Sign of the Cross (18 page)

Spike stared at her across the bar. There was so much metal in her face it looked as though she’d been caught in a nail bomb and the doctors had decided not to operate.

‘You fucking
slow
?’ she said to Spike, who still hadn’t moved. She withdrew a biro from her ponytail and stabbed it through the plastic of the tray.

‘I’m looking for John Petrovic.’

‘Well, he ain’t here, sweetheart,’ the barmaid said, ripping back the casing.

‘But he’ll be in later, right?’

‘When we’re open you can pay the fifteen-euro cover charge and find out for yourself.’

She took out a can, then glanced up. ‘You need to leave.
Now
. The bouncer’s out back.’

Spike reached slowly into his pocket. ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I owe John money, but I’m on a flight home tonight.’ He slid three folded notes across the bar.

‘Mango Lounge,’ the barmaid said, jabbing the biro back into her ponytail. ‘On the seafront.’

6

The strip on the beachfront was busier. Girls with promotional leaflets darted from bars like fish at a lure. A brunette in hot pants and a tied-off man’s shirt stepped in front of Spike. ‘Free chaser with every pint,’ she said in a London accent.

‘I’m too broke.’

‘Babe, I’d buy you a drink any time,’ she replied, tapping him on the behind with her sheaf of flyers.

The bars occupied the ground floors of what looked like holiday apartments. The odd party was taking place on the balconies above, but mostly the windows were dark. Spike passed a group of students talking German, all carrying balloons on sticks. Below on the beach, a couple disappeared hand in hand along a carpet of moonlight.

Louder music throbbed ahead, ‘Mango Lounge’ scribbled in orange neon above a doorway. Inside, a waitress stood on the bar, firing a water pistol of tequila down into the mouths of three underage European boys, their pimply heads tilted back like nestlings. Watching on unimpressed was a group of tall, vanilla-haired Scandinavian girls.

Spike moved deeper inside the room. Vicious nu-metal pumped from speakers. In one corner sat a pack of groomed Maltese youths, eking out bottles of Cisk beer, their fitted shirts and complex facial hair suggesting an affiliation with the Italian national football team. A few ruddy-faced British ex-pats were huddled round a quiz machine, too old for the scene but seeming not to care.

Spike checked the booths on the far wall. In one sat a blond man with a freckled American face.

One of the Scandinavians nudged her friend as Spike passed, but he ignored her, slipping onto the banquette beside John, who had his bulky white trainers up on the table, frowning at a mobile phone as he composed what looked like a lengthy text message.

Spike tapped John hard on the shoulder. The protest died on his lips as he recognised Spike. He managed an unwilling smile. ‘Hey, bud,’ he shouted above the music. ‘I thought you were going home.’

‘I’m looking for Zahra.’

He screwed up his face. ‘You’re what?’

‘You heard.’

John removed his feet from the table, then slipped his phone into the pocket of his loose, low-hanging jeans. ‘You guys had a thing once. Right?’

In the next-door booth, two of the Germans had broken away from the main group and were kissing greedily, balloon sticks discarded on the floor.

‘I get it,’ John said, clapping a hand onto Spike’s shoulder. ‘I’d be the same.’

‘Where is she, John?’

They both looked up as the waitress appeared. She mouthed something in Maltese, and John nodded back. ‘We need to get you a drink,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘I’ll grab us both one.’

Spike stood and watched him walk to the bar. The waitress decapitated a first bottle of beer as John reached for his wallet.

‘
Abend!
’ Spike heard above the music. He glanced round and saw that the rest of the German group had appeared. The kissing couple shrank down in their seats. ‘
Erwischt!
’ someone yelled gleefully.

When Spike looked back, the waitress was tonging wedges of lime into bottle necks. John Petrovic had gone.

Spike plunged forward into the crowd, knocking into a German with a rat’s tail, who muttered an incomprehensible insult. ‘Your drinks!’ the waitress called, but Spike pushed past her into the corridor. Ladies to the left, Gents to the right, security door marked Fire Exit . . . Spike tried the Gents first, seeing one of the tequila boys praying on his hands and knees to the urinal as his friends roared with laughter. The cubicle doors were all open.

The waitress was standing in the corridor. ‘
Oi!
’ she shouted as Spike put his shoulder to the back door and burst outside. On the far pavement stood a figure. ‘John!’ Spike called out.

The figure turned, then vaulted the barrier to the beach.

7

Spike set off across the road. A souped-up muscle car was coming the other way; it braked in front of him, a hairy bejewelled fist holding down the horn as Spike scrambled over the flame-licked bonnet and hurdled the railings to the beach.

To the left rose sand dunes, to the right a promontory with a few parked cars. The figure was running between them along the edge of the water.

Spike sprinted down the beach, glimpsing a half-naked couple clamped together in a depression in the sand. They froze as he passed, faces fused.

The figure was thirty yards ahead; as Spike reached the furthest extent of the waves, the harder-packed sand allowed him to increase his speed. He was gaining; he heard the regular splash of his feet as they pounded the thin film of tepid water below. ‘Petrovic!’ he called out.

John glanced round, then stumbled, and Spike picked up his knees higher. A low sea wall flanked the promontory – the car park was part of a spit used to hold the beach in place. John moved diagonally into the softer sand, heading towards a set of steps, but Spike kept along the fringes of the water, cutting in at the last moment and propelling himself into the air. His outstretched hand clipped one of John’s oversized trainers, sending him crashing chin first into the sand.

Spike landed painfully on his hands, then sprung to his feet. John was sitting up now, rubbing wet sand from his hair and eyes. Spike took a step towards him.

‘What is your
problem
?’ John yelled, clambering up awkwardly. ‘Are you
retarded
?’ Tendons appeared in his neck and his jaw jutted, as though he were readying himself for the last charge of a football game.

‘I asked you a question, Petrovic. Where’s Zahra?’

John thrust out his arms in frustration and moved forward, then seemed to take Spike’s measure and stop. ‘For Christ’s sake . . .’ He lowered his gaze. ‘She was asking me about some girl. OK?’

‘Dinah?’ Spike said.

‘Yeah. Dinah. That’s it.’ His eyes switched left: at the far end of the beach, the courting couple were hurrying back hand in hand towards the road.

‘And where is she now?’ Spike said.

‘I have no fuckin’ idea.’ John shook another clod of sand from his baggy denims. ‘Are we done?’ Flexing his neck, he turned and started walking towards the promontory.

‘I know about the girls,’ Spike called after.

John hesitated, then continued walking.

‘The underage girls.’

John slowed. Spike watched his shoulders move up and down as he tried to catch his breath.

‘I’m sure the US embassy will be fascinated to hear about a charity worker with a penchant for child abuse.’

John turned to the left, towards the sea. A moment passed. ‘It isn’t what you think,’ he said as Spike moved towards him, fists tucked beneath biceps.

‘The girl came onto
me
, right?’ John resumed. ‘I’d only just got to Malta. No more Peace Corps; I was lonely. She told me she was legal, but then the texts started coming. Photos of us together.’ John paused, the only sound now the steady rhythmic whisper of the Mediterranean. ‘I changed cell but they kept on coming. I’ve got a girl back in the States, you know?’ His voice took on a whining, childlike quality. ‘Then another text arrived. He told me he could make it stop.’

‘Who could?’

‘The man sending the pictures.’

‘What was his name?’

‘We never met.’

‘His name?’

John turned his head a fraction. In the moonlight, his bright green eyes were wide and afraid. ‘Salib.’

‘Salib who?’

‘Just Salib.’ John looked away.

‘What did he want?’

‘Nothing . . . Just for me to hook him up with any migrants looking for a way into Italy.’

Spike’s chest suddenly felt tight. ‘Did you hook Zahra up with Salib?’

‘Zahra told me Dinah had a kid or something; she wanted to ask Salib some questions, check they were both OK.’ He swept aside his blond fringe defensively. ‘She knew the migrants were skipping to Italy as well as I did. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.’

‘Because she’s missing, John.’

John glanced down at his wristwatch. ‘Can I go now?’

‘How many men did you send to Salib?’ Spike said, stepping towards him. ‘How many old people?’

John gave an amused snort.

‘Because he only wanted the girls, right?’ Spike shifted his weight from foot to foot. His joints felt lacquered now, his muscles sharp and precise. ‘Did he tell you only to approach the pretty ones? Pay you a bonus if you cherry-picked a real beauty?’

John raised his eyes. This time he held Spike’s gaze.

‘Where did you send her, John?’

‘Eat me.’

Slowly, Spike tilted back his head, then brought his brow crashing down on the bridge of John Petrovic’s nose. There was a crack, like a fist crushing a walnut, followed by the reeling pain of having walked into a low-hanging beam.

Spike staggered backwards. When he opened his eyes, John was kneeling before him, blood pattering into the sand from between his cupped hands.

‘Where did you send her, John?’

John groaned into his palms, rocking back and forth.

‘
Where?
’

‘Racecourse Street.’ His voice was reedy and nasal.

‘Where’s Racecourse Street?’

‘In Marsa. By the Sporting Club. That’s all I know.’

Spike was already walking back towards the road.

8

The taxi drew to a halt. ‘Here is Marsa.’

‘I need Racecourse Street.’

‘I told you, mister, I don’t know any Racecourse Street.’

The cabbie kept his hands on the wheel, refusing to drive further. Spike paid what was on the meter and got out.

Half a mile earlier, they’d passed an industrial dockland, with the entrance to the original migrant camp opposite. After that they’d wound through the narrow streets of a residential working-class district: hardware stores, launderettes, rotting window frames contrasting with the ornate balconies of Valletta. The taxi had stopped at the mouth of a road, beside a wall with the words ‘Marsa Sports Club’ daubed in bull-blood red. Spike watched it reverse quickly away, then drive back in the direction of the docks.

He turned and headed along the wall. Poorly lit alleys sloped down to meet it; he checked the street names but they were all in Maltese.

A squat woman bustled towards him with a shopping bag. ‘Racecourse Street?’ Spike said, but she lowered her whiskered chin and increased her speed.

He took out the Mifsud address book and made a call. A female voice answered in Maltese.

‘Natalya?’ Spike said.

‘Is Clara. You want speak Natalya?’

‘Is Michael there?’

An old-fashioned click, then the Baron picked up. ‘Home safe?’

‘I decided to stay on for Carnival.’

‘How wonderful.’

‘I’m trying to look up an old friend. The trouble is, I have the street name in English but I need it in Maltese.’

‘What is it in English?’

‘Racecourse Street.’

There was a pause. The distant rev of a motorbike came from a passageway behind.

‘Are you sure that’s where your friend lives?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s just . . . I’m not sure it’s a very good area.’

‘I can look after myself, Michael. Now do you have the name?’

‘Triq it-Ti
g
rija,’ the Baron said in perfect Maltese. ‘But I really don’t –’

Spike thanked him and hung up.

9

Spike checked the name of each triq he passed. A barred gate appeared in the wall: he peered through and saw what looked like the concourse of a racetrack. He continued on until the street began to brighten. Lamp posts rose ahead on a crumbled-down pavement. Finally he saw a name painted in white along the top of the wall: ‘Triq it-Ti
g
rija’.

A woman emerged from the shadows, whispering in Maltese. She wore red PVC trousers and a leather basque; judging by her height and jutting Adam’s apple, she had not been a woman for long.