Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti)
Read Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) Online
Authors: Thomas Mogford
Shadow of the Rock
A Spike Sanguinetti Novel
Thomas Mogford
For Ali Rea
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot,
The Waste Land
Contents
The girl gasps as his fingernails rake the soft skin of her inner thigh. She reaches for the whisky bottle and takes a long slow drink, clear brown liquid spilling down her lips and chin. She passes the bottle to the man beside her; he screws it back into the corpuscular imprint it has formed in the sand.
Across the Strait of Gibraltar, just a few miles distant, the lights of Europe flicker, losing their strength to the dawn. The girl manoeuvres herself onto all fours, facing out to sea as the man kneels behind to hoist her thin dress to the small of her back. The first glow of the sun starts to redden the Straits; this, and the electricity spreading up the girl’s spine, convince her, ever superstitious, that her decisions must be right, that today’s actions will be vindicated.
Warm water laps at the girl’s splayed hands. The tide is coming in; she pushes herself back and forth onto the man’s strong extended fingers, grinding her knees down into the sand, watching the European shoreline lights vanish as the sun unsticks bloodily from the mire.
The man reaches forward, easing down the straps of her dress, stroking a shoulder blade. Her head lolls, hanks of dark hair hanging over multi-pierced ears. Out to sea, the morning breeze gusts on the water, drowning out the break of the waves.
The girl sucks in a sudden breath. She feels a sharp, chilly sting on the side of her neck, as though more whisky has dripped down, or some insect or jellyfish has been brought in by the tide. She tries to exhale but the breath will not come. Lifting a hand to her neck, she senses the warmth between her thighs matched by a thick, sticky gush, as a high-pitched whine distinguishes itself above the waves, like a mosquito, the girl thinks dreamily, or a punctured lilo held to the ear.
Her elbow collapses, face slapping down hard onto wet sand. Rich red pools in the film of water, turning to pink before it drains away. The girl sees his shadow darken the sky above, then feels something spatter her cheek. The spittle clings to her eye socket, quivering with the last spasms of her body. Somewhere behind, a call to prayer rings out, marking the start of another Tangiers morning.
Gibraltar
Spike Sanguinetti stared across the water at the shimmering lights of Africa. A breeze was whipping in off the Straits; he held his cheek to it, testing for the dry heat of a Saharan southerly. Instead came the same moisture-laden levanter. There would be no sun in Gibraltar tomorrow.
He turned back towards Main Street. Cobblestone lanes that a few hours earlier had been jostling with tourists were now deserted – safely back aboard their cruise ships, or cloistered over the Spanish border in the cheaper
pensiones
of La Línea de la Concepción. The grilles of the duty-free shops were down, wooden pub tables tipped on their sides, gleaming in the lamplight from closing-time scrub-downs but failing to dry in the humidity. Spike pulled his tie free, folding it into his suit pocket. Then he turned off Main Street and entered the steep-rising maze of the Old Town.
The ancient, crumbling houses clung precariously to the skirts of the Rock. Spike climbed past them, lulled by the routine, into backstreets and alleyways too tight to permit traffic. The Church of the Sacred Heart gave a solitary toll, while high on the Upper Rock, mist was muting the floodlights, lending a yellow sodium glow to the residential buildings below.
Spike stopped as he entered Chicardo’s Passage, suddenly alert. Twenty metres ahead, silhouetted in the spectral light, stood a figure. Thickset, with a man’s broad shoulders, standing directly in front of his house. Spike watched, heart quickening, as the figure took a silent step forward, then tested the door handle.
‘
Hey
!’ Spike called out.
Flinching at Spike’s voice, the man turned and launched into a heavy-footed sprint. Spike waited until the figure had reached the end of Chicardo’s Passage, then doubled back the way he had come in, pacing himself for the climb ahead.
Tank Ramp, Bedlam Court, Devil’s Tower Road: Gibraltar street names were the hallmarks of its bloodstained past. After crossing a narrow passageway, Spike ran up a high-walled set of steps. A fig tree had seeded itself in the ruins of an old victualling yard; he caught a hint of mustiness in the scented leaves and raised a hand to the branches, sending a large grey ape bounding away into the darkness.
Tongues of fog licked at Spike’s face as he burst onto Castle Road, the last demarcation before the Rock became too sheer to colonise. Cars and scooters were parked tightly on the cramped pavements; he zigzagged between them, stopping at the point where Fraser’s Ramp met the road. Head resting against damp concrete, he waited, allowing his breath to steady. The levanter swept through the Rock scrub above. More low cloud drifted past floodlights. It was then that he heard the noise.
A soft scrape of shoes on flagstones, followed by a coarse, asthmatic panting. Spike edged closer, stopping as the squat dark figure appeared on the road, chest heaving, hands on thighs. As soon as the man straightened up, Spike stepped out of the shadows and grabbed his arm.
A dusty old Fiat was parked ahead on the pavement; Spike slammed the man against it, pinning his thick neck down onto the sloping rear window. In the half-light, he made out pouchy cheeks and round, gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘Solomon?’ he said.
Solomon Hassan leaned against the passenger door of the Fiat, arms by his sides, staring down at the pavement. He wore a pinstripe suit, the right trouser leg torn and the white shirt stained. His black hair was wet with grease or sweat, a tuft at the back sticking up.