Hollow Mountain

by Thomas Mogford

  Queues. Never-ending queues. I swelter in the uncomfortable seat of my cramped SEAT Ibiza, driver’s window down. Everywhere I see these strange number plates, brief as swearwords – G6935, G4482. It’s like stepping back in time. The booking line of my hotel had just five digits. Five!

  The delivery van in front – Gibraltar plates – is being searched by Spanish customs, the belly of the official straining to escape the buttons of his nylon shirt. I want to pull out of the queue and gut him. Grizzled, wall-eyed – clearly the local junta puts the real cretins on border duty. At last, after finding nothing more sinister than some trays of wilting lettuce, the official gives the van the nod to proceed.

  As the driver gets back into his cabin, he stares pointedly at my Madrid number plate. A moment later, a hand emerges from the window to dump the heaped contents of an ashtray onto Spanish soil. I see a beaming face in his rear-view mirror as the van pulls away. Reddish hair, sunken eyes. A Jew, no doubt. I’ll remember you, friend, I think. The official waves me on without a glance, and I adjust my view of him. A loyal patriot.

  Just as I’m about to put my foot down – another queue. Only then do I see the second border post. A woman in a chequered hat comes to my window. She speaks in English, so I hold up my passport, and she gives what I grudgingly accept is a winning smile, then asks – in perfect if accented Spanish – one of the most idiotic questions I have ever heard. ‘Negocios o placer?’ Pleasure? In Gibraltar?

  Finally on the other side, I make it to ten kilometres an hour. To my left rises the Rock, cloud gathering around its peak, its sides pale and craggy, like the images I have in mind of the white cliffs of Dover. Albus, Albion, Perfidious Albion. I wonder what those dark holes are in the limestone. Caves? Tunnels? Dwelling places for the Gibraltarians? Suddenly I hit the brakes. A third queue and another police girl, hand raised.

  Roadblock. Dios. I think of the compartment Hernán has hidden in the roof of the car. Ahead, a ‘bobby’ in a tit-head helmet is dragging a chain of spikes across the road. I twist on the fan, contemplating my options.

  This fan is loud. I turn it down but the roar continues, growing to a crescendo as . . . An aeroplane has just landed ten metres in front of the bonnet of my car. A 747 jumbo, name splashed in gaudy orange on the fuselage, wheels screeching as the third-rate pilot struggles to bring it to a halt. Airport terminal. Control tower. Baggage handlers. The road into Gibraltar is bisected by a runway. De puta madre!

  The spikes are withdrawn, and at last I drive across the tarmac apron, flanked by moronic workers on pushbikes and aggressive youths on mopeds. Concrete council estates sprout on the other side, the narrow pavements jammed with cars. A red British phone box throbs on the street corner. Behind, filling my mirrors, is a London-style double-decker bus.

  I turn left off the roundabout and pass a wholesaler’s shop. The white van of earlier is parked outside. I memorise the name above the door, then press more deeply into the heart of the fortress.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The pile of reference books towered precariously at the edge of Spike’s desk. He checked the time and found he’d been working for three hours straight. Only last week, anxiety about Zahra had been getting in the way of his work; now he realised that he’d barely had a chance to think of her in days. He felt a sudden stab of guilt as he imagined her abandoned in Italy, then remembered her cold impersonal voice on the phone, Jessica’s insistence that she always found a way to come out of things on top. He would wait and see what Enrico Sanguinetti sent back from Portofino, then decide what to do next.

  Back to the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 . . . Something Clohessy had said about the cost of remaining moored in the Straits had suggested a possible line of attack. The competition Neptune faced from its rivals – you only had to type the company name into Google for the current location of their ship to come up – meant staying in possession of the site was all the more vital. The seas were full of unregulated salvage bandits, none of whom would be scrupulous enough to declare valuable unlisted cargo. Spike had found numerous examples of companies failing to disclose what they’d scavenged from the sea floor. Then there was the continuous harassment of the Guardia Civil: always worth bringing in the noisy Spanish neighbours to get a Gibraltarian court onside.

  The one irritant was the lack of news from Jardine. A clear accord between the salvor and the Ministry of Defence was the starting point for the case. Friday lunchtime had come and gone without any contact. So much for military efficiency. Then, as if summoned, his desk phone rang. ‘Spike Sanguinetti?’

  ‘Hugh Jardine.’

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Top brass took a while to debate. And we’ve decided not to press any claim on the silver.’

  Spike paused. ‘No claim at all?’

  ‘Technically the silver bars are not MoD property.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You also said they would probably be confiscated by Customs and Excise.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘And even if they aren’t, well, frankly no one here can quite believe we’re in for a multi-million payout for some old lead. We’d rather not rock the boat with Neptune, if you’ll forgive the saying.’

  ‘You do realise the value of the silver could be five times that of the lead?’

  Jardine seemed to hesitate. ‘Try and see it from our point of view, Spike. The MoD is suffering the most swingeing cuts since the end of the Cold War. There could be hundreds more shipwrecks hidden in the Straits.’ He chuckled. ‘The wise man plays the long game.’

  ‘So that’s the official MoD position?’

  ‘I’ll have my secretary email through the documentation.’

  ‘Very well. See you on Monday.’

  ‘Monday?’

  ‘The hearing.’

  ‘I suppose I ought to be there.’

  ‘I suppose you ought.’

  Spike hung up. Baffling: Clohessy must have got to the MoD somehow. Discount the silver or we walk away. Ruthless bastard.

  He returned to his skeleton argument, cross-checking it with Galliano’s original notes. As he flicked through a printout detailing the scope of Gibraltar’s territorial waters, he noticed a faint pencil mark in the margin he’d missed the first time round. He twisted the page, trying to decipher Galliano’s sloping, artistic hand. ‘Simon,’ he read aloud, ‘Grainger’. Simon Grainger. So Grainger really had been in touch with Galliano.

  There was a phone number sketched beneath, which Spike dialled at once. ‘Hola?’ came a female voice. A televisual hum in the background, then a peal of childish laughter. ‘Is that Mrs Grainger?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Spike Sanguinetti.’

  A long pause. ‘I didn’t give you this number.’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to see you about.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Clinging to the slope above the land border with Spain was the Moorish Castle Estate, a cluster of medium-rise tower blocks rising from the ruins of the oldest part of Gibraltar, a fort built by the Arabs when they’d captured the Rock in ad 711. The castle’s ancient stones intermingling with the cheap, post-war materials of government housing created a curious millennial clash of styles.

  Spike stopped beneath the castle gatehouse. A family of apes were climbing down from the Upper Rock, using its creeper-clad wall as a bridge down into the estate. They moved in single file, two juveniles, a male, a stocky female up front – macaques were a matriarchal society, Spike remembered as he watched the mother turn and bare her fangs, then crouch for her mate to pick a flea from within her grey pelt. One of the juveniles vaulted across a gulf of a thousand years, clattering down onto a recycling bin shelter. It picked up a sun-bleached Walker’s crisp packet, sniffed, then tossed it aside.

  A brick-lined archway led towards the tower blocks. Macmillan House, Tankerville House . . . The nomenclature reminded Spike of cigarette brands: the cheaper the tobacco – Pall Mall, Regal – the grander the na
me. Patriotic graffiti – ‘British Forever!’; ‘Give Spain No Hope’ – was scrawled on the retaining wall of a caged football ground, while the kerb was painted in red, white and blue, like a sun-drenched street in West Belfast. A woman in a velour tracksuit stood guard beside a boarded-up Social Club as a child urinated beneath the porch. ‘Swings, Granny,’ the girl demanded. Granny? She looked younger than Spike.

  Spike gave the woman and child a nod, then passed beneath the Tower of Homage, the one part of the castle that was still intact. Not long ago it had housed Gibraltar’s prison: there were tales of inmates escaping, cheerfully observed by residents, who would only grass them up if they had a Spanish look about them. The prison had since been moved to a purpose-built facility on the other side of the Rock; pigeons now nested in the battlements, though its air of incarceration remained, seeping somehow into the surrounding buildings.

  Keightley House formed three sides of a square. Union Jacks and Gibraltar flags were draped from the upper windows, along with the inevitable selection of smalls and Liverpool FC beach towels. Pinned to one wall was a laminated notice from the Tenants Association. Apparently Gibraltar’s Chief Minister was to visit next month to discuss ‘widening the water mains’. ‘Nob’, someone had scrawled helpfully by his name.

  Spike pushed open the metal door to Block C. The pigeonholes were swollen with post – however grim the conditions, the fantastically low rent meant that government housing was always oversubscribed. Spike found the box marked ‘Grainger’ and wrestled out a wad of envelopes. Three were stamped ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’, a misleadingly exciting phrase betokening income or council tax bills. A couple of stiff handwritten envelopes were addressed to ‘Amy Grainger’ – condolence cards, probably.

  Flat 7B, the post-box said, so Spike started up the narrow staircase, apparently built for a generation of Gibraltarians expected to be short and undernourished. Two doors opened at the top of each flight, most with a cheap wall tile alongside, some offering welcome, others an image of a favoured saint – Bernard of Clairvaux, Patron Saint of Gibraltar; Our Lady of Fátima, a Portuguese madonna with a penchant for ghostly appearances. An ironing board sat on the third floor, a man’s designer white shirt stretched across it. The front door was of expensive oak; Spike had heard rumours of cigarette smugglers living on the estate in flats pimped out with marble bathrooms, jacuzzis, plasma TVs.

  He paused on the sixth floor, slightly alarmed to find himself out of breath. The landing window appeared to be composed of jam-jar bases, a few panes missing, presumably to temper the heat. The view looked out onto the eastern face of the Rock, fourteen hundred feet of limestone cliff, O’Hara’s Battery at the peak, a folly built by a former general to monitor the Spanish ships leaving Cádiz. Grainger must have stared at that view every day, Spike thought grimly, perhaps wondering how it might feel to jump.

  A baby buggy lay folded outside the door to Flat 7B, its seat dotted with crumbs and stains. How anyone could drag it up here defied belief. Cheap rent or not, this was a cruel allocation for a young family. The welcome tile showed a country cottage with smoke furling from the chimney, ‘God Bless Our Home’ glazed above. Moved by the irony, Spike pushed in the stiff metal button of the doorbell, and waited.

  Chapter Twenty

  Footsteps, then a sliver of Mrs Grainger’s pale face appeared in the doorway. A security chain jangled, and Spike was inside.

  No cigarette smuggler’s Aladdin’s den for the Graingers, just two sagging brown sofas, so large that they must have been assembled in the flat, so old that the assemblers must be dead. The walls were laid with flock wallpaper, the TV of a similar vintage to Galliano’s antique computer monitor. Spike had been wrong about the view: the kitchenette gave west, towards the Straits. Cranes jutted skywards from reclaimed land – luxury apartments for Category-II buyers, high-net-worth individuals whose only requirement to qualify for Gibraltar’s tax rates was to own a property on the Rock ‘appropriate to sustaining a wealthy lifestyle’. Whether they ever crossed the threshold was irrelevant.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ Amy Grainger said, pointing Spike towards the nearest sofa, ‘I’ve been a little tired lately.’ The sofa back was so high Spike failed to see the occupant until he’d almost crushed him: the little boy Charlie, lying on his stomach in a Spiderman vest and shorts, slotting shapes into a wooden cage. He peered up at Spike with eyes as solemn and dark as his mother’s, then slid off the sofa onto a battered plastic pushcart, which he propelled over the wood-effect floor using just the tips of his bare feet.

  ‘Your post,’ Spike said, laying the envelopes on the coffee table.

  The kettle was whistling. ‘Tenkiù,’ Amy called back in yanito. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Just some agua de beber, please.’

  The kettle quietened down, and Amy reappeared with two china mugs of tap water. Charlie was sitting cross-legged by the kitchen table now. Spike realised he was shaking the shapes out of the box, an act of some dexterity.

  Amy muted the cartoons on the television, then turned to Spike. ‘How did you get my husband’s number?’

  He waited until she had sat down. She wore cut-off jogging pants and a stripy matelot top. A plastic hair clip held her black fringe to one side; she looked sad, and very young.

  ‘It seems that Simon contacted my partner shortly before he died. His number was jotted down in a case file. Do you know why?’

  ‘I told you, I found his business card in Simon’s papers. I don’t know why Simon met or even spoke to him.’ From the kitchenette came the steady tick of wood against wood. Amy gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I don’t seem to know very much at all.’

  Spike paused; he hated this part. ‘Were you and your husband happy, Mrs Grainger?’

  ‘What does that have to do with it?’

  ‘Peter handles our divorce practice. I’m sorry, but I have to ask.’

  She lowered her eyes. ‘We were OK. Surviving. Like most people.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention the toxicology report?’

  Her voice fell. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The military pathologist concluded that your husband was taking prescription drugs.’

  She didn’t reply, so Spike pushed on: ‘Did you know he was depressed, Mrs Grainger?’

  Her lower lip began to tremble. ‘A biscuit and your room,’ she called to Charlie, who ran obediently to a cookie jar, removed a ginger nut and disappeared.

  Spike passed her his handkerchief and waited. He was good at that at least – knew the power of a silence. Eventually she spoke. ‘We met two years ago in Puerto Banús. I was on holiday with friends. Simon came from Falmouth, in Cornwall. Do you know it?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘It was a holiday romance, I suppose. But he was interesting. Had opinions. What if Land’s End was part of Spain, he used to say.’ A smile played on her lips, then faded. ‘When I found out I was pregnant, we decided to get married. My family would never have let me . . . you know. It just wasn’t an option. We talked about moving to England but then the recession hit.’ She reached for her water. ‘It was all a bit of an adventure at first. Simon had been studying law in England; we thought he could continue here as a correspondence student. But when Charlie was born, it was all so expensive. He had to take a job at a restaurant in Ocean Village. When they gave him the role of manager, he accepted it. Things were tough but . . . I didn’t know he was on antidepressants. He must have felt he couldn’t tell me.’ She was crying now, and Spike laid an awkward hand on her shoulder, cursing himself for getting involved. What had Peter been playing at with Simon Grainger? The widow nodded at the pile of envelopes, then forced herself to meet Spike’s eye. ‘I can’t even pay the bills. Our account’s stopped working. And my parents . . .’ She lowered her head, and Spike took the opportunity to withdraw his hand on the pretext of examining the letters more closely. ‘Simon’s bank account has been frozen as part of probate. You need to settle your husband�
��s estate. If you give me any outstanding bills, I can contact your bank and instruct them to switch the account into your name.’

  Amy gave a small smile, and for a moment Spike could see the girl Grainger had met on a beach in Puerto Banús and hoped to take home to his mother. A classic Gibraltarian blend with her pale complexion and black hair – Maltese, Italian and Portuguese blood, no doubt spliced with the genes of a lustful British squaddie. ‘You’d do that?’ she said.

  Spike nodded.

  ‘And you’ll keep looking into what happened to Simon?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said, hastily gathering up the bills. ‘Do you have any more of these?’

  ‘In the bedroom.’

  ‘Can you . . .’ But she was already on her feet.

  A police siren wailed from below. Estate kids probably, causing trouble. Spike looked back at the kitchenette and saw the little boy standing by the table, watching him. Spike smiled. Charlie didn’t smile back.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Walking away from Keightley House, relieved to be back in the sun, Spike saw an ambulance parked at the edge of the estate. He recognised one of the paramedics. ‘Anything serious?’

  The man pointed at a white van with two wheels mounted on the pavement. ‘Hit the kerb,’ he replied. ‘Head into the steering wheel. That’s why you wear a seatbelt.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Extremely.’

  ‘Gibraltarian?’

  ‘One of the Benady brothers.’

  ‘Alfie Benady?’

  The paramedic’s radio crackled into life; he nodded, then turned away to answer the call. Alfred Benady, Spike thought. Restaurant delivery driver. Four years above him at school. A couple of fist-fights with the SBS in the late Nineties, some drunk-and-disorderlies after his wife left him, two of them defended by Spike. Dead in his van after a minor prang. Not much of an obituary.

  A dull-looking, bespectacled man in a blue car was rubbernecking the scene from the other side of the road. Spanish number plates: typical. Spike continued past him on foot towards Governor’s Parade, keeping above Main Street, choosing a route that avoided the tourist hordes. Earlier he’d seen a cruise ship moored in the harbour: the passengers would be doing their rounds by now, cable car to the Upper Rock, St Michael’s Cave, a few snaps of the apes, then back into town, stocking up on duty-free before moving on to Sardinia.