She was happy with that. We finished lunch, then went our separate ways, she towards the car park, me back to the house.
One of the very few downsides about living in St Martí is the mobile phone signal, which varies from bad to very bad, and disappears entirely inside several of the old stone buildings. When I stepped into the hall, and laid my phone on the new hall table, I realised that it had been switched off all day. I checked the landline, and saw that I had two voice messages. I pushed the replay button, put the handset to my ear, expecting to hear Gerard’s voice. . and almost dropped it again, as a deep, familiar accent reminded me of home.
‘Primavera, this is the other grandpa speaking.’ Mac Blackstone, Oz’s dad; something wrong? Mary, Ellen, Harvey, one of the boys? And then he chuckled. ‘Trust me to call when you’re at church. . or sprawled on the beach more like. Can you give me a ring when you pick this up? I’ve got an opportunity, but I’ll need to know fast.’
‘What the hell’s this about?’ I murmured, as I dialled Mac’s number.
‘What the hell’s this about?’ I asked, as he picked up my call.
‘Puzzled you, did I?’ He chuckled. ‘Sorry to be mysterious, but you never know how long you have on these things. Do you fancy a visitor for a few days?’
‘Depends who it is.’
‘Me, woman. Who else?’
‘Well, there’s your wife, for a start.’
‘Ah, but she’s the reason. Mary’s cousin’s been ill; Isa, the one in Crieff. She’s had a hysterectomy, and now they’re discharging her from hospital, way too soon in my opinion. She’s on her own, and she’s going to need looking after, so Mary’s going to stay with her for a week. I don’t fancy any of that, so I’ve been thinking it might be nice to see my grandson and his mum. I’ve been looking around, and I can get a flight to Girona from Prestwick on Tuesday, for next to bugger all, going home next Monday. Would that be okay, or do you have other arrangements?’
I didn’t take a second to decide; the cheery presence of Mac Blackstone was just what I needed, even if he wasn’t quite the man he had been. ‘Book it,’ I told him.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. Book it, then send me an email with your arrival time; I’ll pick you up.’
‘Not at all, I’ll get a taxi.’
‘You’re not that rich; I’ll pick you up. I won’t tell Tom, though; he still likes surprises.’ I remembered something. ‘By the way, there’s someone here who says he knows you; Matthew Reid, from East Lothian.’
‘Is he, by God? In that case, I’d better bring the golf clubs.’
I ended the call and then went back to my voice messages. As I had expected, the second was from Gerard; timed less than an hour earlier. ‘Primavera,’ he said, his voice calm, ‘I need you to call me. Something has happened. Use my mobile, as usual.’ I’d always made a point of not calling him at the parish residence, for fear of embarrassing Father Olivares, the old priest.
I did as he asked. I could hear engine noise as he answered. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m on my way back from Figueras. I had an office to perform, for Angel Planas.’
‘I know what’s happened,’ I told him. ‘In fact, I’ve seen what happened. Alex came for Justine, not long after you left, and I went with them.’
‘You did? Angel didn’t mention that when he called me.’
‘Angel was upset at the time, as you’d expect. Gerard, I need to see you.’
‘Of course. You must be upset too.’
‘That’s not why. Can you come here?’
‘Yes. I’m only five minutes away.’
‘Then I’ll open the garage and wait for you there; drive straight in when you arrive.’
I left a note on the table for Tom, in case he came home and wondered where I was, then took the winding internal stair that leads down to the garage, where I opened the door with the remote. Gerard’s five minutes were closer to ten, but eventually he arrived, parking between my Jeep and our bikes. As he climbed out of the car I saw that he was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt, with a flash of clerical white showing at the front of the buttoned collar. I closed the door and led him upstairs, and into the kitchen.
‘This is a terrible thing,’ he said, as I handed him a bottle of water from the fridge.
‘You’ve seen the body, then? That’s where you were?’
‘Yes, I went to bless him.’
‘When are they going to do the autopsy? Did anyone say?’
‘That man Gomez, from Girona, was there. He said they hope it can be done this evening. I asked him why the haste; he said that they have to be absolutely certain about the cause of death.’
As he took a drink, I reached out and touched his collar. ‘Take it off,’ I told him. He looked at me, blankly. ‘Please,’ I added.
‘As you wish.’ He reached round to the back of his neck, fiddled around for a second or two, then flicked his fingers. The collar loosened and he drew it out; it was a complete circlet, nothing like the thing that Gomez had shown us.
‘Is that the one you had on Friday night, in your jacket?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘Yes.’ He folded it twice and slipped it into a pocket in his shirt.
‘I thought you guys just wore a wee insert thingie.’
‘Some do, but not us; we’re traditionalists. Would you like to see my hair shirt also?’ He smiled and reached for a button of his shirt. ‘I don’t think that would compromise us.’
I was flustered, didn’t know what to do, or say. ‘Bollocks,’ I stammered, highly inappropriately. ‘Stop it. I’m sorry, I was only wondering. .’
He stared at me, then as if a penny had dropped he shook his head, and started to chuckle. ‘And I can guess why,’ he said. ‘You went with Alex and Justine to Planas’s house, because Gomez wanted to talk to you. When you were there, he showed you what he later showed me, and told you as he told me what his colleague had sworn it was. You know, Primavera my dear, we all accept that our Maker moves in mysterious ways, but the means by which He allowed an idiot like that man Garcia to become an inspector of the Mossos is beyond all comprehension. It seems that once upon a time he was in Africa, and met a missionary who wore a short insert to his collar, to make it more bearable in the extreme heat. When he found that piece of plastic in Senor Planas’s hand, he decided in his wisdom that the dead man had ripped it from the neck of an assailant. That is the theory he put to Gomez. However, when the intendant took a closer look, after you and Justine had left, he saw some faded writing on the material. What he thought he read was “Rev Rivularis”. He admitted to me that he entertained the fleeting notion that this might have been the name of the owner, until his eye was caught by a pot on the top of the wall beneath which the body had been found, with a small, fairly recently, planted tree in it. Senor Gomez is gardener enough to know a Majesty palm when he sees one, and resourceful enough to do some very quick research, to discover that the botanical name of this genus is “Ravenea Rivularis”, “Rav” for short. So the officially revised theory of the police is that as Planas fell over the wall, he grasped the palm in a vain attempt to pull himself back, and ripped the circular white plastic label from its trunk.’
I felt that the floor was crumbling away from beneath me. I had been afraid that. . Christ I’d been a bigger idiot than Garcia. ‘Gerard,’ I mumbled, ‘I’m. .’
He stepped towards me, cupped my face in both of his hands and kissed me on the forehead. ‘You were afraid. You feared that I might have given in to the baser instinct that I confessed to you, and that I might have gone to chastise Planas. You were afraid that I might have gone too far, and scared him to death. Or even pushed him over that wall.’
‘No,’ I protested. ‘I’d never have thought that, not for a second.’
‘Yet you did your best to protect me. I heard from Gomez that you told Alex that I had been with you all evening and into the next day, that I dropped you off and went home, as Father Olivares would have been able to confirm, if it had been necessary. He and I sat together for an hour, over a bottle of very fine garnaxa; my senior likes a liqueur before he retires.’