by John Connor
‘What if they’ve already gone through?’
‘I told you. We’ll find them. If they’re already in Gibraltar then they can’t get out. They know about them at the airport and the harbour. They have your daughter’s photo. They know she’s English, so they will be interested. They’ll find her if she’s over there.’
‘Can’t we go across the border, to check?’
‘Not yet, no. There’s a process. It’s not Spain. We are awaiting the diplomatic clearance for cooperation. But they can’t fly out without—’
‘They could just get a boat out.’
‘They can’t. The coastguard knows – the Spanish coastguard. All boats out of Gibraltar have been queried for over three hours now.’
Queried? What did that mean? ‘It would be safer if I could go over and look around the airport and the harbour.’
‘I need you here to look.’
‘They’re not going to come here. Not now. There are police all over. You said it yourself.’
She heard a series of small explosions from beyond the road, a loud shout of many voices raised together.
‘They’re fireworks,’ Molina explained. ‘They shoot fireworks at the emergency services.’
From where she was to the road was only a hundred metres. Further to the west, traffic coming into Gibraltar took this same road into La Linea, then edged around the actual town, following the curve of the bay before turning off, right in front of her, to use the short single road into the colony. The road continued down to the other side of the isthmus, to the football ground she could see there, then the Mediterranean, a little beyond that. From the bay to the sea was about one kilometre of flat sandy land, much of it given over to lorry parking on the Med side. Across the far side of the dividing road was an apartment development and a series of dusty public parks that stretched down to the football ground and the sea. Inland from the apartments and parks was the central part of La Linea. That was where all the noise was coming from, that was where all the police cars were headed.
But even as she watched she saw a crowd start to emerge from the street directly opposite. They were coming straight towards her, though still about two hundred metres distant, and not moving with any obvious purpose or direction – just spilling out of the town, chanting, shouting, fists in the air. They looked more like a football crowd, like they were celebrating. Molina picked up a handheld radio and spoke to someone brusquely.
She watched the initial group of people quickly swell into a crowd large enough to be threatening. They stopped just the other side of the road, roughly a hundred and fifty metres away. The police hadn’t closed the road yet – or the border – so the line of cars and trucks waiting to turn towards the border post was still there, an obvious target. A bottle sailed through the air and smashed against the windscreen of one of the cars. From the corner of her eye she saw the occupants starting to get out, cars turning in the road, trying to get away.
They were between her and where she needed to be. Rebecca’s phone was over there somewhere, in the town itself. There was no obvious reason to be here instead of there, and Molina had given no sound explanation. It was his assumption that if they had come to La Linea then they would be trying to get to Gibraltar. But she didn’t understand that, didn’t understand any of what they were doing.
‘Do you have any men over there?’ she asked him. Her heart was continually racing now, so that when she spoke the words came out slightly breathless. ‘Do you have any men actually covering the area where you think the phone is?’
‘I already told you that,’ he said. ‘You should trust me more. Calm down. I’m trying to help you. We put in place a discreet cordon, over an hour ago. But then the demonstration kicked off and they worked out we were there. That’s why things are getting heated. They think we’re trying to move in on them – the demonstrators, I mean. They don’t realise it has nothing to do with them.’
‘And are they still there now – the people you put in?’
‘It’s more complicated now. The guardia have priority now – they are just trying to manage the crowd, to prevent a repeat of last week.’
‘He could just walk away from the town then, or drive away.’
‘You have to be patient—’ He stopped as the radio crackled into life again. He held it to his face and listened as someone said something quickly, something about a girl. She held her breath. He asked for clarification and coordinates, then raised his eyebrows at her and pointed through the window, towards the crowd. The voice at the other end said something about a man and a girl. Molina gave an instruction. What had he said? She didn’t quite understand it – some police jargon. He lowered the radio. ‘A possible sighting,’ he said, quietly. ‘A man and a girl, behind the crowd there, about twenty metres further up the street.’ He picked up the pair of binoculars lying on the desk. The woman at the desk started to say something into a microphone, something unconnected, speaking to someone else about one of the cars coming through.
Molina stood for what seemed like minutes, staring through the binoculars. She kept her mouth shut, watched the crowd growing larger at the other side of the road. She could see no little girl over there. All she could see was angry males, most of them with bandanas covering their heads.
‘I can’t see anything,’ he said, finally. ‘You look.’ He handed her the binoculars.
‘What did your man say?’ she asked, her voice almost strangled off in her throat.
‘A possible sighting at the back of the crowd. It’s not confirmed. There was a sighting like this an hour ago …’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘It was a false alarm. Look up that street straight opposite, the one the crowd are coming down – look at the faces about halfway up.’
She got the binoculars focused and started to scan the chaotic jumble of faces, everyone moving, the image too dark to be useful. ‘I can’t see anything,’ she said, desperately. ‘Did your man say anything about her – did he say what she was doing?’
‘No. Just try to scan the crowd methodically …’
‘Is he sure it’s her? Did he mention her height? She’s very tall for her age – it’s distinctive.’
‘No. He’s not sure. That’s why you’re looking. He didn’t mention her height, just the possible age. He thought a teenager.’
‘But she’s tall for her age, so it could be her.’
But still she could see nothing, partly because the trees and street lights in the space between blocked the view, partly because the crowd was now very large and flowing right out of the street. She lowered the binoculars and watched as police cars sped along the road from both directions, to head them off, to stop them getting anywhere near the border post. From where she was there was a one-hundred-metre stretch of bare concrete – the customs area – then the dividing road – a wide, four-lane avenue with a large central island. Then the apartments and the town. From inside here it was impossible to see behind the ringleaders.
‘I will step out a moment,’ Molina said. ‘I have to call my sergeant out there.’ He was brandishing his mobile. ‘Stay here. Keep trying. It’s important.’ He turned from her and walked to the other side of the room, pushed through a door there and let it close behind him.
That left her and the desk woman, who wasn’t looking at her at all. She was still speaking quietly to someone on the microphone. Julia put the binoculars down and stepped over to the door they had come through. Beyond it, she knew, was a fire escape that opened right onto the concrete area in front of the customs post. She couldn’t see Rebecca from here, so she had to get out there.
Carl was about four hundred metres away from the customs post, on the dividing road that led along the edge of the distant bay then came down past him and the football ground, as far as the coast. There was a turn-off about four hundred metres in front of him – a short road to the customs post and the
border. He couldn’t see the border itself, just the queue of cars moving through. But ahead, spilling across the road he was on, opposite the turn-off, there was a miniature riot going on. Rebecca stood beside him, watching it also.
He estimated there were around three hundred and fifty people in the vanguard. They were coming out of the street that he guessed would lead back to the hotel and the car, so there would be no going that way. There was a turn-off towards the centre only twenty metres from where they were that would cut behind the crowd, but there was a guardia civil car across it, blocking it, officers crouched by the car as if someone was going to start shooting at them. Their caution wasn’t shared by the townspeople – there were groups of them all over the road, standing around, watching, laughing like it was a carnival. No sense of fear, or danger. People were hanging out of the windows of the apartments near the commotion, jeering.
There were at least five police cars up near the border post, positioning themselves between the queue of traffic that had been caught up in it all – the cars and trucks waiting to get over to Gibraltar – and the ringleaders in the crowd. Most of those involved were doing nothing, just standing there on the town side of the road, or on the central reservation; a few were chanting political slogans, some waving banners. At the front were ten to twenty with masks and stones, taunting the police, or running forward to throw missiles at the line of cars. It wouldn’t have taken much to go in and arrest the vanguard, he thought, before things really heated up, but the police were hanging back, sheltering behind their cars, guns drawn, riot shields up. The queue to get over the border was vanishing rapidly as cars reversed out of it and drove off in the opposite direction.
‘Is it dangerous?’ Rebecca asked him, nervously. She was still eating a hamburger they had just picked up at a kiosk near the boarded-up football stadium.
‘I wouldn’t want to try to get through it,’ he said. He was tempted to get the spotting scope out and have a proper look at the border area, but that would be pushing it. He didn’t like standing around here with her in the open. It wasn’t the police that worried him, it was the possibility that Jones had anticipated they would make for here. Jones was still alive, out there somewhere.
‘We could walk up the side there, by the police,’ she suggested. ‘I’ve been to Gibraltar before, last year with my mum – that’s the way you go.’
‘I don’t like it,’ he said, turning away. ‘We’ll find another way.’
18
Julia whacked her palms into the fire exit bar, springing the set of double doors open and running into the lights outside. Behind her the fire alarm started to ring – or was it an alarm Molina had triggered? Straight ahead there was a stretch of bare concrete between herself and where the front line of protestors were lined up on the dividing road, fists in the air, shouting furiously, some of them already throwing bricks at the police vehicles parked to block access to the border post. She cut right, slightly towards the football stadium, away from them, then started to really run.
She could hear Molina shouting behind her but it was unclear what he was saying, the blood pumping too loud in her ears. As she got to the road she glanced back and saw him stopped, a good twenty metres behind her, speaking into his radio. She dodged between two police cars that were coming to a stop. Uniformed men got out, night sticks waving, but they weren’t looking for her. Only ten metres away people were hurling bottles and stones with all their strength, trying to hit the police. A bottle came over her and smashed against the side of one of the abandoned trucks that had been waiting in the queue to go through the border. The queue was down to a handful of empty vehicles now – everyone else had turned and driven off. She could see a ragged line of men across the other side of the road, near the apartments there, the leaders of a much larger crowd trailing into the streets beyond. Nearly all of them were masked. She had to get over there and behind them. Behind her other policemen were shouting, possibly at her.
There was an island of grass in the middle of the road, with a bronze of a statue figure standing with a bicycle on a plinth – she ran straight past it and onto the road on the town side. She was halfway across before she realised exactly what she was doing, and by then it was too late. To get into the customs buildings they had given her a big plastic, laminated ID badge, hanging round her neck. And she had run straight out of the police buildings, in full view, run straight for the protestors.
The men in the front started to react. They started yelling abuse at her whilst she was still thirty metres away. Then the stones started and she got it – they thought she was police. She looked back, but no one was chasing her any more. She was between the two sides, stuck in the middle. She skidded to a halt, turning away from the men shouting at her, then started to run back towards the police, stumbling slightly. She would have to get back to safety then find a way round them.
A car was speeding up from the side. It swerved to a halt in front of her. The doors opened and four men piled out, sticks in hand. There were stones and bottles flying, bouncing off the ground, shattering. She started shouting in Spanish that she wasn’t police, yanking off the ID. She aimed for the space between the car and the crowd of men with bandanas and started to sprint. She saw them coming at her from the left, sticks up. Beyond them there was a line of police with shields and batons, but they were easily thirty metres off, further down the road. She couldn’t see Molina at all. She ducked, felt something graze her shoulder, swerved to the right, saw four or five men all screaming at her from over there, saw missiles curving lazily through the air towards her. She dodged, swerved, kept going.
There was a small guy in jeans, face uncovered, mouth twisted in anger. His arm flicked forward and he skimmed something at her, something small. Her eyes tracked it as she was running, saw it scything through the air at leg height. She broke her step, tried to stop to avoid it, then felt it strike her knee and bounce off. A stone. For a few seconds she kept going, her legs still carrying her forward, then the knee just collapsed on her, the whole leg folding so that she went head over heels, rolling across the tarmac.
She came up into a sitting position, looking around, trying to get her bearings. Her hands were automatically clutching the injured knee. There was no blood but she couldn’t feel a thing, couldn’t get the leg to work. A second later an intense pain shot up the leg as she tried to scramble backwards and get to her feet again. She dropped down. There was nothing she could do but crawl. A bottle smashed just to the side of her, showering her with glass fragments.
The men with sticks were running back to the car now. Something was happening from the police line. She tried to turn towards it, to see, but a man appeared from nowhere, stooped and grabbed her by the arm, started pulling her back towards the crowd. She yelled that her daughter was missing, tried to pull away from him, but another ran up to help him. It was like they were trying to rescue her, pull her to safety, but the guy was screaming at her, telling her she was a filthy police bitch, that she deserved everything coming to her. The other let go of her arm long enough to start hitting her head with his fist. She felt her head jerking sideways, shouted again that she wasn’t police, tasted blood in her mouth.
Their faces loomed in and out of her field of vision as she was dragged forwards, numbed by the blows. She could see the street stretching behind them towards the town, the buildings white and tall on either side, hundreds of individual doors and windows, see a huge crowd there watching them doing it, but no one moving to help her.
They were trying to get her away from the police so they could hurt her. She started to violently shake them off, fighting to wrench herself away, but the leg still wouldn’t work and she kept falling back down. She crouched in the road, staring towards the crowd. Suddenly the two who had dragged her were also fleeing. She could hear movement from behind, whistles blowing, men shouting orders.
Her eyes scanned the crowd, watching to see if anything else was t
hrown, passed over a man right at the front, came back to him. He was moving against the flow, in the front row of the crowd, his eyes fixed on her. He was dressed like the rest but she knew instinctively that he wasn’t with them. He was focused on her. Short, dark hair, a normal face, a backpack off his shoulder and held in one hand. As her eyes met his he was lowering his right arm to his side, bringing it back, out of sight. He had a pistol there, held as if he had been about to fire it. Or had already fired. She was certain. She saw the black metal, the barrel. He slipped back a row and was instantly gone, lost in the sea of movement and noise.
Then legs were running past her, uniformed men all around, charging towards the crowd. She saw at least twenty thunder past her, shields up, batons held ready over their heads, roaring like animals. The crowd panicked in front of them, splitting up and fleeing in all directions.
There was a small stand of taxis near the stadium, three cars in line when Carl had passed it on the way up, all looking very ‘local’. He guessed they were a smuggling asset, rather than taxis for tourists. But they would do.
The noise continued behind them as they put their backs to it. Rebecca kept up with him, walking by his side, mostly passing people hurrying in the opposite direction to watch the show. He could see there were only two taxis parked up now, both drivers out on the pavement, talking, pointing towards the demo. He crossed the road with her and said, ‘We’ll try to get one of these cars. I’m going to say we need to get to Malaga, to reach your brother in hospital …’
‘I don’t have a brother.’
‘It’s a lie. I need them to sell me one of those cars, or agree to take us out of here. Back me up if they don’t understand. OK?’
‘OK.’
The two drivers separated as they drew near, one going for the nearest car, pointing at it and shouting something in Spanish. Carl kept going, walked past the first car, shook his head, pointed to the car behind. The one in front was a SEAT, fairly decent and clean. The one behind was a Vauxhall Astra that hadn’t been washed in years, much older. There was some objection to him choosing the second in line – from the first driver – but he ignored it, walked straight past him, keeping Rebecca close. Both drivers had cigarettes in their mouths, lank black hair. They were about Carl’s size. They could have been brothers.
