Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) (29 page)

‘A Bedouin elder called Ibrahim al-Mahmoud. Killed by either Ángel Castillo or Nadeer Ziyad. They may be responsible for the murder of Esperanza too. Do you understand me?’ Grilles were rattling up from shop windows. People kept staring.

‘There is a witness,’ Hakim resumed, ‘who says she saw you and a girl enter Abdallah al-Manajah’s flat. You never mentioned any girl. You told me you were alone.’

‘I’m giving you the solution to a murder and you’re quibbling over witness statements? If you’ve got all this time on your hands, why not drive down to Zagora Zween with a pickaxe and smash up some concrete?’

‘Are you at the Hotel Continental, Mr Sanguinetti?’

Spike stopped. ‘How did you know I wasn’t on the boat?’

Silence at the other end.

‘You asked me to catch the 3 p.m. boat,’ Spike went on. ‘Who told you I wasn’t on it?’

‘Where are you, please, Mr Sanguinetti?’

Spike switched off his phone and continued up the rue de Belgique, hearing the distant wail of a police siren as he neared the Café des Étoiles.

Chapter 73

The café was empty save for the same white-haired barman washing glasses. Spike checked the time: 3.50 p.m. Zahra was due at four, Jean-Baptiste at five. He ordered a Coke and sat at a stool, looking ahead at the door through which Jean-Baptiste had disappeared the last time they were here. Moving his drink to one of the low round tables, he waited until the barman had his back turned.

After knocking on the door, Spike heard the sound of chains being removed as a young Moroccan with severe acne appeared in the gap. Behind him, Spike sensed the familiar glow of monitors. ‘
Jean-Baptiste, por favor?
’

The boy shook his head, then closed the door. Spike looked back at the barman, who was staring at him. ‘
Mon ami
,’ Spike called over.

The chain jangled to reveal Jean-Baptiste, tall and stern in his white prayer robes. ‘We say 5 p.m., no?’

‘Have you seen Zahra?’

‘
Qui ça?
’

‘The girl. Zahra.’

Jean-Baptiste shook his head.

‘Does the tape work?’

‘I do not try. Later.’

‘Can you try now?’

Someone called from behind him in Arabic. ‘I go,’ Jean-Baptiste said. ‘I find
you
, uh?’

The door closed and Spike returned to the table. Another police siren droned outside. The barman continued to stare.

Spike pressed in his solar plexus, bruised from where Riddell had hit him. It was after four . . . maybe he should just hide out here until the night boat. He drank some more Coke. His phone rang. ‘Zahra?’

‘It’s Nadeer.’

Spike put down his bottle.

‘I’ve heard about the videotape,’ Nadeer said. ‘You still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a fake, of course, but an irritant. You have it with you?’

‘What if I do?’

‘I understand you and your Bedouin sweetheart have been rubbing the police up the wrong way. Something about a false witness statement? We could probably make that disappear.’

‘I’ve got a different idea,’ Spike said. ‘You get Ángel Castillo to give a full confession to Esperanza’s murder and I’ll consider not posting the tape to Gibraltar.’

‘Now you’re being silly.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Your girlfriend’s rather keen for you to bring the tape here. Isn’t that right, Tobes?’

Spike heard a muffled scream in the background. ‘Bullshit,’ he said.

‘Well, she’s not with you, is she? What colour are her panties, Tobes?’

‘Pink,’ Spike heard shouted in the background.

‘Pink,’ Nadeer repeated. ‘So bring the tape with you in half an hour. You remember the villa. Send the taxi away then ring the bell on the gatepost.’ There was a pause. ‘Half an hour, Spike. Don’t make her wait.’

The line went dead. Spike felt his heart banging against his ribs like a prisoner in a cell. He stood and walked to the café entrance, glancing left and right up the street. Four thirty. His head felt dizzy; he waited for his breathing to regulate then returned inside, hammering on the back door.

Spike barged in as soon as the teenaged boy opened up. Rather than TV monitors, the glow was from laptops. The room smelled of weeks of stale perspiration.

Jean-Baptiste and a crew-cut Moroccan sat staring at a fold-up screen. Displayed was a black-and-white image of heliopods, filmed from above. Numbers ticked along the base.

Jean-Baptiste turned his slack face. ‘That tape,’ he said.

‘Have you made a copy?’

Jean-Baptiste said something to the Moroccan, who hit a key on the computer. ‘We burning DVD now,’ Jean-Baptiste said.

‘I need the original.’

He spoke again to his colleague. ‘Is it . . . real?’

‘Yes. Can I have the original?’

‘Not finished.’

‘I need it right away.’

‘You want help,
Chingongo
?’

‘Just the tape. The tape and a pen and paper . . .’ Spike scoured the cluttered room and saw a printed sheet on a table. ‘Pen, pen . . .’

The boy gave Spike a chewed biro and he wrote out the home addresses of Peter Galliano and Jessica Navarro on the back of the sheet. On the screen, the black-and-white image was forward winding. Nothing changed but the numbers at the base.

‘
Beaucoup
bad shit,’ Jean-Baptiste said as he ejected the tape and handed it over.

‘Listen,’ Spike said, ‘I’ve got to meet someone. If I don’t come back, you’re to post DVD copies of the tape to Gibraltar. I’ve got money . . .’ He laid out a two-hundred-dirham note.

‘What you mean, don’t come back?’

Spike moved to the door, then turned. ‘The El Minzah Hotel. How good are your contacts?’

Jean-Baptiste stuck up a thumb.

‘One more favour, Jean-Baptiste, and I’ll buy you a first-class ticket to Madrid.’

Chapter 74

Spike held down the buzzer as soon as the taxi pulled away. There was no one in the sentry box, just the same stone lions eyeballing the road. A small black CCTV camera peered down from the gatepost.

‘Yes?’ came a voice.

‘It’s Sanguinetti.’

The mechanism began to whirr, and Spike slipped at once between the gap. Cicadas pulsed in the palm trees lining the driveway. Strips of late sun shone between their trunks, heating Spike’s skin as he passed through them. In his right hand, in lieu of the tape box, he held a plastic carrier bag.

The dizziness returned as he remembered Zahra’s smile as she’d left the hotel room. He’d let her go, failed to protect her . . . He stopped, wiping a sleeve across his forehead. He needed to concentrate. He continued up the curved section of driveway into the turning circle.

No cars, no liveried butler to welcome him. He crunched over gravel to the gatehouse tunnel. Another CCTV camera tracked his paces.

The swimming pool glowed in the last rays of the sun. Squatting like a silver toad at its rim was the heliopod.

Spike walked up the right-hand edge of the pool. The doors to the main house began sliding apart, and Toby Riddell stepped outside, frowning at the sun, a smile on his freckled face. He wore a navy, brass-buttoned blazer and high-waisted chinos. His sandy hair was combed back, as though he were ready to go out for the evening. His black shoes glinted.

‘You’ve got the tape then,’ he called out.

Spike held up the plastic bag.

‘Great,’ Riddell shouted. ‘Bring it over, then you can take the girl.’

Spike took a step towards the heliopod, then stopped. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Zahra first. Then the tape.’

Riddell glanced over Spike’s shoulder at the doorway which led down to the underground garage. ‘Uh-uh, sunshine,’ he replied. ‘Other way round.’

As Spike started to turn back towards the gatehouse, he saw Riddell’s right hand dip beneath his blazer. Spike would have thought that the pistol was fake, but for the long black silencer screwed to its muzzle.

‘Hands nice and visible,’ Riddell called out.

Spike raised the plastic bag up above his head. Riddell was coming towards him over the terrace.

‘Higher. Where I can see them.’

Using his fingertips, Spike felt for the handles of the plastic bag and knotted them together. Riddell was almost at the heliopod now, skirting towards him along the edge of the pool. Spike could see his yellow teeth as he smiled, piggy eyes squinting at the sun.

Breathing out slowly, Spike transferred the plastic bag to his left hand. It dangled down. He swayed it back and forth. Then he looped it into the air so that it landed with a plop in the middle of the pool.

Riddell’s smile disappeared. He steered his gaze to the pool, where the tape was floating, buoyed by the air in the bag. ‘That was stupid,’ he said, looking back at Spike.

‘You’d better get it before it sinks,’ Spike replied. ‘Or you’ll never know if it’s genuine.’

Riddell twisted both hands, angling the pistol, as though aiming up beneath Spike’s chin.

‘And if it’s not genuine,’ Spike called out, ‘then I’m the only person who can tell you where the original is.’

Riddell glanced again at the plastic bag. ‘Not one fucking muscle,’ he said, as he backed along the edge of the pool.

The water darkened Riddell’s chinos as he splashed down the steps. The plastic bag was creeping towards the deep end, drawn by the cleaning current. Riddell was up to his waist, still pointing the pistol at Spike. His blazer tails swirled. The bag was just three metres in front. When he turned his eyes to check its position, Spike sprinted towards the heliopod and crouched down behind it.

There was no bang from the gun, just a cymbal-like reverberation as the bullet hit the side of the heliopod. A higher-pitched clang followed, as Spike crouched down lower, protected by the metal shaft. In front, he could hear Riddell thrashing about in the water, trying to get an angle for the shot.

Grimacing, Spike placed his hands on the shaft of the heliopod and shoved outwards. The current prickled his palms as though he were gripping the stem of a rose. The heliopod started to rock as the metal clanged again, right by Spike’s ear. Directing all his strength into his arms, he heaved again until it tipped on its stand, landing with a heavy splash in the water.

Sharp droplets sprayed up onto Spike’s face; he was teetering on the flagstone edge, hands clawing at the air, trying to switch his momentum backwards. Elbows by his ears, he held himself there, looking down and seeing Riddell frozen in the middle of the pool, plastic bag beside him, one hand still on the pistol, the other clutching back and forth, sinews on the side of his neck like ropes as his face angled upwards to the setting sun.

A crackle came from the water: the heliopod was sinking, drawing its forked tail of wires behind it. Now Riddell’s entire body was convulsing. As Spike finally fell back onto the terrace, he heard Riddell give out a long falsetto scream. Then there was nothing but the rhythmic saw of cicadas and the slow, steady chug of the filtration system.

Chapter 75

Spike glided like an automaton, a torso on mechanical legs. The lights were on in the gatehouse; he descended to the garage, taking the steps three at a time. Then he saw her. Sitting on a metal chair in the middle of the concrete floor, motionless, brown hessian sack over her head. ‘Zahra!’

Her shoulders began to twist; he pulled off the sack and saw her eyes wide, hair lank and sweaty, electrical tape over her mouth. She kept glancing beyond him, blinking as though in warning.

‘It’s OK,’ Spike said, ‘you’re safe now.’ He moved behind her; her wrists and ankles were taped behind the chair.