‘It was a long walk to where he died, since they lived in the old town.’
‘They didn’t, not then; they had a house in Carrer Muga, up in Puig Sec, not far from your friend Shirley’s place. Henri bought the land . . . oh, must be seven, eight years ago now . . . and built the house himself.’
‘I thought he sold carpets.’
‘So he did, when he came to Spain. But like a lot of people here he went into property development in the boom years, and made a lot of money. Dolores sold the house right after he died, and went back to her old family home. Nobody was surprised; to someone from an old L’Escala family, moving to Puig Sec’s like moving to L’Estartit, or Begur.’
‘So she couldn’t have been too happy, living up there?’
‘Well,’ he began, ‘as a police officer I don’t like to go on rumour . . .’
I laughed at that. ‘Bollocks! The cops I’ve known all told me that gossip is where it starts. You keep your ears open, you hear what’s being said, you investigate and you find out whether it’s true or not.’
Alex smiled. ‘That’s crime; I’m talking domestic here. My mother-in-law said the other night she heard that Dolores was furious when Henri built that house. When he bought the land she assumed that it was for a project for sale, but he told her that he’d always wanted a view of the sea and the mountains and that they were moving in.’
‘That’s interesting.’
‘What is?’
‘The time frame. Henri bought the land seven or eight years ago; let’s say it took him a year or so to build the house. They must have moved in around six years ago.’
‘Yes, that would be right. So?’
‘So, that was when Planas’s wife died. Does your mother-in-law recall what went wrong with her?’
‘As a matter of fact, she does; she says that she had breast cancer. She fought it for a while, but eventually she lost.’ He glanced at me. ‘You’re suggesting that maybe Henri Michels had good reason to move his wife a little distance away?’
‘I’m floating the idea, that’s all. Let’s see what the diaries tell us.’
Alex nodded and selected one from the pile. ‘Two years ago,’ he announced, then flipped it open. He frowned as he looked through the first few pages.
‘What’s up?’
‘It’s only appointments, council meetings, various business dates.’
‘Too much to hope for, that he kept a daily journal. See what you can find, though.’
‘Okay, be patient.’ He thumbed his way to a particular page, then made his way back, day by day. He was halfway through turning one more when he paused. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘take a look at this. Wednesday, May the twenty-third. He’s had a busy day, three meetings with clients in the estate agency, two council committees, and a session with Angel in the furniture shop. There’s no room left on the page, but look what’s written in the margin.’
He held it up for me, pointing at a note in a neat, clear hand; I read aloud. ‘H M, El Burro, 8:30. H M being Henri Michels?’
‘Let’s suppose that it was.’ His forehead wrinkled. ‘But El Burro? Why the hell would they meet there?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Everything. It’s closed now; it went broke before the public health people could shut it down. It was a dirty little Brit bar up in Riells de Dalt. Planas was a patron of the Miryam, and Henri Michels drank in El Golf Isobel; they weren’t the sort of guys who’d have been seen dead in El Burro.’
‘So they met somewhere they wouldn’t be recognised. Who do you think set it up?’
He scratched his chin. ‘Michels built some houses on a plot not far from there. I doubt if Planas had even heard of the place. I’d say Henri.’
‘And the agenda . . . I wonder who set that?’ I took the diary from him and looked at the next page; again, business meetings, council meetings, but nothing else. I flicked on to the next; more estate agency stuff, but at the foot of the page, the last entry read, ‘F. Rhodas, P-S. 2:00.’ I showed it to Alex. ‘Who’s this F, d’ you think?’
‘I’d only be guessing,’ he said. ‘But from that I’m pretty sure I know where they were meeting. There’s a restaurant named Rhodas, in a place called Palau Saverdera. I know it quite well; once a year a few friends and I, all Mossos, have dinner there. It’s famous for its lamb. Let me make a call.’
He wandered across to the window, mobile in hand. ‘Hey, Chico,’ I heard him say after a while, ‘it’s Alex Guinart. Yes, I know it’s Sunday and I know you’re busy, and you know I’m a cop so listen to me, okay.’ Then he lowered his voice a little and I couldn’t hear what he was saying any more, until finally, he laughed. ‘Good customer?’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, chum, if I were you I’d go out and find another to take his place, for you won’t be seeing him again, or her for that matter.’ He ended the call and turned to face me. ‘I just described Planas and Dolores to my friend Chico, the owner. He says they’ve been customers there for as long as he can remember, and he goes back twelve years; they went there for lunch, last Friday of every month. But the weird thing is he didn’t know their names . . . although he did say he overheard him calling her “Flora” a couple of times. The table was a standing reservation, and Planas always paid cash.’
‘Ask your mother-in-law if Dolores had a nickname when she was younger, and see if she says it was “Flora”. Bet?’
‘There’s no danger of me taking that one on. But I wasn’t finished. My pal told me a story about them. Their regular lunch date, a couple of years ago, May, he reckons, they were mid-meal and a guy walked in, big guy, white hair; he went right up to their table, shouting at them, something about having warned him, but Planas being too fucking arrogant to listen. Spoke Catalan, but with a foreign accent. Planas stood up, and the man decked him, grabbed the woman by the arm and hauled her out of there. Chico offered to call us, but Planas told him not to.’
‘And two days later Henri Michels had a heart attack and fell over a cliff?’
‘And one month later, Planas and Dolores were back there, and it was as if the whole thing had never happened.’
I whistled. ‘That’s what I call a result. What does the diary say,’ I asked, ‘about the night Michels died?’
He looked up that page. ‘Nothing. No appointments. No alibi.’
‘What do we do next?’
‘You take your son back home,’ he said. ‘I call Hector Gomez and tell him what we’ve found here. Then he and I might decide to have a word with the guy who was so keen to write off Michels’ death as a suicide.’
‘If you do,’ I asked, ‘can I come?’
He stared at me, in disbelief.
Fifty-one
T
here wasn’t a cat’s chance of that, and I knew it; still, I persuaded Alex to make his call from my house, so that I could be on hand to defend him if the intendant blew a gasket over our search of the Planas place, and threatened to send him on night patrol in the no-go areas of Barcelona . . . and there are some, trust me on that.
But Gomez took the news calmly; I know this for sure because we used the office phone, which has a hands-free facility, and so I could hear him. ‘You know, Alex,’ he said, when the story was told, ‘I always thought the Michels investigation was irregular. I was going to take it on myself, but Javier Fumado brushed me off. His angle was that it was a family tragedy and should be handled quietly for the sake of his sister, and his nieces. I fell for it too. Christ, if I had known this stuff about Planas . . .’
‘There’s no evidence that Fumado knew either,’ I pointed out.
‘You’re right, Primavera, there isn’t. But it’s come to light now, and it’s put the power in my hands. Thanks to you two, I can walk into his office tomorrow with this new evidence about Dolores and reopen the investigation.’
‘Even though both she and Planas are dead?’
‘Henri Michels doesn’t know that, though. If his death wasn’t accidental, and wasn’t caused by a heart attack, he deserves justice. This too,’ he added. ‘I’ve never liked that little bastard Fumado and I’ve never trusted him. Over the years he’s taken a few decisions against prosecution that have struck me as odd. So we’ll pay him a visit.’ He paused, and then he surprised me, totally. ‘Would you like to come, Primavera? You’ve earned it, I reckon. If it wasn’t for you we’d never have established that Michels knew about this triangle. And there’s a second reason: you being there will unsettle him, make him uncertain.’
‘But how will you explain me?’
‘I’ll tell him that our regular secretary’s on vacation and that we’ve taken you on as a temp. You take the note of the meeting.’
‘I don’t know shorthand,’ I said, lamely. (I had to use the English word.)
‘What’s shorthand?’ he replied. ‘You know how to switch on a recorder, don’t you? Come to Girona, tomorrow morning, ten. We’ll go to his office from there.’
‘How do you know he’ll be there?’
‘I have an appointment with him already, to discuss another case. He’ll find that the agenda’s been changed.’
As it happened, Tom had an appointment of his own next morning. One of Ben’s neighbours was running a summer sailing school for kids, and I’d enrolled him. I dropped him off at the marina, in front of Café Navili, with instructions to meet me when the session finished, at two o’clock, at a restaurant called La Clota, just around the corner, then I headed off for Girona.
My mood was far different from what it had been two days before. I was still worried about Gerard, of course, deeply worried, but I felt that at least I was doing something. It might not have had anything to do with the two murders of which he was accused . . . okay, Primavera; to which he’d confessed . . . but then again. It was a can of worms, and if our visit to the public prosecutor’s office tipped it up and sent them crawling all over his desk, who knew where they might take us?
I’d even taken my own recorder with me for the meeting, but Gomez gave me a small minidisc machine, like the one . . . maybe the same one, for all I knew . . . that Valdes had used to let me hear Gerard’s confession. He said that it was better if I was seen to be using official issue, for the sake of propriety. That made me smile.
The office of the public prosecutor isn’t far from the Mossos building. The morning was dry and not too hot, so the three of us walked there. His secretary was at her post in the main reception area when we arrived. I expected Gomez to wait to be shown in, but he simply said, ‘Meeting with your boss,’ and headed for an unmarked door behind her, with Alex and me trailing along behind. The woman, mid-twenties, white shirt, tight grey skirt, enhanced blonde . . . another reminder to do something about my chestnut hair . . . rose to her feet, open mouthed, but we were past her before she could say a word.
Javier Fumado stayed in his seat as the intendant stepped unannounced into his office. He looked mildly annoyed, and more so as his gaze took in Alex. When it got to me it reached angry, and bewildered.
‘What is this, Gomez?’ he exclaimed. ‘What has Guinart got to do with the Iniesta investigation . . . and what the hell is this woman doing here?’
‘Iniesta can wait. We’re here to talk about something else. As for the lady,’ he stressed the word, ‘she’s working for me while my regular clerk is on vacation.’
‘And she can leave right now!’ Fumado snapped. He was an unpleasant little man, with a sharp face, pointy enough to have played a villain in
Wind in the Willows
.
Gomez shook his head. ‘She stays. We may need to take a formal statement later; that’s her job.’
‘Statement? From whom?’
‘From you, Javier.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘We’re here to reopen the investigation into the death of Henri Michels.’
‘That file is closed.’
‘Wrong. It was closed; now it’s open again. We have new evidence in the case, and so I need to look at your records.’
‘It’s been two years, man!’
‘So?’
‘It was misfortune, that’s all; Henri was in poor health, he went on a walk that was too strenuous for him, had a heart seizure and fell to his death.’
‘Henri Michels was as strong as an ox,’ Alex Guinart intervened. ‘I worked out with him in the gym in Riells about a month before he died. He was bench-pressing his age in kilograms, fifteen repetitions at a time; as you’ll know, he was sixty-four years old. When he’d finished that, he did ten kilometres on the exercise bicycle.’
‘The file, please, Javier,’ said Gomez.
The public prosecutor locked eyes with him. I thought he was going to refuse, but he blinked first. ‘Okay,’ he said, with a huge sigh. ‘I’ll get it.’ He made to rise.
‘No,’ said the intendant, briskly, ‘we’ll do that. I need be sure that all of it arrives. Inspector, please.’
‘What the hell . . .’ Fumado exclaimed, but Gomez cut him off.
‘When were you first aware that your sister was in an adulterous relationship with José-Luis Planas?’
The little man frowned. ‘When I received the lab comparison between samples taken from her body and from his,’ he replied.
‘Not before?’