Hollow Mountain (21 page)
Authors: Thomas Mogford
Spike nodded, aware that he was grinning like an imbecile.
‘He needs to rest now; you can come back this evening.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Spike said. ‘Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow.’
The silence of the skies was broken as Spike emerged from the hospital to find a police helicopter hovering over the western flank of the Rock. The sense of elation he’d felt at Peter’s bedside vanished. His phone began to ring: it was Jessica. ‘Any news?’ Spike asked.
‘Not yet. But we’re doing everything we can.’
The background noise was oppressive: Spike could barely hear her. ‘Where are you?’ he shouted.
‘In a boat. Checking the coves around Catalan Bay.’
He heard a man’s voice shouting orders above the engine of the speedboat: ‘Gorgeous’ George Isola, no doubt.
‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ Jessica said to Spike. ‘Something you might have forgotten?’
Spike hesitated for a moment.
Tell the police and I will kill him
. ‘No, nothing else,’ he replied, then almost changed his mind before realising that she’d already hung up. As he came into Casemates, he saw that half the restaurants and cafés had their grilles lowered: most of the catering staff were Spanish, and a closed border left no one to flip burgers or wait tables. The only movement was a house sparrow enjoying a dust bath beneath a eucalyptus tree. The hushed atmosphere stirred memories of when Franco had shut the frontier, sealing the Gibraltarians inside, helping them to forge their proud yet adaptable nature.
Midway through the square, Spike paused to watch the tail end of a crowd climbing Demayas Ramp. The road was crammed with people – schoolkids marshalled by teachers, men and women in suits, Arabs, Jews, Hindus, Christians, all united in the search for a stolen child. Spike felt a momentary glow of pride, until he remembered that he was the reason for this show of solidarity.
At least the ‘All’s Well’ pub was open; he sat down on the terrace, receiving a glare from the Liverpudlian waiter, annoyed to have his viewing of a pre-season football match interrupted. Checking the time – still an hour before the photographs would be ready – he took the faded airmail letter from the pocket of his cargo trousers and carefully unfolded it.
‘My darling J
,’ Spike read.
‘I still can’t sleep, so I’ve left your father to snore alone. I don’t think he’ll even notice I’m gone. I’m sitting on the balcony of our holiday apartment, sipping the rough Burgundy from supper, watching the tide roll onto the shore. S wears himself out during the hot days here – building huge sandcastles with R on the beach below, tearing himself away from the water long enough only to beg for ice cream. So he does not stir in bed, a mercy on nights when I feel like this, when the pain of losing you is so raw. People think it strange to grieve so long for a child who never lived. But they are wrong. You did live. Inside me. I also mourn for the life we might have had together. The memories we might have made which have been stolen from us. R wants to move on, to live. It is his nature. I know that he loves me, but he does not know how to make things better, and that hurts him dreadfully. He is a man who needs to fix things, to solve problems, but I think that we are both beginning to realise that he cannot fix me . . .’
Spike closed the letter. He’d never really thought about how it might feel to lose a child. How it could destroy a person. At least Amy had never suffered the pain of knowing that her son was missing. That was something, wasn’t it? Leaving a stack of coins for his drink, he continued on foot towards Devil’s Tower Road, aware that there was another stop he needed to make.
The North Front Cemetery was the only graveyard in Gibraltar still in use, the others having reached bursting point last century. It grew larger by the year, though its indefinite expansion was checked by the airport runway which ran along the far side. At least the planes were silent today.
Inside, Spike saw thousands of headstones huddled together, sun-bleached and upright, contrasting with the older, crooked graves of the Trafalgar Cemetery, where the injured had been buried from the famous naval battle which had taken place twenty miles off the coast of Gib. Spike moved towards the middle row, passing the section for the unconsecrated dead, feeling his feet sink into the soft pathways – the cemetery was built on the narrow sandy isthmus that connected Gibraltar to Spain, always a boon for gravediggers. Finally he reached the simple white marble of his mother’s headstone. A vase was pegged into the earth beside it, the glass smudged and dirty. He plucked it from its ring and polished it on his T-shirt, realising that once again he had failed to bring flowers. Not that it mattered – she was dead and gone and no God was smiling down on those who remembered her. He squinted through the sunlight at the inscription: ‘
Catherine Rose Sanguinetti, beloved wife of Rufus, mother of Somerset, missed beyond all bearing
’. ‘Why didn’t you just
say
something?’ he asked aloud. Sensing someone move behind him, he turned to see a hunched old man, hands clasped behind his back. The man gave a nod as if to say, ‘We all must carry on . . .’
He stepped over Catherine Sanguinetti’s grave and stopped by a smaller granite block two rows in front. ‘
JS
’ the inscription read. ‘
Born 16/01/1977. Died 16/01/1977. Always in our hearts
’. Juliet. His sister. Born and died on the same day. Spike crouched down and touched the stone. Its darkness had absorbed a little of the sun’s heat, and it warmed his palm. Shutting his eyes, he thought of his mother, and of the sister he had never known, of Amy Grainger and Enrico Sanguinetti, both dead, of Charlie and Zahra, both missing. Tears pricked his eyes, until he remembered Žigon’s cold lazy-eyed stare, and turned to walk away past his mother’s grave, trailing his fingertips over the top of her headstone, feeling his grief harden into a small, tight knot of anger.
Dusk was falling as Spike locked up the office and moved into the evening traffic of Europa Road. Echoing in the distance, he heard the last cries of the search party as they returned to the Moorish Castle Estate, still calling out for Charlie Grainger, knocking on doors, checking abandoned buildings. Some people thought he might have fled up onto the Rock, hoping to find his dead father; Spike had overheard one person suggest that the apes might have taken him. By now, the police would have searched every part of the Upper Rock accessible by foot. On his way back from the graveyard to the photo shop, Spike had made out tiny figures moving inside the gates of the military base, usually forbidden to civilians.
Distrust had been etched on Haresh’s brow as he’d handed Spike the disc. When Spike had asked if he could also take the cardboard box marked ‘Xerox’ lying behind the counter, Haresh had asked to be compensated for each remaining sheet of photographic paper inside. It had been worth it though – the box was just the right size to transport a ship’s bell.
Back on Main Street, Spike had slipped the disc into a jiffy bag addressed to his contact at Interpol. By the end of the week an image of Žigon – and of his work – would be safely in the hands of the authorities. And Spike’s mobile phone would bear no electronic trace of the photographs having been sent.
Now that the package had been posted, Spike carried nothing but the empty Xerox box past the cable-car station, skirting the gates of the Alameda Gardens, trying not to think of the time he’d spent there with Zahra, nor of the nightmare he’d had about her in Genoa.
It was gone 8.30 p.m. He’d wanted to scout out the location for at least an hour before the handover, but had forgotten how long it took to reach Europa Point on foot. It was a part of Gibraltar he always tried to avoid. To his left rose the Rock, the steps to Jews’ Gate winding up its flank, the point above which the search helicopter had hovered this morning. Beside it lay a shrine to the Pillars of Hercules, a plaque explaining how Hercules had torn Africa and Europe in two to celebrate one of his Labours, and how the Romans had believed Gibraltar to mark the gateway to Hell on account of the maze of caves and passages deep within its porous limestone.
Mons Calpe
, Hollow Mountain. Even the most impregnable fortress could have a vulnerable centre.
The levanter was gusting again, the first wisps of cloud appearing on the foothills of the Rock. After a brisk ten-minute walk, Spike rounded a corner and saw the southernmost tip of Gibraltar spread out before him, flat and windswept, a handful of disused military huts scattered over the sand dunes and a squat, red-and-white-striped lighthouse protruding from the edge of the cliffs.
The road curved around a dusty cricket pitch, laid on to entertain the Forces, rarely used these days. Spike remembered watching a match there as a boy, the Army vs. the Navy, hot red-faced Englishmen in whites berating and applauding each other in equal measure, oblivious to the loyal Gibraltarians gathered at the boundary. The only piece of green that now remained was an astroturf wicket in the balding nets.
A bungalow describing itself almost accurately as ‘The Last Shop on Earth’ stood behind the pitch. It had once sold souvenirs and food, but lack of tourist custom had led to closure. Spike paused by its boarded-up windows, staring out at the Straits and the dark Rif mountains of Morocco breaking the evening haze.
Parked on the road beside the cricket pitch was a bus, optimistically waiting for passengers to board before beginning its route back to town. The last departure was 9.30 p.m.; this, and the complete absence of CCTV on Europa Point, led Spike to conclude that whomever he was due to meet must have done an extensive recce before deciding on the venue.
He passed beneath the lighthouse, a hundred and sixty feet high, its revolving electric warnings automated by Trinity House in London, the only one of its kind outside Britain to enjoy the honour. Beneath it lay a shingle-covered viewing platform; below that was a fifty-foot drop to a cove known as Deadman’s Beach. Somehow appropriate, Spike thought, as he crossed the shingle.
Beyond the cricket pitch, the bus driver fired up his engine. Watching the bus drive away through the thickening fog, Spike suddenly felt like the last man left on the continent. Red brake lights vanished into the gloom, and he checked the road again, seeing the steep incline of the Rock above, a track climbing the lower slope towards a dark tunnel mouth, its entrance blocked with steel bars. There were no other vehicles in sight.
He set the empty cardboard box down on the viewing platform, felt the wind threaten it, so picked up a handful of shingle and threw it inside. The box held firm, and again he ran through the plan in his mind, feeling a sudden longing for a drink, a little alarming in its intensity. Instead he lit a cigarette, aware that it might be for the last time. When he looked back up, a small blue car was rolling towards him along the coast road.
Spike flicked his cigarette over the cliff edge as the car drew to a stop on the road, headlights slicing through the fog that was drifting steadily now down the Rock. 9.45 p.m.: too early. Clohessy wasn’t due to arrive for another half an hour. Whatever slim chance of success Spike’s plan had would vanish completely if Clohessy failed to turn up on time.
Slowly Spike held up his mobile phone. The car flashed its lights in recognition, sending a surge of adrenalin into his bloodstream.
He beckoned to the driver to come closer. He needed him here on the viewing platform, as prominent as possible for Clohessy and his men to see. Heart shifting, Spike watched as the car crept forwards, indicating fastidiously before turning onto the viewing platform.
A blue SEAT Ibiza, hatch-backed and flimsy. Could this really constitute a threat? The driver reversed into the space furthest from Spike, boot tight to the low cliff wall behind, the scene briefly lit up by a beam from the lighthouse, which gave a first rotation of warning to the shipping traffic fetching in and out of the Straits behind.
With a soft click, the car door opened and a man stepped out. Before the flash of the lighthouse faded, Spike saw that he was of average height, a slightly bulging stomach covered by a short-sleeved shirt tucked into faded jeans. Then the beam receded and his face was subsumed again by darkness and fog. ‘Your phone, please,’ the man called out in a lisping, Spanish accent.
The lighthouse gave a second flash, providing Spike with a glimpse of a pair of dull brown spectacles obscuring the man’s eyes. Every instinct told Spike that he could take him out, overpower him. But there was too much at risk. ‘I want to see the boy,’ he called back.
The Spaniard nodded, then began edging around his car, eyes still trained on Spike. Forty years old? Fifty? Again Spike fought the urge to run over and tackle him.
The man pulled open the boot and a dim yellow light ignited within. Spike heard him hiss something in English. Receiving no response, the man jabbed a finger roughly into the space. ‘Mama?’ came a weak voice, before the boot slammed shut again.
Spike stared across the platform at the nondescript man leaning against his shabby car with his paunch and cheap glasses.
You fucking coward
, he thought. ‘Well come on then,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got what you want.’ He threw his mobile into the cardboard box and shoved it over the shingle with a foot.
‘Wait,’ the man commanded. ‘Stay there.’