Authors: Thomas Mogford
Hollow Mountain (19 page)
‘The boy’s missing. Amy’s son, Charlie. You’ve got to find him.’
Spike took in the long black eyelashes and buff physique of Jessica’s senior officer, Inspector George Isola. He seemed to take an age to jot Spike’s words down, forming the letters in a conscientious childish hand. Spike felt frustration threaten to overwhelm him.
‘Perhaps he’s with the father,’ Isola said.
‘The father’s dead.’
‘Staying with friends?’
‘He’s two-and-a-half, Inspector. You need to get out there and start looking for him.’
Isola lowered his pad. ‘How did you know Mrs Grainger?’
‘She was my client. I’m a lawyer.’
‘And how did you come to be at your client’s flat this evening?’
‘I wanted to see her.’
‘At 8 p.m.?’
‘We were . . .’ Spike broke off as Jessica ran back up the stairs, having completed her interview of the fat man.
‘You were?’ Isola parroted.
‘Involved.’
Spike saw Jessica’s neck stiffen within the white collar of her police shirt. Isola snapped closed his pad. ‘We’ll need you to come with us to New Mole House to make a formal statement.’
A third policeman emerged from the flat, holding what looked like a hand-written note between rubber-gloved fingers. He beckoned to Isola, who turned away, leaving Jessica glaring up at Spike from beneath her chequered hat. ‘What’s in the bag?’ she said, not bothering to keep the contempt from her voice.
Spike pulled open the white bag and showed her the A4 envelope containing the manifest on top. ‘Peter’s stuff from the hospital.’
‘What a prince.’ Jessica shook her head, then spoke in an undertone. ‘You can’t have Zahra. You fuck things up with me. So you sleep with Amy Grainger instead.’
Spike stood there in silence, taking his punishment.
‘She was vulnerable, Spike. She’d just lost her husband. And she was your client. Your responsibility.’
Isola returned, issuing orders, motioning for Spike to follow. ‘Make sure you sweep the flat for prints,’ Spike said as he joined him on the stairs. ‘And for fuck’s sake start looking for the boy.’
On his way back from the police station, Spike stopped at the Royal Calpe and bought a packet of cigarettes from the machine by the bar. Two pounds fifty. Cheap smokes – still the bedrock of Gibraltar’s economy. Once in the Upper Town, he leant against a damp stucco wall and lit up. The white stick slotted neatly between his fingers as the dry smoke filled his lungs; it was as though he’d never stopped. Even after ten years, there was something intrinsically disappointing about a cigarette: the nicotine never quite seemed to hit the spot. He took a deeper drag and continued walking.
Amy had been confirmed dead, he’d learnt after giving his statement. Charlie was still missing. The child’s relatives and friends’ parents were being woken one by one as the entire Moorish Castle Estate was meticulously searched. The Chief Constable’s assumption was that Charlie had found his mother’s body and fled in panic into Gibraltar. Spike wasn’t so sure. He knew that a boy would want to stay with his mother, dead or not.
He checked his phone. Still no messages. His head began to spin, either from the nicotine or the growing awareness that he’d been the cause of another death. Charlie might be dead too, or hiding somewhere on the Rock, terrified, alone. Spike had never cared much for children, always finding something alarming in the noise, the mess, the unpredictability. But this solemn boy with his watchful eyes had found a soft spot he’d never known was there. The idea that Spike had put him in danger was almost too much to bear.
As he reached Chicardo’s Passage, he could tell at once that something was wrong. Ahead, one of his father’s pot plants lay smashed on the cobbles, red geraniums caked with earth. The levanter had been high this evening, but not that high.
He ran for the front door. The wood around the Chubb lock had been splintered and the frame opened with the slightest push.
‘Dad?’ he shouted as he burst inside to find his father sitting at the kitchen table. Relief was tempered by déjà vu as he recognised the same look on his father’s face, the same broken posture, as he’d seen on another terrible night. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, taking in the debris on the floor: dresser overturned, tea chests rummaged through, brown paper bag of Christmas decorations emptied, baubles smashed. ‘Dad? Are you hurt?’
Slowly Rufus turned his head, the rims of his eyes pink behind his glasses. ‘You were right, son. As usual.’
Spike reached out to touch his father’s face. ‘What happened, Dad?’
‘I came back . . .’ Rufus broke off, shaking his head.
Spike waited for him to continue, feeling annoyance rise, even now. ‘You came back . . .’
‘From Cousin Sandra’s. She rang me yesterday. Asked me out to dinner. I thought why not. But when I came back . . .’ He stopped again.
‘What?’
Rufus’s eyes wandered over the chaos of the kitchen.
‘Who did it?’
He sighed. ‘I didn’t see their faces.’
‘Whose faces?’
‘The burglars. The men you’ve been warning me about. I didn’t bother locking the door tonight, and now this.’
‘You said “them”?’
‘There were several voices. They must have heard me. Got out onto the balcony and climbed down the front of the house.’
‘Did they take anything?’
‘I don’t know. But look what they’ve done to your mother’s things.’
Hearing his father’s breathing grow laboured, Spike took a pack of beta-blockers from the windowsill and stood over him as he swallowed them down like an obedient child. ‘I don’t want you staying here, Dad,’ he said.
‘But where can I go?’
‘To a hotel? A friend?’
Rufus shook his head.
‘Why don’t you stay with Cousin Sandra?’
‘She was a bit annoying, actually. Could hardly understand what she was saying.’ He laughed strangely, and Spike wondered not for the first time how far away they were from adding dementia to his list of ailments. ‘How about next door? The Montegriffos have a spare room.’
Rufus nodded, and Spike immediately pushed through the bead curtain up the stairs, finding his bedroom cupboards yanked open, one door pulled from its hinges, clothes unworn for perhaps a decade ripped from hangers and trampled to the ground. The luggage he kept under the bed now lay in the middle of the room, lids unzipped, stained linings ripped. He grabbed the bag he’d taken to Genoa, then moved into Rufus’s room, filling it with clothes and medicaments, most of which were strewn over the floor. The bedroom window was half open, he saw, a pot plant smashed and upended on the balcony. Spike jammed the window closed, fingers shaking, from the break-in or Amy’s death, he couldn’t tell. When he returned downstairs, he found Rufus on his knees, stuffing old papers into one of the tea chests.
‘Dad, please. I’ll do all that.’
His father put down a sheaf of paper, but remained kneeling, eyes fixed on the cork-tile floor. ‘You were right about another thing, son. I did let your mother down. I let her down terribly.’
‘Come on, Dad. We don’t need to do this now.’
‘“J” is for Juliet. Your sister.’
Spike stood stock-still, foolishly clutching his father’s suitcase.
‘She was stillborn, you see. You were three years old.’ There was a pause as Rufus struggled to find the words. ‘Your mother went mad with grief. The doctors told her to write it down. Hoped it might help her to get it off her chest.’ He removed his glasses and looked up at Spike, eyes raw. ‘We tried for another child but it never happened. That’s when she started drinking. I wasn’t strong enough to help her.’
Tears began to slide down Rufus’s lined face. ‘She’s buried in the North Front Cemetery, son. Close to your mother.’
Spike crouched beside him. ‘It’s OK, Dad. I know you did your best.’
Carefully, Spike helped his father up, then led him outside onto the street. The budgie flapped and cheeped as the neighbouring door opened. Keith Montegriffo wore paisley pyjamas as his wife peered down behind him from the staircase, unrecognisable in hair-rollers and an old cotton nightdress.
‘There’s been a break-in,’ Spike said. ‘I wondered if Dad could stay with you.’
‘My God, Rufus,’ Mr Montegriffo replied, widening the door. ‘Are you hurt? Come in! Come in!’
‘I told you, Keith,’ Spike heard from the stairs, ‘I warned you. It’s those tinkermen. They’re not here just selling bangles, you know.’
‘It wasn’t a tinker I heard,’ Rufus said as he marched inside, folding his tweed jacket onto the hallway table. ‘It was a Scotsman.’
Spike turned from the door. ‘What did you say?’
‘A Scottish accent. Clear as daylight.’ Rufus stared at Spike, then tapped the hearing aid in the frame of his glasses. ‘First thing I did when I came home was turn this up. And there he was upstairs, yammering away to his pal. Och aye this, och aye that.’
Spike thanked the Montegriffos and closed the door behind him.
Back home, Spike took the bell and the coin from the hospital bag and placed them next to each other on the kitchen table. Kneeling amid the mess of spilt bags of sugar and spice jars on the floor, he found an unbroken bottle of white-wine vinegar, which he tipped onto a tea towel. Massaging the coin with a rag-clad finger brought away a layer of bluish grime. He repeated the motion until the towel was dotted with stains. Resisting the temptation to run the coin under the tap, he poured neat vinegar over it, then wrapped it in the tea towel and rubbed it vigorously between his palms. When he took it out, one edge had crumbled. The rest was gleaming: he held it to the light and found glinting silver metal.
He took out his phone and ran through the list of recently dialled numbers. Cádiz prefix . . . ‘
Hola
?’ came a brusque female voice.
‘
Puedo hablar con Juan
?’
‘
Es tarde
.’
‘
Es emergencia
.’
The woman muttered something to someone beside her, a disgruntled husband presumably. There followed the creak of a door and a shrill cry, ‘
Juan-i-to
?’
Another extension picked up as Juan’s mother slammed the phone down.
‘It’s Spike Sanguinetti.’
Spike heard a small sigh of disappointment. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to ask you something.’
‘I was asleep.’
‘I’ll be quick. Can silver get bronze disease?’
On the other end of the line, Spike sensed Juan’s professional vanity doing battle with his dislike. ‘Yes and no . . .’ he said eventually.
‘Meaning?’
‘The metal might look like it has bronze disease. But it’s more likely to be verdigris.’
‘Verdi-what?’
‘What are we talking about here? A coin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, pure silver is too soft to be made into anything practical. So it’s usually alloyed with more hardy metals. Copper, mainly. Which makes it susceptible to verdigris. A mild bronze disease that doesn’t ruin the artefact. What type of coin?’
‘
Un peso de ocho
.’
‘Same era as the bell?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well,
pesos
were made of sterling silver. Eight
reales’
worth, in fact – hence, “pieces of eight”. Over ninety per cent pure, a new international standard for the time. You’ll probably find the discoloration is just skin deep. A patina caused by age. Particularly if it’s been lying on the seabed near other metals. With slow and conscientious cleaning the surface dirt will come away.’
Spike glanced down at his filthy tea towel.
‘Do you have more work for me?’ Juan said.
‘Not at the moment.’
Juan cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose you could give me the phone number of that girl you were with?’
Spike almost laughed. ‘
Hasta luego
, Juan. She’s out of your league.’ And mine, he admitted to himself. ‘When the recession’s over, I suggest you return to the museum and ask for your old job back.’
Spike hung up and re-examined the coin. Stamped on one side was an image of the Pillars of Hercules, the phrase ‘plus ultra’ written below. The Romans had thought there was nowhere to go beyond Gibraltar, but the Spanish had proven otherwise. On the flip side was a crest, the number 8 beside it. So
pesos de ocho
were silver, not bronze. The
Holy Flower of the Mountain
had been carrying silver.
Up on his feet, Spike reached above the kitchen units: at least the bastards had left him the whisky. He poured himself a glass and sat back, thinking hard. Could Neptune have discovered a cache of Spanish coins lying on the seabed near the lead they were extracting? If so, they wouldn’t have had a right to them – sovereign coins were the automatic property of the country that issued them. Neptune wouldn’t have been able to sell the coins on the open market, so they’d come up with a neat solution. Invented a story that the
Gloucester
was smuggling silver – in untraceable, unmarked bars. All they then had to do was salvage the coins on the quiet, melt them down, and then they could sell the silver legitimately. Spike reached for his packet of Bensons. What if Simon Grainger had seen Neptune’s boat working in the Straits? He’d dived the Europa Reef and was familiar with the local wrecks. He knew he’d found a ship’s bell close to a site that didn’t correspond to a freighter from the Crimean War. Maybe the crew had dined at Grainger’s restaurant and he’d mentioned something to one of them, causing Clohessy to panic. Grainger was in a position to expose Neptune’s criminality. The salvage had been valued at twenty-four million pounds. A prize worth killing for . . .
