Spike hung up and reached beneath the bar stool. ‘Merci mec,’ Jean-Baptiste said as he accepted his drink. After downing it in one, he did a jig on the spot, dreadlocks clacking. ‘Now I buy for you,’ he said, turning to the bar. ‘Happy hour for Chingongo et Abid.’ His duffel bag wilted emptily on his shoulder.
As soon as Jean-Baptiste left his sightline, Spike saw something glitter at a table ahead. He crouched down, trying to catch a view through the tangle of limbs. A girl in a sparkly headscarf was passing something to a man with a bushy beard and shaven upper lip. The girl received a package in return, which she tucked into the pocket of her kaftan. As she drew back her hand, she met Spike’s eye, then looked hurriedly away, reaching over to touch the arm of her companion before turning for the exit. ‘Got to go,’ Spike said to Jean-Baptiste.
‘Comment?’
‘See you back at the hotel.’
Spike launched into the crowd as Zahra gracefully circumnavigated the table. He collided with a youth with gaps shaved into his eyebrows, who shoved him back, spitting out insults in French.
A channel opened up; Spike plunged into it. Zahra was almost at the door. ‘Wait!’ Spike called out.
A hush swept through the bar, broken only by the tuneless rendition of ‘Summertime’.
‘I’m a friend,’ Spike said. ‘I’ve seen Ángel.’
The bar hum began to reassert itself as Zahra exited. Through the misty window, Spike saw her hesitate on the pavement outside, then beckon with a hand.
Chapter 34
Spike had forgotten how tall she was. ‘Come,’ she said in her husky voice, ‘not too close.’ He kept a few metres behind her, breaking into an occasional jog. Most of her face was hidden by her headscarf, the only clear features her flashing eyes and a loose strand of black hair, swaying in the breeze.
They entered the café-clogged Place de France. On the roof of a medium-rise building, backlit so as to be visible at night, Spike saw a Dunetech billboard. Powering a Greener Future . . . Beside it was a panel advertising ‘33 Export’ beer. Alcohol was banned within the Medina and Kasbah; outside, most things seemed to go.
Zahra exited the square along an avenue of palm trees, stopping as the pavement widened out to provide a viewing platform over the Straits. Four black ceremonial cannons were pointed out to sea, primed as though to repel intruders. Moored in the bay was a green-lit cruise ship, dull Europop throbbing from its deck.
Zahra sat down on the retaining wall, folding her kaftan beneath. Some Moroccan teenagers gathered further along glanced over. When Spike appeared, they resumed their kif smoking, inured to courting couples. Spike’s legs hung beside hers above a shadowy bed of bougainvilleas.
‘You know this place?’ Zahra said.
‘No.’
‘It is the Terrasse des Paresseux. The Terrace of the Idle.’ She stared out to sea. ‘Who are you?’
‘A lawyer.’
‘You don’t look like a lawyer. Where are you from?’
Spike pointed over the Straits to the lights of Gibraltar; Zahra inclined her eyes to see. ‘The magical island for the idle English.’
‘English speakers. And it’s not an island. It’s attached to mainland Spain.’
She turned her head properly. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes held Spike’s own, causing him a momentary, unfamiliar slide in his stomach. ‘Why are you following me?’ she said.
‘I want to talk to you about Esperanza.’
‘Why should I listen?’
‘I represent a man called Solomon Hassan. He’s the chief suspect in Esperanza’s murder.’
‘So this is about money for you. Tax-free, I assume.’
‘Do you know him?’
She shook her head.
‘You argued with Esperanza. Why?’
She turned back to sea.
‘Why did you throw a drink in Esperanza’s face?’
She pulled up the sleeves of her kaftan, giving Spike a glimpse of smooth, coffee-coloured skin beneath. ‘Esperanza used to come into the club,’ she said. ‘She was friendly at first. Then I processed her card and saw she was a Castillo.’ A muezzin began to wail from a distant minaret; Zahra waited for him to finish. ‘My father was head of the Bedouin council in my village. Eight years ago, some men from Ángel Castillo’s company came to see him. They wanted to buy some land. A Bedouin burial site. Two weeks later my father disappeared.’
‘Where?’
‘Nobody knows. The elders say he took a bribe. That he’s in Rabat, spending the money on women.’ Her voice hardened: ‘He liked women.’
‘And the land?’
‘Sold. Most of the Bedouins now have jobs on the site.’
‘Did you tell Esperanza about this?’
‘At first she just laughed. Then we fought.’
‘But you saw her again?’
‘She came back to the club. She was upset. We went for a drive and she told me she’d confronted her father. The next day she was dead.’
‘Stepfather,’ Spike murmured. ‘So who killed her?’
Zahra shrugged. ‘When I found out what happened I kept away. Then you turned up in Chinatown and we had our fun with the jeep.’
‘Do you know who was driving?’
‘I thought you might.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ she said, turning again, ‘it looked like it was trying to hit you.’
Spike paused. ‘A police vehicle?’
‘Maybe.’ Her gaze returned to the European shoreline.
‘Where were you the night Esperanza was killed?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Could Marouane have killed her?’
‘He tried to touch me once. He didn’t do it again. He’s a parasite, not a killer.’
‘What were you buying just now in the café?’
She started to stand, so Spike reached into a pocket for his wallet, stopping only when he saw her look of contempt. Shaking her head, she walked away.
‘Wait,’ Spike said. ‘I’ve got Esperanza’s phone.’
‘A lawyer and a thief,’ Zahra called back. ‘How unusual.’
Spike stood and dug into another pocket. ‘There’s a text on it,’ he said. ‘From an Abd al-Manajah.’ He approached her; she was just a half-head smaller. ‘I think Esperanza had arranged to see him the day she died.’
Zahra looked down at the phone. ‘It’s a Bedouin name. Used for the city. Abd is for Abdallah. Al-Manajah is the name of the tribe.’ She passed the phone back.
‘Do you know him?’
Before she walked away, Spike thrust a business card in her hand. ‘Call me if you remember anything,’ he said. ‘Especially about Abdallah al-Manajah.’
Zahra turned the card upside down. ‘No baksheesh?’
‘Do it for Esperanza.’
‘Why should I care about her?’
‘Because she’s dead.’
Zahra strode away into the darkness. Spike checked to see if she’d dumped the card. When he looked back up, she was gone.
Chapter 35
An empty police jeep was parked on the pavement above the Sundowner Club. Street kids milled around it, kicking the tyres before running away. Spike crossed over and started climbing up to the Medina, where men were streaming out of cafés, plastic carrier bags in hands, chatting as though leaving a sports event.
Stopping at a food stall, Spike bought an avocado milkshake and some dusty unleavened bread. As he paid, he saw a bearded man watching him from beneath a street light.
Spike continued up the hill, chewing on his bread. When he looked back, the man was still following. He turned into an alleyway, then up a wider lane towards the Petit Socco. The man was still behind, his step quick and athletic. Around the next corner, Spike ducked into the first open shop he could see.
The shelves were lined with pots and jars like in an ancient apothecary. The owner creaked up from a stool, as though surprised by the custom. In the back room, Spike saw a shawled woman clipping her toenail
s as a tajine crock simmered before her.
‘Bon prix pour épices, monsieur?’ the owner said. ‘Guter Preis?’
There was a barrel in the middle of the shop; Spike crouched behind it as his pursuer appeared at the window. His beard was bushy, his upper lip entirely smooth. He carried a red rucksack on his back, which he swung off to remove a slim mobile phone. Still by the window, he made a call, talking animatedly, glancing about before finally moving out of sight.
The owner reappeared with a glass jar. Spike watched him tweezer out a series of fragrant, russet stamens, holding them one by one to the light. Spike bought the bag of saffron for old times’ sake, then chose a different route back to the hotel.
Chapter 36
‘An offence by one villain may injure a million.’
‘Room 303.’
‘You had a visitor.’
‘Quotation or fact?’
‘A police inspector.’
Spike picked up his key. ‘What did he want?’
‘To come back tomorrow.’
Spike started walking up the stairs, then stopped. ‘Do you have a telephone directory?’
‘Comment?’
‘A big book. With phone numbers.’
The receptionist turned to a shelf behind the computer point. ‘A book is a garden you carry in your pocket,’ he said as he heaved the directory onto the counter.
‘You’d need pretty big pockets for this one. Merci and . . . bonne nuit.’
‘À vous aussi.’
Silence from Jean-Baptiste’s door, the frosted panel above it dark. Spike unlocked his own room. The bed was as he’d left it: no turndown service at the Continental. He pulled off his T-shirt, opening the shutters to breathe in the warm spiced air. A pale crescent moon hung above the Straits.
After clearing a space on the dressing table, he selected Caprice No. 16 in G minor, composed by Paganini in Lucca in 1805 while he was working as court musician for Napoleon’s sister, Elisa Bonaparte. Paganini had conducted an affair with Elisa while also giving private violin lessons to her husband, Felice. The Devil looks after his own . . . The cadenzas seemed to clamp Spike’s temples like a vice. He forced himself to keep listening, shutting his eyes and seeing Arabic script and musical notes flit interchangeably beneath his lids. The caprice ended; he snapped back to life and picked up the phone directory.
Half the names were in Arabic, half in French. The same names in both languages? No ‘al-Manajahs’ anyway. He searched for ‘Abdallah’ as a surname and found two entire pages.
Reaching for his notebook, he began making a list. Ángel Castillo. Nadeer Ziyad. Toby Riddell. Marouane. Abdallah al-Manajah. Zahra . . . He tore out the sheet, crumpling it into a ball and basketball-pitching it into the bin. He was here with a simple task: delay an extradition demand. And what was he doing? Drawing up a list of suspects like some backwater Poirot. His penultimate night in Tangiers and he’d achieved nothing save for a possible meeting with the local governor. The prison . . . He needed to go to the prison, seek out some hard evidence.
Grabbing the phone book again, he flicked through for the most common Jewish surnames: Benunes, Israel, Larache, Levy . . . His mobile phone was ringing; he hit ‘pause’ on the iPod. Number withheld. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s Galliano.’
‘Qué pasa?’
‘I’m afraid there’s been some news.’
Spike shot up from his chair. ‘Dad?’
‘What? No, no. Nothing like that.’
Spike felt his lungs deflate as he sat back down.
‘They’ve done the second post-mortem in Madrid.’
‘And?’
‘Traces of DNA.’
‘I thought they’d been degraded by the salt.’
‘Not on the body.’
‘The knife?’
‘No.’
‘Underwear?’
‘It seems that no good deed goes unpunished, Spike,’ Galliano said. ‘The girl was two weeks pregnant. And there’s a ninety-nine per cent genetic match with Solomon Hassan.’
Chapter 37
After a night of disturbing dreams, Spike awoke to find the city back in Ramadan mode. The Mendoubia public park was strewn with sans-papiers face down on the grass, as though there’d been a street festival the night before and they hadn’t quite made it home. Tethered goats grazed around outstretched limbs.
Once through the commercial zone, the petit taxi drove past various small-scale industrial concerns – brickworks, sawmill, bus depot. Spike assumed they’d reached the prison when he saw a gate topped with razor wire; instead, the hand-painted Coca-Cola billboard above the walls revealed it as a bottling plant.
The road grew narrower, flanked by scrubland and the occasional caved-in building. Past the next hill, Spike saw Chinatown nestling in its sweaty hollow. The taxi began to slow, stopping at another set of gates. A Moroccan flag dangled from a pole, blood red with a green star in the middle. A metal car barrier was presided over by CCTV cameras.
Spike paid the driver and got out. Two women in burkas were chatting on the pavement, each with a child tugging at a black-cloaked arm. Spike buzzed the door panel. ‘Visita,’ he said as a Coca-Cola lorry lumbered behind.
As he reached to buzz again, a jeep with tinted windows turned off the road. The barrier bounced up and the gates began to open. Spike waited, then followed the jeep inside.
The gates clanked closed. The air throbbed with stillness. Somewhere a cicada buzzed.
Passing the entrance the jeep had taken, Spike saw a courtyard of parked cars. He stopped at a wooden hut, occupied by a heavy man sharing a spicy dish with the flies.
‘Visita.’
The man stashed his carton guiltily out of sight. His face was so fat that the flesh pushed his eyes shut, reducing his vision to a slit of skin.
‘Visite,’ Spike tried, guessing at the French. ‘Levy,’ he added, handing over a sheet of paper on which the receptionist had written out the surname in Arabic. The guard slimmed his eyes still further, then picked up a Bakelite phone and waited for the connection.
Just past the hut, a two-tiered gate gave onto one of the yards of the prison. The ground was dusty and sun-drenched; in the only shady corner sat a group of men hugging their knees.
Spike moved towards the bars. One of the men shielded his eyes then stood. He took a step forward as another prisoner yanked him back by the tunic. He broke free, loping across the yard. His beard was russet, his forehead pink and flaky. He hurled himself at the bars, one sandal still on, the other left behind in the dirt, shouting in a language Spike did not recognise.
‘Hellas,’ he yelled, just inches from Spike’s face. ‘Hellas, Hellas . . .’
One of the other prisoners was striding over, dark tufty beard down to his chest.
‘Greece,’ the sunburnt man shrieked, ‘ambassada, ambassada . . .’
With a creaking of hinges, the guard emerged from his hut. Drawing his truncheon, he strolled towards the gate, shouting as he swung at the bars. The man gave a bird-like cry as the truncheon crushed his knuckles, and fell to the ground. The prisoner behind him laughed as the guard raised his truncheon again.
‘Hey!’ Spike called out, stepping between the guard and the gate. ‘Visite.’
Tucking the truncheon under his arm, the guard took Spike’s piece of paper out of his pocket and tore it neatly in two. Spike swore at him in English, then turned to the sound of a clank from the opposite end of the walkway. Another jeep was driving in.
The gates were starting to close. Spike set off rapidly towards them, hearing the guard shouting behind him as he slipped between the gap.
The ladies in burkas were still on the pavement. Spike walked past them, waving down a petit taxi on the other side of the road. ‘Medina,’ he said, and the cab performed a U-turn and headed back to town.
Chapter 38
‘Right then, you charavaca,’ Spike swore down the phone, ‘one more lie, one more half-truth, and I throw you to the wolv
es. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long do we have?’
Solomon gulped at the other end of the line. ‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Then get ready to talk. Did you kill her?’
‘God, Spike. No.’
‘But you were sleeping with her.’
‘Yes.’
‘How many times?’
‘Twice . . . once.’
‘Which is it?’
‘I don’t know. The first time didn’t . . . work.’
‘Didn’t work?’
‘Couldn’t.’
‘Where?’
‘We went to the Museum of Ethnography. Then to a hotel bar, the El Minzah. She had a few drinks, then went crazy. Pulled me into the toilet but I was too . . . taken aback. So I asked her to dinner at my flat. I’d ordered up some pills online. Things went . . . better. I told her I wanted to see her again. When I asked her if she was sleeping with other people, she just laughed.’
‘Which other people?’
‘Men she picked up. Women.’
‘Their names?’
‘I don’t know, Spike, I just know there were others. A few days later, we arranged to meet at the club. We watched a woman and a man dance. I didn’t like it so we went outside. The rest is as I told you.’
‘So who killed her?’
‘I don’t know. Someone on the beach. Or from the club.’
‘The barman?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘Why did you lie before?’
‘I thought you might not take my case.’
‘Why?’
‘If you knew I was sleeping with her you’d think I had motive.’
‘You do have motive, cortapisha. Did you know she was pregnant?’
Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) Page 10