Authors: Thomas Mogford
Hollow Mountain (10 page)
A brick-lined archway led towards the tower blocks. Macmillan House, Tankerville House . . . The nomenclature reminded Spike of cigarette brands: the cheaper the tobacco – Pall Mall, Regal – the grander the name. Patriotic graffiti – ‘
British Forever!
’; ‘
Give Spain No Hope
’ – was scrawled on the retaining wall of a caged football ground, while the kerb was painted in red, white and blue, like a sun-drenched street in West Belfast. A woman in a velour tracksuit stood guard beside a boarded-up Social Club as a child urinated beneath the porch. ‘Swings, Granny,’ the girl demanded.
Granny?
She looked younger than Spike.
Spike gave the woman and child a nod, then passed beneath the Tower of Homage, the one part of the castle that was still intact. Not long ago it had housed Gibraltar’s prison: there were tales of inmates escaping, cheerfully observed by residents, who would only grass them up if they had a Spanish look about them. The prison had since been moved to a purpose-built facility on the other side of the Rock; pigeons now nested in the battlements, though its air of incarceration remained, seeping somehow into the surrounding buildings.
Keightley House formed three sides of a square. Union Jacks and Gibraltar flags were draped from the upper windows, along with the inevitable selection of smalls and Liverpool FC beach towels. Pinned to one wall was a laminated notice from the Tenants Association. Apparently Gibraltar’s Chief Minister was to visit next month to discuss ‘widening the water mains’. ‘
Nob
’, someone had scrawled helpfully by his name.
Spike pushed open the metal door to Block C. The pigeonholes were swollen with post – however grim the conditions, the fantastically low rent meant that government housing was always oversubscribed. Spike found the box marked ‘Grainger’ and wrestled out a wad of envelopes. Three were stamped ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’, a misleadingly exciting phrase betokening income or council tax bills. A couple of stiff handwritten envelopes were addressed to ‘Amy Grainger’ – condolence cards, probably.
Flat 7B, the post-box said, so Spike started up the narrow staircase, apparently built for a generation of Gibraltarians expected to be short and undernourished. Two doors opened at the top of each flight, most with a cheap wall tile alongside, some offering welcome, others an image of a favoured saint – Bernard of Clairvaux, Patron Saint of Gibraltar; Our Lady of Fátima, a Portuguese madonna with a penchant for ghostly appearances. An ironing board sat on the third floor, a man’s designer white shirt stretched across it. The front door was of expensive oak; Spike had heard rumours of cigarette smugglers living on the estate in flats pimped out with marble bathrooms, jacuzzis, plasma TVs.
He paused on the sixth floor, slightly alarmed to find himself out of breath. The landing window appeared to be composed of jam-jar bases, a few panes missing, presumably to temper the heat. The view looked out onto the eastern face of the Rock, fourteen hundred feet of limestone cliff, O’Hara’s Battery at the peak, a folly built by a former general to monitor the Spanish ships leaving Cádiz. Grainger must have stared at that view every day, Spike thought grimly, perhaps wondering how it might feel to jump.
A baby buggy lay folded outside the door to Flat 7B, its seat dotted with crumbs and stains. How anyone could drag it up here defied belief. Cheap rent or not, this was a cruel allocation for a young family. The welcome tile showed a country cottage with smoke furling from the chimney, ‘God Bless Our Home’ glazed above. Moved by the irony, Spike pushed in the stiff metal button of the doorbell, and waited.
Footsteps, then a sliver of Mrs Grainger’s pale face appeared in the doorway. A security chain jangled, and Spike was inside.
No cigarette smuggler’s Aladdin’s den for the Graingers, just two sagging brown sofas, so large that they must have been assembled in the flat, so old that the assemblers must be dead. The walls were laid with flock wallpaper, the TV of a similar vintage to Galliano’s antique computer monitor. Spike had been wrong about the view: the kitchenette gave west, towards the Straits. Cranes jutted skywards from reclaimed land – luxury apartments for Category-II buyers, high-net-worth individuals whose only requirement to qualify for Gibraltar’s tax rates was to own a property on the Rock ‘appropriate to sustaining a wealthy lifestyle’. Whether they ever crossed the threshold was irrelevant.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ Amy Grainger said, pointing Spike towards the nearest sofa, ‘I’ve been a little tired lately.’ The sofa back was so high Spike failed to see the occupant until he’d almost crushed him: the little boy Charlie, lying on his stomach in a Spiderman vest and shorts, slotting shapes into a wooden cage. He peered up at Spike with eyes as solemn and dark as his mother’s, then slid off the sofa onto a battered plastic pushcart, which he propelled over the wood-effect floor using just the tips of his bare feet.
‘Your post,’ Spike said, laying the envelopes on the coffee table.
The kettle was whistling. ‘
Tenkiù
,’ Amy called back in
yanito
. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Just some
agua de beber
, please.’
The kettle quietened down, and Amy reappeared with two china mugs of tap water. Charlie was sitting cross-legged by the kitchen table now. Spike realised he was shaking the shapes
out
of the box, an act of some dexterity.
Amy muted the cartoons on the television, then turned to Spike. ‘How did you get my husband’s number?’
He waited until she had sat down. She wore cut-off jogging pants and a stripy matelot top. A plastic hair clip held her black fringe to one side; she looked sad, and very young.
‘It seems that Simon contacted my partner shortly before he died. His number was jotted down in a case file. Do you know why?’
‘I told you, I found his business card in Simon’s papers. I don’t know why Simon met or even spoke to him.’ From the kitchenette came the steady tick of wood against wood. Amy gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I don’t seem to know very much at all.’
Spike paused; he hated this part. ‘Were you and your husband happy, Mrs Grainger?’
‘What does that have to do with it?’
‘Peter handles our divorce practice. I’m sorry, but I have to ask.’
She lowered her eyes. ‘We were OK. Surviving. Like most people.’
‘Why didn’t you mention the toxicology report?’
Her voice fell. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘The military pathologist concluded that your husband was taking prescription drugs.’
She didn’t reply, so Spike pushed on: ‘Did you know he was depressed, Mrs Grainger?’
Her lower lip began to tremble. ‘A biscuit and your room,’ she called to Charlie, who ran obediently to a cookie jar, removed a ginger nut and disappeared.
Spike passed her his handkerchief and waited. He was good at that at least – knew the power of a silence. Eventually she spoke. ‘We met two years ago in Puerto Banús. I was on holiday with friends. Simon came from Falmouth, in Cornwall. Do you know it?’
‘A little.’
‘It was a holiday romance, I suppose. But he was interesting. Had opinions. What if Land’s End was part of Spain, he used to say.’ A smile played on her lips, then faded. ‘When I found out I was pregnant, we decided to get married. My family would never have let me . . . you know. It just wasn’t an option. We talked about moving to England but then the recession hit.’ She reached for her water. ‘It was all a bit of an adventure at first. Simon had been studying law in England; we thought he could continue here as a correspondence student. But when Charlie was born, it was all so expensive. He had to take a job at a restaurant in Ocean Village. When they gave him the role of manager, he accepted it. Things were tough but . . . I didn’t know he was on antidepressants. He must have felt he couldn’t tell me.’ She was crying now, and Spike laid an awkward hand on her shoulder, cursing himself for getting involved. What had Peter been playing at with Simon Grainger? The widow nodded at the pile of envelopes, then forced herself to meet Spike’s eye. ‘I can’t even pay the bills. Our account’s stopped working. And my parents . . .’ She lowered her head, and Spike took the opportunity to withdraw his hand on the pretext of examining the letters more closely. ‘Simon’s bank account has been frozen as part of probate. You need to settle your husband’s estate. If you give me any outstanding bills, I can contact your bank and instruct them to switch the account into your name.’
Amy gave a small smile, and for a moment Spike could see the girl Grainger had met on a beach in Puerto Banús and hoped to take home to his mother. A classic Gibraltarian blend with her pale complexion and black hair – Maltese, Italian and Portuguese blood, no doubt spliced with the genes of a lustful British squaddie. ‘You’d do that?’ she said.
Spike nodded.
‘And you’ll keep looking into what happened to Simon?’
‘I’ll try,’ he said, hastily gathering up the bills. ‘Do you have any more of these?’
‘In the bedroom.’
‘Can you . . .’ But she was already on her feet.
A police siren wailed from below. Estate kids probably, causing trouble. Spike looked back at the kitchenette and saw the little boy standing by the table, watching him. Spike smiled. Charlie didn’t smile back.
Walking away from Keightley House, relieved to be back in the sun, Spike saw an ambulance parked at the edge of the estate. He recognised one of the paramedics. ‘Anything serious?’
The man pointed at a white van with two wheels mounted on the pavement. ‘Hit the kerb,’ he replied. ‘Head into the steering wheel. That’s why you wear a seatbelt.’
‘Dead?’
‘Extremely.’
‘Gibraltarian?’
‘One of the Benady brothers.’
‘Alfie Benady?’
The paramedic’s radio crackled into life; he nodded, then turned away to answer the call. Alfred Benady, Spike thought. Restaurant delivery driver. Four years above him at school. A couple of fist-fights with the SBS in the late Nineties, some drunk-and-disorderlies after his wife left him, two of them defended by Spike. Dead in his van after a minor prang. Not much of an obituary.
A dull-looking, bespectacled man in a blue car was rubbernecking the scene from the other side of the road. Spanish number plates: typical. Spike continued past him on foot towards Governor’s Parade, keeping above Main Street, choosing a route that avoided the tourist hordes. Earlier he’d seen a cruise ship moored in the harbour: the passengers would be doing their rounds by now, cable car to the Upper Rock, St Michael’s Cave, a few snaps of the apes, then back into town, stocking up on duty-free before moving on to Sardinia.
An email was waiting back at Chambers containing the MoD’s official decision on the Neptune deal. Spike scrolled down, finding Jardine’s instructions to his secretary at the base of the chain. ‘Pls forward asap to counsel. Ta muchly, J’.
Poor woman, Spike thought as his mobile beeped. A new text: ‘8pm tonite at the Calpe? J xx’. J for Jardine, J for Jessica . . . Tossing his phone onto the desk, he took out Amy Grainger’s sheaf of bills. Standard utilities, nothing too alarming. The most interesting piece of correspondence was an invoice from a workshop in Cádiz.
Monies to be paid on collection of goods
. Spike jotted down the address, then hit print on his skeleton argument, waiting impatiently as the sheets disgorged slowly from the mouth of the machine.
At last I find a space and swing the SEAT inside. The meter is demanding pound coins. Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world – second only to Mandarin. Yet on this ugly piece of Rock we are forced to put up with incestuous, six-fingered freeloaders calling themselves natives and talking in English. I know my history – all Spanish schoolchildren do. Gibraltar was forcibly stolen from Spain in 1704. The British claim it was ceded by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, but even they will admit that the terms were invalid, signed under duress. In any case, the Treaty provides that if Britain ever relinquishes sovereignty of the Rock, Spain has first refusal. Yet what did I drive past on the way here? A parliament building. Gibraltar has its own parliament, and if that isn’t relinquishing sovereignty, I don’t know what is. A dawn raid, I think to myself as I dig out three gold coins stamped with the head of the Queen of England and shove them into the machine. The Spanish navy, air force and army combined. It would all be over by breakfast.
He is still on the other side of the road. Tall and rangy, with a confident gait and a cool, thoughtful gaze. Looks like he could run fast if he had to. Thick dark hair cut short, face angular, high cheekbones and a fine aquiline nose. Disconcerting eyes: bright blue, but set into a face which is naturally tan, darker now, I suspect, than at any other time of year, given the strength of the August sun when it chooses to break the cloud cover of this strange peninsula. Better-looking than the work-website photo Hernán gave me in the restaurant. When he pauses to greet someone, as he does quite often, he listens more than he speaks, weighing his words before answering, and when he smiles . . . It feels hard-won, somehow, and I have seen his interlocutors shine long after he has let them go.
He stopped on the way here, as it happens, a few streets behind his office, to buy flowers, which interests me. He chose not the garish carnations and out-of-season roses that the local florists flog to tourists, but a small bunch of grape hyacinths, quietly lovely. He carries them at his side, careful with the stems, eyes moving occasionally to the sky, then the sea, then the buildings on either side, which he must have seen a thousand times but seems still to observe with interest.
