‘Not for me, thanks.’ Spike made a face: the smell of burning bacon was making him feel queasy. He turned to Jessica and lowered his voice. ‘Any news?’
‘Massetti’s still missing.’ Jessica glanced across at Charlie. ‘The forensic team spent most of the night at the Capurro house. They found evidence of an accelerant. Some kind of flammable gel.’
‘Right,’ Spike said flatly, thinking of the portable stove in Massetti’s apartment. ‘Come on, Charlie. We’d better go.’
Rufus was holding an unbroken egg up to the light, contemplating it like Hamlet meditating upon Yorick’s skull. Jessica rapped him on the arm with a look of affectionate exasperation. ‘Come on, Delia. Hand it over.’
29
Midway down Line Wall Road, Charlie reached up and took Spike’s hand. This small confidence touched him, and it must have shown on Spike’s face as two tourists rewarded him with smiles of approval, flicking their glossy hair as they turned to go down the steps of the American War Memorial.
As usual, Spike let Charlie lead him beneath the high stone archway. At its top was a bronze plaque commemorating Gibraltar’s role in Operation Torch, the Second World War invasion of North Africa by British and American forces. Normally Charlie liked to gaze up at it for a moment, then take Spike’s hand and abseil down the steps three at a time, but this morning he didn’t seem in the mood.
So when they reached the pavement below, Spike crouched down and placed his hands on the little boy’s shoulders. ‘I know I haven’t been around much lately, Charlie. Work’s been really busy.’
Charlie picked up a mimosa twig and ran it between the limestone blocks, watching as the pale dust passed into the close air.
‘We’re still looking for the new house. That sort of thing takes time. But we’ll find somewhere nice, I promise. Jessica will make it nice after the baby comes.’
Charlie’s chin suddenly crumpled, and Spike was horrified to see his large brown eyes brimming with tears. ‘Don’t want to go back to Nana and Pete,’ he murmured.
‘Nana and Pete?’ The boy’s grandparents, Spike thought. ‘Of course not. You’re staying with us. Wherever we go.’
Spike felt the little boy’s arms clamp around his neck, his head slot into its place between his shoulder and chin. He found he was laughing, and realised once again that he had a lot to learn when it came to children.
Charlie’s tread grew brisker as he retook Spike’s hand, the little red LEDs on the heels of his dinosaur trainers dancing with each step. Spike decided to risk a question. ‘Who do you like to play with at nursery?’
The boy’s face fell again, but then he rallied. ‘Max Macfarlane,’ he replied, looking up at Spike with a shy smile. He crooked one finger and Spike leant down to hear him whisper, ‘Max is a ninja.’
‘I like the sound of Max,’ Spike whispered back.
They’d reached the fence of the playground. Spike bent down and kissed the curls on the top of Charlie’s head. ‘Love you,’ he said, trying to remember when he’d said it last. But then he saw Charlie’s eyes flick towards the nursery gates, and ushered him forward. ‘Come on, then, Sanguinetti. Playtime waits for no man.’
30
By the time Spike got back to Chicardo’s Passage, his father had already left with his watercolour kit. When it came to choices of subject matter, Rufus Sanguinetti displayed monomaniacal tendencies that would have put Monet to shame. So Spike knew where he would be – elegantly perched on his sketching stool above Catalan Bay, easel angled towards the Mamela Rock. The boulder had been christened by the Genoese migrants who’d first settled on Gibraltar’s eastern shore, and its ribald meaning was clear at first sight of the smooth, rounded land mass lapped by the Mediterranean.
Spike was just studying his father’s latest offering when Jessica walked in. Recognising the expression of alarm on his face, she laughed. ‘You don’t need to be Freud to interpret that.’
He pulled out a chair, and she eased herself into it, then opened up the polka-dotted file containing her maternity notes with a moue of distaste. ‘Water birth, anyone?’
Spike threw up his arms in surrender. He was more than happy to put off thinking about the baby’s arrival until he absolutely had to. He hovered by Jessica while she wrote; she put up with it for a minute, then dropped her pen and sat back. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the office?’
Spike remembered the sardonic tone of Peter’s earlier voicemail – ‘Started paternity leave already, have we?’ ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he said, then sat down opposite her and explained about his summons to the hospital after Massetti’s accident.
‘But you told me you had to go back to work,’ Jessica said.
Spike reached out and took her hand.
‘When you actually went to the hospital.’ She withdrew the hand. ‘So you lied to me.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘I thought it might be Dad.’
Jessica’s chestnut eyes glinted. ‘But it wasn’t your father. It was Christopher Massetti.’
‘The doctor said they needed someone to take him home.’ Spike ran the side of one hand across his eyebrow; he was suddenly feeling rather hot. ‘There wasn’t anyone else.’
‘So why not tell me about it?’
‘I didn’t want to worry you.’ The excuse sounded lame even to his ears, and he knew she must think the same. But to his surprise, she reached forward and stroked the small scar above his eye. ‘You were just trying to help, Spike. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me. I deal with vulnerable people all the time. Maybe I could have done something.’
He had hurt her, he realised. Jessica didn’t say anything for a moment, but then she lifted her eyes. ‘I know things have happened in your life, Spike. Things that make you think it’s better for everyone if you hold a little back. But what we’re doing together . . .’ She dropped her hand to her belly. ‘All that has to end. We need to trust each other.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Spike said. And he was.
31
They lay side by side on the futon, the Massetti papers scattered around the bedclothes as though they were midway through the Sunday broadsheets. ‘One country, one culture,’ Jessica read aloud, translating the Spanish with a facility that Spike couldn’t help but admire. ‘For only blood shall purify Iberia and give birth to a second Golden Age . . . Christ. Is it all this bad?’
Spike shrugged. He’d only made it through the first few stanzas. Jessica picked up the photograph that Massetti had stolen from the Isthmus Museum and took another look at Raúl de Herrera. ‘Hard to take a man seriously with that kind of facial hair.’ She shot Spike a playful glance. ‘But this Esteban Reyes is quite good looking.’
Spike rolled his eyes, then put an arm behind his head and lay back against the pillow.
‘What about the other guy?’ Jessica said, pointing at the overexposed figure next to Esteban.
‘Massetti thought it might have been John Capurro. But he couldn’t be sure.’ Spike sat up and rifled through the papers until he found the letter John Capurro had sent Massetti from his hospital bed. ‘I could have used this before the trial,’ he muttered.
Jessica read the note, then looked up at Spike, chewing her lower lip. ‘I need to get this to Isola.’
They both heard the ping as an email landed in Jessica’s in-box, and Spike automatically reached for her iPad, wondering exactly when this fabled maternity leave was going to begin. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said. He watched as Jessica opened the email from Isola and registered its contents. Then she passed her iPad back to him and rolled off the futon.
Spike clicked on the attachment, and a sequence of black-and-white CCTV footage started to roll. The time code was dated 9.49 p.m. last night. The camera must have been mounted on the UK side of the Gibraltar–Spain frontier, as Spike recognised one of the Border Agency officials. A few moments later, a heavy man shuffled into shot and turned to the camera. Massetti had a sports holdal
l slung over one shoulder. He held out his passport. And then he was gone.
‘It was recorded half an hour after you saw him on Governor’s Street,’ Jessica said, as she pulled on her elasticated jeans. ‘They’ve issued a European Arrest Warrant. Can’t be long now before the Guardia pick him up.’
‘Unless he’s already in the mortuary,’ Spike said, wondering how long it would take Massetti to find a Spanish off-licence.
As he watched Jessica gather together the articles and memorabilia that Massetti had so painstakingly collated to persuade himself of his father’s innocence, Spike couldn’t help but wish that he’d done what his former client had asked of him – destroyed everything before it could be used as evidence against him in the murder of Eloise Capurro. But deep down, he knew that Jessica was right. ‘There was a security camera at the Capurro house,’ he called over. ‘They installed it before the trial.’
Jessica nodded, then grabbed her things and left for work. Spike knew he should be doing the same, but there was something else he needed to do first.
32
Spike saw Marcela approach long before she realised he was there. The incline of Convent Ramp was steep enough to have quickened his own breathing, and the old woman certainly looked her age as she shuffled towards him, black caftan blowing behind her in the humid breeze. Her smile fell as she registered his expression. ‘Well, if it’s like that, I suppose you’d better come in.’ She opened her handbag and took out her keys: ‘You can help me open up.’
Spike followed her into the gloom of the restaurant. The shutters were closed, the air frowsty and warm. She reached for an old iron handle on the wall and started to rotate it, the sinews of her arms working beneath the papery skin, swollen knuckles trapping the unfashionably yellow-gold rings below. Those would have to be cut off one day, Spike found himself thinking. He pushed the morbid image aside. ‘It’s bad news, Marcela.’
She continued twisting the handle, one eye on the striped awning as it inched outwards.
‘There was a fire last night in the Old Town.’
‘I saw the smoke.’ Marcela flicked a switch on the wall, then turned back to Spike, her wrinkled face impassive. ‘Come on, then. Out with it.’
The displaced air from the ceiling fans did little to relieve Spike’s discomfort. He tugged the side of his collar away from his damp neck with two fingers. ‘Eloise Capurro was killed in the blaze. I’m so sorry, Marcela.’
Spike watched the notches around Marcela’s mouth deepen. ‘Was it him? Was it Massetti?’
‘The police think so.’
She put out a hand to steady herself on the nearest table. Spike stepped forward to help but she waved him away. ‘Have they arrested him?’
‘I’m afraid not. They think he’s fled to Spain.’
Marcela straightened up, then picked up a remote control from the waiter station. A moment later, the husky notes of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Explain’ drifted across the restaurant. ‘Come on, then,’ Marcela said, and Spike followed her out back.
The old woman opened the door to the kitchen garden and stepped outside, lowering her head against the glare. In the heat of the mid-morning sun, Spike could smell the fragrance of the herbs growing in neat beds by the far wall: oregano and rosemary, chives and thyme. Tomato vines and chilli plants were staked behind them, laden with dusty fruit.
Marcela knelt down before a row of beetroot and started snipping away at the green tops with a pair of orange-handled scissors, laying the stems in a wooden trug. ‘I was evacuated to London during the war. Did you know that?’ She cast Spike a penetrating glance over her shoulder, and he shook his head.
‘No reason why you should. Young people are only interested in themselves. Or I was, at any rate.’ She gave a wry smile and returned to her task, the blades of her scissors clipping back and forth. ‘Your father was on the same boat as me. The Gibel Dersa. But I barely remember him. Toddlers, you know – not very interesting to a teenage girl.’ She sat back on her heels. ‘The whole evacuation was a fiasco, to tell the truth. They told us we’d be safer away from home, then they sent us into the middle of the London Blitz. But then, of course, I would never have found Andrew.’ Marcela held a clawed hand over her eyes. ‘We met during one of the air raids. At South Kensington Tube. He’d been invalided out of France.’ She picked up another trug and thrust it into Spike’s hands. ‘Go on, make yourself useful. We need tomatoes and cucumber for the gazpacho.’
Spike heard Marcela’s husky voice continue behind him as he set to work: ‘After the wedding, Andrew and I opened a café on the Fulham Road. It did well at first, but after the war, things changed. Business was bad, and London was so bleak back then. So cold.’ She shivered at the memory. ‘We got back enough money from the Revenue to move to Gibraltar. I think Andrew hoped being close to my family might alleviate some of the disappointment of there not being any children of our own. But things never work out the way you expect.’
The stems of the cucumbers were sharp and spiny; Spike saw a bead of blood ooze from the pad of his thumb and put it to his mouth, hoping that Marcela hadn’t noticed.
‘My brother couldn’t bear Andrew, you see.’ Marcela inclined her head. ‘I don’t suppose you ever met Tito?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh well. He died a long time ago. Killed himself, just like our father. They say these things run in families.’ Marcela’s green eyes darted round to meet Spike’s as she suddenly remembered herself. ‘But I’m sure that’s just a lot of nonsense. We opened Marcela’s together. And it was a disaster. And men, you know, there’s something in them. They aren’t built for failure. So in 1968, Andrew petitioned for divorce. Left me, and went back to live with his mother in Bethnal Green.’ Marcela shook back her fringe of ice-white hair. ‘But then Franco closed the border with Spain, and everyone was stuck in Gib with nothing to do but go to restaurants. Business boomed.’ She gave a sudden cackle, sunlight glinting off the gold fillings on either side of her mouth, and Spike found himself feeling a little sorry for poor Andrew. ‘I didn’t really miss him, you know. But the divorce was hard, far harder than I’d imagined. It wasn’t the done thing in those days. And going to court, well, it was really very distressing.’ She laid down her scissors. ‘So that was what I said to Eloise. Don’t go to Law, not unless it’s your only option.’
Marcela raised a bony arm and Spike helped her to her feet, seeing the swollen flesh cutting into the edges of her embroidered silk shoes as they walked back towards the restaurant. ‘Maybe if I hadn’t persuaded Eloise to drop the case, they’d have locked that bastard up and she would still be alive.’
As Spike held open the back door, Marcela grabbed his upper arm so firmly that it made him start. ‘The police have to find him,’ she hissed, green eyes searching his face. ‘They must find Christopher Massetti, and lock him up.’ Then she took the trug from Spike’s hands, and disappeared inside the kitchen.
33
Within a week of the murder, the focus of the news coverage had shifted from Massetti’s disappearance to the speed with which the fire had spread through the Old Town. Investigators had concluded that the accelerant was poured through Eloise Capurro’s letter box; it had leaked beneath the floorboards, and the blaze had found force in the original wooden foundations that ran below the street – ancient timbers salvaged from scuttled Spanish warships. Rebuilding the Old Town had now become a priority, and Drew Stanford-Trench’s calls to modernise the area suddenly seemed prescient. ‘How many more people need to die?’ Drew would ask solemnly in every interview, omitting to mention that Eloise Capurro’s death had most likely been caused by a man he himself had failed to prosecute.
‘Sanctimonious git!’ Spike muttered to himself, as he finished reading Drew’s latest panegyric in the Gibraltar Chronicle. Then he looked up to see Ana Lopes sauntering into his office, once again without knocking. If she discerned his irritation, she was untroubled by it, just handed him his morning post and turned on h
er kitten heels.
Spike’s eye was caught by a thick cream envelope addressed to ‘Mr Somerset Sanguinetti and Miss Jessica Navarro’. Inside was an embossed card: ‘Sir Anthony Stanford invites you to a Fund-raising Gala at Dragon Trees in honour of Liberal Party candidate Drew Stanford-Trench QC. Champagne Reception and Silent Auction. RSVP.’
Spike shook his head. Talk about striking while the iron was hot. Sir Anthony didn’t miss a trick.
The next envelope was blank, but even before Spike tore it open, he knew that it would contain the form Peter had been pressuring him to sign for weeks. Spike had just picked up the phone to tell Peter exactly what he could do with it when his office door opened and the man himself appeared.
‘Caught you!’ Peter exclaimed with a diabolical smirk. He wore the houndstooth check suit that came out when business was good and summer on its uppers. His gold-topped walking cane was back in use; he claimed the autumn humidity made his legs ache. Once the grand production of lowering himself into the leather armchair was complete, Peter leant forward to examine the new photograph on Spike’s desk – Charlie dressed in the Lost Boy costume Jessica had bought him, brandishing a wooden sword. Peter set down the frame without comment, but Spike didn’t miss the smile playing at the edges of his lips.
Spike held out the sheet of paper. ‘We’ve discussed this, Peter. I can’t sign something confirming I’ve known some woman for more than a year when I haven’t.’ He pressed the document into Peter’s hands. ‘Even if she is the Chief Executive of our biggest client.’
‘It’s just a question of expediting . . .’
‘It’s a lie.’
Peter’s voice hardened. ‘Siri Baxter came to Gibraltar eighteen months ago. You could easily have met her then.’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘Listen.’ Peter took a moment to smooth down the brown goatee he still thought gave definition to a long-departed jawline. ‘The whole Bonanza Gaming management team’s on today’s BA flight from Heathrow. Let’s empty the Entertainment Account! Take Siri out to dinner at Marcela’s. Get it signed over coffee.’ Seeing the expression on Spike’s face, Peter groaned. ‘It’s a formality, Spike. Be practical!’
A Thousand Cuts Page 9
