Hollow Mountain

by Thomas Mogford

  I slam the boot, then drive to the multi-storey car park I have scouted near the hotel, choosing a deserted corner on the top floor. The boy is sleeping again; I chuck in another bottle of water, then set off down the stairs, avoiding the CCTV cameras, feeling the film of sweat on my forehead drying in the cool, ventilated air.

  Back in my hotel room, with the soft strains of a classical guitar settling my mind, I send a text with the instructions for tomorrow. Sleep feels easy and close: I shut my eyes and wait for tomorrow.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Spike awoke in a single room on the second floor of the Cannon Hotel. He’d stayed here a few times before, back in the days when he and Drew Stanford-Trench had made a game of picking up tourists in town. Spike had proved surprisingly successful – play the Latin angle with the British girls, work the British accent with everyone else. The small functional rooms hadn’t changed much. Perhaps that was why they were almost always available – even at 11.30 p.m., the time Spike had turned up last night.

  It was early now, he could tell as he glanced at the window, the sun still hiding behind the Rock. He realised why he’d woken: guitar music was streaming through the thin wall of the adjoining room. Irritatingly jaunty – Rodrigo, it sounded like. A vindictive Spaniard, perhaps, fantasising about a red and gold flag flying from the Rock.

  Spike tried to go back to sleep, but images of Amy’s suspended body began to rush through his mind. Then of Charlie, held captive, dangled like bait to lure Spike and his phone. Focus on the boy, he told himself as he slid out of bed. That was all that mattered now.

  Wrapping himself in the tiny hotel towel, he paced the corridor to the shared bathroom. The flow of water, though pitiful, helped to clear his mind, and last night’s drunken plan began to take a clearer shape. There were things to be done today, tasks to be achieved.

  Back in his bedroom, the music stopped as his neighbour slammed his own door and headed for the shower. Spike scoured the room for somewhere to stash the ship’s bell, settled on the top of the cupboard, then went downstairs to breakfast, hangover mounting with each step.

  The owner and her elderly mother were conferring on the ground-floor patio, scrutinising a flier.

  ‘Have you heard?’ the mother whispered as she passed Spike a leaflet. The upper section was marked ‘RGP’ – Royal Gibraltar Police.

  ‘A boy’s gone missing,’ she said. ‘Little Charlie Grainger. First his father, now his mum. Poor sweet chuni.’

  Spike stared down at the photocopied image of a younger, happier Charlie, recognising it with a pang as one which had sat in a frame on the sideboard of Amy’s flat.

  ‘They’ve closed the border,’ the owner said. ‘All flights grounded until they find him. People are meeting in Casemates Square at 10 a.m. to help with the search.’

  Spike thanked them and went through to the dining room. Only one other table was occupied, a reminder of the challenge of running a hotel in a booming economy when cheaper accommodation could be found on the opposite side of the border. His fellow diner was an ageing British skinhead in a singlet and shorts. Curled in the middle of his adjacent place setting was a silver necklace, perhaps belonging to someone he had once come here with.

  The owner brought in a plate of brittle bacon, fried eggs and wrinkled sausages. Spike pushed it aside, downed his doll-size tumbler of reconstituted orange juice, then went outside, recoiling from the hazy glare of the early morning.

  The atmosphere in town felt immediately different, clusters of concerned locals standing on street corners, handing out leaflets, policemen in fluorescent waistcoats lining Main Street. The skies were quiet, the occasional cackle of a herring gull intermingling with the throaty roar of patrol boats out in the Straits.

  Spike hurried to Chambers via the backstreets, glancing in at ground-floor windows and seeing pensioners watching GBC News in their front rooms. Once in his office, he locked the door and opened his laptop. It took him slightly more than an hour to compose a document entitled ‘The Conduct of Neptune Marine and the Salvage of the Gloucester’. While it printed, he followed up on a question which had occurred to him late into his restless night. He was certain that he remembered a boozy evening when Galliano had spoken of the illicit nature of ivory. It turned out, as it usually did, that Peter had been right. A Google search revealed that the UK was a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. And if the UK was, that meant Gibraltar was too – while local government dealt with internal issues, matters of foreign policy and defence were still dictated by Whitehall. Under the terms of the Convention, it was illegal to raise even the smallest amount of ivory from the sea floor. The fork that Clohessy had shown to Spike aboard the Trident might have seemed innocuous, but it still meant that his company had broken the Convention. Technically, Neptune must halt salvage until the ivory had been returned to its resting place in the sea.

  Spike marked the relevant pages of the Convention with a Post-it note and placed them, along with copies of his own document and the manifest of the Flos Sanctus Montis, in an envelope addressed to Drew Stanford-Trench. Whatever happened to Spike tonight, at least opposing counsel would have all the information he needed. At the last moment, Spike wrapped the silver peso de ocho in a tissue and slipped it inside. Then he grabbed his phone and braced himself for what lay ahead.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Rocky’s Pictures in the ICC Mall was open, a lone tourist printing out repetitive photos of the Barbary Apes, perhaps wondering why the centre of town was so quiet. Haresh, the shopkeeper, looked grimly resigned to the lack of business.

  Spike lingered by a display cabinet of cheap frames and T-shirts emblazoned with catalogue images of laughing children until the shop was empty.

  ‘Not going to Casemates?’ Haresh asked. Despite the fact that his family had settled on the Rock soon after India’s independence, he still spoke with a strong Rajasthan accent.

  ‘Maybe later,’ Spike said.

  There was a pause, then Spike cleared his throat. ‘Listen, Haresh. I need a favour . . .’

  Haresh’s frown deepened as Spike explained what he wanted.

  ‘So you do not want me to send the pictures from your phone to my computer,’ Haresh repeated back slowly.

  ‘Under no circumstances.’

  ‘And I must place your phone screen on the scanner and physically capture the images that way.’

  ‘Then save them on a disc.’

  Haresh held out his pink-lined palm, and Spike opened the first picture message and handed it to him, catching a glimpse of Žigon’s shrewd confident eyes on the phone screen. As Haresh placed the device on the scanner, Spike snapped, ‘Careful,’ and he lowered the lid more delicately. The photocopier emitted a flash of light, then the blurry image of a man in a hotel corridor appeared on the monitor above.

  ‘Can’t you make it any clearer?’ Spike said.

  ‘I’ll touch it up later,’ Haresh replied defensively as he handed back Spike back his phone. ‘Next.’

  ‘This one’s from Halloween.’

  ‘In August?’

  Haresh peered down at the gruesome image of Enrico’s body. Through the shop window, Spike saw a group of locals hurrying by, presumably joining in the search for Charlie. He turned back to Haresh, reminded again of the urgency. ‘How long will it take to clean them up?’

  ‘Should be done by this afternoon.’

  Spike gave Haresh a nod, then put his phone back into his pocket and left.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The nurses’ station was empty, the swing doors to the ward propped open, hushed voices audible within. Spike moved towards the entrance and saw a group of people gathered around Peter Galliano’s bed. On the near side was the bird-like form of Hilary Silva, as lean as Peter had been fat, blue mascara blurred as she held her brother’s hand. Crouching beside her was the nurse Spike knew, while two doctors in hospital scrubs stood on the far side of the bed, one peering at Peter’s chart,
the other checking his ventilator.

  Hilary turned her head as Spike entered the ward. She looked confused, overwhelmed even, and Spike suddenly wished he was anywhere but there. But a moment later, her lips tightened into a smile. Spike glanced at the nurse and saw that she was smiling too.

  ‘I asked Peter to squeeze my hand,’ Hilary Silva croaked as Spike approached. ‘And he did it, Spike. He squeezed my hand.’

  A moment later, Spike found himself embracing her so hard he was worried she might crack. One of the doctors came round to their side of the bed. ‘We don’t want to crowd him,’ she said to Spike briskly.

  Spike nodded, smiling as he saw that Galliano’s eyes were half open, irises roving, drool spilling from his mouth, lacquering his beard. He bent down and whispered in his ear: ‘I’m going to sort things out, Pete. I’m not quite sure how, but I will.’

  Galliano stared back at him. Then all of a sudden he gave a wink, and Spike felt his smile broaden. ‘Amazing,’ he murmured as the doctor steered him back to the door. ‘Just amazing.’

  She herded him past the desk. ‘I’ve already explained this to Peter’s sister, Mr Sanguinetti,’ she said evenly. ‘You need to remember that it’s very early days. We still don’t know how serious the brain injury is. These are encouraging signs, but no more than that.’

  Spike nodded, aware that he was grinning like an imbecile.

  ‘He needs to rest now; you can come back this evening.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Spike said. ‘Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The silence of the skies was broken as Spike emerged from the hospital to find a police helicopter hovering over the western flank of the Rock. The sense of elation he’d felt at Peter’s bedside vanished. His phone began to ring: it was Jessica. ‘Any news?’ Spike asked.

  ‘Not yet. But we’re doing everything we can.’

  The background noise was oppressive: Spike could barely hear her. ‘Where are you?’ he shouted.

  ‘In a boat. Checking the coves around Catalan Bay.’

  He heard a man’s voice shouting orders above the engine of the speedboat: ‘Gorgeous’ George Isola, no doubt.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ Jessica said to Spike. ‘Something you might have forgotten?’

  Spike hesitated for a moment. Tell the police and I will kill him. ‘No, nothing else,’ he replied, then almost changed his mind before realising that she’d already hung up. As he came into Casemates, he saw that half the restaurants and cafés had their grilles lowered: most of the catering staff were Spanish, and a closed border left no one to flip burgers or wait tables. The only movement was a house sparrow enjoying a dust bath beneath a eucalyptus tree. The hushed atmosphere stirred memories of when Franco had shut the frontier, sealing the Gibraltarians inside, helping them to forge their proud yet adaptable nature.

  Midway through the square, Spike paused to watch the tail end of a crowd climbing Demayas Ramp. The road was crammed with people – schoolkids marshalled by teachers, men and women in suits, Arabs, Jews, Hindus, Christians, all united in the search for a stolen child. Spike felt a momentary glow of pride, until he remembered that he was the reason for this show of solidarity.

  At least the ‘All’s Well’ pub was open; he sat down on the terrace, receiving a glare from the Liverpudlian waiter, annoyed to have his viewing of a pre-season football match interrupted. Checking the time – still an hour before the photographs would be ready – he took the faded airmail letter from the pocket of his cargo trousers and carefully unfolded it.

  ‘My darling J,’ Spike read. ‘I still can’t sleep, so I’ve left your father to snore alone. I don’t think he’ll even notice I’m gone. I’m sitting on the balcony of our holiday apartment, sipping the rough Burgundy from supper, watching the tide roll onto the shore. S wears himself out during the hot days here – building huge sandcastles with R on the beach below, tearing himself away from the water long enough only to beg for ice cream. So he does not stir in bed, a mercy on nights when I feel like this, when the pain of losing you is so raw. People think it strange to grieve so long for a child who never lived. But they are wrong. You did live. Inside me. I also mourn for the life we might have had together. The memories we might have made which have been stolen from us. R wants to move on, to live. It is his nature. I know that he loves me, but he does not know how to make things better, and that hurts him dreadfully. He is a man who needs to fix things, to solve problems, but I think that we are both beginning to realise that he cannot fix me . . .’

  Spike closed the letter. He’d never really thought about how it might feel to lose a child. How it could destroy a person. At least Amy had never suffered the pain of knowing that her son was missing. That was something, wasn’t it? Leaving a stack of coins for his drink, he continued on foot towards Devil’s Tower Road, aware that there was another stop he needed to make.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The North Front Cemetery was the only graveyard in Gibraltar still in use, the others having reached bursting point last century. It grew larger by the year, though its indefinite expansion was checked by the airport runway which ran along the far side. At least the planes were silent today.

  Inside, Spike saw thousands of headstones huddled together, sun-bleached and upright, contrasting with the older, crooked graves of the Trafalgar Cemetery, where the injured had been buried from the famous naval battle which had taken place twenty miles off the coast of Gib. Spike moved towards the middle row, passing the section for the unconsecrated dead, feeling his feet sink into the soft pathways – the cemetery was built on the narrow sandy isthmus that connected Gibraltar to Spain, always a boon for gravediggers. Finally he reached the simple white marble of his mother’s headstone. A vase was pegged into the earth beside it, the glass smudged and dirty. He plucked it from its ring and polished it on his T-shirt, realising that once again he had failed to bring flowers. Not that it mattered – she was dead and gone and no God was smiling down on those who remembered her. He squinted through the sunlight at the inscription: ‘Catherine Rose Sanguinetti, beloved wife of Rufus, mother of Somerset, missed beyond all bearing’. ‘Why didn’t you just say something?’ he asked aloud. Sensing someone move behind him, he turned to see a hunched old man, hands clasped behind his back. The man gave a nod as if to say, ‘We all must carry on . . .’

  He stepped over Catherine Sanguinetti’s grave and stopped by a smaller granite block two rows in front. ‘JS’ the inscription read. ‘Born 16/01/1977. Died 16/01/1977. Always in our hearts’. Juliet. His sister. Born and died on the same day. Spike crouched down and touched the stone. Its darkness had absorbed a little of the sun’s heat, and it warmed his palm. Shutting his eyes, he thought of his mother, and of the sister he had never known, of Amy Grainger and Enrico Sanguinetti, both dead, of Charlie and Zahra, both missing. Tears pricked his eyes, until he remembered Žigon’s cold lazy-eyed stare, and turned to walk away past his mother’s grave, trailing his fingertips over the top of her headstone, feeling his grief harden into a small, tight knot of anger.

  Chapter Fifty

  Dusk was falling as Spike locked up the office and moved into the evening traffic of Europa Road. Echoing in the distance, he heard the last cries of the search party as they returned to the Moorish Castle Estate, still calling out for Charlie Grainger, knocking on doors, checking abandoned buildings. Some people thought he might have fled up onto the Rock, hoping to find his dead father; Spike had overheard one person suggest that the apes might have taken him. By now, the police would have searched every part of the Upper Rock accessible by foot. On his way back from the graveyard to the photo shop, Spike had made out tiny figures moving inside the gates of the military base, usually forbidden to civilians.

  Distrust had been etched on Haresh’s brow as he’d handed Spike the disc. When Spike had asked if he could also take the cardboard box marked ‘Xerox’ lying behind the counter, Haresh had asked to be compensated for
each remaining sheet of photographic paper inside. It had been worth it though – the box was just the right size to transport a ship’s bell.

  Back on Main Street, Spike had slipped the disc into a jiffy bag addressed to his contact at Interpol. By the end of the week an image of Žigon – and of his work – would be safely in the hands of the authorities. And Spike’s mobile phone would bear no electronic trace of the photographs having been sent.

  Now that the package had been posted, Spike carried nothing but the empty Xerox box past the cable-car station, skirting the gates of the Alameda Gardens, trying not to think of the time he’d spent there with Zahra, nor of the nightmare he’d had about her in Genoa.

  It was gone 8.30 p.m. He’d wanted to scout out the location for at least an hour before the handover, but had forgotten how long it took to reach Europa Point on foot. It was a part of Gibraltar he always tried to avoid. To his left rose the Rock, the steps to Jews’ Gate winding up its flank, the point above which the search helicopter had hovered this morning. Beside it lay a shrine to the Pillars of Hercules, a plaque explaining how Hercules had torn Africa and Europe in two to celebrate one of his Labours, and how the Romans had believed Gibraltar to mark the gateway to Hell on account of the maze of caves and passages deep within its porous limestone. Mons Calpe, Hollow Mountain. Even the most impregnable fortress could have a vulnerable centre.