Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) (2 page)

‘Why did you run?’

‘It was dark,’ Solomon replied, speaking English in the same lilting accent as Spike. ‘I wasn’t sure I had the right house.’

A light flashed on opposite, and Solomon raised his head. His small, circular glasses were unhooked from one ear; he reached up to straighten them, hands shaking. ‘I need your help, Spike.’

The sash window across the road began rattling up, so Spike turned and walked quickly down Fraser’s Ramp, Solomon following behind. They came into Chicardo’s Passage by the opposite way. After unlocking the front door, Spike ushered Solomon into the hallway, then through the bead curtain into the kitchen. ‘Keep the noise down.’

General Ironside gave a low growl as Solomon passed. Spike raised an admonitory finger at the dog basket, then clicked through the bead curtain himself.

Solomon was standing by the pine kitchen table, head bowed, hands clasped behind back. Beneath the hanging bayonet bulb, Spike could see him more clearly. He was still as short as in their schooldays, but his chest was stockier, pectoral muscles bulging as though from assiduous gym time. The stains on his shirt were of a rusty-brown colour, the tear in his pinstripe trousers just below the knee, giving him the air of a smartly dressed postman savaged on his round. Solomon held himself there, letting Spike’s eyes range over him, absent-mindedly picking at his left thumb with the sharp nail of a forefinger. The wooden wall clock ticked; Spike spread his jacket over the back of a chair and sat down heavily.

‘Got anything to drink?’ Solomon whispered.

‘Nothing grown-up.’

‘
Agua de beber?
’ Solomon added, switching to
yanito
, the patois of Spanish, Genoese, English and Hebrew used by native Gibraltarians.

‘
Por bashe
.’

Solomon plodded across the buckling cork-tile floor. A tumbler had been upturned by the sink, alongside a pharmacy-shelf windowsill of pills; he filled it and drank, stubbly cheeks puffing. After blinking over at Spike, as though momentarily puzzled as to who he was, he drew out a chair and sat. ‘It’s all a misunderstanding,’ he said, mopping his brow with his suit sleeve. ‘I’m in trouble, Spike.’

‘Financial problems?’

Behind Solomon’s glasses the whites of his eyes were striated with red, like two semi-precious stones. ‘Murder.’

Spike shifted forward in his seat, reassessing the dark stains on Solomon’s shirt.

‘It’s just tomato juice, Spike,’ Solomon said. ‘
Los tomates
.’ He bunched up his shirt tail, revealing a braille of dried seeds. ‘Eight hours in the back of a lorry . . .’ His eyes focused on a knot on the pinewood table, as though he were viewing images within. ‘There was this girl.’

Spike raised a dark eyebrow.

‘It was three days ago,’ he said. ‘Feels like more.’ He straightened up a little, chest puffing. ‘I’m based in Tangiers now: I imagine you’ve heard. She was new in town. We went to a bar on the beach, took our drinks down to the shore, sat for a while, watched the sunset. Then she leans in and kisses me.’ Solomon scratched again at his thumb; Spike saw a drop of blood ooze from the pink, porous scar tissue around the nail. ‘So I pull away. I’m only meant to be showing her round, plus she’s crazy this girl, tattoos, piercings, the lot. She grins at me: “You know,” she says, “I only kissed you because you’re such” . . .
Empollón
was the word she used.’

‘A nerd,’ Spike translated, almost suppressing a smile. ‘Spanish?’

‘My boss’s Spanish stepdaughter. You can see why I didn’t want to start anything with her.’ Solomon sat back, eyes concealed by two suns of light reflecting from his glasses. ‘I get to my feet. It’s not completely dark, plus she’s no kid. So I left her there, Spike. On the beach.’

‘Anyone see you go?’

‘Even if they did, you’d never find them. No one in Tangiers talks to the police.’

‘But someone saw you come home.’

Solomon shook his head.

‘CCTV?’

‘Unlikely. It’s more in rural, isolated areas. So I go up to my flat. Watch a football game . . .’

‘Since when do you like football?’

‘There’s not a lot to do in Tangiers. Next morning I go into work. When I get home there’s a police car outside my apartment block.’

‘How did they find you?’

‘I used my card in the bar.’ Solomon worked a finger beneath his spectacles, itching at his left eyeball. ‘A policeman gets out: “Are you Solomon Hassan?” et cetera. He can see I’m uneasy so he goes back to his car. On the passenger seat there’s an envelope of black-and-white photos. The top one . . .’ Solomon withdrew his finger and ran it beneath his nostrils, laying a gleaming snail trail on the hairy knuckle. ‘She was lying on her back, head against the sand. Her eyes were all milky . . . like an old fish. And her neck – the mark was so small, Spike, like a tiny dash in biro. There was no blood. I asked if she was sleeping and the policeman said the tide had come in and washed the blood away.’

‘You went with him?’

‘Of course. To the station on the Avenue d’Espagne. Full of Moroccans in
djellabas
, rocking on their hunkers. He took me into a back room. Stacks of papers everywhere. I told him what I told you. The tape wasn’t working so I told him again. Then he let me go.’

‘What language?’

‘English . . . French at the start.’

‘You speak French now?’

‘Like I said, Spike, there’s not much to do in Tangiers. So I lie awake that night. The Tangiers police . . . they’re like animals. If they can place you anywhere near a crime, that’s it, they make the arrest, get the stats up. Plus for me . . .’

‘What?’

Grinning sourly, Solomon rubbed his finger up and down the bridge of his nose. ‘Jews are hardly flavour of the month in Morocco. The next morning I look out onto the street. A police
jeep
. Same guy as before but talking to two meatheads with sub-machine guns. The doorbell starts to ring; I grab my passport and run down the service stairs. I assume there’ll be police on that side of the building, but there aren’t, so I catch a
petit taxi
to the harbour.’

‘Not stopped by immigration?’

‘There’s a Gibraltarian who works the port. Slip him enough euros and he’ll get you over.’

‘You mean you crossed illegally?’

‘In the back of a lorry. Six hours before the catamaran even left. The waves . . . felt like my belly was being sucked dry. We got to Gib and the lorry rolled off. Let me out at Casemates. Imagine how it felt to see the Rock again.’

‘There was too much cloud,’ Spike said.

‘Sorry?’

‘There was too much levanter cloud to see the Rock.’ Spike stroked his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Why not go to your mother’s?’

‘You crazy? She’d have a heart attack. No, I think, my old pal, Spike Sanguinetti, he’s a lawyer. I remembered where you lived. Or thought I did.’

‘I’m a tax specialist, Solomon.’

‘You’re a friend,’ Solomon said, holding out his shaky palms in supplication.

‘You shouldn’t have run.’

Solomon snapped closed one hand. ‘And
you
don’t know Tangiers.’

Spike looked over to the wall, at his father’s blurry watercolours. All showed the Rock: from below, from the side, from above with HMS
Victory
towing in Nelson’s body, pickled in a barrel of cheap Spanish brandy. He got to his feet. ‘I’m going upstairs. When I come back down, you may be gone. You may even have crossed the border to Spain. I doubt the Moroccan authorities will have had time yet to alert immigration. Or,’ Spike added, turning from the curtain, ‘you may still be here. If you are, this is what happens. You’ll surrender your passport and I’ll make a call to Jessica Navarro. She’ll drive you to prison where you’ll be remanded overnight. After that, a criminal barrister will come and find you.’

Spike pushed through the beads to find General Ironside asleep in his basket. He creaked upstairs; from outside his father’s door he heard erratic, laboured breathing.

The tap in Spike’s sink snarled like an ape. He splashed his face and tasted salt. The house’s plumbing was so antiquated that seawater still seeped into the mains.

Downstairs, Solomon was standing by the sideboard, examining a silver photo frame. ‘My mother always said your father was the most handsome man on the Rock.’ He held the picture out; Spike looked down at the tall, laughing man in his elegant waistcoat and sombre tails. Even with the fading of time, Rufus Sanguinetti’s piercing blue eyes stared back fearlessly: northern Italian blood, as he still liked to insist. Beside him, Spike’s mother – a foot shorter even in heels – gazed up quizzically, as though unsure of what was to come, but guessing it would at least be amusing. Her left hand held a small bouquet of ivory roses, contrasting with the dark, delicate features of her face.

‘You look a lot like him,’ Solomon said.

Spike replaced the photo on the sideboard. When he looked back, Solomon had the crumpled purple rectangle of a British Gibraltar passport in one hand.

‘All right,’ Spike said, taking it. ‘Let’s get this done.’

Chapter 3

By 7 a.m., Spike was at his desk. The ceiling fan whirred soporifically above as he picked up a remote, switched off the fan, then picked up another and turned on his iPod speakers, feeling the humidity rise as the first arpeggios of Caprice No. 5 filtered through. Spike could do ten minutes of music with no fan, ten minutes of fan with no music, but combining the two created a discord that made work impossible.

The tax statute had downloaded; Spike checked an appendix, fountain pen in hand. Ahead, a pair of high French windows gave onto a paved patio. A date palm had centuries ago cracked through its flagstones to provide shade, not that that were needed today – the levanter breeze had drawn in a blanket of thick, humid cloud, shrouding the entire peninsula of Gibraltar, while out in the Straits, the sunshine blazed.

Spike heard the distant scrape of chair legs on parquet. The offices of
Galliano & Sanguinetti
had once been a grace-and-favour residence for various Royal Navy sea lords. Spike liked how their conversion reflected Gibraltar’s shift from military stronghold to financial centre. Liked that more than the work.

A rap came from the door. ‘Keep it on, keep it on,’ Peter Galliano said as Spike stretched for a remote control. ‘Anything to distract from this
pipando
closeness.’ He sank down into the leather armchair opposite Spike’s desk. ‘Your fellow Genoese?’

Spike nodded.

‘Didn’t he sell his soul to the Devil?’

‘Paganini had Marfan syndrome,’ Spike said. ‘A rare disorder of the connective tissue.’

‘Sounds like the Devil’s music to me,’ Galliano replied, still arranging his bulky frame in the armchair. ‘Anyway, speaking of crafty Devils . . .’

‘The Uzbeks?’

‘Back in town and meaning business.’ Galliano shunted forward in his seat. He was wearing his three-piece houndstooth suit today, a sign of an important lunch. There was even a spotted kerchief in the breast pocket, which he took out to dab at his fleshy brow. ‘
Jodido
levanter,’ he murmured.

Spike switched the music for the ceiling fan, the rush of air making the documents on his desk tremble.

‘Why you won’t let me buy you an air-conditioning unit,’ Galliano said, ‘I shall never . . .’

Spike let him finish, waiting for the double blink that signified his mind was focused. ‘The key,’ Spike began, ‘is to impress on them that Gibraltar’s ten per cent headline rate is for keeps. Other tax havens may give better short-term deals, but their fiscal future is uncertain. Gib will still be here, same as before. Minor expenditure for major security.’

‘Safe as the Rock of Gibraltar?’

‘You got it.’