Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti)
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Shadow of the Rock
A Spike Sanguinetti Novel
Thomas Mogford
For Ali Rea
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Two
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Part Three
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Part Four
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Part Five
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
A Note on the Author
The girl gasps as his fingernails rake the soft skin of her inner thigh. She reaches for the whisky bottle and takes a long slow drink, clear brown liquid spilling down her lips and chin. She passes the bottle to the man beside her; he screws it back into the corpuscular imprint it has formed in the sand.
Across the Strait of Gibraltar, just a few miles distant, the lights of Europe flicker, losing their strength to the dawn. The girl manoeuvres herself onto all fours, facing out to sea as the man kneels behind to hoist her thin dress to the small of her back. The first glow of the sun starts to redden the Straits; this, and the electricity spreading up the girl’s spine, convince her, ever superstitious, that her decisions must be right, that today’s actions will be vindicated.
Warm water laps at the girl’s splayed hands. The tide is coming in; she pushes herself back and forth onto the man’s strong extended fingers, grinding her knees down into the sand, watching the European shoreline lights vanish as the sun unsticks bloodily from the mire.
The man reaches forward, easing down the straps of her dress, stroking a shoulder blade. Her head lolls, hanks of dark hair hanging over multi-pierced ears. Out to sea, the morning breeze gusts on the water, drowning out the break of the waves.
The girl sucks in a sudden breath. She feels a sharp, chilly sting on the side of her neck, as though more whisky has dripped down, or some insect or jellyfish has been brought in by the tide. She tries to exhale but the breath will not come. Lifting a hand to her neck, she senses the warmth between her thighs matched by a thick, sticky gush, as a high-pitched whine distinguishes itself above the waves, like a mosquito, the girl thinks dreamily, or a punctured lilo held to the ear.
Her elbow collapses, face slapping down hard onto wet sand. Rich red pools in the film of water, turning to pink before it drains away. The girl sees his shadow darken the sky above, then feels something spatter her cheek. The spittle clings to her eye socket, quivering with the last spasms of her body. Somewhere behind, a call to prayer rings out, marking the start of another Tangiers morning.
Part One
Gibraltar
Chapter 1
Spike Sanguinetti stared across the water at the shimmering lights of Africa. A breeze was whipping in off the Straits; he held his cheek to it, testing for the dry heat of a Saharan southerly. Instead came the same moisture-laden levanter. There would be no sun in Gibraltar tomorrow.
He turned back towards Main Street. Cobblestone lanes that a few hours earlier had been jostling with tourists were now deserted – safely back aboard their cruise ships, or cloistered over the Spanish border in the cheaper pensiones of La Línea de la Concepción. The grilles of the duty-free shops were down, wooden pub tables tipped on their sides, gleaming in the lamplight from closing-time scrub-downs but failing to dry in the humidity. Spike pulled his tie free, folding it into his suit pocket. Then he turned off Main Street and entered the steep-rising maze of the Old Town.
The ancient, crumbling houses clung precariously to the skirts of the Rock. Spike climbed past them, lulled by the routine, into backstreets and alleyways too tight to permit traffic. The Church of the Sacred Heart gave a solitary toll, while high on the Upper Rock, mist was muting the floodlights, lending a yellow sodium glow to the residential buildings below.
Spike stopped as he entered Chicardo’s Passage, suddenly alert. Twenty metres ahead, silhouetted in the spectral light, stood a figure. Thickset, with a man’s broad shoulders, standing directly in front of his house. Spike watched, heart quickening, as the figure took a silent step forward, then tested the door handle.
‘Hey!’ Spike called out.
Flinching at Spike’s voice, the man turned and launched into a heavy-footed sprint. Spike waited until the figure had reached the end of Chicardo’s Passage, then doubled back the way he had come in, pacing himself for the climb ahead.
Tank Ramp, Bedlam Court, Devil’s Tower Road: Gibraltar street names were the hallmarks of its bloodstained past. After crossing a narrow passageway, Spike ran up a high-walled set of steps. A fig tree had seeded itself in the ruins of an old victualling yard; he caught a hint of mustiness in the scented leaves and raised a hand to the branches, sending a large grey ape bounding away into the darkness.
Tongues of fog licked at Spike’s face as he burst onto Castle Road, the last demarcation before the Rock became too sheer to colonise. Cars and scooters were parked tightly on the cramped pavements; he zigzagged between them, stopping at the point where Fraser’s Ramp met the road. Head resting against damp concrete, he waited, allowing his breath to steady. The levanter swept through the Rock scrub above. More low cloud drifted past floodlights. It was then that he heard the noise.
A soft scrape of shoes on flagstones, followed by a coarse, asthmatic panting. S
pike edged closer, stopping as the squat dark figure appeared on the road, chest heaving, hands on thighs. As soon as the man straightened up, Spike stepped out of the shadows and grabbed his arm.
A dusty old Fiat was parked ahead on the pavement; Spike slammed the man against it, pinning his thick neck down onto the sloping rear window. In the half-light, he made out pouchy cheeks and round, gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘Solomon?’ he said.
Chapter 2
Solomon Hassan leaned against the passenger door of the Fiat, arms by his sides, staring down at the pavement. He wore a pinstripe suit, the right trouser leg torn and the white shirt stained. His black hair was wet with grease or sweat, a tuft at the back sticking up.
‘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.