Spike heard a faint noise, and looked down to see Juliet’s mouth fixed around Massetti’s little finger.
‘Hungry, aren’t we?’ Massetti whispered. ‘She’s got a taste for life, this one.’
‘I wish you’d give Juliet to me, Christopher.’ Spike tried to keep his voice low and calm, hoping that Massetti wouldn’t notice the crack in it. ‘Her mother’s hardly let me have a minute with her.’
Massetti nodded, but then they both heard the distant sound of sirens drifting in over the Europort, and he drew the baby closer. ‘I never wanted a child, myself.’ He gave Juliet a fond stroke of the head, and her blanket slipped down, revealing her tiny legs in their white romper suit, still kinked from their months in the womb. ‘Only a fool would bring an innocent child into a world like this.’ Massetti covered Juliet tenderly back up with the blanket. ‘I knew you’d work it out in the end. Once you’d seen me at the marina. That was bad luck.’
Spike slid his hand into his jacket pocket, and Massetti narrowed his eyes. ‘I took it from the Marina Office,’ Spike said, as he laid the square of folded paper on the bed. ‘No one has to know. You could just give Juliet to me and leave. Sail your boat back to Spain. Wait and see what happens with the transplant.’
The sirens grew louder, and Massetti gave a regretful smile. ‘A man my age? An alcoholic? They don’t put you at the top of the list, you know.’
Surely he wouldn’t hurt her, Spike told himself. No one could hurt such a tiny baby. But then he thought of the infant he’d seen taken to a mortuary in Valletta all those years ago, and he remembered that monstrous things happened every day. And Massetti was a monster, he suddenly realised, because only a psychopath could have done the things he’d done to Eloise and Marcela.
Spike got to his feet and took a slow step towards Massetti. ‘At least you managed to clear your father’s name. No one can take that away from you.’
‘That’s what Eloise Capurro said.’
Spike froze. ‘You didn’t mean to kill her,’ he coaxed. ‘I know that now. You just wanted her to tell you who “Laurel” was.’ It was a guess, and a terror paralysed Spike as he wondered if he’d gone too far. But Massetti just stroked a thumb down the side of Juliet’s face. ‘It was the only thing I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Not then. Not until I found the diary. And it took a long time for Dr Capurro to tell me it was Anthony Stanford. But by then the fire had taken hold.’ Massetti looked back at Spike, and Spike saw condemnation in his eyes. ‘I asked you to do it. That day in my flat. To talk to her. But you wouldn’t. So I had to do it myself.’
Spike held out both hands. ‘Please give Juliet to me.’ The baby whimpered under the pressure of Massetti’s grip. ‘It’s hard for her to breathe, Christopher. When you hold her so tight.’
Massetti stared down at the child. Then his baggy face crumpled, and he let out a terrible, racking sob. Spike took another step forward, muscles tensed, preparing himself to run at the man. He could see the tears dripping down Massetti’s yellow cheeks, catching in the bristles of his beard, grey eyes creased with pain. But then Massetti extended his arms, and Spike reached out and took his daughter, amazed even now at her lightness, hearing a gasp he didn’t recognise as his own emerge from the back of his throat. When he looked back up, Massetti was gone.
‘Spike?’ Jessica rasped. She pushed herself up onto one elbow and gazed at him. ‘Was that the doctor?’
Spike didn’t answer, just clasped their daughter to his chest and kissed her soft warm cheek. Outside, the wail of the sirens grew more urgent.
74
Spike sat in the patrol car, watching DI Isola strut around the Ambulance Bay, yelling into his mobile phone. The detective’s lantern jaw was tense with frustration, and Spike felt a vague sense of sympathy for whichever unlucky subordinate had drawn the short straw and been forced to call with what was evidently bad news. Reprimands delivered, Isola yanked open the car door and pitched himself into the driver’s seat.
‘So they lost him,’ Spike said.
‘Ceremony of the fucking Keys,’ Isola spat. ‘Massetti walked straight out of the hospital into a sea of Redcoats.’
Spike held his tongue as he waited for the man’s fury to dissipate. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. ‘Have you tried the boat yet?’ he asked.
‘What is it with the bloody boat?’ Isola retorted. Spike raised an eyebrow, and Isola looked away with a grunt, which was as close as Spike would ever get to an apology, he supposed.
‘Two officers were despatched to the marina as soon as we got your call,’ Isola resumed. ‘But there was no sign of Massetti. And we still don’t have a warrant to go aboard.’
Spike reached up and massaged his aching neck. Then he took out the page he’d torn from the Marine Ledger and passed it to Isola. The detective looked at it for a moment, then back up at Spike, eyes widening as if to say, ‘And?’
Spike wondered if he had the energy to explain it all to Isola. Then he thought of his daughter cradled in Massetti’s hands, and sat up. ‘We were all working on the assumption that Massetti couldn’t have killed Marcela because he’d fled to Spain.’
‘And because there’s no record of him crossing the border back to Gib,’ Isola said defensively.
‘That’s because Massetti didn’t cross the border on foot.’ Spike tapped the Marine Ledger with his finger. ‘He took the Rebecca out the day before the fire. Probably sailed her round the headland to Spain and moored at one of the fishing ports by La Línea. Then he walked back across the land border to Gib on the same day. You can check that, I suppose?’
Isola nodded.
‘The next night, Massetti set the fire at the Capurro house. He hung around at the scene just long enough for someone to see him, then fled across the border to Spain.’
Isola looked down at the page again. ‘And then he sailed the Rebecca back to the Rock that same night . . .’
‘While the emergency services were all busy tackling the fire,’ Spike completed. ‘From then on, he stayed hidden on his boat. Kept out of sight during the day, then did what he needed to do at night.’
‘Massetti had it all worked out,’ Isola murmured, a certain amount of admiration in his voice.
Spike nodded. ‘He even built in his own alibi. No one could ever have imagined he’d killed Marcela if they thought he was still on the run in Spain.’
‘But what about Anthony Stanford?’ Isola asked, and Spike could tell he was thinking about the CCTV footage.
‘Massetti knew there was a camera outside the Capurro house,’ Spike said. ‘It came up during his trial. All he had to do was make sure that the only person captured on film was Sir Anthony.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why Stanford was there that night.’
Spike shrugged. ‘Maybe Massetti summoned him. Sent him a text from Eloise Capurro’s phone.’ Spike looked away, trying not to think of what Massetti must have done to Eloise to make her give up Sir Anthony’s name. ‘The point is, Massetti had already started the fire by the time Anthony arrived. Then later, once Anthony was in the frame for Eloise’s murder, Massetti sent me Marcela’s diary to make sure that the police knew Anthony had a motive to kill the other members of the Mil Cortes.’
‘All because of what they did to his father?’
Spike nodded, eyes on the Ambulance Bay outside, watching through the passenger window as the gates opened with a dull clank. The more he thought through everything that had happened since he’d agreed to take Massetti’s case, the more he kept remembering details which troubled him. The business card Dr Martinez had found in Massetti’s pocket which had led her to Spike’s door. The newspaper articles about Esteban Reyes left so casually on Massetti’s desk for Spike to see. The fact that Massetti had waited for his trial to end before revealing the note that John Capurro had sent summoning him to the hospital, making Spike believe he’d somehow won the old man’s trust. A series of random events, Spike had assumed. But were they? What if they were a
ll part of Massetti’s plan? Mechanisms to arouse Spike’s sympathy and ignite his interest in an ancient miscarriage of justice?
Isola pulled Spike back to the present, as he had a habit of doing. ‘But where did Massetti get the morphine?’
Spike plucked at his lower lip between finger and thumb, then shook his head in defeat. Just one more thing to add to his long list of variables.
Isola’s radio buzzed and he snatched it up. ‘You got it? Then get aboard. I don’t want to waste any more time.’
Spike watched as a young paramedic helped a stout, middle-aged woman out of the back of the ambulance, her head lolling. Then he looked back at Isola. ‘I think I know where Massetti might be.’
75
Though the Ceremony of the Keys was over, the streets were still clogged with tourists, so Isola parked the patrol car on the corner of Bomb House Lane and they continued together on foot. As they walked up Convent Ramp, Spike made out the Moorish Castle rising from the flank of the Rock, the medieval prison where they’d hanged Esteban Reyes. A Union Jack hung limply from its ramparts.
‘I meant to say,’ Isola muttered. ‘Congratulations on the baby.’
It was a grudging compliment. But Spike knew what it must have cost a man who’d once had Jessica within his romantic cross-hairs, so he was grateful. He was about to say so, but when he looked across at Isola, his eyes were focused on the road. So he just nodded.
Inside the wrought-iron gates of the Alameda Gardens, a family of English tourists were admiring the bust of General Eliott, the youngest straddling a black ceremonial cannon as her father anxiously tried to capture the spontaneity of the moment with a selfie stick.
Then, beneath the low boughs of the Judas tree, Spike saw what he’d expected to find. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing at the figure slumped on the park bench. Lying on the gravel beneath the seat were two bottles of whiskey, one empty, the other with its seal unbroken.
Isola crouched down and laid two fingers on Christopher Massetti’s neck. Then he turned to Spike and shook his head.
One of Massetti’s arms was dangling over the side of the bench, like Marat in his bath. His yellowed eyes were fixed on the Judas tree, the skin of his face swollen with mosquito bites. There were flecks of vomit in his beard, and the smell of it took Spike back to that day in Massetti’s flat, when he’d thought that the man was going to die, friendless and unmourned.
Spike looked down at his dead client and wondered what more he could have done. He took in the sunken cheeks, the dark patches of urine on his trousers. Then he turned and walked back towards the hospital.
PART SEVEN
76
Looking back, Spike found it hard to remember the days after Jessica had brought the baby home from the hospital, such was the grimness of the nights that followed. And he hoped he might someday be able to forget the stress of the inconveniently timed move into their new house. Yet now, sitting in an armchair in front of the wood-burning stove, with Juliet asleep in a Moses basket at his elbow, he couldn’t help but feel content.
Not even the discomfiting presence of his business partner could entirely puncture the mood. Peter Galliano sat there like Henry VIII in one of his more benevolent humours, red lips pouting in approval as he cast his quick eyes around the sitting room. ‘Well, I must say, Spike. You’ve done very well,’ he boomed.
Spike glanced into the cot, and Peter produced a face of exaggerated contrition and continued sotto voce. ‘The child’s angelic, of course.’ He waved a vague hand at the Moses basket. ‘But the house. It’s so light. And spacious. I mean, look at the size of that thing.’ He pointed a fat finger at the Christmas tree, nose wrinkling at the glitter-covered baubles that Charlie had made at nursery, the crooked star askew on the top branch.
Spike shrugged. It was a little overdone, but secretly he rather liked it. Beneath the tree sat an enormous Fortnum & Mason Christmas hamper that Peter had brought as a housewarming present. It bore all the hallmarks of the recycled corporate gift, Spike thought, and he hoped he wouldn’t find a card inside from Siri Baxter that Peter had forgotten to remove. At any rate, it was loaded with delicacies that no breastfeeding mother would ever touch – foie gras, blue goat’s cheese, dark chocolate liqueurs . . .
Spike looked back at the Moses basket and saw Juliet’s eyelids flicker, then close again. She was beautiful, he’d decided. And even if that was just some atavistic urge that all fathers felt, no one could dispute that her skin was soft and smelled of something delicious. Even the alarming Mohican of black hair had given way to an unexpected covering of golden fuzz.
Peter cleared his throat. ‘A longer commute into work, of course.’ It took Spike a moment to recognise the inference – that his paternity leave was expected to end with the holidays. He watched as Peter pulled out his cigarettes and held them up enquiringly.
‘You’ll have to go out on the balcony. Come on. It’s this way.’
Upstairs, the door to Rufus’s bedroom was ajar, and Spike paused for a moment to watch his father at his easel, blurring the waves with the pad of a thumb. Sensing his son’s presence, he looked round and smiled, and Spike wondered if his blue eyes weren’t perhaps that little bit dimmer since he’d learned the news of Marcela’s murder. Hearing a noise behind him, Spike turned to see Peter waiting on the landing, tapping one Italian-leather-shod foot.
He guided Peter between unopened packing boxes into their bedroom, then forced open the shutters. They stood in silence for a while on the balcony, watching the surf crash against the sand below. Then Peter canted his head and contemplated Spike though his long black eyelashes. ‘I’m sorry about how we left it, Spike. That night when we discussed Siri’s donation.’ Peter blew out a smoke ring and watched it evaporate in the darkening light. ‘It was a grave lapse of judgment on my part. I see that now. And I can only give you my word that it will never happen again.’ His cigarette had burnt down; he dropped it onto the cracked tiles of Spike’s balcony and crushed out the embers under his heel. ‘I’m sure you’ve given a lot of thought, as have I, to what the right thing is to do under the circumstances. Whether an error of such magnitude merits investigation by the appropriate authorities.’ He peered up at Spike, wet eyes filled with just the right amount of self-reproach. ‘But looking around your beautiful home, seeing your darling daughter, I sense this may not be the ideal time to risk the fortunes of our little firm.’ He dropped his gaze thoughtfully. ‘Because it is a partnership, Spike. In the truest sense of the word. Galliano & Sanguinetti. Unlimited liability, as it were.’ As if to labour the point, Peter lifted his walking cane and scraped the tip along a fissure that ran through the concrete. ‘Nasty crack, that.’
The first peal of a cry came from downstairs. ‘That’s my cue,’ Peter said, clasping his hands together and giving Spike his most bountiful smile. ‘I’ve outstayed my welcome.’ He laid a hand on Spike’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. ‘I’m so glad we sorted all that out, old friend.’
77
The lamp posts on Main Street had been garlanded with Christmas lights, and Spike gazed up at them as he approached Marcela’s, finding twinkling sleighs and angels, Christmas trees and bells. He paused for a moment outside the restaurant, watching through the frost-sprayed window as Sofia Peralta prepared for evening service. After Marcela’s funeral, Sofia had talked about selling up and moving back to England. Perhaps she’d changed her mind. In that vintage black dress, with her glossy bob tucked behind her ears, Spike was struck again by her resemblance to Marcela, and he wondered what Sir Anthony might have thought to see her there, framed in the soft light of the window.
He started up the western face of the Rock, eyes drawn to its limestone summit. One day, he thought, some bright young thing trying to make a name in marketing would suggest they erect a giant star on its peak for Christmas. The press images would go global.
Turning onto the road to Dragon Trees, Spike recognised the same family of apes crouching on their outcrop, watching
in silence as he rang the bell. A minute passed, then the door was opened by a slim, dark man in pink scrubs, holding a bumper festive edition of ¡Hola! under one arm.
‘I’m here to see Sir Anthony.’
The Spanish nurse bowed his head and beckoned Spike in with a long finger. ‘Por aquí, señor.’
Sir Anthony’s beautiful glass cube was swathed in gauze. No magnificent views on display this afternoon, just a sombre half-light accentuated by the smell of antiseptic. The elegant art deco dining table had gone, replaced by a hospital bed, the multiple wires and leads that snaked across the glass floor suggesting a complex array of adjustable functions. On an occasional table in the corner sat a small artificial Christmas tree, decked with blue lights and a string of sad-looking tinsel. Remembering the scene he’d just left in Catalan Bay, Spike wondered if it might be the most depressing thing he’d ever seen.
Sir Anthony was propped up against an arrangement of thin pillows. His steel-grey hair was half-heartedly combed in a manner that revealed patches of alopecia Spike had never noticed before.
‘Tea-coffee?’ the nurse sang out.
Spike shook his head, and the man melted away. A high-backed dining chair had been positioned by the bed, and Spike sat down on it, averting his eyes from the palsied side of Sir Anthony’s face, from the cloudy drool darkening the collar of his pyjamas.
Spike reached over and placed a gentle hand on the old man’s shoulder. Sir Anthony shifted his head to the right, and Spike was relieved to find his good eye bright and alert. A bandaged arm emerged from the sheets, and Spike took his hand in his, feeling the coolness of the crêpey skin. ‘Can I get you something, Anthony? Some water?’
‘Maybe later,’ Sir Anthony rasped, his voice slow but surprisingly clear. ‘Sorry about the gloom. The sun hurts my eyes.’
A Thousand Cuts Page 23
