Blood Red

Fifty-seven

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.’

‘I’m surprised he let you leave,’ Alex murmured.

I hadn’t considered that point. ‘I didn’t tell him I was going,’ I replied. Maybe if I had, he might not have been so nice. . I banished the thought.

‘How did they get into the place?’ he pondered. ‘It’s still clear that the old man was taken by surprise.’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But I’ll make a guess. Santi and Gerard’s father was a locksmith. There’s a back gate in Planas’s garden wall, and if you check, I’ll bet you find that it’s been picked, just as the lock on my store was opened without a key.’

‘All of that. Why?’ Lavorante asked. Justine was walking towards us, her dark hair falling around her shoulders, her eyes shining. She had gathered herself together completely. Indeed, it was more than that; an aura of triumph seemed to embrace her.

‘Because she worshipped her father,’ I told him. ‘I could see it in her eyes the first time we met, and every time she spoke about him after that.’

She stopped, a few feet away, and looked directly at me, as calm as anyone I’ve ever seen. ‘I’ll give you that much,’ she said. ‘I worshipped my papa.’ Then she looked at Alex, with a sneering smile. ‘Now go ahead and prove the rest of it.’