Blood Red (10 page)
Once he’d gone, the niggly feeling came back. I fought it off by catching up on some housework; my usual Monday chores . . . changing the beds, laundering sheets and pillowcases, and doing the rest of the weekend’s wash . . . then, when I was finished, slipping on a bikini, and going down to the beach to swim. That didn’t last long, for there was a heavy swell coming in, probably the aftermath of a storm far out at sea. I went back home, stripped off my damp suit, and stretched out on the lounger on my private terrace, hoping that I might catch up on some of my lost sleep, but someone was working on the renovation of a house in the village, and the din of their machinery put paid to any chance of that.
Finally, I gave up and settled for feeling like a pre-menopausal hag for the rest of the day. I showered, dressed, switched on my computer and cleared my mailbox, sending a reply to Shirley that said in essence, ‘Jealous as hell!’ and one to my sister in Los Angeles, that was an exchange of kid information, and some forward planning. It’s only when I speak to Dawn, or email her, that I feel the lack of a man in my life . . . in the fullest sense. Hers is great; even if he was an ordinary Joe, a bus driver, a computer salesman, whatever, he’d be great. The fact that Miles is one of the most famous men in the entertainment industry is irrelevant . . . almost.
Once my box was clear, Charlie and I left the house and went down to Ben’s wine shop. (The ‘Closed’ sign had been up all morning on the information booth, but there are very few callers on Mondays in the low season.) I still had the best part of two hours to kill before I was due at the town hall to collect the signed permission, and it had occurred to me while tossing on my lounger that now that the venue for the fair had been tied up, we’d better get on with the minutiae. Ben was having a quiet morning and so we were able to have a fairly productive hour, doing some rough planning of the layout of the stalls in the fairly confined square and working out what we were going to need in terms of glassware, tables, covers, and parasols . . . these would be essential to keep the sun off the stock. Ben also called Mercé, the designer who was working with him on the format of the tickets. She has a studio in the next street to the wine shop, so she was able to sit in on our impromptu conference and agree the last details.
‘What about the print run?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got a decent price for three hundred,’ Ben announced. ‘Plus fifty posters.’
‘Then the unit cost of a thousand, and a hundred and fifty posters will be much lower.’
‘We’ll never sell a thousand.’
‘Don’t you be so sure.’ I turned to Mercé. ‘Could you design an ad for the town council’s web page, and for the tourist sites?’
‘No problem. In fact, it already exists.’
‘I’ve got a website too,’ Ben explained, casually. ‘It’s called arrelsdelvi dot com. Mercé laid it out for me.’
‘Now you tell me! Let’s see it.’
I waited while he called it up on his laptop. It was fine, but no more than that, a simple one-page ad for the event that didn’t go anywhere. ‘Any thoughts?’ he asked.
‘Sure. It should explain what the punters get for their money, then we should list the producers who’ve agreed to appear, with links to their sites, and information on the wines that’ll be available for tasting. It should market the event as the centrepiece of a visit for people who’ve never been before. There should be a page of information about St Martí itself, about the restaurants and the hotel and apartment accommodation available. And there should be information about us.’
‘Us?’
‘You, as founder and owner, Mercé as design consultant, and me as operations manager . . . especially me, and this is what it’s going to say about me: “St Martí resident and former wife of Oz Blackstone, sister of Dawn Phillips, and sister-in-law of Miles Grayson.” All the big search engines have thousands upon thousands of entries every day from people looking for one or more of those names. When your site turns up among the hits, the event goes global.’
He looked interested, but cautious. ‘Will it cost much?’
Mercé shook her head. ‘No, and it can be done very quickly.’
‘Then let’s do it. Any more bright ideas, Primavera?’
‘I’ll see what I can come up with, after I’ve collected the permission from the town hall,’ I told him. ‘Got to go there now.’
I didn’t expect to see Justine, but I was shown into her office when I arrived. She handed me an unsealed envelope. ‘There it is,’ she said, ‘with a note of what the fee will be. I don’t think it’ll scare you too much.’ I took a look; it didn’t.
I told her about my conversation with Angel, the night before, but she’d known; in fact she’d been at his house when I’d called, with her sister. ‘Elena’s decided to go to the funeral,’ she said, ‘which is a big relief for me. If she’d stayed away, I’d have felt honour bound to do the same. But I’m mayor, and he was a council member; if I wasn’t there it wouldn’t look good to the people who don’t know about the family difficulty, and very few do. Old Planas didn’t talk about it, and neither did Angel.’
‘Do they know yet when it’s going to be?’
‘No. I called Angel half an hour ago; he’d heard nothing from the police. They’d better get a move on. Already, tomorrow’s out of the question; if they don’t release the body soon, even Wednesday might be difficult.’
I left her and headed home, I just had time to get there before Tom, and to whip up something for lunch, specifically a long baguette stuffed with tuna and mayonnaise, followed by chunks of diced, fresh pineapple. Tom had more of the sandwich than I did; the boy could eat for Catalunya, or Scotland, or for any other country for which he might be qualified to compete. When I saw him off, for the second time that day, I felt a lot brighter than when he’d left in the morning. My burst of creativity down at Ben’s had chased away my mood and, in addition, I was beginning to look forward to Mac’s visit. I’d kept my promise and not dropped the slightest hint to Tom that Grandpa Blackstone was coming to visit. My plan was to find a pretext to drive him to school in the afternoon, rather than let him take his bike, then pick him up and head for the airport. If the flight was on time, we’d get there around the same time as he did.
I was smiling at the prospect as I programmed the dishwasher, when the door buzzer sounded. I checked the video screen in the kitchen, and saw Alex Guinart peering into the camera. There was someone else with him, another uniform, but I couldn’t see who it was. I pressed the button that opens the gate, and went to the front door, to meet them.
As they approached through my small garden, it was Intendant Gomez who took the lead, Alex a couple of deferential paces behind. ‘Good afternoon,’ I greeted them. ‘You don’t usually travel together. Where’s Inspector Garcia?’ Given what I’d learned from Gerard, my question was mischievous.
‘He’s in the office in Girona; we have a big caseload. I’ve asked Sub-inspector Guinart to work with me on this matter. After all, this is his town.’ That was all Gomez volunteered. I didn’t press him; whatever the visit was about, his face said that it was serious. Instead, I showed them into the television room, just off the entrance hall.
‘What brings you here?’ I asked. ‘Not that it isn’t a pleasure to see you, but . . .’
‘We need to talk to you again. The autopsy on Senor Planas has begun. It’s not yet complete, but already things have changed.’
‘In what way?’
‘He didn’t have a heart attack.’
‘Okay, he fell and landed on his head.’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
I was waiting for him to continue . . . when I realised what was wrong with my mental picture of Planas, dead in his garden. ‘He was lying on his back,’ I exclaimed. ‘He must have fallen backwards over the wall to wind up that way. But Garcia found the plastic in his right hand . . . incidentally, I know what it was now; Father Gerard told me. If he’d reached out for the Majesty palm to break his fall, and ripped off the label . . . The pot was on the wrong side; he’d have grabbed it with his left hand, not his right.’
‘Hey,’ said Alex, his eyes widening, ‘that’s true. And we hadn’t got that far yet.’
‘No,’ Gomez agreed. ‘But thanks for pointing it out. That takes our thinking forward; in fact, it helps our developing theory. The autopsy has been interrupted because our pathologist realised that he needed a second opinion, that of someone with more specific experience than he has. So we’ve called in someone from the university in Barcelona. She’s an authority on blunt force injuries, and she’s given evidence in criminal prosecutions all over Spain, and even in other countries.’
‘Why do you need her?’
‘To confirm our examiner’s theory,’ said Alex, ‘. . . if it’s viable, that is. He’s suggesting that Planas may not have died where he was found, or if he did, that he didn’t sustain his injuries there. He reckons that he was attacked, hit hard enough to leave him dead or dying, and then thrown over the wall and down on to the rocks.’
‘And the label?’
‘Put in his hand to make it look like what we assumed it to be, a reflex reaction to a trip and a fall. The intendant and I have just been back to the house; he’s sent the scene of crime technicians back in to take another look, across a wider area.’
‘That’s right,’ Gomez confirmed, ‘but already there are new possibilities to explore, and new questions to be answered. Think back to the scene, senora. Do you recall a patio with doors that opened on to it, from the house?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, with a sort of pagoda structure over it. And a table. And chairs.’
‘Indeed. And on the table there was?’
‘I can’t remember that.’
‘A bottle. Faustino One, red, from La Rioja, a very fine wine. Beside it, a glass, half full, although there would have been a little evaporation between it being poured and being discovered. The bottle was empty, Senora Blackstone.’ I frowned, wondering where he was going with this. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. ‘But Senor Planas didn’t drink it all himself.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘From the contents of his stomach. One partly digested steak and French fries, consumed earlier that night in Hostal Miryam . . . where he had no wine, only a small bottle of water and a coffee . . . and forty-two centilitres of red wine. The bottle held seventy, the glass contained eleven, allowing for evaporation. Someone else had the other seventeen.’
‘Maybe he drank the bottle over two nights,’ I suggested.
‘The corkscrew was on the table, with the cork still in it; it’s logical that it had just been drawn. Left open, it would not have been drinkable on the second night. For sure, he had a companion, and after he was dead, that person cleaned the second glass and put it away, or simply took it when they left.’
‘It’s possible that person left before Planas was attacked.’
‘And he was so tidy that he washed the second glass right away? Possible, but it’s a tight timescale. Our examiner says that he died between midnight and four in the morning. He didn’t leave Miryam until just after ten. The time on his bill, when it was printed out, was two minutes before. No. I believe he got home and had a caller, maybe someone he was expecting, maybe not, but someone he knew well enough to give a glass of damn fine wine. And I believe that caller smashed his head in, arranged things so that we stupid cops would buy it as an accident, then got to hell out of there.’
‘Your second pathologist will be able to confirm this?’
‘She’ll be able to determine the exact shape of the fatal injuries, and tell us how much force was used.’
‘Do you have any idea what the weapon might have been?’
‘We found various substances in the wounds, dirt from the ground, stone chips and other debris. We plan to match everything against items in the rockery, as far as we can.’
‘I hope you get a result. Now, much as I appreciate being told all this, why are you here? You haven’t come for my advice.’
‘No,’ Alex agreed. ‘We’ve come for a sample of your DNA.’
‘Are you saying I’m a suspect?’ I blurted out, indignantly.
‘You did have an argument with the man,’ Gomez pointed out. ‘He tried to extort money from you.’
‘Which I would have paid.’
The intendant smiled. ‘I know. You’re not a suspect, I promise, but you were at the scene. We’re taking samples from everyone who was, police and paramedics too, so that we can identify any traces we find, and eliminate those who had business there.’
‘Do you have a swab?’ I asked.
He nodded and produced one, in a container, from a pocket in his tunic.
I took it from him and wiped the probe across the inside of my cheek, returning it with a sizeable saliva sample. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Now let me warn you . . . if that winds up on a national database, there will be trouble. I am not a fan of Big Brother.’
Both he and Alex stared at me as if I was mad, and then I realised why.
Poor old Orwell
, I thought.
His greatest creation consigned to obscurity by a crap TV show
.
EighteenPoor old Orwell
, I thought.
His greatest creation consigned to obscurity by a crap TV show
.
B
ut did I really believe Gomez? Hard as I tried to get on with the rest of my day, that question kept interrupting it. After all, I did have a major argument with a murder victim a matter of hours before he attained that status. Had I been sweet-talked into volunteering a personal sample that no lawyer would have allowed Gomez to take without an order from the court? I thought of all the cops I’ve known over the years. In those circumstances Ricky Ross, when he was in Edinburgh CID, and even Mike Dylan, bless his imperfect soul, would have been all over me like a nasty skin condition. When I looked at the situation, dispassionately, even I would have had me down as a suspect.
ut did I really believe Gomez? Hard as I tried to get on with the rest of my day, that question kept interrupting it. After all, I did have a major argument with a murder victim a matter of hours before he attained that status. Had I been sweet-talked into volunteering a personal sample that no lawyer would have allowed Gomez to take without an order from the court? I thought of all the cops I’ve known over the years. In those circumstances Ricky Ross, when he was in Edinburgh CID, and even Mike Dylan, bless his imperfect soul, would have been all over me like a nasty skin condition. When I looked at the situation, dispassionately, even I would have had me down as a suspect.
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