He closed his eyes as he thought back. ‘I don’t recall that you were,’ he said, eventually.
‘I don’t think I could have been, or when I slipped it would have fallen off, and I’d have noticed it. I reckon it must have dropped off my shoulders in your car. But when you took us back to the village, I sat in the front and Justine went in the back. That’s when she took it, for sure.’
Alex threw his head back, and let out a deep breath. ‘And do you know what? She had me keep her informed of every step of the investigation. I told her the lot, including the fact that we’d found your DNA on the chair, and that we were going to have to talk to you about it, probably on the following Monday. But I told her also that we weren’t taking it seriously, that not even Hector at his most zealous could see you as a killer, not over a sum of money that would hardly buy new tyres for your Jeep.’
‘When did you tell her this?’
‘At Planas’s funeral, outside in the square.’
‘That figures. My assumption was that she might have decided to get rid of Dolores on the spur of the moment, because her car had been found, but now I can see that she was already planning it when she came to the reception in Meson.’
‘Maybe, but putting the body into your store, that was a huge risk, was it not?’
‘Not after Justine drugged me. She put something in my wine glass, Alex, when I wasn’t looking. All of a sudden I was out of it; I left not long after you and Gomez, and I remember virtually bugger all after that till next morning, when Charlie got spooked and I found the body.’
‘You did? Not Tom’s grandfather?’
‘Mac never saw the body, or knew it was there, until after Gerard and I had both gone. No, I found it, like an idiot I panicked, and Gerard got me out of there. Justine must really have thought she had me stitched up. She was right too, for a few days.’
‘Justine and Gerard,’ he murmured. ‘Now he’s taking the fall for her. She must have seduced him.’
‘A nice oldfashioned term, Alex. Ben says that she can make people do things for her, simply because they want to please her. Yes, I suppose you could call that seduction.’
We drove down the autopista in renewed silence for a while after that, each of us with plenty on our minds. We were driving into Barcelona Airport when I remembered favour number two. ‘How did you get on with tracing Justine’s communications?’ I asked.
‘It’s under way,’ he replied. ‘If and when our people come up with something, I’ll hear about it.’ He looked at me, as I drove into the multi-storey car park. ‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going now?’
‘Malaga.’
‘Why the fuck are we going to Malaga?’ he asked, bewildered.
‘You’ll find out when we get there.’
Fifty-five
What he found out was that Malaga wasn’t our ultimate destination. As soon as we emerged from the baggage hall I headed straight for the Hertz counter. (Sure, Avis may try harder, but they still haven’t caught up with Number One.)
We were driving out of the airport when he asked again. ‘Where? Please.’
He was starting to sound pathetic, so I gave him a clue. ‘Remember that big cop you had in your office last week?’
‘Captain Lavorante?’
‘Yes. You might want to give him a call, since we’re going to be on his patch.’
‘Granada? But why?’
‘Because that’s where Justine Michels is headed.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘She left a box of tampons in Gerard’s house, with the stamp of Farmacia Xaloc on them. I found them when I was there, but I didn’t make the connection till last night, when I saw the same name on something I’d bought. We shop in the same place.’
‘Oh dear,’ he sighed, ‘so he and she. . They really were. . You must be very disappointed, Primavera.’
I laughed. ‘Men stopped disappointing me a long time ago. They always live down to my expectations.’
‘You’re taking it well.’ He frowned. ‘She’ll have a pretty good start on us,’ he observed.
‘Not much. Angel took her to Girona station; given the time that he did, I reckon she was catching the sleeper from Barcelona. It doesn’t get into Granada until just before nine.’
‘So what do we do when we get there? Go to Gerard’s house and grab her, I suppose. But why the hell’s she going there?’
‘Maybe she isn’t going to the house. Go on, make your call.’
Most people would have used directory inquiries. Alex didn’t; he simply called One One Two, the emergency number, identified himself and asked the operator to connect him with Captain Jorge Lavorante of the Granada Municipal Police. I switched off from the conversation, much of which was in police speak. When it was over, he turned to me and said that Lavorante had suggested that we go to his office.
‘Did you agree?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t say when.’
I had asked for a car with a navigation system. It was telling me that we weren’t all that far from the city, although I could see that for myself, when Alex’s phone rang. He flipped it open. ‘Yes?’
This time I did tune in. ‘Yes? Well done. Only one? Yes, do that please, right now.’ He closed the phone and looked across at me once more. ‘There’s a number, a mobile number, that Justine’s called a lot. It’s a top-up card and we don’t have a clue who’s on the other end. She called it last on Saturday morning, had a call back on Sunday, then yesterday morning she sent a text.’ The phone sounded again as he spoke; he flipped it open. ‘My star at Telefonica can access it; she’s forwarding it to me.’ He pressed a button. ‘And here it is now. “Torre de la Vela, ten thirty, tomorrow night.” That’s it; that’s all she says. What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means they’re meeting in the Alhambra tonight; that’s where Torre de la Vela is.’
‘How will they get in? It isn’t open at night.’
‘Who told you that? There’s a guided tour of the place every night, after dark, when it’s floodlit.’
‘So who’s she meeting? It can’t be Gerard; he’s locked up in Barcelona. Do you know?’
‘I suspect she knows we’re on to her, or figures that it’s only a matter of time. This meeting is all to do with her escape plan.’
‘So what do we do in the meantime, once we get to Granada?’
‘First we check into the very nice, very large hotel that I’ve booked us into.’
‘What if Justine’s there as well?’
‘She won’t be. I’m ninety per cent certain that I know where she’ll be staying. Once we’re settled in, I suggest that to avoid any chance of the two of us being spotted, even in a city with a few hundred thousand visitors, we go and spend the day with our friend Lavorante. Oh yes, and we’d better get tickets for the night tour.’
Alex grinned at me. ‘You’re a diamond, Primavera, but you’re flawed, thank God. We don’t need tickets; we’re the police.’
Fifty-six
‘You’re looking for a woman.’ Lavorante laughed across his coffee table. ‘You’ve come to the right place, Inspector Guinart. Would you like gypsy, Arab, Chinese, South American, African, or, of course, East European? All available in Granada, and very reasonably priced. Or you could have German, or Scandinavian, or even French; they’re here too, if rather more expensive.’ He looked at me from under the Boris Karloff eyebrows. ‘But not British, senora,’ he added. ‘Not that I know of, anyway.’
‘That’s comforting.’ I took a card from my bag, wrote a name on the back and handed it to him. ‘If you call this place,’ I said, ‘you might find that the one we’re after is registered. She’s none of the above, by the way; she’s Spanish.’
‘Discreet, mind,’ Alex warned.
Lavorante spread his arms wide. ‘Do I look like the unsubtle type?’
He went to the desk, in his surprisingly spacious and elegant office, picked up the phone and made the call. ‘You’re right,’ he grunted as he came back to us. ‘She’s there and she’s in her room.’