Hollow Mountain (16 page)
Authors: Thomas Mogford
‘Maybe to Peter, not to me,’ Spike snapped, causing Stanford-Trench to break off from his monologue. Just let this be over, Spike willed, more grateful then ever for the courts’ Summer Hours. ‘How many days do you need?’ he asked.
‘Two to bring up the cargo,’ Clohessy said, ‘so long as the weather holds. Another day to pack it up. Then we fly it all to Vancouver by private jet. Four in total, at the most.’
‘What’s your insurer’s position?’
‘Zurich’s over the fucking moon,’ Clohessy hissed. ‘The cave’s the most secure place on the Rock.’
Spike moved his chair round to find Stanford-Trench elegantly bringing his submission to a close.
‘Mr Sanguinetti?’ Bossano said, emptying his bottle of water.
Spike explained to the judge about the bunker, then watched him bang his papers on the bench like a gavel. ‘Thank you. The Court will now relay its verdict.’
Spike stepped out of the portico into the punishing midday heat. He thought that he’d tarried long enough in the changing rooms for everyone connected to the case to have left. Not so: Hugh Jardine was standing in the shade of one of the giant date palms laid out when the Law Courts had been built in the 1830s. He turned away from the court notice board, narrow grey eyes protected by an elderly pair of Wayfarers. In his cream suit he had the louche look of a James Bond actor put out to pasture, then called unexpectedly back into service.
‘I hadn’t realised they tried the
Mary Celeste
case here,’ he called out. ‘You’d have solved that one, wouldn’t you, Somerset?’ He smiled and lit a cigarette.
There was something of Rufus’s leanness about Jardine, Spike thought, though none of his intelligence. Spike managed a perfunctory nod, then continued down the gravel path towards the street.
Flitting between the garden’s wrought-iron gates was Mort Clohessy, mobile phone clamped to ear, jawbone bulging, two fingers wrenching loose his Hermès tie. He looked as uncomfortable in a suit as Jardine had looked at home – a Tour de France winner forced into black tie for an awards dinner.
‘I don’t gave two shits what it costs,’ he barked, ‘I want it chartered and parked on the runway for as long it takes. I’ll call a board meeting if I have to.’ He saw Spike and beckoned him over. ‘Too damned right,’ he concluded to the unfortunate at the end of the line.
Slipping the phone into his suit pocket, Clohessy pulled off his tinted glasses. Then he held out his arms and croaked with as much warmth as he could muster, ‘You just saved my company, bud.’
Clohessy’s sinewy arms felt like leather straps around Spike’s back. He drew out of the embrace earlier than might have been considered friendly.
‘Mr Sanguinetti doesn’t look too happy about it,’ Jardine called over, tapping his ash into a bed of orchids.
‘Shut the fuck up, Hugh,’ Clohessy said, teeth bared in a smile. ‘You kicked ass, Sanguinetti.’
‘Just doing my job,’ Spike replied. Someone jostled him from behind and he leapt to one side in alarm. A family of Sephardis late for Synagogue, the father with an ‘Arsenal Football Club’ logo embroidered onto his skull cap.
‘I’m taking the crew out later in Ocean Village,’ Clohessy went on. ‘You’ll join us.’
‘I’m afraid I’m busy. But thank you.’
‘Six p.m. at Ipanema’s.’
‘Sorry,’ Spike said, but Clohessy wasn’t listening now, taking out his phone to answer another call.
Spike turned and set off down Main Street, vaguely aware of Jardine still watching him from the gatepost. Spike wanted to knock the slim-eyed smile off his face. A moment later he heard his name. He ignored it but the call came again, ‘Spike?’
Drew Stanford-Trench held a beaded Coke can, bought from the café by the Law Courts. He caught Spike up. ‘Jesus, Spike! Didn’t you hear me?’ A look of concern clouded his clever freckled face. No lawyer with such a fair complexion should ever have moved to the Rock, Spike thought, however calamitous their degree result.
‘What’s with the doomed expression?’ Stanford-Trench said.
‘Not feeling so good today, Drew.’
‘Beaten by a man with a weapons-grade hangover,’ Stanford-Trench chuckled, shaking his head. ‘Fancy some lunch? Settle the stomach?’
‘I think I’ll just go home.’
‘I can walk with you as far as the Cathedral?’
Spike glanced down the street. The Sephardis were gone, replaced by day-trippers heading for the cable car, wafting programme sheets against their faces in a vain attempt to cool down.
‘Actually, I’d rather you didn’t.’
Stanford-Trench took a step back. ‘OK.’
‘It’s just not a good time.’
He nodded, then laid a hand on Spike’s arm. ‘You know you can always talk to me, Spike. Whatever’s wrong, I guarantee I’ve seen worse.’
Spike nodded back. No mention had been made of the shoddy trick Spike had pulled in court, pre-empting his opponent’s argument. He squeezed Stanford-Trench’s shoulder gratefully, then turned off Main Street into the less crowded alleys above.
His phone was ringing. He swallowed drily, expecting to see Enrico Sanguinetti’s number on the screen. Instead, Jessica Navarro’s face smiled back. He knew that if he didn’t answer she’d hunt him down, turn up unannounced at his house. Gibraltar suddenly felt oppressively small.
‘Hey,’ Jessica said. The silence made it clear that the onus was on Spike to speak. ‘You OK?’ he offered eventually.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Fire away.’
‘Face to face.’
Spike looked to his left. Something had moved at the periphery of his vision – just a man on a scooter with two fishing rods on his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Jess. I can’t at the moment.’ He felt her hurt reverberate down the line. ‘Listen. You’re . . .’
‘What?’ she said, anger ignited.
He felt his voice start to shake. He raised his head, seeing an arm cut out against the blue sky as a hand reached from a top-floor window to adjust a satellite dish on the roof. ‘You’re the best person I know, Jess. But right now, I really need you to leave me alone.’
Phone clenched in his fist, Spike turned onto Cannon Lane, waiting for the next message from Enrico Sanguinetti, or for a stranger to appear at the next corner. High above the Old Town, the Rock stared down impassively.
Rufus stood hunched in the kitchen, still in his mauve dressing gown, peering into the fridge as though lunch might mysteriously appear. On the table behind him lay the
Chronicle
’s cryptic crossword. An editorial connecting Alfred Benady’s death to Peter Galliano’s hit-and-run dominated the opposite page: ‘Call for Speed Cameras on Gib’s Steep Backstreets’, the headline screamed.
‘Don’t you ever get dressed?’ Spike said, more sharply than he’d intended.
Rufus turned from the fridge, appraising the tension in his son’s face. His dressing gown gaped, revealing a frail pigeon chest – combined with his height, a classic symptom of Marfan syndrome, the doctors had said, amazed that no one had picked it up before. Under his armpit ran the lurid scar where a tube had been inserted last year to drain his lungs. ‘Woman trouble?’ he asked as he closed the fridge with his long, spindly fingers.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’ve been in a foul mood for days,’ he went on. ‘
Cherchez la femme
. . .’ He sat down, mulling a clue. ‘Don’t know how to keep ’em happy, I s’pose.’
‘And you’d know all about that,’ Spike murmured.
Rufus peered up over his half-moons, and Spike took in the hearing aid built into their frame, feeling irritation tighten his jaw.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Rufus said.
As Spike gazed at his father’s blithe face, he realised that ever since Rufus’s diagnosis he’d been reluctant to speak plainly, afraid of upsetting him. Of making things worse. ‘Who’s “J”?’
‘Jay who?’
‘The letter “J”. Comes after I, as a rule. He was mentioned a great deal in those airmail letters you dug out of the attic. From Mum. Someone she cared for quite a lot, it would seem.’
There was a pause, then Rufus said quietly, ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’
‘Is that a clue or a reply?’
Rufus set his pen down on the table.
‘You might kid yourself that you were a good husband, Dad. But not only did your wife kill herself, it seems that she was having an affair right under your nose.’
Suddenly Rufus slammed down his palms, a gesture Spike knew had wrought terror in the hearts of thousands of adolescent pupils. Dragging himself to his feet, he lurched towards his son, right arm raised. He had never hit Spike during his childhood, but then again, he’d never had the chance – Spike had always been halfway up the stairs before the shouting had even started. Lifting a hand into the air, Spike caught Rufus’s thin wrist, feeling his anger dissipate as he watched the pain flash across his father’s face. Shame and weariness filling the void, Spike sat down on one of the old wooden chairs and pulled one out for Rufus. ‘Come on, Dad. Let’s have something to eat.’
‘
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
’ . . . Typical of Rufus to hide behind somebody else’s line. Spike sat down on his bed and took out his phone. Clicking open the text message, he forced himself to reread it:
You were warned. We are watching you and your family. Do not tell anybody. If you alert the police we will know. Someone will come for your phone
.
So Zahra had been right. Why had he doubted her? She’d been nothing but straight with him for as long as he’d known her. And what if by ignoring her warning he had put her in greater danger? From now on, he would just do as he was told. Hand over the phone and hope for the best. He couldn’t allow anyone else to be put at risk.
Feeling the dizziness start to return, he opened his email, trying to ignore the reams of work-related messages that were starting to clog up his inbox. Tomorrow he was meant to be meeting Peter Galliano’s sister to discuss his ‘future’. An ill-chosen word: the discussion would focus on whether or not the doctors should let him die. Finding little comfort in the fact that there were still some people worse off than himself, he scrolled through the rest of his messages, stopping when he found one from Sandra Zammit at the Garrison Library entitled ‘Flos Sanctus Montis’.
‘Hi Cuz,’ it began. Spike smiled despite himself at Sandra’s writing style – more akin to that of a teenager than a 62-year-old. Perhaps a reaction to spending too long around antique books. ‘U R 2nd person wanting info on this. All we have is copy of original manifest. Booked out at mo but I will let u no when its back. Sandra.’
Spike immediately called the Garrison Library, picturing the Bakelite telephone pealing away unattended in the back room. The library had been founded in 1793 to provide reading material for officers during lengthy Spanish sieges, and sometimes it felt like it had barely advanced since then.
‘Garrison Library, 418?’ came a hesitant voice.
‘Sandra. It’s Spike.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Spike Sanguinetti. Your cousin.’
‘How lovely. You got my message then?’
‘I did. And I was wondering – who booked out the manifest?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say. Data protection.’
‘Oh come on, Sandra?. . .’
Spike heard gentle breathing, then the receiver laid down and the hum of a radio behind. ‘Just because it’s you, Spike,’ Sandra resumed. ‘It’s out to a . . . Peter Galliano.’
Spike felt a sudden rush of confusion. ‘Really? When?’
‘Three weeks ago.’
Around the time of the hit-and-run, Spike thought.
‘I remember him coming in. Nice man – big smile. Told me it was do with a case he was working on. Isn’t he connected to you in some way?’
‘We work together. Do you have another copy of the manifest?’
‘Just the one. I was amazed we had it at all. Something to do with a controversy over whether she sank or not.’
‘Is there anything else about the ship?’
‘How funny! That’s exactly what your colleague asked. The answer was no.’
‘Do you know where I can find more information?’
‘You could check the law library.’
‘I already have.’
‘Or the “internet” maybe?’ She said the word as if he might not have heard of it and she’d only recently added it to her vocabulary.
‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Then you’ll just have to find someone who knows about boats. Listen, Spike, you should pop by some time. Our dragon tree is coming into bloom.’
Spike fought an urge to join his cousin in the library’s shady back garden and get quietly smashed on G&Ts.
‘Or ask your Pa. Expect he could use the company.’
‘I’ll mention it. Thanks, Sandra.’
His finger moved towards Amy Grainger’s number, then he dismissed the idea, remembering Charlie’s earnest face peering up at him. Instead he went downstairs, catching sight of his silent father’s back. Still seated at the table – brooding no doubt.
