by Lex Lander
Knowing what I knew that he didn’t know, it rankled that my efforts were so readily written off.
‘You had Vella on toast, after I planted the nitro in his fridge,’ I reminded him. ‘The police let him go.’
He bridled. ‘They could hardly do otherwise when that Pilchard chap confessed.’
‘If you and they were going to respect the rules of habeas corpus and the rest you should never have hired me in the first place.’
A cloud moved aside for the sun, which flooded onto the terrace in full force. Toby shielded his eyes and switched from tapping his cup to drumming on the table.
‘You won’t be paid, you know. Unless …’ He nibbled at his underlip.
‘What’s the unless? Technically, you don’t owe me anything outside my expenses. I didn’t deliver on my brief.’
‘The unless is, you could still earn it if you’re interested.’
A waitress with an exceptionally large bottom passed by. Toby caught my eye, and we exchanged grins, as guys do.
‘Yes,’ he said, when I didn’t respond. ‘You could still collect your million if you’ve a mind to.’
I exaggerated a yawn. ‘Get to the point, Toby. I’m kind of tired of working for the British Government, but I wouldn’t say no to the million, if you don’t expect too much in return.’
He crossed his legs, fastidiously arranging his pants so that the crease lay dead centre of his knee.
‘First, let me ask you a question. Why do you think we especially selected you for the job?’
‘You told me. Independent, available, previous track record…’ I was checking them off finger by finger when a mocking gleam in his eyes pulled me up.
‘Well, of course these were useful attributes for the job in hand,’ he said with a vague smirk, ‘but hardly unique to you. What we really needed above all was insurance.’
I blinked. ‘Insurance?’
‘In case you failed in your primary objective of bringing GIBESTÁ crashing down, dear boy. As a last resort we needed someone who could – how do you chaps say it? – burn Michael Vella.’
Burn Michael Vella.
The meaning was clear but slow to infiltrate. I had accepted the job on the understanding that they weren’t asking me to kill anybody though, come to think of it, Toby had never said as much. It seemed like I had been kidding myself all along.
‘Is that what you’re now asking me to do?’ I said at last.
He nodded. ‘Right up your street, I would have thought. Easier than trying to stop a revolution, at any rate.’
Toby’s analysis couldn’t be faulted. As he put it, GIBESTÁ, even if the invasion was off, was still active, still a threat to Gibraltar and the British connection. Chop off the head and the body would wither. No different from my casus belli to justify my private declaration of war against Irazola.
‘I’ve no quarrel with your reasoning,’ I said, after I had gotten used to the effrontery of his proposition. ‘It’s your being so reticent about what you really expected from me that bugs me just a little.’
He went to work on me then with all guns blazing. All the reasons why GIBESTÁ had to be crushed, including the danger that independence would weaken the Rock and Britain’s stake in it, tempt Spain to renew its efforts to establish overlordship, and put the Mediterranean at risk of Russian naval incursions. It was inevitable that the postponed talks on the future of the territory would be revived and their outcome was as uncertain as ever.
As he talked in his forceful yet beguiling style, the arguments in favour of eliminating Michael Vella were bolstered by my new-found personal hostility towards him. Yes, Michael Vella, was the man who had saved my life, but also the man who had stolen Linda from me and not even had the moral courage to own up until he was caught out. The loss of Linda I could bear. If Vella had been a stranger I would have let it go. It was the betrayal by him more than the cheating by her that really hurt.
So why not accept the contract? Avenge myself, do right by Gibraltar, and earn a million pounds in the doing. A win-win-win situation.
Whether he talked me into it, or I talked myself into it, I agreed to do it. Maybe, in my confused state, my loyalties torn between Vella and the British Government, torn anew by the Vella’s betrayal of me with Linda, I was incapable of making an objective decision. Nor of considering how I could bring myself to kill Michael Vella in breach of my private code that forbade me from killing the innocent.
‘Tell Ribble I need a sound suppressor for an H and K VP-70,’ I said.
* * * * *
He was home. When he answered my phone call I cut him off without announcing myself. I collected the Aston from the Caleta parking lot and made it to his apartment in twenty minutes. It was sunny, with a balmy breeze from the east to take the edge off the heat.
Vella answered the door in person. Even beamed at me, as if I were a long-lost brother back from adventures in darkest Africa.
‘Come in, André, come in.’ He shook my hand as I entered, his grip firm and oh, so sincere. ‘It seems you were right, they didn’t invade after all. What went wrong?’
He led me across the entrance hall to the living room with its gloomy wallcovering, low seating, and extensive mahogany carpentry. The sliding French window that extended the length of a wall was half open, admitting the coos of pigeons and the cheery chatter of children at play in the park opposite.
I glanced around for Linda. Thankfully she was absent.
‘Linda’s in the shower,’ he told me. ‘Let me get you a drink. We can celebrate.’
Better to get it over with right away, before she joined us and became a witness. Better too she didn’t know it was me who did it.
Too late. I was in the act reaching behind me for the VP-70 when the door to the bathroom opened and she emerged, wrapped in a blue bath towel, her hair damp and spiky.
‘Hi, Warner,’ she said cheerfully, not at all self-conscious over her state of undress. But then I had seen all it all before.
She came up to me, planted a kiss on my cheek. Her hair smelled of shampoo. It was a familiar smell, too readily recalled.
‘Still sore at me?’
I grinned obliquely. ‘I’m getting over it.’
Vella cleared his throat, looking flustered. ‘What about that drink?’
‘Sure. Too early for hard stuff. Tonic water will be fine, with ice if you have it.’
Linda dragged me to the nearest couch and pressed me down onto it. With the VP-70, over a foot long with the sound suppressor fitted, down the back of my pants, sitting in a low seat was bordering on painful.
‘It’s good to see you, you know. Even as a friend.’ Her face clouded. ‘We are friends, aren’t we?’
‘Best of.’
Vella looked pleased and crossed the room to the drinks cabinet.
‘The invasion didn’t happen,’ Linda said, sitting beside me, hugging the damp towel to her.
‘Correct. It’s off for good.’
We chatted on about inconsequential stuff until Vella returned with my tonic and a juice of some kind for Linda.
‘Tell us what happened. You called me and predicted it wouldn’t happen. Did you manage to prevent it somehow? You personally, I mean.’
I nodded. ‘Somehow.’
His brows converged. ‘Don’t you want to tell us about it?’
‘Best you don’t know. Just be happy about the outcome.’
As I sat there in some discomfort in his living room, with its views across the bay to Algeciras and the hills beyond, it dawned on me that to kill him meant killing Linda too. Even with the protection of Toby’s crowd, if I left her alive as a witness I would never get out Gib. It even crossed my mind that Linda’s removal might well be part of Toby’s grand scheme. Devious thinking, but then it was a devious business I had gotten myself mixed up in.
Vella had served himself a glass of water. He came and stood facing Linda and me, fingering the wart that punctuated the end of his moustache.
‘Will you go on with your independence movement?’ I asked him.
‘Certainly. You’ve bought us a reprieve, we need to make use of it. The British government has proved it can’t be relied on any more.’
Toby was not being alarmist with his predications about GIBESTÁ after all. The quest for independence would continue. It was driven by emotion, like Brexit. It was easy to imagine it precipitating a Spanish takeover, especially if the Brits did a Pilate and opted out.
It was all down to me then. The man who saved the Rock. I groped behind for the VP-70, jerked it free of my waistband and out into the open, sound suppressor and all.
Vella stiffened; Linda expelled a cry of fear, sliding along the couch, away from me.
‘They just hired me to kill you, Michael. You’re a nuisance, an embarrassment, an obstacle to peace and goodwill in Gibraltar. They want you out of the way.’
His jaw dropped.
‘They’ve ordered you to assassinate me?’
‘Happens all the time. Even in so-called civilised countries.’ I pointed the gun at him. He flinched, but his jaw jutted in defiance. He wasn’t about to beg for his life.
The safety was on. I stroked it with my thumb.
‘You’re a good man, Michael Vella. But you’ve made enemies in high places and they’re not going to give you carte blanche to do your revolutionary thing.’
‘If you kill him, you’ll have to kill me,’ Linda said, stumbling a little over the words. ‘Won’t you?’
My shrug spoke louder than an admission.
Without getting up, Linda reached for Vella’s hand. It hurt to watch that demonstration of solidarity. Hurt, but not badly enough for me to put a bullet in him, and especially not in Linda.
‘Bang,’ I said, with a sardonic chuckle deep in my throat. ‘You’re dead.’
They stared at me, nonplussed, disbelief written in their expressions.
I reversed my grip on the gun, proffered it to Vella. ‘Better take this. You might need it one dark night.’
With patent reluctance he accepted the gun from me, holding it gingerly as if he expected it to explode in his face.
‘You mean …’
‘I mean assassins are plentiful if the price is right. Dead, you’re worth a million sterling to them –’
Linda’s reaction was a shocked ‘A million!’.
Vella sat down abruptly on the couch behind him.
‘They’re prepared to pay you a million pounds to kill me?’ His voice was unsteady.
‘That’s right.’
‘And you’re prepared to give up that much money and let me live.’
‘That’s right too.’
I gulped down my tonic and vacated the couch. Vella and I clasped hands without speaking. Linda was gazing up at me, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide and slightly moist. I mimed a kissing motion at her with my mouth.
‘Some causes matter more than money.’
No goodbyes were said. None were needed. Outside, the sky was end-to- end blue, the breeze still balmy, and the smell of ozone elusive in the nostrils. It was almost a good day to be alive. For a decade and a half I had trodden a dirty trail through a dirty underworld, but on this day at least I felt clean again.
END
SPANISH ROCK
Contents
Cover page
Title page
Copyright
Part1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part2
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part3
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two