Sign of the Cross (19 page)

Two heavy-set men stood beneath a street light, each holding a birdcage in one hand. They fell silent as Spike approached. Their birds cocked their heads, each staring at Spike with tiny ink-spot eyes.

‘I’m looking for Salib.’

One of the men raised his chin from a bed of neck fat and motioned up the street. Spike walked away, hearing the chaffinches chattering excitedly in their cages.

The street grew wider. Four women in stockings and bikini tops leaned against a parked car, overplucked eyebrows rippling like waves as Spike passed. He glanced into an alley and saw a girl in leopard-print leggings quietly unlocking a door.

A bar appeared on the pavement. Spike looked back at the men with their birdcages, and the same man motioned with a large hand towards it.

The bar had a row of plastic chairs with backs pressed to the facade. Two men occupied them, each with a birdcage at his feet. In Marsa, instead of walking a dog in the evening, apparently you walked the chaffinch.

Inside, an older man sat filling out a betting slip. The bar had a pinboard of currency notes behind it, beer on tap and a man rinsing pint glasses on a spray jet. Spike relaxed a little; this place would do OK in Gib.

He sat down on a stool. The barman rinsed another glass. He was tall and thin with a florid rash across his nose and cheeks.

‘Pint of lager, please,’ Spike said.

The barman cupped an ear, then brought his head closer. His breath smelled of pickled eggs. Spike pointed at the beer tap, and the man nodded, pulling a pint which was largely foam. Spike handed over a ten-euro note, which the barman slipped into the pocket of his cords before returning to washing glasses.

Spike rotated his stool. The man with the betting slip was gone. A white panel van rolled by outside. When Spike turned back to the bar, his pint had part liquefied; he took a sip and found it warm and flat. ‘I’m looking for Salib,’ he said.

The squirt of the drinks rinser wilted.

‘Do you know him?’

The barman shook his head, then fired up the fountain again. Spike looked past him to a rear door. Voices outside: some kind of beer garden, perhaps.

‘John Petrovic sent me.’

The barman swivelled his head. ‘American John?’

‘He told me to ask for Salib.’

A grin exposed a set of brown stumpy teeth. ‘You like girlies?’

Spike gave a wink, and the barman approached, reaching into his back pocket. ‘For friends of John,’ he said, returning Spike’s ten-euro note, ‘is on the house.’ His accent was heavily Maltese but the words were comprehensible.

Spike tucked the note back into his wallet, seeing a Gibraltar five-pound note inside, which he took out instead. ‘For your collection.’

The barman smiled and pinned the note to the board behind. ‘Come,’ he said, motioning to the back door.

Beer garden had been overstating things: a collapsed outhouse formed a rubble-strewn rear courtyard. In the only clear corner, a plank of wood had been stretched over two upturned flowerpots. A family of three sat eating what looked like rabbit stew; the woman and her son stared at Spike, while the man kept his back turned, stabbing at a chunk of meat with a knife.

‘Is better you go through,’ the barman said, sensitively indicating the child. He unlatched the gate in the wall. It gave onto a dusty track, with a broad single-storey building opposite.

‘Wait here,’ the barman said. ‘Five minutes.’

10

Spike eased his way through the cockeyed gate. The building on the other side of the track housed a series of stables. The upper halves of the doors were open but the horses had the sense to be grazing elsewhere. The smell of manure and damp hay was sharp and pungent.

Adjoining the stables was an open-ended shack: tools, inner tyres, leather saddles on walls. Spike crouched down and found a smooth spar of wood loose on the ground.

From inside the beer garden came a click as the inner door closed: must be the family, going back into the bar.

The moon was almost full, casting a pale light on the dusty track. Spike stooped down further as the sound of an engine approached. A few seconds later, a motorcycle appeared. As it drew closer, Spike saw that its rider wore a black helmet. He gripped the handle of his cudgel more tightly.

The motorcycle stopped, the rider kicking down the footstand, then swinging his legs off the bike. The man’s hands went to his head; as soon as Spike saw his helmet start to rise, he set off at a sprint towards him.

The man must have heard Spike approach, turning at the last moment, so that Spike’s cudgel made contact with his temple rather than the back of his head. A smack of wood on bone echoed through the backstreet.

The man sank to his knees, helmet still gripped between his hands. Then he fell forward into the dust.

11

The man was lying face down, helmet just beyond his outstretched arms. Spike looked round: the motorcycle was parked a few yards behind. A throb of music pulsed from the street on the other side of the wall. The moon shone.

‘Shit,’ Spike said out loud.

He heaved the man onto his back. His lank dark hair receded to a widow’s peak on a high forehead. His jaw was wide, an unexpected home for pink girlish lips, his blue canvas trousers fastened with what looked like fisherman’s string. It was hard to tell if he was breathing or not.

Reaching forward, Spike held the back of his hand under the man’s nose. A faint warmth tickled the skin. He patted him down, hoping to find a wallet. Nothing but a small set of padlock keys. Digging his hands beneath the man’s muscled flanks, he rolled him onto his side, ready to check the back pockets. As the man turned over, his white T-shirt rucked up his back, revealing the base of a tattoo. Spike pushed the material higher and saw half of a Maltese cross, thickly inked.

Something moved in front: the man’s hands were clasping the sides of his motorcycle helmet. Spike made a grab for the cudgel but the man was too quick, swivelling on one hip and swinging his helmet up with both arms so that it collided with Spike’s forehead.

Spike stumbled backwards and fell heavily onto his coccyx. The man was already on his feet; he stepped to the left and kicked Spike neatly under the chin with the point of his toes. Spike felt his neck snap back and a sharp heat in his throat. Then he was lying on the ground, staring up at the moon, unable to hear anything except a swirling seashell sound in his ears.

12

Spike sensed a shadow move above. The noise in his ears had stopped; he realised he was still lying on the track, head tilted back in the dust, staring up at the night sky.

He tried to stand but his arms were jammed in the pockets of his trousers. He moved his eyes downwards and saw a rubber bicycle tyre squeezed around his hips.

The man reappeared. With his left hand, he swept his thin black hair into its peak. Then he reached down and picked up a plastic canister.

Spike tried to force his arms out but the tyre was too tight around his midriff. He kicked with his feet to push himself away. The rubber tread gripped the ground, holding him in place. His face was hot, sweat soaking his T-shirt.

The man stared down. One of his cheeks was shiny with blood.

‘I have money,’ Spike said. ‘Five thousand euros.’

The man seemed to hesitate. Then he started unscrewing the lid of the canister.

‘Ten thousand,’ Spike said as the man dropped the cap onto the ground.

It was then that Spike started to shout. A moment later, his cries became retches as the man sloshed petrol into his face. His eyes burned, vomit mixing with saliva, heaving from the depths of his stomach, making him gag and convulse so much that he managed to flip over onto his side.

The man was walking away. Footsteps in the distance, the sound of a motorbike wheeled towards him. Spike’s eyes were open but he could see nothing but a grey blur.

The rattle of a matchbox, a hissing Maltese voice. The slow slide of the box opening. The rasp of a match on the striking strip . . .

Imperceptibly, Spike’s thoughts turned to Zahra, and he found himself less afraid. A flame glowed above, a halo of orange around it. He waited for the heat, for the shrieks to rise from his chest until the dizziness engulfed the agony. The match was burning, so brightly he realised he must already be alight, yet there was no pain. How clever, he thought, the body arranged it so there would be no pain. What a thing to discover so late.

He listened to the long, loud hoot of a horn. Shouting echoed, an exchange of voices. An engine revving, then a motorbike passing beside him, kicking up dust which caked the inside of his mouth.

Hands rolled him over. The glow came from car headlights, not a flame. The face above wore a small neat moustache.

‘My boy,’ whispered the Baron. ‘My poor, dear boy.’

She sits in the same position, legs out, back against the bars, chin lolling. Her upper arms throb: an infection spreading between the needle marks, joining the dots.

Deep within the cavern, the man’s voice sounds agitated as he talks on a mobile phone. A word is spoken which jolts her from her fever. It reappears a few sentences later, the Maltese pronunciation rasping and harsh:
Geebraltah
.

She feels her cracked lips form a smile. Spike is here . . . he is looking for her.

The man stands, voice quieter as he issues what sounds like a warning down the phone. Then he turns, looking her way. She closes her eyes, dreading the footsteps. But instead comes the click of a padlock as the gate opens, then closes.

She raises her head. In the half-light, she sees new figures on the camp beds. Beside her, the same woman sits slumped. She has given up calling for her baby. Perhaps she is dead.

With added determination, she tries to force her arms away from the bars. The needle marks in her upper arms start to pound. Leaning to one side, she lets her right arm flop down, then stretches her hand as far from her body as it will go. Her fingers brush something: the rough weave of hemp. She has reached the ropes of the woman next to her. She digs her nails beneath the knot and starts to work it free.

Chapter Nine

1

Spike opened an eye. The wallpaper above was old and peeling, decorated with images of a stork carrying a baby bundle through the air. Sometimes the stork’s wings were raised, sometimes lowered. The baby bundle remained the same.

Spike opened the other eye. He was stretched out on a metal-framed bed. Small, lace-trimmed pillows supported his head. A glass of water rested on the bedside table.

He sat up, shoulders throbbing. By the door, slumped in a wicker armchair, sat the Baroness. She wore white jeans and a sky-coloured linen shirt, her sandy hair tied back in a ponytail. In repose, her lips sagged as she breathed in and out.

Spike surveyed the bedroom, seeing his clothes washed and folded on the dresser, his espadrilles side by side below the cupboard. He blinked to clear the fog from his eyes, trying to remember the events of last night. Helped into the Baron’s Daimler. A frantic drive back to Valletta. The cool sting of eye drops from the doctor’s pipette. The unsympathetic tones of Clara as she’d reluctantly made up the spare room.

He moved his neck gingerly: the blow beneath his chin had bruised his windpipe. A taste of petrol lingered on his palate. Rainbows attached themselves to all sources of light. His retinas ached if they focused too long.

When he cleared his throat, the Baroness stirred, then got to her feet. ‘How are you?’ she whispered, coming over.

‘Better. I think.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘We were wondering whether to call your father.’

‘Best not.’

She nodded. ‘How are your eyes?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘That in Malta, little Malta . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Michael has already contacted the police. Given a description of the man. Apparently there’ve been robberies there before. Why did you go to Marsa?’ she asked, suddenly angry. ‘Sorry. You do not want to be interrogated. You go there for your own reasons. But Michael . . . when you phoned him, he worried and worried. Thank God he chose to go.’

‘How did he find me?’

‘He drove around. But you can ask him yourself, I’ll send him up. If you’re not too tired?’