Hollow Mountain (26 page)
Authors: Thomas Mogford
Spike stared out of the window of the taxi, increasingly anxious about what he might find in Ruta. How well had he really known Zahra? Could you ever truly know someone else? Suddenly he could see how shocking it must have been for his father to lose his wife in the way he had. Not just the grief, the terrible loss, but the fact of not having seen it coming, of not having known how badly the person you loved was suffering. Would you start to question the rest of your lives together? Whether she ever really loved you at all?
‘You want to stop?’ the driver called back, catching Spike’s eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Take picture?’
They emerged from a dense patch of woodland onto a straight piece of road, a tantalising view of the Mediterranean below.
‘No thank you. Just keep going.’
The driver glanced at the map on the passenger seat, then twisted the wheel into another switchback. Rustic villas clung to the mountainside, most of them pastel-pink, facing the sea. They passed a church, a bijou bakery with a few aluminium tables outside, then turned down a narrow track flanked by olive trees. A green wire fence appeared, a swimming pool nestling within, its surface swollen with fallen leaves. Adjoining the fence was a farmhouse, modern window frames set into the ancient stonework. ‘I wait?’ the driver asked.
‘
No, grazie
.’
Spike paid up, then hovered in the road as the taxi performed a laborious five-point turn and drove away. He turned and looked at the house. The turquoise shutters were closed on both floors. As Spike approached, his eyes were drawn to a
trompe-l’oeil
emblem above the door, clumsily restored in fresh paint. A single head with two faces, one turned to the future, the other to the past.
Suppressing a powerful urge to walk away, Spike stepped forward and rang the bell.
The doorbell echoed through the house. Spike waited, then rang again. He put an ear to the frame. It felt cold to the touch, and he realised that it was made of some kind of reinforced metal painted to resemble wood. As he leant forward to ring again, he heard a soft click from a first-floor window. A clasp being quietly closed behind the shutters.
Spike banged with his fist, then heard movement inside, a creaking of stairs. ‘Hello?’ he called, and the footsteps fell silent. ‘Is anybody there?’
Cicadas sawed from the boles of olive trees. The Mediterranean whispered at the foot of the mountain. Just as Spike was steeling himself to knock again, he heard the long slow scrape of a bolt sliding from its metal casing. His stomach tightened. The door was opening. And there she was.
The first thing that struck him was her scent, not the light citrus fragrance of before, but something spiced, unfamiliar and intoxicating. She’d cut her dark hair short, and it framed her face, which was as lovely as he remembered. But in her cream silk blouse and designer jeans, she no longer looked like the girl he had met in Morocco, but like a chic European, the kind of woman shop assistants would flock to help. Spike realised he was still standing in the doorway, staring. ‘May I come in?’
Face unreadable, Zahra held open the door and he followed her into the house. A ceiling light was on, illuminating a large country kitchen with two spotless white sofas positioned around a fireplace crammed with unburnt logs. The restoration had retained a few original features: exposed stone, timber beams, an empty niche above the fireplace which in another house might have held photographs of loved ones.
Zahra retreated to the island in the middle of the kitchen, then she looked at Spike, chin defiant.
‘I told you I’d find you,’ he said.
‘And I . . .’ she began in her low voice, then cleared her throat. ‘And I told you not to.’
Folded on the table was a pile of cashmere and silk, an expensive-looking leather washbag alongside. Beneath it was a cardboard box, brown packing tape sliced down the middle.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ Spike said.
‘Žigon’s been arrested. I have to leave.’ She walked towards the dresser, yanked open a drawer and took out some items of make-up, which she brought back to the table.
‘You could at least talk to me while you pack,’ Spike said. ‘You owe me that.’
She threw the make-up into her bag, then walked over to him, arms crossed. In that moment, he caught a glimpse of the proud woman he had known in Tangiers. He had forgotten how tall she was, he thought, and smiled despite himself.
‘What do you want me to say, Spike?’ she asked. Then she turned away, and in the dull light, he saw that her skin was dusted with a pale powder, small lines scoring the space between her eyes.
He reached out a hand to her shoulder, feeling the sharp jut of the blade. But she started at the touch and he let his hand drop.
‘The girl you knew is gone,’ she said, and walked back to the table across the uneven stone floor.
Spike saw that the straps of her sandals were encrusted with gems. ‘I could help you.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ she laughed as she zipped closed her washbag.
‘You could start again. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care what’s . . .’ He broke off.
‘What’s happened to me?’ she completed, voice thick with sarcasm. ‘How
generous
of you, Spike. As long as you can get over it, I guess it must be fine.’
‘You know what I meant.’
‘You have no idea what’s happened to me,’ she murmured as she bent down to the cardboard box on the floor. Spike found his eyes following the contours of her haunches, and hated himself for it.
‘Where will you go, Zahra?’
‘Back to Tangiers. I need to hear my own language for a while.’
It was unbearably hot in the house; he wanted to rip open the shutters, let in some air. He felt his cotton shirt dampening beneath his ridiculous new suit. ‘How will you get there?’ he asked.
She turned and thrust a burgundy-red passport into his hand, ‘République Française’ embossed in gold letters on the cover. Her arm was brown and more slender than he remembered, her silver Russian bangles catching below a slim Cartier watch. He opened the passport and saw her unsmiling photograph inside, hair in its new gamine style, small gold pendant resting on the smooth dark skin of her throat. ‘Marie-Laure Chamakh,’ he read aloud.
She took the passport back, indenting the surface with freshly manicured nails. ‘That’s right. I finally got a real one. After all this time.’
‘Do you need money?’
She scoffed at the question, and he felt the colour heating his cheeks. ‘I don’t
think
so,’ she replied, gesturing at the box by her feet.
Spike peered down. At the base of the box was a stiff leather attaché case. Wedged on either side were two thick piles of cash. On top of each, he made out the golden glow of a two-hundred euro note.
‘Žigon told me that if anything happened to him, he would make sure I was taken care of. This was delivered this afternoon.’ She lifted out the case by its patent-leather handle. Louis Vuitton, Spike noted, a solid silver clasp on the front, key protruding from the lock.
‘Tres chic.’
‘You never could speak French, Spike.’ He hoped for a hint of a smile, but it was just a statement of fact. Slinging the attaché case onto the table, she walked back to the dresser.
Things have happened to me too, he wanted to say – Come with me, we’ll go to the bakery down the road, eat some focaccia, drink cappuccino, I’ll tell you a story of two shipwrecks, of base metal turned into coins, of a soldier who tried to kill me on the Rock and a man drowning in the Straits with a rucksack of silver on his chest. But instead he just asked, ‘Did you love him?’
Zahra didn’t flinch. ‘I learned not to hate him. He used to tell me that we were alike. Two survivors. Two resourceful little rats.’ Now she did smile, but it was a smile that frightened Spike. ‘Žigon said I was the most beautiful thing he had ever owned. Maybe he liked me because I couldn’t be broken. Whatever he did, whatever his friends did, I wouldn’t cry.’
Spike felt his heart cramp in his chest. He took a step forward but she turned away. ‘Please go.’
‘Maybe you could come and visit once you get settled in Morocco. Cross the Straits like before.’
‘Sure, Spike. It’ll be just like before.’
Zahra returned to her packing. Spike watched her, then walked away to the door.
The late-morning sun stung Spike’s eyes as it reflected off the swimming pool, a film of rotting olive leaves gleaming on the surface, plastic sun loungers browned by twigs and dried rain. A red oleander blossom fell from an overhanging shrub and bobbed in the water, petals facing upwards, waiting to decay.
I was a Flower of the mountain
, Spike thought bitterly, remembering the line from Molly Bloom’s plinth. Once through the trees, he looked out at the Mediterranean, sparkling pitilessly away. As he passed the bakery, he saw an old man in worker’s overalls sitting at a table, filling in a crossword, biro scoring the thin paper. ‘Asterisk betrayal,’ Spike said to himself, wondering why one of his father’s old clues had come unbidden to his mind. Then he stopped walking. ‘Double cross,’ he said aloud. ‘Double cross . . .’
The old man glanced up as Spike turned and sprinted back up the road, feet pounding the asphalt. The church, the pine trees . . . He saw the wire fence of the swimming pool, the shutters of the farmhouse still closed. He slowed, feeling relief surge through him, followed by a twinge of embarrassment. Then he heard the explosion.
A deep hollow boom, then a tinkling of glass as the window panes shattered and sprayed outwards between the slats of the shutters. Spike lurched forwards, ears ringing, hearing a heavy creak as one of the shutters swung from its hinges and smashed down onto the road. Smoke seeped from beneath the front door, sour with cordite.
Slamming a shoulder to the solid frame, Spike moved to the window, shards of glass crunching beneath his soles. ‘Zahra!’ he yelled as he hoisted a foot onto the sill.
Inside, he saw that the kitchen table had been thrown onto its side, charred and black, burning banknotes fluttering in the air. He jumped down onto the stone floor, coughing, eyes stinging from the smoke.
‘Zahra!’ he called again, hearing the desperation in his voice.
Blackened clothing littered the floor. His foot struck something hard: the top of the attaché case, cleanly severed, key still protruding from the clasp. Dangling from the other side was a small metal rivet – the pin of a grenade, Spike realised as he dropped it back onto the ground.
The smoke began to clear, and then he saw her. She must have spotted the grenade as soon as she opened the case, and had some time to run, as she was lying by the far wall next to the fireplace, sheltered by the sofas, which had been blown into a V-shape. ‘It’s all right,’ Spike said as he crouched down beside her. ‘It’s all right. I’m here.’
Zahra lay with her back to him. As he put a hand to her shoulder to roll her towards him, he felt the muscle slacken beneath the silk material, shards of bone floating loosely in the smashed flesh.
‘Zahra?’ he said, voice cracking.
He moved his hands to her hips and eased her towards him. She flopped onto her back, eyes open, puzzled, smiling up at him. Her face began to relax, and then he saw the girl he’d known, the way she’d looked while she was sleeping next to him, when he’d watched her in the moonlight, full of disbelief that someone so lovely could be sharing his bed. She coughed, and a bubble of blood burst from her nose.
‘You came back,’ she whispered.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll always come back. I can’t help it. I love you.’
Tears started to roll down her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Spike. I’m so sorry.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry. You don’t ever need to be sorry. Do you hear me?’
Her eyes narrowed, teeth biting down on her lower lip. ‘I don’t deserve you.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Spike whispered back. ‘Don’t you ever say that again.’
Blood was spilling from her mouth now. She drew in a breath and her body jerked, forehead creased as though concentrating on something difficult. Then her face relaxed, and she exhaled.
‘Zahra?’
There was no response.
‘
Zahra
?’
He glanced round, hoping that help might have arrived somehow, someone to take over, make things better. When he looked back, her eyes were closed. He leant in to kiss her. His ears were no longer ringing, and drifting in through the broken windows of the farmhouse, he could hear the faint beat of the cicadas and the steady, relentless wash of the Mediterranean.
Thomas Mogford has worked as a journalist for
Time Out
and as a translator for the European Parliament. His first novels in the Spike Sanguinetti series,
Shadow of the Rock
and
Sign of the Cross
, were published by Bloomsbury in 2012 and 2013 respectively, to great critical acclaim. He was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award for best new crime writer of 2013. He is married and lives with his family in London.
