The tax statute had downloaded; Spike checked an appendix, fountain pen in hand. Ahead, a pair of high French windows gave onto a paved patio. A date palm had centuries ago cracked through its flagstones to provide shade, not that that were needed today – the levanter breeze had drawn in a blanket of thick, humid cloud, shrouding the entire peninsula of Gibraltar, while out in the Straits, the sunshine blazed.
Spike heard the distant scrape of chair legs on parquet. The offices of Galliano & Sanguinetti had once been a grace-and-favour residence for various Royal Navy sea lords. Spike liked how their conversion reflected Gibraltar’s shift from military stronghold to financial centre. Liked that more than the work.
A rap came from the door. ‘Keep it on, keep it on,’ Peter Galliano said as Spike stretched for a remote control. ‘Anything to distract from this pipando closeness.’ He sank down into the leather armchair opposite Spike’s desk. ‘Your fellow Genoese?’
Spike nodded.
‘Didn’t he sell his soul to the Devil?’
‘Paganini had Marfan syndrome,’ Spike said. ‘A rare disorder of the connective tissue.’
‘Sounds like the Devil’s music to me,’ Galliano replied, still arranging his bulky frame in the armchair. ‘Anyway, speaking of crafty Devils . . .’
‘The Uzbeks?’
‘Back in town and meaning business.’ Galliano shunted forward in his seat. He was wearing his three-piece houndstooth suit today, a sign of an important lunch. There was even a spotted kerchief in the breast pocket, which he took out to dab at his fleshy brow. ‘Jodido levanter,’ he murmured.
Spike switched the music for the ceiling fan, the rush of air making the documents on his desk tremble.
‘Why you won’t let me buy you an air-conditioning unit,’ Galliano said, ‘I shall never . . .’
Spike let him finish, waiting for the double blink that signified his mind was focused. ‘The key,’ Spike began, ‘is to impress on them that Gibraltar’s ten per cent headline rate is for keeps. Other tax havens may give better short-term deals, but their fiscal future is uncertain. Gib will still be here, same as before. Minor expenditure for major security.’
‘Safe as the Rock of Gibraltar?’
‘You got it.’
‘And the sovereignty issue?’
‘There’s a new Foreign Office report out. Print it off.’
Galliano waved a pudgy palm. ‘Too much detail looks like weakness to your Uzbekistani.’
‘Where are you planning to take them?’
‘I thought the Eliott.’
‘There’s always that new vodka bar in Ocean Village.’
‘Ochen horosho.’ Galliano prised himself up using both armrests. With one hand he smoothed down the goatee beard he’d grown in an attempt to reclaim a long-lost jawline. In the three years since he and Spike had started up on their own – escaping the open-plan uniformity of Ruggles & Mistry, their previous employer – Galliano had had to make numerous adjustments to his wardrobe. Lunching for victory, he called it. ‘Still on that e-gaming SPV?’ he asked, seeing the statute open on Spike’s laptop.
‘Yes, but for a different company.’
He gave Spike a sideways bear hug, wafting cologne. ‘Goods and services, young Sanguinetti,’ he said, wheezing at the effort. ‘A few more years of this and think of all the goods and services. Your own palazzo in Genoa. Yo-Yo Ma playing Paganini at your dinner parties . . .’ He was still muttering as he picked up his briefcase and huffed into the entrance hall. Spike heard him curse as he met the butterfly-house humidity outside, then pause to light a Silk Cut Ultra as the doors clicked closed behind him.
Spike switched the music back on. On his desk sat a more recent photograph of his mother. He stared at her, embarrassed to be startled yet again by her beauty. He tried to catch her eye, but she was gazing out to sea, dark glossy hair tied back in a ponytail, snapped unawares on a family holiday a lifetime ago.
The intercom buzzed. ‘I know,’ Spike said, ‘goods and services . . .’
Instead of Galliano’s jocular tones came a brusque female voice. ‘Mr Sanguinetti?’
‘Sí.’
‘It’s Margo Hassan. Solomon’s mother.’
Spike’s finger hovered over the button. He depressed it and switched off the music for good.
Chapter 4
Spike indicated the leather armchair Galliano had just vacated.
‘I’d rather not,’ Margo Hassan replied curtly, ‘you’ll probably bill me.’ She stood with her legs apart on the frayed Moroccan rug that covered the office parquet. Above her faded black jeans, a scooped green top revealed a seamed and sun-weathered neck.
Spike leaned against the panelled wall, arms crossed. He remembered Mrs Hassan from his schooldays, waiting for Solomon by the gates. She’d always been a favourite with the older boys – the dyed brown hair was shorter but her sharp eyes and red lipstick remained the same. Spike had seen her around from time to time, in the way the thirty-odd thousand residents of Gibraltar did as they went about their business: a nod here, a smile there; too much courtesy and you’d never make it past your front door.
‘I’ve seen him,’ Margo Hassan said.
‘I told him to keep it quiet.’
‘The warder told a friend and that friend told me.’ Her lower lip began to quiver, sending a wave of irritation through Spike. ‘Patitu,’ she murmured. ‘I’m a bit . . . May I?’
‘Of course.’
They both sat down, Margo Hassan neat and bird-like in the armchair. Spike pointed behind him to a shelf of leather-bound spines. ‘Tax books, Mrs Hassan. I haven’t taken a criminal case in years.’
‘He wants you.’
‘Drew Stanford-Trench read law at Durham.’
‘Solomon says lawyers only practise in Gib if they can’t make it elsewhere.’
‘I’m here.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
Margo glanced at the portrait on Spike’s desk, giving him another stab of irritation.
‘He says Stanford-Trench drinks.’
‘This is Gibraltar, Mrs Hassan.’
‘That he doesn’t know about extradition treaties.’
‘Nor do I.’ Spike stared at her across the desk. He had only the vaguest memories of Mr Hassan, a short, bearded man in a skullcap who used to carry Solomon through the streets on his shoulders. He’d left Gibraltar when Solomon was still young. Just cleared out one morning – the talk was he’d wound up in Tel Aviv with a new family.
‘Please,’ Mrs Hassan said. ‘I know you two weren’t the greatest of friends at school. But this is Solomon we’re talking about. Solly. He can be pushy, ambitious. But this?’ Her voice caught as she traced four red nails across a fold of her neck. ‘He doesn’t even know how to lie. As a boy, I’d say, Do the right thing when you go to a friend’s house – even if you don’t like the food, say you do. But he never could.’
Spike remembered that attitude crucifying Solomon in the playground. ‘Mrs Hassan,’ he said, ‘there are more lawyers per capita in Gibraltar than in any other town on earth. If your son doesn’t like Drew Stanford-Trench, I can find him someone else.’
‘I want you.’ She stalled, casting about. ‘You . . . won that scholarship.’
The clouds parted behind the French windows, sending a contre-jour sunbeam onto Margo Hassan’s face. Spike took in the notches around her mouth, the translucency of her skin as it hung at a slight remove from her skull. The sky reclaimed the sun and her face darkened. ‘He won’t last five minutes,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘As a Sephardi. In a Tangiers jail. Not five minutes.’ She rose from her armchair, still staring over at Spike. ‘It’s always come so easily to you, hasn’t it?’
‘What has?’
‘I mean . . . just look at you.’
‘I’ll walk you out,’ Spike said, but she was already in the hallway, pushing through the doors onto the street.
Chapter 5
The Union Jack flapped impatiently from the portico of the Convent, the pretty pink building that was home to the governor of Gibraltar. Opposite, the beer garden of the Angry Friar pub was bustling with punters: tax-free shoppers, baffled Japanese, small-time Costa crims leafing through the day’s Sun. The pub was named after the Brotherhood of Franciscans evicted from their monastery – convento in Spanish – to make way for the British gubernatorial household, after Spain had lost Gibraltar in 1704. A group of shirtless youths was marching towards it, tattooed forearms swinging in formation. Their leader – best man, probably – glanced up at the sky, frowning at Gibraltar’s curious subtropical microclimate before joining in with his friends’ football chant.
Spike shouldered past them, the sharp iron railings of the law courts to his right, a gravel pathway running between beds of orange orchids towards a knot of chain-smoking locals awaiting their turn in the dock. The crowds grew denser; interspersed with the British high-street brands were independent Gibraltarian shops: VAT-free drink and fags, gold, perfume, electrical equipment. One name, Booze & Co., caught the tone nicely. Inside, Spike saw the shopkeeper heaping litres of Gordon’s and cartons of Winstons into the greedy arms of expats. They’d be back over the Spanish border by evening, driving their booty down to Sotogrande for a weekend pool party. A leather-faced Brit looked Spike up and down. He stared back and she winked a lazy, turquoise-lidded eye.
Behind the Horseshoe pub, pigeons pecked busily at a heap of carroty vomit. A herring gull waddled over to chase them from their savoury syllabub. As Spike climbed higher, the tourist droves began to thin and the urban beautification so beloved of the Gibraltar government – brass plaques, hanging baskets, ceremonial cannons – ceded to flaking stucco and unionist graffiti. With Britain till death do us part was daubed on one block of houses; We shall fight to the last but never surrender, a legacy of the constant threat that British sovereignty of Gibraltar be shared with Spain.
Above lay Chicardo’s and home; Spike turned left, skirting over Main Street, heading for the easternmost edge of the Old Town. Casemates Square sprawled below, the hub of Gibraltar, formerly a soldiers’ barracks and site of public executions, now full of karaoke bars and fish’n’chip stalls. Beyond spread the frontier traffic of Winston Churchill Avenue, queues of overheating cars tooting in frustration as the Spanish border officials deliberately slowed them down: the unnecessary search of the spare-tyre axle, the drawn-out phone call to check a valid EU passport. Gib was like a wart to the Spanish. Pull the noose tight enough and eventually it would drop off.
On the corner of Hospital Hill, Spike saw a group of kids, probable truants from the Sacred Heart Middle School. ‘Check it,’ the youngest one said, pointing up at the cemetery. ‘Macaco.’
Spike looked up to where a female ape perched on a headstone. Clinging to its underside was a fluffy brown ball with eyes, its fur darker than the light-grey pelt of its mother. Appropriate insulation for the snows of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, where the apes were said to have originated, less suitable here. The mother gave a hiss, flashing yellow sabre-tooth fangs. Patrolling the unweeded graveyard below was a stocky male, moving on all fours with a swagger that would have impressed the stag parties down on Main Street. Its naked pink face and absence of tail gave it a disconcertingly human quality. It made a lunge for the female, which bounded off the headstone onto a wall – baby still hanging – before thumping down onto the roof of a transit van.
‘Muncho cool,’ the youngest kid said. Time for a cull, Spike thought to himself as he walked away – when the ape colonies grew too large and started encroaching to the Old Town, the government would send in the sharpshooters with silencers.
Ahead rose the Moorish Castle, dominated by the Tower of Homage, built by the Moors when they’d captured Gibraltar in ad 711. They’d held it until the reconquest, seven centuries later, and their leader’s name had stuck, Jebel Tariq – Mountain of Tariq – had stuck, morphing over time to Gibraltar. Beneath the stone battlements ran dark, sweaty stains where the Moors had poured boiling pitch onto besieging Spaniards. Spike stared up at them, marvelling as ever at their longevity, as he came into Upper Castle Gully. Then he saw Jessica Navarro standing by her Royal Gibraltar Police van.
Chapter 6
Jessica took off her chequered hat, pinioning it beneath her short-sleeved white shirt as Spike stooped to kiss her cheek. He still had a hand on her shoulder as she drew away; she hesitated, then moved back in for the second peck.
‘How’s your schedule fixed?’ Spike said.
‘Pickpocket. Due in the Mags at half two.’
‘Looked pretty busy down there.’
‘Thought you’d given all that up, Tax Man.’
They both turned, looking up at the Rock, at the gulls circling and squawking as they dipped in and out of a grey discus of cloud. ‘Humid one today,’ Spike said.
‘Muy mahugin.’
Spike looked back. The smooth olive skin of Jessica’s forehead betrayed no hint of sweat. Her chestnut hair was gathered in a silky knot, the better to fit beneath her police hat. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked, managing to hold Spike’s eye. ‘Guilty?’
‘Solomon’s a chartered accountant, Jess. He’s capable of many things but I don’t think murder’s one of them.’
‘People can change.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
She looked away. ‘Maybe you’re right. He’s got that feel about him. Wrong place, wrong time.’
‘How do you mean?’
She shrugged, breasts shifting beneath her black stab vest. ‘He was hysterical when we brought him in. Freaking out in case he had to share his cell. But when we stuck him in solitary, he just sat there on the bunk and bowed his head. Like he was used to life doing him over. Expected it.’
‘What’s the commissioner’s take?’
‘He’s waiting to hear from you. Seems we all are.’ She stared up again. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I saw your number come up, I assumed you actually wanted to talk.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
He watched her beautiful eyes narrow with anger. ‘Don’t work too hard,’ she said. ‘All that paper-pushing is ageing you.’ She half reached up to touch his face, then let her hand fall as a clank came from above. The portcullis door of Her Majesty’s Prison opened to reveal a junior warder accompanied by a sullen, handcuffed youth in a tracksuit.
Spike walked Jessica up the slope. She signed a clipboard, escorting the pickpocket back down to her van as Spike and the warder continued on to the entrance, the fifteen-yard passage that represented the thickness of the castle’s thousand-year-old walls. There’d been attempts to move the prison wholesale to a shiny new facility on the other side of town. It still hadn’t happened.
Before going inside, Spike turned to see Jessica sharing a joke with her ward. Then she slammed the double doors behind him.
Chapter 7
Alan Gaggero stood up from the front desk. Behind him rose a bank of elderly CCTV monitors. Spread before him was the Gibraltar Chronicle crossword.
‘Stuck?’
Gaggero grinned. His grey comb-over and kindly eyes were unchanged. ‘What’s it been now, Spike?’ he said. ‘Two years?’
‘Three.’
‘Three years,’ Gaggero repeated as he ran Spike’s briefcase through the scanner.
‘Thought they were shutting this place down,’ Spike said.
‘Overspill.’
They headed in single file down the side stairs. ‘How’s your old man doing?’ Gaggero asked.
‘Está haleto. But he can still finish the crossword in ten minutes flat.’
‘I’ll have to up my game then.’
Gaggero jangled his key fob and unbolted the steel door. ‘Back in a mo,’ he said, leaving the door ajar.
Spike listened as Gaggero’s rubber soles squeaked away down the corridor. The off-white walls of the interview room were windowless and the strip lights hummed. The air smell
ed of disinfectant and was as dank as might be expected in the deepest reaches of a medieval castle. A table was nailed to the lino, carved like a school desk with initials and incomplete slogans of protest. In the corner, a black CCTV camera peered from its bracket like an alien eye.
Once Gaggero’s footsteps had faded, Spike walked over to the far wall. Leaning back against it, he took a tissue from his pocket and worked the two leaves of the material apart. He tore off a fingertip-sized piece, which he moistened with his tongue. After checking the door, he reached up and stuck the tissue to the CCTV lens. Then he returned to the table.
Tipping one of the chairs onto its side, he brought a brogue crashing down on the pivotal leg. With a few more kicks, the wood splintered. He propped the chair back up in front of the table, then went round to the other side and sat down.
His briefcase held a single-deck tape recorder, which he took out and positioned on the table. Moments later, the door opened fully and Solomon Hassan appeared, Alan Gaggero behind. ‘You remember the form,’ Gaggero said, gesturing at the wall buzzer beneath the camera.
Spike nodded.
‘Vale,’ Gaggero said. ‘Enjoy.’ He withdrew, sliding the bolt into place.
Solomon was back in his supplicatory position, head bowed, hands behind back. He wore prison denims now – belt-free trousers, coarse button shirt – and tatty flip-flops with, for some reason, a minute Brazilian flag on the straps. His skin was paler and his plump cheeks stubblier, like wintry copses seen from the air.
‘Have a seat,’ Spike said.
The chair leg gave way at once. Solomon let out a yelp, making a lunge for the table but toppling sideways onto the lino.
Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) Page 2