Blood Red by Quintin Jardine Read Free Book Online Page A

him. ‘I will.’
    ‘But it’s a hell of a lot of money.’
    ‘Come on, man. You were in the PR business, weren’t you? Have you never seen a pissing contest before?’
    ‘Not one with a woman involved . . . and no, not even figuratively. Seriously, the fair isn’t budgeted for something like that. Ben’s talking about charging fifteen euro a ticket, to include six tastings. With that sort of ground rent, I reckon he’d need to sell three thousand to break even. He’ll do well to shift a tenth of that. Ingrid and I, we can’t let you do that.’
    ‘Yes you can, Matthew.’
    ‘Come on, you’ve got a kid to bring up. You can’t be chucking away that sort of money.’
    I smiled up at him. ‘Actually I can. I don’t like talking about my finances, but between you and me, the biggest mistake that old man made was in thinking that he could bully me financially. I can chuck twelve thousand euro into the pot without a second thought. When I was with Oz, we both made money. When we divorced, I did very well out of it, for he didn’t want it to get messy. When he died, he left a trust fund for Tom that’ll see him well through university, and beyond.’
    ‘That’s fine,’ said Matthew, ‘and it’s very generous of you, but I still feel bad about it, and so will Ingrid, not to mention Ben.’
    ‘Then don’t mention it, to either of them.’
    He looked at me, seriously. ‘Primavera, if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s this: never keep secrets from your wife.’
    I had to agree with him on that. Tom was three years old before his father ever knew he existed. That wasn’t fair to either of them, and I’m ashamed of it now. ‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but try to wait until all the tickets are sold. You might be surprised how many we shift. Truth is, I am careful, and I’m not given to chucking money down the drain. Maybe I have a secret weapon.’
    ‘And do you?’
    ‘Could be, but I’m keeping it to myself for now.’ I sighed as I started to make my fruit and veg choices. ‘Life does get complicated, though. One thing about Oz; he had a way of slicing through problems.’
    ‘Oh yes? And what would he have done in this situation? What would he have done about Planas?’
    ‘If the old clown got him mad enough, he’d probably have had him taken out.’
    Matthew laughed . . . but he couldn’t see my face.

Ten
    ‘ D o you really believe that?’ Gerard asked. I had just reached the end of a blow-by-blow account of the morning’s events, over dinner in La Lluna, a restaurant in L’Escala that’s as far off the tourist track as you can get . . . and that means, not very. More often than not, Tom would have been with us, but I’d wanted to talk to my friend on my own, and Ben had been happy to sit with him. Cher and Mustard had also been happy to sit with Charlie. About a year ago, Father Olivares, the senior parish priest and Gerard’s immediate boss . . . although Gerard would counter that his immediate boss is God . . . attempted to give him a very gentle hint about the propriety of dining à deux with a divorced woman. He was told, pretty sharply, I suspect, that he was a priest, not a monk, therefore a member of an open society, and that the reverend father would have thought nothing of him dining à deux with a divorced man. (In other words, he told him to fuck off, but in clerical terms.)
    ‘Yes, I do. Are you shocked, that I could love someone who’s capable of such a thing?’
    ‘I’m shocked,’ he conceded. ‘But not by that. I’ve been hearing confessions for long enough to know that love is blind, deaf, dumb, and has no sense of smell. Also I’m human, and as susceptible to rage as the next man. No, I’m shocked because I’ve seen a few of your late ex-husband’s movies and wouldn’t have suspected that he’d be capable of such a thing.’
    I stared at him, astonished. ‘You never told me you were a fan,’ I exclaimed.
    ‘I didn’t like to,’ he said, head bowed, but