‘Is that part of the official business plan?’
Regina leaned in close to let Spike light her thin cigarette with a tea light. Her scent was sharp and musky, like a man’s cologne. ‘It’s what’s exciting investors, I can tell you that much. Why else headquarter the company in Tangiers? It’s smaller than Casablanca and Rabat. But closer to Europe. Isn’t that what’s always made Tangiers special?’
Spike put down the candle and reached over to the shining shaft of the heliopod. He whipped back his hand: felt like he’d just been stabbed with a pin.
‘Ouch,’ Regina said.
‘Not such a friendly source of energy after all,’ Spike said, shaking his fingers.
Regina took a step forward. She had a pair of oversize designer sunglasses hooked to her top, their weight tugging down the silk to reveal a smooth arc of breast. ‘I’m stuck here with my trade mag till they sign,’ she said. ‘Want to grab a drink in town?’
‘Maybe some other time.’
She tapped at her clutch bag. ‘Not tempted by the local specialities?’
Spike shook his head, and Regina shrugged, sliding on her sunglasses and setting off in the direction of the house, a swarm of eyes following her haunch as she swayed across the flagstones. When she was gone, Spike looked down at his hand. A small, greenish burn scored the index nail.
Chapter 41
High-wattage uplights blazed from the terrace. A cicada in an olive bough duetted with an unseen sprinkler. Spike zoned in on it, amazed as usual that something so small could create such a racket.
Alongside the panel that controlled the pool lights was a doorway. Still facing the terrace, Spike leaned against it, feeling behind for a handle. It twisted and he held it down, kicking backwards with his heel. Another quick glance at the guests, and he stepped inside.
The air had the close, mushroomy smell of an old cellar. Spike felt for the switch and watched the strip lights wink and flicker, eventually revealing a damp concrete stairwell. Downstairs was another switch. A dingy, gaping underground space emerged.
Ranged along one side of the garage was a collection of gardening equipment: rakes, hosepipes, shiny four-pronged forks. Beneath the mouldy ceiling ran a bank of video monitors, each displaying black-and-white images of the terrace, the driveway, the gatehouse, the turning circle, two cars already pulling out . . . Spike located his petit taxi, still parked beside the Bentley. A row of numbers updated at the base of the screen. Beneath lay a metal chair flanked by an ashtray and a Moroccan newspaper.
On the other side of the garage, four vehicles were parked, noses pointed towards a ramp which appeared to lead up to the turning circle. A yellow Ferrari, a Hummer with glittering wheel spokes, the silver Mercedes which had picked Spike up. And a jeep with tinted windows and bull-bar bumper.
The jeep was painted electric blue. Putting his champagne flute down on the concrete, Spike delved into his pocket for a ten-dirham coin, then crouched to the mudguard and scraped at the bodywork. Nothing happened so he twisted the coin in a circle. Powdery flakes came away; he brushed them off and saw jet-black paint beneath.
A metallic clank sounded from upstairs. Spike crouched behind the jeep. Footsteps on the concrete, slow then quick; flattening himself, he peered beneath the chassis and caught a flash of diamanté.
Spike rose to his feet. Regina’s long legs were tensed in their gleaming heels. Her tuxedo jacket was draped over her forearm like a sommelier’s towel. She threw it onto the metal chair and it fell to the floor. Her bra was a similar pale pink to her skin.
‘Bit hot up there, is it?’ Spike called out, glancing suspiciously over her shoulder. As he stooped to pick up her jacket, he checked her eyes. The pupils were dilated, rolling back and forth in her head as though drawn by a magnet.
Regina smiled lazily as she put down her handbag. A new image was flickering on the monitors above her head: a black-and-white Toby Riddell, striding across the empty side of the terrace. As Riddell reached the heliopod he paused, hand testing for something tucked in the waistband of his chinos. Spike turned to the opposite wall, where a small black CCTV camera was fixed. On one of the monitors, Riddell’s arm was extending for the gatehouse door.
Spike looked back to Regina. Her bra was unfastened, exposing two neat, coral nipples. She beckoned at Spike, pupils still rolling, and he stepped forward to kiss her. Her saliva had a sharp chemical taste. ‘Fuck me,’ she hissed in his ear, Scandinavian accent thickening. ‘Fuck me on the Ferrari.’
Spike felt her tongue probe forcefully against his. From upstairs came a creak; he slid his hand across her stomach and cupped a breast.
‘Squeeze it,’ she breathed. ‘Harder.’
Taking the stiffening nipple in his fingertips, Spike steered her round until she was facing the stairwell. She’d unclipped her trousers: no underwear, the smooth, pinker skin between her thighs hairless save for a slim strip of blonde. She reached down to his flies: ‘Hel-lo . . .’ she began, before suddenly tensing up and drawing her elbows across her chest.
Spike turned to see Riddell on the bottom stair, hand still tucked beneath his jacket. He drew Regina close, face twisted in disgusted shock. ‘Some privacy, maybe?’ he shouted.
Riddell continued to stand.
‘Piss off!’ Regina snarled, pressing her half-naked body to Spike’s.
Riddell took a hesitant backward step, catching the leather sole of his shoe and stumbling, hand still beneath jacket. He held his watery eyes on Regina, before turning and climbing back up to the door.
‘Pervert,’ giggled Regina, leaning in and gnawing at Spike’s lower lip. He drew away and pointed at the camera. ‘Not sure we want to end up online.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Behind the Hummer?’
‘Probably best not.’
Regina started to blink, as though slowly becoming aware of where she was. She shook her glassy eyes in an attempt to focus, then reached down for her trousers. Spike passed over her bag and jacket, zipping himself up and taking her hand to lead her, dressed, up the car ramp at the other end of the garage. There was a red lever box on the wall; Spike yanked it down and the gates began to open.
They emerged at the edge of the turning circle. Most of the cars were gone but the petit taxi was still waiting. Regina laid her head on Spike’s shoulder, twining a white lock of hair around one finger. ‘Feel a bit sick,’ she said in her sing-song accent.
Spike stuck a thumb up at the taxi driver. ‘Still time for a loosener?’ he asked Regina.
She brightened, lifting her head, and they walked back through the tunnel to the pool terrace. There were fifteen or so guests left, all gathered by the bar. The band had packed up; of Nadeer and Riddell there was no sign. Seeing Nadeer’s overweight American friend, Spike led Regina over. ‘Do you two . . .?’
‘Oh sure,’ the Texan drawled. ‘Reggie’s gonna do a piece on me.’
‘Maybe you could give her a lift into town.’
‘If she’ll wait till this numbskull masters the mint julep.’
Spike turned to Regina. Her jawbone poked in and out as she chewed her teeth.
‘Got to go,’ Spike said.
‘What?’
‘Boat to catch.’
‘But –’
He squeezed her hand – ‘Sorry’ – then set off back to the turning circle.
Chapter 42
The usual traffic hierarchy had been reversed, cars waiting for pedestrians, the road a pavement, choked with people, the majority fighting their way towards a single narrow gateway in a whitewashed wall.
‘What’s going on?’ Spike said.
‘Le Jour Sacré,’ the taxi driver replied. ‘When the Gates of Heaven are open to all.’
‘Is there another way through?’
White minivans were parked on the pavements, either having disgorged their passengers or abandoned their journeys altogether. Blankets patchworked the road, women in headscarves selling branches of foliage, slowing progress further as the customers
haggled and paid. From behind the walls came the distant sound of chanting.
‘Marshan Cemetery,’ the taxi driver said. ‘Oldest for all Tangiers.’
‘I’ll walk then,’ Spike said. The taxi driver counted his notes, tonguing the gap between his teeth more quickly.
Once through the gate, the cemetery sloped ahead, an uneven rectangle the size of two football pitches, ended by clifftops and the sea beyond. The gravestones were intersected by pathways, the widest running down the centre, lined by beggars, wailing as they held out warty, palsied palms in supplication.
The crowd swept Spike on. The chanting and incense grew heady, intermingled with saline gusts from the sea. Spike turned onto a smaller path: the graves were like concrete bathtubs sunk into the ground, headstones where the taps might have been. Some sprouted with grass, mulched by sprays of decaying flowers.
Spike watched a man and woman approach, escorted by a beggar with a hoe who set to work scraping away the weeds. The woman carried a water bottle; she sluiced it over the headstone, cleaning off the dirt, worrying at the engraving with her fingernails. Her husband beckoned to a holy man, who came over and planted joss sticks in the soil, reciting from the Koran as the woman pressed her face into her husband’s chest.
Spike walked to the cliff face, sitting down on a bare patch of dirt. White horses reared in the Straits: the Gut, twisting away with its secret currents. Sickle-shaped swifts screamed above, preparing to migrate south. The murmur of the crowd started blending with the chanting, as though the mourners were singing their own requiem.
Spike took out his phone and texted Galliano: ‘Extradition dropped. Taking night boat home.’ Then he stood and went to a side exit.
Chapter 43
‘Ouai?’
‘It’s Spike.’
The door opened. Jean-Baptiste’s chest was bare above a pair of baggy Aladdin trousers, his brown nipples like tired eyes above the round prurient mouth of his navel. Spike followed him in, bag over shoulder. The air reeked sweetly.
‘Where you go last night?’ Jean-Baptiste said as he picked up a remote control and sat down on the bed.
‘Business.’
‘Your friend?’
Spike nodded as the sound of the TV monitors muted. On-screen, an actor with a widow’s peak was pinned against a wall, knife point stretching to a nostril.
‘I’m going home,’ Spike said.
Jean-Baptiste picked up a rubber band and fastened his dreadlocks into a ponytail.
‘Can I buy you a drink at the port?’
‘Have to finish this movie, uh?’
Spike laid a hotel envelope on the mattress.
‘No money . . .’
‘Good,’ Spike said, ‘because there isn’t any. I’ve got a friend in Gibraltar called Sebastian Alvarez. He runs cigarettes over the border to Spain. If you can make it into Gib, he’ll get you across in his fishing boat. Phone number’s in the envelope.’
Jean-Baptiste prodded the envelope with a finger.
‘There’s a Gibraltarian on the dock who can arrange passage. He takes euros.’
‘My Chingongo,’ Jean-Baptiste said, smiling. ‘Maybe I do come for –’
‘Be seeing you, Jean-Baptiste.’
Downstairs, Spike settled up. ‘Money is like a rose,’ the receptionist said as he handed Spike his receipt. ‘Smell it and pass it onto the next person.’
‘Did the policeman come back?’
‘Not yet.’
Spike reached over the counter. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’
‘Life without friends is like couscous without salt.’
‘What is that you’re reading?’
‘Mysteries are the –’
‘OK, OK.’
Down by the quayside, Spike purchased a half-bottle of whisky and waited at a café, plugged into his iPod. The lights of the catamaran began to approach, passengers already out on deck. He looked down at his ticket. Gibraltar, Jebel Tariq . . . The screen of his mobile illuminated and he swatted out his earphones. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s me.’ The voice was husky and low.
‘Zahra?’
‘I found his address.’
‘Whose?’
‘Abdallah al-Manajah’s.’
‘In Tangiers?’
‘Terrasse des Paresseux. Half an hour.’
Out in the Straits, the catamaran slotted into the port like the last missing piece of a jigsaw.
Chapter 44
Zahra was waiting in the shadows on the Terrasse des Paresseux. Her headscarf was tied beneath her chin to reveal a large mobile mouth with dark, cushion lips. She wore a white dress over her kaftan, fastened with a sash. Her smile vanished as quickly as it had arrived. ‘You smell like cheap perfume.’
‘Whisky.’
‘Yesterday kif, today whisky?’ She strode away along the line of cannons into the Place de France. The cafés were closing, a seller of individual cigarettes padlocking his wooden cart for the night.
Spike adjusted his overnight bag on his shoulder and caught her up. ‘I didn’t think you would call.’
‘Esperanza wanted to see Abdallah al-Manajah,’ Zahra said. ‘Maybe he will know something about my father.’
The sky was a dark, denim blue, the moon still too thin to shed light. They crossed over the rue de Belgique. The smaller residential streets had potholes in the macadam and beaten-up cars on the pavements, the apartment blocks seeming to date from an earlier, more optimistic period, acanthus scrolls crumbling above doorways like in old-world Paris.
‘How did you find the address?’ Spike said.
‘I asked a friend.’
‘The man with the red rucksack?’
‘Who?’
‘From the Café des Étoiles?’
Zahra stopped. ‘You are spying on me now, Somerset?’
‘It’s Spike.’
‘Why “Spike”?’
‘Because it’s better than Somerset.’
‘Is Somerset a family name?’
‘My mother was a fan of the English short story.’
A white, Velcro-strapped trainer emerged from Zahra’s dark robes as she picked her way across the rubble. ‘It’s 13C, rue des Rosiers.’
The bell pushes were unmarked. Zahra pressed the third one down. Nothing happened so she tried the same on the next column.
A light flashed on; someone was coming out. Spike and Zahra drew back like caryatids on either side of the entrance as it opened to an old woman in black. As soon as the woman stepped into the road, Spike moved forward and caught the door. She turned and stared; Spike stared back and she shuffled away into the darkness.
‘After you,’ Spike said as Zahra came forward, ducking elegantly beneath his arm like an Elizabethan dancer. Inside, envelopes marked with dirty footprints littered the doormat. The ground-floor flat was 13A; they climbed the drab stairwell to 13C.
The doorbell was silent so Zahra knocked instead. ‘Why don’t you try his phone?’ she said, turning to Spike.
‘He never answers.’
Zahra stared at him until he took out Esperanza’s mobile. From inside they heard a long, distant ringtone. She cast him a querulous glance then rapped again. As she turned to leave, he dropped to his knees and slotted an arm through the letter box.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed.
‘Just watch the stairs.’
He contorted his arm upwards. Blood poured into his head as he strained his fingertips towards cold metal. With one last surge he got hold of the latch and yanked it down. The door shifted, tugging at his shoulder blade. He released the latch and removed his hand.
‘You’re very flexible.’
‘I think it runs in the family.’
The door fell an inch open, releasing a dank putrid aroma. Spike put his shoulder to the frame. Something was blocking it. ‘Hello?’ he called through the gap. ‘Can you try in Arabic?’ he said to Zahra.
‘You think that makes a difference?’
‘Could
do.’
‘Salaam?’ she said. ‘Billatí?’ She withdrew, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Spike barged the door again. It moved a foot this time, allowing him to edge crabwise inside, arm extended for the switch. She followed him in, momentarily throwing them into darkness as she blocked the gleam from outside. Sweeping his hand up and down, he found metal again and the lights crackled on.
The flat was open-plan with a high-beamed ceiling and a mezzanine level accessed by a fixed wooden ladder. A halo of bulbs shone above a motionless fan; there seemed to be a problem with the circuit as they kept flickering on and off.
‘Ya Allah,’ Zahra said.
At first Spike assumed the flat had been ransacked. It looked as though the contents of a skip had been emptied out. The door had been blocked by an armchair, one of three crammed next to each other, springs jabbing one to the other. A racing-green picnic table was heaped with string-bound Arabic newspapers, a tangle of anglepoise lamps beneath.
Zahra shoved the door closed. On top of a stack of microwaves sat a gramophone, vinyl records in a crate alongside. She drew one out, nose still wrinkling: the sleeve showed a Moroccan in a handlebar moustache and seventies string vest. She reached into the gramophone cylinder, emerging with a tangle of round spectacles, most missing a lens. ‘Doesn’t he throw anything away?’
Spike glanced to his left. Along the far edge of the flat ran a kitchenette, its floor space covered in empty jars and cans, a knife block on the work surface over-jammed with blades. The aroma of rotting food seemed to issue from there. The lights went out again; Spike heard a clatter as Zahra grabbed his shoulder. ‘What was that?’
The lights blinked on to reveal a tabby cat slinking through the detritus. It turned to Spike and Zahra, stripy tail swishing, before hopping onto the arm of a sofa.
Spike squeezed between the furniture towards the only clear space, a nook beneath the mezzanine where a free-standing plasma TV rose like an altar before a canvas director’s chair.
Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) Page 12