A Thousand Cuts

by Thomas Mogford

  ‘It’s hardly conclusive,’ Massetti retorted. ‘But no, it wasn’t what I’d hoped to find. Although . . .’ He seemed to be weighing up whether or not to trust Spike. Decision made, he dipped back into the box and passed him an envelope. It was addressed to ‘Christopher Massetti, c/o The Gibraltar Museum’.

  ‘May I?’ Spike said.

  Massetti nodded, and Spike pulled out a small square of notepaper headed ‘GHA’: Gibraltar Health Authority. Spike read aloud the three lines handwritten in shaky biro: ‘There’s something I need to tell you. It’s about your father. Please come. JC. John Capurro wrote to you?’ he asked.

  Massetti nodded. ‘He spent a lot of time at the museum. After he got ill. We got to know each other a little.’

  ‘And you think he knew your father, Esteban?’ Spike picked up the photograph again: could John Capurro be the third man at the table?

  ‘They would have been about the same age,’ Massetti replied.

  ‘So that was why you were at the hospital that night? Because John Capurro asked you to come?’

  ‘But when I got there John wouldn’t tell me anything. Said he’d made a mistake.’

  Massetti was looking worryingly pale; Spike hoped he wasn’t going to be sick again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before the trial, Christopher? It would have helped your case.’

  The old man gave no answer, and Spike felt his frustration return. ‘And why harass Eloise?’

  ‘Because she knew,’ Massetti snapped. ‘She was his wife. You didn’t see how they were together. Whatever John knew about Esteban, you can be sure she did too.’ Massetti grabbed Spike’s wrist, eyes burning. ‘I thought maybe Eloise might talk to you. Tell you what her husband knew.’

  Alarm bells started to ring, and Spike gently detached himself and got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Christopher. I can’t help you with this.’

  Massetti pushed the box file away from him. ‘Take it then. And the papers on the desk. I don’t want them any more. Chuck them out. Just like you did with my drink.’

  At the bedroom door, Spike turned. ‘There’s more food in the fridge, Christopher. Make sure you eat it.’ He tried an encouraging smile. ‘Dr Martinez said a health visitor would come this week. As soon as they tell you you’re well enough, you should go back to the Gibraltar Museum. Ask for your old job back. I could put in a good word for you, if you like.’

  But Massetti didn’t smile back. Ignoring the quiet insistent voice of warning in his head, Spike picked up the box of papers and left.

  25

  Spike had never been a fan of surprise parties, and as he looked around the patio garden of the Royal Calpe pub, he questioned once again why he’d let Ana Lopes persuade him that this would be a good idea. The chocolate icing on the enormous cake she’d ordered, emblazoned with Jessica’s name and a baby rattle, was already melting in the evening sun, while most of Jessica’s colleagues were at least three pints down, no doubt seeking Dutch courage for what Spike suspected must be their first experience of a baby-shower-cum-maternity-leave party.

  Jessica was the only woman in the unit, and her colleagues all wore plain-clothes suits, their eyes starting to glaze as Detective Inspector George Isola held forth. Isola boasted a wide repertoire of bawdy anecdotes, Spike knew, and he liked his subordinates to laugh in all the right places. The fact that the Woman of Honour was not amongst them must have irked him, as he flashed Spike a look that wasn’t hard to decipher. Can’t even get this right was the most benign interpretation.

  ‘Late for her own party,’ Peter Galliano muttered.

  ‘That’s always the danger with surprises.’ Rufus took a prim sip of Prosecco, like an old maid savouring her glass of sherry after church. ‘What did you tell her, Spike? That you were meeting for a quiet drink?’

  Spike shrugged.

  ‘What you’re really saying,’ Peter chimed in, ‘is that date night with Spike is insufficient to bring Jessica in on time.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Rufus replied, and Spike gave a weary smile. He supposed he ought to be happy that the two men were getting along. It wasn’t as though they had much in common – Peter the bon viveur, and Rufus almost Presbyterian in his tastes. The only thing that brought them together was Spike. For his sake they had forged some sort of half-hearted modus vivendi, and for that he was grateful.

  ‘Another round?’ Peter asked.

  Spike watched his business partner limp away towards the bar, then turned to his father. ‘What do you know about Christopher Massetti’s parents?’

  Two policemen glanced around at the sound of the name.

  ‘Mark and Josephine Massetti?’ Rufus confirmed, the skin of his forehead pleating like a concertina as he considered the best way to describe the pair. ‘They used to run the cash and carry on Devil’s Tower Road. Typical Genoese sailing stock – same as us.’ Rufus stared down at his long fingers, and Spike wondered if he knew that Massetti’s biological father had been hanged as a traitor. Probably – but if he did, he wasn’t letting on. ‘The Massettis were always very good to Christopher. Stuck by him through some tricky times. It was hard for them to manage, I think. And of course Josephine’s health was never good. She died, oh, a long time ago. Her husband never really got over it.’ Rufus looked up as Peter reappeared carrying a bottle of Rioja and three glasses. ‘Nice people.’

  Peter’s face was flushed, and Spike wondered if he’d treated himself to a quick sharpener at the bar. His old friend’s recovery from the hit-and-run accident that had almost killed him had been nothing short of miraculous, the doctors had said. Only two years ago, they hadn’t thought he would regain consciousness, let alone walk again. But sometimes Spike wondered if the accident hadn’t taken its toll in other ways. Especially when he saw the way and the quantity which Peter drank. As if on cue, he tipped a third of the bottle into each glass and held one out to Rufus. ‘Not for me, Peter – I’ve had quite enough.’ Rufus turned to Spike. ‘Why not give Jessica a ring, son? It’s getting rather late, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, give her ten more minutes,’ Peter said. ‘Live a little.’

  Rufus’s expression darkened. ‘I was hoping to read the boy his story,’ he said peevishly. ‘We’ve just started Fantastic Mr Fox.’

  ‘Charlie will be fine, Dad,’ Spike replied. ‘Ana’s babysitting,’ he added for Peter’s benefit, but Peter just gave a distracted nod, suggesting that his business partner’s childcare arrangements could not have been of less interest to him.

  ‘I found Ms Lopes a little odd, entre nous,’ Rufus said to Spike, then dropped his voice suggestively. ‘Very attractive though.’

  Spike threw his father an uneasy look, wondering if the new medication that the specialist had prescribed might be having unwelcome side effects.

  A mobile phone went off at the adjacent table. Then another. Suddenly the air was alive with the jarring sound of ringtones and vibrations, and Isola was on his feet, barking into a police radio. Spike caught his eye. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fire in the Old Town,’ Isola called back as he grabbed his jacket. Before he disappeared, Isola summoned the good grace to shout over his shoulder, ‘Jessica’s at the scene.’

  Spike got to his feet and ran out into the street after him, hearing the slow lazy wail of sirens drifting down from the Old Town above.

  26

  Black smoke was already rising against the flank of the Rock as Spike pushed his way through the crowds on City Mill Lane. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the violent gush of water hoses. He could smell the fumes now, the woody scent of bonfire tainted by something acrid. A group of middle-school children jostled past him, whooping with excitement, and Spike felt a sudden stab of antagonism towards Jessica that even he recognised as unfair. But what the hell was she doing in the middle of all this chaos?

  The people were five-deep on Governor’s Street, a line of police officers struggling to keep them back behind the yellow-and-black-striped cordon. The blaze must have spread quickly: it seeme
d as though half the terraced street was alight.

  ‘Cagona,’ Spike swore to himself as he took in the scale of the conflagration. He’d never seen a house fire up-close before, and as he watched the dazzling showers of sparks crackle then fade, he had to admit there was something beautiful about it. Then he saw how the firefighters were struggling to get the flames under control, and realised that they didn’t see any beauty in it at all.

  The burnt-out shells of two houses rose above him, their blackening beams dripping with water, belching smoke. The adjoining building glowed orange and red through its upper windows, dark fumes billowing from what remained of the roof. With a jolt of panic, Spike realised that Chicardo’s Passage was just fifty yards above, Charlie asleep in his cot bed. But he knew that Jessica was at the centre of the blaze, so he made himself press on through the crowd, puzzled to taste salt on his tongue until he remembered that the fire brigade pumped their water from the sea.

  A taut face emerged through the smoke, and for the first time in years Spike found himself pleased to see DI Isola. ‘Where is she?’ Spike shouted. ‘Where’s Jessica?’

  They both heard the sharp crack as something structural inside the burning house collapsed, then looked up to see a bright jet of embers erupt into the night sky. Spike watched the feverish eyes of the crowd widen as they took in the new constellation of golden stars above their heads.

  ‘Over there,’ Isola yelled back.

  Spike could just make out a second cordon farther down the road, dividing the mob from another row of firefighters. He searched through the faces until he saw Jessica, then called out her name, but his voice was carried away by the spitting of the flames and the roar of the water, and he realised that there was no way that he could get to her through the throng.

  So he pushed his way back through the onlookers, ignoring their cries of protest, trying to picture the layout of the Old Town in his mind, the warren of streets where he’d played as a child. He knew a back way.

  Skirting above Governor’s Street, his gaze was drawn upwards to the western face of the Rock, as mighty and indifferent to the fate of Gibraltar’s insignificant hordes as it had always been. Then he felt something sear the flesh on the back of his neck, and slammed a hand against the skin to tamp out the burning ash. Pulling up the collar of his shirt, he ran down the passage that led to the other end of Governor’s Street, then stopped for a moment to catch his breath, coughing out the stink of the fumes.

  As he straightened up, he saw a figure standing twenty yards in front of him. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and looked again, knowing even before the smoke cleared that it was Christopher Massetti he would see.

  Massetti was gazing up into the flames as though mesmerised. And suddenly Spike was transported back to Eloise Capurro’s description of him standing beneath her bedroom window as he’d waited outside her house, night after night. The Capurro house was on Governor’s Street. The street where the fire had started.

  Spike called out his name and Massetti looked round, and for a moment their eyes locked, the older man’s face unreadable. Then another shroud of smoke fell across the street, and by the time it had dissipated, Massetti was gone. And that was when Spike heard the high-pitched scream behind him, and turned to run back towards the heart of the fire.

  27

  Spike could hear his feet thudding on the cobbles, feel the rasp of his breath raw in his throat, but these sensations seemed to him vague and indistinct as he stared up at the top floor of the burning house. He drew closer, heart thumping as he caught sight of a figure behind the blackened glass of a sash window. Then came a tinkling crash, and the crowd covered their heads as a shower of broken glass hailed down on them.

  Spike made out the figure more clearly now, and he knew it was a woman from the pitch of her screams. Twenty feet below her, a firefighter with a loudspeaker was appealing to her to stay calm as his colleagues scrambled back towards their truck. But his pleas went unheeded as the woman swung a leg out of the shattered window, and the crowd gasped. Her grey hair was dishevelled, the material of a white nightdress whipping around her thin body in the breeze.

  Spike heard another collective inhalation from the watchers below as the woman stood up, bare feet on the sill, bloodied hands clasping the window frame. The orange glow behind her faded, then brightened again and the smoke began to blur her shape. On the pavement below, the side door of the fire truck rattled closed like a drum roll. The crash mat was readied and on the move.

  ‘Jesus,’ Spike whispered as he saw what happened next. At first, just the hem of the woman’s nightdress was alight, but within moments, her whole body was engulfed by flames, hair flaring and crackling. Then her screams crescendoed to a level that Spike knew he would never forget, the writhing of her body like some kind of hideous dance. He closed his eyes, desperate to obliterate the memory, and when he opened them again, he saw her jump.

  The speed with which she fell was extraordinary, as though a guy rope had yanked her down towards earth. The crowd fell silent, and somehow the noise of the flames seemed to quieten too, so that they all heard the hollow, sickening crump as she struck the pavement.

  Then the panic began, people screaming and yelling, filled by some irrational urge to flee. Spike fought his way towards the safety cordon, where he saw the woman’s body surrounded by an entourage of paramedics. One got to his feet, and Spike saw him wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of a gloved hand, the resignation clear on his face. To one side, watching in silence, stood Detective Inspector Isola.

  Jessica still had her back to the cordon, reassuring an old man who was draped in a metallic silver sheet. The man was stroking his moustache with frightened, fast-moving fingers, and Jessica took his hand in hers and whispered something to him that made him raise his eyes and nod. Spike edged towards her, seeing her fluorescent-orange gilet unfastened around her baby bump. She looked up and saw him, and he pulled her into his arms. There was a smear of soot on her cheek, and he wiped it away with a thumb.

  ‘We thought we’d evacuated the whole street,’ Jessica said, eyes gleaming in the flicker of the flames.

  Spike remembered the look on Christopher Massetti’s face as he’d watched the house burn. ‘You know who lives there, don’t you?’

  He must have whispered it as Jessica didn’t seem to have heard. ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Just stay here!’

  ‘Spike!’ He heard Jessica call after him, but he pushed on through, ducking beneath the cordon, dizzied by the foul aroma of drenched embers and something else. He reached the knot of emergency services personnel just as they were hoisting the woman up onto a stretcher. As they gently laid her down, the sheet covering her body slipped.

  The woman’s hair and eyebrows were gone, and all that remained of her nightdress was a blackened web entwined with her charred flesh. But beneath the blistered skin, Spike recognised the shape of her face, the small sharp chin that Dr Eloise Capurro had raised at him defiantly as he’d upbraided her on the stand.

  Suddenly he felt a hand grab his forearm and twist. He glanced up and saw it was Isola, Jessica standing next to him, her face filled with bewilderment and irritation. Isola gave Spike a shove in her direction. ‘Do your fucking job, Navarro,’ he hissed. ‘Get him out of here.’

  Spike watched Isola stride away, then turned to Jessica. ‘It’s her.’

  ‘What?’ She wouldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘It’s Eloise Capurro.’

  28

  The next morning Spike awoke, as he was prone to, exactly one minute before his alarm was due to go off. The sun was already streaming through the sides of the blue linen curtains, and just for a moment he felt happy, listening to Jessica snoring gently beside him. But then the image of Eloise Capurro’s blistered face forced its way into his mind; the spectral figure of Christopher Massetti watching as the Old Town burned.

  Jessica stirred; Spike was about to embark on the high-risk operation of coaxing her awake
when he remembered she was now on maternity leave. So he rolled as gracefully as he could from the futon and crept into the shower, hoping that the warm, brackish water would do its work, soothe his body and mind. As he lowered his head beneath the spray, he tried to persuade himself again that there was still a possibility Massetti had had nothing to do with the fire. Perhaps Eloise Capurro had been a smoker; most doctors he knew were. And the fact that Massetti had been hanging around Governor’s Street was hardly conclusive – it wouldn’t be the first time. The police ought to be checking the Alameda Gardens: they’d probably find him slumped under a park bench, sleeping off another heavy night.

  Stepping out of the shower, Spike picked up his razor and cleaned the mist from the mirror. Each swipe of the blade took a month off him. Five minutes later, he contemplated his tanned, angular reflection and decided he looked . . . well, forty. Finding the bedroom deserted, he slipped on a fresh cotton shirt and followed Jessica downstairs.

  The scene that met him in the kitchen might have been the subject of a genre painting entitled ‘Domestic Harmony’. Spike paused in the doorway to savour the tableau – Charlie kneeling on his chair over a bowl of Cheerios, tracing the letters on the back of the cereal box with one finger. Jessica, barefoot at his shoulder, edging him closer to literacy. And Rufus, comb grooves still clear in his silver hair, laying rashers of bacon into a frying pan that was only marginally carbonised.

  ‘Morning all,’ Spike said. Knowing that a peace offering was in order, he reached for Jessica’s hand and pressed it to his lips. She gave him a small smile, which was probably more than he deserved, so he leant over and ruffled Charlie’s hair. ‘It’s polite to say hello, Charlie.’

  But the boy just pressed his lips together, as he seemed to more and more these days when Spike was about.

  ‘Bacon sarnies all round?’ Rufus called out, as he bullied the rashers about the pan with the corner of the plastic packet.