Page 29 of His Worst Crime

And he crossed the space to open another big door to the right. Up a step, and over a wide flagstone threshold, David discovered a spacious, high-ceilinged kitchen. Extending across the right-hand wall, on the same wall as the house’s main entrance, were a row of three windows. The depths of their sills showed that the building’s outer walls were a good half-yard thick. Underneath them ran counter tops, a stove top, and a shallow marble sink that looked as if it had been hand-carved. The taps above it were of copper, fixed to long copper pipes that snaked across the length of the wall in random zigzags before disappearing into a hole that had been drilled through the thick masonry. At the other end of the kitchen, a huge fireplace occupied the far wall, so large they could have parked Ramon’s four-wheel-drive inside it. It was protected by a chimney so massive, its mantelpiece consisted of a single broad oak beam that crossed the room at shoulder height from one wall to the other. The kitchen was divided into two halves: a large round dining table with eight or ten chairs around it dominated the kitchen end; while a collection of mismatched armchairs clustered around the fireplace at the other.

“This is where we spend most of our time.”

“We?”

“It used to be my parents’, plus my sister and I. Mum and Dad both passed nine and ten years ago now. My sister sometimes comes up here with her family, but mostly it’s just me.”

“Sorry… about your parents.”

Ramon shrugged. “They loved this place. I do too. I come down when I can. To ride Ferro, mainly.”

As he spoke, he was turning on lamps and turning off the garish fluorescent that had first lit up the kitchen. Then he busied himself at the hearth, laying a fire. David looked around. The walls held artworks, mainly watercolors and prints, while pottery ceramics dotted the surfaces, probably done by some family member.

“Who’s the artist?”

“That was Mum. She liked her pottery… and painting. Dad was an inventor.”

“And you became a policeman?”

Ramon smiled. “Everyone says that.”

He now had a fire going in the hearth, and crossing to a big old wooden dresser, he pulled out a bottle of wine from its lower cupboard.

“Bring us glasses.” He nodded his head towards a shelf where crockery and glassware were stacked, while back at the table he attacked the bottle with a corkscrew.

David chose two large elegant wineglasses that almost matched, as nothing quite did in the whole house. Bringing them to Ramon, he said:

“It’s an amazing house.”

“You haven’t seen the half of it. It’s a masia, an old farmhouse, built in 1673, the earliest part. The rest in the eighteenth century. My parents bought it when we were kids for next to nothing, and spent our childhood fixing it up.”

He handed David a glass and took one himself.

“Salut!”

David sipped the red wine, which was full-bodied and strong on tannins, with an aftertaste of flint and iron.

“Wow!”

“It’s from the Montsant region, just upriver.”

Ramon’s eyes were on him in their black intensity. So what now? It must be past three in the morning. Were they going to have sex? He was tired, but he would… though it had been a long day. Not knowing what to do, he said:

“It must have been a cool childhood.”

Inadvertently he’d slipped into English, though up to that point they’d been speaking in Catalan. But Ramon replied in fluent English:

“It was: riding, the beach, helping Dad and Mum work on the house. What about yours?”

“At Ravenscragg? Horses, always horses. Everything was horses. I loved it. Our Owen, my brother, not so much.”

David saw that Ramon was on the point of saying something and then stopped himself. He also saw that Ramon was at a loss, not quite knowing how to proceed. With his heart hammering in his chest, David put his wineglass down, crossed the few feet separating them, put his arms around him and kissed him. Ramon kissed him back, as with one hand he also placed his glass on the table, before his powerful arms wrapped around David.

They stayed like that, just kissing, for a long time. Finally, Ramon broke off to say:

“If I take you upstairs, the bed’ll be freezing.”

David’s voice was hoarse when he tried to speak: