Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) (21 page)

‘Spike?’

‘I need you to do something for me, Peter.’

‘You name it.’

‘Dunetech, Solomon’s company. I think it’s time to shine a bit of light on proceedings.’

Spike heard a pen and paper readied.

‘It’s a clean technology business, right? Backing from sovereign investors. Renewable energy funds. Philanthropists with an eye on the buck. They’re using Ruggles & Mistry to sort out their tax liabilities in Gibraltar.’

‘So?’

‘This is a sensitive time. Chequebooks readied. New offices built. I think Esperanza may have stumbled onto something at a crucial moment.’

‘Such as?’

‘Just see what you can dig up on the founders, Nadeer Ziyad and Ángel Castillo. And an ex-British Army officer called Tobias Riddell.’ Spike heard Galliano chuck away one pen to pick up another. ‘Maybe you could talk to Belinda Napier at Ruggles. Ask her for the skinny on Dunetech.’

‘Think I’m still
persona non grata
with Napier.’

‘Take her to a vodka bar. And can you drop in on my dad? Check he’s OK?’

‘Will do. So when are you back?’

‘Looking like Friday.’

‘Sorry?’

Spike checked his phone screen: half a bar of reception. ‘What kind of thing,’ he heard Galliano say as he put the handset back to his ear, ‘might –’

The line went dead. Outside, the landscape had lost its verdure: pebbly ground, rocky outcrops. Hearing footsteps, Spike turned to find Zahra in the corridor. She wore baggy drawstring trousers and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Her headscarf was off and her hair free; she was older than Spike had thought, early thirties probably. As she rubbed her eyes, he saw faint frown lines on her forehead.

‘What time is it?’ she yawned.

‘Coming up to seven.’

She turned and gazed out of the window. ‘Hopefully we’ll make the next bus.’

‘How long’s the journey?’

‘Couple of hours, if it doesn’t break down first.
Tired
,’ she added in an elongated voice. When she yawned again, Spike caught her eyes dart his way. The pupils were cold and alert.

Chapter 48

The bus had been driving for two hours and there was still no sign of the desert. The road followed a gorge with a river below and steep, crumbly walls of orange rock above. They were travelling downhill, but only just; the watercourse was deep and sluggish, content to creep along the base of this narrow fissure, spreading its goodness to the limited flat space on either side, where belts of almond groves grew interspersed with the occasional cuboid mud hut.

Spike stared out of the bus window, sunshine slanting through onto his forearms. He wondered not for the first time if a person could get burnt through glass. Zahra sat beside him, hair still loose, waving intermittently at a small, silent boy who kept peeking from between the foam-spilling seat backs.

The brakes mewled plaintively as the bus slowed into a corner. Outside, Spike saw three grey apes sitting on an outcrop of rock, two adults and an infant. ‘Barbary macaques,’ he said, looking back round. ‘Same as in Gibraltar.’

‘You have monkeys in Gibraltar?’ Zahra said, craning her neck to see.

‘We call them apes, because they don’t have much of a tail. Only place in Europe where they’re wild.’

‘How did they get there?’

‘In reality, pets for the British garrison. But according to legend, they crossed over from the Atlas Mountains in a secret tunnel beneath the Straits.’

‘Maybe this is the start of that tunnel. The old caravan route from the desert.’

Spike stared up at the vertical walls of orange rock.

‘You know,’ Zahra said, ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile.’

He ran a hand through his short dark hair and looked ahead.

Zahra waved again at the child, who was encouraged back round by its mother and presented with something sticky to eat from a rolled-up handkerchief. Spike cleared his throat. ‘So you slept OK?’

‘Yes.’ She breathed out. ‘Thanks for coming, Spike.’

‘I can’t leave the country anyway.’

‘I suppose not.’

Another rickety single-decker came tearing round the corner. Spike saw the bright polka dots of headscarves leaning on the windows. ‘There’s a bus every day,’ Zahra said. ‘You can be back in Tangiers by tomorrow night.’

‘Is there phone reception in your village?’

‘Not sure. These days.’ She reached into a woven handbag for a bottle of water and offered it to Spike.

‘You first.’ As she drank, he watched her larynx glide up and down her tanned, glistening throat. When the bottle came to him, he was careful not to finish it. The water had a hot saline taste, filled from the tap at Meknes station. Zahra’s bag shifted forward as a wooden toy rolled from under the seat in front.

‘I’ve never seen a dead body before,’ she said, putting a foot down on her bag.

Spike turned. ‘Are you sure he was only asking for his mother?’

‘
Sakarat al mowt
.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Death noise.’

‘Death rattle?’

The mother stood to retrieve her child’s toy.

‘Yes,’ Zahra said. ‘Death rattle.’

Chapter 49

The river broadened out and the gorge on either side of the road reduced to friable, horizontal shelves of rock. Spike saw a man in a turquoise turban leaning against a dead tree, smoking a roll-up as the bus sped by. The driver changed up a gear, heedless of potholes and boulders.

Spike felt a tap on the shoulder. Zahra was mouthing at him; he plucked out his headphones.

‘What are you listening to?’ she said.

He showed her the iPod screen with its image of an emaciated man in black, hair tied back in a ponytail, violin at his chin. ‘Niccolò Paganini,’ she read aloud, putting the stresses in the right places. He reached over to tuck a plug into her neat little ear. She screwed up her face at once. ‘Is a string broken?’ she shouted.

He lowered the volume. ‘Paganini was the greatest violin virtuoso of his era.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Zahra replied.

He unlinked them, then plugged himself back in. Outside, the road emerged into a wasteland of stones and shrunken shrubs. The river was just a trickle now, a green ribbon vanishing into the hazy brown horizon. From the corner of his eye, he saw Zahra slip a mobile phone out of her bag. He turned down the music; she spoke in a strange kind of Arabic, quick and low. She flashed him a look, then put the phone away.

A range of hills rose in the distance, the parched, cracked earth before them like a dried-out seabed. Shimmering at their base was a Legionnaire-type settlement: fortified terracotta walls, minarets poking above. ‘Is that your village?’ Spike asked, switching off his music altogether.

‘It’s where I went to school. Erg Makeem.’

‘Is it near your village?’

‘An hour’s walk. Then a bus.’

‘Every day?’

‘Twice.’

Spike steered a finger along the soused sponge of an eyebrow. The sun seemed low in the sky.

‘My cousins are going to pick us up,’ Zahra said.

‘Is that who you were phoning?’

‘I was just updating them.’

‘So they do have signal.’

‘Landline.’

‘What did you tell them about me?’

She pursed her lips. ‘They know I want to move to Europe. That’s why I learned English. When I said I was bringing you, they just . . . assumed.’

‘Assumed what?’

‘That you would be helping me.’

Spike reached automatically for his pocket, checking for the sweaty rectangle of his passport against his thigh.

‘I had to tell them something,’ Zahra protested. ‘They’re very traditional.’

A billboard flashed by the roadside. ‘DUNETECH,’ it read. ‘
Powering a Greener Future
.’

Chapter 50

The bus pulled over at a crossroads as Spike, Zahra and three men in turquoise turbans got out. The driver’s assistant clambered up a ladder to the roof and unfastened the guy ropes holding down their bags. Somehow carrying all of them at once, he bundled back down and dumped them on the stony ground.

Spike’s leather bag felt hot to the touch. The sun was directly above yet still seemed low in the sky, as though it had decided to set where it was. A single-storey building with a reinforced door stood back from the road, a camel lying in its shade, chewing on a bridle of chains with long, hairy lips. A small man emerged, overwhelmed by his white robes; Spike caught a glimpse of shelves of canned food behind him. ‘Is that your cousin?’ he said.

He had to squint to see that Zahra was smiling. ‘He’s here for the tourists.’

‘What tourists?’

‘Camel safaris into the desert.’

Zahra spoke to the man in the same rapid language she’d used on the phone. He reached into his robes and took out a coiled black ammonite. When she added something else, he carried the fossil reluctantly back inside.

The bus rumbled away, revealing a dusty lay-by where a white pickup was parked by a minivan. Zahra and the three other passengers set off towards it.

Spike could feel the heat of the sun on his hair. ‘Have you got a spare headscarf?’ he called out to Zahra, but the wind gusted and she didn’t hear.

The strap of Spike’s bag kept slipping on his collarbone. He raised his eyes to the sky: the sun seemed even lower, a huge orange saucer docking overhead, pushing downwards.

As the minivan drove away, Spike saw a face pressed to the window. Black beard, shaven moustache . . . He seemed to be staring down at Spike with what looked like a patient smile.

The pickup was still parked in the lay-by, white and new-looking. Its doors opened simultaneously and two men got out. Both wore turquoise turbans and button-down beige
djellabas
. The driver stuck out both arms, letting Zahra walk into the hug. Drawing back, he rubbed his nose three times against hers. His companion did the same, then all three turned to stare at Spike.

The face of the driver was elongated, a thick black moustache curving above a deep, prominent jaw that seemed out of kilter, as though the top half had not been designed to go with the lower. Stopping a few metres shy of Spike, he gave a stage bow, one arm tucked into his stomach, the other sweeping the dusty earth below. Sweat dripped into Spike’s eyes as he nodded in response.

The younger man stepped towards him, almost handsome but burdened with a similar jaw. Spike stuck out a hand, but he only wanted the bag.

Zahra came over, touching the sodden back of Spike’s T-shirt. The driver glanced round as he walked towards the truck.

‘That’s Othman,’ Zahra said quietly. ‘Salem’s his kid brother. We’ll do the introductions later.’

Both doors slammed as Zahra climbed up over the tailgate and sat down. Once Spike had joined her, they pulled out of the lay-by and onto the road in the direction of the hills they’d seen from the bus. Wedged in by Zahra, Spike stared out at the dust cloud burgeoning behind. The metal had started to burn through the material of his T-shirt; the breeze gave relief, but he knew he was still in full glare, so looked about for a cloth or oilskin. Nothing but a spare tyre with a petrol can inside. He drew his T-shirt over his forehead. The metal seared his back so he held himself away from it, stomach muscles straining.

Zahra turned and smiled. ‘Now you are a Bedouin,’ she shouted above the engine.

The dust cloud made it hard to see behind, but left and right there stretched nothing but a flat, shimmering void. Spike tucked his forearms beneath the tail of his flapping T-shirt. Zahra had an elbow on the side of the pickup, oblivious to the heat, staring out in silence.