So it was after midnight when Spike finally made his way up the narrow staircase to the room he now shared with Jessica, steeling himself as he sat down heavily on the futon. She’d bought it to replace the childhood bed he’d still found himself sleeping in aged thirty-nine, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he hated it. Tonight, she lay curled in the foetal position, and in the moonlight, Spike had time to study her wide mouth, the smooth tanned skin with the hint of a freckle. How had he got so lucky? She’d given him not just a second chance, but a third and a fourth. You weren’t supposed to get those odds.
Stretching out beside her, he stared up at the familiar stains and shadows on the ceiling. Number 12 Chicardo’s Passage was still as dilapidated as it had been when Spike’s mother had killed herself twenty years ago. Somehow the house had felt temporary ever since, as though both father and son had been waiting for someone or something to come along and make them change it.
Spike rolled over, trying to shake the feeling that this was all too good to last. To be given one healthy child and have another on the way. To have found a woman who loved him and was prepared to put up with his father; to have a chance to leave this damp terraced house that had been clinging – like the Sanguinetti family that inhabited it – to the Rock for nearly two centuries. How could that be allowed?
Because it can’t, you fool, a small stubborn voice hissed in his head, an echo of all the people he’d let down over the years.
Willing himself to ignore it, Spike drew Jessica close, feeling a faint wing-beat of movement from their unborn child. Just let things stay as they are, he whispered to himself like a mantra. Then he closed his eyes.
13
The next morning, Spike braved the queue of shrieking toddlers and exhausted mothers at Little Rock Nursery, and plunged into the maze of the Old Town with some relief. He gave a hearty ‘Good morning’ to Old Man Levy and his wife as he passed them on Cannon Lane, off as usual to buy their morning bagels from Idan’s. Five decades of marriage and still holding hands. Spike was still smiling to himself as he reached the New Law Courts, but then he saw Drew Stanford-Trench standing outside, locked in what appeared to be hostile dialogue with Alan Cassar.
Still smarting from his ticking-off in Cassar’s chambers the day before, Spike hung back and watched with interest as the stipendiary magistrate glared at Drew, then shouldered past him through the revolving doors. Drew stared after him, rubbing the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. Then he tugged down the tails of his navy worsted suit in one brisk movement, and followed Cassar into the courthouse.
Spike waited another moment, then jogged up the stairs to the first floor in a state of mild apprehension. Through the glass panel in the door to Cassar’s courtroom, he made out Eloise Capurro sitting in the third row of the public gallery, the shrunken form of Marcela Peralta perching beside her. Strange, he thought as he reached for the door handle – he didn’t remember seeing the Capurro family dining at Marcela’s, yet now the two women seemed inseparable.
‘There’s been a development.’
Drew was at Spike’s elbow, cramming a file into his overflowing briefcase. He was trying to look relaxed but Spike knew him better than that. ‘What is it?’
Drew snapped closed his briefcase. ‘You’ll see.’
They entered the courtroom as the door to the cells opened, and Christopher Massetti stepped into the dock, wearing the same suit and expression of defiant indifference as the day before, Spike was depressed to note. Cassar bristled past him, bald pate gleaming, trailed by his clerk, whose anxious expression gave him the air of a courtier who’d just discovered that his status with his monarch was unexpectedly on the wane.
‘Could the defendant please stand?’ Cassar asked.
Massetti either didn’t hear, or pretended not to.
‘Mr Massetti!’ Cassar raised his voice, and the police guard rapped Massetti hard enough on the shoulder to make him jump to his feet.
‘It has just been brought to my attention’ – Cassar glowered at Drew – ‘at extremely late notice, that the complainant has altered her position.’
Spike was loath to turn and stare, but circumstances trumped etiquette. Eloise Capurro’s eyes were lowered, hands clamped between the knees of her trouser suit.
‘The complainant has informed Crown Counsel that she has withdrawn her support for Mr Massetti’s prosecution, and has no further evidence to offer.’
Spike looked round at Massetti and saw his Adam’s apple slide up and down his bristly throat.
‘The court notes that Mr Stanford-Trench has phrased Dr Capurro’s “change of heart” extremely carefully. No doubt because he is aware that his client has now left herself open to a charge of giving false evidence.’
Eloise was crying now, and perhaps it was that which made Cassar rein in his tone. ‘The Attorney General will consider whether to charge Dr Capurro for wasting police time, but under the circumstances, there may be a case for leniency. As for Mr Massetti’ – the magistrate’s distaste was evident – ‘I have no choice but to dismiss the charges against him.’
The only sound now was the urgent tip-tap of the stenotype machine as the clerk strained to catch up with his master.
‘Now this court has a busy schedule,’ Cassar went on, ‘so if counsel would kindly clear their tables for two lawyers who are here to argue a legitimate case, and we can return to the docket . . .’ Cassar turned to the guard: ‘Get on with it, Sergeant!’, and the officer unlocked the gate to the dock and pushed Massetti into the courtroom.
Eloise Capurro looked up. As she met Massetti’s eye, Spike saw the last bit of colour drain from her face. Then, as smoothly as if she were ejecting an undesirable from her restaurant, Marcela Peralta took her friend’s elbow and eased her towards the exit.
14
Spike found his client standing on the corner of Town Range, shoulders hunched, blinking in the midday sun. At his feet lay a sun-bleached Morrisons shopping bag containing, Spike assumed, his prison effects. Tourists bustled past him, laughing and chatting, oblivious to the small drama that had just played out in the courthouse above them.
‘Christopher?’
Massetti glanced up. It seemed to take him a moment to remember who Spike was. He cleared his throat and extended his slab of a hand. ‘Tenkiù,’ he mumbled in yanito.
Spike shook it. The palm was callused and dry. ‘You’re a lucky man, Christopher.’
Massetti gave a lopsided grin. ‘Not often.’
‘Well, you were today. But now you have to stay away from Eloise Capurro.’ Spike’s eyes searched the old man’s face. ‘Because if you end up back in court, they will throw the book at you.’
Massetti reached slowly for his plastic bag.
‘So you’ll keep away from the Capurro family?’
‘Sorry about your eye,’ Massetti said in his gruff voice. ‘And thanks for this.’ Massetti held out Rufus’s chess book; Spike took it, then watched his client shuffle away, feeling a small but resilient sense of foreboding.
Hearing the courthouse doors rotate behind him, Spike turned and saw Drew Stanford-Trench striding towards him. Over Drew’s shoulder, Gibraltar’s Swiss-built cable car was inching its way up the Rock, no bigger than a matchbox.
They walked together along Main Street. For a man whose case had just fallen apart, Drew seemed surprisingly chipper. ‘Epic waste of time, of course,’ he drawled, stifling a yawn. ‘But my clerk will be pleased to have my diary freed up.’
For something more lucrative, Spike thought, but didn’t say.
‘Got you off the hook too.’ Drew shot Spike another of his sideways glances. ‘Can’t imagine you were looking forward to putting that client of yours on the stand. Dog of a defence case, but then I expect you and Galliano have to take what you can get these days, right?’ The corner of Drew’s mouth curled, and – perhaps because Spike knew he was right – he fought an overwhelming urge to give his old friend a punch on the shoulder, som
ething he would have done without thinking five years ago.
Drew stopped. ‘I almost forgot. My old man wants you to come to supper. He’s very curious to meet the future Mrs Sanguinetti.’
Spike rolled his eyes, but secretly he was pleased. He hadn’t seen Sir Anthony Stanford for so long that he’d been starting to wonder if he’d fallen out of favour at Dragon Trees. ‘Send me through some dates,’ he said.
Drew gave a mock salute, then turned towards Irish Town, no doubt heading for the HQ of the Liberal Party, the latest political group that was rumoured to be courting him. The levanter breeze had stilled, and Spike could hear the pulse of the cicadas in the mimosa trees. His mood was just starting to lift when he passed an off-licence and saw Christopher Massetti standing by the till. Racked on the counter in front of him were three dark bottles of spirits. Spike averted his eyes and kept walking.
PART TWO
15
The evening of the dinner with Sir Anthony came around quickly, one of the hottest Augusts on record passing in a blur of late nights at the office, antenatal appointments and unfathomably expensive trips to Mothercare. So it was early September by the time that Spike led Jessica up the steep road that twisted around the western flank of the Rock. He had so much on at work that he’d been tempted to cancel, but Jessica had been keen to see Dragon Trees, the house where Spike had spent so many summers during his teenage years, and he felt a strange desire to introduce her to the old man who’d acted in loco parentis when his own father had proven unequal to the task.
The evening sky was clear, the mountains of Morocco on the far side of the Straits streaked with purple in the setting sun. At moments like this, seeing the shipping freight pass from Atlantic to Mediterranean, Mediterranean to Atlantic, Spike felt as though they might be living at the very centre of the globe. He turned to Jessica with a smile. She looked very beautiful tonight, and he hoped she knew it. Whatever the evening ahead might hold, right now he felt a tremendous sense of contentment.
‘Here’s trouble,’ Jessica said, pointing to a Barbary macaque crouching on an outcrop above the road. Thick grey fur bulked the monkey’s square jaw; her yellow-brown eyes gleamed with intelligence. Sitting at her feet was a smaller male, his dextrous fingers twining through his mate’s pelt, searching for fleas and flecks of limestone.
‘She’s got the right idea.’ Jessica gave Spike a playful nudge, and he pulled a face. His future wife wasn’t the first Gibraltarian woman to relish the fact that Barbary macaque society was a matriarchal one.
A hiss came from the crags above as a younger female appeared. The matriarch turned, repelling her rival with a mere look. Last year, the more antisocial Rock Apes had been rounded up and deported to a safari park in Stirling. How Scotland felt about becoming a Botany Bay for Gibraltar’s primates was unclear, but a new pecking order had emerged within the colonies, a new set of females taking charge. Not unlike the current regime at Chicardo’s, Spike thought with a rueful smile as they continued along the dusty road.
They reached the fences marking the perimeters of Gibraltar’s mansions. Most were empty – investments by the super rich, inhabited only when the taxman demanded it. Through thick wire mesh entwined with evening jasmine, Spike could just make out the red clay of a tennis court, its expensive surface cratered by the seeds and suckers blown down by the swirling winds of the Rock. Then the wire ceded to the intricate wrought-iron that Sir Anthony preferred, and Spike lowered his six-foot-three frame to the security camera. He glanced over at Jessica, then held down the button and awaited their summons.
16
‘Pish pine!’ Spike exclaimed in yanito, feeling his stomach keel as he caught his first glimpse of the huge plate-glass cube protruding from the back of the house. A chuckle rang out behind him: ‘A lifetime on the Rock and the man still has no head for heights.’ It was Drew, of course, but then Spike heard Sir Anthony’s deep, reassuring voice, ‘It’s perfectly safe, Spike. The glass we used for the floor is 12mm thick.’
Spike took a tentative step forward, forcing himself to look down. Under his feet, he made out the jagged canopies of the ancient dragon trees that gave the house its name. The only sense of substance came from the four heavy steel joists that supported each corner of the cube, their bases sunk deep into the terrace beneath.
Spike edged back onto solid ground. ‘I knew you were engaged in building work, Anthony, but this is something else.’
Their host allowed himself a modest smile as he tore a strip of lead from the neck of a champagne bottle. ‘A man must never stand still, Spike.’
Sir Anthony looked well tonight, Spike thought, taking in the bright crow-like eyes, the well-cut silver hair that was surely still as lustrous as it had been in his youth. The man had fifteen years on Rufus, yet the comparison was not one from which Spike’s father emerged with credit. It was hard to imagine Sir Anthony being troubled by any of the things that bothered other people, like ill health, or mortgages. He seemed insulated, protected by his excellent genes and limitless self-confidence.
‘You always were a jammy sod, Spike,’ Drew murmured. He was leaning against the kitchen door-frame, watching Jessica with undisguised admiration as she sauntered fearlessly around the cube.
Hearing a muted pop behind him as Sir Anthony eased out the cork, Spike went over to help him pour, tipping each glass by its fine crystal stem the way the old man had taught him all those years ago. He held out a half-glass to Jessica, and she hesitated.
‘In my day,’ Sir Anthony called out, ‘expectant mothers were encouraged to relax with the occasional drink.’
‘In your day,’ Drew countered, ‘the dinosaurs still ruled the earth.’ Spike suspected that Jessica agreed, but she accepted the glass anyway, and they all repaired to a trio of deep sofas.
Spike sipped his champagne, glancing around at the minimalist surroundings – the whitewashed walls glowing amber in the last rays of the sunset, the coconut lounge chairs which surely no one would ever really want to sit in, let alone a man who’d quietly had both hips replaced. It was certainly impressive, but part of Spike missed the old Dragon Trees, the sprawling bohemian mansion cluttered with frayed Moroccan rugs and chipped vases, walls hung with the black-and-white photos that Drew’s mother had lovingly collected over the years.
Sir Anthony got to his feet and raised his glass. ‘To an old and loyal friend, whose escapades have kept me entertained ever since he was a boy, and whose integrity and intelligence I have always admired.’ Spike turned away, surprised to feel his cheeks burning. ‘And to Jessica. I fear you may have a challenging job on your hands, my dear, but it should come as some consolation to learn that in all the years I’ve known Spike, I’ve never seen him look so happy.’ Sir Anthony turned back to Spike, and his craggy face softened. ‘Your mother would be proud of you, son. To Jessica and Spike – and the newest member of the Sanguinetti family.’
Spike stared at the bubbles corkscrewing up through his champagne flute. Then his eyes found Jessica’s, and she smiled. From somewhere deep inside the Bulthaup kitchen came a thin, irritating beep. ‘Drew,’ Sir Anthony said, and his son stood up with a long-suffering shake of the head.
17
The candlelit table had been positioned in the very centre of the glass cube, and as they took their seats, Spike had the unwelcome impression that they were levitating. So he focused on his food, forking up another crisp leaf of cos lettuce. Supper had been simple but delicious, the main event a salade niçoise in the French rather than British style – fresh tuna instead of tinned, no boiled potatoes.
‘How’s that law firm of yours, Spike?’ Sir Anthony asked. ‘You took up with that chap who had the car accident. The big one with the little beard . . .’ He waved an impatient hand at his son. ‘Oh, what’s his name, Drew?’
‘Peter Galliano,’ Drew supplied.
Sir Anthony took another sip of Sancerre. ‘Brave decision, I always thought . . .’
Spike braced himself.
‘Leaving a firm like Ruggles & Mistry to go it alone. Especially with . . .’ Sir Anthony caught Spike’s expression and peered across the table. ‘Well, I suppose you must know what you’re doing.’ He paused. ‘We have a little announcement of our own.’
Spike saw Drew shift in his seat. ‘Not tonight, Dad.’
‘Why not?’ Sir Anthony said, and Drew conceded defeat with a small shake of the head.
‘The Liberals have asked Drew to stand.’
‘For Parliament?’ Jessica said.
‘For Chief Minister.’
Spike half-expected Drew’s face to crease up, but he just cast his eyes downwards, focusing on realigning his cutlery. A few years’ graft were usually needed before one of Gibraltar’s three main parties would put up a candidate for the top job. To be parachuted in as Party Leader was unheard of. Perhaps Drew felt the same, as a sprinkling of colour had leached into his cheeks. It must be embarrassing to be run by your father, Spike imagined, but then Sir Anthony was a man used to getting what he wanted. Like most people on the Rock, Spike knew those parts of Sir Anthony’s background which he had considered salient to reveal – how he’d overcome an impoverished childhood in Gibraltar to build a career in the British Diplomatic Service, culminating in an appointment as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Portugal. Most men in his position would have accepted their knighthood and retired gracefully to the golf course, but Sir Anthony had had other plans. Even at ninety, his reputation cast a long shadow over the Rock.
Jessica laid a hand on Drew’s. ‘Congratulations.’
A Thousand Cuts Page 5