Free Blood Red by Quintin Jardine Page B

the old priest.
    I did as he asked. I could hear engine noise as he answered. ‘Where are you?’
    ‘I’m on my way back from Figueras. I had an office to perform, for Angel Planas.’
    ‘I know what’s happened,’ I told him. ‘In fact, I’ve seen what happened. Alex came for Justine, not long after you left, and I went with them.’
    ‘You did? Angel didn’t mention that when he called me.’
    ‘Angel was upset at the time, as you’d expect. Gerard, I need to see you.’
    ‘Of course. You must be upset too.’
    ‘That’s not why. Can you come here?’
    ‘Yes. I’m only five minutes away.’
    ‘Then I’ll open the garage and wait for you there; drive straight in when you arrive.’
    I left a note on the table for Tom, in case he came home and wondered where I was, then took the winding internal stair that leads down to the garage, where I opened the door with the remote. Gerard’s five minutes were closer to ten, but eventually he arrived, parking between my Jeep and our bikes. As he climbed out of the car I saw that he was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt, with a flash of clerical white showing at the front of the buttoned collar. I closed the door and led him upstairs, and into the kitchen.
    ‘This is a terrible thing,’ he said, as I handed him a bottle of water from the fridge.
    ‘You’ve seen the body, then? That’s where you were?’
    ‘Yes, I went to bless him.’
    ‘When are they going to do the autopsy? Did anyone say?’
    ‘That man Gomez, from Girona, was there. He said they hope it can be done this evening. I asked him why the haste; he said that they have to be absolutely certain about the cause of death.’
    As he took a drink, I reached out and touched his collar. ‘Take it off,’ I told him. He looked at me, blankly. ‘Please,’ I added.
    ‘As you wish.’ He reached round to the back of his neck, fiddled around for a second or two, then flicked his fingers. The collar loosened and he drew it out; it was a complete circlet, nothing like the thing that Gomez had shown us.
    ‘Is that the one you had on Friday night, in your jacket?’ I asked, puzzled.
    ‘Yes.’ He folded it twice and slipped it into a pocket in his shirt.
    ‘I thought you guys just wore a wee insert thingie.’
    ‘Some do, but not us; we’re traditionalists. Would you like to see my hair shirt also?’ He smiled and reached for a button of his shirt. ‘I don’t think that would compromise us.’
    I was flustered, didn’t know what to do, or say. ‘Bollocks,’ I stammered, highly inappropriately. ‘Stop it. I’m sorry, I was only wondering . . .’
    He stared at me, then as if a penny had dropped he shook his head, and started to chuckle. ‘And I can guess why,’ he said. ‘You went with Alex and Justine to Planas’s house, because Gomez wanted to talk to you. When you were there, he showed you what he later showed me, and told you as he told me what his colleague had sworn it was. You know, Primavera my dear, we all accept that our Maker moves in mysterious ways, but the means by which He allowed an idiot like that man Garcia to become an inspector of the Mossos is beyond all comprehension. It seems that once upon a time he was in Africa, and met a missionary who wore a short insert to his collar, to make it more bearable in the extreme heat. When he found that piece of plastic in Senor Planas’s hand, he decided in his wisdom that the dead man had ripped it from the neck of an assailant. That is the theory he put to Gomez. However, when the intendant took a closer look, after you and Justine had left, he saw some faded writing on the material. What he thought he read was “Rev Rivularis”. He admitted to me that he entertained the fleeting notion that this might have been the name of the owner, until his eye was caught by a pot on the top of the wall beneath which the body had been found, with a small, fairly recently, planted tree in it. Senor Gomez is gardener enough to know a Majesty