Hollow Mountain

by Thomas Mogford

  Jessica spoke into her radio and called to Isola. He nodded, then gunned the engine and began speeding towards the stricken ship.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Mayday was evidently an international signal – derived from the French, ‘M’aidez’, Spike seemed to remember as he stared out from the Royal Gibraltar Police launch, feeling his wrists chafe as the salt water sprayed onto his tight handcuffs. As they neared the Trident, he made out a rusty Italian container ship floating alongside the Guardia gunboat. On the opposite coastline, a Moroccan patrol vessel was powering towards them from Tetouan, along with a helicopter that must have come from Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, the existence of which – in Gibraltarian eyes – rendered all Spanish complaints about the Rock null and void.

  The gantry crane appeared to have pulled the RIB under as well, as what looked like the entire crew of the Trident had now abandoned ship. The Spanish lifeguards were already hauling men from the water; Spike saw their spotlight flash onto a blue polo shirt and recognised the shaggy blond form of Anders the Swede being pulled into the back of the boat.

  A smaller group of survivors seemed to have become separated from the rest. The Italian container ship’s lifeboat was rowing towards them, two sturdy men in oilskins manning the oars. Isola reduced the throttle and steered the police launch their way.

  As they passed what was left of the Trident, a last creak came from her bow as she slipped completely under the water. Waves bulged, jolting Spike and Jessica in the back of the launch. For a moment Spike lost sight of the men in the water, then saw heads re-emerge as the surface settled. Isola twisted the engine in bursts, fearful of running over any survivors.

  By the time they’d drawn up by the Italian lifeboat, there was only one man left in the water. One of the Italians was reaching down to him; Spike saw a pale face bob up, breaking the surface like an egg. Jamie was on his feet in the lifeboat, thin hair drenched as he screamed at the man in the water, ‘Take it off, for God’s sake! Take it off!’

  Isola steered the police launch closer. Overhead, the Spanish helicopter arrived, searchlight illuminating the scene as a rope ladder was lowered into the water.

  ‘Take off the rucksack!’ Jamie cried.

  The Italian lost the man’s grip, and he disappeared again below the surface. His colleague was stripping down now, yelling instructions as the Guardia Civil boat pulled up, all other members of the Neptune crew rescued and remaindered below deck.

  Spike peered over the edge of the launch and saw a man’s thin white face bob up in the water. He recognised the strong jaw and stubborn brow of Morton D. Clohessy. Clohessy’s mouth broke the surface, sucking in air like a carp, brown island of hair furrowed as he fought to stay afloat. Looped over his chest, Spike made out the straps of a rucksack, so tight against his shoulders that it had to contain something dense and heavy – metal perhaps. He wondered if Clohessy had seen him as he seemed to open his mouth to speak. But a moment later, a wave from the Guardia speedboat rolled over him, and he sank back down, face fading as he disappeared into the depths of the water.

  ‘Why didn’t you help him, for Chrissake?’ Isola yelled.

  Turning his back on Isola, Spike stretched out his cuffed hands behind him. The Italian swam towards their boat, performing an impressive breaststroke. ‘Dov’è?’ he called up. ‘Dov’è!’

  Isola cursed, scouring the water, as a frogman started abseiling down the helicopter’s rope ladder. A tannoy from the cockpit ordered all boats to move away, first in Spanish, then in Moroccan, Italian, and lastly, reluctantly, in English. Isola turned the police launch round, withdrawing in the direction of Gibraltar.

  Spike remained at the stern, staring at the helicopter as it hovered over the location where Clohessy and his ship had sunk. Jessica sat down beside him. ‘We’ve just had confirmation. They’ve found another body. Up on the Rock.’

  Spike nodded.

  Jessica stared at him. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Where to find the boy.’ Her dark eyes questioned his, then she pulled a small bunch of keys out of her pocket and undid his handcuffs. ‘Charlie’s in hospital,’ she said, tucking the cuffs into her belt. ‘For observation. Under police guard.’

  ‘Will you take me to see him?’

  She took his right hand, caressing the bruise on the back and the raw skin around his wrist. Then her fingers interlinked with his, enfolding his palm and giving it a gentle squeeze. After a moment’s hesitation, Spike returned the pressure. The lights on the Rock seemed to brighten as they headed for home.

  I hear water lap against stones, feel it whipping up from time to time into a foamy spray as unseen ships pass in the distance. The beam of the lighthouse, still turning, picks out the dark surface of the sea. I cannot move. My face is wet. When I stick out my tongue, I taste not saltwater, but a ferrous tang I have come to know well.

  How many did I kill, I wonder now. Twenty? Perhaps one more, if they do not find the boy. It has occurred to me sometimes, usually in the night, that they might have suffered, felt pain or fear. But now as I lie here, I realise that I have nothing with which to reproach myself. The coming of death is peaceful. We are no different to the pebbles beneath my head – we wash up, we grind down, the world rolls on. If there is a scheme, perhaps I have contributed to it no less than most. Who can say? Millennia will pass before that sort of thing is clear.

  I hear a noise from the cliffs above. The lighthouse rotates again, and I try to raise my head, then feel a sticky warmth run from my scalp, filling the cavities of my ears. Voices now – English, of course. A sudden pain starts to climb from my legs to my chest, and I let out a sigh. The irony of it . . . For it to end here, of all places. I, Rodrigo de Guzmán, direct descendant of the great conquistador, one-time captain of the Spanish police, killer of twenty, perhaps twenty-one, am to die on the shores of a stolen British colony. And suddenly I see how Gibraltar can still exist. The effrontery of it, the cheek – that can only be pulled off by a strange and resilient race. It is my fault. I should have taken more care.

  I try to think of Madrid, of the Prado with the sun setting over the Plaza Mayor. But no. I will die here. In Gibraltar. Then – silence.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Spike sat in a windowless interview room at the back of New Mole House, watching Inspector George Isola struggle to adjust the sound level on his tape recorder. ‘Tell me again about the ship,’ Isola resumed.

  ‘The Trident,’ Spike said. ‘Owned by a company called Neptune Marine. They were using her to salvage lead from a wreck sunk in the Straits. What the company failed to disclose was that they had also been plundering Spanish silver from an adjacent shipwreck.’

  ‘And you were helping them do this?’

  Spike took a steadying breath, feeling the cuts on his chest test the steri-strips the nurse had applied the night before. ‘I represented Neptune Marine in relation to their legitimate salvage of the Gloucester. What I discovered only later was that the crew were melting down the Spanish coins in an attempt to pass them off as part of the same cargo.’

  ‘I see,’ Isola replied uncertainly, jotting something down in his notebook. He looked like he’d had a much better night’s sleep than Spike. ‘And how is the boy connected?’ he asked.

  ‘His father was Simon Grainger – remember him?’

  ‘Of course,’ Isola retorted.

  ‘Grainger realised what Neptune were up to. Tried to get in on the action. So Jardine lured him into the Rock and killed him. Made it look like suicide. He had similar plans for me.’

  ‘But in fact it was you who killed Jardine.’

  ‘In self-defence.’

  More assiduous note-taking; Spike found himself wondering what Isola thought the tape recorder was for.

  ‘And your belief is that Jardine must have killed Mrs Grainger too. And kidnapped her son. Why would he do that?’

  The lie came at once to Spike’s lips. ‘In or
der to keep me quiet. Jardine knew that I was involved with Amy Grainger, and that I’d learnt about Neptune’s crimes. The Graingers provided the perfect collateral to buy my silence.’

  ‘Why not just kill you?’

  Spike was momentarily taken aback by the acuity of Isola’s question. ‘He tried to, didn’t he? On the Rock. His prints were on the pistol.’

  Isola paused, then slowly nodded. ‘And the body found on Deadman’s Beach?’

  ‘I have no idea. Possibly an accomplice of Jardine’s.’

  ‘Why kill him if he was an accomplice?’

  ‘He knew too much. As did Simon Grainger. As did I.’

  ‘And your business partner?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Spike said. ‘Peter was Neptune’s original lawyer. Grainger went to see him – told him what he’d found out. When Jardine learnt about it, he got Peter drunk, then ran him over and passed it off as a random hit-and-run.’

  Isola fixed Spike with a stare, and he looked away, scanning the rows of posters and mugshots hanging on the wall, evidence of the hard work of the Royal Gibraltar Police – drugs intercepted from Morocco, cigarette smugglers arrested, domestic abusers locked up. Why not just tell him that the dead Spaniard had been hired by Žigon? he wondered. Then he looked back and watched Isola pick a piece of breakfast from between his teeth. Better to let Interpol handle it.

  ‘How were Neptune Marine paying Jardine?’ Isola asked, tongue still roving around his mouth.

  ‘I have no idea, Inspector. I should have thought that was your job. While we were up on the Rock, Jardine did mention an account in the Cayman Islands. I expect that you’ll find that the payer was Clohessy.’

  ‘The drowned man.’

  ‘Before he drowned.’

  Spike watched Isola try to think of something with which to admonish him, then abandon the search.

  ‘Do I need to instruct a lawyer, Inspector Isola? Because unless you’re planning to charge me with something, I think I’ve spent enough time voluntarily helping the police with their enquiries.’

  Isola clicked off the tape recorder and got to his feet. ‘I’ve always had a good bullshit detector,’ he said quietly. ‘And it’s going off right now.’

  ‘Neptune were running a complicated operation,’ Spike replied. ‘I realise it must be difficult for you to keep up.’

  As Spike pulled open the door, he felt Isola’s glare intensify as he saw Jessica get up from a plastic chair in the waiting room, and accompany him into another sunlit Gibraltar morning.

  PART THREE

  Genoa

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Spike Sanguinetti stared out of the window, identifying the Balearic Islands below, Minorca at the head of the chain, ceded to Britain three centuries ago under the same treaty as Gibraltar, now returned to Spanish rule. Just another chess piece of the Mediterranean, shifted by naval superpowers jostling for prominence. How many lives had been changed by these baffling political moves, families uprooted, strange races formed?

  ‘Sir?’ The smiling stewardess was back at his elbow. It was a busy flight yet she seemed remarkably solicitous of Spike’s needs. ‘Another tomato juice?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Want any vodka in this one?’

  Spike shook his head as the ice-filled plastic cup appeared. What was it about planes and tomato juice? He never had any desire to drink the stuff on land, yet up in the sky he couldn’t get enough of it. He reached for his briefcase and pulled out the documents he’d received from his contact at Interpol. In some ways, the situation had worked out better than he could have hoped. The scanned image of Žigon he had sent to Interpol had tallied with the driver’s licence of a man pulled over for racing his Lamborghini Aventador in Genoa. Once an identification had been made, armed police had arrived at Žigon’s opulent townhouse on the Via Garibaldi to question him over the death of a hotel doorman, whose decomposing body had been found face-down in the Gulf of Genoa. A firefight had ensued in which Žigon – now believed to be a former member of Slovenian special forces – had been gravely wounded, and three of his henchmen killed. Žigon was currently in intensive care at an undisclosed hospital, awaiting trial. Spike stared down at the blurred photocopy of Žigon’s driving licence. His real name was Aleksander Zavrl.

  The greater challenge for the Italian police had been trying to unravel Žigon’s financial dealings. It was clear that he’d been trying to reinvent himself as a legitimate businessman, siphoning the fortune he had stockpiled from drug and prostitution rackets into an offshore company in Monaco, which was greedily snapping up commercial property all along the Italian Riviera. Most of this had already been seized by an impecunious Italian government. The question now was what other assets they could link to him.

  No trace of a Zahra al-Mahmoud had been found in Žigon’s townhouse, nor was her name known to any of his contacts. As a last resort, Spike had asked his friend at Interpol if there were any residential properties contained in Žigon’s portfolio. Two apartment blocks, it emerged, one in Genoa, one in San Remo, plus a smattering of villas along the Italian coastline. None of the tenants had matched Zahra’s description; all would shortly face eviction, with the Italian government selling its spoils to the highest bidder. One address had caught Spike’s eye, however. A house in a village called Ruta. Though Spike hadn’t heard of the place, he’d since found out that the nearest town was Portofino.

  The sound of the name brought a hot sting of sweat to Spike’s forehead. He reached up to adjust the nozzle of the ceiling fan. Žigon would never hurt me, Zahra had once said. What had previously been a source of pain was now the only thing Spike could cling to.

  The stewardess reappeared. Her platinum hair was twisted viciously into a knot, and Spike found himself wondering again why anyone would choose to conceal such a delicate prettiness under an indelible layer of orange pancake and waterproof mascara.

  ‘Can I tempt you to any duty-free?’ she said.

  ‘No thanks; I’m from Gibraltar,’ Spike offered by way of explanation.

  The stewardess pushed her lip-glossed mouth into a smile. ‘We were trying to guess where you were from. Haven’t you got your own airport?’

  ‘It only flies to the UK. Hence the departure from Málaga.’

  The stewardess draped a bare arm over the top of Spike’s seat. ‘And what are you up to in Genoa?’

  ‘Unfinished business.’

  ‘Sounds intriguing.’ She must have caught his glance at the trolley: ‘Sure you don’t want a proper drink?’

  ‘No. Thank you. Really.’ He forced a polite smile, then turned back to the window, seeing the brown landmass of Corsica below, first Genoese, then British, now French. He realised that he hadn’t smoked a cigarette, nor had a drink, since the night the Trident sank four weeks ago. He hadn’t missed it much, and it had helped him to analyse what had happened with a clearer eye.

  Certain things had worked out well. Peter’s recovery was proceeding steadily. The doctors said he would always walk with a cane, and would have to undergo many months of intensive rehabilitation, including relearning to drive, which Spike might have suggested even before the accident. Most importantly, his mental faculties appeared unscathed. He had managed to keep off the weight, and there was even talk of him returning to work early next year. In Peter’s absence, Spike had thrown himself into a series of banal conveyancing and tax cases, and the revenues of Galliano & Sanguinetti were now back in the black. They could pay the rent, at least.

  Rufus was also improving. Ever since he had told Spike about his sister, Juliet, he’d seemed more at peace with himself. Now the two of them could sit quietly together in a room, his father painting again, Spike working, even reading the occasional novel, something he hadn’t done in years. Next month, on the anniversary of Spike’s mother’s death, they were planning to visit both graves at the cemetery.

  As for Charlie Grainger, there was good news there too, if you looked hard enough. It turned out that the Trident ha
d sunk just inside Spanish waters, and the local junta had put in an immediate claim for salvage. With the support of Counsel for the Crown, Drew Stanford-Trench, Spike had cooperated with the Spanish authorities, and the copper content of the silver bars raised from the seabed had been matched to that of the peso de ocho from the Flos Sanctus Montis, the identity of which was confirmed by the ship’s bell. Spike had instructed a reputable firm of Spanish solicitors to have Simon Grainger recognised as the original finder of the wreck. As both Simon and his wife were dead, the sole heir would be Charlie Grainger.

  Spike had visited the boy a few times at his grandparents’ house on Horse Barrack Lane. He remained guarded and silent, but for some reason he seemed to like Spike, and was content to sit on his knee reading or colouring. On his last visit, Spike had mentioned the claim, explaining that Charlie could be due a payout of between 5 and 10 per cent of the value of the silver. The grandparents had looked stupefied as Spike had floated a potential award of two million euros, after tax. The possibility of a trust fund had been mooted, with Spike appointed as trustee. Whatever happened, he would ensure that the boy was looked after.

  As for Neptune Marine . . . Its stock price had plummeted as news broke internationally, and a vulture fund had seized control. Within days, the company had been rebranded and all its previous sins laid firmly at the door of the late CEO, Morton D. Clohessy. The argument for this was compelling: Clohessy had been so desperate to land a big score to put Neptune back on an even financial keel that he’d lost all sense of proportion, committing crime after crime to keep his business afloat. He’d found a like-minded accomplice in Captain Hugh Jardine. A journeyman soldier, Jardine had been incensed to find so many of his former colleagues earning huge sums of money working for private defence contractors, while he was stuck in a desk job in Gibraltar, in constant pain from an injury suffered during the Falklands War. Following his interview with Spike, Inspector George Isola of the Royal Gibraltar Police had unearthed a series of large illegal payments made to Jardine by Clohessy in a Cayman Islands account. Isola had also been congratulated for matching a paint sample from the scene of Peter Galliano’s accident to a scratch on the chassis of Jardine’s van.