‘It’s tax efficient, I suppose,’ Spike conceded.
Peter clenched a fist and shook it in his face. ‘Exactly!’
Judging by the bloodshot quality of Peter’s eyes, and the syrupy smell on his breath, he’d kept drinking long after the party had wound up. Spike wondered idly with whom.
‘And about that document we discussed,’ Peter resumed. ‘Alan Cassar says he’s more than happy to sign it, though I must say I’m a touch disappointed that you’d put such a petty point of principle before . . .’
Mercifully, this morning’s ‘Peter Galliano Ethics Lecture’ was cut short by a rap at the door. Peter swung round in irritation, but as ever, Ana Lopes was entirely unmoved by her employer’s histrionics. ‘Apologies for interrupting such an important meeting, gentlemen,’ she said with that sly, innocent smile she did so well. ‘But Sir Anthony Stanford is here.’
Peter’s face lit up.
‘Bad luck, Peter. He didn’t ask for you.’ Ana turned to Spike. ‘I put him in your office.’
‘Whatever he wants,’ Peter called out, rubbing his hands together like a housefly, ‘sign him up.’
The whistling had started before Spike even reached the door. Spike recognised the tune: the Ginger Rogers standard, ‘We’re in the Money’.
38
Sir Anthony had already made himself at home in the armchair opposite Spike’s desk, legs crossed, one foot jogging with impatience. ‘Glass of water?’ Spike asked, and the old man gave a brisk nod without meeting his eye.
Spike turned towards the crystal decanter set on the sideboard, another of the expensive affectations Peter had demanded when they’d started up the firm. Spike was unsure when its contents had last been refreshed, but if Sir Anthony noticed the motes of dust swirling in the water, he didn’t say.
As soon as Spike sat down, he could see that Sir Anthony was not himself. He’d missed a coin of silver stubble on the side of his jaw and the front of his monogrammed shirt was creased. He was hunching over his sling, so it was only when he sat back that Spike realised he was almost shaking with anger.
‘Now you listen to me,’ Sir Anthony said, raising an index finger, the nail split and ridged. ‘I don’t care for scurrilous insinuation, particularly in my own home.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Anthony,’ Spike replied, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him.
‘You know exactly what I mean. Taunting me with talk of that fascist charlatan.’
Spike opened his desk drawer and took out Massetti’s photograph of the three young men at the bar in La Línea. He slid it over the desk and waited, intrigued to see how the old man would react. Sir Anthony used his good hand to remove a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket and nudge them on. The furrows on his brow deepened. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Does it matter?’
Sir Anthony took a sip of water as he considered his next move. ‘What you need to understand is that at the time, these were issues of national security. We can talk off the record, I suppose?’
‘I’m not a journalist, Anthony.’
The old man raised his damaged wrist so he could rest it on the arm of the chair. ‘At the start of the war, Gibraltar was in a precarious position.’ He lowered his head to peer at Spike over his spectacles, perhaps trying to ascertain how much the younger man was likely to know about 1940s Gibraltar. Not much, thought Spike, and it didn’t take Sir Anthony long to reach the same conclusion as he sighed and prepared himself to begin with the basics. ‘General Franco was in hock to Hitler for his assistance in the Spanish Civil War, and by the end of 1939, Spain was full of Nazis. There were howitzers in the hills above Algeciras, their barrels trained on the Rock.’ Sir Anthony shook his head at the sheer audacity of it. ‘Then Mussolini entered the war, and it looked as though the Italian fleet would take control of the Mediterranean. Vichy France had captured Morocco, so the threat to the Rock was threefold – from Spain, North Africa and the sea.’ Sir Anthony looked up from under puffy pink eyelids at the flaking paint on the ceiling. ‘I was sixteen at the time. My father was a retired British corporal, but he was also an alcoholic. He could be . . . unpredictable. In retrospect, I suppose it must have been very hard for my mother.’ He dropped his gaze to meet Spike’s. ‘But you’d know all about that, of course.’
Spike looked away, remembering his own mother’s volatile moods. The litany of painful incidents she’d begged him to conceal from Rufus. The shaming relief he’d felt when she’d finally given up on herself – and them.
‘Money was tight’ – Sir Anthony was still talking – ‘so in the holidays I took whatever casual work I could find. Water carrier. Pot washer. But as the hostilities increased, more and more servicemen began streaming into Gib, and servicemen, as I expect you remember, have certain appetites. U-boat activity made the beer ships unreliable, so those with a bit of entrepreneurial flair could make good money importing essentials from Spain. There was a market for Red Biddy, the soldiers called it – a mixture of red wine and methanol that would strip the flesh from the back of your throat. They needed a team of boys to run it over the border – that, and a few other contraband items as well.’
‘So you were a black marketeer, Anthony?’ Spike couldn’t help but smile.
‘I was a young man trying to help keep his family afloat,’ Sir Anthony retorted. ‘The immorality of the thing never occurred to me. At least, not until the night I was stopped at the frontier.’ Sir Anthony pulled off his glasses and sat back. ‘The guards took me in for questioning, and I assumed they would transfer me to the Moorish Castle. Lock me up. But then a man came into the hut. I didn’t learn his real name until much later, but he called himself Bowers. Claimed he’d fought with my father at Cambrai. Well, Bowers told me I had a choice. That there was a way I could pay off my debt – and help the war effort at the same time.’ Sir Anthony snorted derisively. ‘Some choice! The penalties for marketeering were harsh – a fine I could never have paid and two years in gaol. But then Bowers said I’d be working for the SIS, and that was it, I was sold. Hook, line and sinker.’ Sir Anthony raised his tufted eyebrows. ‘He’d massaged the truth, of course, as they all do, but I wasn’t to know that then.’ He paused, eyes clouding a little as he remembered that conversation from so long ago. ‘La Línea was swarming with German spies, Bowers told me. They needed people they could trust to keep an ear to the ground. It wasn’t much at first. My reports, such as they were, were anecdotal – a sense of the German presence in La Línea, that kind of thing. But Bowers seemed pleased, and after a few weeks, he made contact again and said he had a mission for me.’ Even now, the memory brought a boyish glow to Sir Anthony’s face. ‘The Security Service had a particular interest in a Spanish nationalist living in La Línea. A man who was working with the Germans to plan an assault on military targets in Gibraltar. His name, of course, was Raúl de Herrera.’ Sir Anthony enunciated the Spanish slowly, with relish and precision. ‘De Herrera was building a network of spies and potential saboteurs, seeking out the disenfranchised, the disillusioned – young men he could influence and mould. Like many of us in Gib, I had relatives in Spain, and an uncle on my mother’s side had been killed by the Reds in the Civil War. Bowers was aware of that, of course, and knew it was just the kind of thing that would make me an appealing target for de Herrera.’ Sir Anthony’s smile was thin now, bitter. ‘The first meeting wasn’t hard to engineer. I made sure to frequent de Herrera’s usual haunts, then one evening he asked me to join him at his table. Plied me with brandy, tried to impress me with his poetry.’ Sir Anthony gave a sniff. ‘Dismal stuff, but then I’ve never had much of a taste for it. Before long, we were meeting regularly, and each time I gained a little more of his trust. Made him think he’d found a willing acolyte he could manipulate.’ He rolled the shoulder of his bad arm with a grimace, and Spike found himself wondering to what lengths a teenaged boy might have been persuaded to go for King and Country. ‘It wasn’t long before de Herrera began t
alking openly about the need for direct action against the British. An act of sabotage so daring it would send a message to the Allies – and devastate morale amongst Gibraltar’s civilian population. And then, one night, he revealed his target. The Royal Navy Dockyard.’ Sir Anthony allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction in recognition of a job well done.
‘So why did the bomb go off, Anthony?’ Spike asked, making no effort to temper the scepticism in his voice.
Sir Anthony frowned.
‘De Herrera had told you of his plans. But this man’ – Spike tapped a finger on Esteban Reyes’s handsome brow – ‘still succeeded in blowing up the Dockyard.’
Sir Anthony gazed back at Spike for a moment with his bright crow’s eyes, but then he looked away, and it was as though a door had slammed shut. When he spoke again, it was in that patronising tone his son favoured when questioning a witness he wished the jury to conclude was well meaning, but a tad slow-witted. ‘Intelligence is an imperfect art, Spike. Especially in times of war. Not every act of sabotage can be prevented.’ He placed one hand on the desk and started to prise himself out of the low chair. ‘Our overriding objective was to prevent Spain from entering the war. And in that regard, we succeeded admirably.’ The look on Sir Anthony’s face left Spike in no doubt that the discussion was closed, so there was nothing left to do but take the old man’s elbow and escort him through reception.
‘How’s the arm?’ Spike asked, feeling the weight of Ana Lopes’s inquisitive gaze upon them.
‘At my age, these things take a little longer to heal.’ Sir Anthony turned and, almost as an afterthought, added, ‘So where did you get that photograph? The National Archives at Kew?’
Two can play at that game, Spike thought. So he just smiled. ‘Do give my best to Drew.’
Perhaps it was the intensity of the expression on Sir Anthony’s face when he’d enquired about the photograph, or maybe it was just that he was the second person to have mentioned Kew to Spike in the space of a month. But when he got back to his desk, something made him flip open his laptop and log onto the website of the National Archives. There was a box marked ‘Explore our Records’ at the top of the screen; Spike clicked on it, then dragged the cursor down towards ‘Second World War’.
39
As usual at this time of year, the humidity had caused the lock at Chicardo’s to tighten like an oyster, and it caught on the first twist of Spike’s key. Nerves frayed by an afternoon spent needlessly redrafting an opinion on the instructions of an overpaid London associate many years his junior, Spike felt a sudden burst of rage, and had to stop himself from doing further damage to the woodworm-raddled door-frame with his foot. At last the lock yielded, and the blare of the telly struck him like a cosh – ‘You can fly, you can fly, you can fly, you can fly . . .’ Peter Pan – again. Spike checked the time. 7.40 p.m. Rufus must still be in charge.
In the sitting room, he found both man and boy topless. But seeing the wide-eyed exhilaration on Charlie’s face, Spike felt his frustration ebb away. Charlie raised a hand for a distracted high-five, eyes trained on the screen as Michael and John Darling defied gravity.
Spike sank down into the sofa and leant his head back. A new canvas was drying by the wall, a study of the chapel in Catalan Bay. ‘What happened to the Mamela Rock?’
‘Old Davey wouldn’t let me sketch from his terrace today,’ Rufus replied, the perceived slight obvious from the set of his lips. ‘Had to find something different.’
‘Old Davey? He’s younger than you, Dad.’
Rufus ignored him. ‘He told me he’s selling up. Downsizing, he called it.’
That got Spike’s interest. Properties in Catalan Bay rarely came up for sale. ‘Is the house on the market?’
‘No clue. Look, Charlie, there’s Skull Rock,’ Rufus said, and the little boy shrieked in anticipation, shuffling into a kneeling position in his red underpants.
‘Is Jessica in bed?’ Spike asked.
‘Eh?’ His father was as engrossed as the four-year-old. ‘No, no. Gone to the station.’
‘She’s on maternity leave, Dad.’
‘Well, that’s what she told me.’ Rufus jabbed a finger at the screen. ‘That rascal is Smee, Charlie. He’s the evil genius of the operation, that’s my theory. It’s always the ones you least suspect . . .’
Jessica’s number went straight to voicemail. Spike lay back for just a moment, then forced himself to his feet. ‘Bye, son,’ he heard called behind him as he wrestled with the lock once again.
40
As he reached the police station, Spike looked up to see the blue glass lamps on the facade of New Mole House fizzing with suicidal moths. Shaking off the inexplicable sympathy he felt for the doomed, euphoric insects, he pushed open the doors and presented himself to the desk sergeant. ‘I’m looking for DS Navarro. Tell her it’s her fiancé.’
The sergeant pivoted a heavy forearm on the edge of his desk and nudged his mouse. His placid, bulging eyes scanned the screen. ‘She’s on maternity leave.’
Spike resisted the urge to bludgeon the man over the head with his keyboard. ‘I know that. Why don’t you try the sign-in book?’
The desk sergeant inched across for the ledger. The pace at which he moved suggested he was on a mission to burn as few calories as possible. ‘She’s in Interview Room Three. With DI Isola.’
‘Could you please let her know that Mr Sanguinetti is here?’
Spike watched as the receiver was slowly hoisted, then took himself off to wait in one of the chairs at the back of the room. The battery of his BlackBerry was dead, so there was nothing to do but stare up at the walls, at the cracked paint covered in sun-bleached bulletins and alerts. ‘Operation Gib Watch’, one poster said. The logo showed a magnifying glass enlarging the Rock above the tagline: ‘Working Together to Put Crime Between a Rock and a Hard Place’. Christ: who paid these people? Spike looked away, then found himself staring into the eyes of a mugshot he recognised.
‘WANTED: CHRISTOPHER ALEJANDRO MASSETTI’, the text beneath it read.
Massetti is sought in connection with the murder of Dr Eloise Capurro. He was last seen crossing the Spanish border at 9.50 p.m. on 4 September. He is white, around 6'2" tall with long grey-brown hair and grey eyes. At the time of his disappearance, he was wearing dark tracksuit trousers, a blue T-shirt and carrying an Adidas holdall. He should not be approached, but anyone who sees him should call police on 199. Note: If calling from Spain, please ring 900-111-555. A reward of up to £3,000 is on offer.
Who had put up the money, Spike just had time to wonder before his eyes closed.
41
‘Spike?’
He opened one eyelid, trying to work out where he was – if he’d been asleep for five seconds or five hours. Then he blinked, and Jessica came into focus, wearing the same clothes as he’d left her in that morning. She pushed a styrofoam cup of coffee into his hands and eased herself down next to him.
‘You’re meant to be at home,’ Spike growled. ‘On maternity leave.’ He took a gulp of coffee, wincing at the temperature and taste. At the periphery of his vision, he saw DI Isola emerge from an internal door with a petite young woman. Spike pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. ‘Was that Sofia Peralta?’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Jessica said in a strange, flat voice. ‘Marcela didn’t turn up at the restaurant this morning. First time in forty years.’
Spike sat up, feeling the fogginess that always assailed his mind after an unplanned nap give way to a creeping sense of unease. ‘Have you tried her apartment?’
‘Sofia has a key. The place had been turned over.’
Spike got to his feet and started to pace. ‘What about her mobile?’
‘Straight to voicemail. I’ve been trying to persuade Isola to pay for a trace, but he wants to wait another day.’
The tightest man in the Royal Gibraltar Police, Spike thought. ‘Did Sofia file a missing persons report?’
Jessic
a nodded. ‘She also said the staff at the restaurant thought Marcela had been acting strangely. Jumping every time a customer came in.’
‘As though she was scared? Of what? Massetti?’
‘Maybe.’ Jessica looked unconvinced. ‘But if Massetti had crossed the border back to Gib, we’d know about it.’ She shifted about in her chair, trying to find a more comfortable position, and Spike glanced across to see a tiny muscle twitching under her eye, like it always did when she was exhausted. ‘We should go home.’ He drained his coffee. ‘Get some sleep. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. I’ll order a cab.’
This time Jessica didn’t protest, so Spike gestured for her phone and waited for the line to connect. ‘Have you eaten anything?’
She made no reply, and when he turned back, he saw her resting her head against the wall. So he leant down and kissed her cheek, aware of the sergeant watching them from behind his desk, blinking his melancholy, bovine eyes.
42
The next morning, Spike sat at his desk with a headache, staring at the latest set of directives proposed by the European Gaming and Betting Association. EGBA missives never made for the most scintillating reading, and Spike’s task was not helped by the fact that it had been past 2 a.m. when he’d finally persuaded Jessica to come to bed. Neither of them had slept much after that, lying awake side by side, waiting for news of Marcela.
Spike’s phone rang and he snatched it up.
‘Peter here.’
‘Peter who?’ Spike said, hearing the murmur of his business partner’s voice reverberate from the next door office.
‘Very droll. Listen, I need a favour. Details of the private client account.’
‘Filing cabinet too far for you?’
A Thousand Cuts Page 11