Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) (10 page)

Spike heard the engine rev behind them. ‘Stop,’ he called, catching her up. She spun round, fist emerging as though to strike him.

‘We can’t outrun it.’

The headlights gleamed into Zahra’s almond eyes; she glanced back, then dashed towards the side wall.

The breeze blocks were piled seven feet high. Zahra leapt up and got her hands on the top, holding herself in position before slipping back.

Spike dropped to his knees like a sprinter. ‘Stand on my back.’

‘What?’

‘Go on!’

Spike felt pressure on his spine as Zahra’s feet pressed downwards. He forced his neck up, her weight finally lifting as she got a hold on the wall above.

The headlights were almost on him. In a single fluid motion, Spike got to his feet and threw himself at the wall. His fingers gripped the top edge and he held himself there, lungs burning, espadrilles paddling against rough breeze blocks.

He hauled his legs into the air as the jeep sped beneath him. Further along, it stopped. There was a sharp double click of doors opening.

Spike felt a touch on a sinew-twisted shoulder. He pulled himself higher, scraping his stomach muscles until he came to rest face down in a flat, asphalted space. Feet pounded the mud below. A flashlight raked up and down the wall.

Spike’s shoulder joints sang in a hot and not unpleasant way. The girl grabbed his hand; he’d cut himself, he saw as he stood. They edged for a while along the platform until Spike felt his neck jerk back, the top of his head slamming into a low-hanging pole. He put a hand to his hair, testing for blood, then felt Zahra touch his arm, steadying him. They crouched together in the darkness, the only sound now the pitch and fall of their chests. From below came the slam of car doors. An engine restarted.

Spike sat down, leaning dizzily against the surrounding wall. He felt her breath warm his face. ‘Thank you,’ he heard her say. Then he closed his eyes.

Chapter 21

The back of Spike’s head was leaning against a rough surface, sandpaper or pebble-dash. The air smelled of hot cat piss. He groped in his pocket for his phone, then manoeuvred it over his eyes. He’d only been out for five minutes. And she was gone.

He hauled himself up. His head throbbed; he explored with his fingers, finding a large bump above the hairline. The skin of his forehead felt taut, uneven with mosquito bites. Balance regained, he edged along the platform, waiting for his eyes to adjust. A makeshift frame of bamboo scaffolding seemed to be holding the structure up, a dusty back road three metres below.

After testing the bamboo, Spike started to climb down. His shoulders ached. There were more bites on his ankles, slick blood on the back of his wrist. He licked it and tasted ferrous grit.

Once on the ground, he saw stars spangling the night sky like the sequins on Zahra’s headscarf. At the end of the street, a bonfire crackled, three or four silhouettes gathered round, turning some kind of meat on a spit. Woodsmoke and burnt flesh carried in the air. Beyond, Spike made out the jagged shape of a bicycle.

Fresh tyre tracks scored the mud; Spike kept to the shadows until he caught the first whiff of the stream. The outdoor café appeared, card-players gone, bearded proprietor slowly clearing tables.

Jogging now, Spike followed the bank, dry-retching as the miasma strengthened. Two bristly yellow dogs burst from the rushes and ran at his ankles, thrilled at the speed. Once past the brick buildings, Spike felt his heart lift as he saw the triangular roof panel of the
petit taxi
.

The driver was slumped at the wheel; Spike tapped on the window and his head shot up. Blinking bulbously, he reached over and tugged up the passenger lock.

‘Hotel Continental,’ Spike said, and the driver twisted on the headlights.

As they reversed, Spike saw a figure appear between the buildings. They rumbled away, pursued by the barking pack of dogs. The figure was gone.

Chapter 22

The cafés on the Avenue d’Espagne were busy, black-tied waiters shuttling between groups of locals and tourists. Seeing a table of tanned, laughing Europeans, Spike felt a powerful urge to go and join them.

‘Slow here,’ he said as the police station came into view. A youth with a fishing rod over one shoulder was arguing with a man in chef’s whites, their dispute overseen by a harassed-looking sergeant. Spike caught sight of a crowded hallway behind. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Carry on.’

They stopped at the walls of the Medina, the streets above too narrow for cars. The driver hit a button on the meter: ‘
Bonne continuation
,’ he grinned once he’d registered the size of the tip.

A few late-night hawkers ambled over but their hearts weren’t in it. As Spike passed the Grand Mosque, he saw a strip-lit room where lines of men chanted, kneeling and bowing in unison. Looked like good exercise.

Outside the hotel, the guard was watching football in his cabin, devouring couscous from a paper plate. Spike strode past him to reception. The lighting from the chandelier created a soothing atmosphere as the receptionist perched contemplatively at his desk. ‘A good night,
monsieur
?’ he said.

‘Eventful.’

‘The variety of the rainbow creates its appeal.’

‘If you say so,’ Spike replied as he went upstairs.

Nearing his room, he heard screeching tyres and machine-gun spray. He stopped, rapping at the door. He thumped harder until it was opened by a tall, well-built black man with shoulder-length dreadlocks. ‘
Ouai?
’ The air behind him stank sweetly of hashish.

‘Can you turn that down?’ Spike shouted. ‘
Menos ruido?
’

The man shook his head, dreadlocks held in place by multicoloured beads.

‘I’m in the next-door room,’ Spike said, feeling fatigue drape him like an oppressive cowl. He tucked his hands pillow-like behind an ear.

The man’s face brightened. ‘
Ah. Mes excuses
.’ As he turned away, Spike made out a glowing bank of TV monitors. The noise quietened and he reappeared, smiling. ‘Jean-Baptiste,’ he said, proffering a pink-palmed hand. The skin was rough yet soft, like the bottom of a dog’s paw.

‘Spike.’

Jean-Baptiste’s eyes fell to Spike’s cut. ‘
Tu veux du
 . . .’

Spike shook his head, then went next door, collapsing on his bed as the fan wheeled above. He shut his eyes, trying to think of the name Zahra had used when he’d approached her. What had it been? Sleep tugged at his brain like a crafty hand on the corner of a blanket.

Chapter 23

After bandaging the cut on his wrist, Spike stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. The pink domes of mosquito bites spotted his forehead. He threw cold water over his face, remembering a story he’d read about Paganini. In the winter of 1786, when Paganini had been four years old, his parents had thought he’d died of measles. They’d laid him to rest in a chilly pauper’s grave until the undertaker had seen a wisp of condensed breath emerge from his shroud. The boy had been removed from the coffin and nursed back to health, and the next year his father, a mediocre mandolin player, had pressed a violin into his bony hands. The ghoulish rumours had started when the boy had begun composing sonatas aged seven. They’d stepped up a level when he’d played his first solo concert at nine. Look closely, the people of Genoa whispered, and you will see the Devil guiding his elbow.

The receptionist was still at the desk.

‘Don’t you ever sleep?’

The receptionist looked up from his book. ‘How short is the night for those who sleep well.’

‘What are you reading there?’

He held up a front cover marked by curly Arabic script.

‘Quotations?’

‘A man must take his wisdom even from the side of the road.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Spike said as he handed over his room key.

The dining terrace of the Continental overlooked an apron of shipping containers. A female dog was lying in their shade as a male sniffed her rear. The female kept her tail down, head firmly on forepaws.

The Arabs were fasting, the Europeans breakfasting. Spike sensed the Spanish couple observing him from behind. The man with the sideburns now had a split lip. Spike wondered what adventure they ascribed to the wound on his wrist.

He drank his coffee – warm and milky, better than the reconstituted orange juice that had preceded it – and stared out at the Straits, where a succession of freight and cruise liners was coming and going from the quayside. On the furthest coastline, his father Rufus would be eating his breakfast egg, slippered, dressing gown gaping as he fed the occasional buttered soldier to General Ironside. Routine: the doomed attempt to defeat the march of time. The past wasn’t truly past if it could be repeated.

Spike stood and headed for the coast road.

Chapter 24

The duty sergeant was reading the next day’s
Journal de Tanger
, but the rest of the waiting room had emptied out. Spike walked past him to a side door, where a man at a desk was scowling at a large computer monitor, as though not quite sure what it was, still less how it had come to be there. He wore a brown corduroy suit rather than the sky-blue shirt and peaked cap of the sergeant outside. Beside one hand lay an overflowing ashtray.

‘Inspector Eldrassi?’

The man raised his eyes, face long and grey, like a lolly sucked dry of flavour. Contrasting with the sallow skin was a suspiciously dark moustache.

‘Jessica Navarro gave me your name.
Hablas inglés?
’

His expression animated, as though he’d been flicking through a mental file of e-fits and come across a match. ‘The beauty from Gibraltar,’ he said, laying his cigarette in the crematorium of its predecessors. ‘They send me there for trafficking conferences. I speak the best English.’

‘Spike Sanguinetti.’

The man stood up properly. ‘Inspector Hakim Eldrassi. You are also a policeman from Gibraltar? Here on holiday?’

‘Lawyer. Here on business.’

Hakim withdrew his hand and rubbed it on his brown corduroy trousers. He motioned with his chin to a chair opposite the desk. ‘Five minutes.’

Spike sat down. ‘I represent Solomon Hassan.’

Hakim shook a cigarette from his pack even though the previous one was still smouldering. ‘He is on his way back to Tangiers, I hope?’

‘We’re seeking to prevent extradition.’

Hakim’s eyes closed in weary disbelief. ‘There is an arrest warrant, Mr Sanguinetti. He has a case to answer.’

‘We consider Tangiers Prison to be unsafe for a Sephardic Jew. Even if my client were only in custody overnight, that would still represent a breach of his human rights.’

A smoke ring hung in the air, stretching to a Munch-like skull before disappearing. ‘Why are you here?’ Hakim said.

‘Seeking evidence of anti-Semitism within your penal system.’

‘But here,’ Hakim went on, ‘in front of me. Now.’

‘Have you been to the Sundowner Club?’

‘In this room,’ Hakim said, ‘we do not care for it when people answer a question with a question.’ He threw some ash into the tray with a practised flick. On his desk Spike saw the same triangular card he’d seen in the hotel:
Together Against Terrorism
.

‘It’s a clip joint,’ Spike continued, ‘on the beach. The murder victim, Esperanza Castillo, was there the night of her death.’

‘With your client, no?’

‘Did you know Esperanza was involved in a fight at the Sundowner a few days before she died? With a waitress.’

Hakim sucked hard on his cigarette, as though it were somehow to blame. ‘We are considering no other suspects until your client comes back to answer the charges against him.’