Hollow Mountain (2 page)

A murmur came from behind as a middle-aged couple appeared, two Asians wrestling with a tourist map. They took in the scene, then vanished back the way they had come.

‘Z-I-G-O-N?’ Spike spelled out.

A bitter smile caught the girl’s lips, too old for her face. ‘She is pretty.’

‘Yes.’

‘Pretty ones do not stay in Genoa.’ She moved away, perhaps hearing something Spike had not.

‘Where do they go,
signorina
?’

‘Follow the money,’ the girl laughed, spine straightening.

Spike spoke more urgently now – ‘I don’t understand’ – as the Genoese reappeared, tapping at his breast pocket. ‘Where?’ Spike hissed. He barely caught the girl’s reply, a single word so softly spoken it seemed to float out of the alley and away to sea. ‘
Paradiso
. . .’

Spike turned back to the pimp. ‘Changed my mind,’ he said, taking out a grimy ten-euro note. ‘Sorry to waste your time.’ The man plucked at the money between Spike’s thumb and forefinger. Spike held onto it for a moment, then released his grip and walked back towards the waterfront.

Chapter Two

Spike flipped out the light. The guest-house window gave onto the north side of Genoa’s cathedral, its black-and-white marble lit up like a humbug to tempt the tourists. He lay back on the metal-framed single bed, leather bag packed and tucked beneath, bill already settled.

As soon as he closed his eyes, Zahra’s face appeared. It always seemed to start the same way. An autumn afternoon not long after he’d brought her to Gibraltar, a time heightened by the relief they’d both felt at escaping Morocco and its bad memories. Zahra had abandoned her headscarf by then, and her black hair lay in glossy waves on her shoulders. Spike had shown her round the Alameda Gardens, pointing out the bronze sculpture of Molly Bloom, who in the fictional world of
Ulysses
had grown up in Gibraltar. Zahra hadn’t heard of Joyce, but she’d liked how Molly had raised her chin defiantly at the Rock, as if challenging its hulking majesty. A few sentences were etched into the plinth beneath the sculpture, which Zahra had read aloud in her low voice, one thumb hooked beneath the waistband of newly purchased jeans: ‘. . .
and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees . . . I was a Flower of the mountain . . . walking down the Alameda on an officers arm
. . .’

They’d caught the cable car up to the Apes’ Den. As they climbed higher, Zahra had pressed her face to the window, watching the limestone crags fall away beneath her. Her breath had condensed on the perspex, and they’d seen an image appear in the mist, a child’s finger-drawing of a man and a woman encased in a heart. ‘You see,’ she’d said, ‘I can show you things too.’ Spike had known what her smile meant, what she’d wanted him to say, but had pretended not to. She’d looked away, face fallen. Spike hadn’t realised it at the time, but something had been lost that day. A month later Zahra had left Gibraltar for Malta. And six months after that she’d disappeared.

Sinking further into sleep, Spike found himself back on the Rock, standing alone on the concrete platform, waiting for the cable car to approach. As it hove into view, he saw Zahra sitting inside, staring up at him, panic in her dark eyes. The car gave a judder as it slotted into the docking station, the wire that held it in place springing loose. As Spike leapt forward, trying to force the doors apart, Zahra turned away, staring down at the drop below as the car lurched. ‘Take my hand,’ he shouted, and she reached up through the gap he’d wedged between the doors. He grabbed her wrist, but the skin felt cold, and when she looked up, he saw that the face no longer belonged to Zahra, but to the young woman he’d identified in a Maltese mortuary – lips blue, hair clotted with blood, murdered baby at her breast.

The cable car fell away, and Spike watched it crash in slow motion down the Rock, leaving her dangling from his hand as he stumbled closer to the edge. She was slipping, and he registered her look of surprise as she felt the onset of weightlessness just before he let her go. Her scream rose, then faded, as she fell . . .

Spike snapped open his eyes, feeling his heart shift as the scream dissolved into laughter, drunken shouts of revelry carrying up from the cathedral square. He ripped back the sheets, body filmed in sweat. More laughter drifted up, killing the last possibility of sleep. Then he flicked the light back on, reached into his bag and took out his map of the Italian Riviera.

Chapter Three

The next morning, Spike sat at the back of a creaking ferry, watching the creamy wake trail behind into the Mediterranean. The Alpine peaks above the coastline were topped with forts, a railway line ruled aggressively into the hillside beneath. The boat had already stopped at three of the fishing villages along the Gulf of Paradise – Nervi, Recco and San Fruttuoso – where Spike had shown Zahra’s photograph at various cafés and hotels, arousing the usual mixture of indifference, pity and suspicion. He stared at it now, smoothing it against his palm, still disturbed by last night’s dream. He’d rescued the picture from a barman in Tangiers, just hours before meeting Zahra for the first time. Her shiny black hair was drawn back, her expression suggesting she had not volunteered to be photographed. One eye was covered by a loose lock of hair, and the other . . . The dark brown iris, the delicate almond shape, an innocence her glare failed to mask.

He felt his throat thicken as he remembered the last time he’d seen her alive – slamming the door of a hotel room in Malta. He’d let her go, assuming that she would call once she’d calmed down, like she always did. That they could talk it over, start again. But she had vanished. And this time it was his fault.

Zahra had always had a talent for trouble, he thought. When they’d first met in a shanty town in Morocco, he’d had to push her out of the path of a jeep. She’d been asking the wrong questions, demanding answers like she always did. He’d felt compelled to help her, the man who never liked to get involved. He still didn’t really understand why. In the end, they’d made it back over the Straits to Gibraltar – but not before people had got hurt.

They’d had a real chance there to make it work, he felt now. She’d charmed his father, and he’d thought he saw her face soften, the wariness ease in her eyes. Spike had screwed that up too, of course, but their reconciliation in Malta a few months later had been all the sweeter for it. They were both a little older, perhaps even ready to commit. Maybe that was why Spike had chosen to pick an argument with her on their last morning together.

Stupid
charavacca
, he cursed to himself as he slipped her photograph carefully back into his wallet. Zahra’s disappearance had now been linked to the people-smuggling ring Spike had helped to break in Malta. It had initially seemed to be a local affair – African migrants scraping together the cash to get to Italy. Yet when Spike and the Maltese police had visited a warehouse outside Valletta . . . His stomach knotted as he recalled the scene. Drugged women chained to camp beds, starved, raped. The body of a dead Somali baby stashed in a freezer. That time, it had been Spike who encouraged Zahra to ask questions in the refugee camps where she worked, unwittingly bringing her to the attention of the man behind it. An individual known in criminal circles only as Žigon.

Spike wished he had a face to put to that strange, sibilant name. Žigon was thought to run the largest prostitution and drug racket in the Mediterranean, and was wanted by Interpol and the police forces of several European countries, yet no one knew his real identity, nor even what he looked like. He was believed to be Slovenian, and had last been seen in Genoa. But then the trail ran cold.

Spike turned back to the coastline, seeing terraced fields rising above the vines and olive trees, cypresses jutting into a picture-perfect sky. It was beautiful, he knew, and felt strangely guilty. He rubbed his stubbled cheeks. The beard he’d allowed to grow since arriving in Italy was long enough now not to itch, and to reveal unexpected patches of grey in the black. His nose remained crooked from the beating he’d received in Malta, when he’d first heard Žigon’s name mentioned in connection with Zahra’s disappearance. How far had his quest advanced since then? He was saved from considering this depressing question further as the ferry slowed, and he pulled himself to his feet.

The village they were now approaching was the most bijou Spike had seen so far. Within a sheltered inlet, a harbour was enclosed on three sides by soft, ochre-hued houses. A yellow clock tower rose above, powder-puffed by palm trees and acacia fronds. The green interlocking knuckles of the Italian Alps concertinaed in the distance.

The ferry hit reverse as it neared the jetty, its route narrowed by sleek rows of yachts. Their prows all faced to sea, as though trying to escape but held by an irresistible force. Money, Spike thought, seeing a diminutive oligarch steer a willowy blonde towards a waterfront table.

‘
Portofino, signore e signori
,’ came the ferry’s announcement. Then, with a hint of reverence in the tone, the more languid repetition, ‘
Por-to-fin-o
.’

Chapter Four

Spike checked the time. The next ferry along the Gulf of Paradise was in an hour. He’d already visited the restaurants and bars in Portofino’s small but perfectly formed
piazzetta
. There was one place left to try, a pastel-pink palace basking high on the hillside which might have been home to some local
principe
, but for the subtle and tasteful signage he’d seen dotted around the town.

Spike turned up a set of smooth terracotta steps. The creepers on the sidewalls were tamed and sculpted, errant suckers nipped off. Aged plant pots exuded a sweet scent of honeysuckle and jasmine, while chirping cicadas blended with the drowsy hum of bumblebees, one of which Spike watched disappear into a borehole so perfectly circular it suggested a gardener had been asked to neaten it up with a chisel.

The steps led to a pathway that emerged onto a canopy-shaded terrace. On the level below was a swimming pool, an infinity lip spilling over the harbour where the ferry had docked. Sunloungers lined it, expensively emaciated women eyeing each other competitively as oblivious men in Vilebrequin trunks ogled their smartphones.

The maître d’ was restraining a rebellious tablecloth. He straightened up as Spike approached. ‘Good afternoon,
signore
.’

Spike heard the church bell in the village fall silent on the twelfth chime. ‘Perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for . . .’

‘Reception? Please follow me.’

There existed a level of luxury, Spike thought as he looked down at his scruffy espadrilles and faded blue shorts, when haughtiness reverted to good manners. Another garden staircase, then the maître d’ signalled a doorway beneath a jutting Juliet balcony. ‘
Signore
,’ he exhaled, disappearing to the level below before Spike could even open his wallet.

As soon as Spike raised a foot to the first step, a doorman materialised between the hanging fronds of wisteria. He was dark and compact with startling cornflower-blue eyes. He held open the door, and Spike caught sight of his nametag as he passed. ‘
Enrico Sanguinetti
’.

‘Good surname,’ Spike said.

The doorman gave a puzzled smile as Spike passed him the tip he’d intended for the maître d’.

Reception was small for such a grand hotel. A tanned redhead sat behind the mahogany desk, green eyes expertly outlined with kohl and showcased by a pair of designer horn-rimmed spectacles. It took her about five seconds to size Spike up, then, ‘How may I help you, sir?’

‘I’m not sure you can,’ Spike replied, leaning in conspiratorially. At the concierge’s desk, a bearded man glanced over from behind a computer screen.

‘I met a girl in town last night,’ Spike went on, offering the receptionist an embarrassed smile. ‘I think she may be staying here.’ He took out Zahra’s photograph and placed it on the desk. The edges looked suspiciously dog-eared on the stained hardwood.

The receptionist drum-rolled two long, red fingernails. ‘Don’t
think
I’ve seen her. Michele?’

The concierge came over, shook his head almost imperceptibly, then returned to his monitor. A young couple in immaculate tennis whites entered. The receptionist had unhooked their key before they’d even had a chance to ask for it.

‘How about a Mr Žigon?’ Spike said. ‘Has he checked in recently?’

The cat-like eyes flicked upwards. ‘I’m afraid we cannot give out information about our guests. I’m sure you understand,
signore
. But if you’d like to see a brochure . . .’ She reached below and placed a glossy white wallet on the desk. The stars encircling the words ‘Hotel Splendido’ were of embossed gold.

Spike tried a charming grin. ‘Or a Mr Radovic?’ he asked, remembering an alias Žigon was once thought to have used. The receptionist still had a hand on the brochure, ready to return it to the shelf. As she picked it up, one of her blood-red nails snapped on the desk. She raised the fingertip to her mouth, then handed Spike back the photograph, all traces of playfulness gone. ‘Good luck finding your lady friend, sir.’

Chapter Five

As soon as Spike stepped outside, the doorman reappeared. ‘Sur-name,’ he said. ‘
Vuol dire cognome, no
?’