Hollow Mountain (9 page)
Authors: Thomas Mogford
‘The hearing’s on Monday.’
‘Friday, then?’
‘At the very latest.’
Jardine drained his cup then assessed Spike’s face. ‘You don’t have a musician in the family, do you? A mother? An aunt?’
Spike felt his instinctive dislike of the man harden. ‘The former.’
‘That must be why you look so familiar. I’m sure your mother gave my eldest violin lessons. Must have been . . . what, eighteen years ago? She used to come to our house after school. Name of . . . Missoni?’
‘Mifsud.’
‘Mifsud . . . Well, well, well.’ He laughed, stroking what remained of his cleft chin. ‘But you’re a Sanguinetti, I thought?’ He kept the ‘g’ hard in the local Gibraltarian way – San-
ghin
-etti. Really must have been on the Rock a while.
‘My mother taught under her maiden name.’
‘Never forget a face,’ Jardine said, nodding contentedly as he chewed. ‘It’s a useful skill out here, of course, given how close the community . . .’ He let the sentence fall, with its innuendoes of interbreeding.
‘You two rubbing along?’ Clohessy murmured to Spike as he arrived back at the table.
‘Finding common ground,’ Jardine said.
‘What was it you were saying the other day, Hugh? Thirty thousand locals? In an area of six square kilometres?’
‘It is indeed a small world, Mort,’ Jardine replied.
‘How about Simon Grainger?’ Spike said. ‘Did you come across him?’
Something in Spike’s tone caused a hush to fall around the table. Jardine smiled and continued eating. ‘What about him?’ he asked, spraying pink crumbs of pâté into the close air.
‘His widow came to see me,’ Spike said. ‘She thinks the military police botched the investigation into his death.’
The silence that followed was oppressive. Clohessy shifted in his chair as a team member scrambled to revive an earlier conversation. A Gibraltarian had recently taken the crown in the Miss World contest; apparently the mix of émigré races on the Rock had worked to create an exceptionally beautiful local population.
‘Your client is mistaken,’ Jardine resumed.
‘In what way?’
‘I imagine she didn’t mention the pathologist’s report.’
‘Was that a military pathologist?’
Jardine either missed or ignored the tone. ‘There was a cocktail of antidepressants in the man’s blood, Spike. Cipramil. Zoloft. Poor sap. We thought it best kept out of the press for the family’s sake.’ He shot Spike another glance. ‘It’s not easy for a child when a parent commits suicide.’
The tension was punctured by a shout from the other side of the cabin. ‘Sir,’ Mike the American called to Clohessy, ‘our Spanish friends are back.’ He tapped at his keyboard and the monitor switched to a view from the
Trident
’s topmast. Approaching from the south was a police speedboat, a grey machine gun mounted on its rear deck. Spike recognised the red and gold livery of the Guardia Civil.
‘’Kin ’ell,’ Dougie muttered, getting to his feet. ‘Third time this week.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Jardine asked, looking from face to face.
‘Spanish coastguards,’ Clohessy replied. ‘They say we’re trespassing in their waters.’
Jardine gave a snort. ‘Typical
Slopis
. Whole country’s on its uppers so they have to pirate British waters.’
‘This will be about the Estrecho Oriental,’ Spike said.
‘That’s what they’ve been saying on the loudhailer. What does it mean?’ asked Clohessy.
‘It’s a marine nature reserve. The Spanish refuse to recognise the existence of Gibraltarian waters. They claim they now have legal backing from the EU, as the European Court of Justice unwittingly passed a motion declaring that half our waters fall within a Spanish conservation area.’
Mike tapped at the microphone, preparing to make an announcement over the
Trident’s
speaker system.
‘It’s specious,’ Spike went on. ‘Any state recognised by the UN has jurisdiction over at least three nautical miles off its own shore. That takes precedence over any so-called nature reserve.’
‘Wait,’ Clohessy called to Mike. ‘We have a lawyer aboard. Let’s see what he can do.’
Spike shrugged, then stepped forward to the microphone. He spoke in fluent Spanish, hearing his words reverberate tinnily above deck. On screen, the camera showed the patrol boat slow down, then circle the
Trident
aggressively before speeding away towards the Spanish mainland. A cry of triumph went up from the Neptune team.
‘What did you say to them?’ Clohessy asked, slapping Spike on the back.
‘That we were filming them for a report commissioned by the European Court of Justice.’
‘Was that all?’
‘And that I knew where the driver lived in Algeciras.’
‘Do you?’
‘All the Guardia boys come from there. It’s a racket.’
Clohessy laughed. ‘You’ve earned your fee, son. Wouldn’t get Paul pulling that stunt.’
‘Peter,’ Spike said icily. ‘His name is Peter Galliano.’
Dougie picked up Spike’s briefcase. ‘Allow me to run you back to the Rock, sir.’
As Spike climbed back up to the upper deck, Jardine stopped him, laying a yellowed finger on his arm. ‘Beautiful girl, your mother. Such a shame.’
Queues. Never-ending queues. I swelter in the uncomfortable seat of my cramped SEAT Ibiza, driver’s window down. Everywhere I see these strange number plates, brief as swearwords – G6935, G4482. It’s like stepping back in time. The booking line of my hotel had just five digits. Five!
The delivery van in front – Gibraltar plates – is being searched by Spanish customs, the belly of the official straining to escape the buttons of his nylon shirt. I want to pull out of the queue and gut him. Grizzled, wall-eyed – clearly the local
junta
puts the real cretins on border duty. At last, after finding nothing more sinister than some trays of wilting lettuce, the official gives the van the nod to proceed
.
As the driver gets back into his cabin, he stares pointedly at my Madrid number plate. A moment later, a hand emerges from the window to dump the heaped contents of an ashtray onto Spanish soil. I see a beaming face in his rear-view mirror as the van pulls away. Reddish hair, sunken eyes. A Jew, no doubt. I’ll remember you, friend, I think. The official waves me on without a glance, and I adjust my view of him. A loyal patriot
.
Just as I’m about to put my foot down – another queue. Only then do I see the second border post. A woman in a chequered hat comes to my window. She speaks in English, so I hold up my passport, and she gives what I grudgingly accept is a winning smile, then asks – in perfect if accented Spanish – one of the most idiotic questions I have ever heard
. ‘Negocios o placer
?
’
Pleasure? In Gibraltar?
Finally on the other side, I make it to ten kilometres an hour. To my left rises the Rock, cloud gathering around its peak, its sides pale and craggy, like the images I have in mind of the white cliffs of Dover. Albus, Albion, Perfidious Albion. I wonder what those dark holes are in the limestone. Caves? Tunnels? Dwelling places for the Gibraltarians? Suddenly I hit the brakes. A third queue and another police girl, hand raised
.
Roadblock
. Dios.
I think of the compartment Hernán has hidden in the roof of the car. Ahead, a ‘bobby’ in a tit-head helmet is dragging a chain of spikes across the road. I twist on the fan, contemplating my options
.
This fan is
loud
. I turn it down but the roar continues, growing to a crescendo as . . . An aeroplane has just landed ten metres in front of the bonnet of my car. A 747 jumbo, name splashed in gaudy orange on the fuselage, wheels screeching as the third-rate pilot struggles to bring it to a halt. Airport terminal. Control tower. Baggage handlers. The road into Gibraltar is bisected by a runway
. De puta madre!
The spikes are withdrawn, and at last I drive across the tarmac apron, flanked by moronic workers on pushbikes and aggressive youths on mopeds. Concrete council estates sprout on the other side, the narrow pavements jammed with cars. A red British phone box throbs on the street corner. Behind, filling my mirrors, is a London-style double-decker bus
.
I turn left off the roundabout and pass a wholesaler’s shop. The white van of earlier is parked outside. I memorise the name above the door, then press more deeply into the heart of the fortress
.
The pile of reference books towered precariously at the edge of Spike’s desk. He checked the time and found he’d been working for three hours straight. Only last week, anxiety about Zahra had been getting in the way of his work; now he realised that he’d barely had a chance to think of her in days. He felt a sudden stab of guilt as he imagined her abandoned in Italy, then remembered her cold impersonal voice on the phone, Jessica’s insistence that she always found a way to come out of things on top. He would wait and see what Enrico Sanguinetti sent back from Portofino, then decide what to do next.
Back to the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 . . . Something Clohessy had said about the cost of remaining moored in the Straits had suggested a possible line of attack. The competition Neptune faced from its rivals – you only had to type the company name into Google for the current location of their ship to come up – meant staying in possession of the site was all the more vital. The seas were full of unregulated salvage bandits, none of whom would be scrupulous enough to declare valuable unlisted cargo. Spike had found numerous examples of companies failing to disclose what they’d scavenged from the sea floor. Then there was the continuous harassment of the Guardia Civil: always worth bringing in the noisy Spanish neighbours to get a Gibraltarian court onside.
The one irritant was the lack of news from Jardine. A clear accord between the salvor and the Ministry of Defence was the starting point for the case. Friday lunchtime had come and gone without any contact. So much for military efficiency. Then, as if summoned, his desk phone rang. ‘Spike Sanguinetti?’
‘Hugh Jardine.’
‘You’re late.’
‘Top brass took a while to debate. And we’ve decided not to press any claim on the silver.’
Spike paused. ‘No claim at all?’
‘Technically the silver bars are not MoD property.’
‘I see.’
‘You also said they would probably be confiscated by Customs and Excise.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘And even if they aren’t, well, frankly no one here can quite believe we’re in for a multi-million payout for some old lead. We’d rather not rock the boat with Neptune, if you’ll forgive the saying.’
‘You do realise the value of the silver could be five times that of the lead?’
Jardine seemed to hesitate. ‘Try and see it from our point of view, Spike. The MoD is suffering the most swingeing cuts since the end of the Cold War. There could be hundreds more shipwrecks hidden in the Straits.’ He chuckled. ‘The wise man plays the long game.’
‘So that’s the official MoD position?’
‘I’ll have my secretary email through the documentation.’
‘Very well. See you on Monday.’
‘Monday?’
‘The hearing.’
‘I suppose I ought to be there.’
‘I suppose you ought.’
Spike hung up. Baffling: Clohessy must have got to the MoD somehow. Discount the silver or we walk away. Ruthless bastard.
He returned to his skeleton argument, cross-checking it with Galliano’s original notes. As he flicked through a printout detailing the scope of Gibraltar’s territorial waters, he noticed a faint pencil mark in the margin he’d missed the first time round. He twisted the page, trying to decipher Galliano’s sloping, artistic hand. ‘Simon,’ he read aloud, ‘Grainger’.
Simon Grainger
. So Grainger really had been in touch with Galliano.
There was a phone number sketched beneath, which Spike dialled at once. ‘
Hola
?’ came a female voice. A televisual hum in the background, then a peal of childish laughter. ‘Is that Mrs Grainger?’
‘Who is this?’
‘Spike Sanguinetti.’
A long pause. ‘I didn’t give you this number.’
‘That’s what I’d like to see you about.’
Clinging to the slope above the land border with Spain was the Moorish Castle Estate, a cluster of medium-rise tower blocks rising from the ruins of the oldest part of Gibraltar, a fort built by the Arabs when they’d captured the Rock in
ad
711. The castle’s ancient stones intermingling with the cheap, post-war materials of government housing created a curious millennial clash of styles.
Spike stopped beneath the castle gatehouse. A family of apes were climbing down from the Upper Rock, using its creeper-clad wall as a bridge down into the estate. They moved in single file, two juveniles, a male, a stocky female up front – macaques were a matriarchal society, Spike remembered as he watched the mother turn and bare her fangs, then crouch for her mate to pick a flea from within her grey pelt. One of the juveniles vaulted across a gulf of a thousand years, clattering down onto a recycling bin shelter. It picked up a sun-bleached Walker’s crisp packet, sniffed, then tossed it aside.
