Hollow Mountain

by Thomas Mogford

A few yards on, a dull glow threw a little light on the tunnel floor, revealing a smaller shaft angling upwards, the air inside cleaner-smelling, pinpricks of what looked like starlight at its end. Spike hauled himself inside. If this was a ventilation shaft, as he suspected, then it would emerge on the side of the Rock, hopefully with no grille to block it.

  Tiring now, Spike started to drag himself along the passageway, feeling the uneven surface of the stone beneath his palms, a sign that the shaft had been bored by hand, part of the original eighteenth-century network built to defend the Rock during the Great Siege.

  The roof lowered, forcing him to crawl again, his injured knee dragging blood along the floor, his steady rhythmic progress allowing his mind to wander, first back to Tangiers, when he’d rescued Zahra from the path of the jeep, then to Malta, where an ancient escape route beneath a knight’s palazzo had saved him from a fire. A warm, salty breeze started to blow onto his face, and at last he was able to draw in the sweet air of Gibraltar, of home. The tunnel broadened again, and now he could see the moon above, hear the distant sounds of the city, the murmur of waves at the foot of the Rock.

  Spike raised himself into a standing position and stepped towards the open tunnel mouth. One hand gripping an iron rung, he peered down, seeing a sheer drop, the razor wire of the military base below.

  There was less fog on this side of the Rock. As Spike looked out further, he made out a thin escarpment to the left, leading down the eastern face of the moutain. If he could somehow swing down to it, he had a chance.

  Pulling off his sodden T-shirt, he started to roll it up, preparing to tie it to the rung. Then he heard a triumphant voice behind him: ‘Gotcha.’

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Captain Hugh Jardine stood at the entrance to the cavern. He wore old grey sweatpants and black trainers. Wrapped around his waist was a fleece, perhaps removed as the chase had progressed. Clenched in his hand was a pistol, pointing at Spike’s naked chest.

  Spike took a backwards step, feeling the breeze from the open tunnel chill the sweat on his shoulders.

  ‘Sorry about your friend in the SEAT,’ Jardine panted. ‘I thought he was you. Or perhaps that was what you intended?’ Jardine glanced down at the mother-of-pearl handle of the gun. ‘He had good taste in firearms, whoever he was.’

  ‘The police will find the body.’

  ‘You think so? I dumped it over the seawall. And they didn’t spend much time investigating the last hit-and-run, did they?’ Jardine must have seen something in Spike’s expression as he slimmed his eyes and chuckled. ‘I thought you’d worked that out. Turned out your business partner was the only lawyer in history who couldn’t be bought off.’

  Spike risked a glance at the open drop behind. ‘Did you bring Simon Grainger up here?’

  ‘Now there was a man who knew the value of money,’ Jardine said. ‘He came to see me and Mort. Got wind that we’d found some silver and said he knew it was Spanish. We didn’t take him seriously at first, but then we found out about his other discoveries. The ship’s bell. Some pieces of eight.’

  The pistol was now pointing at Spike’s throat. Why hadn’t Jardine fired it? No one would hear the shot.

  ‘So you killed him.’

  ‘We did consider paying him off. Brought him up here to see the coins before we melted them down. Then he told us he’d met with your friend, Galliano.’ He sighed. ‘And that was that.’

  ‘So you jacked him up on Zoloft and alcohol and threw him over the edge.’

  Jardine laughed. ‘We got him drunk all right. But he took the happy pills on his own time.’ He shrugged. ‘Call it a lucky break.’

  Spike thought back to the wedding photograph in the Graingers’ apartment. The gentle giant gazing tenderly into his young wife’s face, Amy’s veil thrown back as she met his eyes. Both dead now, murdered so that rich men could keep their dirty secrets hidden. Spike made no effort to temper the contempt in his voice. ‘So who came up with the scheme to steal the silver?’

  ‘That was Mort’s idea. I just helped with logistics.’ Jardine raised an eyebrow. ‘The execution, if you like.’ He was enjoying himself now. ‘Mort told me they’d found Spanish treasure near the Gloucester wreck. He wanted to find a way for Neptune to claim it. Turned out to be a little more complicated than we hoped. But here we are. Stop doing that, will you?’

  Spike was edging away from the tunnel mouth, eyes roving for a loose cable hook.

  ‘And keep your hands up. Palms open.’

  Spike stepped back in front of the opening, hearing the breeze howl through the crags below.

  ‘There’ll be no trouble attributing your death to suicide,’ Jardine went on. ‘Like mother, like son.’ He took a step closer. ‘She would have fucked me eventually, you know. They all did, back then. But she was a drunk. Completely crackers, as it turned out. But then you know all that, don’t you?’ He cocked the gun and said softly, ‘It’s close to here, isn’t it, where her car went over the cliff? There’s an appealing symmetry in that at least.’

  Spike felt his heel pivot on the tunnel edge. ‘I still have the ship’s bell,’ he said quickly, playing for time.

  Jardine paused, considering.

  ‘You wanted it enough to kill Grainger.’

  ‘Grainger was a two-bit blackmailer.’

  ‘And to have Dougie break into my house. I’ve got it with me here. I’m sure Mort would be pleased to see it destroyed.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There. Just behind me.’

  In the fraction of a second that Jardine’s eyes flicked to the left, Spike threw his weight forward against the old soldier’s arm. They both watched in silence as the pistol arced through the air. Then Spike launched himself at Jardine’s stomach.

  They fell together on the cool stone floor, Jardine immediately rolling over, his muscles unexpectedly taut. He stretched out a hand for the pistol, but Spike held him back, trying to pull him away, face pressed into his fleece, catching the lonely smell of smoke and booze trapped within. Jardine’s fingers were edging forwards, just an inch from the gun now; Spike released him for a moment, then dug the nails of both hands deep into the scar he’d been shown on the pontoon. Jardine let out a desperate groan, arms clutching his side; as soon as he loosened his grip on the floor, Spike hauled him round, surprised at the lightness of the man, and shoved him forward until his head was sticking out over the edge of the open tunnel mouth.

  ‘Please,’ Jardine called back, words muffled by the breeze, ‘I’ll pay you.’ Now his chest was dangling out from the Rock. ‘I’ll give you everything Mort paid me. Four hundred thousand pounds.’

  Spike held onto Jardine’s legs as his upper body sank further into the void.

  ‘It’s in a Cayman Islands account,’ he called out in a high-pitched voice. ‘We can make a deal . . .’

  Spike felt Jardine’s legs lurch forward. His black trainers caught in the crooks of Spike’s arms. His weight was dragging Spike towards the edge; he held on for a moment, then released his grip, seeing Jardine’s feet vanish almost instantly into the darkness. There was a distant cry, followed by a soft, hollow thump.

  Spike sat back. The pistol was beside him. He kicked it out after Jardine, then waited for his breathing to steady.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Gripping the material of his rolled-up T-shirt, Spike swung through the night air. At the last moment, he released his makeshift rope and landed awkwardly on the thin strip of land to the left of the tunnel mouth, bare chest catching against the trunk of a holm-oak tree. Tentatively he got to his feet and started the slow painful climb down the eastern flank of the Rock.

  With the moon shining down, and the breeze warm against his bleeding skin, Spike felt as though he were in a dream. His senses were heightened, his mind sharp, the objects around him hyperreal. He considered this ancient Rock where he’d been born, stuck between continents and oceans, between cultures and races, with its jungle of monkeys and lawyers and children and so
ldiers and crooks and tourists. The Rock was like the earth, he thought, spinning in infinity with no one the wiser as to why it existed, how it made sense, what these strange and arbitrary collisions meant. For a moment he felt as though he was at the centre of the universe, bound up with it. Then he pushed through the fronds of a fan palm and saw Hugh Jardine’s shattered body on the ground.

  The dead man lay in the foetal position, a spill of blood and other matter seeping into the pebbly scrub beneath him. His right wrist was folded back where he had put out his hands to try to break his fall, and his left . . . Spike raised his head and saw the silhouette of an ape sitting on a crag, a tubular object gripped between its paws.

  Forcing his eyes away, he knelt at the remains of Jardine’s corpse. A raw, butcher’s shop stink rose from his chest. Keeping his eyes averted from the stump, Spike pulled off the fleece wrapped around Jardine’s waist and slipped it over his own shoulders, then brushed a hand over the man’s pockets. Car keys, wallet, smartphone in a rubber case. The device appeared miraculously unscathed. Spike tapped in a number, wondering at the clarity of his mind, the ease with which he remembered each digit.

  ‘DS Navarro?’ came a voice at the end of the line.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Spike? Where are you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve found Charlie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s locked in the boot of a blue SEAT parked on the viewing platform at Europa Point. He’s alive, Jess.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He could hear the relief flooding into her voice. ‘Just wait a minute, will you? Just wait.’

  Spike stared out from the Rock as he listened to Jessica shouting commands to her colleagues. To his right, he saw Black Strap Cove, Both Worlds retirement village alongside. He shook his head in amazement: he must have passed through the entire breadth of the Rock. A ship was moored off the jetty by Sandy Bay – hulking industrial hull, black gantry crane rising from the stern . . .

  ‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Make sure they bring fluids.’

  ‘I will.’

  A smaller vessel was approaching the jetty, and Spike recognised the RIB that had taken him out to the Trident on the day he had first met Mort Clohessy. ‘Are you still on boat patrol?’ he asked.

  ‘Just back.’

  ‘Can you turn round and pick me up on the jetty in Sandy Bay?’

  ‘Why would I want to do that, Spike? I’ve been up for the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Because I’m about to hand you the biggest bust of your career.’

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Spike paced the jetty as he watched the Royal Gibraltar Police launch crash towards him over the waves. In the distance he could just make out the tail lights of the Trident as she sailed away through Gibraltar territorial seas.

  The police launch slowed by the jetty, Jessica standing in the back, Inspector George Isola at the wheel.

  ‘Get in,’ Jessica called, and Spike climbed into the boat, grimacing as he pulled his injured knee over the fibreglass rim. The strange epiphany he had experienced on the Rock had now been eclipsed by a dull persistent headache throbbing against the top of his skull. ‘Did you find him?’ he shouted. ‘Did you find the boy?’

  Jessica nodded, and Spike tried to interpret her expression. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jess. Tell me! Is Charlie all right?’

  She nodded again, and Spike enjoyed a brief moment of relief before he felt his arms yanked behind his back and the cold steel of handcuffs pinch his wrists. ‘You’re under arrest,’ Isola said, perhaps more enthusiastically than might have been considered professional.

  ‘What’s the charge, George?’ Spike said, looking at Jessica, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Withholding information. Suspicion of kidnap . . .’

  ‘Tell me he’s joking, Jess.’

  Jessica averted her eyes as Isola shoved Spike down onto the rear seat of the boat. Turning away, Spike nodded towards the lights of the Trident fading into the distance. ‘Oi! Genius! You need to intercept that ship,’ he shouted at Isola. ‘The real baddies are getting away.’

  But Isola ignored him and fired up the engine, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jessica said.

  ‘That ship is carrying illegally raised bullion. Melted-down pieces of eight.’

  Isola glanced around and rolled his eyes.

  ‘There’s also ivory aboard,’ Spike said. ‘In breach of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.’

  Isola slipped the launch into gear and began steering it along the coastline towards Gibraltar Harbour.

  ‘There’s a body, you cortapisha,’ Spike shouted. ‘Under the cliffs by Europa Point Lighthouse. It belongs to the man who took Charlie. The men aboard the Trident killed him.’ He turned to Jessica. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jess! Can you do something?’

  Jessica stared back, then made her way over to Isola. At first he threw up his arms like an angry teenager, but then she placed a hand on his shoulder and, like many a man before him, he weakened. Throwing Spike a look, he put the boat into neutral and took out his radio. A moment later, he was standing by Spike’s side. No taller than five-foot-seven, Spike was pleased to note.

  ‘You’re talking about the cargo ship that just passed us, right?’ Isola said, pointing at a flashing red light disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘About fifteen minutes ago, yes.’

  Isola barked into his radio, then clambered back to the wheel. Jessica sat down by Spike as the police launch picked up speed, slamming over the waves. ‘Is that blood?’ she said, pointing at the creeping stain on the knee of his cargo trousers.

  He nodded, eyes trained on the ship’s lights. They were catching her up now; Spike arched his head and checked their position. The port of Algeciras glittered to the right – the Trident was pressing into the open Mediterranean as it sought to leave Gibraltar seas. ‘You can still make an arrest in international waters,’ Spike called to the front of the boat. ‘Universal jurisdiction.’

  Isola nodded impatiently, then swore as he watched the Trident change direction. Spike thought back to the map he’d studied for the Neptune case delineating Gibraltar territorial seas. There was a thin buffer zone of international waters between Gibraltarian and Spanish territory, but the space beyond that belonged categorically to Spain. Isola must have known it too, as he jammed the engine into full throttle and flicked on the police light on the roof. Soon the Trident would be in Spanish territory, an impossible location for the Gibraltar police to make an arrest in without triggering an international incident.

  Fettered by his handcuffs, Spike slid from side to side, leg aching with each jolt, the wind chilling his neck. Jessica put out a hand to steady him, her touch warm and comforting. Half a mile ahead, the Trident had completed its arc. Spike made out the gallows shape of the gantry crane and saw the RIB bouncing behind it, dragged by a rope from the stern.

  Isola slowed, frowning at a computerised map on the control panel. ‘Bezims,’ he cursed, smashing the tiller with a fist.

  ‘Spanish waters,’ Jessica said to Spike.

  Spike thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘But the ship’s carrying Spanish silver.’

  Jessica stared back, baffled.

  ‘Radio the Guardia Civil,’ Spike called to the front of the launch, feeling a wave of fatigue hit him at the prospect of having to explain a complex point of international maritime law to Inspector Isola. ‘Tell them that a boat carrying stolen Spanish artefacts has just entered Spanish territorial waters. Come on!’

  Jessica hesitated, then took out her radio. A moment later she spoke in her near-perfect Spanish, watched by her mute and puzzled superior. Spike glanced again towards land. They were two miles from Algeciras now; with the Trident heading west, soon she’d be out of Spanish waters altogether and onto the Moroccan side of the Straits, beyond the jurisdiction even of the Guardia Civil.

  �
��The ship’s called the Trident, right?’ Jessica called to Spike. He nodded, and she spoke more urgently into her radio. Before she’d even hung up, Spike caught a high-pitched rattle in the distance, like ball bearings shaken in a jar. A small flashing light started bombing towards them out of the bay. They sat in silence and watched as the noise grew louder. A minute later, a powerful Guardia Civil patrol boat roared by, the silhouette of a machine-gun mount rising on its rear deck.

  ‘They’ve got the gunboat out,’ Isola called back with unembarrassed excitement, putting his own engine into gear and following the Guardia at a respectful distance.

  The echo of a loudhailer reverberated across the water, but the Trident pressed on, ignoring whatever Spanish threats were being issued at volume.

  ‘Refusal to stop,’ Isola called back. ‘They can arrest them for that alone.’

  The loudhailer sounded again, followed by a crackle of gunfire, rubber bullets shot into the air as a warning. In the distance, the lights of the Moroccan shoreline grew stronger – the port city of Tetouan, drawing closer. Spike watched the Guardia boat speed around the bow of the Trident, blocking her route, blue and red lights flashing. But rather than relent, the Trident continued bearing down on it.

  Spike imagined the testosterone of the control room, Clohessy screaming, Dougie mumbling Scottish curses as little Jamie covered his eyes and prayed for his mother. At the last moment, the Guardia boat seemed to lose its nerve and revved away. There was an unsettling silence as the Trident chugged on, unencumbered, but then a moment later they heard a deeper burst of gunfire, then a series of ominous thumps.

  The Guardia boat stopped, swaying in the current as the Trident powered onwards, its shape fading into the gloom. ‘They must be in Moroccan waters now,’ Isola said. ‘Game over.’

  A sudden fizzing sound cut through the sky as a phosphorescent glow appeared above. Spike, Jessica and Isola got to their feet, watching as the distress flare hung motionless, then exploded into crimson light. And then Spike realised that the bow of the Trident was strangely high in the water, her gantry crane pitching forward, tipping her upwards. On either side of the ship, he saw figures floundering in the reddened water, then the flare died and the figures were hidden again by a terrible darkness.