Alex moved behind the desk and began opening doors and drawers. ‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘Look at this.’ He reached into the drawer that would have been at Planas’s right hand and produced a revolver, with a barrel that looked to be around six inches long.
‘I thought those were illegal here,’ I said.
‘They are, without a permit. . and I don’t recall him having one.’
‘It didn’t do him much good.’
‘No, but it shows the kind of man he was; not to be taken lightly. Like Gerard.’
‘Don’t.’ I shuddered. ‘What else have you found there?’
He squatted beside the desk, rifling through its contents. ‘Personal accounts, tax papers, bills, bank books,’ he listed; then his face broke into a smile. ‘And diaries,’ he added, ‘oldfashioned page per day diaries. Going back five years. You told me to trust my nose, Primavera; I’ll trust yours from now on.’ He took them from their shelf in the left pedestal, and laid them on the desk. ‘Should we start at the beginning?’
‘Eventually, but for now, let’s go back just two years, to when Henri Michels was killed. Can you remember the date?’
‘I looked it up in the office, among our incident reports; the body was found on the twenty-eighth of May, a Monday. It was called in at eight twelve by a fisherman; he was out checking his pots near Saltpax rock when he spotted the body at the foot of the cliff. But there was an earlier note from the municipal police, timed at eleven thirty the night before, letting us know that Dolores had reported that her husband hadn’t come back from a walk.’
‘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.’