I was beginning to get the impression that Justine had had a few also, especially when she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Okay, tell me about you and the priest. I know I was told no, but, let’s hear it from you. Are you or not?’
‘Not,’ I replied firmly. ‘Why, do you have ambitions?’
‘Ouch. Even if I did, I couldn’t. I’m the mayor, remember. But . . . would you like to? Come on, secretly.’
‘You wouldn’t tell me your secrets a minute ago, so why should I tell you mine? But it’s still no. He’s a pal, that’s all.’ (Even though, at that moment, he wasn’t.)
‘Don’t believe you.’
‘Honest,’ I tried to insist.
She’d have pressed me further, maybe asked me if the thought had ever crossed my mind, but we were both distracted by the sound of a mobile. We followed it, to see Gomez reaching for his pocket. He pressed the phone to his ear. As he listened, his face seemed to darken, and he glanced towards Justine. He ended the call, quickly, spoke briefly to Alex, then headed for the mayor, but she was already moving towards him. He spoke to her quickly, earnestly, and I saw her hand go to her mouth, then he and Alex turned and made for the exit.
I stepped up to Justine’s shoulder. ‘What is it?’ I whispered.
‘They’ve found my mother’s car; in some woods beside the main road, opposite Ventallo, where nobody lives. It’s a shell, burned out.’
‘And . . .’ I gasped.
‘No. She wasn’t in it, thank God.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Primavera, I have to go, to be with my sister.’
‘Of course.’
She went in the same direction as the two cops, through the whispering crowd, ignoring everyone who spoke to her. As she did, I felt the room begin to wobble, very slightly, or maybe it was me. Maybe it was the news, maybe it was the cava, maybe I’d lost a week somewhere and it was the time of the month, but I knew my evening was over. I thanked Angel . . . he was still by the door, frowning as if he didn’t know what to do for the best . . . and made my way unsteadily home.
Thirty-one
When I woke up next morning, I felt fine. My memory of the latter part of the evening was hazy, but with a little effort I recalled announcing that I was going to bed and Mac saying that was fine and that he was going to see if Ben was still open, and if so, he was going to drag him off for a beer.
I swung my feet out of bed and planted them on the floor . . . right in the centre of my satin party dress, which lay in a perfect circle exactly where I’d let it drop and stepped out of it. I winced, and hoped that I hadn’t destroyed it, but it looked okay when I fastened it to a hanger, no food, wine or other embarrassing stains.
I checked my watch; seven fifty, too late to go for a swim and be back in time to make breakfast, so I settled for a quick shower instead, dressed in my usual daywear and headed downstairs. I beat Tom by five minutes . . . he’s a self-starter these days . . . and in that time his oranges were freshly squeezed, his Coco Pops and my Special K were in their bowls, ready for the milk, and the coffee percolator was on the stove alongside a pan in which three eggs were beginning the short journey to being soft boiled.
Of Mac, there was no sign. I sneaked a look into the garden, and into the kennel. Of Charlie there was no sign either, and so I guessed that one had taken the other for a walk. With our dog, it’s sometimes difficult to tell who’s in charge.
They still hadn’t come back when Tom headed off to school on his soon-to-be-replaced bike, but a burst of furious barking, in a familiar canine voice, told me that they weren’t far off. Charlie was still giving it plenty when the garden gate opened and he burst in, pulling on his leash.
‘I don’t know what the hell’s up with this dog,’ Mac exclaimed. ‘We were just going past your garage when he stopped in his tracks and started barking at the door alongside it. He wouldn’t come when I told him; finally I had to put the lead on him and drag him away. What is that down there anyway?’
‘It’s mine,’ I told him. ‘Go through to the kitchen and pour yourself some coffee. I’ll go down and take a look.’ I headed for the door that opens on to the stairs and trotted down to the garage.
As I’ve told you, my house is very old, but clearly, my garage isn’t, not in relative terms, given that cars have only been around for a hundred years or so. It’s big, and could hold at least three vehicles, although it doesn’t. The rear part is cut into the rock on which the house stands, and the rest is built out from that. The oldest man in the village is over ninety; he told me that his father told him, that when he was a boy, a hundred and twenty years ago, the back of my garage was a dwelling in its own right, and that a family lived there . . . the cave dwellers, they were called. Alongside it, there was, and still is, a trustero, an outhouse, entirely self contained, that he believed was used as a privy by the nineteenth-century occupants. It’s possible that it might have been; the floor’s mainly stone, but there’s a concrete slab right at the back that might be covering what could have been a limepit, a makeshift chemical toilet. Today, I use it as a storeroom, for logs mostly, for the wood-burning stove in the main living room. That’s what Charlie had gone off at, and I couldn’t figure out why, for he goes past it every day without a murmur.
I opened the up-and-over garage with the remote, grabbed the big old store key from its hook and stepped outside. The wooden door was scratched, by Charlie’s hard claws, I guessed. I’d half a mind to dock the cost of the paint out of his next bag of dog food. I slid the key into the lock, turned it and pushed the door open.
There’s no light in the cupboard and it’s at least twenty feet deep, so I couldn’t see very clearly, not straight away anyway. There was a tall pile of logs near the door; I stepped past it to see what was beyond. As soon as I did I knew what had scared my big tough softie of a Labrador. We had a visitor, a woman. She was seated, on some more logs, leaning against the back wall, and she was staring straight at me, sticking her tongue out at me as if a game had been played and I had lost. As I looked back at her, I knew that, somehow, she was right too.
It was Dolores Fumado, Justine’s mother, Elena’s mother. Her normally immaculate hair resembled a caricature of the Beijing Olympic stadium, and her face was streaked with days-old make-up. I didn’t have to touch her to know that she was dead, and I didn’t have to go any closer to know how she’d died. Something was knotted tight around her neck, something black: my clever, all-purpose, missing shawl.
I’m not usually a screamer, under any circumstances, but I came close then. I backed out of there faster than Jackie Kennedy crawled out of that car in Dallas, pulled the door shut and locked it, stepped back into the garage and pressed the remote closer. I didn’t even think to look around me, to check that nobody had been watching.
I leaned against the wall, panting, feeling the thumping of my heart, trying to retain a degree of self-control, fighting against the sheer blind panic that threatened to overwhelm me. The best way to do that is to put your mind to work, and so I made myself analyse what I had seen, and tried to fit answers to some obvious questions.
How long had she been there? Only a matter of hours, I told myself. Charlie went past the storeroom every day; he’d been set off by an unfamiliar scent, one his doggie brain told him instinctively was wrong. Tom had taken him out as soon as he’d got back from school the day before. Which meant that: she must have been dumped in there during the night. And in turn, that since the store is directly below my bedroom terrace . . . quite a few metres below, I’ll grant you, but below it . . . even though I’d left the patio door slightly open, as I often do when it’s warm and out of the peak mosquito season, I’d slept right through it.
How long had she been dead? Only one way to find out. I picked up a torch and went back outside. It was still way too early for beach-goers, so I was able to slip back into the storeroom unseen. This time I went right up to the body and touched it, taking care not to shine the torch on her face. I wasn’t brave enough to look into those ey
es. She was cold, but, I judged, still above the ambient temperature of her windowless crypt, which only ever feels the early morning sun. I took her hand and lifted her arm. I sensed stiffening, but rigor mortis was still well short of complete. I thought back to my classes during my nursing studies, when they taught us the facts of death. ‘Six to twelve hours to completion,’ I murmured. Semi-educated guess; she’d either been killed there, where she sat, or just before she was dumped. I had to assume the latter; Dolores was a sturdy woman and I couldn’t imagine her going in there like a lamb to the slaughter. She’d have fought, raised hell probably, raised every sleeper in the village. But not me, not Mac, not Tom.
But why had she been killed? Yes, why? She must have been kidnapped at some time on Sunday, some time after telling Justine that she was going to look after the fragile Elena, not long after the discovery of the body of José-Luis Planas. That one was beyond me; I hadn’t the faintest, and I knew that I could have sat there all day without coming close to an answer.
What should I do about it? Call the police, silly bitch. Call them right now. Only, hold on for a minute . . . She’d been put there, on my property, for a reason. Again, I’d no idea what that might be, but I knew one thing for sure: I couldn’t come up with a single answer that was good for me. So, proceed with caution, senora. In any other situation, my first thought would have been to call Alex Guinart, my friendly face within the Mossos. But some things precluded friendship and this was one of them.
‘Primavera! Is everything okay?’
Mac’s voice sounded too close for comfort. I bolted out of the storeroom and locked the door, just before he appeared from the garage entrance.
‘It’s okay,’ I assured him. ‘Panic over. A squirrel got in there somehow or other and died.’ It was the best lie I could come up with at short notice.
He frowned. ‘How the hell did it manage that? That door looks pretty solid.’
‘How should I know?’ I blustered. ‘How should I know how long it’s been there? Does the word “hibernation” mean anything to you?’
‘It’s May.’
‘Then it must have overslept.’
He shook his head. ‘This bloody place,’ he chuckled. ‘I guess everything moves at its own pace. Gimme the key and I’ll get rid of it for you.’
‘Bugger off,’ I retorted. ‘Do you think I’m too timid to clear away a dead rodent? Get back upstairs and make yourself some breakfast while I bag it and chuck it in a bin.’
‘Yes, boss,’ he said, chastened, doing what he was told and disappearing back into the garage, leaving me with the idle considerations of where I could possibly find a bag big enough to contain what was in the store, or a bin big enough to take it.
In the end, I could only think of one thing to do. I took my mobile from my pocket and punched in a number I knew off by heart.
‘Good morning, Primavera,’ he greeted me. His tone was neutral, perfectly pitched between cold and friendly. ‘If you’re calling to ask whether Tom can come to church on Sunday, the answer is, of course he can. Or are you going to disappoint me by saying that you’re not going to allow it?’
‘Gerard, I’m sorry,’ I exclaimed, and in the instant I realised that I was. I’d blown up in his face for no good reason, other than that possibly I was trying to make the point to Mac that I wasn’t some sort of clerical groupie. ‘I didn’t mean all that stuff. Where are you?’
‘I’m in L’Escala.’
‘Can you come here, now? I’m downstairs, in the garage.’
He sighed. ‘In truth I was coming anyway. Ten minutes.’
I was puzzled by what he’d said, but I didn’t dwell on it. As I waited for him, I realised that my mouth was as dry as a lizard’s . . . whatever the driest part of a lizard might be. I have a small drinks fridge in the garage; I took out a bottle of water and sat on the wall looking out to sea, trying not to feel scared by what had happened and was still happening.
Gerard must have left a layer of rubber on the road, for only seven minutes had gone by before his old white Fiat crested the hill. I beckoned to him; he drove down and swung into the garage, and I followed him inside. ‘Primavera,’ he said, as he climbed out of the car, but he didn’t get any further before I hugged him tight, pressing my unfettered breasts into his chest so hard that they hurt. He didn’t resist, just wrapped his muscular arms around me.
‘I think I’m in trouble,’ I whispered.
‘I know you are,’ he said, as finally we separated. He held me at arm’s length and looked into my eyes. ‘I had a visit from Alex Guinart early this morning, in church. I heard his confession, but when it was over he told me something else. He said that he and Gomez are going to detain a suspect this morning . . .’
I guessed what was coming. ‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
‘They’ve examined the chair that hit Planas over the head and cracked it open. They found a palm print on it and they were able to extract a DNA sample from it. It’s a perfect match for yours. There were no other prints on the chair other than one of Planas’s at the top, where he’d probably dragged it to move it.’
I thought back to Sunday afternoon, and I remembered something: tripping, falling and grabbing hold of the leg of a chair, that chair. I told him. ‘Did anyone see you?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it. I think that Alex and Justine were both ahead of me; neither of them would have noticed.’
‘Still,’ said Gerard, sounding optimistic for the first time, ‘it’s plausible, and it will be for them to prove that couldn’t have happened.’
‘Maybe not,’ I sighed. ‘Go next door and see what’s in my storeroom.’ I handed him the key and the torch.
He was gone for two minutes; when he returned his face was grim. ‘When did you . . .’
‘Twenty minutes ago.’
‘Oh my.’ His eyelashes flickered.
‘Are you going to ask me if I did it?’
‘I know you didn’t, so why should I?’
‘But how do you know?’
‘Because I . . .’ he barked, then stopped himself. ‘Primavera, if you’re going to tell me I’m wrong, then please let me hear your confession as a priest, so that I can never be called to give evidence against you. If not, then just accept my support.’ I smiled helplessly at him, and nodded. ‘You have to get out of here,’ he continued. ‘Alex Guinart told me what he did outside the confession box. I reckon he did so on purpose, guessing that I’d pass it on to you. He doesn’t believe that you killed Planas any more than I do, and he wants you to clear off so that he can sort it out, and so that Gomez and the public prosecutor don’t settle on you as the easy answer. If you get caught up in the criminal system here, you can be inside for a couple of years before you even come to trial, and if you are there, they won’t be looking for anyone else. Alex has put his job on the line for you, so don’t let him down. Is there somewhere you can go now, to hide, where you won’t be found?’
I thought about that, and the first question I asked was, Did I want to? If I ran, who knows how long it would be for, and who knows who’d look after Tom. No answer to the first, but to the second, he was upstairs, Mac. If I stood my ground . . . did I fancy my eight-year-old seeing me in the nick? Last time I was inside, I’d barred all my close family from visiting me. ‘I have a key for Shirley’s house,’ I told him. ‘I could hang out there for a while.’
‘Then do so. I’ll come to see you there tonight, and we’ll see about getting you further away. Don’t think about it. You have to hurry.’
He didn’t have to tell me that. ‘I have to see Mac,’ I said. ‘Wait here.’
I ran upstairs, heading straight for my room on the top floor; by the time I got there I was panting. I grabbed some clothes, almost at random, and some other essentials, girlie stuff like make-up, facial wipes, and such, and rammed them into a haversack. Finished, I went back down to the kitchen. Mac was there, wolfing a slice of toast.
I loo
ked him in the eye and handed him the key to the store. ‘In ten minutes,’ I told him, ‘I want you to open that door again. When you’ve seen what’s there, do what has to be done.’ I gave him a quick hug. ‘You’re right, Mac, I’m a magnet for bother; trust me again, please, and look after my boy.’
He stared at me. I could still feel his eyes on my back as I left the room.
There’s a safe in the garage as well as the fridge. It’s built into the wall, it can’t be drilled out and it’s pretty much impregnable; not even the legendary Johnny Ramensky could have cracked it. Ever since my trouble a few years back, I’ve made a point of keeping an emergency stash of money, near at hand. I had four thousand euro in there, cash, and I took the lot. I also had a brand new taser weapon, but I left that where it was.
I took my bike from its place against the wall . . . I could hardly have taken the Jeep, could I?
I stepped up to Gerard, and for the first time in my life, I kissed him, woman to man. Again, he didn’t flinch. ‘Thanks, love,’ I whispered. ‘It isn’t just Alex who’s putting his job on the line, is it?’ He said nothing in reply, but I knew. ‘We both have to leave,’ I told him. ‘You first. Come to Shirley’s back gate, after dark; I’ll leave it open.’
He nodded, climbed into his car and drove away. I counted to ten, then slipped on my haversack, straddled my mountain bike, and swung it out of the garage. I pressed the remote closer, chucked it back under the door as it began to swing down, and pedalled out of Dodge, or in this case St Martí d’Empúries, as fast as my legs could pump.
Thirty-two
Quite a chunk of my sensual history is tied up with Shirley Gash’s garden; I haven’t had all that many sexual partners, but two of my encounters have taken place there. Enough said about them, though.
Still, I had lots on my mind as I sat in the summer house and waited for night to fall. I’d made sure that nobody had seen me slip into the house and the garden isn’t overlooked by any of the neighbours, so I felt secure, or as secure as I was entitled to feel in the circumstances. Shit, I was an old hand at the game. I’d been a fugitive before . . . or, to be accurate, I’d believed that I was. This time, though, it was for real. I was as innocent as I’d ever been in my life, but the Mossos d’Esquadra were after me, and they are not people you want on your trail.
Blood Red Page 14