Is the intendant still smarting?’

‘He’s in a filthy mood, so I wouldn’t let it slip any time soon that you could have warned us about the guy.’

‘Honest, I didn’t know myself until you’d put your feet in it. Honest.’

‘I believe you.’

‘How’s the whore quest going?’

‘Badly. I’ve visited most of the houses of horizontal refreshment in the area. None of them had ever heard of Planas, far less recognising him as a client. I’ve still got a few to interview, but I’m not hopeful of success. Gomez is insisting that I do it, though, even though we’ve checked the calls made from the old man’s mobile and his landline, and can find nothing that links to any of these places.’

‘What about the murder weapon?’

‘Nothing on that yet. . at least nothing that I’ve heard, having spent most of the morning interviewing madams.’ He sighed. ‘Ah well, back to the grind, so to speak.’

I smiled as I hung up, yet I was intrigued, too. Planas wasn’t a whore-monger, but who had been deemed worthy enough to service him?

‘What are we doing this afternoon?’ Mac asked as I came back into the kitchen.

‘What would you like to do? The world is your oyster; or anchovy, or mussel or clam, or whatever sea creature you prefer.’

In the end he settled for a round of golf, not on the big tracks of Pals or Emporda where you’re going to take a minimum four hours to get round, but on the par three course at Gualta, which we could fit into the length of Tom’s school afternoon. I’d have taken Charlie, but as I wasn’t sure he’d be welcomed, I left him with Ben, and his two chums.

Mac still plays tidy golf, and I’m not bad, but for all that we found the little course more difficult than it looked, and each of us contributed a couple of balls to the water hazards before we were done. Afterwards, we had a cool drink in the bar before heading back to St Martí to pick up Charlie and to be in time for Tom getting home from school.

I was on my way up back from Ben’s shop, with the dog trotting ahead of me when I saw a Mossos vehicle parked in front of my house; it hadn’t been there when I’d stepped out of the gate five minutes before. My first guess was that Alex had stopped off to blag a coffee, after a weary day spent chasing whores, until I realised that the car was a saloon, and not the off-roader he usually drove.

Intendant Gomez was waiting in the garden when I let myself in; Mac was with him, but nothing was being said, not least because neither spoke the other’s language to any significant degree. ‘Good afternoon,’ I greeted him, in Catalan. Mac looked bewildered, shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the front door, to indicate that he was going inside.

‘Good afternoon to you, Primavera,’ Gomez replied. I was surprised; he’d never been so familiar before.

‘Yes, it is,’ I continued, ‘but now we’ve got that over with, why the visit?’

‘It’s a courtesy call, no more. I understand that Inspector Guinart let you in on the results of the second autopsy. I don’t mind that at all. In fact, since it seems that you have friends with friends in high places. .’ there was more than a hint of irony in his tone, ‘. . I thought I’d let you know the latest. Alex’s tour of the clubs is over; it’s left him a little disgusted, and us none the wiser. . although we do have some potentially useful information about their client lists. However, we have determined the murder weapon.’

‘Have you indeed? A wooden club, Alex said.’

‘Not quite. It was a chair, from Senor Planas’s patio set. It seems that he and his nocturnal visitor had some sort of a disagreement, he turned his back on her and she picked up the chair and swung it at him.’

‘I see.’ From what I remembered of the furniture in question, it had been solid enough to do the job. ‘Alex also told me that you had DNA samples from Planas’s clothing that would identify the woman. Any luck there?’

‘Not yet. We’ve eliminated someone, though.’ He laughed. ‘Actually we’ve eliminated five people; two of our female officers, Senora Michels, you, of course, and Senor Planas’s housekeeper.’

‘Was she a suspect?’ I asked.

‘Potentially. . and if not her, then her husband, the gardener. The lady was well paid by the dead man, and we wondered whether that might have covered more than the usual domestic services. They were our principal suspects, in fact, even before we knew of the sexual aspect; we’ve been questioning them since Sunday.’

‘But now they’re off the hook?’

‘For the moment, although we haven’t excluded them completely. The son remains suspicious of them; he’s never liked them much.’

‘Angel? That reminds me. Do you know when the funeral will be?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Gomez replied, ‘as he had hoped. It will be a burial. As you may know, cremation is becoming more popular in Spain, but you will appreciate that in the circumstances I couldn’t allow that.’

‘No, I can see why.’

He frowned. His small talk hadn’t fooled me; I knew there was a specific reason for the visit so I wasn’t surprised when he got round to it. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘your friend, the gentleman we pulled in yesterday morning. During the meeting that you didn’t discuss with us earlier, just how angry was he with Senor Planas?’

‘Very, but it didn’t come to anything.’

‘Not then, but. . You see, Primavera, the account of his whereabouts is so meticulous that it’s almost as if it was planned in advance. Now, I have this new time frame that’s been suggested. The thing is, I’ve been told very little about this man; I asked the boss when he called me, but he said that it was none of my business. That makes me imagine lots of things. Now I find that Senor Reid has left town, and that makes me imagine even more. I wonder whether there’s any point in continuing with this investigation. From what you know of him, am I right?’

I thought about it, for a while; yes, Matthew could have gone out again, and yes, Planas might still have been up, sinking a bottle in celebration of having his ashes hauled. But against that, there was the inconsistency of the wine consumption, and there was something else. It would have been easy for me to have agreed with Gomez at that point, and there were times afterwards when I wished I’d done just that. But I didn’t; instead I said, ‘I don’t think you are. From the little I know of his background, I’d be very surprised if he’d have needed to hit the guy with a chair. I reckon if he’d killed Planas, it really would have been written off as an accident.’

The intendant cursed, softly. ‘Ah,’ he murmured, ‘what a pity. I really wish this thing would go away. For we’ve just had something else dumped in our laps.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The mayor, Justine Michels, and her sister Elena, Angel Planas’s wife; they’ve just reported their mother missing.’