70
Stepping through the hospital doors, Spike was struck by a wall of sunlight, and felt himself stagger a little on the steps. A prosperous-looking woman in a suit swerved past him, heels clicking on the tiles, murmuring anxiously into her phone. Spike watched as the sliding doors swallowed her into the netherworld of the hospital, then turned and picked his way up Europort Avenue, disorientated by the rush of people. A whole night had passed since they had arrived at the hospital, he realised. And he half-expected everyone to stop in their tracks and stare at him, whispering in awe at what had just occurred. But they didn’t, of course, because they couldn’t have known, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t have been much moved by what seemed to him an astounding and unique experience, but in reality was just another part of the messy business of life. But as Spike watched these people bustle by, balancing their morning macchiatos and their briefcases, clutching the hands of their snot-glazed children, he wondered how many of them had spent their own bleak night pacing the corridors of a hospital, waiting and hoping, trying to pray. Then he heard a noise and tried to place it. His phone.
‘Son?’ Rufus barked. ‘Anyone there?’ Beneath the veneer of impatience, Spike could hear the strain in his father’s voice. He had to clear his throat before he trusted himself to speak. ‘It’s a girl, Dad.’
‘Is she OK? Is Jessica OK?’
‘They’re both fine.’
A heaving sigh of relief. ‘Charlie? Char-lie! He’s coming to the phone now. Is there a name?’
‘Juliet.’
His father emitted a thin, reedy noise from the back of his throat. Spike heard a rustle, then Charlie’s high-pitched voice came onto the line, ‘Papi?’
‘You’ve got a sister, Charlie. She’s called Juliet.’
A long pause. ‘I made a Lego tower.’
Spike laughed. ‘Is it a big one?’
‘The biggest in the world. Ever.’
‘Then maybe you could take a photo, and we can show it to Mama and the baby. What do you think?’
‘OK.’ Spike heard the sound of the phone hitting the kitchen floor, little feet slapping away.
‘Hello?’ came Rufus’s voice.
‘I’m on my way home, Dad. Just to get a change of clothes.’
‘Well done, son.’
Spike tried to ignore the tightness in his throat. ‘See you in a bit, Dad.’ He slipped the phone back into his pocket. He was just mustering the courage to brave the crowds on Main Street when he heard another voice call out his name, and turned.
Danny Garcia looked a little taken aback by the enthusiasm of Spike’s greeting. He retrieved his hand from Spike’s grasp and massaged the fingers, as though hoping to restore circulation.
‘Sorry, Danny. My fiancée just had a baby girl.’
A shadow crossed Garcia’s face, but he quickly rallied. ‘That’s great news. All well, I trust?’
Spike nodded and smiled. Suddenly he couldn’t stop smiling. ‘How was the surfing course?’
‘It was . . .’ Garcia clicked his teeth. ‘It was probably more Laura’s thing than mine. But I think she enjoyed it. I heard Massetti kept you busy. A murder charge, no less.’ Garcia gave a low whistle. ‘But the man’s got judgment, I’ll give him that.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘When he asked for you, he chose the right brief.’
Spike looked Garcia in the eye. ‘I thought the referral came from you, Danny.’
Garcia shook his head. ‘Massetti requested you after he fired me. I told him you were more of a tax specialist these days, but he was adamant.’
Spike felt his euphoria fade. Garcia didn’t seem to have noticed, just gingerly held out a hand for Spike to shake as they reached an unattractive prefab that some Pollyanna of an architect had seen fit to christen ‘Regal House’. ‘Well, this is me,’ Garcia said. ‘Congratulations again, Spike. On the birth. And the result.’
71
As he continued through the Old Town, Spike tried to reason with himself. Why shouldn’t Massetti have asked for him by name? Spike Sanguinetti might not be the fixture in the Mags that he once had been, but he knew he still had something of a reputation as a criminal defence counsel. Yet the niggle remained: why would Massetti have acted as though Spike had been foisted upon him that day at the prison? As though he didn’t give a damn what happened to him?
Spike reached the corner of Fishmarket Road. Uphill lay the route home; downhill, the sea. Maybe it was just the eerie chime of the masts, but something made him turn towards the marina. The first boat he passed was a cheap inflatable dinghy, unremarkable save for the oversized engine that told Spike it was used for more than just pleasure trips. Tobacco smuggling had long been part of life on the Rock – hardly surprising when cigarettes retailed at 25 euros a carton in Gibraltar and 40 in Spain. And as he stared down at the sun-bleached rubber, Spike was taken back to all those long summer nights he’d spent as a teenager with Joseph Guzman and Sebastian Alvarez. The hit of adrenaline as they’d powered a boat just like this one through the darkness towards the Spanish coast, cut the engine and drifted into the beach, where the boys from La Línea would wade through the blood-warm water to meet them with rolls of pesetas in plastic bags. Seba and Joe – what had happened to them? They’d had their children young; he’d barely seen them since.
A good-looking youth in a red polo shirt and matching shorts dozed on the deck of the next vessel, a sailor’s cap tilted over his eyes. A tender, judging by the man’s livery, and by the sleek stained-wood of the hull. Ocean Village had been conceived as bait to lure the chic yachting crowd, and looking at the well-heeled horde currently breakfasting at the ‘internationally themed’ restaurants on the harbour’s pontoons, the plan had worked.
The Rebecca lay a few berths along. Her tarpaulin was down; Spike pulled out his handkerchief and leant over to scrub some of the muck from the windscreen. Through the glass, he could just make out the dials and gauges, cracked and dirty with disuse.
‘She doesn’t look like much, does she?’
Spike spun round and saw the youth standing on the quayside behind him, scratching his tanned stomach with a fingertip.
‘I’m looking for Christopher Massetti.’
The youth knocked back his cap to light a cigarette, then waved the smoke out of his eyes. ‘The old guy? I expect he’ll be at the hospital. They want him there every day, he says.’ He rolled his eyes in the way that men in their early twenties do when talking about the elderly and infirm. ‘He hasn’t stopped going on about it since I let him have some fuel.’
Spike inclined his head. ‘Massetti’s taken the Rebecca out?’
‘You’d never think it to look at her, but she’s sound enough. He’s had her out on the water three . . . maybe four times these past weeks?’
‘Vincent?’ An autocratic female voice rang out, and they both turned to see a well-maintained woman of a certain age standing by the tender. She held a boxy white shopping-bag in each hand, and, had the filler in her face allowed it, she almost certainly would have been scowling. ‘We did say ten o’clock, didn’t we?’
Vincent crushed out his cigarette just a few seconds later than he might have done. ‘We did, Mrs Fitzgerald. I’ll be right with you.’
Spike watched them cast off, then turned back to the Rebecca and unhooked the first peg of the tarpaulin, wondering idly what kind of penalty he might expect to receive for trespassing on someone else’s boat. But then he saw the crate on the deck filled with six-litre bottles of the bio-ethanol gel that Christopher Massetti used in his marine stove, and decided to take his chances.
He lifted the tarpaulin and stepped aboard, cursing beneath his breath as he stumbled over a boathook lying on the deck, its shaft polished and new. Hunching down the narrow steps towards the hold, he found the hatchway divided in two, a lock in the middle. The wood flexed a little as he pulled the handle towards him, but held fast.
He reached back up for the boathook and w
edged it into the gap between the hatch doors. There was a splintering crack as he rammed the shaft down hard with the heel of his hand, then one half of the hatch flew open, releasing the overpowering stench of a chemical toilet. Spike reached inside and undid the internal bolt, grappling on the wall until he found a light switch. Then he walked over to the twin cabin beds at the end of the hold, eyes adjusting to the grimy sodium glow.
One bed had been neatly made up, the grey wool blanket pulled taut and tucked under with the kind of hospital corners that would have made a drill sergeant turn misty-eyed. The other had been stripped down; lying on the wooden frame was a pile of chess magazines. Spike sat down on Massetti’s bed and picked up a well-thumbed copy of Pergamon Chess, imagining the old man lying there, debating the advantages of the Queen’s Gambit over Fool’s Mate as the waves lapped around him. His neck was aching again; he reached up to massage it, then heard paper rustle beneath him and slipped a hand under the blanket.
It was just a plain brown package. The envelope had been slit with a paper knife, and Spike reached inside and pulled out a wad of papers. It took him a moment to work out what he was looking at. Then he saw that the cover letter was headed ‘Rosia Road Surgery’.
‘Dear Mr Massetti,’ Spike read. ‘Further to your Subject Access Request (SAR), in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998, please find enclosed a copy of your medical records dated from five years ago to the present day . . .’
Spike shuffled through the medical notes, feeling his breathing accelerate as he recognised the same sections he’d forced Eloise Capurro to read out in court carefully highlighted and annotated. He sat back and rubbed a palm across his face. When the evidence had been delivered to the courtroom, Spike had assumed it must have come from Danny Garcia. It had never occurred to him that someone like Massetti could have been the source. But then he supposed that had been exactly what Massetti had wanted – for Spike to take him at face value, an old man with a grudge and a chronic drink problem. Someone to be pitied.
Spike stood up and smacked his head smartly against the fibreglass roof. Swearing, he spun around, eyes scanning the cramped interior. An Adidas holdall sat on the counter next to the marine stove; he zipped it open and pulled out handfuls of Y-fronts and a faded pair of paisley pyjamas. Massetti had used a sandwich bag to hold his wash things. It was a depressing sight, and in other circumstances Spike might have felt sorry for the man. But not today.
Heart shifting, Spike turned to the bed and ripped back the tightly made sheets. Then he wedged his fingers beneath the mattress and tipped it up. And there, in the cavity beneath, he found what he was looking for. Box file after box file of Massetti’s carefully prepared research.
He opened the lid of the nearest file, jolting in shock as he saw a photograph of his younger, leaner self staring up at him. ‘The Devil’s Advocate’, the headline read; ‘How far will one lawyer go for his client?’ A ‘think’ piece’, the journalist had dubbed it, published in Vox, a now defunct local rag covering legal and political affairs. Five years ago, it had caused something of a stir amongst the legal community on the Rock, insinuating as it did that Spike’s defence of his then client, Solomon Hassan, had exceeded the bounds of appropriate behaviour. Spike felt his mind drift back to all the professional and personal compromises he’d made over the past few years. If the author had known what had really gone on that summer in Morocco, he could have placed the article in a far more prestigious publication than Vox.
Underneath, he found a complete copy of the MI5 file on Esteban Reyes, Marcela Peralta’s and John Capurro’s names neatly underlined. He checked the postmark: Massetti had requested it three years ago, as soon as the information had been declassified.
The last box file was filled with notebooks. Spike recognised the blue hardback covers immediately, and felt his guts churn. He leant in and picked up the most recent of Marcela’s diaries. The last entry was dated September 13, the day before Marcela had been reported missing.
Terrible argument last night with Tony at Dragon Trees. It was just like the old days, Tony telling me in that cold, logical way he has that he would manage the situation. But Eloise is dead. First Jack, and now Eloise, who knew nothing, who had nothing to do with what happened to Esteban. But I know we have no one to blame but ourselves . . .
The diary that had been posted anonymously to Spike was missing. In its place was a sheaf of photocopied sheets, carefully stapled in one corner. The evidence was undeniable. It was Massetti who had sent Marcela’s diary to Spike. And the only person who could have taken it was the one who’d killed her.
Suddenly the stench of the place was too much. Spike lurched for the hatchway, knocking over a bin filled with empty tin cans as he gulped for cleaner air. He leapt off the boat onto the quayside and ran towards the Marine Office. The hut was empty, so he reached behind the counter for the Mooring Ledger Book, trying to make sense of the scribbled entries. At 2 p.m. on 3rd September, he read, the Rebecca had left the marina. Then, on the morning of 5th September, she was back in her berth. Since then, she’d been marked as present at the marina every day.
Between those two days lay a date Spike was unlikely to forget: 4th September, the night of the fire that had killed Eloise Capurro.
Spike tore out the page and ran outside. As he reached the road, he realised that there was only one member of the Mil Cortes who was still alive. And he was at the hospital, too.
72
As Spike dialled the number for New Mole House, he saw that his hands were shaking. ‘Put me through to DI Isola. Tell him it’s an emergency . . .’
Even at a fast jog, it took Spike ten minutes to make it back across town to the hospital. All the way there, he kept trying to reassure himself that Sir Anthony couldn’t be in any real danger. Massetti had kept Sir Anthony alive for a reason: to atone for the death of Esteban Reyes by taking the blame for the murders that his son had committed. Esteban had died knowing that he’d been falsely accused of killing two people, and Sir Anthony would suffer the same. An eye for an eye: Massetti would find a pleasing symmetry in that, Spike thought, remembering the copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy that he’d seen in his apartment at Governor’s Meadow Estate.
Nevertheless, by the time Spike reached the hospital, he found himself increasing his pace. He sprinted down the corridors of the first floor but found Sir Anthony’s room empty. Lights out, bed stripped; for a moment Spike thought that nature might have done Massetti’s work for him. He heard the squeak of unoiled wheels, and turned to see a hospital porter pushing an empty gurney down the corridor. ‘What happened to the patient in here?’
‘They discharged him yesterday,’ the porter said. ‘The police took him home.’
Spike exhaled in relief. If Massetti went looking for Sir Anthony at Dragon Trees, he’d find him recuperating under police guard.
‘Funny thing,’ the porter chuckled to himself, and Spike looked back up. ‘The old man’s on death’s door for a week, and no one comes to see him but his son. Now he gets two visitors in the space of an hour.’
Spike caught the porter’s sleeve as he turned to go. ‘The other man. Did you see where he went?’
The man scrunched up his face as he tried to remember. ‘He was after directions, I think.’
‘To the Liver Ward?’ Spike prompted.
‘Well, he looked pretty yellow, I’ll grant you that.’ The porter tutted in sympathy, then snapped his fingers. ‘I know. He said he knew someone who’d just had a baby.’
Spike felt his body tense up. Then he turned and sprinted for the lifts, hammering a fist on the button. He was about to abandon it for the stairs when the doors parted and he stepped inside, sensing the other passengers exchanging concerned glances behind him as he repeatedly punched the button for the fourth floor. At last the doors opened, and Spike dodged out sideways, swerving past porters and labouring women pacing the corridors, leaning on the arms of their partners.
He stopped a few yards from Jessica
’s room. All around he heard familiar sounds: nervous laughs, low moans of pain. More couples waiting for their lives to implode. Maybe it would be fine, he told himself. Perhaps he was just being paranoid.
Then Spike looked through the glass panel and saw Christopher Massetti sitting in a chair in the corner of Jessica’s room. Cradled in his arms, wrapped in a white blanket, lay his daughter, Juliet.
73
Spike pushed open the door, and Massetti looked up with a frown. Then he raised a finger to his lips and beckoned Spike in. Juliet was asleep, Spike saw, the back of her head cupped in one of Massetti’s huge palms. Spike glanced round at Jessica, searching for some indication of life, but her face was turned away from him and he didn’t want to risk moving around the bed.
‘Hello, Christopher,’ Spike said, trying not to focus on the strong, callused fingers cradling his daughter’s fragile skull. The bones were still unfused at birth, the midwife had said. One needed to be careful.
‘She’s dreaming,’ Massetti murmured, and Spike forced a smile, feeling the muscles of his face ache with the effort. He made himself sit down on the chair by the empty cot. In the silence, he listened for Jessica’s breathing, but all he could hear was the swish of nylon-covered thighs as a nurse bustled past the door.
Massetti pressed the baby to his chest, one hand stroking her back as he whispered sweet nothings into her tiny ear. He must have come straight from the marina, Spike thought. Above his docksider shoes, Spike could see his ankle bones, blue and sharp beneath the thin yellow skin.
‘I saw you bring in Jessica yesterday,’ Massetti said. ‘Came to pay my respects. Looks like she’s had a bit of a time of it.’
Juliet twitched beneath her blanket, and Spike felt a hot sensation prickle over his scalp. ‘I’m not sure Jessica wants too many people handling the baby.’ He made as if to get up, but Massetti glanced at him sharply, and he lowered himself back into the chair.
‘The Marine Officer called,’ Massetti resumed. ‘Said someone had broken into my boat.’
A Thousand Cuts Page 22
