I didn’t realise it, but I was trembling as he told his story. ‘Senora,’ said Valdes, ‘would you like a glass of water?’
I realised that I would. Once I’d drunk it, the Andalusian carried on. ‘So there I am, up at the Hernanz house. The neighbour had said that the trouble was in the garden so I went in the back way, through a little gate. It was all quiet, not a sound. Then I saw Gerard’s old man. He was lying there, covered in blood, and when I say he was out of it, I thought he was dead, till I took a closer look at him, and found a pulse. I could hear voices inside, Gerard’s and his brother. Santi was all right, the more sociable of the two, but he was as formidable as Gerard. No way was I handling one of them, let alone two, and besides, they were my friends, so I picked their father up, carried him out of there over my shoulder, and took him to hospital. We were there when the boys brought Gerard’s girlfriend in. They didn’t see him, or me, and I made sure it stayed that way, but I found out from the staff that the girl had been raped. I also heard that she’d refused, point blank, to call the police. The old man was starting to come round by that time. He’d a fractured skull, they reckoned, and maybe his upper jaw too, but they said he wasn’t going to die. “Oh no?” I told them. So I got him out of there, again, put him back in my car and drove him all the way to Cordoba, and left him at the hospital there. I also told him that if he ever came back to Granada, I’d fucking kill him myself. Trust me, he believed that.’
I listened to the rest of the story, although I knew it all. Irena’s leaving, and Gerard’s decision to save his life, as Lavorante put it, by entering the priesthood. ‘I never did find out what happened to the old man after that,’ he concluded. Ah well, I was one up on him there.
‘Now you’ve heard that,’ said Valdes quietly, ‘there’s something else I want you to listen to.’
He led me back to his office, produced a minidisc recorder, and put it on the desk. He peered at a dial as if he was setting it up, then pressed Play.
‘Do you love Senora Blackstone, Father,’ I heard him ask, ‘in the way a man loves a woman, that is?’
I heard a sigh. ‘Just once,’ a disembodied Gerard said, ‘I’ll answer your question, although I wouldn’t if she was here. Yes, I do.’
‘I thought so. In that case, I’m going to put a proposition to you, the same one I’m going to put to the court. Two weeks ago, exactly, the lady had an argument with José-Luis Planas in his office, during which he called her a whore, loudly enough for it to be heard by people outside. I’ve spoken to the lady who managed the business for him; she told me this. Eighteen years ago, in Granada, you knocked a man unconscious and were prepared to kill his brothers when such an insult was aimed at the last woman you loved. When she was attacked by your father, you beat him almost to death. That isn’t part of my proposition, by the way; that is witnessed fact. In this case, what I believe is that you went to Senor Planas’s home on the night of his insult to Senora Blackstone; you left the residence after Father Olivares had retired to bed. He let you in, you hit the man with a chair and you killed him. The London forensic team are very good, much better than our people, I have to admit; eventually they found a hair on the murder weapon. The DNA they took from it matches a sample you gave Intendant Gomez for elimination purposes, in Figueras when you went to the morgue to perform the final offices on the man you’d killed. But that night, at the house, you didn’t know you’d find Dolores Fumado there. Her relationship with Planas was very much their secret. You dealt with it; you made the scene look as if an accident had occurred, you abducted the lady, and you imprisoned her. You drove her car into the countryside, and you burned it. But not well enough, for you also left a DNA trace on a corner of the driver’s door, more hair and some skin, as if you’d bumped your head. So what to do with Dolores? You didn’t know, until. . A few days later, you learned that Gomez’s team had found Primavera’s palm print on the chair, and you conceived a very bold plan. You killed Dolores, with a shawl belonging to Senora Blackstone. We believe that either she left it in your car on that Friday night, or that you stole it from her, possibly on the Sunday afternoon in St Martí.’
Of course, I thought, I wore it to church.
‘You put the body in her storeroom. Careless, Father, you left your DNA there again.’
Of course he did, I sent him in there to look.
‘When she found it, and called you, as you knew she would, you told her she must leave. You actually framed the woman you love for two murders that you had committed, and then you persuaded her to confirm her own guilt by escaping.’
There was a pause in the recording. ‘But why would you do this?’ it continued. ‘What possible reason could you have had? Let me tell you. You planned to disappear too; you planned to take her son and to join her in hiding, letting her be condemned as a murderess in her absence, but freeing you to spend the rest of your life with the woman you love. Brilliant, flawless. . or it should have been. You underestimated her resourcefulness, and her ability to prove her own innocence.’
‘Something I will never do again,’ said Gerard, quietly.
‘So that’s it?’ Valdes asked him. ‘You admit it?’
‘You’re a very smart man, Comisari,’ he replied, with a soft chuckle that caused me physical pain as I listened to it, ‘to have figured all that out. You put it on paper and I’ll sign it; as you said, it’s brilliant.’
The commissioner switched off the recording. ‘So you see, senora,’ he sighed.
I stared at him, that John Cazale lookalike, and as my eyes filled with tears, I knew that he’d done to me what Fredo did to Michael in Godfather Two. He’d broken my heart.
Forty-eight
I asked Valdes if I could speak to Gerard. He told me that he had no personal objection, provided that there was a guard present for my security, since I was now a potential witness against him, but that ‘the prisoner’. . how I hated it when he used that word. . had made it clear that he did not want to see anyone.
I asked him if he would contact Santi, but he replied that the prisoner had expressly forbidden him from contacting his brother. ‘He says that he will not allow his situation to compromise his career. He has that right, senora; I have to respect it.’
There was nothing that I could do but leave. I sat outside in the car park for a while, not wanting to drive until I had pulled myself together and was able to concentrate on the road. The last thing I needed was to hit a kid, or get hit myself, through lack of attention.
I was stunned. I’d gone in there telling myself that nothing would ever make me believe that Gerard was guilty, only to hear him admit it. I called Mac, on my mobile. He had been in on it, so he had a right to know. I told him where I was, and what had just happened.
He was as stunned as I was. ‘He set you up?’ he repeated. ‘He did that to you?’
‘I don’t think he set out that way, but when he heard that I was implicated, he saw a way to get himself clear and to get us what we both wanted, each other. I’m in no doubt that if I had been caught he’d have come forward and confessed.’
‘You reckon?’ he growled. ‘You’re too good to people, Primavera, that’s your problem. You trust too much.’
‘I haven’t always. This time I really thought I could. Luck of the devil, eh. Oh Mac, why do I always fuck up? I get close to someone then I do something daft, or he dies, or goes to the bad. I’m a fucking carrier of disaster; they should lock me up like one of those typhoid women and chuck away the key.’