‘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?’